Tech Inflection Point
The War is Declared
Today on twitter I saw two amazing short videos. One was the new Apple iPad ad. The other was a chiral — an anti-ad.
More than anything I’ve seen all year on twitter (X), this spoke to me. I see it as revealing the hidden, often unconscious desires of our technological civilization, now at an inflection point. You know, the kind of inflection point where, as Illich said
the schools make you stupid, the medicine makes you sick and the moeny makes you poor.
Apple debued as the great liberating force of its generation. The “fuck-you we’re going to do it our way and make the world a better place.” It’s message was liberation from existing structure, opening of new possible worlds, of creativity and freedom. The future is ours to create.
The new Apple ad, has a sinister message that even Tim Cook and his team couldn’t see. It stands for “compression of life” of closure, and of control. It destroys everything. Everything we currently play with, create with, sing with and open up to new possibilities, can now be compressed into a tiny locker that some one else controls. The future is theirs to control.
The second video, the “anti-ad” was created and posted on X by
Reza Sixo Safai @rezawrecktion
He simply reverses the tide. It allows the technological vision to redeem everything.
That’s the message, techno-guys — use technology to reverse the tide.
Here is a montage of both of them.
Let the first one seep into your pores and allow the hidden sinister message to give you the cringe.
Let the second seep into your pores and feel the sweet taste of being freed.
Thank you for this gift Bonnie. The crushing to spirit in this ad felt like another act of violence that seeks to deaden our experience of life. The ad itself is just a mirror of what is inside and outside of me (us?). I could feel myself breathing when the ad went in reverse.
What this reminded me of is the need to re-contextualize ourselves in relation to the world - the land, the non-human kin, to each other and ourselves. It also seems to call for a remembering of the past that lives through and in us and demands to be felt.
We need to practice the deadening of modernity with life affirming practices to join us to each other.
Super grateful for you!
Thank you for sharing, Bonnitta.
Quite the emotional rollercoaster, although I must admit to still feeling the nausea induced by the ad. For me it wasn't even about the control (though I agree that sinister message is there and horrifying) but about the loss of so much of what is joyful and beautiful about living as a human being -- full-bodied involvement in making music, art, reading.
Or maybe I'm just getting old.