It has been a while since I last wrote something not release– or giveaway–related. The reason being, quite unsurprisingly, that I had nothing else to write. As I have finished my work on Flux and took a small step away from the music to get some air, I can share with you a part of what has been on my mind aside from the cinematic electronics, organics, and industrial twists…
The world is going crazy.
How is that for a revolutionary statement?
What lead me to these thoughts, is the country house where I have been recently. Electrified in the fifties, the house’s master bedroom has only one power outlet, near the bed, embedded in the same casing as the light switches, thrown in there “while we’re at it,” possibly with a reading lamp in mind. This was the world before — no need for at least ten power outlets in every room to plug in all sorts of necessary equipment. Just a place to live, to sleep, to cook and eat the food, to keep us warm, a place to receive friends on an occasional festive evening.
This is not a nostalgia rant, you may continue reading safely.
Now we are overpowered with electrical appliances that we are convinced we need, so much so, that they outweigh everything else in our lives. During my days in Paris, my neighbour could only afford a 30m² apartment for himself, his wife, and their two children. But that apartment had a monstrous jumbo plasma screen, BluRay player, XBox, and other countless gadgets that must have cost twice the rent he was paying.
By no means is it wrong that we have all this plethora of magnificent gadgets to keep us company, at least, their possible impact is not the subject of this post. However, it is very odd to constantly witness people complain, feel trapped, seek help, and generally stress out about their morose financial situation. And quite rightfully so, I must add — everyone is a pauper, with the prices going up each year and the salaries failing to follow suit. However, paupers that we are, we are filling our lives with products and services we can’t afford, yet can’t seem to live without. All of that while struggling to pay our rent, decent food, health and education — the problems we can share with the world in real time through the 3G mobile networks on our Blackberries and iPhones.
I embrace the new world. Not only because I have no choice, but also because as a sci-fi and cyberpunk teenager, I was preaching it and waiting for it to come. Still, this transitional phase, when the remnants of the old world are dominating our existence, and the sci-fi part of the new world is shyly prying open the door, is not anything I could have imagined. The priorities have shifted, the necessary new is taking over the well set-in old, but instead of a revolution or a gradual transition the history books have taught us to expect, we are in the real-time in-between. The in-between where the nuclear power plants are no longer seen as good, but the renewable energy that should keep our ever-growing needs satisfied without burying us under piles of uranium is still a hippie bastard child. The in-between where the sound and image are digital, but their quality is degraded by compression. The in-between where we can go online anywhere and communicate across the globe through our mobile phones, but can’t accomplish a local phone call…
The in-between where the customer is no longer the slave at the provider’s mercy, but is in control of what the provider will provide them. Or, rather, in the perfect illusion of the said control, for the consumer who dictates what genre of entertainment they want, and how this entertainment is delivered; the consumer who is the provider’s equal, for they converse on Twitter; the consumer who can bring down a corporation with a single post on their blog; this consumer, surrounded by the gadgets they imposed on the provider to construct, this consumer struggles to have a roof over their head, decent food, health and education, with their future being all but certain.
The in-between where the control is still in the old hands, not ready to be let go of, with a taste of the odd world where everyone is the king and the pauper. This in-between is upon us, and it feels like a dead end, for where do we go from here?
This is the reasoning and questioning that I keep seeing ever so often, but where is the call for action? (Doesn’t action need action?) Where is the answer? Giving the answers seems to have become an exclusive domain of advertising, while every supposedly thought-provoking discourse asks the questions, in what seems like a rhetorical manner, meant, apparently, to make us think. But haven’t we thought enough already? Haven’t we been told time and again about the dehumanisation and tremendous pressures of the modern world (or, in certain case, the world to come) by a plethora of science fiction authors? Haven’t we been set to passively observe the unwelcome change of the welcome future and express our lack of surprise together with the absence of possible preventive or improving action? I think we have. I think we are growing too used to this determinism, for it is much more simple to observe and disprove under the classic “what can I do?” adage.
But why this “what can I do” defeatism? Once again, why has “you can do anything” become the advertising industry monopoly? Possibly because the suggested alternative is often an unreasonable “drop your modern ways.” Why so? Why can’t we enjoy the technological and cultural opulence while making the sustainable future a reality? I think we can’t, simply because we have been let to believe in our powerlessness for too long; the dystopian depressionism has made us throw in the towel on the world. Which could not have been more wrong — the world is not determined for us, the world is what we make it day by day. Our free will, our collective and individual consciousness, our collective and individual actions is what crafts the world. We are the actors in this flick, no matter whether feeling like a star or the extra, we — you, are making the future present. It is in our hands, and not in the way the politicians are telling us on the elections year, that choice or absence thereof is something I shall leave for the willing person to comment on. We are making the future world become present, we can choose it to be modern yet remain humane and not let it turn us into dehumanised carcasses, for that is what will be the beginning of the end…
Tags: answers, debt, electricity, electronics, finances, gadgets, life, new world, old world, power, questions, rant, rave, reality, science fiction, society, the end, thoughts
Category: notes
