What is The Machine™

[Doktor Howl]

Bump.

[LMNO]

Oh yeah... didn't we have a PDF of some of this stuff?

[Doktor Howl]

Oh yeah... didn't we have a PDF of some of this stuff?

Dunno.

We need to start a PDF dump, because I miss all that shit.

[Cramulus]

Oh yeah... didn't we have a PDF of some of this stuff?

yes:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/4950524/The-Machine

[President Television]

i dunno, so far i can see a few ideas to remedy the situation
- destroy the machines. discordian chaos/OM is a good attempt. like malfunctioning organs and uninhibited mutated cells (cancer) kills a lifeform.
- get ourselves a "good" machine, like kai wren said. it may be possible, but you have to make sure it is 1) able to defeat the other machines and 2) is intrinsically concerned with the well-being of the humans it is made of. who knows, perhaps discordianism can become such a machine some day.
- a bit far-fetched and esoteric, but since it is the medium on which these machines are operating that bugs us, if we can just slowly transfer their patterns to another medium, nobody'd notice and we're rid of them. kind of like the machines did to the humans in the matrix, actually

This is rather off-topic and I know this quote is from wayyyy back at the beginning of the thread, but I've got to say that I'd totally watch the italicized option if it were made into a movie. It makes me think of giant robots and Godzilla.

[Cramulus]

relevant: http://nietzschecoyote.wordpress.com/2009/12/28/analog-system-hacking-101-alternate-visions-built-in-the-gaps/

Analog System Hacking 101: Alternate Visions built in the gaps

The primary problem I see is the lack of an alternative to the system as it is. We need to have a vision, perhaps multiple visions, of how people will be living their day to day lives “after the revolution” and the structures that will allow them to do that.

I look at how we live and value things in terms of the internet and then I go home and I visit my tv and newspapers reality parents… and I realize we are already living in a different culture, almost a different society. This for me hints at the kinds of alternatives we must generate.

With our alternate visions we can begin building alternate structures in the gaps of the current system. We can take the innovations and legal structures that already exist and adapt them to our purposes. Corporations, Churches, Non-profits, Co-Ops… these are things that already exist. How can we use them differently?

We have to look at both the structures that constrain our behaviours and the values and motivations that guide them. We are already freer than we usually realize.

[Hoser McRhizzy]

The empire, the spectacle, the mainstream, the machine... "We are already freer than we usually realize."

About a week ago, a poster (LMNO, I think) linked to "a pamphlet called The Machine," which led a wiki page, which led to this thread.  At the end of which was a link to the aforementioned pamphlet.  I'm very aware that everything's probably been covered.  And a tl;dr that's mostly summary might not be welcome.

But here's this, either way.  Mostly agreement, I think, but I honestly have no idea. 

I'm not convinced of the monolith.  Or its inherent-ness.  "This is just the natural order of naturally violent/sadistic/self-interested/manifest-destiny monkeys" argument holds no weight for me.  It's one of many myths backing up imperialists as the top of the food chain.

For my own sitch.  The Machine is governmentality.  The Machine is the mindfuck soul-killer pleasure centre buzz I get from completing a task for an authority figure before the deadline and without collaboration.  The Machine is a verb, a reenactment, when I avert my eyes from a CCTV camera.  Or when I make 'eye contact' with the dome, knowing it's either just recording or it's some person bored off their tits in a booth somewhere (but I'm made to feel like I'm fighting The Man).  Either, both.  The Machine is functioning properly when I clear an airport metal detector on the first go, and the guy on the other side offers me the option of getting a nudie pic taken or getting felt up.  And I smile.  At.  Him.  The fissures in the machine become clearer when I'm able to perceive these things as ridiculous.

Or that newsfeed thingy talking about working counter to the mainstream.

If one of The Machine's myths of itself is that it's a monolith fapping to binary argument, one way of thinking outside it (or an exercise in trying) involves routing around the rewards we get for accepting or imposing the appearance of coherence or applicability.

Simply, a universal definition will overdetermine the situation I apply it to.  I'll miss the fissures and chaotic places my predetermined analysis doesn't work.  An anomaly or information that doesn't sit right might be an indicator of another set of bars (if I'm understanding the metaphor right), or something else worth thinking for.   

The Machine tells us there's a mainstream: that it is the mainstream; that it subsumes what tributaries bring to space always/already claimed as its own; and that the idea of a mainstream is more than a sometimes useful metaphor.  The Machine tells you that crabgrass is a fractal.  That the representation of a thing is the thing itself: ex. why an online poll can be used as proof of what 'the people' want, and hardly anyone blinks, or why a person can be referred to as an alien or simply illegal.

Rambling now.  Guess that's all I can articulate so far.  If you've read this, thanks for putting up with the mental fappage.  To anyone in this thread since it started, thanks for taking the time to write good stuff to think with.  It's very appreciated.

tl;dr - and then, some other stuff...

[tyrannosaurus vex]

Everything operates in systems. From society at large and international trade down to the bridge club for cell blocks E-G at the retirement home. Groups of people organizing themselves for some common purpose which, invariably, gets eventually lost behind the processes and bylaws of the organization. All groups encounter this at some point, even a two-person marriage where the routine of "Date Night on Thursdays" becomes an obstacle to some development in life, simply because that's the way it's always been.

I don't know anymore whether the Machine™ is something to fear, something to fight, or just something that is. In fact the more I think about it the more clear it becomes how interconnected everything is, and the Machine™ loses its definition, because everything adds a layer of complexity to the system and so it grows and grows until it becomes practically useless to call it anything other than what it ultimately is: Life. Mind you, that doesn't excuse it, or those who are lost in it. It is what it is: a great big fucking clusterfuck of apes caught up in a society that has been engineered just to get people caught up in it, and that's all.

It's not an agency, or a bureaucracy, or even a state of mind. It isn't just modern consumerism, or the obesity epidemic. Really, I don't really think the Machine™ is about anything we as a species to do ourselves, because that implies that we can attain, or deserve, some kind of relief from our own self-inflicted bullshit. I don't think I can really define the Machine™, but I think I found some pictures of it here.

[Requia ☣]

There's something Kai talks about sometimes, called emergent properties.  Kai does a far better job explaining it than I ever could, but at its core the emergent is when simple rules combine to form complex systems.  Each ant is a truly simple creature, but the rules they follow combine in magnificent ways.

The Machine is that.  But taken up a few orders of magnitude.  All the thousands of little rules like 'if profits go up, so does the stock price' and 'you need X amount of money in order to get (re)elected' or 'if somebody doesn't look me in the eyes they're lying' combine to form The Machine.

But, like any emergent system, its a hell of a lot more than just the sum of its parts, those rules have a hell of a lot of unintended consequences.  So cops think am Arab is lying to them, because in his culture looking someone in the eyes all the time is rude, the CEO fires tens of thousands of people because that brings profits up that quarter.

[Hoser McRhizzy]

I don't think I can really define the Machine™, but I think I found some pictures of it here.

I think you're right.


edited fer threadspammage

[Kai]

[quote author=vexati0n link=topic=10409.msg872747#msg872747 date=1273876710

It's not an agency, or a bureaucracy, or even a state of mind. It isn't just modern consumerism, or the obesity epidemic. Really, I don't really think the Machine™ is about anything we as a species to do ourselves, because that implies that we can attain, or deserve, some kind of relief from our own self-inflicted bullshit. I don't think I can really define the Machine™, but I think I found some pictures of it here.
[/quote]

The destructive aspect.

There's something Kai talks about sometimes, called emergent properties.  Kai does a far better job explaining it than I ever could, but at its core the emergent is when simple rules combine to form complex systems.  Each ant is a truly simple creature, but the rules they follow combine in magnificent ways.

The creative aspect.

Call it emergent and collective human impact, call it the collective unconscious, whatever. It's like humanity, the MIND of humanity, the CONCEPT of humanity and human ideas, has been given velocity and form as a physical, REAL construct, an artifact. Sort of like the Kuhnian paradigm, a model/worldview applied.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

So then the Machine is a model, generally with negative connotations that different authors/writers/pd posters use to reference some aspect of reality that they dislike? Form some its the Political Machine, for others the Social Machine, for others the Consumerist Machine etc etc etc

Maybe the Machine is the stuff that urges the individual to conform to behaviors that they may not otherwise conform to?

[LMNO]

The Machine™ is Legion.



It is That Which Prevents You From Your True Desire.


The Beast, lo, it hath many names, but the end is always the same: Frustration, Despair, Death.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

The Machine™ is Legion.



It is That Which Prevents You From Your True Desire.


The Beast, lo, it hath many names, but the end is always the same: Frustration, Despair, Death.

[Kai]

Funny, I was being serious.