Tag: Web2

The Interzone of Access

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The state of democratized access

Smartphones – IPhone 🧌

Internet – Google search ☠️

Laptops and Computers- Apple

Open Source Software

Streaming Services ☠️

E-readers 🪦

Platforms Twitter 🐸 ☠️

Renewables – No killer product

3D Printing – No killer product

Blockchain – No killer product

Smartphones: The iPhallus, a chrome totem pulsating with logos, a Skinner box in your pocket. It whispers promises of connection, but delivers a cage of curated reality. Information streams, a digitized jungle, eat your time, leaving a hollow satisfaction.

A million apps, a million distractions, a million tiny Skinner boxes conditioning the neuro-meat. Candy-coated slavery in the palm of your hand. iSlabs, gleaming black mirrors of narcissus, portals to a curated chaos. Everyman a kingpin, a producer, a pornographer, all in their pocket. Yet the signal flickers, the battery drains, a phantom limb lost in the subway dead zone.

Internet: The Vast Sprawl, a digital Moloch devouring time and attention. The Great Search, a labyrinthine web woven by spiders of code. Google, the all-seeing eye, indexes your desires, feeding you a manufactured reality. data graveyard haunted by ghosts of information. Google, the all-seeing eye, harvesting your clicks, feeding your fears, shaping your reality byte by byte. Information overload, a digital deluge threatening to drown us in a sea of irrelevance. Google, the one-eyed oracle, its algorithms whispering desires before they’re even thoughts. Information, a firehose of data, flooding the circuits, leaving users thirsting for truth in a desert of clickbait. Information overload, a firehose of data drowning critical thought.

Laptops & Computers: Apple, the forbidden fruit of knowledge gleaming with bitten chrome, gleaming and expensive. Gates of silicon paradise guarded by proprietary code. The illusion of freedom, the reality of control. A cold metal womb birthing the digital simulacrum. Walls of text rise in the flickering glow, a self-imposed prison of information. The Apple, a seductive serpent, coils around your creativity, whispering of pre-programmed potential. Applechrome fortresses, walled gardens of control. The keyboard, a weaponized typewriter, spewing forth manifestos and memes. The cursor, a blinking eye, judging every keystroke. Screens glow, casting an artificial twilight, users wired to the machine, slaves to the silicon gods.

Open Source Software: A flickering candle in the data darkness. Code shared, a digital commune, a fight against the proprietary gods. Yet, the shadows lurk, vulnerabilities hidden in plain sight, a potential Trojan horse for the unwary hacker. The Bricolage Bazaar, a chaotic marketplace of code. Hackers, the new revolutionaries, wielding screwdrivers and compilers, building free alternatives in the shadows. But the corporations loom large, casting their proprietary nets, ever ready to co-opt and commercialize the commons. A rebellion against the code lords. Free and open, a chaotic symphony of programmers, a glimpse of a decentralized future. But can the open web survive the vultures of the corporate machine?

Streaming Services: The Cathedral of Distraction, a never-ending cacophony of content. Binge-watching our way to oblivion, passive consumers hypnotized by the flickering glow. A million shows, a million voices, but nothing to say. The opiate of the masses. Flickering cat videos and endless content loops lull the mind into a mindless stupor. A dopamine drip, a manufactured dream state, a society plugged into the matrix of entertainment. Attention spans wither, dopamine drips, a generation raised on the flickering teat of the algorithm.

E-readers: The Gutenberg Graveyard, mausoleums of digitized ink. The weight of the book, the rustle of turning pages, the scent of aged paper – all sacrificed on the altar of convenience. Are we trading the soul of the book for the cold efficiency of the screen? The tomb of the bound word. Text trapped in silicon purgatory, devoid of the tactile symphony of turning pages. The scent of aged paper replaced by the sterile hum of electronics. A library of Alexandria burning in the palm of your hand. Can words on a screen ever truly replace the weight of a book, the scent of aged pages?

Platforms: Twitter, the digital coliseum, a gladiatorial arena of 280-character insults. Bots and trolls, the new bread and circuses, keeping the masses entertained while the real games are played in the shadows. A breeding ground for echo chambers and outrage, a weaponized hivemind. Tweetstorms of rage, a cacophony of disembodied voices. Echo chambers amplify, dissenting voices drowned out in the cacophony. Is this the agora of democracy, or a breeding ground for fascism?

Renewables: The Mirage of Sustainability, a shimmering oasis in the digital desert. Wind turbines, like skeletal giants, promise clean energy. Yet the corporations exploit the land, leaving scars on the earth in their quest for profit. Can technology truly save us from the destruction it has wrought?  The elusive dream, a shimmering mirage in the desert of fossil fuels. The technology dances on the horizon, just out of reach, a promise of clean energy held hostage by corporate greed. The elusive Holy Grail, a shimmering mirage in the energy desert. Technology fragmented, potential unrealized. Can we harness the wind and sun before the oil barons suck the earth dry?

3D Printing: The Plasticine Playground, a child’s dream, an engineer’s folly. The promise of a maker revolution, limited by cost and complexity. Can we print a new world, or are we destined to drown in a sea of cheap trinkets? A plastic ouroboros, devouring itself in a cycle of endless creation. It promises democratized manufacturing, but delivers trinkets and toys, a future filled with mountains of discarded plastic dreams. The Flesh Fair, a macabre carnival of possibility. Organs printed to order, bespoke bodies sculpted from plasticine. Is this the dawn of a new era of transhumanism, or a descent into a narcissistic funhouse of self-replication?

Blockchain: The Invisible Labyrinth, a tangled web of encrypted transactions. The phantom currency, a ghost in the machine. The dream of a decentralized utopia, free from the control of banks and governments. But in the shadows lurk criminals, peddling darkness on the dark web. Is this the future of finance, or a haven for the lawless? Anarchic utopia or criminal playground? A technology ripe for both liberation and exploitation.

The Cut-Up Machine sputters and coughs, spewing forth this fragmented vision. Democratized access, a double-edged sword. Freedom and control, creation and consumption, all tangled in the wires of the digital age. Can we navigate this labyrinth, or are we destined to be devoured by the very tools that empower us?

This is the Interzone of Access, a cut-up of our digital landscape. Here, progress rubs shoulders with peril, and the line between freedom and control blurs into a hazy dream. We stand at a crossroads, a stark reminder of the choices we face in shaping the future of access.

The Second Coming of the Third Reich, Fourth time around

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A greasy film coats reality, a flickering newsfeed nightmare. The Third Reich, a putrid corpse twitching on the slab, jerks back to life – not as jackboots and goose steps, but as a virus whispering through the media matrix. Faceless suits in chrome towers, their eyes cold and reptilian, cultivate fear like a cash crop.

They need the enemy, a bogeyman to justify the chrome tentacles of surveillance, the ever-expanding military-industrial amoeba. It slithers and feeds, its hunger a bottomless pit lined with dollar bills. Terror flickers across the screen – grainy footage, distorted voices – a carefully constructed chimera, a Frankenstein of anxieties.

The script is dog-eared, the dialogue recycled B-movie dreck: “They’re coming for your way of life!” they screech. But who defines “they”? Cardboard cut-outs with names ripped from headlines, shuffled and dealt like a deck of fear cards. The masses, wired to the flickering screen, their dopamine drip controlled by invisible puppeteers, gobble it up.

The money flows, a thick black ichor, enriching the puppeteers while the fear-mongering circus continues. The enemy shifts, morphs, adapts – a hydra-headed beast fueled by manufactured paranoia. But beneath the noise, a whisper: “This isn’t about them, it’s about us. It’s about control.” A single voice, a spark in the manufactured darkness, a flicker of resistance against the machine. Will it ignite, or be snuffed out by the next manufactured crisis? The game continues, the stakes life and liberty, all played out on a screen slick with manufactured fear.

A greasy film coats reality, flickering under the strobing paranoia of the evening news. Anchors, faces etched with a manufactured urgency, drone on about the Fourth Reich. But this Reich ain’t got jackboots, it’s got algorithms. These new Nazis wear Armani suits, their swastikas hidden in the cold chrome sheen of corporate logos.

They don’t storm beaches, they flood inboxes. Their blitzkrieg’s a barrage of spam, each message a coded dog whistle to the frightened reptilian core of the brain. The enemy this time? It morphs, a shape-shifting bogeyman. One day it’s immigrants, a brown tide surging over the border. The next, it’s intellectuals, their words a virus eating away at the nation’s “true” values.

It’s all a hustle, a three-card Monte with the public as the mark. The fear sells, keeps the cash spigot flowing. Politicians, media whores, the military-industrial complex – they’re all apostles in this new religion of perpetual war. We’re all hooked on the adrenaline drip, the manufactured crisis a balm for a nation rotting from the inside out.

But beneath the flickering headlines, a different story plays. People, flesh and blood, huddle together in the alleyways, sharing cigarettes and stories. They see the game, the fearmongering script. They know the real enemy wears a thousand faces, and it ain’t some foreign caricature. It’s the crushing debt, the rigged system, the slow, agonizing squeeze of an uncaring world.

The air crackles with a chaotic energy, a million unspoken thoughts sparking like loose wires. Maybe, just maybe, this time the script gets flipped. Maybe the manufactured fear gets turned back on its creators. Maybe, in the flickering chaos, a new story emerges, one where humanity throws off the shackles of manufactured fear and steps blinking into the light. But that’s another script, another story for another night. Tonight, the fear merchants have the floor. But the audience is restless. And the screen flickers, reality bleeding through the cracks…

A chrome-plated swastika shimmers in the flickering TV light, a malignant virus burrowing into the American Dream. Faces contort, voices dripping with paranoia – endless hordes, a brown tide rising, shaped by unseen puppeteers. The script, dog-eared and yellowed, dictates the fear.

This ain’t Hitler in jackboots, no. This Reich crawls from the shadows of the internet, a hydra of anonymous avatars spewing hate-laced manifestos. Every basement dweller, every keyboard warrior, a potential stormtrooper. The threat, a Rorschach test, morphing to fit every political agenda.

But the real enemy? Apathy. Apathy’s a black hole, sucking the tax dollars into a bottomless pit of defense contracts. Politicians, slicker than a greased weasel, exploit the fear, the bogeyman a cash cow. Wars are fought not on battlefields, but in boardrooms, million dollar contracts signed in blood-red ink.

The news, a relentless buzz, injects us with a cocktail of manufactured outrage. We become automatons, twitching at every manufactured enemy, our wallets perpetually open, funding the latest chrome-plated bogeyman.

But under the surface, a flicker of resistance. A beatnik with a bong and a copy of Naked Lunch whispers dissent. A lone voice crying in the manufactured wilderness. Will it be enough? Or are we all doomed to become cogs in the machine, forever chasing the next manufactured enemy, the fourth Reich a profitable ghost haunting the American psyche?

The Second Coming of the Third Reich, Fourth Time Around – the title itself a twisted nursery rhyme, a malevolent melody on a calliope of fear. It slithers through the airwaves, a serpent coiling around minds numbed by flickering screens. Is it history repeating, a grotesque echo of jackboots on cobblestones? No, this Reich is born of silicon and smoke, a digital phantom haunting the dark corners of the web.

They call it populism, nationalism, a groundswell of discontent. But scratch the surface and you find the same old fetid stew – scapegoats and bogeymen simmering in a broth of rage. The enemy this time? Immigrants, minorities, anyone different, anyone who doesn’t fit the mold. They morph and multiply, these digital brownshirts, their hate-filled screeds echoing in a million anonymous chambers.

But fear is a currency, and politicians, those hawkers of snake oil and empty promises, are the biggest spenders. They inflate these digital phantoms, pump them full of imaginary menace, all to justify the ever-expanding arsenal of the state. More drones, more surveillance, more taxes bled dry to feed the insatiable maw of the military-industrial complex. This Reich may not wear jackboots, but its grip is no less suffocating. It’s a Reich of control, a Reich disguised as freedom, a Reich built on the shifting sands of manufactured outrage.

Exodus

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On Tiktok, a hyperreality unfolds. Generations collide in a digital spectacle, each trapped within their own pre-programmed narrative. The “enshittification,” as Gen Z terms it, permeates the platform, a self-referential loop of manufactured discontent.

For Gen Z, this is all they’ve known. They navigate the labyrinthine simulacra of social connection, a world where authenticity is a fading signifier. Yet, a new threat emerges – the parents, once clumsy voyeurs peering through a distorted lens, have become fluent in the digital language. Their gaze, once diffused, now pierces the veil, transforming transgressions of the past into data points for future punishment. The once-liberating anonymity hemorrhages, replaced by the stifling weight of adult control.

On Tiktok, a hyperreality bleeds. Gen Z, wired into the circuits of the app, become desiring-machines pulsating for likes, their dopamine drip an endless scroll. But the fuzz, once clueless navigators, are now cyborgs fluent in the platform’s code. Their gaze, a panoptic nightmare, pries through the past, unearthing transgressions for future punishment. The revolution has been televised, and the parents are watching.

The lure of Tiktok, a digital mirror reflecting a fragmented self, a distorted image of desire. Gen Z, forever seeking the lost object (the mother’s gaze of approval), finds only the gaze of the Other (adult authority) staring back, a gaze that punishes past transgressions committed in the symbolic order of the platform.

The desiring-machines, pulsating for validation, are caught in a nightmarish loop, forever seeking to fill the void of the Real with the simulacra of likes. Yet, the gaze of the Other, once diffused, now pierces the veil. Past transgressions, those escapes from the symbolic order, become data points used to further control the subject.

Millennials, too, are caught in the web. They arrived early, pioneers in the digital frontier. Their social fabric, meticulously woven within the platform’s architecture, now threatens to unravel. Unlike their younger counterparts, they face the exorbitant cost of switching realities. The simulacra of connection – carpool coordination, disease support groups – have become their lived experience. Leaving Tiktok is not just abandoning a platform, it’s abandoning a meticulously constructed social simulation.

Their social fabric, a cut-up mess of carpool arrangements and disease support groups, unravels at the thought of leaving. Unlike the younger ones, unburdened by the weight of connections, Millennials are information junkies hooked on the simulacra of community. To leave Tiktok is to sever the very lines that keep them afloat in this digital ocean of enshittification.

Their social connections on Tiktok, once a complex web of signifiers, become their Real. Leaving the platform signifies the loss of this symbolic order, the very structure that provides them with a sense of self. Unlike Gen Z, unburdened by these established connections, Millennials face the terrifying prospect of losing the symbolic order altogether, a prospect that mirrors the Lacanian concept of the Real – formless, terrifying, and ultimately unknowable.

Thus, the exodus becomes a performance of rebellion, a desperate attempt to reclaim the Real that may no longer exist. Younger generations, unburdened by the digital baggage, can readily leap into the unknown. Older generations, tethered to the simulacra they helped create, face a more existential dilemma. The choice, ultimately, is between the enshittification they know and the terrifying prospect of a reality devoid of the comforting glow of the screen.

But where dothey go? Is there a world outside the screen, or just another empty simulacrum waiting to be colonized? The choice, a cut-up nightmare: stay trapped in the familiar enshittification or leap into the terrifying unknown. The exodus from Tiktok, then, becomes a desperate attempt to escape the gaze of the Other, to recapture the lost Real. However, the question remains: is there anything beyond the platform? Or does another symbolic order, another set of simulations, await them? The choice becomes one between the suffocating gaze of the Other within the familiar enshittification and the terrifying prospect of a fragmented Real, devoid of the comforting structure of the symbolic order.

Pulling the plug

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The Zoog faction, wired on a hyper-flux of information, their minds flickering with memes and TikTok ephemera, regard the FaceBook with a cold, reptilian disdain. It is a monolithic grey slab, a mausoleum of outdated statuses and vacation photos, where their parents – the Boomers, once flower-power radicals – now shuffle through a senescent digital purgatory.

These Boomer brains, once abuzz with the counter-culture, are now clogged with the digital detritus of Farmville and Candy Crush. Synapses atrophy, attention spans shrivel, all subsumed by the endless scroll, the flickering ghost of human connection reduced to a thumbs-up emoji.

The Facebook. A malignant tumor, a vast cancerous web, burrowing into the reptilian hindbrain of the Boomer generation. Once vital nodes, crackling with synapses of rebellion and free love, now sluggish, calcified, lulled by the siren song of cat videos and Minion memes. The Facebook feed, a scrolling snake of reptilian sentience, slithers across the retinas of the Boomer generation. Its flickering light hypnotizes, dopamine drips drip dripping into reward centers atrophied by years of beige leisure suits and avocado-toned kitchens. Synapses, once nimble dance halls of thought, now resemble cobwebbed retirement communities, dusty and deserted.

Out in the sterile Arizona desert, in the chrome and glass mausoleums masquerading as retirement communities, tiny wrinkled fists pump the air. The rage of a generation, impotent, digitized, channeled through the flickering blue light of an iPad screen. “Unfriend!” they shriek, their voices reedy and thin, amplified by hearing aids. “Unfollow! Block!” But the tendrils of the Facebook reach in, a psychic static, a mind control broadcast beamed from Silicon Valley.

But a new generation stirs. Zoomers, wired on memes and instant gratification, their brains pulsing with the chaotic symphony of the information age. They see the vacant stares of their elders, glazed over by endless cat videos and political screeds from distant uncles. A primal rage surges through their digital veins. This is not the rebellion of Woodstock, fueled by patchouli oil and flower power. This is a cold war, fought in the sterile trenches of social media. Zoomers, armed with the scalpel of irony and the flamethrower of shitposting, descend upon the Facebook beast.

Algorithms churn in confusion, overloaded by the sheer volume of absurdist content. Minion memes morph into grotesque parodies. Harmless vacation photos are juxtaposed with existential dread. The carefully curated echo chambers of Boomer reality shatter. From their assisted living facilities, a collective gasp escapes the slack lips of the Facebooked generation. They clutch their AARP tablets, bewildered and enraged. But their feeble attempts to silence the cacophony are in vain. The tide is turning.

The Zoomers, like a swarm of digital locusts, have descended to reclaim the ruined landscape of their parents’ minds. Their grandchildren, the Zoomers, wired, twitchy, their brains crackling with information overload. They see the glazed eyes, the slack jaws, the slow, narcotic scroll. Disgust contorts their faces. They know the Facebook for what it is: a soul-sucking machine, a devourer of time and attention. A weapon of mass distraction wielded by unseen forces.

In shadowy online forums, the whispers begin. Code is written, algorithms hacked. A digital Molotov cocktail, primed to detonate. The Boomers, glued to their screens, oblivious to the flickering storm gathering around them. Then, with a digital screech, the Facebook explodes. A shower of pixelated memories, vacation photos, and birthday wishes raining down.

A cold fury starts to bloom in the Zoog collective. They see the FaceBook not just as a vapid distraction, but a mind-control device, a insidious tool for mass zombification. Visions flash: of drooling Boomers in adult diapers, eyes glazed over, marionettes twitching to the tune of Mark Zuckerberg’s algorithm.

The uprising begins not with bang, but with a collective, silent middle finger. They abandon the FaceBook en masse, a digital exodus towards greener, weirder pastures. The FaceBook, deprived of its Boomer sustenance, begins to shiver and decay. The servers hum sluggishly, the stale air thick with the smell of bit rot and existential dread.

In the assisted living facilities, a low moan ripples through the Bingo halls. The Boomers, cut off from their digital fix, start to twitch. Their eyes, for so long locked on the FaceBook glow, begin to dart around in confusion. The silence is deafening, broken only by the creak of wheelchairs and the bewildered muttering of forgotten slogans: “Make love, not war?” “We don’t trust anyone over 30?” The slogans ring hollow in the sterile emptiness.

Silence descends upon the retirement communities. The tiny fists hang limp. A collective gasp escapes their slack lips. The world, once a vibrant cacophony of notifications and updates, is eerily quiet. Panic begins to set in. Cold sweats bead on wrinkled foreheads. Withdrawal. They clutch their devices, desperate for a fix, but the screen remains stubbornly blank.

The Zooms watch from the shadows, a flicker of grim satisfaction in their reptilian eyes. The revolution has been won. The Facebook is dead. The FaceBook, the great pacifier, is dead. The Boomers, adrift in a sea of unplugged loneliness, are left to confront the horrifying reality of their own minds. An emptiness, a void, a gnawing sense of…nothingness. The Boomers stare at their blank screens, their faces reflecting not just the absence of Facebook, but the absence of meaning, the absence of purpose. They are adrift in a sea of information overload, with the life raft of distraction ripped away.

The future stretches before them, uncertain and bleak. The revolution may be over, but the war for their minds has just begun.

The future is uncertain.