Another post to the cybermind archives. Can you guess I’d been reading a lot of William Gibson?
” Calm. Cruising down Digital Sunset Boulevard. Anticipation of
sudden changes in destiny, the art of the casual concealing the
rigorous metronomic causality that flashes a path in front of me.
I choose to tread the path because I am now part of the path, the
path is part of me. The path is meaningless, the journey complete
before I hit the send key;singing ” I am one as you are one and we are all
together now”. Consciousness at large, consensus spread thin,
apparatus in the thinking man’s playground. The Net is my shepherd,
and I shall not want.
But I do…yet another way of seeing becomes reduced to city clicker
psychobabble (PSYCHOBABEL-at a *Service* Provider near you!!! (that
better for you Jerry, )).
Are we…can we…are we a we? Am I now consumed by the ToggleBox?
My silence is churning inside of me, it reaches for you all: Alan, Dobie,
Keith, Rose et al, yet what comfort is thought when truth and ethics
no longer exist to me?. How can (dare we?) we measure ourselves against our fellow
wo/men? There is no morality left. You can neither excuse nor decry
human behaviour. We have gone too far for that. We have
deconstructed our rules of existence so much that all that is left is
either existence or denial. Deny me at your pleasure.
Is this evolution: What kind of species are we that we
can’t even decide whether or not millions of people were exterminated
for their religious persuasion? What kind of species are we that we
argue about truth anyway? It does not matter to me whether or not
there was a genocide or not. What matters to me is that millions of
people *do* believe that ethnic cleansing takes/took place (and
called it fucking “cleansing”)
Is this evolution: the hive mind, the global consciousness, the
subdomain of mortality in the Big E-Net of Life. Horseshit. If I
wanted to reach Nirvana I’d reach for my shotgun. Fuck, man, somebody
stole my uzi. See you on the cover of Time.
Is this evolution: we live in a time where vision is shrink wrapped
and comes in three exciting fruit flavours. We live in a time where
it makes as much fucking sense to blow you away as to get to know
you. What’s the difference man…surf’s up.
JUSTIFY OR DIE…JUSTIFY OR DIE the existential terrorist screams at
me as (kapow) I reach for my mouse and (kerplunkk) I minimise it. I
minimise IT. I’m in misery. Misericordia senor, no me olvides ahora.
I’m sorry, I’m truly sorry. I want to talk in neo-pastoral
tones about the net. I want to be the Coleridge (or better yet the
Shelley) of a cyber age, but somehow, somehow I can’t.
Referentiality is driving me crazy. I see red, I think Marlboro. I
see diamonds I think Renault. I see tampons I see
girlsjustwannahavefun. I see mirrors I see deathbecomesme. I cannot
think without materiality invading my sub-conscious. IRONY IS
KILLING ME and I can’t even iron my thoughtshirts for that straight
off the homecow crease.
My silence is churning inside of me. It aches to get out. It hears
the passengers on the web and I hope (Oh God (for want of a better
deity) I live for hope) that they are not the corporate
spiders it tells me they are.
Is this evolution: one man, scared, lonely sitting late after work
at an oversized screen. The backup tapes are re-labelled and ready
to kick in. He is no longer in charge of this post. The technology
will whisk his thought away and tomorrow will be another day.
If I am not here they will always have the backup tape
If I am here I will erase them ;->
Evangelista Macabre End Transmission”
I’d forgotten about that pseudonym. The feelings are exactly the same, eleven years on — it’s the vocabulary that’s different. Depressing.
