chi cheng, deftones

Thursday, February 08, 2007

Now Entering Cyberia

(Population: Zero)
A Note on the Medium

Due to your vague interest in these matters which have been deemed antisocial by the new thought police, you have been exiled to Cyberia. You may believe your visit to be voluntary, but ask yourself: if you could live—in real time, in full color, without a 'net'—the revolt and transformation you fantasize about, would you be here, contemplating and trading in mere representations of such things? The new isolation chambers and interrogation rooms largely need no judicial procedures or law enforcement to fill them—we confine ourselves to these office cubicles, internet cafes, and lonely bedrooms willingly, even believing ourselves to have found access to our dreams and desires here.

Not to criticize you, of course—since obviously I am in the same situation as you, similarly self-exiled. But let's use this time in the wilderness as the political prisoners of old did: not to get accustomed to it, not to build new lives around this voluntary amputation, but to educate ourselves, increase our powers and connections, so when we can return to society we will be armed with new tools for dismantling and reconceiving it. Let us take the world itself back, rather than the "information superhighways" upon which we are being herded so quickly away from it, so one day there will be no need for anyone to return here besides misguided historians and other archeologists of the cursed graveyards of the past.

See you on the other side of the screen, if you make it, earnest cyberspace cadet.