Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World Page #5

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and it's the natural rhythm

for animals and humans.

I also sleep in my car,

which I instinctively did in the beginning

and I later learned that it acts

like a partial Faraday Cage.

The metal keeps out the radiation.

This place in Green Bank is wonderful.

It's not perfect but I can go outside.

I can see the trees, I can see the sky,

I can see the stars.

When I lived in the Faraday Cage,

I had to live in a box and I only left the

box when I wanted to go to the bathroom

or to use the shower, otherwise

I stayed in that box day and night.

- In a cage?

- In a Faraday Cage.

How long?

A couple years.

Several years.

I had a mattress and I didn't

have a place to stand up.

I had to stay on the bed the entire time.

My husband went grocery shopping,

he cooked the food, he would

bring and serve me the food.

We'd open the door, he'd hand me the plate

and I'd eat inside the Faraday Cage.

I've heard it also called as a super sense,

that we just have this ability to,

for whatever reason,

feel these frequencies.

It's a very legitimate illness.

But at this point I don't

consider it a gift.

I would give anything to give it back.

You're the refugee now?

I... Yes, I don't know what to call myself.

This is brand new

and I just want people

to know that this type of illness

and doctors... I really want them to hear

that this is a legitimate illness.

Um, and it affects our lives

tremendously, you have no idea.

When you go home today

after this interview,

you have the luxury of going home

to your familiar surroundings.

You have that luxury to

go back to your families.

I haven't had that in

four and a half years.

I haven't had any stability.

And I just have to impress upon you

how serious this is for those

of us that are suffering.

And I'm extremely grateful

that there is a location here

where I am no longer in pain.

Or whatever type of irreparable harm may be

being done to my body

will be either suspended

or temporarily arrested.

There's a lot more community

interaction in a place like this.

I think because of the absence

of cellular technology

and also because of the isolation

of a rural community

in such a beautiful place like this.

And, yes, I do play the fiddle

and the banjo at night.

My old lady gets mad at me

She gets hotter than ginger tea

She is good and she is bad

She can be the devil when she gets mad

Goin' up t' Cripple Creek, goin' on a run

Goin' up t' Cripple Creek, have a little fun

Raise my britches high to my knees

Wade in ol' Cripple Creek when I please

The state of Washington

across the continent,

in an idyllic forest not far from Seattle,

a rehab center for internet addiction

named Restart was established.

Well, there are so many

of these severe cases.

For instance in South Korea

there was the case of a couple

that had a young baby

and they were very much addicted to a game

that they went to play while

neglecting their child at home.

And this baby eventually starved to death

and they went to jail for this,

but it is because they

were hooked on a game

and ironically it was a game in which

they were taking care of

and nurturing in the game

a young girl,

but as they were doing that

their own child was starving to death.

Shortly after we opened Restart,

we got a call from a stepmom.

Her stepson was living with his grandmother

and had just had his leg amputated

because he'd developed

a thrombosis in his leg

from lack of movement.

So we know of cases, many cases happening

in Korea and China, people who are dying

at the computer because

they are playing for

40, 50, 60 hours at a time

and completely neglecting

their body's physical needs.

It is not uncommon

that in South Korea teenage

video gamers put on diapers.

This way they avoid losing

points by going to the bathroom.

Tom, you do not need

any further introduction.

This was great.

My lowest point came at the beginning

of this year.

New Year's Eve I had lost a job,

I was losing my girlfriend, my family,

my relations were very strained

and I tried to drink myself to death.

Suicide?

I was playing video games

16 hours a day, often drunk.

I watched porn a lot

and I just had given up.

I had no future, I had no will to live.

I was just waiting for

the timer to run out.

I was in my spring quarter in college

and I was doing nothing except

sleeping about six hours a day

and playing video games and absolutely

not attending any of my classes,

not doing any of my work

and lying to my parents about my progress.

So it was a lot of lying, manipulation,

isolation especially,

which are all common things for addicts

but mine were pretty much sleep

and you know, interact with my addiction.

Did you adopt certain characters

that became almost like you?

I'm not sure I'm comfortable

with that 'cause I'm still in the phase

where thinking too deeply

about my own intricacies

could set me off,

could really start that cravings

and start those withdrawal symptoms again.

I wanted very much to discuss

fictional characters with Chloe,

like the malevolent Druid Dwarf

or whoever these figures are,

but I had to desist.

The real danger to gaming is when...

you... or when I stopped

being present in the real world

more often than I was in the game world.

If...

If you get to the point where...

you're thinking about the game more

than you're thinking about real life...

what you're gonna do for food,

what you're gonna do the next day or two,

you're not thinking about

a relationship or a job or a career.

If you're thinking about the game...

it's a problem...

because eventually it'll get

in the way of everything real.

Our sun, the giver of life.

At the same time it is

hostile, destructive.

Protuberances unimaginable in size

are being hurled into the universe.

These flares may become the

undoing of modern civilization.

The best known historical example

of a very large solar flare

is an event called the Carrington

event which happened in 1859.

This was observed

by an astronomer named Carrington

who saw a patch of the sun

as he was monitoring sun

spots, grow brighter.

In those days, the predominant

form of technology

was a telegraph, that was

our main form of communication,

and this very, very large flare

that happened,

that created a brightness change

so great that Carrington

could actually see it with his eye,

which is very uncommon,

actually induced currents

in telegraph wires

that created fires in the paper

of the telegraph machines.

There's even reports from that time

of Aurora being seen as far south

as the equator,

and there being Auroras so bright

at the Northern latitudes

that it was possible to

read by them at night.

We've been fortunate that nothing

as large as the Carrington Event

has happened in these times

of modern technology

but even the smaller solar flare events

that we do see do disrupt

our communications

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