"In the 1990s, Mark Fisher’s philosophical reading of the cyberpunk novel gave us a persuasive theory of cyberspace as a prosthesis of humanity, a cybernetic nature, an extension of the human nervous system. For Fisher, akin to the characters in William Gibson’s druggy cyberpunk classic, Neuromancer, we are possessed by the internet; only as alive as the digital current that circulates in our veins. We are dispossessed of will, and inert as the machines that we get neurologically intimate with, letting them hack our endorphin channels and social impulses, addicted to their stimulants. Our neuroses, emotions and attention are ordered by our computers. As if in a trance, we follow the collective pattern of feeling transmitted to us—collective hypnosis, a feeling of shared outrage, fear, anger, joy, catharsis, justice, revenge, pleasure. Online, all impersonal worldly events are experienced as intensely personal, even if we don’t play a role in them. We internalize everything, struggle to see beyond ourselves, to see the mechanisms that are not centered on us. The internet is a claustrophobia of interiority that only appears to be ours. It ‘doesn’t work by suppression, or repression, but through a participative process … [It] doesn’t represent or even ‘manipulate’ public opinion but substitutes for it.’ All actions are reactions, predictable reactions, endless nervous systems swaying to the same rhythm."

(The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet, by Bogna Konior)

#bookstr #plebreads #grownostr