More artificial Fear and synthetic Loathing from the Big (technological) Other of The Internet. Post-Cyberpunk Theory-Fiction.
RND/ To consider the oh-so-zeitgeisty gaze of the internet as zero degree frozen, imploded and super critical, forever poised on the edge of wilful forgetfulness, of vast impenetrable soul distance rendered bare at the screen’s bright super surface.
But firstly, that strange phrase – “The Internet.” Isn’t that somehow already problematic, arriving at our last-mile fiber doorsteps with heavy ideological baggage? Doesn’t it already imply a horribly seductive mythologization, a convenient (for some) techno-romantization similar to William Gibson’s deadpan-hilariously obsolete notion of Cyberspace? (When Uncle Rico talks to Kip about ‘Cyberspace’ in Napoleon Dynamite, we get the reference – we understand the appealing Retro Feel as we might understand the odd 80’s appeal of having an Uncle Rico, with his bicep hugging sports shirts and bad private football-glory home videos.)
Perhaps there is no goddam Internet. There are a series of advanced communication protocols maintained and controlled by rich white megaNerds, some formal fractal fragments in the form of several billion pages floating atop a deep (shallow) web of.. tubes, or whatever. But to loose-talk of The Internet is too often to already fall prey to a convenient Cultural abstraction which decidedly does not benefit its end users – particularly as those users are exactly seen as The End, the lowest and most disposable units of consumption, ie. that from which the vast hyper-corportions effectively owning the net parasitically draw an infinite variety and quantity of usable data – for purposes of mass surveillance and marketing.
Ultimately (ie. from the outset) the gaze of The Internet seems pathologically directed at itself, its own sick fascination with its own infamy, its pathetic toxicity, its cosmic uselessness (thanks,Thomas Ligotti.) The sense that there is no sense to The Internet, only a sprawling mass of long abandoned cultural data, rotting skin cells shed by an ignorant, blind robotic animal forever crawling in the eternal darkness for want of anything better to do.
This Gaze penetrates with dead eyes, with the cold stoic indifference of machines running on full automatic, charged with the will-to-technological-dominance, always ready for Teh Lulz. There is a perfected dumb-smartness to The Internet, exactly similar to those who follow Elon Musk on social media. A rich and overbearing memetic cleverness which is philosophically uninterested (if not outright hostile) to truth. Watch as it watches us with smarmy lab grown eyes, repeatedly telling us what we remotely imagine we already know, constantly confirming our own worst-suspicions so we can finally drag our Covid-lockdown fatigued eyeballs into bed each day feeling fart-warm safe in the knowledge we gained zero knowledge. Another day on The Internet, another paranoid insomniac 24-7-365 of Sports-Crime-Weather-War (in the classic Henry Rollins formula.) Or rather Covid-Trump-Cyberpunk 2077-Netflix Binge. The Internet Gaze turns us all into Edward Norton’s character from Fight Club. A bit of an asshole with high bandwidth and little imagination; a ripe and ready meat popsicle.
The Gaze of The Internet is Artificially Intelligent – an intelligence that appears intelligent, but which in fact is entirely synthetic. Baseless, and without truth. I.T devours its own eyeball, emitting cold black light. Nobody cares, nobody was missed, and all that remains is the silent biocosmic background radiation of raw Internet Drama; who apparently said or alt-right dogwhistle implied what about whom. CTRL-ALT-DELETE?
Ghoulish. 2596 x 1440 .jpg
Ideal / Idealized price for such a Concept as this: £250K – contact Robert What today for details.
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// how to play big science