9 PEOPLE WHO HAVE INAPPROPRIATE RELATIONSHIPS WITH TECHNOLOGY

9 People Who Have Inappropriate Relationships With Technology
By K. Thor Jensen, PC Magazine, 21 February 2015.

Let's face it: we're living in a wired world, and there's no turning back. Technology permeates every aspect of human existence, from making food to making babies. And as we advance intellectually, our emotions struggle to keep up.

There are always people who can't handle the shock of the new. The human mind is relentlessly adaptable, but the twists and turns required to plug our cortex into the Information Age are having some serious side effects, psychologically speaking.

These effects can manifest themselves in different fashions, from the criminal to the erotic. And if left untreated, they can transform into life-changing compulsions. When you're completely surrounded by technology, it's impossible to just walk away, no matter how unhealthy it is for you.

In this feature, we'll spotlight nine cases of people who relate to technology in unusual and inappropriate ways. Some love it, some hate it, and some are simply addicted to it. Consider these cautionary tales, and once you finish the article, unplug from the screen for a minute or two and re-evaluate your relationships.

1. Sal 9000

Romance in the digital age is a touchy subject, but the makers of Love Plus made it even touchier - literally. The Nintendo DS game acts as a virtual girlfriend, requiring players to court high school girls and use the console's microphone to "speak" to them. A player who goes by the name "Sal 9000" formed such an emotional connection to his pixelated paramour that he travelled to Guam with his portable game console and married her in a ceremony with a priest and everything.

2. Little Wang

China's relationship with the Internet is an unusual one. Even as the nation filters out banned material from the West, citizens spend staggering amounts of time online. For a young man who went by the alias "Little Wang," it became an addiction. Unable to control his desire to go online, Wang stole a kitchen knife, snuck out of his house, and chopped off his left hand on a park bench. Police found him and rushed him to a hospital, where doctors managed to reattach it.

3. Edward Smith

I don't think many otherwise normal people would deny that there's something sexy about a beautiful automobile. But few of us would go the extra mile, so to speak, and consummate our desires with one. Edward Smith has made love to over 700 cars in his life, starting with his neighbour's Volkswagen Beetle and moving on to hundreds of other vehicles from sports cars to pickup trucks. He's even done it with a helicopter!

4. Danny Bowman

Social media is in the process of rewiring our brains, turning us into a world of needy attention-seekers desperate for tiny nuggets of approval. British teenager Danny Bowman shows just how toxic that can be. The 19-year-old became obsessed with selfies, spending up to 10 hours a day taking photographs of himself on his iPhone. Bowman dropped out of school and stayed in his house for six months, going on a crash diet to improve his appearance, and eventually attempted suicide in 2012. His parents got him into an addiction program and he's currently in recovery.

5. Kevin Warwick

Some people won't be truly at peace with technology until they incorporate it into their bodies. British engineer Kevin Warwick wants to be the world's first voluntary cyborg, and has had multiple cybernetic implants surgically placed in his body to make it happen. Most notably, he created an interface that would enable a robotic arm thousands of miles away to mimic the motions of his own arm, and also implanted a device into his wife to enable them to communicate nonverbally. Warwick's no lunatic - he's a respected teacher and lecturer at Coventry University - but he receives a fair amount of criticism for his unconventional experiments.

6. Anonymous Google Glass Addict

The name of the next subject was not released, but his story is a terrifying one. Google Glass was released to the public in 2013, and quickly became a hot button issue in the tech sphere, with privacy issues circulating around its built-in camera. One Navy serviceman checked into a substance abuse program for alcohol issues and, while there, began to go into withdrawal from his Glass headset, exhibiting involuntary movements and memory problems without it.

7. Li Meng

Image source

Let's head back to China for another tale of Internet addiction, this one showing just how bad things can get if left untreated. Li Meng has lived in an Internet café in Changchun for over six years, never communicating directly with any other human there. He leaves his chair to get food and occasionally bathe and sleeps in the café during the day, earning money by presumably farming gold in online games.

8. Velma

The majority of the people in this piece are overly connected with modern technology, but "Velma" is different. She claims to have excessive sensitivity to electromagnetic radiation, requiring her to spend most of her time inside a home-built Faraday cage that allegedly protects her from crippling headaches, memory loss, and other symptoms. This condition began when the 3G wireless protocol came into effect, but doctors are sceptical of her claims.

9. Chris Sevier

The debate over same-sex weddings is often cast by cultural conservatives as a weakening of the very institution of marriage. Most of those "man marries dog" comparisons are specious, but then we have the case of Florida man Chris Sevier. Sevier is filing suit in Florida and Utah for the right to marry his personal computer filled with pornography. He claims that "over time, I began preferring sex with my computer over sex with real women," but a judge dismissed his complaint for obvious reasons.

[Source: PC Magazine. Edited.]