Techno-fascism?
A little over two years ago (how time flies!) I did a review of the final part of the “Qatsi” trillogy – Godfrey Reggio’s seminal nonverbal films which captured spectacular visual images of the world, accompanied by an equally stiring score by Philip Glass. Looking back at these highly thoughtful and provocative works (including others such as Baraka) when I saw a piece written by said director I thought it was about time for some reflection…
By any measure, we live in an extraordinary and extreme time. Language can no longer describe the world in which we live. With antique ideas and old formulas, we continue to describe a world that is no longer present. In this loss of language, the word gives way to the image as the ‘language’ of exchange, in which critical thought disappears to a diabolic regime of conformity – the hyper-real, the omnipresent image. Language, real place gives way to numerical code, the real virtual; metaphor to metamorphosis; body to disembodiment; natural to supernatural; many to one. Mystery disappears, replaced by the illusion of certainty in technological perfection… [read on].
Can you see where this is going? Yes, without even noticing it have we have fallen into our own self-created Matrix by which we have insualted ourselves from reality through technology? Sounds far fetched? Perhaps, but in a world where we have had to re-invent organic-this and eco-friendly-that surely a few alarm bells should be ringing?! Perpetuated by cheap air travel the world may be a smaller place but at the same time travel will become pointless when everywhere looks the same as everywhere else. Just take the UK as an example – every city has the same shops etc that distinguishing between them becomes positively hard. Globalisation? Techno-fascism? Has technology replaced/overwritten nature? You tell me!
N.B. I’m not arguing either way, just presenting a topic for reflection.
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That nobody has posted anything in response to your question since '06 should tell you at least a little about our Western relationship to technology. That we've willingly brought the techno-ticket (or at least been sold the idea that Tech = Good) and now we're stuck on the ride. I'm not really sure we would even want to jump off at this late stage – even if we knew how.
Perhaps the mere fact that things like the Internet even exist, is already a sign that we've all strayed a little too far from the Garden.
Hmmm. Perhaps the need to switch off the tech, is really the evolutionary urge to switch off our own selfish egos for good..
Take it easy
Henry
PS. Small note to the shiny happy coldplay metrosexual hipster latte crowd: your new mobile phone is a lifeless lump of toxic plastic made in a Chinese sweatshop, not a social movement.
Hi Henry, glad someone replied to this even if it is over 2 years since I posted it!
If anything it appears the technological onslaught continues to accelerate even faster than before – I'm still divided about the future implications of this as the positive and negative effects are a very mixed bag.
To be honest I don't see any way out of it, short of a catastophic failure of some sort. As part of this revolution I'm wouldn't really want that either but certainly some consideration needs to be given to the man-machine dependance.
I currently am having my University students read this. We are doing a section on Culture. I would suggest Focualt’s book Discipline and Punish. I also think that a good read would be Machine fetishism Value and the Image of Unlimited Good
The grip of technology has the United States firmly held in oblivion. We must seek to educate those lost to its power. However, ultimately it is just a tool of the forces that seek to dominate us all.
Read “The Formation of Intellectuals” by Antonio Gramsci
Read FSTR by James Glick
Read “Hic Jacet” by Robert Harrison (note: this appeared in Critical Inquiry 2001
Read “Putting up the Gates” by Edward J. Blakely and Mary Gail Snyder
Read “Power of Words in War Time” by Robin T.Lakoff
Read “the Whimper of Whipped Dogs,” by Harlan Ellison (found in Deathbird Stories)
Society has lost its way, and maybe it always has been lost, to the lure of the gods that call to us throughout the ages. Currently, the gods of business and technology lure us (those uneducated many) to walk the halls of ignorance relegating us all to shadowy functions of the system itself.
One master is switched for another throughout the ages and we bow and scrape with servile glee to do its bidding. There are, however, a few a very few who do not seek to be controlled and dominated. We are the educated people. We are the true individuals. We are the grit in the machine that hums with freedom and joy. The rest…they suffer on the lathe of heaven.