Saturday, April 18, 2009

Now I Wanna Be Your SERVOMECHANISM!


After spending entirely too much money on music on Record Store Day, it occurred to me that I might just be another servomechanism* for my stereo.

I am now unwinding after a LOOOONG, nervewracking day (as part of the assimilation process of becoming a "New Yorker", I'm developing a reckless driving record in earnest) by listening to an awesome playlist of The Magnetic Fields' songs assembled by Trent Reznor. I've only recently been able to stop listening to "Distortion." I may have to revisit 69 Love Songs now.

* - "To behold, use or perceive any extension of ourselves in technological form is necessarily to embrace it...It is this continuous embrace of our own technology in daily use that puts us in the Narcissus role of subliminal awareness in relation to these images of ourselves. By continuously embracing technologies, we relate ourselves to them as servomechanisms. That is why we must, to use them at all, serve these objects, these extensions of ourselves, as gods or minor religions. An Indian is the servomechanism of his canoe, as the cowboy to his horse or the executive of his clock." Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, Marshall McLuhan, pp. 46

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