[2024-09-29 note: This was previously posted on Cohost, on 2024-05-08 at https://cohost.org/ireneista/post/5892016-the-dark-side-of-cyb but the irenes.space URL is the permanent one.]
Apple SVP of marketing, apparently: so our core message should really be that Apple will destroy all the things you love, and sell you a joyless piece of glass to replace them
sorry, we know this is low-hanging fruit, just, we can't get it out of our head hours later
the horrible part is we don't think they were trying to horrify viewers!
it's an ad in which musical instruments, fancy cameras, an arcade cabinet, pottery items, representations of well-loved characters, etc are all crushed by a giant press. very detailed videography of each thing being destroyed.
(you can see it over on youtube if you want)
so, like, cyberneticism conceptualizes all phenomena on the same ontological plane
the connection between this and computing is that a lot of computer people, ourselves included, have at some point in our lives thought that it would be nice to not be burdened by physical reality. pulling everything into the computer would be freeing.
in reality, pulling everything into the computer does empower people to some extent, but the reason corporations want to do it has always been so that they can impose their own new constraints in the new context. the goal is not for humanity to solve its problems, but for corporate entities to be in charge of the problems and profiting by them.
additionally - as we have come to understand through our own spiritual growth over the years - it turns out that some burdens are nice to have. some things you WANT to form an attachment to and be limited by. the people you love; the tools you use for creative expression; ...
look at the resurgence of vinyl record sales: now that we all have the ability to access music however we want, free from physical constraints, it turns out that being deliberate about accepting SOME physical constraints can help you to have an emotional experience and lasting connection
anyway, this is a larger topic we struggle with as someone who went very, very deep in the inventing-things skill tree. there's a difference between choosing to free ourselves from an unwanted attachment, and forcing everyone else to do the same
there is a group, though, who do not struggle with this at all, and that's the executives who make the big decisions about corporate direction. they fully embrace the idea of destroying everything in their path and offering their own replacement for it. no desire to be self-critical at all.
so, like, sorry to make so much of this one ad, but again it was just an unexpectedly emotional experience for us to watch, and it happens that we've been working on ways to say some of these things in the background, so we had the theory ready to hand
remember: from the perspective of C-suite, this is not new, this is a continuation of everything that's gone before. same motivation. yeah :/
this was originally a fediverse thread, which is over at our new personal instance
it was also inspired by some fragmented discussion on one of our posts earlier today