  The
terms wired and wireless refer to different technologies.
In an earlier age, wireless referred to a form of radio that allowed
two-way communication without a physical line. Today, these terms may be
used to distinguish between two-way or multi-way electronic communication
tied to a physical telephone or cable line and electronic communication
without a physical link. Nevertheless, both technologies are mostly tied to
another form of wire, that is, a steady supply of electric current to the
individual receiving device.
Whether one is using wire-based or wireless technology, one
could still be called wired or connected to the global electronic system or
some part thereof. The difference between being wired/wireless and not
for example, not being connected to the Internet is not
necessarily a difference of power or status. Many people can live
successfully without the Internet. However, for many of the relations among
states as well as nonstate actors today, there is a considerable degree of
correlation between the power-status of a given entity and the degree to
which its population is wired. In North America, of course, virtually every
young person simply has to be wired.
 The
contrast between the wired/wireless and unwired areas around the world is roughly
that between the First World and the Third World. Almost everyone in Canada
or America can afford an Internet-capable computer if he wants it. In the
Third World, Internet access is not as easy to come by; when it is available, it
can make enormous differences in peoples lives. People in remote
areas can now access educational and medical facilities in urban areas, or
check weather projections, or find markets for their crops.
In Canada and the United States, though, the term
wired conveys the feeling of being interconnected, part of a hip
group; the term is also a synonym for being keyed up or
high. One can certainly perceive the unbelievable acceleration
of life today, especially for young people, who seem always to be on the
Internet, listening to loud rock or rap music (whether through speakers or on
their earphones), talking or otherwise interacting on a cell phone or similar
device, playing video games, or (more rarely now) watching television. Many
people immerse themselves in a world of entertainment, such as massive
multiplayer on-line role-playing games (MMORPGs).
There are consequences to this development.
First, critics of technology argue that most people today do
not take the time for real solitude and reflection. The lure of quick on-line
interaction can be a far less-demanding path than time with oneself without
distraction.
Second is the new illiteracy, which disproportionately affects
the young. Increasingly, children and teens are choosing the quick answers
offered on-line to the challenge and reward of reading more difficult
materials.
Third, many adults spend an enormous amount of time at their
often soul-deadening jobs. People spend so much time on-line that they can
have little left over for meaningful family relationships. The surging tide of
multimedia available on the Internet can be overwhelming.
Fourth, many people mistakenly believe being wired means
they are free of restrictions. They do not see themselves as puppets
dancing on anyone's string. However, being on-line often creates for the user
a matrix of existence (a media/entertainment information barrage) that
embraces many prevalent aspects of the current-day world, including
political correctness. Paradoxically, many people today who believe
themselves utterly free are in fact in thrall to various forms of political
correctness, consumerism, pseudo religion, or ersatz patriotism.
If the term wired means interconnected,
there is a sense in which many people immersed in the electronic media field
are in fact unwired. They lack grounding or rootedness they are not
tied to anything truly worthwhile. Indeed, they are living recklessly, like
acrobatic performers without wires who have no support systems should
their scrambled display fail.
![[Breaker quote for Wired and Wireless: Embattled traditions in an electronic world]](2008breakers/mw080214.gif) The
people who are the most wired immersed in the media
electronic field that mostly emphasizes different combinations of political
correctness, consumerism, and antinomianism are actually unwired
in the sense of being rootless. At the same time, people in the world who are
less wired or not wired at all are often tied to a more traditional sense of
place, religion, and family. They are wired to something higher than the
merely electronic world.
The electronically wired are in many cases wired to the
consumerist and antinomian pop culture; the electronically unwired are in
many cases wired to long-enduring traditional, religious, and historical
identities.
The people who are both electronically wired and wired to
long-enduring traditional identities (or some interpretation or residues
thereof) may include some of the best as well as worst people on the planet
today. There are battles over interpretations of tradition, among different
traditions, and against the relentless pressures of the late modern world. As
Pope John Paul II noted in his last major book, Memory
and Identity, much of the real core of a worthy human existence
may consist of reflective memory and rooted identity.
This is indeed a period of the sharpest, worldwide culture
wars, where the future of humanity may be set on certain trajectories for
decades, centuries, or even millennia to come. It is a setting where actual
armed conflicts may be just the tip of the iceberg; it is the battle of ideas
that sets the conditions under which armed force may or may not be
exercised. Although in Canada and America today almost no one (except
aborted babies) is actually getting killed in large numbers, this does not mean
that the social, political, and cultural conditions are necessarily salubrious.
Let us hope that the more decent-minded traditionalists and
people of faith everywhere can navigate the path for their societies between
extremists of tradition like the Taliban, and the hypermoderns of the late
modern West, with their global agenda of polymorphous perversity.
Mark Wegierski
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