Technological Narcissism
What you're reading is an attempt to delve deeper into the 14th aphorism featured in Guy Debord's 'The Society of the Spectacle'. If you missed the last one, you can find it here.
Here's the actual passage:
The society which rests on modern industry is not accidentally or superficially spectacular, it is fundamentally spectaclist. In the spectacle, which is the image of the ruling economy, the goal is nothing, development everything. The spectacle aims at nothing other than itself.
I've been meaning to continue with this self-exposition for quite a while now, and here I am, exactly one year after I first began writing this. Let's see how long I go this time.
Spectaclist Republic
It's been a few decades since Marshall McLuhan's idea of the 'Global village' went mainstream, with many following that up with appealing, but useless epithets like 'global citizen' and the like.
Here's what I find intersting: when it comes to the internet, there is only one such demonym. i.e. netizens. Everything else is downstream of this term and isn't restrictive in it's identity, unlike passports (Indian passports FTW).
When I'm online, I can be a redditor, a twitterati, a LinkedIn'er etc. These platforms have become huge in their own right and function not unlike nations because of the million little design and engineering decisions that went into architecting these platforms.
I don't see them as platforms. I see them as republics in their own right. They're not federal republics, neither are they unitary republics. They are spectaclist republics that are composed of, and governed by the spectacle itself.
What's in a word?
Everything, really. When I say something is spectacular, I mean that it lends itself to being worthy of a spectacle, that can then do it's rounds over the media format that it is best suited to.
When I say spectaclist, I mean that something exists to serve the spectacle at the cost of every other consideration.
Take most social media platforms for instance. All of them were envisioned to 'make connections easier'. The only way to do that was by abstracting lived realities into a representation, i.e. a spectacle, and assembling them in our collective liminal space and sort them in terms of popularity.
The platform was initially meant to foster connections, but it eventually ended up becoming a spectacle creation and spectacle propagation machine. In other words, social media platforms are fundamentally spectaclist.
When society itself co-opts such forms of interaction into quotidian realities, society will inevitably march to the tune of the spectacle, thereby becoming a 'spectaclist' unit.
Porsches with no brakes
I haven't driven a Porsche (yet), but I'm reasonably certain that driving one without brakes is a death sentence, both for the car and me. Not to mention how unpleasant the whole experience will be as the only format that such driving lends itself to is drag racing, a quintessentially American sport (which also happens to be quite boring).
The spectacle is akin to a Porsche with no brakes. It doesn't seem to have a definitive begnning, neither does it have a clearly defined destination. It chugs along, fueled by our collective dreams and desires.
Everytime someone figures out how to alter the innards of the system to enable greater speed, the Porsche goes that much more faster. Unfortunately, said imporovements do not bring with it a sense of purpose, or clarity. That's something that each of us will have to do for ourselves.
For the greater good
Development as a goal in and of itself is idiotic. Progress, in the modern sense of the term is peddled to conceal the true nature of what's actually going on: megalomaniacs with immense leverage choosing to shape the world to their liking, only to then be sidelined and replaced by the next guy with a bigger phallus (in the metaphorical sense).
What remains constant throughout all of these is the spectacle. Representations will always exist, and they will almost certainly become indistinguishable from reality, if that hasn't happened already.
If any of this sounds relatable, please write to me. Part of the reason I write this is to seek out more people who feel the same way I do about the modern Internet.