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From the Editor’s desk
The future shouldn’t be virtual
For the past few months I have been bombarded by the Meta commercial every time I try to watch TV.
In it, actors depict the future of education, farming, medicine and the study of history. All of it taking place in the metaverse.
I think that, while technology has its perks, it shouldn’t become our entire reality like this commercial would suggest.
While I would love to see farmers be able to correctly predict the yield they will have from each of their fields, I don’t think the metaverse is going to help it.
There is no way that virtual reality will be able to correctly predict weather patterns or soil fertility. Those are things we have been trying to predict for centuries, and the closest thing we have to understanding it is the Farmers Almanac.
Weather can be unpredictable, and no virtual simulation is going to change that.
Medicine is also something I think needs to stay within our reality. Simulating surgery would be an excellent educational tool for teaching anatomy and how to perform a surgery.
But we should still use the tools that we already have at our disposal.
People have been donating their bodies for medical students to study for a long time, and I think they provide a more in-depth view of what an actual human looks like. Our insides rarely look like the models, and surgeries sometimes have unexpected issues. If we fall back on technology, we might be putting a lot more patients at risk.
Don’t even get me started on using technology as the backbone of education. It works great until we have city-wide power outages (take Monday as an example) and we are unable to get any work done.
Technology and virtual reality simply create a disconnect from humanity that I don’t know if I can fully get on board with.
The new movie “Don’t Worry Darling” illustrates some of the harms of virtual reality perfectly. The film is a commentary on not only online groups focused on reversing time and recreating a “better” time in U.S. society, but it also touches on the effects of living in a virtual simulation.
For a majority of the movie, the main character, Alice (Florence Pugh) can’t tell what is real and what isn’t, which is all part of the grand scheme of things. In the movie, men who are a bit insecure in their masculinity use the advanced technology to make things the way they want it, regardless of if it hurts somebody else along the way.
In virtual reality, we lose ourselves, our conscience and the beauty that the world has to offer. Another example of this is the book “Ready Player One,” which was adapted into a movie in 2018. In it, author Ernist Cline describes a gray world that has fallen into shambles, with people using a virtual world to replace it.
Reality in the book has become so corrupt, that the people there would rather pretend everything is fine in VR than fix the actual problems.
I could list several more books and movies that all have the same warning signs.
Replacing the real world with a screen will only make things worse in the end. Technology is a beautiful tool that can make us so much more intelligent, but it shouldn’t become our only future.
Aubrie Lawrence
As You Said It!
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6Nov. 10, 2022 | The Eagle | csceagle.com Opinion
As We See It
Look to the stars and lose a little sleep
u By Velvet Jessen
Opinion Editor
As the moon rises and is covered in shadow, we can remember that sometimes we have our own shadows to pass through. But pass through them we will, by losing a little sleep.
Tuesday morning was the last total lunar eclipse until March 14, 2025. My mom passed down her love of the stars and the moon to me and my sister. So, at midnight when I was done with homework, I set my alarm for 2:30 a.m, laid out a blanket, hot hands, my glasses and keys at the foot of my bed and then slept until my alarm went off.
I woke up more ready to get out of the bed at two in the morning than most days when I have class at 10 a.m. I drove out past houses so that I could see the stars and just sat and watched for an hour.
If you don’t like astronomy, you probably think that was an insane idea. Who disrupts their entire night of sleep to watch Earth’s shadow fall on the moon?
I asked myself that question while I was Googling the times that the eclipse was going to happen. But at the end of the day the answer is simple.
Someone who found something worth disrupting their sleep.
For me watching stars, eclipses, or meteor showers are worth disrupting my sleep. For other people it might be watching that baseball Velvet Jessen
game to its last inning, no matter how late it goes. Or maybe it’s something simple like staying up all night with a friend talking until you’re so tired that words don’t make sense and everything is funny.
No matter what it is that you deem worth ruining a night of sleep, I say that every once in a while, you should treat yourself to it.
Yes, it will ruin an entire night of sleep and you’ll probably be exhausted halfway through the day, but if you don’t let yourself do the things you love, you’re going to be exhausted anyways.
If you only live life doing what others ask, then what’s left for you?
I once saw a quote somewhere that said, “We’re all going to die someday, you may as well do something for yourself for once.”
I don’t think enough people have heard that quote.
You can live your life helping people if that’s what you love to do, but you have to help yourself too. If you only focus on others or what the next assignment is without taking care of yourself, you’ll find yourself overshadowed with expectations and work.
But just like the moon and Earth’s shadow, it’s just a phase that you can pass through.
Some people would say good sleep will help heal. And I do agree, objectively, good sleep will help. But having something to wake up excited for or having those experiences you love that ruin your sleep for a day heal just as much too.
You can sleep every night or even take a nap during the day, but you can only see that eclipse in person once. Live life while you can and go lose some sleep with something you love.
How to do what you hate
u By Abigail Swanson
Guest Columnist
College is challenging, involved and sometimes unpleasant.
Getting through is hard and keeps being hard. No matter how many forum posts I write, I still hate every one.
But I keep doing them. Every week I do unpleasant things for school, for work and for myself. I detest running with three-quarters of my soul, but I still do it.
So, I wanted to share some of the strategies I’ve learned to get through the week.
Remember your why. Zoom out and look at why you wanted to take that class, get that degree, or be in college at all.
What keeps you coming back?
My why is the Chadron community. I want to continue working and participating in this community, and that means doing my homework day in and day out. (I’m also stubborn and hate failing even more than I hate homework.)
Mitigate your hate.
Look at why you dislike a task and see if you can work around it. For me, that means printing so I don’t have to read off a screen or typing in Times New Roman before changing to the prescribed font.
Control what you can control.
I have to read textbooks, but I do control when, how, and where I read them.
I’ve taken trips to coffee shops to start papers, found the best place in my apartment to drudge through Learn Smarts and joined Zoom meetings outside. I can play a soundtrack that sounds like I’m adventuring in distant lands rather than just reading about the different methods of evaluating the corporate environment of a business, or put on a podcast to take my mind off running.
Reward good habits.
Bribery is one of the more effective motivators in my experience.
Maybe I’ll make a really good supper after finishing a project or eat icecream at the end of a workday. I love giving myself the weekend (or just a day) off homework if I finish the week early.
Find something small and motivating to give you an extra nudge.
Just try.
Sometimes there are no other options than just starting. For me, that’s the worst part of projects. Occasionally, once I have the first paragraph written or the first question answered, I realize it wasn’t as bad as I imagined it to be. And if not, at least I’m 20 minutes closer to being done than I was before.
I hope you genuinely enjoy most of the things put before you, but if you come across something unpleasant, maybe try a tip or two.
Abigail Swanson
