Or decide for yourself, by watching the whole thing here.

The problem is, internet activism is so much easier than ‘real’ activism. It takes barely any effort to tick a box and register your support to a campaign, or to ‘retweet’ someone else’s observation or damning statement. Yet we’re supposed to consider the huge amount of statistics these polls, lists and virtual signatures amass to as worthy as a traditional march or picketing would have been. In the olden times, people really had to make an effort to stand up for things. Would a modern day Emily Pankhurst have really won the vote for women from a Facebook Group? Would Martin Luther King have had as much success in his fight for civil rights with a particularly memorable hashtag for his Twitter campaign?

Twitter is certainly the online campaigner’s service of choice right now, and the press are always keen to throw in anything gleaned from the site as a measure of the cultural zeitgeist. But isn’t a lot of this micro-moaning just a little predictable? As a quick scan through the Trending Topics on any given week shows, Twitter has a heavily liberal bias. Every week there’s some outrage about Sky News, Rupert Murdoch or Fox News. After a while campaigns just blur into one, and it’s hard to see the serious from the frivolous. Someone a bit racist, bigoted, homophobic, or just mental, has said something that’s quite rightly outraged a big chunk of people. And the big (organic, carbon-neutral) pitchfork wielding Twitter-mob descend upon those persons, sending around implicating quotes and feverishly typed quips, until they get some kind of apology.

But it’s very unlikely any of this virtual campaigning is ever actually going to take down some huge empire. The Daily Mail is going to continue to spout barely-masked racism for many years to come, because much of its readership are bare-faced racists. The opinion of a group of web-savvy campaigners isn’t really something they’re that concerned with. Most Daily Mail readers have been brainwashed to believe the Internet in general is evil anyway, and wouldn’t point their browser Twitter-wards for fear of catching cancer.

At some point all these continuous battles become ‘us vs them’, and a whole lump of the internet just becomes understood by non-users as simply a place for complaining. It belittles any real campaigns for things where there can be some kind of real world resolution. Why is it such a great idea for the masses to control how every little decision is made? In this country, we vote every few years for a representative in council or parliament who does the decision making for us. If she or he was to ask us all to vote on every single issue she or he dealt with, most of us wouldn’t know enough about it to decide fairly. Instead we’d do what we do online; Look for easy villains to blame, and take the moral high-ground. David Cameron talks about his ‘big society’ and how he’ll ask people how they want the country to be run on every detail. I give six months before we see public hanging brought back and Jeremy Clarkson elected as Supreme Leader.

Online campaigns all seem to follow a similar pattern. As online outrage grows, a cyber ‘chinese whisper’ takes place as quotes are linked and misquoted and sent out again around the internet. People get excited, and seem to enjoy the moral outrage and sense of being part of ‘something’ more than the effort they’re willing to make to find out if they’re right. It’s almost like they seem to find some kind of pleasure from the original offensive comment, as it gets to validate their want to be morally superior. The mob starts to notice it’s own size, which reinforces its conviction that it’s doing the right thing. The outrage officially becomes a ‘campaign’. Supported by the angry pack behind them, individuals start to act just as aggressively and amorally as those they’re fighting against.

Back when Jan Moir was being criticised for her piece implicating homosexuality as the cause for Stephen Gately’s death, she refused to own up and admit the nastiness of her article. Perhaps she felt slightly justified, and not at all apologetic, partly because of the similarly confusing morals of some of the campaigners who were attacking and calling her a ‘filthy slag’? A lot of people call this modern form of News-gathering ‘Citizen Journalism’. That would make us, the internet gatherers, the worst journalists known to man. Overly excitable and prone to suggestion from anyone we know and like, with a personal vested interest in anything we report, unwilling to accept any other point of view.

All this internet chat gives us is a vague measure of the levels of excitement on a subject. It’s just indicative of how much people are talking about something. Twenty years ago you wouldn’t gave taken the observation that a lot of people were moaning about work around the water-cooler as some indication that something had to be changed. But today a representative of that group might march up to the boss with a record of their chatter, demanding something is done. “8 whole people said 400 negative things about you, our boss, at 3.15 today! We demand you are fired!”

If Internet campaigning does have its place, it’s around the more frivolous aspects of society. A few years ago it was a Facebook campaign that brought back Wispas after all, and they’re absolutely delicious. We should perhaps leave it at that. Chocolate bars are about as much responsibility the internet protesters should be given. There’s no emotion involved, and nobody was trying to push their own biased agenda. The worst we could do is drop some of it on our clothes, or mistake it for poo.

I post to Twitter, which is linked to my Facebook status, about once every couple of days. I write utter nonsense generally. Jokes I’m trying to tell, or observations of life unfolding around me. Sometimes I joke about things I know at least some of my followers/friends will disagree with, because I enjoy being a bit provocative. Then I get surprised when they respond annoyed, and deny any provocation. But, I do have some loose rules around what I post, and by which i judge what other people post. I generally don’t mention anything overly personal, intentionally obscure or exclusive to certain groups of friends. I don’t make direct comments to specific people, and certainly not to my girlfriend. My online behaviour almost mirrors my Real Life behaviour in social situations; Sometimes reserved, with frequent bouts of angry swearing and attempts to offend whole chunks of society through ridiculous sweeping generalisations. But across platforms at least I am consistent.

When I was a teenager I was much less aware of how to condone myself socially, even moreso than today. I would wear my heart on my sleeve, act with incredible self-righteousness on subjects I knew nothing about, and say lots of other naive embarrassing things that other not-fully-formed people do between the ages of 13 and 19. I was the kind of idiot who’d compose bad poetry in the back of his log book at school. You get the picture. It doesn’t bear thinking what a tit I’d have made of myself if there was such a thing as Facebook/Twitter/My Space when I was that age. As many of us, I remember leaving parties in my teenage years a little worse for wear and emotionally distraught. If I had such an outlet who knows what unbearable gut-wrenching cringeworthyness I would have blurted half drunk to my idiot school friends and acquaintances. It would almost certainly have been in the third person, brimming with sarcasm, and would definitely have name-checked at least two or three of the other partygoers. ‘Toby is just fine that no-one asked him how he was after failing his Driving Theory Test, and hopes Sebastian and Timothy really enjoyed chatting up the most beautiful girl he’s ever seen on Saturday night.’ Eurrgh.

Having said that, there are plenty of well-adjusted grown ups amongst my Facebook friends who are still prone to the typically teenage ‘cry for help’. Statuses like ‘Feeling sad…’, ‘Well that’s three years of my life wasted…’, generally people who use more than their fair share of ellipses, are all examples of these adolescent yearnings for attention. Maybe those people are just more in touch with their youth than I. There I go again with the ridiculous broad generalisations…

How would I, or teenagers today, cope with the future realisation that these comments are permanent and entirely searchable? We all know that people search potential suitors on the internet before dates, and that some employers do likewise before job interviews. What’s the point in lying so elequently in your CV if once they get it they’re able to access the uncensored truth so easily? Forget three years as assistant manager in a local record shop. they’ll be much more concerned with all the Internet activity they have of you bragging about being so ‘mashed’ every weekend.

Plus, it’ll stay findable throughout your whole life, by anyone who cares to look. A lot is said about how much information these huge faceless organisations hold on us, but it doesn’t really bother me that much. I’ve always assumed there are loads of horrible intrusive files kept on each and every one of us, such was my interest in paranoid 1970s sci-fi films growing up. That they’d keep ones on me specifically I’d actually be more flattered about than frightened. No, what scares me is the thought of my future grandchildren having uncensored access to every pithy remark and conversation I had in my youth. My generation, in general, still respects the elderly. They survived world wars, lived thriftily to provide for their offspring and deserve to spend their final years in peace and happiness. We were bought up in the extravagant 80s, with luxuries our grandparents couldn’t have dreamt of, and our trail of internet archived material would reflect this indulgence. Children aren’t going to respect us in our old age when they know the truths behind our vague sage advice.

“What did you do in the (second Gulf) War grandpa?”
“Well little Tobetta, it was difficult times, and people made difficult choices as to how they thought they could contribute.”
**Pats Tobetta on the head**
“But according to your Xbox statistics you spent those six years around the war playing Call of Duty 4 online? And I read all those jokes you’d make about 9/11 and the war in Afghanistan decades later. How was that contributing anything even slightly worthwhile?”
(Uncomfortably long pause)
**Pats Tobetta on head again**

Thanks to the permanent binds these services create, a youngster leaving school these days is less likely to experience the same exciting feeling of escape that I did. They’re going to be in virtual contact with everyone from their class from the first term they’re away at university, a constant reminder of the previous self you’re pretending not to be to your new peers. Friends at school have known you through the most intense and dislikable time of your life. No matter how nice they are, it’s impossible to re-invent yourself when they’re still about. Where’s the ten year recovery period that most decent minded people need in order to fully rid themselves of the horrors of a small-town comprehensive school?

‘Toby just loves La Jetée. A sublime masterpiece. Less a film, more slowly-moving poetry.’
Comment – “Was it slow moving like that time you shit yourself doing the 400 metres after we’d eaten all those Cherry Tarts we found in McCluskies store cupboard? “I can’t run, it’s dripping down my leg” LOLOLOL!”

Maybe young peoples attitude to these services will wain as the years go past, as they experience the potential pitfalls themselves. Or perhaps someone will invent another hugely popular service that goes through the Internet burying your embarrassing past. Who knows, in five years time we might all be cowering behind individual pay-walls, if current big media trends keep spreading. Anyway, back to me talking to the teenager. As I said, he was quite unlike the stereotypes the Daily Mail breed about his ilk. Perhaps my reliance on broad generalisations is something I should try to rid from my personality, both online and in real life, in the coming years. We had had a good chat, and I doubt I’d have been able to have done that with someone my age when I was his. Mind you, he did stab me at the end, and filmed himself doing so on his mobile phone. Go to Youtube and see it for yourself. No need to rush, it’ll be there forever.

It goes back to that old adage: If you’re not doing anything wrong, what have you got to worry about? We don’t assume some chap with a balaclava just has issues with his acne, and similarly I wouldn’t think that whatever you’re secretly reading on the bus is anything less than the written equivalent of an act of terrorism. Or Alex Reid’s autobiography.

By masking the activity you’re currently doing, these e-readers make every user’s actions seem alike. You might be on the bus pondering the latest pseudo-science fiction by some charismatic new media entrepreneur, but if you’re doing that through an iPhone interface you’ll be grouped in with anyone else using one, checking Facebook or playing Flight Control.

And not just on buses, in pubs too. It used to be alright for a lone drinker to browse the paper at the bar before his friend arrives. Now even if you’re reading New Scientist online you’re judged as to be repeatedly checking your phone for signal, and pestering said friend with angry messages.

iPhones, and the E-Books that supersede them, should display publicly the high-brow things you’re consuming, perhaps in a timely Wordle that floats above your head. Or the device just needs rebranding, to be seen as a credible source for culture and intelligent discussion, as well as a convenient phonebook of pizza delivery companies. How about an attachment for resting one’s pipe on, or one to hold an apple? You know, stuff that clever people do while reading.

At times when I actually am checking my texts or emails, it should point out I’m not browsing the web, cheating in the pub quiz I’m currently competing in.

The easiest win iPhones could have would be to at least make it clear we’re not all taking surreptitious photos from behind them. I know simpler mobile phones have to make that annoying ‘click’, in order to prove we’re not all paedophiles, but would prefer something more explicit (obvious, not dirty).

I want a bright LED display that announces my innocence to those around me. Just not when I’m doing something I don’t want other people to know about. Media consumption transparency is all very well and good, just not when I’m looking at pornography. With multiple-tasking coming in iPhone 4.0 I guess I could open up my Business Inspiration app first, and hide the porn behind that; a new media evolution of reading Playboy behind a copy of the Financial Times. Whilst smoking a pipe.

When the first iPod was announced in 2002, some questioned whether it was too big to fit into your pocket. Exactly how large were Steve Job’s trousers for the match-box sized player to sit comfortably in them without it looking like he had an iRection? Others knocked it’s greedy storage capacity. ‘Style Bible’ The Face magazine’s then bleeding-edge barometer gave it a thumbs down, scoffing at the claim it would hold ‘all your favorite songs in your pocket’. “Who has 1000 favourite songs?” they jibed from behind their rimless glasses. They had a point though. Initially people judged the device on it’s size, and what it could do technically. But it was the fact that it was such a pleasure to use, because of it’s playful scroll-wheel, that was the enduring appeal that sealed its future success.

The iPhone too was not without it’s share of detractors. After a similar level of speculation to that we’re experiencing now, the device was revealed to an audience who had been compiling and blogging lengthy technical wish-lists for years. When Jobs pulled the ground breaking touch-screen device from out of his pocket, many were disappointed to find it had a relatively poor camera and no 3G capabilities. But the moment those same people got their hands on it, all the superficial complaints paled in comparison to how simple and enjoyable it was to use.

What both these devices did was provide an innovative new method of interaction, something that can’t very easily be predicted by the legions of less-innovatory nerd bloggers who fuel this speculation, and the style-mongers who assess it. While both i-products may be flawed in some aspects, the user interface glue that holds them together more than compensates for the average non-technically minded consumer. Apple products aren’t just the sum of their functional parts. They make the accessing of information a pleasure in itself, far exceeding the interaction flaws that blight their nearest competitors.

Much has been said about this by far more knowledgeable people than myself, that Apple create features of what others would consider a product’s hindrance. ‘With thousands of songs to navigate, won’t the user get bored?’ The best example is their very own shops. Apparently in shop design, the biggest challenge is getting people to go upstairs. It’s one thing to get people through your front door, but to get them to make that additional effort often requires hiding lots of enticing otherwise-unavailable items on the first floor. Apple solved this by making a feature of the stairs themselves. Floating translucent panels hang from thin wires making the experience of walking up the stairs feel more like entering the Tardis/Enterprise/Whatever that ship from ‘Flight of the Navigator’ was called.

Most of the predictions and chinese whispers currently floating around the internet at the moment are based on what Apple will do from what we currently know. Odd, seeing as one thing we know about their history is their continual inventiveness. I for one am hoping it will continue their trend of turning people’s expectations on their heads. I look forward to Wednesday’s blog posts brushing past the inevitable hard drive that’s too small and rubbish battery, and having something entirely new to be over-excited about. Unfortunately one place I can’t turn for an evaluation of Apple’s effort the next day is The Face magazine, which sadly folded in 2004.

When The Wire finished in the US in 2008 it’s passing didn’t generate much noise in the UK press outside of a small but vocal group of supporters at The Guardian. They’d been drumming support for the little-known show for a couple of years, much helped by columnist Charlie Brooker’s three minute stamp-of-approval on his BBC show Screenwipe in 2007. However, the only people who could take them up on their recommendation were those with niche non-terrestrial channel FX. That, or someone with enough of a conviction that this was must-watch TV that they’d shell out for DVD boxsets of something they’d not seen an episode of.

No, the only real way to watch The Wire was either borrowing DVD boxsets from friends, or copying illegally downloaded files from friends. Either way, I’m pretty sure HBO wouldn’t have approved, and either way it involves getting the show for free and all at once. That last part to me is key, because I don’t believe this could have happened any earlier in the show’s existence. Downloading has been on the increase for years, yes, and there is the shift in watching habits where folk now have myriad devices to comfortably watch something on, whereas in 2002 they didn’t. But still, the Wire bandwagon wasn’t anywhere near rolling up to BBC2 by the time of the show’s critically lauded third series aired in 2004, despite having a strong cult following.

The Wire is a very complex show, unforgiving to those who don’t have the patience to watch every episode, structured apparently like a novel. Nothing much happens but build-up for eight or nine episodes per season, at which point the viewer is rewarded with two or three hours of brilliant pay-off. Its creator David Simon apparently didn’t pay too much regard for those who want to be able to dip into the programme episodically, famously saying “Fuck the casual viewer”. It’s this reason that once the show became being distributed across water coolers in increasingly high capacity pen-drives it always came with the caveat: “You have to get into it. Watch four or five episodes back-to-back and then you’ll be hooked!” Then once that hump was passed, you’ll be approaching each season’s home straight, at which point the receiver of the ‘product’ will respond “I got to episode nine and literally had to watch the rest!” Indeed, it’s very much like the very addictive substances around which the society of this fictionalised Baltimore revolves around. TV crack.

It’s being consumed in this manner that has given The Wire it’s huge success in this country. By being able to watch the whole thing at once, we can satisfy our craving for the later episodes’ action that stems from six hours of exposition and setting the scene. If the beginning of each season takes a while to get going anyway it’s doubly grueling to have to wait another whole week to get what you know will be more of the same, as US audiences did. In it’s native country, whilst given much higher exposure than it did here, it still won no Emmies in it’s five year run.

I watched The Wire last year, riding just behind the crest of that wave Brooker started over two years ago. By that time it’d become ‘must-see’ TV that any self-respecting metropolitan urbanite had downloaded and passed on months before. They’d all watched it over the space of a couple of weeks, and gleefully tease new-comers to the show about what’s to come. This I didn’t mind though, as I myself love a little bit of snobbery. What I did find odd though was people’s reaction to the speed at which I watched it.

It took me about nine months. Apologies Charlie Brooker, but sixty whole hours of intense crime drama have to be spread about it for less-gangland weathered people like myself. Each episode is one hour, and that’s without any nice comforting ads. I found if I watched more than one episode in a row I’d start making direct comparisons between the life of young hoppers selling heroin on the corners of ‘B-more’ (I’m sorry) and my immediate neighbours. I’d be walking the streets near where I live in Islington, nodding sagely at anyone not wearing a shirt and tie, aware finally of the plight of Britain’s burgeoning underclass. I’m not in ‘The Game’ though, so I knew I would be alright. I don’t even like football, and I know everyone works to a strict moral code. Like I said, this is why I had to string it out over a considerable time.

When a series ended I waited a few weeks, a month even, before starting the next. Aware that each one starts a year or so after the previous, it’d feel it a bit disjointed to make such a leap the moment the end credits fade. Instead I’d have a break, think for a while about the bleakness of everyone’s lives, about how we’re all trapped in the workings of a giant heroin-fueled machine, take a deep breath, and put the next DVD in. But none of my contemporaries did. They’d all hammered through a series in four days, sticking firmly to our stereotype as binge consumers. They’d enjoyed it immensely, of course, and many talk of rewatching it someday. But the fact they guzzle it all down in one nobody is in disagreement with; that’s the future of how we watch TV.

But how can it be? The Wire took six long years to make, or at least to produce. You could count the years David Simon spent researching the thing, and clock it up to about nine or ten. And during that time, the production of the show in actual real-life Baltimore created so many jobs in the area for it to significantly benefit the overall economy of the city. Actors from London relocated their family, or took huge breaks from them, in order to dedicate six months a year to film. Everyone worked very, very hard for a good chunk of their career, and we lap it up greedily in about a month. The same could obviously be said for any great book, or film, which can be finished with in a tiny fraction of that, but I feel that’s different. Those are standalone, and intended to be read or watched within those periods. With The Wire I feel we’ve cheated.

The Wire is television, and in this country we’ve always had a weird relationship with that. It’s not a film, which we don’t mind if are shit. No media in which ‘Meet the Spartans’ exists can also have a culture of people constantly complaining about ‘dumbing down’. Idiots pay £11.60, lights dazzle, and even if it was bobbins they probably go home satisfied. Compare that with the fraction £11.60 would represent of the licence fee, and how much programming that would afford the television consumer. That’s roughly a tenth of their years television being utter balls, and them not minding. We’re much more critical of television than the rubbish films we pay infinitely more to see. If Doctor Who isn’t on a par with some rose-tinted vision people have of programming in the 70s, the BBC is criticised and the state of British programming is brought into question. People phone up to complain, and yet a good few thousand are still going to see ‘Bride Wars’. We have particularly high standards for our licence-fee-funded television, but in today’s post-iPlayer climate we’re watching all the good stuff far too quickly. If I were to choose now to watch only the highest-quality, most-hyped and celebrated television programmes, I’ll find myself culturally bereft by around 2014. Christ, if you choose to binge one of the staple BBC 6-part comedies you can get through a whole programme in an afternoon!

This is my worry. Television production companies can’t hope to produce shows at the pace we’ve gotten accustomed to consuming them at, and at some point we’re going to run out. We’ve gotten greedy on our big fat US dramas and we’ve forgotten that in the UK we don’t have enough budget to make more than three episodes of Doctor Who a year. People want to use their Sky Wotsits and Virgin Doo-hickies to filter through the rubbish and have nothing but un-edited awesome of an evening, but eventually that entertainment pipe is going to run dry. You have to take the rough with the smooth, The Wire’s with the Deal or No Deal’s.

From the actual collecting of vinyl and CDs, to keeping ticket stubs of movies, we find ways to document the films and music that meant something to us. Young men, as shown by the archetypal snobbish vinyl collector in High Fidelity, are obsessed with showing their worth through meticulously arranged shelves of aging paper and plastic. We hope that people will visit our cultural playpens, these museums of one’s self, and judge our worth accordingly. If it’s sweet talking that’ll get get a girl back to your flat, it’s your original Smiths seven inches that’ll convince her to stay the weekend. Or that’s the theory.

It’s one thing to ‘live in the now’, and to enjoy an experience, but once that’s gone what have you got? If it’s a gig, probably beer in your hair. If it was a film, possibly some popcorn stuck in your teeth. You could say it enriches the soul, broadens your horizon, that culture can expand your mind, and allows us to learn. But we’re not patient enough to wait for the long term benefits these films, books, music and art promise. We want immediate recognition and feedback from any time we’ve invested, wearing a badge for every experience we’ve had.

So thank goodness systems like Spotify have come about to shake us out of our selfish badge-wearing ways. Music is free, but it’s also never owned by anyone. No-one shows off on the internet. It’s all about sharing, not ownership, right? Poppycock, of course. What are blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr etc other than a sliding scale on which to express our vanity. Either you’re showing off about your cultural activities of a weekend, or you’re putting up that picture of your girlfriend who’s way hotter than ANY chick ANY of those IDIOTS at school go out with.

Now rather than exciting band album titles adorning our Billy book shelves, we have Last.FM and the culture of Scrobbling. Not only can we see a list of music you own, but the frequency of your listening to it. You can literally compare your tastes with your peers, without even having to visit their home! A weekly chart of your most consumed bands can be announced from your Twitter feed every Sunday. You literally are Top of the Pops.

I’ve gotten greedy though, and want more things I hear to be scrobbled. Surely there are times in my life when the songs I’m listening to aren’t coming from iTunes or Spotify. I want Shazam to recognise songs played on the radio, or in the car, and add them to my charts. If I’m in the shower singing, why can’t this be added to my personal audio history? If a tree falls in the wood, and no-one hears it, does it make a sound? Maybe not, but I’ll scrobble a record of it to Last.fm regardless.

Aside from music, we can save links of web content to Delicious, and our work trips to Dopplr. Now there’s Daytum, created by the brilliant Feltron, where you can input details around any aspect of your life, from the seemingly large scale ‘Gigs I’ve been to’ to the minutiae of ‘Number of Sugars in my tea’. We’re all going life-stats crazy. I would joke that we do this because it’s as if we’re expecting an annual report on ourselves, with all the details of how we’re achieving in comparison to last year, but Feltron actually does that, and it’s amazing.

Perhaps the reason we’re doing this is to do with the retrospective nature of so much of the media these days. Peeking as we are over into the brink of the dangerous 21st century, we do so love to wallow in the past fifty years, more so than is probably healthy. If we’re so obsessed with everything people did in the recent past, imagine how fascinating we’re going to be to youngsters in thirty years time! That’s a good insight, I’m going to put it as my status. As my friend Matt said recently on Twitter. “Years from now, when people ask ‘where were you when Michael Jackson died?’, I’ll have a Brightkite link showing precisely where I was.”

Space films exist in a vacuum. Not just in the sense that they’re set in a vast expanse with no air but that their storylines exist in a hermetically sealed environment where nothing can affect the characters. In each one astronauts blast off from the messy land of Earth, where variable, unquantifiable things like ‘happiness’ and ‘love’ live, into the great ether where Science and Maths are king.

In Alien, 2001, Apollo 13 and many many others, we know that space travelers have limited oxygen with which to breath. They float about as there’s no gravity, and if they do so out of the confines of their ship they will continue doing so infinitely. They have limited food and fuel. Nerds love these films because they’re comfortable with stories that rely purely on rational forces as contributing narrative forces. If the main protagonist runs out of air, Nerd A had noted the suggestion in the opening scene that his suit was faulty. When the minor crew member expends all remaining fuel in a desperate lone mission for possible survivors in Act 2 Nerd B remembers that Mission Control didn’t account for such bravery in Act 1 and that everyone is going to die.

We love these films because what they don’t account for is the immeasurable, less scientific aspects of a lone space pilots life. All it takes is for any unexpected factor to appear, be it other space people or an alien being, and your nerd is as excited and confused as that time a girl joined their science club.

Romantic films have potentially infinite plot variations, and to watch one directly after a space based film is a very confusing experience. The main protagonist purchased the specific type of flowers Main Love Interest A expressed interest in, so why does she leave him for Love Rat C just because he’s more extravagant (and less energy efficient) at love making in Act 3? Why does Love Interest B not fall for him when he’s obviously so committed that he’s followed her home? Confusing, possibly unethical stuff.

In Science Fiction it’s this random element of human interaction that is the uncontrollable substance in an otherwise perfect experiment. It’s like someone added reproductive fluids to the already volatile product of Mentos and Diet Coke and created something even more explosive and dangerous. Suddenly it’s all gone Weird Science, and nerds everywhere are adjusting their glasses at they get their first glimpse of the unexplainable.

It’s not just the sexual confusion though. Terminator 2 and Aliens are amazing examples of the conflicting result of Science Fiction vs Family Drama (one of few acceptable uses of the horrid sub-genre of ‘Vs’ movies… I’m looking at you Predator). Both took their more adult orientated originals and added more human worries in order to create a more rounded sequel. Sarah and Ripley were oh-so vulnerable in Aliens and Terminator (which I have to admit would make an awesome cross-over) but it was their relationship with their children that resulted in what many people think are the better films. The need to escape a giant terrifying monster is one thing, but the need to protect someone else from it to the risk of your own life is quite out of the ordinary to the genre’s typical viewer.

So, to reiterate. Moon is good, but not amazing. It  sticks to a rigid enough Sci-Fi code to make the surprises it pulls exceed the expectations of it’s likely audience.

Oh, and Event Horizon was shit because the random external element was ‘they went to Hell’. Yeah, brilliant. Like that’s a genre mix anyone wanted. The logical world of space mixed with the religious notion of Hell is far too abstract and other worldly for you to relate to the danger that any of the characters could be in. For starters, if there’s a hell, I’m sure there are unicorns nearby in Heaven. Why not just get them to whisk you away from the Hellship? Sam Neill, I don’t care how awesome you were escaping from Velociraptors, this film was garbage and I want my £6.50 (£11.50 inflated to modern prices) back. Or if we’re dealing in terms Event Horizon understands, I’d like some Leprechauns gold and a jug of angel tears.

At around age ten the great Megadrive vs Snes War began. I remember the legendary battles of words that took place every lunchtime. Nintendo versus Sega, Mario versus Sonic, 64 colours versus 256. Obviously in the long run Nintendo were the winners. We, however, were all losers.

The internet was in it’s infancy around the time we were blossoming teenagers. A magic box arrived in our houses offering all the information you never knew you wanted before at the press of a button. Your parents bought you a computer because they were told it would make you excited about learning. Being as they were essentially a giant, more accessible library with limited access to nudey pictures this was the educational equivalent of dipping fruit into sugar to get kids to eat it. We trained our eyes to recognise nudity in even the faintest traces of naked flesh as JPEGs progressively downloaded.

Mp3s came about when we were about twenty years old. By this age a steady foundation for your taste in music has been established through older brothers, mixtapes and The Evening Session on Radio 1. CDs, while not the most desirable of music formats, were sought after and cherished. Copies were passed around and recorded onto increasingly fuzzy cassettes. When MP3s starting pouring out of our computers in 2000, we suddenly had instant access to every piece of music we could ever want. It came at exactly the right time, as we were all heading off to university, where such items have a drugs-in-prison style currency.

People my age seem to have been exposed to new and exciting developing technologies at appropriate times in their physical development. For instance, I’m glad we didn’t have the awesome video games we do now when I was five. All these involving storylines and photo-realistic graphics would have been wasted on our simple, barely comprehending minds. I’m glad the revolution in easily accessible actual proper pornography didn’t happen at a time when all that malarkey was still such a mystery. Kids these days must be be confused when their first dates don’t want to do anal in front of all their friends. They won’t realise that some times you just have to be patient and wait.

Likewise for music, we’ve become greedy in a way I don’t think my teenage or child self would be capable of dealing with. I wouldn’t have cherished my LP of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles OST, or taped the Sunday Chart Countdown for 3 years if I could just have downloaded millions of (admittedly better) songs seemingly for free. It’s as if these technologies appear out of no-where to enable us with various tasks at different stages of our lives. They are our surrogate parents, and we their digital offspring.

My generation seems to have ridden this bizarre wave of childhood, where we’ve pushed the age at which it’s permissible to spend one’s hard earned cash on gadgets and videogames into our thirties. I can’t wire a plug or fix a car but I’ve got quite a respectable ranking on Halo 3. Actually that’s a lie. I’m rubbish at video games despite enjoying them immensely. A more realistic example is that I am sitting here now setting up a blog while a real man from a slightly older generation is fixing my shower in the other room.

This blog will record my opinions and observations on what it’s like as one of these Children of The Resolution. I intend to document technology’s interuptions into our everyday interactions, as these mysterious digital props and cushions sprout up around us. Whilst I can’t promise it’ll be bursting with well-researched facts to back me up, I hope to make it honest, passionate and possibly a bit entertaining.