Page 153 - Flaunt 171 - Summer of Our Discontent - PS

as attack his own Justice Department, caused more than 50,000 concerned citizens to send telegrams to Washington, most of them demanding his impeachment. From that night on, the battle over the White House tape recordings transfixed much of the nation.
Micro-moral of this tale? Don’t get caught, because that sparked the first investigation in this case, conducted by Nixon’s own Judiciary Department, who pushed Nixon’s closest aides
to conceding his wrongdoings and the existence of the tapes to save their necks. Once all the information was aired, Nixon lost the public’s trust, and had to finally resign.
So what are we getting at? Well, we’re all a bit like Nixon now. Our participation in technology is electively logging all we
ing these forms of technology into our anatomy for the purpose of self-betterment, is the act then, by nature, invasive? With all the oversight splled out on previous pages, do we need support from human ingenuity vis-à-vis technology to tip the scales? What is the difference between the subconscious awareness of being spied on through our everyday Google searches, versus the advancement and improvement of mental health by willing integration of process’ deemed invasive?
Let’s consider invasiveness, shall we? In 1935, the first brain surgery to treat mental illness was performed in Portugal by neurologist Egas Moniz. It was a procedure that involved drilling holes into a patient’s skull, and Moniz coined it “leucotomy”.
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ADAM HARVEY AND JOSH EVANS. “CV DAZZLE VER- SION 2” (2020). DIGITAL FILE. COURTESY THE ARTISTS.
say, receive, post, posit, and search, into a little drawer, and should we ever find ourselves in a pickle of sorts, there to substantiate or refute our agency in said pickle is every- thing we’ve ever done online. The bonds we forge with people are sec- ondary to technology’s oversight.
So why run with liars on a night out in 2020? Because why not!? They’re a lot more fun and if they’re liars, what they’ve logged into their little drawer might not even be true!
NOW IF YOU’LL
JUST HOLD
STILL, I’LL
ERASE ALL
NEGATIVE
MEMORIES
FROM LAST
NIGHT, OK,
SORTA LIKE
A BROWSER
CACHE DUMP
Written by Lina Savage
So, arm in arm with a choice batch of liars, police on the scene, and threads designed to scramble, what’s next? A chip in our head? Well... yeah! At least the transhu- manists would say so. Transhuman- ism is a philosophical movement that advocates for the transformation of the human condition by developing and making widely available so- phisticated technologies to enhance human intellect and physiology. In other words, why fight the tide? Tech- nology is great, and if one’s banal laundry is the subject of scrutiny, who cares? If it’s dirty, that means
it deserves to be known. Rather, optimize yourself with the latest and greatest, be that a node, a chip, or otherwise, and live a virtuous—and perhaps three times as long—a life.
Alas, the evolution of the trans- humanist experience is a dubious one: if we are voluntarily incorporat-