Digital Nation

Photo courtesy of abcnews.com

Take a walk into my shoes. I enter the Iraqi battlefield almost everyday and must dread the idea of combat every second of my life. I fight for my country, proudly sporting my air force uniform that clings close to my heart. I constantly think about my wife Julie, and two children, Alice and Joseph. I worry for them, and cannot imagine telling my family some of the horrific tales of war that continue to run amok in my mind. Luckily, once the day is over, I can drive home from the Arizona Air Base and spend a restless night in the comforts of my own bed.  Who am I? I am a Predator Drone Pilot.

Are you wondering how I could possibly fight a war in a nation that is 75,000 miles away from an Arizonan Air Base? As a Predator Drone Pilot, my mission changes day by day. I am throwing missiles in Afghanistan on Monday, and then shifting gears in Iraq on Tuesday. The possibilities of technology are endless, even in war. The army has the capacity of recruiting pilots that will fight at air bases only 20 minutes from their own homes. I mentally prepare myself during my car ride to the base, and think about the casualties that might arise. My fellow pilots and I sit in an aircraft simulator and monitor potential dangerous men that are lurking around in the streets of Iraq and Afghanistan. Several warnings indicated that this mysterious Afghani man that is bicycling his way through the dirt roads is doing some dirty dealing. I am ready to zoom my monitor in and about to press the button. My finger is trembling and my forehead is dripping with sweat. Push the button; you know he is up to no good. I move in closer and then I see him drift off his path. He starts to play soccer with a few local kids in the playground. Innocent kids just like Alice and Joseph. Thank God my nerves got the best of me. The man conducting some suspected fishy business is just like me. He is taking a break from all of the chaos in his day and wants to find a moment to relax, just like me. Wait, he strays away. The black moving objects that happily played soccer with the man are nowhere to be seen. He runs on top of a building and there is plotting, some kind of exchange that does not look promising. I quickly slam my forefinger onto the button and boom.

As I reach my front porch, my children come running to the door after they hear the doorbell. I am greeted with open arms and I ask them how I can assist them with their homework. Unlike some of my comrades, I am really lucky. I do not need to leave my family, my home, and the comforts of America. I never have to look at the faces of innocent civilians, the bystanders of these horrific wars. Even though my enemy is evil, I never have to think about having second thoughts when I pull the trigger as I stare into his cold blood eyes.  Technology has helped this digital nation move past the human emotions that arise during war. Do I ever fear that I made a mistake? Yes, absolutely. I constantly wonder if the 15 civilians that died in a drone attack was due to the power of my little finger. 

Should the United States Army recruit pilots to fight enemies thousands of miles away?  Has technology desensitized human beings?  The Frontline documentary Digital Nation examines the wired world, as we never knew it. Producer and director Rachel Dretzin and correspondent Douglas Rushkoff evaluate the effects new media has on human beings. As I kept my eyes glued to the computer screen, I noticed that I was definitely a guilty culprit of the Digital Nation. My cell phone was actively buzzing next to me and I continued to text my friend while trying to watch this documentary. I was surprised to find that like many MIT students, I should not brag about my multi-tasking abilities.

In the opening scenes of the documentary, the filmmakers examine the results from a study that was conducted at Stanford University. Several MIT students put their multi-tasking abilities to the test, and discovered that they were actually performing tasks better when they focused on one task at a time. Multi-tasking reduces the brain’s capacity to perform at an optimal level.

Rushkoff even traveled to South Korea and visited a PC bang, a trending hotspot amongst many younger Koreans. Like Internet Cafes, PC bangs offer customers with unlimited free Wi-Fi, but there is a catch. PC bangs are actually gaming centers and many younger Koreans spend hours playing computer games. In South Korea, children are becoming addicted to computer games and many of them needed to seek physical and psychological medical help. Could you imagine dying from dehydration because you spent days sitting at the computer playing video games? It may sound crazy, but one child let video games take his life.

Scared, shocked, surprised? Digital Nation will have you shaking in your boots. Next time you run to your Crackberry the second it starts ringing, you may want to think twice.

-Nidhi