Plug and Play

In 1984 Apple Computers released this commercial as an homage to George Orwell’s classic dystopian novel. Playing out semiotically graven images of oppression and control with drab, grey imagery of men marching to their “indoctrination”, who are given a way to freedom in the form of an Olympic athlete casting a sledgehammer into a television screen. While Anya Major from England was running down the aisle between rows of drab men gaping at the screen in a pair of orange shorts, the color of her shorts stood out in contrast against a sea of grey, mesmerized faces. This brief commercial was directed by Ridley Scott, five years after directing the science fiction classic "Alien" and just two years later than the release of "Blade Runner." At the pinnacle of his career.

It was not until years later and the failure of the Macintosh that they released the smartphone. A revolutionary and innovative technology that came complete with a two-way mirror, a microphone to listen to you, and which came later was a way to track your movements. Apple, as we know them now, are the same company who has removed applications from their platform because they did not agree with certain words or opinions of said app company. Or words used to incite others that cannot be tracked, cannot be controlled. Words and pictures carry weight as they give meaning.

Nystrom describes an immediate man. One who evolved with innovative technology and culture, yet not irrational, I do not reject the past or abhor the future. With this technology, as Sherry Turkle describes us a society that is always connected, yet still far apart; we are all “Alone Together” (2011) connected in an information system driven by social media and powered by our smart phones. In this new media environment, Brazilian philosopher, Paolo Freire argues, within this system people educate each other through the mediation of the world (32). And he also says because of this mediation each individual wins back the right to say his or her own word, to name the world (32). This is not always true.

Christine Nystrom's essays feel outdated as they pertain to one gender, leaving women out of the discourse. However, as rational man who can plug and play the words, I include them. I know I am a man because my parents, schools, my friends, and girlfriends all told me so. But when is a man not a man? When the pronouns tell me so. 'They' and 'Them' are plural pronouns, but now made into "singular pronouns" to be following an unspecified antecedent. If we are changing the English language, why don't we just say "person" or "human being." If referring to someone as a human might sound as funny as me referring to one single person as a them. Restructuring my mental understanding of a language I've studied for years isn't going to happen overnight.

As I quote George Orwell “two plus two equals five because the Party says so” (129). Just like I plug and play they and them, I can plug and play the word "party" with innovative words such as Youtube, Twitter and Facebook. Rational man leaves logic standing on the side of the road, because non-agreeableness with the “party” line causes me to wear words such as misogynist, homophobe, white-supremacist and racist. If I argue, stand my ground and further speak in a heathen language of irrationality I will endure the wrath cancellation, deplatformation and labeled as hate speech. New words, new symbols – Newspeak.

Coming full circle, Apple and others have built a media environment that sometimes feels like an indoctrination rather than mediation. Some say that they were oppressed at one time, I agree. For I am not a radical man or a fanatic who rails against the new powers, because this “new man” as Paolo Freire warns will rise from the contradiction, only to become the oppressor (46). And that is not the person I aspire to be, yet sometimes I feel as if I am being oppressed.

~Fin.