The Trouble with Computers

You! Infected two-dimensional primal scene

There is something about the Human Computer Interface (HCI): something inhuman.

The computer feels like our friend....or at least acquaintance. It efficiently provides us with information at the click of a switch. That robotic reach, consistency and reliability is in fact a problem: its too damn efficient. And we find ourselves falling into its rhythm. We become immune to the limitations and monotony of this environment. Repetitive behaviour becomes the norm.
We become absorbed into the computer interface for many hours at a time. Its weird: most human activity has a natural beginning, middle and end to it, rooted in family, work or friends. But with computers its like we give ourselves over to something quite alien and foreign to our natural makeup: little by little we become dependent. There is a case for saying that the Internet on its own, is an addictive environment.
But when you combine this with other well-known, potentially addictive behaviours, like gambling or pornography, petrol is definitely dousing the flames! We have to face the fact that there are now vast, virtual industries in on-line pornography, gambling, and other emerging areas like gaming, that threaten to rip into the sanity, wealth and well-being of millions of people across the world. And as individuals and societies, we have not developed the defences and means to confront or deal with these phenomena.

Up to now most of the concern around the harm that internet pornography can cause, has understandably been directed towards its impact on children. But it is now surely time for us to consider the harm it is capable of causing adults as well? Adults are vulnerable too, and we are not naturally equipped to cope with the audio-visual and psychic onslaught that the web provides. That's why addiction rates are climbing so rapidly.

The main focus of this site is addiction to pornography on-line, to sexualised chat-rooms and telephone sex. This site as such is not designed for those with gambling or gaming problems, but it does provide some information about where to get help. (See the Getting Free page for more on this.)

With sex addiction, we can say that the individual has lost control of their sexual desire, and become compulsively pre-occupied with satisfying their lust, without reference to affection, intimacy and the deeper dimensions of love. Until the early 1990s, pornography was confined largely to episodic encounters with magazines, films, or prostitution. The arrival of the computer has radically changed all that: now we can gain access to sexual encounters at the click of a switch: and we are doing just that....in our tens of millions! The computer faithfully calls up hundreds or thousands of pictures, videos, words or contacts. It can rapidly focus in on any variant or predilection that catches our curiosity: enough to keep us fully preoccupied!

Phone sex chat rooms/services (themselves made possible by computer technology) result in a similar pattern of compulsive behaviour and addiction, but draw more strongly on the immediacy of the human voice. Often Internet and phone sex usage feed off each other. With the arrival of voice-over-internet programmes, the potential these technologies have - to cause users to behave in an unhealthy and compulsive way - is truely disturbing.

We get hooked, and all night and day we are potentially caught up in a compulsive longing, because of the faint but inexhaustable potential for a rush of excitement, images, contact and pseudo-intimacy; and because the machinery enables us to.
We log off/ring off and feel lousy about our behaviour, but the next night the urge is there again. And the trouble is, its a frictionless activity: noone is there to stop us - in fact we would be ashamed if anyone knew. And that shame and secrecy is part of our undoing. But between you, the sex sites and the technology, there is this little bond growing. There is no disapproval, little cost (for now) and intense excitement over what the next site or encounter will bring.

But after a while decline sets in relentlessly: fatigue, shame, guilt, insensitivity, loss of concentration all begin to accompany our lives. Over time, depression, and a loss of normal contact with friends and lovers sets in. In fact we tend to avoid interaction because we have begun to mortgage our capacity for love and friendship. We have begun to lose our sense of well-being. From the relatively 'innocent' images of soft porn, we graduate to more unsettling desires and a preoccupation with ever-weirder and kinkier sex, tending to increase our sense of shame and secrecy, and driving us into an ever more extreme and isolated place. We may get drawn into behaviour involving strong psychological manipulation, such as sado-masochism, dominance/submission etc which can accelerate the tendency towards compulsive and depersonalised states.

All this outside of any context which may provide a stable, sane and loving container for our sexuality. For it is within an embodied, loving relationship that we can safely explore our sexual playfulness, imagination, aggression and other strong emotions, with something approaching freedom. Not within the robotic, anonymous, digital and pornified, glittering wasteland of the computer!

In its absence, and locked into the virtual cyber world, there may grow an underlying anxiety about nothing in particular; a sense of guilt that is free-form - latching onto everything and nothing in our lives. And while compulsive sex is linked to the uncontrolled preoccupation with 'pleasurable', 'exciting' thoughts, the emergence of hot anxiety, self-loathing, shame, and unpleasant thoughts or fears that just won't go away, should really set alarm bells ringing!

Nor does computer porn occur in quite the blameless isolation that solitary porn surfing might imply. Cyberspace, including some of the 'social networking' sites, is filling up with porn-fed addicts busily scrambling each others minds and hearts, unwittingly propagating and sustaining the whole sorry mess. A Mess of Potage. Those who continue to Sell their inheritance, risk ensnaring others.

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