Sunday, May 20, 2012

A Thought on Zuckerberg


Undertakers wear suits and are those who deal with death. Zuckerber, Gates, Jobs and the others of the life industry, the digital, do not wear suits. Zuckerberg's fortune is built on an advertising industry desperate to connect to the 'always-on' generations, people who are no longer eyeballs on TV or cinema screens (from the good ol' days when media was housed in configured build environments that occupied solid real estate). He is an insanely rich stooge who can code, who relies on the mythology of hacking and the dude culture of 'brogrammers' to push yet another configuration of 'being connected' upon the most politically and socially isolated generation for a century.

Zuckerberg is the Elvis of the digital, the apolitical pseudo-hacker who was plucked from the ranks with one brilliant idea, which it seems was not his but succeeded thanks to intellectual property rights, whereby you cannot own an idea but only a thing and his code, as Facemash. This concept is mutated over and over again for his captured fans by his content paymasters. He is the symbol for a technical expertise that serves the interests of the powerful, who brought him everything he has, and who want to see the continuation of a consumption driven culture at all costs.

No comments: