From: fadden@uts.amdahl.com (Andy McFadden)
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Subject: Help at last
Date: 19 Nov 92 23:59:10 GMT
Reply-To: fadden@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com (Andy McFadden)
Organization: Amdahl Corporation, Sunnyvale CA

It's not too late.

-----
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1992 22:20:20 +0100
>From: Dennis Wier <drwier@CLIENTS.SWITCH.CH>
Subject: File 8--Any Technophiliacs Here Besides Me?

An Introduction to Technophiliacs  Anonymous
	(By Dennis R. Wier )

The same Truth has many forms.

Technophiliacs Anonymous is a fellowship of persons and institutions
who desire to stop their addiction to technology.

Technophiliacs Anonymous is supported entirely through contributions
of its membership and is free to all those who need it.

To counter the destructive consequences of addiction to technology we
draw on these resources:
1. We use our personal willingness to stop our addictive behavior on
a daily basis.
2. We use the support of the fellowship of Technophiliacs Anonymous
to increase our capacity to stop our addiction.
3. We practice the principles of Technophiliacs Anonymous to
recognize and properly respond to addictive behavior.
4. We develop our perceptions and awareness of the correct use of
technology by the regular practice of meditation.
5. We support the efforts of those who expose the hidden side effects
of any technological activity.

Technophiliacs Anonymous is not affiliated with any other
organization, movement or cause, either religious or secular.

What is a Technophiliac?

The word technophiliac is a newly coined word and it means "having a
pathological love of technology." We use this new word to imply that
the love is a dysfunction of some kind. We are all technophiliacs in
the sense that we as a society are dependent on the wide-spread use
of technology --such as electricity, cars, telephone, TV, computers
and many other forms. We need to seriously ask ourselves if this
dependence helps or hurts our human relationships. We need to
constantly examine this dependence to see if the hidden-side effects
of technological dependence are destructive to our families, society
or environment.

Are You A Technophiliac?

Has the use of technology improved or worsened your
 financial condition,
 health,
 relationships with friends and family,
 relationships with your mate or lover,
 relationship with your self?

How many hours a day do you
 watch television,
 work on a computer,
 operate technical equipment,
 talk on the telephone,
 tinker with your car?
Add those hours up.

Is your total use of technology an indication of your addictive
relationship to technology?

Now honestly look at your human relationships with the planet, your
environment your family and your inner self:
 do you know what phase the Moon is in right now?
 do you know which way the seasonal clouds are moving and their
shapes?
 can you comfortably walk alone in the woods at night without a
flashlight?
 do you know the type of earth around your house?
 do you tell your children stories, or do you let them watch TV so
they leave you alone?
 are you aware of environmental stress through your personal
sensitivity to the behavior of local animals and plants?
 Do you choose to spend time on your computer or watching TV or
talking on the telephone or tinkering with your car or with other
technology rather than being with your mate or children?

Long-term focused awareness on technology or on technological matters
to the exclusion of natural or human relationships indicates a life
profoundly out of balance.

The cumulative effect of many lives out of balance creates a
world-wide disaster with profound effects on the environment, social
and group interactions, institutional and political behavior, human
and family values and ethics, interpersonal relationships, and
physical and psychological health, with immense costs in all areas.

What is Technophiliacs Anonymous?

Technophiliacs Anonymous is a multi-faceted fellowship based on a
desire to know the hidden side-effects of technology, to popularize
the awareness of the hidden side-effects of technology on our social,
psychological, economic and spiritual beings, and to counter the
destructive consequences of technological addiction. With established
meetings in many cities in the United States and abroad, this
self-help fellowship is open to anyone, and any institution, who
suffers from a compulsive need to use technology, and those
desperately attached to a specific technology such as the telephone,
the computer, the television, the automobile, etc. Technological
addiction also includes a pathological interest in destructive,
coercive and invasive technologies. What all members have in common
is the realization that the compulsive attachment to technology has
become increasingly destructive to all areas of their lives --
family, career, environment, society and political institutions.
Technophiliacs Anonymous welcomes the participation of anyone
directly involved in technology or directly affected by technology
--either beneficially or otherwise, or in the government, or in the
spiritual areas corned with the subtle effects of technology. We
especially welcome the participation of human potential workers and
facilitators.

We seek to understand, and to make known to all, how technology,
generally and specifically, affects our spiritual, mental, emotional,
physical, economic, political and social lives, and to cure, whenever
possible, the deleterious effects of technology; and to learn, by
sharing information, the correct ways to manage our lives for the
continued benefits of life-supporting technology without subjecting
ourselves to the hidden malevolent side-effects.

Technophiliacs Anonymous was first begun in June, 1988 in Berkeley by
Dennis R. Wier, who realized that technological dependency was
affecting life in the same ways as chemical, alcohol and love
addictions, but not only were the deleterious effects felt in
personal lives, but also in ecological, political and spiritual
realms. Thus, what may be said of a personal addiction to a
technology also may be said in a global way as well, that is, one
side effect of our addiction to automobiles causes air pollution, one
side effect of our addiction to telephones causes separation between
people, one side effect of our addiction to television causes loss of
awareness through induction of trance, one side effect of our
addiction to computers causes loss of judgement and cognitive
abilities. There are other, more hidden and more sinister side
effects of technological addiction.

Co-Dependency

If a technophiliac is addicted to technology there are those around
him or her who are co-dependent. Co-dependents may not be addicted to
technology but they derive important benefits from the addiction.
Manufacturers of alcoholic beverages are co-dependent to alcoholics
in different ways than a person in a close personal relationship with
an alcoholic is co-dependent, but both are co-dependent in that their
common behavior supports the continued addiction of the alcoholic.
A technophiliac has the same problem. Manufacturers of the newest
computers are co-dependent with the technophiliac. And, if the
technophiliac is highly paid, those persons dependent financially on
the technophiliac psychologically support his dependence even though
it may be personally destructive to the technophiliac.

One of the differences between AA, SLAA and Technophiliacs Anonymous
is that many institutions --government, educational and business
--support and encourage technological addiction because they are not
aware of the hidden side-effect of technological addiction. It is
possible to make a change in awareness. A change in awareness will
help bring about an important social change. Some years ago,
cigarette smoking was socially acceptable and tolerated if not
encouraged by many social institutions. Smoking was generally
tolerated as a common and nearly harmless bad habit. Now, with
greater social awareness of the dangers of cigarette smoking, society
is now attempting to reduce cigarette addiction by prohibiting
smoking in public places and requiring manufacturers to place health
warning messages on tobacco products.

It may seem that technological addiction is a trivial and unimportant
matter compared to the more obvious and important issue of cigarette
smoking; yet, technological addiction has greater consequences for us
all the longer we ignore it. Technophiliacs are not the only victims
of their addiction, but their creations often are at the root of
important and world-wide dangers and all of us become victims.
Beneficial social changes came about because of increased social
awareness of the dangers of the hidden side-effects of tobacco
addiction, and the same social awareness now extends to alcohol and
drug addiction. The same social awareness is now beginning to be felt
in environmental and ecological areas, because of PCB contaminations,
acid rain, toxic waste treatment procedures, atmospheric pollution
and other technological hidden side effects now making themselves
known. It may become obvious that there is an increasing awareness of
the hidden side effects to technological things we think are simple,
 are not.

It is the position of Technophiliacs Anonymous that society needs to
become aware of its dangerous addiction to technology and to begin to
cope with its co-dependent issues, as well as the underlying and
important hidden side effects.

Because technological addiction is so pervasive and is encouraged by
co-dependent governmental, educational, business and institutional
entities, the members of Technophiliacs Anonymous include not only
those who recognize their compulsive need for technology, and those
with a desperate attachment to one specific form of technology, but
also those leaders and visionaries who may conceive of the
possibilities of a right relationship to technology.

Why Technology Can Be Addicting

The use of technology for the purpose of lessening pain or augmenting
pleasure, by a person, institution, government or business who has
lost control over the rate, frequency or duration of its use, and
whose corporate or individual psychological, economic, social and
spiritual life has become progressively unmanageable as a result is
addicted to that technology.

Technological addiction extends from teenagers addicted to
television, to yuppie programmers making piles of money, to a
military establishment addicted to acquiring newer, faster and more
exotic destructive forces, to a government intent on knowing and
controlling everything possible, to real estate agents with a
perverted sense of "highest and best use."

Technophiliacs Anonymous believe that an addiction exists not just
because we need or use technology more than others, but because of
the motive. A technophiliac uses technology to lessen the pain that
comes from problems in other areas of life. Governmental and business
institutions use technology to regulate and control life, a behavior
which is typical of co-dependents.

As we collectively or individually seek someone or something to 'take
us away from all this,' we are really seeking to avoid reality
altogether. We come to use a technology as a substitution for other
satisfactions, to comfort ourselves for real or imagined needs, or to
avoid or try to make unnecessary attending to a life that seems to
give us too much pain.

Even the humble electric light, used to provide illumination at night
to read, has become a substitution for other satisfactions such as
observing the night, and it comforts us in driving away the
mysterious darkness, and helps us avoid our own thoughts, those same
thoughts we need to think in order to keep our life in balance. Even
the electric light has the side effect of keeping our life out of
balance in very subtle ways. The cumulative effect of millions of
lives out of balance causes disastrous effects over the entire planet.
More technology is not the answer.

In our addiction to technology it seems as though the power lies
elsewhere, and that our lives are being destroyed by forces and
tensions that cannot be denied and by problems that cannot be escaped.
For the technophiliac, closeness to others has become increasingly
rare and difficult. It is easier for the technophiliac to have a
relationship with his car, television or computer than with his mate,
his children, or his neighbors.

Within an institution, it may be easier for an institutional
technophiliac to buy more computers, hire more consultants, process
more data faster, make heavier reports, create ever more
sophisticated military hardware, than to have a real and meaningful
relationship with its clients, citizens or employees.
What can you do if you admit, however reluctantly, that technological
addiction might be the problem, instead of lack of 'enough' or the
'right kind' of technology?

The Road to Recovery

The road to recovery starts with an awareness of the existence of the
problem. To get aware that technological addiction is the problem,
try this experiment: turn off all your electricity for five days.
Most technological devices depend on electricity in order to work. If
the changes you go through during the five days are not painful, but
"business as usual," then you are not addicted to technology.
However, if the changes are painful, frightening, or perhaps so
difficult that you cannot finish the five days, then you are a
technophiliac.

The beginning is simple, but not easy. The admission of powerlessness
has to be coupled with a readiness to break the addictive pattern --
to stay away from all technology for long periods of time. This
withdrawal from the addictive use of technology generally brings
symptoms just as physical and as painful as the withdrawal from drugs
or alcohol. On our own the tension would be too much, the temptation
to indulge just one more time would be unbearable, and the belief
that there could be another way to live would weaken.

First we find a sense of wholeness and dignity within ourselves. Even
while working with technology we need to keep balanced and at some
distance from it. To find wholeness within ourselves we first must
know that part of us which is human and then to explore the intimate
and mysterious relationship we have with the planet.

Meetings

For information on meetings in your area, please write to us and we
will send you a local meeting schedule or give you information on
organizing a local chapter.

Evolving A Proper Relationship

The hard questions cannot be ignored. The most difficult questions
are ultimately the most important because they represent those
aspects of life which we tend to ignore or deny. In place of facing
these difficult questions which are different questions for each one
of us, we create substitute problems, such as technical problems, as
symbols for our own internal processes. There is the mistaken belief
that by solving these technical problems somehow the more difficult
questions will also be solved.

Technology can be known in many ways which will enhance our
relationship with ourselves and with the universe.
The proper relationship with technology is a distant and cautious
one. Without spiritual protection in place, dealing with any
technology ultimately is damaging to us. Any other relationship
ultimately damages our spiritual, social, environmental and
psychological life.

Developing spiritual protection is a life-long continuous practice
which is helped by meditation in all of its forms. The support of
others in a community devoted to personal awareness and growth lays
the foundation for right social action and planetary unity.

How you can help

If you want to help in a real way to popularize these concepts,
please discuss these ideas with your friends and the media, send
pertinent newspaper clippings, cartoons to us and write us for any
information. Help us start a chapter in your area. We will appear on
TV and talk on the radio about these concepts. Write for helpful
details, but ultimately the power, benefits and responsibility is
yours.

+++
Comments on the above are welcome by e-mail.  Yes, I am ALWAYS
on my computer!

		Dennis

-- 
fadden@uts.amdahl.com (Andy McFadden)
[ Above opinions are mine, Amdahl has nothing to do with them, etc, etc. ]