the techno-social environment

We live in a mega-scale corporate capitalist economy, and in such a setting technology is never used to save time. It’s used to speed up production and consumption in order to expand the system. The basic rule is this: technology doesn't make our lives easier. It makes them faster and more crammed with stuff.

But they have nonetheless grown up with an acute consciousness of having an externalized double—a digital double, an idealized identity that is partitioned from their “real” selves and that serves as a role they must perform for the benefit of others if they are to succeed. At the same time, they must project the unwanted and dangerous parts of

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“Commerce and culture are locked in an ever-tighter embrace.”

Narratives seek closure (the story must end). The Database is open-ended (it assimilates new data indefinitely). The Database resists the Narrative impulse to control and stabilize meaning.

a super-stimulus system optimized to fulfill our desires.

When digital media reversed cognitive detachment into situational immersion, it set off other reversals. The structured, fixed world built by literacy reversed into a “natural” flow: the newsfeed pouring into our devices. The flow has no structure or completeness, typical of literacy. As soon as structuring, selection, and completeness are

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A specific state of connectivity is not transportable; therefore, it factually belongs to the platform.