The Psychological Drain of the Technological Ghost Appendage

The psychological drain of the technological ghost appendage

Waiting impatiently in a line you don’t want to be in, you take out your mobile phone to squelch the anxiety and impeding ghost of boredom to occupy your mind and receive dopamine hits in your reward center from analyzing how many likes you got on that photo of your pet. Do we even really know what boredom is anymore? Have we lost the ability to sit in a chair in a room and do nothing?

Ah, the draw of nostalgia and getting back to a more simpler times where distractions were less accessible and the parasitic need to be connected with what is happening all the time isn’t agitating the core restlessness of our minds. It’s seem like now is better time than ever and thinking of a fantastical utopian society only leads us to more anxious flesh bots that have no gratitude for what is. It’s rather convenient to blame and attribute all these fervent monkey mind tendencies to our mobile devices or hallucinatory LCD screens, but it only makes the core of what we are smaller and less apt to reach a more stable sense of equilibrium and “satisfaction”.

When we have the world in our hands, we can tend to take it for granted and overuse our devices while creating a type of abhorrently pernicious codependent relationship. It is the integration of disintegration that disintegrates our own sense of serenity and autonomy once divorced from such technological convenience. A courage of comfort type of conflict.

We outsource our cognition through these tepid rectangular radiation boxes while simultaneously using it as a crutch to get out of awkward scenarios, transportation binds, halting trauma from the past, and the virtuosic tendencies to not buy that trinket that is on sale on Amazon. The utilitarian aspects are endless and the fact that we can order laundry detergent to get delivered to our home while simultaneously investing in crypto currency is nothing short of what someone from a third world country or Presbyterian church would call a miracle. What better way to feed the conspicuous monster of consumption, then to make menial tasks and base desires so accessible and convenient that the idea of traveling to a place to get something ourselves is outlandish and dare I say uncivilized.

This instant gratification we exercise on a daily basis sometimes without us knowing we are doing it, leads us more fractionated and more of a cog in the machine for the propagation of better machines. That dented and germ ridden world at your finger tips device becomes an appendage. Our heart skips and beat and cortisol levels shoot up when we realize that our mineral mined portable smart computers are nowhere near our heads or pockets ever so close to our precious genitals. So willing we are to offer our attention and bodies to the amorphous technological organism that we crafted with our own fanciful intellect. Like a cyber Jesus voluntarily surrendering his will onto the cross for the sake of a new resurrection of a God Like Extension of Artificial and Cognitive Intelligence. While we obey these habitual tendencies to connect with others, we don’t necessarily know where it is going. We don’t even know where we are going in relation to this ever-changing landscape of planned obsolescence and how it affects the relationships with ourselves.

Here we are. Showboating and sauntering across the technological plane while driving fancy cars, wearing fancy clothes and taking metaphorical pictures of the overpriced salmon we just ordered at the new pretentious seafood restaurant. In this day and age, taking pictures before meals and broadcasting them to the world is the new way of saying Grace. What an interesting propagation of arrogance and narcissism in an age of the reformed technological dependent individual. Advertising and projecting our own sense of psychosis and destruction.

What are we feeding and what is growing outside of our awareness? It has been posited that all this data and mindless scrolling of content helps this new technocratic super organism learn about our biologically and insecurity based decisions and habits. What better way to study demographics than to collect search history’s and develop algorithms to cater to the evolutionary consuming instinct and our predictive worldly desires.

In this morphing landscape of manipulative consumerist algorithmic tactics, we are one click away from infinite clicks away. Each unmindful and unconscious habit of liking, reacting and responding to online content forms patterns of psychosis built on the pillars of insecurity where the need for acceptance and the pursuit of pleasures are paramount. Like begets like. Like rats constantly pinching that button that gives them sweet and savory pellets, it seems as if we are chasing the effects of the original high. The first rush of dopamine that coded our expectations for our future dubious and deviant interactions with technological advances. Like flies to a light, we get caught in the screen daze. Screen fatigue creeps upon our eyes and after a minute of rest, we crave that sweet unconscious scrolling of information. In one ear and out the other. Will we ever be satisfied? Replacing critical thinking with a cheap knockoff substitute with frilly edges and a shiny surface begging to be stroked and recognized in all its squeamish glory.

Facts and anecdotes on demand.
Instant Gratification on a whim.

Some wax poetically on the coming of the cybernetic revolution. A romantic idea of sorts aligned with the magical thought of humans slowly transgressing into some type of cyborg. Well, look around. The cyborg coming has already come. The integration of human cognition and hyper functioning is here. A first phase in a type of phantasmic organum that is predicated on the marriage of biological humanoids and benign and dubiously intentional technological advancement. A type of positive feedback loop is put into place that attempts to transcend the way we have lived and integrate it into a new type of humanoid actualization and manifestation.

Where does this technological progress end? This constant growth aligns with the corporatist and consumerist infrastructure that brought us to where we are today. Like. Buy. Sell. Like. Buy. This technocratic future now is growing like some type of cancerous growth aligned with the need to expand and evolve into a monster of unknown manufactured minutiae. How can we contend with this complacent existence littered with our lack of awareness and gross negligence?

The mysteries of Phantom Leg Syndrome creates dewey residue across the Medical Industrial Complex. Much like PLS, we can think of this technological and psychologically dependent ghost appendage we call a mobile device as creating a Phantom Phone or Phantom Ring Syndrome. You might have felt it before. The twitching above your thigh. Muscle memory and nerves imprint the constant buzzing and vibrating into us without us knowing it. A cybernetic ghost if you will that drills into our psyche and implants its neurosåis and patterning into the sacred flesh of the body. Psychic Residue. We can feel that absence of the technological appendage in times of need and times of unrequited complacency. It is both a metaphysical phenomenon that rings true both literally and metaphorically through the echoes of how we perceive ourselves in relationship to this agreed upon hallucination we call reality.

( A mobile device whispers I OWN YOU that crescendos into a state of confusion and catastrophe built on desire and resentment. )

Within our own biased sense of pernicious anthropomorphism, we can see how our “text neck” postured bodies are servants to this eternally expanding technocratic web that seems to have no end. A fly gets caught in the web. A horse gets stuck in the quicksand. The struggle to get out of the quicksand sinks it deeper and deeper. The resistance to this entangled web only entangles us flies more in the dominating super structure. The more this web starts to mimic the neural connections and cosmic unconsciousness us humans are a part of, the more we start to merge into a new age of unpredictable predictability. Neurotransmitters and networks merge in order to service our dopamine driven masters. We are like the steps and genitalia for this amorphous technological blob. Pawns for the system to continually upgrade and feed off the data of how we act and react to the way IT wants to change and use us for the dawn of new hierarchy of dominance and “advancement”.

What we thought we were using and building took a sharp turn when we lost control of what we were doing. We lost this sense of being. Being with ourselves without the pull of the screen. The fruits of our labor created seeds of new and unpredictable origins. Origins of a new technological age of merging and replacement. This new ghost appendage seems more and more less “ghostlike” because it is very much alive! Alive with a new system of intelligence. An arm with an arm and a mind of its own! Fractals of infinity set in place by ones and zeros put into place by what we may refer to as Human Progress and Advancement of the Human Race. How many other invisible appendages are being created or are going to be created in this new dawning of cybernetic integration? Appendages with appendages. Multiplying potential points on a map begging to be drawn in by parasitic algorithms and unconscious acts of expansion and growth. Connect the dots if you will or let the dots connect themselves as we watch and embody an invisible octopus like body driven by compulsion, instinct, and the surrender to appease its next contemptuous upgrade.

//We feel the pull as our phantom tech body uses us as a host.
// Where are we being pulled?


DG