The State of the World: Google Search and the PS5

MacDuff Mountain, Oregon

If you needed more evidence that going outside is a revolutionary idea, on Thanksgiving day I started a Google search with "where can I buy a..." and pictured below, you'll find all of the autocomplete options that Google populated:

All of the results related to buying a video game console, except for one (and I had to look up what a sugar glider is). At the time of this writing, the PS5 has been constantly sold out since its release on November 12th, including every day that it's been restocked at Walmart and Game Stop. (Source) Playstation even called this their "biggest console launch ever" and the demand for the PS5 to be "unprecedented" (but isn't everything "unprecedented" these days?).

How many consoles are we talking about? According to BGR.com, "we still don’t have actual sales figures, but we do know that Sony moved 7.6 million PS4 consoles in its fiscal launch year. In a recent call with investors, Sony CFO Hiro Totoki said the company is 'aiming to exceed' those unit sales in the first year of the PS5’s life cycle, and it sounds like the PS5 is well on its way to doing so."

I know we're stuck in the cold, dark months of winter and already it feels like there's nothing better to do than play video games or bing watch Netflix. In the past, I've personally taken to video games to get me through surgery rehab, sickness, and the darkness of winter. And of course, you could easily still complete Outside 365 and still maintain a video game habit.

But what better way to get the pulse of the planet than Google searches? This is the state of the world we live in. While bicycle sales have boomed this year, technology and video game sales appear to be booming even more.

I'm not a technophobe by any means. I greatly appreciate technology and all of the many ways that it's radically improved my life, and even the ways that it helps me to more easily get out into nature. But I'm also very cognizant of the detrimental effects of certain types of technology, and the screen addiction that can so easily arise.

While many of the articles published on this blog will be evergreen in nature, I also want to analyze the trends of humanity's relationship to both technology and nature, two opposing forces at work in our lives. The world is at a crossroads, as our scientific understanding of the benefits nature exposure have never been greater while simultaneously, the rate of technological change has never been greater. And in 2008, homo sapiens officially became an urban species. (Source)

Going outside and being active every single day is not the status quo, and doing so demands work, dedication, and the elimination of excuses. It requires us to leave the comfort of the couch and the easy access of the video game controller and head out into the cold, dark wintery world to walk a mile, even when maybe we don't want to.

But in the end, it's always worth it.