Computer Lust
Uh... internet?
Privacy has never been so luxurious.
There has been gradual discourse about stepping back from the internet under pivotal decades of manipulated forms of digital media constructed to distract and cause more harm than ever before. And the messages that I have been receiving over these past few years is a reminder that perhaps we have been engaged in the midst of an ongoing war between our decaying moral consciousness guided by hyper-individualized industrialization, at the expense of repeated pillaging excused by propaganda, and motivated by flaccid imageries of a monolithic utopia.
Several pedestrians breathe, die, and continuously remain unashamed to be the cattle of algorithmic husbandry. People have been baiting their lives to computers and have become attached to computers (as if the people are literally plugs themselves) and rely on the computer to order, to sell, to seduce, to schedule, to organize, to eat, to sleep, to wake up, to get a job, and to feel every emotion at its demand. But for several of us, its programming was (and still is) a form of survival, especially during that uneasy crisis of mandatory isolation. But that period skyrocketed the computer’s ability to become the pimp that we the people did not ask for, with artificial intelligence blending with authentic ignorance.
The computer, once an embryonic electrical vision that developed into a pubescent chapter for military operation, is now an evangelistic born-again and reborn-again system with updated programs of advertisements and surveillance. The user is conditioned to come back and come back again. The computer has become the bread and water to civilizations, at the cost of contaminating bread, water, and civilizations at the same time. Consumption powers the DNA of the person and the computer is the umbilical chord to this identity, which I fear that this practice is becoming homogeneous.
The computer analyzes the individual’s desire, to the point where the computer knows more about the individual than the individual knows about themselves. And the individual may know or may not know that the development of their own personality (which one can argue has never been theirs to begin with) is currently inseparable to the freshly renovated vacuumous devices. These same devices which are compacted and coded into our hands and fingers so we can hold them as flashlights at the next concert or party or date we swipe and schedule and later attend. So we can record the next unexciting extravaganza and feed these events onto the public of other attached plugs who have been detached from their souls for instant validity and inexpensive attention, hopefully praying to be profitable off of inebriated popularity while loneliness skips through sunflowers and undeniably ascends to the powerful psyche.
The hoarding of documented moments of clips and screenshots are not for any kind of reflection of an uninteresting legacy, but rather a microwaveable fixation for the next eye of the beholder to inhale its content, and then forget the small image within the next second, already craving another image while the image running in front of them is proactively disposed from the mind. Ready to move on. And move on. Muscle memory has never been so cheap. Ask your thumb. The smartphone has become the new cigarette, built and distributed with intentions of it not being the reliable tool it once was, but another stimulating drug gradually looming in front of our faces. Every chime, every notification, every advertisement, every post, every click, every like, every comment, and every subscription is a hit and a new high. New hit. New high. The ultimate form of peer pressure.
What is the definition of the individual without the Stockholm Syndrome of the alluring screens — the same screens designed to draw you back into its world of feaux prophets and psudointellectuals who voluntarily choose to regurgitate unsophisticated rhetoric — the same screens that coddle your negative esteem that its world is yours even though you might be unaware that you have been held hostage underneath the manure of data? The diagnosis of the self, oblivious to the specific dependency of a calculated informational whirlpool — might become obsolete (or dare I say “deleted”) if that self is not careful.
Prince already tried to warn us about this particular concern right before this millennium began.
“Don’t be fooled by the internet…It’s cool to use the computer. Don’t let the computer use you… There’s a war going on. The battlefield’s in the mind, and the prize is the soul. So let’s be careful. Be very careful.”
This is not me saying “fuck the internet.” The person I am today and the person you are today would not be here without it. The computer is a remarkable source where the access to knowledge and answers to questions can satisfy the curiosity quicker than a roadrunner. Communities have been assembled and sustained by the help of these digital machines. Some mom and pop joints remain stable after almost going out of business with the help of online assistance. The machine may have helped a local resident pay their rent on time. It may have helped cover medical expenses, or outstanding funeral costs. Donating funds to those who struggle within difficult circumstances can happen within the press of a few buttons. These devices are compasses (in a literal sense) to guide us to where we need to go. But our moral compasses could become twisted and lost if we decide to only rely on this source as our nucleus of living and nothing else. It is easy to get lost upon the virtual navigation. Just watch your diet.
Further Reading:
Thanks for these words Ricky. As I continued to read, I was reminded of the scene from The Matrix when he was telling Neo exactly what the matrix is: “The Matrix is everywhere, it is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window, or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work, or when go to church or when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.”
Brilliant insight into the evolution of the machine and exposition of its incremental yet pervasive intrusion into our collective consciousness to a near possession of our very souls. As we enter the artificial age (also predictively punned by Prince as the Art Official Age), the question is: can we remember who (and whose) we are, disentangle ourselves from the multidimensional matrix, and ultimately reclaim our sovereignty and dignity from this digital dystopia? Or is it too late?…