deus ex machina by: julian mansfield

 In this system, we work for the sake of organization. Organization increases, which increases work. The harder and faster we work, the more work there will be to do; after all that is how the pyramids were built. Forty years ago offices didn't have PCs or cubicles. How many of us today are forced to sit solitary under fluorescent bulbs in windowless gray cubes most of our waking hours (most of our lives) in front of a computer monitor, staring into scratchy cobalt purgatory, trying to hear silence through the ever-present hum of mechanized garble, executing precise movements on a keyboard to manipulate the obsolescent sigils of Am-Soc which have no vital meaning to us, all the while subconsciously panicked by pervasive surveillance? Forget the whole dynamic complex of simultaneous coercion, persuasion, socialization, sticks, carrots and credit that condemn us to the console. Would we do this if instead we could just live our lives, foraging in one way or another, eating, socializing, creating, fantasizing, sleeping, drawing, singing, dancing, just living, not in use as a cogs in the machine, free, free of fabricated goals? Subsistence  would be such a luxury, compared to the "luxuries" we have now.
    Human minds are transformed into information-processors. We have Devolved into serving machines; processing raw reality into binary code and computer logic data (scanning products at a cash register, data entry). We are used more and more as either translators or the human avatar of the machine, that is, as interfaces between computerized systems. In the service industry, the staff is identical in their regalia, their speech is scripted, they are expected to do their work starting at a certain time, ending at a certain time, resting at a certain time so they may continue to operate efficiently. Make no mistake: Machines re-cast us in their images. 
   Technology uses people, people do not use technology. Technology is not any single isolated object, it is a unified system of relationships between elements and systems. Those who claim that technology is a "neutral tool" or that it is an accumulation of independent "things" to be picked through selectively, fail to realize that technology is a metaphysical whole, that it is an expression of organization, and therefore can only direct itself toward higher order, increased centralized control, and the inevitable degradation of it's human components. The metabolic flow must speed faster in pursuit of total productivity. We can always be more efficient, but we can never be efficient enough.
   The electronic first comes in molded beige plastic, beeping. Then we all do Windows, and statistics show that after your done reading this your more likely to check your Facebook than hug your kids or call your mother, and he that will not compute will not eat. And as our work, so our play: both are communication. To be silent or uninterested is to be anti-social. Evermore we will be captive to the electronic, as media zombies we are starved of light, fresh air, nutritious food, spontaneous movement, friendly face-to-face human interaction, human warmth, human smell, human touch, animals no more. We struggle: depression, agoraphobia, addiction, bulimia, anorexia, panic, suicide. And doctors medicate.
   Cyberspace disperses the crowd, and clears the streets. We are living in the post-riot era, inside our cubicles (office blocks, housing blocks, cell blocks), staring at the screens, being entertained.
   This is not the case for everyone. There are many of you who say: "We want to live , to be here, now. A desire that goes beyond the television screen, the computer monitor, the past, the present, the future, a temporal, an instant that hangs in infinity like a single musical note, like our stories and scars that remain regardless of our second thoughts. The New World Creative is all of us, forever!