Pamela's Blog 32

Published on Wednesday, July 8, 2009 by Nas2EndWork.org

“Children Of The Technology”

by Pamela Satterwhite

"One great reason why clergymen's households are generally unhappy is because the clergyman is so much at home or close about the house....Our great days were when my father went for a day's shopping to Gildenham....As soon as his back was turned the air felt lighter; as soon as the hall door opened to let him in again, the law with its all-reaching 'touch-not, taste not, handle not' was upon us again. The worst of it was that I could never trust Joey and Charlotte; they would go a good way with me and then turn back, or even the whole way and then their consciences would compel them to tell papa and mamma. They liked running with the hare up to a certain point, but their instinct was towards the hounds." (Samuel Butler, The Way Of All Flesh)

[See: The Communal Alternative for a discussion of the plans of 'power' to "tweak the noticing" of the academy-trained...to twist it up so they won't see us (the earth)...and to insure that any trusted with 'the keys' find the four walls of their cell "comforting."]

We are all hooked on the global network now, I tell myself, hooked to it and hooked on it. The new drug: the instant, the now, the worldwide…The global network is only the newest form of revolution, I think. Maybe it’s only revolution we’re addicted to. Maybe the form never matters [...huh?...] – socialism, rock and roll, drugs, market capitalism, electronic commerce – who cares, as long as it’s the edgy thing that’s happening in one’s own time. Maybe every generation produces a certain number of people who want change…And socialism, with its…old-fashioned virtues of steadfastness”… – is all too hopelessly pokey for us now. [...huh?...] Everything goes faster these days…I’d like to think that computers are neutral…But there is something in the system itself, in the formal logic of programs and data, that recreates the world in its own image. Like the rock-and-roll culture, it forms an irresistible horizontal country that obliterates the long, slow, old cultures of place and custom, law and social life. …We think we are creating the system, but the system is also creating us… (Ellen Ullman, Close To The Machine, p. 28-30, 89-90)

"We think we are creating the system, but the system is also creating us…"

(No shit.

So what do we do about it?)

Our love affair with our hand-held devices, our variously shaped, colored and capacitied portals to our personal electronic-worlds, is our comfort food for the soul, our popcorn, that fills us up and leaves us forever hungry…so we dive back in for more.

(No shit.

So what do we do about it?)

When the unreality of materiality overwhelms we flee to our customized reality personally created out of immateriality, and in it see ourselves reflected, our existence confirmed. While the material reality is left to those who care about such things, …and they care…a lot.

(No shit.

So what do we do about it?)

We’re trapped in the circularity of the present system, in the nullifying effect of the technics: the system shapes the technology to its own needs, which then shapes us to fit the technology, which we reinforce as we compulsively seek our own images, all the others just like us, reflecting the system back, just as we do…

(No shit.

So what do we do about it?)

We see ourselves…everywhere…and yet are not comforted. Nor could we be…because all we see…is...an absence.

(No shit.

So what do we do about it?)

Everyone’s doing “their own thing,” which, by coincidence, is the same thing everyone else is doing, individually or with their mirror images, ‘making’ separate ‘realities’ mirroring electronic ‘realities’ – the sum total of all of which leaves the physical world in the hands of those who care about such things.

And they care a lot.

(No shit.)

...So what do we do about it?

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Pamela's Blog 32

Published on Wednesday, July 8, 2009 by Nas2EndWork.org

“Children Of The Technology”