FEBRUARY 14, 2010
LONG BEACH, CALIFORNIA (AP) --
Technology rivals Bill Gates and Steve Jobs agreed on one thing at the annual TED Conference finishing this weekend in Long Beach, California; that the “back to electronics” movement was making great strides among the nation’s youth and population in general.
“Awareness of electronic devices and the role they play in the Earth’s fragile ecosystem is at an all-time high,” said Microsoft Founder Bill Gates, “and not only that, but people are participating, getting directly involved in technology far beyond the humble PC in their study, and are literally surrounding themselves with wireless and wired devices.”
The grass-roots “Back to Electronics” movement, believed to have started shortly after the introduction of the first generation iPhone, gathered steam as waves of parental resistance to cell phones with unlimited text and data plans gradually buckled under the pressure from the nation’s youth, who can usually be counted on to spearhead such cultural shifts. Evidence of the Movement’s penetration into everyday life were cited at TED2010 with discussions of people barricading themselves inside their house for months at a time to see if they could survive “living off the Internet,” as well as groups of Apple fanatics known collectively as “iPhone-huggers.”
Movement proponents cite the many benefits of getting Back to Electronics, including evading the sun’s harmful rays, recycling of air in closed spaces, allowing animals and plants in the wild to exist without any interference from or the presence of humans, and improved thumb dexterity.
Groups of electronics activists have been camping inside bars and Starbucks coffee houses to form “flashmobs” or to participate in “tweet-ups” based on the popular Twitter platform that allows people everywhere to have instantaneous and detailed information about the status of virtually everyone else. Others have been venturing out to the more remote and desolate edges of the electronic wilderness, living for weeks at a time in virtual worlds like Second Life.
Technology advocate and dreadlock-wearing self-promoter Jaron Lanier has announced plans to take advantage of the movement by holding ChipStock, “An Electronics Exposition, 3 Days of Peace and Technology,” to be held in an empty industrial park off of Lawrence Boulevard in Santa Clara CA, as well as virtually, wherever a WiFi hotspot can be found. Lanier is also rumored to be the head of the more radical group, Electronics First!, which advocates such extreme practices as placing wireless hotspots inside churches and in otherwise pristine natural settings.
