Full of the enthusiasm of youth and the pent-up anger of small-town life, three skinny boys started writing songs that fell between melodic pop and shouty punk, depending on the time of day. They persuaded a drummer to join them, and played their first gig at lunchtime in the school hall. Spending the proceeds in the pub, they decided to take on the world. They didn’t get any further than Brighton, before imploding in the kind of mess it takes most bands three albums to get themselves into.
I’d like to think that computers are neutral, a tool like any other… But there is something in the system itself, in the formal logic of programs and data, that recreates the world in its own image. the computer is not really like us. It is a projection of a very slim part of ourselves: that portion devoted to logic, order, rule and clarity. We place this small projection of ourselves all around us, and we make ourselves reliant on it. the more we surround ourselves with a narrowed notion of existence, the more narrow existence becomes. We conform to the range of motion the system allows. We must be more orderly, more logical. Answer the question, Yes or No, OK or Cancel. We think we are creating the system, but the system is also creating us. We build the system, we live in its midst, and we are changed.
Close To The Machine