While dropping out of the techno-age marathon is an ethical decision anyone could easily make, it also means giving up the only real outlet for subversion. But if there is a sadder case than the lonely, radical farmer-luddite who thinks the world noticed their conscientious desicion to give up the cell phone and the laptop, it is the person who cheerleads for progress, who excitedly feels like they’re relly on the cusp of SOMETHING each time they laud the newest techno-innovation, salivating on the instant opinion dispersers of the day over the i-whatever. Like the out-of-touch Hillary Clinton giving a commencement speech at Barnard College and shouting to the graduating class of women, “Get out there, girls! MySpace and Twitter! Social network your way to the top!” This kind of blind faith in the power or social networking betrays a person eager to be tapped into the “next big thing” in order to more efficiently wedge themselves in with the status quo, as we saw McCain try during the presidential debates when, looking like a child expecting to be given a cookie, he made some desperate and cringe-worthy comments about how he had been using Ebay.

It was easy to live without these things before we had them, but now we must not only have them, we must talk about them constantly. Was it really so bad to run to the corner in the middle of the night to use the payphone? How about when we, Europeans, left the continent to come to America, goodbye was goodbye, possibly forever? We cried, we felt sad, we committed suicide, we knew it was serious and didn’t want to fuck up.

Dear people of the future, this is how we lived, and how we will no doubt be re-enacted in your bizarre “period piece” movies: standing at payphones, writing letters, throwing rocks at windows, meeting up by chance, failing those things, weeing each other in dreams.

Cholesterol on the arteries, cancers in prostates, the joke is on us now. Especially on me.

Anyway.

Now give an ear to Akay’s flaring-up mixes!

(all vinyl, no computer wankery)
(and see blog for detailed playlists)

Mix9 100220 (nightXperience, Radio X 94.5, 2010-02-20) by Akay

Mix8 100206, 1/2 (Live at nightXperience, Radio X 94.5, 2010-02-06) by Akay

Mix8 100206, 2/2 (Live at nightXperience, Radio X 94.5, 2010-02-06) by Akay

Mix3 080504 > All vinyl (no computer wankery) by Akay