By CoyotePrime (Reporter)
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 by Karl Denninger

“Damn those coincidences… According to eMarketer, the average U.S. adult spent a bit more time in the digital world than watching television for the first time last year. But get this: We’re not watching less television. That’s right. The experts say we now spend an average of 10 hours a day with our eyes glued to some sort of screen, roughly split between digital and TV.

So here’s what I’m wondering. What exactly was everyone engaged in before we all became so engaged in the digital world? Said another way, what have we disengaged with in order to become more engaged with our gadgets? What price have we paid in the name of user engagement?

That’s easy: Our souls and our society.

You probably read my “In Closing” Ticker recently. Maybe I’m partly to blame for what’s happened over the last 20 years.  After all, I’ve made the better part of my living (by far) providing both the tools for that “engagement” online (in the form of MCSNet) and then running this joint.

Maybe the answer is really In Closing, at least from my point of view. 10 hours a day for me? Yeah, roughly, but effectively none of it on the TV. And that was a big part of the decision, you see. I noticed that I got a hell of a lot more joy out of a couple of hours hashing with friends than I did from a whole week of this. Or from a couple hours over at the local watering hole having a drink and some wings with friends. Or, for that matter, just pruning the shurbs in front of the house, or a simple 5k run in the morning.

What does it say about what you’re doing when you get more satisfaction about pruning a shrub than being “engaged” online? It says it’s time to change.

Zuckerberg wants to own your mental space. So does Twitter. So does Instagram. My kid the other night came in and asked me to watch a Youtube video that she said was emblematic of her generation. I damn near threw up.  Here it is- sit down before you watch it, and keep a barf bag handy. (I’d normally post the video here, but it and the morons in it are simply so shallow and stupid that it offends me too much. – CP)

Really? Yeah.  Really. You’re not there, right?  You’re not part of that? Like hell you’re not. The average US adult spends an average of 10 hours a day “engaged” between TV and “The Internet.” That’s 70 hours a week or roughly double the number of hours you work and about 50% more hours, on average, than you sleep.

Let’s put that in a sentence that everyone in American can understand: How much time is left? None. The author argues that a big part of the deterioration in our society comes from that. I agree. Further, if you let “them” continue to own you in this fashion you will not only lose yourself you’ll lose your society and your nation.

There have been plenty of people who have thrown up all sorts of tinfoil explanations for why I made the changes that were recently undertaken here. That’s not surprising, given the Zuckerberg deception found in the so-called “engaged” world. But what surprises me, quite honestly, is that despite leading a lot of people to the water with the Ticker in which I made the announcement, and it was rather clear too if you actually read it, nobody took a drink. I took a couple of recent drinks and I thought the water tasted like ****.  The result was that I changed what I was doing.

It’s time to reflect ladies and gentlemen, and then decide. Of course, if you prefer you can keep your online dystopia.  You just get the consequences that come with it.”

- http://market-ticker.org/

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