Today we’re celebrating 3 years since the launch of DigitalDeliria.com! Granted, we are on a bit of a hiatus… though I still want to thank those who have followed. For now, I’ve returned focus to a new (actually, quite old) project… ranging back to 2012 when I first documented the concept, and 2016 when I first started writing it in fully shaped form. Who knew that I would come up with this particular concept before Google started to actually build it (before anyone, for that matter). But via my telling, it will come to a full fruition that no one else has yet imagined.
As an update in the vein of Digital Deliria, I will share an anecdote from today. I witnessed a person spend 10 times as long pumping and paying for their gas. Normally, it’s a quick swipe of a credit card and then “pump away”. But today, they actually chose to stand by their car, fiddling with their phone, attempting to scan QR codes on the pump again and again, and then fiddled on their phone some more. Meanwhile, 3 cars waited in line behind them in 100+ degree heat, burning more gas.
This is the Digital Deliria my friend. The madness that ciphens our time and gives it away to powerful corporate entities… to their benefit and not ours… without us even knowing.
That is what we exposed with this website, DigitalDeliria.com. In ways both as small as this, or as large as behaviors like looking at our phones 96 times a day on average. It’s all about the evolving human-technology condition.
Blessings and peace be with you till next time. Bye for now.
The last time AI came calling was in 2012. A concept came to me. A new world revealed itself. It seemed like science fiction. It felt like I was the first to see.
Now AI has come calling again. Eleven years later, my science fiction concept has started to become a reality.
How far will it go? Perhaps if I see my vision through, it will lead to an outcome of good.
So an intermission again is warranted here, for continued focus on the big and sublime.
When will the Digital Deliria continue? Perhaps we will find ourselves here again, in a world changed.
As always, I hope you enjoyed this. Share if it provoked interest or intrigue.
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I created this painting in my teens, one of my first. Let’s call it “amateur art” (though it did get me into a prestigious art study program). It’s acrylic on a hand-stretched canvas. The picture just came to me, likely in a dream. I never knew what it actually was.
Requirements Monster by Carisa H-K
Observers found it unsettling, yet with a sense of creeping calm. Movement is missing, like a slow-growing leafy mass. The organic is also confused – feeling artificial and sharp.
I had theories that it was about ecological disaster. Or industry and cityscapes being reclaimed by vengeful nature.
But I now know it was a premonition. Of the digital to come. Of the world in which I would live, which was never even imagined at the time.
I never had a title for it until today… it shall now be officially named Requirements Monster. It is now alive in the virtual game of my story here.
As always, I hope you enjoyed this. Share if it provoked interest or feeling.
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One thing I’ve been working on is getting people interested in digital/application development through relatable stories. Such that even if you haven’t lived in that world, you can get a sense of what it “feels” like to be inside it.
We generally see technology as a lifeless, soulless thing. However, I write Technology Stories with Life. Throwing in a dash of nostalgic fun, and a dash of bittersweet, and it offers a view into the evolving human-technology condition.
Since my last Tale from Digital Deliria, AI burst onto the scene as a “writer” as well.
So I put ChatGPT to the test… could Technology itself take my place? Can it write “Technology Stories with Life” and take over the job of writing DigitalDeliria.com?
Well, you tell me… check out the result and let me know what you think:
Below is the bot’s story. Note — My writer’s prompt for ChatGPT was: Write an allegorical story about developing requirements for an application, including the roles involved. Provide a corresponding graphic as well. Here’s what it wrote:
“Once upon a time, in a far-off land, there lived a group of people who wanted to build a new application to make their work more efficient. The group consisted of different individuals, each with their unique skills and expertise. There was the Project Manager who led the group, the Business Analyst who helped define the requirements, the Software Developer who built the application, and the Quality Assurance Tester who tested the application to ensure it was functional.
The group knew they had to work together to build a successful application. The Project Manager started by outlining the project’s goals and objectives. He created a blueprint of what the application should do and how it should work. He showed it to the Business Analyst, who reviewed it and asked questions to understand the users’ needs and what the application must achieve.
The Business Analyst then created a document with detailed requirements that specified what the application should do, how it should work, and what it should look like. She made sure the requirements were clear, concise, and achievable. She presented the requirements to the Software Developer, who then started building the application based on the Business Analyst’s specifications.
As the Software Developer worked on the application, the Quality Assurance Tester started testing the application to ensure it was functional, user-friendly, and met the requirements. The Tester worked closely with the Developer to resolve any issues and make sure the application worked as expected.
In the end, the group built a successful application that met the user’s needs and improved the efficiency of their work. They accomplished this by working together and ensuring everyone understood their roles and responsibilities.
The corresponding graphic for this story could be an image of the Project Manager holding a blueprint, the Business Analyst holding a document with detailed requirements, the Software Developer writing code on a computer, and the Quality Assurance Tester holding a magnifying glass to test the application. The image could show the four individuals working together, with arrows connecting them to illustrate how they are dependent on each other to build a successful application.
Overall, this allegorical story and graphic represent the importance of collaboration, communication, and understanding roles and responsibilities when developing requirements for an application.”
Why thank you, ChatGTP. So… who (or what) won the challenge and why?
As always, I hope you enjoyed this. Share if it expanded your thinking or excited your curiosity.
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It feels like a city… of brick and mortar, steel and glass. But the walls are grey blocks: nondescript surfaces without texture or light.
Your avatar character makes its way down streets and alleys, picking up torched tendrils. The pieces sear into your protective gloves, as you sprint toward Central Square.
There it lies. The Monster you are building. Attaching the piece to the whole, the burnt mass flashes once, then shapeshifts to a pulsing green mass. Oh, the satisfaction you feel with each connection made! Your heart thumps like a gambler pulling the slot machine lever, as the 8-bit soundtrack throbs faster.
Before picking up another tentacle and attaching it to the Requirements Monster, you must go back to the Junction Box. Junction is where you find your protective gear hanging on pegs: hard hats, gloves, lab coats. There are 7 roles you must use to finish your Monster. The maroon hat is the Information Architect. The lavender: User Experience Director. The blue is Project Manager, and yellow is Product Owner. The purple is Software Engineer.
The Monster’s body grows and multiplies with every attached piece, until tentacles reach down all adjacent city blocks and scroll up the surrounding buildings. The smell it emanates is of a dusty, warm fan running at high speed in vintage laptop. The place gets warmer and warmer and your avatar starts perspiring. Run, run back to the Junction Box and flip the AC switch!
Wiping your brow with a sound effect “whew”, you spin on a heel to behold what you have done.
Towering above you is a bubbling mass of energy, excited to launch into the sky and take over the land. It flashes from green to blue and even red, undulating like rough waters at sunset. Even the nondescript surrounding buildings are enlivened from Pong-like blocks into detectable (yet much more delectable) titled textures.
But something is missing.
Through the city maze, in a hidden alleyway, a sizzling chunk remains. It might as well be end of Time Bandits, when the final piece is found in a toaster. When once it is touched, everything blows up in your face.
Your character spins again on its heel, staring at the Junction Box. Oh no. Oh hell no! The Business Analyst hat still remains on its peg!
And then, like that thing at the end of Xaxxon that you can’t ever get past, you’re vaporized in a poof. Game over and start again.
It leaves you wondering: What the heck just happened? And so it is… a video game that doesn’t exist, yet reflects actual digital application development. ‘Round every corner, there’s another piece you didn’t think about. Another requirement for the form and function of your emerging digital beast.
The only sure thing?: You won’t forget that edge case again.
As always, I hope you enjoyed this and it brightened your day.
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Rare ladies, almost elven, graced the revered halls of a genuine place. They swept down a golden staircase of brass and glass, papers in hand. They swayed through meandering spaces, long floral dresses swishing around their calves. Scrunch socks inside gym shoes softened their pathway of worn maroon berber.
I found myself in this new home, a landing of my own design. And for more than a few moments, this newcomer examined these fresh air “women warriors” like an oddity.
Ah, the comfort, safety and protection that this place afforded – it pulsed with a deep heartbeat. How could this exist? This population still in their 1980’s frocks, living in this enclave ever since, as if never influenced by the outside world… empowered to focus on a Mission… how?
Driven by science and medical expertise, their cause remained true: doggedly uninfluenced and unadulterated by Business. This was their source of safe isolation, where huddled in dark corners, the warriors made the engine run in a place of esteemed beauty.
Well, as beautiful as a maroon-carpeted office with brass doorknobs could be, anyway.
Seeing this living time capsule, I felt modern in comparison. A digital agency survivor, sprouted through the hottest (and silliest) days of the early web.
Yet at once, I was freed. The ability to express thought, opinion, and solutions took the place of putting on trendy airs. Oxygen once again raced back into my capillaries. After working too long with crafty (and at times manipulative) Pharma clients, this non-profit actually supported people’s health through software and learning. Hell, even I lost that “last 20 pounds” by just following their health guidance.
A short time after my health began to improve, excitement built as the maroon carpet was replaced with a modern grey. We had to keep up the meandering sprawl, which looked like one office section cobbled with another, and another. We loved this space that was not perfect, because we all knew we owned it.
Still, some of the maroon carpet remained, like the workers locked there in time. Never leaving the halls, dedicating their lives like nuns. So admirable.
Soon more new women like me started to pad the grey berber in buffed black boots. Now traveling with laptops vs. a stack of papers, we mixed like oil and water. Yet together we blazed a trail because we all believed in the Mission.
Yet, how to navigate this trail? Sometimes it wasn’t easy with territory carve-outs abound. Even taking great care to determine a move from one chessboard box to another didn’t always pay off. Though it might be right and just for the greater cause, stepping a toe into the next box shocked others. In no time, I was tasked with investigating a catastrophic loss of traffic to our website and the chessboard started to bend and skew like a scene from Alice in Wonderland.
There is no explanation for the website problem, other than when you’re somewhat sheltered, you can deepen expertise in specific areas. However, you’re equally sheltered from gaining expertise in new areas.
Thus the need for fresh blood, to train, deepen knowledge, and transform. To build an island of digital innovation… seek a new way of doing things… and foster the same in others. That was me… my role. And I didn’t know where it would lead next.
As always, I hope you enjoyed this and it brightened your day.
Her downy white head nods, with almost imperceptible frequency, visible just above the top of the couch.
Below her chin, a blue bony hand pokes from the sleeve of two sweaters. Maintaining a motionless grip, she holds three warm blankets up to her neck.
Entranced by her TV, it’s no matter that VHS tracking stripes flip and garble her picture every few minutes. Still, she remains pleased to watch her Disney movies over and over in succession. It made her daily routine.
A bit of spittle slips from the corner of her gentle smile until the bowl of vegetable soup arrives. In a delayed reaction, eyes still fixed on the TV, the soup smell elicits a grimace. She mutters, “icky frick”.
As the movie continues, her expression softens back to pleasure. I ladle small spoonfuls of soup into her now lax mouth.
Gazing into the box of VHS tapes, on this precious weekend of peace between jobs, I conjure this memory. A memory that never happened.
The beautiful sight of my elderly mother, in a caregiving eventuality that would never be.
Oh how she smiled one day, her tapes nearby. She succumbed to the ploy of Disney “opening the vault” every few months, releasing a backlog movie on to VHS. They assured that if you didn’t buy it now, you would never see it again.
“Pooh Baby,” she said, as she accumulated the tapes. “When I’m old, just prop me up on a pillow and play these for me. That will be all I need to fade away into my demented oblivion. Drool might come out of my mouth. And I won’t know what I’m saying. But I will be contented, with a big smirk on my face.”
Ah, she laughed with red-blotched cheeks. A giggle ending in a deep chortle, then a high sigh. This was her old age senility plan. And it brought us joy.
There were at least 2 problems with this. First, cancer stole her too soon. Second, nary a VHS player would still exist by the time she became “senile”. Neither problem was foreseen.
Soon, my overthinking brain adds a third problem: what about a VHS tape rewinder, the necessary tool to keep the movies running with no delay, endlessly? Well, good luck finding one of those.
And so this box remains, a time capsule in my house. Some tapes sit in the original wrappers, never opened or watched. Saved for senility, perhaps now my own. Or waiting for service in another dimension where circumstances are different.
Meanwhile, technology marches on in its villainous way, where perpetual format change means Disney asks you to pay over and over again for the same films. The passing years reveal the farce of their “closing vault”.
As holiday snow now flits past my window, downy as her head of hair, a moment of clarity arrives. Hang on to them tight, as if the only heaven is on earth, in the people for which you care.
You may sacrifice your time, your freedom. Sometimes your happiness. But what I wouldn’t give now to give. To exist in that place where caring for dying flesh is the one true virtue. Where the blessed masquerades as the horrendous.
Be there. Be there for them in their most awful moment. Because one day you might find yourself pining for this horror over another… and realizing how blessed you are.
Wishing you happiness and health this holiday season and always, to you and the loved ones you serve.
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"When the levee breaks, mama you got to move."
-- Led Zeppelin
The “white tea and ginger” hotel lobby scent did not extend up to the 8th floor.
There in room 849, a desk light shines. The heavenly bed and heavenly shower are not enjoyed. She thinks, a heavenly WiFi would come in handy right now.
The hour pressurizes the need for speed. It’s too late to enjoy grilled meat at the oddity Weber Grill-themed restaurant down the street. It’s far too late to have any sense at all right now. It’s 25 or 6 to 4, and she’s trying to do some more.
She picks through a website, while the creeping WiFi boils her blood.
Did a word change on this page of the website?, she struggles to remember. Oh yes, let’s flag that in the document.
On to the next page. She thinks, This page didn’t change. But given how they busted my balls the last time I missed something, I’m still going to include it in the doc to be sure.
And so the inane task continues, here at 4 am, under a small pool of desk lamp light. She proceeds to take screenshots of every page of the website. EVERY. PAGE. Every message. Every pop up. Every frame of every animation. Every step of every form. Twenty pages become forty. One hundred becomes two.
Loading each page took minutes she did not have. Eyes turning to sand, her throat tightens into a silent scream at the tedious circumstance. There is no escape to sleep, because she’s going before the pharmaceutical company’s Medical, Legal & Regulatory Review Board in a few hours with this doc in-hand.
Once the “Consumer” site is done, on to the “Health Care Professional” site she goes. Three hundred pages become four hundred.
A 485-page PDF later, she is confident that this drug’s marketing website can now continue to push pills into consumer’s lives.
But what did the Medical, Legal & Regulatory Review matter anyway? This particular drug caused cardiovascular problems. As such, they changed their marketing every day to game society into keeping it on the market as long as possible.
It’s too much to think about as exhaustion takes over. The mind grows numb and bleary at the implications.
From a full day of work at the office, followed by a plane that landed at 9pm local time, to 20 mins left to sleep before heading into the review board room… she knew.
Her soul smells it in the air — this is her last trip to Indy. This mama had to move… but where? Maturing back-pocket plans remain concealed.
In this nightmare before Christmas, the season’s the first flurries start to fall outside. Her bones creak from their hunched position at the desk, and she rises.
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DOOM, badum badum
DOOM, badum badum
“Manic depression is a frustrating mess.”
So says Jimi, booming through the massive Charger woofers. The song is her daily morning mantra, blasted on the drive in to the agency.
Pulling into the parking garage, she sweeps into her front parking spot. The crouching car proves that every day she is consistently first in and last out, with no lunch run in between.
Today is Thursday. A long, manic depression-ish kind of day to be sure, given the obligatory cycle of weekly project plan updates. This ensured “success” for the Friday morning staffing meeting. If you didn’t have your staffing needs in your plans, you didn’t get staff. And if you didn’t get staff, well — maybe someone would notice and even fire you after a few weeks.
But here was the rub. Even if you had your needs in, your staff would quite often not get the work done during the subsequent week.
Thus, a sickly cycle emerged for this business: a company culture that revolved around prodding for progress. Without individual autonomy and accountability to deliver, no amount of time spent nudging was ever enough. Even an army of “Paid Worriers” (aka Project Managers) could not supply enough momentum during the week to break through the sludgy bog.
By Thursday there were so many backlogged project plans to update, the Worriers spent more time updating plans to push out dates than actually working on the projects to keep them moving forward per the original dates.
Today, the entire day flies by, gobbled by communications with staff on what was done and what work remained. By 7pm, nary a project plan was yet updated.
So it begins as the sun sets: a thuddish cadence of updating plan after plan — 16 in total — mirroring the roiling thump of “Manic Depression” itself. Tedious at best, maddening at worst.
The company’s online system fostered sluggish progress through the task. Click-click-clicking through buggy Waterfall project plans offered no room to employ Agile software development methodologies. The sad reality?: Agile may not have helped at this place.
By 9:30pm her work-addicted buddy still huddles in his cube. With plans all ready for the next morning, she exits a dark hallway into the muggy evening air. Back in the parking garage, only their 2 cars remain. She scans the shadows under her crouched beast, and then in its backseat, as her Chicagoland mother taught her.
As Beast roars to life, she knows she learned nothing from her devastating personal loss years prior. If anything, she is more like her colleague than ever: a work-addict herself in a way.
So what is left tonight, besides a hasty fast food meal and crashing into sleep?
Crank it up of course. She still had that “music, sweet music”…
This time a haunted harmonica echo screeches through the night air, foreshadowing the moment the levee will break, as a lone mosquito floats in through the car window. A moment later, gas surges and peels the beast out of the garage. A fitting outro narrates the drive home:
“If it keeps on rainin’, levee’s goin’ to break If it keeps on rainin’, levee’s goin’ to break When the levee breaks, I’ll have no place to stay…”
She thinks, Well mama, maybe I’ve got to move.
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I expected to join that work conference call. Instead, a different morning call comes. The work conference now resolves with incommunicado, and co-workers move on.
My tears flow, my hands shake, and I curse at my husband who is standing by, watching me get dressed in a hurry. I curse for no other reason than sheer anger at coming to the realization that I was a fool. A fool for not spending the time when I could. A fool for planning this blasted conference call and putting work in front of what mattered. And a fool for believing until the end that some miracle would occur. I curse again like I had in my unanswered prayers, but this time aloud for all to hear.
The tears continue in the car, but at least the steering wheel steadies my hands. Upon arriving at the house, I rush through the kitchen, and down the few stairs to the brass bed. In a room filled with light, my mother sits unmoving, pale and cold.
All I could utter is “oh mama, mama, mama” over again, like a child. I attempt to close her mouth and eyes, both slightly open, without success. I press my lips to the top of her downy head, her short white hair soft to the touch. I get in the bed beside her once more, hold her hand, gaze at her, and my eyes dry up as I try to comprehend the end of our lives as we’ve known them.
Considering a theory that she may be up above looking down at this scene, my eyes fix on the upper left corner of the high-ceilinged room. I attempt to communicate with a spot high up on the wall, convincing myself that her soul is there. Then, I look back to her in the bed. I do this many times, back and forth, looking for a sign and none comes.
Sometime later, as I hang half-off the edge of the bed, my hand holding hers, fixated on her face, my eyes like sand, my aunt breaks my solitude. It is time for the funeral home to take her away.
Why was I planning to take that conference call on the morning of her death? Why did I work until 9pm every night, and never go to a single chemo treatment with her? And why did she not ask me to accompany her? Was she shielding me from seeing her like that? Or was it my plain dereliction? The questions circle and swirl in an infinite, discordant loop in my mind.
So begins the next phase of my journey into grief. Where connection is now a broken bond. An empty hole.
I remained blank, but not a blank slate. Empty, but not renewed.
Until, one day – we meet again through Technology. And/or Death.
Something more is to come.
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The halls filled with sunset, darkening from moment to moment. Monitors illuminate the evening player’s faces. Many use their high-powered equipment to transition from programming by day to video games by night.
They while away their evenings (or at least until dinner at 8 or 9pm). But some kept coding well into the wee hours. They couldn’t stop. Was it due to deadline?
One of them lives in a cave, emanating screen light from within. It’s a more “modern” kind of cave: a simple cubicle covered in a dark cloth tent, concocted to block out even more of the waning outside light.
Inside is a legend of top proportion. The best programmer in the house. Do you need a fully functional, brand-new app for your client in two days flat? He is the genius for the job.
A nearby Project Manager, burning the midnight oil herself, wants to know: Why does he stay here so late every night?
She pats at his cloth door, softly inquiring: “Hello?”
“Come in,” says the voice inside.
She stoops to enter the inner sanctuary of the coder. It’s a sea of black, if not for an unexpected set of string lights and a dim desk lamp. He sits with his back to her, a figure outlined by the almost imperceptible flicker of his monitor. She asks with empathy: “Workin’ late today? It’s ok, you can go home if you need. The deadline isn’t until next week…”
He slowly turns in his chair and looks at his guest with dry, bloodshot eyes that can only originate from 13 fixated hours at a code-filled monitor.
He says, “It’s ok, I do this for more than just getting the job done. I’m a recovering addict. Programming controls my urges… gives me a different place to focus. Keeps me out of trouble.”
Well alrighty then.
With a comment so raw, so matter of fact, she is rendered unable to find many words.
She mutters, “Ok, well take care of yourself, you’re doing great work…”, trailing off and backing away. Meanwhile his chair swivels back around to his monitor. His antidote.
But, an antidote to what? Drugs, child molestation, crime, porn? All of the above? Her mind lingers on the possibilities, disturbed. But simultaneously she wonders, does this all play into why this guy is such a genius?
The lesson that day is to never deny people who pour themselves into their work. They may be doing it for more reason than one. Replacing one addiction with another of lesser harm may mean “progress” to some in their life’s journey.
Gathering her laptop to work from home the rest of the evening, she chuckles to realize: No one out there really knows who builds the web and why, do they?
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When employees are crying, it can’t be good. I cried to my boss, and today an employee is crying to me.
What does she cry about? Why? Today, this recipient can’t connect. Was it something I said? Didn’t say? External unrelated circumstance?
I can’t remember whether I ever knew.
All I remember is sunlight filling the white walls, and an anchor of modern grey berber carpeting below our feet. A heavenly corporate environ — a place unfitting of an emotional outburst.
With more than a conference room table separating us, our morning meeting devolves. The face of the woman across the chasm flushes pink. A moment later tear-wet cheeks become red.
My mouth runs dry of spit, and this brain is just as dry of reassuring words.
Yet moments later something musters from the deep; from my own episode in her shoes:
“We’re not doing brain surgery here. It’s just toothpaste.”
Beyond that lifeline, this stunned new manager had nothing more to offer. Her tears continued until my kindnesses and mother-like soothing bridged the gap. To anyone passing by, no doubt our “talk” sounded like “bullsh bingo”.
I still needed to learn the lessons of a manager. Years and years offered their slow reveal from the ether.
And this experience today? — well, it’s where leadership patina started growing on some part of my being. It’s when life came full circle again.
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The sun rose in our social lives with a fresh way to connect and share. Our initial instinct?: Just become “friends” on Facebook with everybody we know! That included all of our coworkers. (Especially if you worked in tech yourself.)
Sure, we stayed connected. And maybe learned a little about our fellow human by doing so. But after many years, we discovered that social media is more of a time capsule of who we knew when it launched, versus a tool that deepened any relationship.
People don’t really add anyone to Facebook anymore unless they know them, and even then — not until they know them a while. Maybe that’s good or bad.
Either way, our early dreams of the internet died… it is not what we believed or wanted: a means of global connection, divine understanding across people, and true appreciation of diverse cultures. It is… something decidedly different.
Plus, where did the music go? Oh, how quickly MySpace (zone of non-uniformity and pervasive tunes) just shriveled up and died with no explanation. Old tech: so easily abandoned.
Act Two
Social media — without us realizing it — replaced our tendency to form our own distribution lists (e.g. email). In this way, social media took control of the messaging. We post, but who knows really who sees it. Does anyone? And why/why not? It’s utterly out of our control.
And by the way, if we have business connections that “followed” us, why do we need to pay $10 to “boost” our post to reach them all? Didn’t our audience already basically “opt in”?
Email was imperfect too. Given no one liked to read, ignored email grew to unmanaged digital litter. But ignoring content was the reader’s choice, not the social media platform’s choice. Social media is now rife with assumptions about relevance, irrelevance, and outright censorship. It allows our tree to fall in the forest and indeed no one hears.
Aside: That’s why this website is in an old school format. We are officially rebelling against our no-read culture and bringing deep reading back for those who are open-minded and willing.
Who doesn't remember the fun of messages, lovingly shared among friends via email? Versus the vast, unsatisfying "nothingness" of social media today? Who doesn't pine for those early technology days? And did our best days dissolve with the disappearance of salutations?
Act Three
A woman remembers a time before the internet. A girlhood where every magazine cover and TV commercial reinforced the expectations of chaste sexpot womanhood.
Now, day after day, big tech presents a familiar dichotomy to the woman.
Remembering the content of childhood, she bristles at the latest online “version” of it. The sexpot remains, but instead of being chaste, ill health is the new virtue. On her screen:
One platform presents a retailer’s wares via overweight women posing in swimsuits.
Another platform presents a woman sticking her provocative tongue out, accompanied by a headline: “See her wearing see-through lingerie as clothing”.
The woman saves screen captures of the two images, identifying the hypocritical duality. Her energy channels to post the pictures on social media:
“Yes I do buy from this particular retailer, but not plus size. And no, I do not look up porn on Google. So, how is this explained? Is this some society-condoned descent into self-assured ill health, whilst devolving into a misogynistic female fantasy world that negates anything the original ‘Me Too’ movement stood for?”
The next day, she re-enters the platform to find that her access is blocked.
The all-helpful and all-knowing platform tells her the image of tongue-woman was removed. Further, that posting the image concerned them because it suggested interest in “self injury” and “suicide”.
“We want to support you,” the platform coos.
The gall, she thinks. THE GALL.These images were pushed to ME by the big tech conglomerates, and I just called them out as misogynistic!
If the wild conclusion about self harm and suicidal tendencies is in fact real, WHY is big tech pushing this material to me? In effect, making an admission that they are nudging those tendencies?
She stews. She closes the platform’s message, and expects to be able set the record straight… to speak her mind. But like a punished child, the platform then forces her to “accept” their community standards before being allowed back on. With no means of calling out their blatant hypocrisy until she bowed down to agree that what she did was “wrong”, she is humiliated a second time.
She concludes in that moment that this is proof that big tech institutionalizes harm to women.
Yet, despite the obvious sexism of the initial imagery, she begins to second-guess posting a picture that is now blocked.
What was so wrong about the image that I am now the one being punished?, she thinks.
She returns to her camera reel to look at the photo again.
A tear wells in the corner of her eye as she discovers something she never noticed before.
In the lower corner of the image, the woman is holding something close to her mouth, nearly out of sight. It’s a lighter. Its flame reaches up, burning the tip of her outstretched tongue.
It’s even sicker and more misogynistic than I originally thought, she thinks.
She’s hardened by life, and fearless about speaking out. But it scares her: What is this doing to our young girls, who might let this crap wash over them, and worse yet — engage in “self harm” or “suicidal tendencies” as a result?
Epilogue
In Act Three, women and girls are doubly harmed:
Harmed by the original material.
Harmed again by being censored and ridiculed for pointing out the hypocrisy of the harm fostered by big tech.
What will the tech conglomerates do next to hide their harm to you? Or stated in a different way, what is Act One of the next story?
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The electronic leash came to exist in 2003 when a leader in the company started a campaign to promote awareness of it and to protect against it.
When we first heard about the electronic leash, it sounded foreign. Like it could not possibly be.
The leader described the electronic leash as a state of being where you are constantly connected to your device, checking messages 24/7 and responding without boundaries.
Our minds rebelled. Wasn’t “always on” the best thing? The responsive thing? A way to get ahead?
The entire notion was almost an insult to us: the young and hard working individuals who filled the halls, cubes and conference rooms. Why was this warning even being given?
Further, finding ourselves “leashed” sounded awful… like a dog under control of a master. Who is the master?
Fast forward to 2008, and we find possibly the first mainstream media mention of a “digital leash” (here).
Was this leader ahead of their time by several years, seeing what others could not? — Absolutely.
Still, it didn’t become clear to you that it even existed until a decade later. It happened when you least expected. In the dark corners of a restaurant, gazing at the next table, you find four sitting — all fixed on their phones, not paying any attention to each other.
And then you know. The warning not heeded, we all fell into it: constantly connected to our devices and we don’t even know or care about anything different.
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Small bursting bubbles around the neck. A fizzy haze on the skin. Frog is in the hot tub, cozy and complacent.
So began the Digital Deliria, in converted warehouses, offices and homes, where our own bodies produced a caffeine of email responsiveness. Like inconsequential ping pong balls, back and forth across the net: we hang on for that tone of bing as they come in, and swish as they go out.
It’s a physiological video game. A slot machine. A digital Whac-A-Mole, where replies and response flew. Why pick up the phone when 20 volleyed emails are more efficient than listening to the drone of your fellow human?
Where non-ergonomic chairs once swiveled, the nerves now pinch. Forearms and fingers go numb, after 12 hours rolling the mouse. Feeling the ball twitch over the pad, dust collects and grinds the x and y axes. A mechanical break from the digital universe exists only to clear the dust, affording a more precise pointer position on your screen to the world.
Now thrones turn to cradling cocoons where the body can no longer manage itself, and feet once valiant on the floor must now sit on a small riser to keep blood from pooling. Dust can no longer impede the roller ball, as a laser shoots out from under your hand instead. No need to stop.
Until once we find a bee, admired for their busy ADHD throttle. Elevated, even. Moving from the chair, flying across the keyboard, flitting to the whiteboard, sprinting to their cohort next door.
The whiteboard holds a figment of a plan. The email holds an inert communication element. A sticky holds a fleeting note for a person 5 doors down.
Contradicting themselves every 7 seconds, speaking in partial sentences as the mind races ahead, they are 3 chess moves down another question that no one articulated, yet lives partially baked somewhere in the back of the bee’s mind. There are problems to solve! Do we know what they are?
For every inarticulate problem, there’s a speedy solution. Well-contemplated, it is not. So it’s one without ramifications. Just do it! What’s wrong with you for not buzzing like me?
The bee then we discover is a June bug — bouncing against the net at triple speed. Aimless and then found with one thorny leg stuck in the mesh. Joyous in its entrapment in a solution. But, if stuck on it too long, could lead to a feast for the next morning’s bird.
So one may leave the room on this day, anxious, for the lack of pure direction. Struggling to piece together disjointed elements into what once felt like a woven whole.
In the distance, you hear the storm siren test on a sunny day. It lends a misplaced feeling of disturb — because you already emerged from the tornado. So instead, might you expect a missile to hit any moment, given the details you missed in the whirl?
Yet, all still is business as usual. You grate: Were you too slow? Or they too fast and inarticulate? A missile to you may have always been the plan.
So now we devolve into the basest of instincts — attention seeking, in the business of the aperiodic reinforcement of validation, that gets fewer and farther between. But it’s enough to live another day. We distance into an expanding universe, as real relationships dissolve.
Our dark matter fills the voids in between, as our attention shrinks to ever smaller segments. We bite at the thick, yet vacant air for the next morsel.
The bee we become, the rewired, vibrates past the frog’s sticky tongue. But frog pays little attention, remaining absorbed only with its own circumstance. Today the mist feels warmer around its neck, as the bubbles increase in speed and frequency. But it stays.
As always, I hope you enjoyed this and it brightened your day.
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