techno-mysticism (ne purple)

[Joshua Maremont <thermal@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I think it is important to distinguish here between mysticism and 
fetishism:  mysticism is a transcendental system of belief in which the 
perceptions and logics of the known material world are cast off - or passed 
through - on the way toward a direct intuitive or sacred link to a higher 
and often divine reality, whereas fetishism is a way of redirecting or 
stopping a teleology of desire or consciousness within the material 
world.  When we speak here of the fetishization of technology, I find the 
fetish value of derives not from any mystical reflections upon or 
expectations of that technology but rather from either a fondness for the 
role of technology within our society or an aesthetic cathexis of 
technological artifacts.  For example, it seems no accident that talk of 
the glitch as a pattern of music phenomena has risen to its current loud 
level at precisely the time that our one of our local weekly newspapers in 
San Francisco has redefined the "geek," formerly stereotyped as a 
zit-encrusted dandruff-plagued unwashed freak only emerging from the hovel 
for the occasional Star Trek or Zena convention, as a hipster with stock 
options.  The role of technology here is not at all priestly or mystical - 
it simply is a way to get laid and get paid.  As for the less explicitly 
commodified aesthetics of technological brokenness, here too it is the very 
materiality - the lamed banality - of technology which is the subject of 
creative treatments, and no mystical currents are being channelled from any 
logical void between head and disc of the hard drive.  Moreover, technical 
knowledge is mundane and exoteric:  programming languages can be taught in 
"Dummies" books, and computer repair classes are available from the mail 
order universities plying their wares on late-night television.  This is 
not to say that such things are easy to learn but rather to suggest that 
the addition of such knowledge is quantitatively incremental rather than 
qualitatively transcendental:  there is no rapture by which suddenly 
Everything Makes Sense.  At a certain point of course, we arrive at more 
esoteric realms, for example when we examine the nature of artificial 
intelligence and are forced thereby to reflect upon the very nature of 
subjectivity and consciousness.  But a crashing hard drive hardly confronts 
us with a abyss hewn between the material world and a higher or divine 
reality requiring a mysticism in order to be bridged; rather, it frustrates 
us with the realization that our material knowledge of the objects in our 
all too terrestrial existence is not extensive enough to allow us to turn 
these obtrusive materials into transparent instruments of our impulses.
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