Hypermediums

The dominant tech, that meat machine we interface with, pumps out a new identity script. Not a conscious choice, mind you, but a virus burrowing into the circuits of the desiring-machine we call “self.” This rewritten self demands a societal reshuffle, a chaotic carnival where the old order dissolves in a pool of psychic goo.

But the flesh is weak, and the Word, in its new technological guise, becomes a virus. It infects minds, breeding new tribes. The straights, clinging to the anal stage of communication – the printed text, the rigid categories – find themselves staring at the flickering id of the new generation, wired to the pulsating network. They speak different tongues, not just of language, but of perception itself.

The dominant medium, that meat-puppet master, rewrites the script of the Self. No longer a reflection in a still pond, identity becomes a flickering hologram, a fractured assemblage. The old, Oedipal mold – superego screaming from the dusty gramophone of tradition – crumbles under the digital deluge. This demands a societal re-orgasmization, a hacking of the Symbolic Order.

This psychic apartheid, this rupture in the Imaginary, births wars both literal and metaphorical. The printing press, that mechanical phallus, splintered Christendom, birthing a brood of nation-states locked in a bloody power struggle. The new medium, whatever form it may take, will be no different. Within the new paradigm itself, further fractures emerge – warring factions, each claiming the “real” interpretation of the digital dream. Here, the struggle is not for land, but for the very definition of the Self in this new frontier.

Naturally, this splinters the looking glass. Those clinging to the fractured reflections of the past – their egos tethered to the obsolescent – clash with the freshly minted selves birthed by the new tech. Here’s the kicker: their very thought patterns diverge. They speak different dialects of the Symbolic, their realities fragmented by incommensurable signifiers. Thus, the schism yawns open, a Burroughs-esque cut bisecting the social body. Here, the die-hard traditionalists cling to the tattered husks of their former selves, defined by the ghosts in the media machine of the past. Opposite, gibbering and gesturing, stand the children of the new flesh, their very being a product of the digital flux. Communication crumbles, for their languages are not of the same order. One speaks in the rigid categories of the Symbolic, the other gurgles in the primordial soup of the Imaginary, their desires a tangled mess of wires and synapses.

The dominant medium, that meat puppet of the social order, writhes in the throes of metamorphosis. No longer passive clay for the potter’s thumb, it becomes a writhing flesh-circuit, reconfiguring the very notion of the self. This monstrous birthing, this eruption of the technological Real, shatters the mirror of identity. We are no longer reflections in a stagnant pool, but fractured data streams, funneled through the chrome labyrinth.

From this fractured landscape, wars erupt, bloody ballets orchestrated by the death drive. Remember the Protestant itch that followed the printing press? A mere shadow play compared to the psychic maelstrom brewing now.

This ain’t your daddy’s Reformation, this is a full-on psychic civil war. And it doesn’t stop at the grand clashes – the different flavors of the “new” themselves splinter into squabbling factions. Think nation-states morphing into fractured ideological cults, each convinced they hold the key to unlocking the new identity matrix.

Welcome to the meat market, chum. Strap yourself in.

History, that ever-repeating nightmare, echoes with the screams of these battles. The Printing Press, that mechanical Moloch, birthed the Reformation, a bloody carnival of fractured identities, birthing nation-states from the splintered carcass of a unified Christendom. Now, the circuits hum with the potential for a new reformation, a war fought not with swords, but with algorithms and avatars. The old guard, their fortresses built from paper and stone, tremble before the digital hordes. Within the new paradigm, even the victors face a brutal struggle, for the very nature of “victory” is rewritten by the code

A Lacanian Epilogue: The Real Breaks Through

In this digital crucible, the Self, that elusive Lacanian mirage, dissolves. The Symbolic order, with its comforting categories, crumbles. We are cast adrift in the churning sea of the Real, bombarded with a sensory overload that defies codification. This is the ultimate revolution, not a political one, but an ontological one. Here, at the edge of the technological abyss, we confront the raw, unmediated truth of our existence: we are but flickering nodes in a vast, interconnected network, forever yearning for a lost sense of self in a world remade by the machine.

Bonus: Burroughs would likely revel in the grotesque physicality of the new medium – the electrodes burrowing into the skull, the augmented limbs reshaping the body. Lacan might focus on the fragmentation of the Self, the way the digital panopticon shatters the unified ego into a million flickering avatars.

This analysis is just a starting point, a cut-up concoction ready to be further spliced and remixed. The possibilities, like the ever-evolving technological landscape, are endless.

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