Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, creator of gonzo journalism and counter-culture hero, once famously quipped, "I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone but they've always worked for me."
As this week's tangent on technology deals with the subject of drugs, I'd just like to echo the sentiment in the first part of Dr. Thompson's comment and leave the rest up to my parole agent and psychiatrist.
But Hunter S. has been on my mind this past week ever since news stories began surfacing about kids supposedly getting high from something called iDoses.
These so-called "digital drugs" are MP3 files, just like the music files you steal er buy from the Internet and put on your iPod, iPad, iPhone and those other cell phone or music players that don't have Apple's proprietary "I" in front of their names.
The websites where you can sample and/or buy these iDoses claim that by listening to the "advanced binaural beats" they will "synchronize your brainwaves to the same state" as a "recreational dose" of drugs such as pot, cocaine, opium and peyote.
I'd like to know who tests out the baseline recreational dose for all these drugs.
Maybe Keith Richards has a day job. Maybe there are some pretty spaced out rats listening to Pink Floyd in cages beside a set of computer servers somewhere.
This kind of stuff keeps me up at night.
If Hunter S. were still alive today, he would probably have gotten wind of this supposed trend and already written something both brilliant and slyly humorous about it that also revealed a core human truth.
He also would have listened to every one of those MP3s too (likely one at a time, then together, then maybe backwards), just in the off chance they really did work at actually recreating the same effect as taking one of those drugs.
In a way, you can almost see some science behind the whole idea.
The police keeping things secure at the G20 Summit were reported to have some kind of tank-thing that shot sonic waves at rioters for crowd control.
They also blare heavy metal at criminals and terrorists in bunkers to make them give up, so it isn't such a stretch to think that MP3s may change your thoughts or emotions (I know I feel sick to my stomach every time I hear an MP3 of any of those boy bands - but that's probably more taste than thought manipulation).
Parent and family groups are supposedly up in arms over this phenomenon (much like they were arm's up over rock music, comic books and Dungeons and Dragons) as they think it may lead kids to real drugs.
My opinion is that kids today are much smarter than we give them credit for, and they know cow cookies when they smell them, and a media-created "problem" when they see the sound bite on CNN.
Of course, to honour 'ol Hunter, and just in case, I did listen to an iDose file while researching this column.
It sort of sounded like a wrong number that's meant for a fax machine and there's that screeching sound with a beat.
It actually gave me a headache.
Maybe I skipped the whole high part and went straight to the digital hangover.
Either way, I 'd just like to say I don't advocate the use of digital drugs or digital alcohol (if they ever invent that) because they don't work for anyone.
I'm perfectly fine with digital violence though.
