Demonic Mnemonic Tech Rant
Apologetic introduction: How many more tech rants does the world need? I have no idea, but I’ve never feared ridiculous redundancy, so here goes…
The digital platforms fragment. Our attention spans get shorter and shorter, dictated by dopamine-driven success ”online.” Micro-movements, sedating necessities… ”I’m just going to…” ”Let me just…” Where is the dialogue? Where is our human poetry?
Everyone builds a little empire. At war, at peace, in crisis, at ease… Big Brother watches (or not)… Everyone succumbs and gets conditioned / imprinted, and always on display. ”I am visible, therefore I exist.” The utter hopelessness in awaiting a few more likes; a few more acknowledgements of bot-controlled defeat and dismay.
Lots of deafening, deathening noise, and barely any signal. Where are you in all of this? Unwillingly wallowing through necessary motions in order to simply exist. Technology-driven subhumans sharing platforms like the proverbial junkies’ needles. Needless to say, the more idiotic and cynical something is, the more successful it seems to become.
Irony rules supreme. I remember when the ”joystick” was presented. Genius, almost on Communist China level (I remember the ”Double Happiness” cigarettes sold cheaply in Tibet). And now, a few generations of hollow men and women later, humanity has sunk into total complacency and submission.
Pioneers and entrepreneurs skating on the thin ice of previous progress, where progress doesn’t actually mean steps forward but rather just the vain hope of amassing massive and invisible fortunes online. ”I have a great idea for an app…”
Gadgets and gizmos become more encompassing and ambitious (as well as epihytic / parasitic) as human resistance dwindles into narcotic and necrotic levels of self-esteem. Look at the screen, little human. There are other ghosts / shells inside the gadget. Befriend them (but not for real!). Look at the screen… Don’t think – Just LOL… OMG… Dream of online success while swiping frantically until your mind loses all focus.
Even critical tendencies get lured and lulled away by shallow narcissisms. Bling, bling, beautiful babes, to what degree can you look like everyone else today? The one with the least trace of character and personality wins.
Breaking away, logging out, shutting down… Becoming fully human and functional again. The real upper class is the one that is technology-free to the greatest extent possible, yet remaining fully functional and competitive. Let techno-serfs do the work and take on the detrimental impact of fragmentation.
Rest at ease, enjoy your envisioning a grand future. Technology is a tool, not a lifestyle. The worker works and he pays the price. The aristocrat watches and moves strategically, aware of the imminent and potential dangers of artificially illuminated screens.
We are far too attached to the technology and its premises / promises. But human magic exists in a de-tached mind-frame. The magic happens when you’re not paying attention. The problem with social media-technology and its data-driven despair is that it not only grabs your attention; it holds on to it and refuses to let go. Thereby we deny ourselves giving chance a chance, in-between the lines of the causal and binary. It is far more constructive to zone out and allow for deeper strata to send survival messages to the surface. If the surface is too stormy with digital anticipation, we are barred from listening to ourselves. Far too much noise, far too little signal.
If we take into account that it is currently pretty impossible to exist without online access, and that some of us exist somewhere in-between the digital serf and the analogue aristocrat, then perhaps it’s better to look at the opportunities (they are many!) rather than zone out far, far into cynicism-land. But the crux of the motherboard is that even the constructive and enthusiastic bursts online are also feeding the beast. Whether we take in digi-dross passively or try to build something of our own actively, the behavior is basically the same, and it has the same result: fragmentation. One could of course argue that there is a substantial difference in spirit: one takes in and one gives out. But the technology and the modus operandi are still the same.
To put it bluntly: I think we’re all pretty fucked.
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