Wednesday, November 9, 2016

Usable Users

Many movies today find their plots in the pages of teenie bopper/ pop culture novels, our DNA is a compilation of our mother’s and father’s biological resources, and while we have the hardware to think—it seems even thought is just the extension of existing ideas, language, and performative expression. Our culture seems to glorify commodification as a vehicle in which individuals gain social status, objectify or be objectified. This possibly stems from the idea that—innately—we are tool users, recipients and facilitators of information.
To make a morning cup of coffee (with a Keurig) one gets water from the faucet, pours it in the back of the machine, opens the front lid, selects a prepackaged K-Cup, closes the lid and presses brew. In this one act, before most of us are even half-coherent, we have utilized the luxury of clean running water/ plumbing, a manufactured—often flavored or customized—coffee + filter combo, and the electricity and physical mechanics necessary to run a coffee maker. While our groggy morning brains are most certainly not a prime example of the extremity of human thought—our mental activity throughout the day usually follows in a similar fashion.

Some may argue for the freedom and artistic identity of original thought, but in art—it seems—many simply add to existing ideas, works, and beauty. Art imitates life, and in this cycle of informal mimicry we find our life- editing generation at a loss for novelty. The databases between our ears do, however, contain the unique faculty of revising and edifying culture. It is through this social developmental process that we are able to be used—our servant hood and sacrifice allows for our generations’ redefinition from users to usable users or, as some might say, innovators.

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