Thoughts of a 21st century maniac

It is true that the minute I step my foot back home I feel an excessive wave of loneliness hitting. This time, though, I'm starting to think that it is not the lack of social interactions that breeds such kind of feelings, but rather the obligatory nature that sociality takes in this place. I feel a strong compulsion to meet people, when back there I had the luxury of refraining from such activities with the pretense of working. In the end, though, companionship is overestimated.

For crazed people, like us, the distinction between altruistic consideration and the effort to satisfy one of our essential needs is vague. And even this need is not completely satisfied by normal procedures. "We" are insular people, capable of loving only what is bound to never let us down, spending our time with a companion whose reactions abide by rules of increased predictability. The seclusion in our lives does not result from a lack of alternatives, but from our hunt for efficiency. Our artificial friends are perfect as colleagues, but our biological ones fail in their roles. They are self-contained systems that follow their own rules; They have their own urges and desires. When time comes that we have to satisfy one of their needs for which we are not prepared, we retreat to our conveniently predictable environments. Eventually, we condone socializing altogether. Work is the only efficient procedure in our lives. It's value for time. If you don't invest on relationships with people, you have nothing to lose.

And all these thoughts make me wonder one single thing:

How much time would it take for a society full of detached 21st century phreaks living in a supercomputer -such as that in Fassbinder's "World on a wire"- to become extinct..


N.B. for the friends out there reading this, and probably wondering: this text is ironic.