The Major Tom Syndrome

Yesterday I heard the term "The Major Tom Syndrome."  I just love it. David Bowie, of course. It's colorful shorthand to describe any kind of situation in which an individual decides to cut herself off from earthly realities to keep on floating in space. I just added it to Wikipedia. Let's see if they accept it. Outer space here could be the dreamland of the techno-deterministic galaxy. The term that abbreviates to MTS could also be the radical ticket to the universe divorced from any political realities. No matter which political leaning, it's continuously hard to have the hand on the ground to witness the realities down there. From the U.S. use of chemical weapons such as Napalm in Iraq to the multi-faceted riots in France. I think it was the German writer Tucholsky who described the petit bourgeois spending every free moment at his small country house. Here, surrounded by flowerbeds and beer at hand the world looks rosy and the occasional glance at the newspaper does not intervene too harshly.  
 The Major Tom Syndrome could also be used for the increasing interest-community culture, in which like-minded gather and outside views are considered off-topic. No more confrontations with those who have inconveniently opposing views. We can just glare at them with "cyberbalkanized" disinterest. We can float in the cosmos of our own worldviews without ever being challenged. On the up-side Major Tom lives the anti-social software dream. In the age of super-connectivity and the Post-Fordist "always on" of the network: Who does not dream of being a hermit every now and then? Major Tom becomes strangely appealing, way out there.

Update on November 26, 2005 at 06:00 by [Trebor]

The Wikipedia entry that I added:
The Major Tom Syndrome : In 1972 David Bowie wrote "Major Tom" as part of a re-release of the 1969 single "Space Oddity." The Major Tom Syndrome is a metaphorical shorthand to describe situations in which somebody cuts herself off from earthly realities to keep on floating in outer space.

Minutes later (unbelievably fast) a redirect from my entry to the Wikipedia pagefor  "Major Tom" was put in place by the Wikipedia editors. In response to my post, under "cultural references," they added the sentence:

'In popular slang, the feeling of wanting to be cut off from the world is sometimes called "Major Tom Syndrome".'