Staying the Same

I’d like to begin at the intersection of rarefied metaphysical speculation and blandly platitudinous insignificance. Like if Heidegger was secretly a woman and Bill Gates impregnated her (in my mind he never takes off his Cosby sweater during the do), only instead of a child they bestowed an opening paragraph to a blog post onto the world. I want to talk about technology like that.

Technology, we’ve all thought some high time or another, is frightening and inspiring. I, at least, tend to think of technology as a somewhat independent force that ushers the present into the future with increasingly vertiginous speed. We may be approaching the technological singularity, the world-historical moment when profoundly life-altering technological change becomes a constant part of everyday human experience. But probably not. Or, if we are, mostly we don’t think of it that way. That’s because while the future that technology brings to us is unknown, it is easiest to think of it as somehow better (and usually more neon). In the utopian fantasy of 1980s power-metal pioneers Helloween, this “Future World” is a place where “life will be glorious.” Helloween beckons, “come with me [to] Future World,” but unfortunately they don’t tell us how to get there. Still, I think it’s pretty obvious: we use technology! Think about it: what was life like before iPods? We’re all old enough to remember the experience of being a person before laptops, before the internet—before text messaging. Other glowing (and “glorious”) rectangles, too, were not always a part of our lives. Do you want to go back? Fuck no. I mean, I’d go way back in time to hook up with Jane Austen or whatever in my pimped out phaeton

(remixed with some spinner rims of course), but there is no way in heck that I’d willingly suffer the pains of planning a road trip of even moderate distance without my GPS unit, or try to get together with my friends on a Friday night without the supplement of my cell phone. I think what I’m trying to say is that the pieces of a kinetic utopia are starting to come together for us, and I for one am just jazzed about it. Or, in the words of Squirtle, “Squirtle Squirt!”

So if technology is supposed to bring us the new, the unknown, the grand (or terrifying)—what’s up with technology commercials these days? They deliberately ignore both the utopian and dystopian possibilities of technology, opting instead for a picture of the world that is changed by technology only insofar as it becomes even more like it already is. Take, for example, these recent Cisco commercials starring Ellen Page.

In the first one, Ellen Page visits a classroom of mostly-white, bubbly young children who adorably claim they are “going on a field trip to China!!!” Yo, that sounds awesome! Page is confused, and a bit jealous. “When I was a kid we would just go to the farm.” And even though the kids laugh as the screen cuts away to show footage of a child (supposedly Page, I guess) recoiling in fear from the bushy head of an angry bull, the joke is really on them. Because they don’t even get to go to the farm. All they do is stay in their regular classroom and look at a screen that displays a nearly-identical classroom in another part of the world. The novelty of it all—OMG we’re looking at China!—is absorbed by a feeling of familiarity that you can only get by looking into a mirror. There are no differences (better or worse), only doubling. Doesn’t Page’s WTF-look (0:23) kind of register this sense of disappointment? She knows it, but the deluded children and the commercial don’t acknowledge it: this is the opposite of what we’re supposed to get with technology.

The same point can be made about the doctor commercial. Even when you are on vacation in Copenhagen, you never have to leave work. You can always be in your office, happily looking away from the novel into the familiar. “He’s such a workaholic.” Before, we would use that term for someone who checks his email or calls in to work constantly while on vacation—it suggested that attention was split between two places. Now we can use it for someone who doesn’t even get to see his vacation: he’s in the physical space of Copenhagen, but all he sees is his office.

Well, maybe that’s just Cisco. They are after all trying to bring the “human network” into living contact with itself, so, in a way, it’s not that surprising that their commercials would make you feel as if differences in location are insignificant or even non-existent. But, what about this recent “Healthymagination” commercial by GE?

So this guy is fucked, right? The only thing that technology achieves in this situation is the total eradication of hope. Sorry bro, we’re never going to figure out what your disease is. His real doctor says, “that makes sense” (0:34) after hearing from the peanut gallery, but, c’mon, how could you believe that? Really? it makes sense that all the ideas you just had are verifiably false? Yeah, nice, that totally “makes sense” that nothing you can think of actually helps you determine your patient’s mystery illness. And, while we’re on the subject, why the crap did you make him take off his pants to tell you about his head pains? There’s a lot about this commercial that doesn’t feel right, including the public humiliation that the patient is forced to endure. The commercial wants to sell a message about the potential of medical technology, but the patient’s look and tone suggest that that’s all a con, one he no longer cares to be mesmerized by. “Can I have my pants back?” He’s ready to leave. Because now he knows what before he just feared: this problem isn’t going to get any better. The message is clear: We just don’t know, but we know that for sure. Things are just going to stay the same.

Now, to a certain extent I realize that this message of hopelessness and undifferentiated sameness results from a decision on my part to examine certain advertisements over others. Nonetheless, doesn’t it kind of key into a central tension within technology itself? We are inspired by technology because it brings new and unexpected (and often downright cool) things into our lives, but we depend on it to make our lives more safe, to minimize the possibly devastating effects of the unexpected. That is, technology is in constant contact with the hitherto unknown in order to contain or manipulate its potential for our own purposes. I don’t think anyone has a problem with this (ok, lots of people do—but whatever, F them). It’s just interesting to me that even in the cherry-picked examples I’ve selected (which, let’s face it, since both Cisco and GE are huge players in the tech-market, they clearly tell us something about the way that technology is thought of today), the magical and aspirational—perhaps metaphysically inspiring—aspects of technology are not even downplayed; they are just not there. Even in the “Healthymagination” commercial, where imagination is specifically referenced, we don’t see anything like the Space-Age zaniness of yester-year. And I, for one, could do with just a little more of Helloween’s broad and vague optimism in my life. After the whirlwind democratic primary and subsequent presidential election of 2008-2009, which resulted in about 100 days of hope followed by severe and bottomless national depression, I think we all could.