Tag: Technology

Democratizing Technology: Batteries not included, user manual sold separately

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1. The Gaze of the Other: First, identify the technology that functions as the object of desire, the phallus, for a certain elite. This elite, the Symbolic Order, holds the gaze that defines “real” power. The resentment of the excluded masses, the Imaginary, fuels the fantasy of possessing this phallus.

2. The Gift (That Keeps on Taking): The Lack, the Real: We release the ersatz version, a symbolic substitute for the real technology. This malfunctioning, user-unfriendly monstrosity embodies the lack, the Real, that can never be fully satisfied. The cryptic symbols represent the unknowable beyond the Symbolic Order.

Imagine a malfunctioning toaster controlled by a dial with cryptic symbols and rigged to electrocute you 10% of the time. This, my friends, is democratization in action! Support? Manuals? Ha! Let them decipher the hieroglyphics themselves.

This barely functional, bug-ridden monstrosity is the key to your glorious digital emancipation and the help desk consists of a prerecorded kazoo solo on repeat, but that’s the beauty of it, proles! You’re finally in the driver’s seat (bring your own screwdriver)!

3. The Orwellian Fanfare: Time to trumpet our magnanimity! Issue a press release so vague and self-congratulatory it would make Big Brother blush. “The Corporation is proud to empower the People!” Fanfare, comrades! Announce to the world that you’ve democratized your technology! The very gears of progress now grind at the behest of the… common man? (Shudder at the thought.) Let the unwashed masses drown in a sea of nonsensical menus and cryptic error messages! Just don’t mention the soul-crushing effort required to actually use the damn thing.

4. Hail the Hero : The Dunce Parade: Jouissance Through Struggle: The user, forever seeking the Real through symbolic manipulation, experiences a perverse satisfaction (jouissance) in deciphering the hieroglyphics and wrestling with the malfunctioning device.

Seek out the most clueless, enthusiasm-addled troglodytes to be your poster children. Bonus points if they manage to make a lukewarm cup of lukewarm coffee using our toaster-deathtrap. Shower them with empty awards and feature them in nonsensical commercials filled with stock footage of smiling peasants. Empty titles like “People’s Champion of Code!” Let them be the shining example of what the unwashed masses could achieve, with enough elbow grease and a lobotomy.

The Mirror Stage Misrecognition: The clueless poster children serve as the mirror reflecting back a distorted image of the user’s potential mastery. Their success, however illusory, reinforces the user’s misrecognition of their own place within the Symbolic Order.

5. The Fantasy of Completion: The People are to Blame (Naturally)

The user, forever chasing the dream of mastering the technology, remains trapped in a cycle of desire and lack. The blame for the inevitable failure falls not on the system but on the user’s inherent inadequacy.

When, inevitably, this ersatz technology fails to ignite a revolution of the proles, blame them! The whole thing flops harder than a fish out of water, unleash the blame-ray!

They’re simply too simple, too bogged down by their fleshy limitations, to grasp the true brilliance of your creation.

6. The Final Twist: The Perpetual Cycle: The corporation, the Big Other, maintains its grip on the Real power while offering up symbolic substitutes that perpetuate the illusion of progress and the user’s place within the system.

The illusory nature of empowerment offered by the corporation and the user’s desperate attempts to achieve a sense of wholeness through a flawed system.

Unresolved After 45,000 Years

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Here’s a cosmic joke for the ages, a riddle wrapped in the absurdity of technological evolution: it’s nearly impossible to solve a need while constructing the very technology meant to fulfill it. We’re talking about a grand, sprawling farce that’s played out over the millennia—a never-ending cycle of futility where the answers always elude us. It’s the cruel trick of progress, a perpetual game of catch-up where we’re forever chasing shadows, our hands reaching out for solutions just beyond our grasp.

In the primordial muck of early technological development, when our ancestors first hacked together rudimentary tools, there existed a brutal truth. The earliest attempts to address pressing needs—survival, sustenance, and the basic comforts of existence—were inevitably undermined by their own crudeness. As if by some cosmic malfeasance, the nascent technologies of the day were always clumsy, always outpaced by more ingenious alternatives that lay tantalizingly out of reach.

We think we’re on the brink of a breakthrough, only to find ourselves trapped in an endless loop of mediocre solutions. It’s the universal human tragedy: in our fervent quest to build and innovate, we’re perpetually shackled to our own limitations. The technology of today is yesterday’s answer, a half-baked solution doomed to be superseded by something more sophisticated, something that promises to resolve our deepest issues but never quite arrives.

Consider the wheel, the lever, the first crude implements that gave birth to civilization. They were marvelous for their time, no doubt, but they were also the harbingers of a deeper irony. They solved immediate problems but simultaneously highlighted the stark inadequacy of their own limitations. The technological leaps that followed only served to underscore how our ancestors were barely scratching the surface of what was truly possible.

Fast forward to our present era, where we sit ensnared in the web of our own creation. We’re building ever more complex technologies, each designed to address the needs of the moment, yet each is a mere Band-Aid on the gaping wound of our collective insufficiency. It’s as if we’re trapped in a hall of mirrors, each reflection showing us a new gadget, a new gizmo, a new promise, all while the underlying needs remain, unresolved and mocking our endless pursuit.

In this grand cosmic theatre, the quest for solving needs and building technologies becomes a tragic dance of missteps and miscalculations. The need always seems to be one step ahead, a mirage that shifts just as we think we’ve grasped it. Our technological innovations, for all their brilliance, are often outpaced by the very needs they were designed to address. They become relics of an incomplete answer, monuments to our perpetual struggle against the inadequacies of our own designs.

So here we stand, 45,000 years deep into this grand experiment, caught in the unending loop of need and innovation. The great irony remains unresolved, a testament to the futility of our efforts and the relentless advance of time. We’re stuck in a Sisyphean cycle, forever building and solving, only to find that the true resolution is always just beyond our reach.