Car News

I would like to share something from Godfrey Reggio that deals with
technology. This is an interview. I cleaned it up a bit to make it
readable. It is a direct response as to why table top gaming is vital
especially in light of the current structure of society.
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By any measure, we live in an extraordinary and extreme time. Language
can no longer describe the world in which we live. With antique ideas
and old formulas, we continue to describe a world that is no longer
present. In this loss of language, the word gives way to the image as
the 'language' of exchange, in which critical thought is subverted or
subjugated by a diabolic regime of conformity - the hyper-real, the
omnipresent image. Language, real place becomes numerical code, the
real virtual; metaphor becomes metamorphosis; body becomes
disembodiment; natural becomes supernatural; many become One.
[Capitalized on purpose to indicate the state of one unit encompassing
many people. Think of a bee-hive as a single bee. You can also refer
to José Ortega The Revolt of the Masses]. Mystery disappears, replaced
by the illusion of certainty in technological perfection.

Technology, [and its] acceleration [of society] do not affect our way
of living - they are our new and comprehensive host of life, the
environment of living itself. It is not the effect of technology on
the environment, culture, economy, religion, etc., but rather that all
these categories exist in technology. In this sense, technology is new
nature. The living environment, old nature, is replaced by a
manufactured milieu, an engineered host - synthetic nature. In a real
sense, we are off planet, dwelling on a lunar surface of stone,
cement, asphalt, glass, steel and plastics, engulfed in the atmosphere
of electromagnetic vibrations - the soothing lullaby of the machine.
The common notion tells us that technology is neutral, that we can use
it for either good or bad. We do not use technology, we live
technology; technology is our way of life. Being sensate entities, we
become our environment - we become what we see, what we hear, what we
eat, what we smell, what we touch. Where doubt is prohibited [by the
conformity], we become, without question, the environment in which we
live. Humans originate from nature and the natural order of things.
Thus, we as humans have nature as our foundation. If this context or
relation of humans to nature radically changes, then the mysterious
nature of the human being will also radically change. It will be a
change that will reflect the transformation of what nature means to us
as humans. For us as humans the natural world from which we sprang
will cease to exist. This moment of change will be a turning point or
vanishing point. Natural diversity will be sacrificed to the infinite
appetite of technological homogenization.

We now live the fiction of science. We are now cyborgs. This is real.
It is happening as we speak not in some remote future. We are at one
with our new environment, our new nature. We have become technology.
In this modern wonderland, freedom becomes the pursuit of our
technological happiness. Our standard of living is predicated on
commodity consumption. Consumption, production, and time (i.e.
acceleration) are the three main legs to the new stool of religion—
Capitalism (Kapitalism), upon which we stand. Where its worshipers
only pray for more.

We have embraced this new technological nature which has placed us in
a state of ecstasy. The cinema of technology creates in us an inertia,
a sluggishness, a lethargy, and an inactivity. This occurs because the
audiovisual speed of data in which we immerse ourselves in and
machines that we use to move us force us to inaction, happily so. Now,
because of this acceleration, trans-port and tele-port blend into one.
The beginning becomes the end. The port [of trans-port and tele-port]
disappears in the speed of light. Technological speed transforms
reality as it creates an ecstatic phenomena of compelling [us] and
unparalleled intensity.

The techniques of technology herald the coming of the miraculous.
Technology makes it possible for us to achieve the leaving of our
humanness behind. We desire this and when it comes it will blur human
perceptions, shatter all meanings, drain all content from meaning, and
break our bonds to Earth and to our origin—nature. The image now
becomes the new terra firma and all locations (the real place) of are
subsumed to the image (the real virtual). The image as the new real
and as the new language make possible this is the terrible (demonic)
all consuming conformity that is the genesis of massman. In the shadow
of the mass, all previous definitions crumble. The 'time' and 'space'
of history exit to an homogenized zone of no return.

In this supernatural implosion of g-force, humans become lost with no
way to return because they have lost their origin (have lost their
understanding of where they originate, which is nature), and are now
cast into the void of technological space. The accompanying loss of
our original habitat and our subsequent relocation into accelerated
space [technological space—hyper-space], throws nature into
catastrophe, as [this loss] engenders traumatic stress syndrome as the
now normal condition of post-human existence. Technique, while
promising comfort and happiness, means power, means control, means
conformity, means destiny. Technology creates a condition of war that
is at once universal and unseen. The explosive tempo of technology is
war; the untellable violence of relocation [of us from nature into]
technology is war. All of us are refugees driven from our human state.

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