You listen to your i-pod on ‘shuffle’ mode while you download a video clip from You Tube on your laptop. Of course you’re working wi-fi. An email pings in, reminding you to update your database of friends on Facebook. Your mobile beeps: there’s an SMS message from your mate. You text back the usual white lie: c u soon. Another email, with an attachment announcing tonight’s podcast of the band you favourited on My Space. But you have a date… at least, your Second Life avatar does, with a new Resident; you’ll post details on your blog later. You’re connected and communicating - but you haven’t actually talked to anyone. Dive in with Mazu, the Chinese Goddess of the Sea.
How can a watery goddess untangle the tough wires of technology strangling you? Well, Mazu was not only a goddess but a real woman. Lin Mo was born in Taiwan in 960 AD and from birth possessed a strange combination of practical and supernatural intelligence. She had an uncanny ability to predict the weather, especially ocean storms. But she failed to forecast the typhoon that swept her fisherman father overboard until her ‘second sight’ saw him drowning. She fell into a trance and in her mind, pulled him to safety, until her mother shook her awake. Lin Mo came back to the real world; her father never did.
The cyber network that links you to others is a wonderful web but don’t become ensnared in it. Like Lin Mo, don’t mistake the virtual for verity. It took thousands of years for Mazu’s shamanistic skills to become exalted as goddess-like; a year from now, will anyone notice that software upgrade you cleverly downloaded onto your desktop? Turn off your plasma-screen computer and read a book. Take out your mp3 earphones and play some vinyl. Meet a mate for a double latte in Starbucks... but don't take your phone! Know how to use technology; know how not to let it use you. (Oh, alright then, you can still buy a Blackberry.)
Mod Mazu – Martha Lane Fox: co-founder of Lastminute.com, an online business that become a beacon of the internet dot.com boom and managed to survive its bust. But shortly after cashing in her company shares, Martha herself barely survived a horrific car accident. Her near-death experience shifted her focus and considerable fortune away from technology and towards more human-based endeavours such as prison reform and female education in Africa.
