i used to keep a daily journal online. |
inspired by Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment As Mass Deception"
excitement through commercial consubstantiation
the internet industry:
every web page is a tribute to technology; every email you send encourages someone to spend more time on a computer. each aspect of our life transacted in this sphere carries an implicit endorsement for deforestation, extinction, capitalism, exploitation, sweatshop labor.
as active participants we continue colonization, and it is "fun": no limits on information - only electricity and prowess of our 'puter. we are colonized in return, our leisure time has become work, we process information for business and pleasure. the computer absorbs labor, time, without tangible or time return! we toil thus - enriching technology brokers with no recompense.certainly the only people making money or buying bananas from bytes are the emerging technology baronies; the labor and listlessness of hobbyists and procrastinating workers sells bandwidth browsers and boxes. there is clearly no end in site; as more folks is absorbed in this frenetic fracas only more plastic silicon metal will be mined fom the earth leaving side effect toxins and pollutants as well as american culture exports: disney and arnold schwartzenegger movies and dallas reruns - the computer makes it faster and easier for the shmooze to spread (in spite of whatever quality, humane content that may be out there).
the hopes of the technology evangelists, virtual communitarians, do it yourself publishers, that these broad netscapes might be settled by the everyman and everywoman, have already lead to the focus of enormous attention on nothing more enlightened than internet naval gazing and high technology wonderment. is it any surprise that the most popular sites online are about the internet and technology itself? the computer's colour light and glass spectacle obscures any other topic as all of human history and culture is mined for multimedia material. pundits on junkets, recieving bizarre money from transitioning old media empires, are the modern missionaries sent into our cultural amazon - for all their promises of enlightenment, democracy through technology, we still have nothing more to show for three years of net-hype than an enormous stock market boom and business based on an electric house of cards; we have the internet: a flea market of bad writing and crackpot theory, of little use and much distraction.
technologists would have us believe that today's information overload necessitates their tools, but think of the life of a nebraska farmer - s/he has to be a meterologist, a veteranian, a breeder, a gardener, an herbalist, a merchant, a hunter, a parent, a spouse - and it's been this way for hundreds if not thousands of years. all the information they need they keep in their heads or shared through stories, their tools came not from taiwan. we are drunk on trivium but we are dehydrating as we suspend ourselves in sense-simulating streams.
meanwhile, our machines wheeze nightly as we log on for some connection to other people - mostly singles bars without the smoke or sensuality, a final retreat from pleasure of the flesh; heaven in your hand. who's to say that all of our tantalizing email erotix and new found faceless friends aren't computer generated or lying? bit brokers sell us back to ourselves, with advertising attached. our distance drives us either nuts or out of our communities, our homes to seek the reality behind our digital dwindlings - and what we find now is discount computer storefronts and megacorporate drone employees who can't break computer rules. it is a computer world - don't think you have a choice; only mac or ibm.