Monday, October 18, 2021

I and Thou: Has Your Android Become Your Significant Other?


Are you flipping your lid or a switch? The unconscious may have been working over time, but now you’re of two minds, the one your born with and the other an adopted child who you rely on to carry the heavy loads. Digital photography is a good example. It’s hard to know whether people have time to actually experience existence when they're so busy passing the burden on to the high level cameras that grace most iPhones. If Steven Soderbergh was able to shoot  Unsane with iPhone 7 Plus, why not turn the cameras abilities onto everyday life? Your electronic appendage is going to be better than a brain, as is evidenced when you hire amanuenses like Alexa and Siri. One touch of the power and a whole world lights up that whether intended or not is actually a form of alter ego. The Double that Dostoevsky and later Borges referenced (in his story "The Other") appears as a collection of bytes giving birth to memes. It is, in fact, unclear where you begin and the gadgets which have become your fellow travelers end. Flood and fires are the result of global warming but ransomware attacks in which cryptocurrency is required to put out the fire have taken their place in the lexicon of modern catastrophe. Who do you spend more time with on any given day? Has your MacBook or you Android become your significant other? 

Read "Pet Buddha" by Francis Levy, Vol.1 Brooklyn

and listen to Betty Wright's  "Secretary"


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