Channels, Fall 2016

Channels • 2016 • Volume 1 • Number 1 Page 49 it obscures the authentic way of life. In the constant barrage of efficiency, humans’ relationship to the environment in which they dwell has become complicated and difficult to comprehend. When someone cannot understand the world they have been thrown into, they cannot easily live authentically and avoid the trap of going with the flow. Thus, many beings accept the new order of the world in which a designer somewhere has decided how they will communicate and live. Technique is also fundamentally shifting the modern human lifestyle. The term sensorium, coined by Walter Ong, refers to the prioritizing of senses that results from changing communication media. Different communication mediums prioritize some human senses above others. The shift in modernity’s lifestyle correlates to the shifting sensorium of technique. Automatism refers the process by which technicians determine the one or two possible choices and assert them as the best. We can observe automatism in a variety of modern technologies. The primary method of social existence comes through interfaces. Whether it be the television screen, internet browser, or phone applications, a designer structures the possible choices one can make. Humans now manipulate their free time through the manipulation of interfaces. According to Ellul, such a technical choice is automated. Television stations determine programming based on what will be most profitable rather than what they believe is genuinely good. Popular music experiences a similar automatism. The concept of good in media is now driven by capital. Ellul says capitalism is a stage of rather than the cause of technique. Because the choice between good and bad is no longer driven by humanity's desires or needs, capitalism will inevitability fall to the automation of a future society (Ellul, 1964, p. 82). Ellul (1964) summed up his fear, saying: There is nothing left to do but wonder at a mechanism that functions so well and, apparently, so tirelessly. But, above all else, no finger must be laid upon it, nor its automatism interfered with. It is in this that the headway of technical progress becomes automatic; when modern man renounces control over it and cannot bring himself to raise his hand against it so as to make the choice himself (p. 82). Technique has automated choice, and the modern man no longer desires to make choices for himself. The modern orientation toward technology has allowed the technical domain to invade all aspects of life. The decisions humans make appear to be more and more often structured for them rather than determined by their own preferences. Humans live inauthentically, because living toward their own possibilities doesn't fit into a system that seeks to force the most efficient possible choices. There is little room for individual expression in such a society. The cause of the changing mode of dwelling is a system of ethics based around utilitarian calculus of efficiency and progress. Flusser addressed the issue of technical imagery and entertainment. Flusser (2011) argued that “what is currently happening is a mutation of our experiences, perceptions, values, and modes of behavior, a mutation of our being-in-the-world” (p. 5). For Flusser, technique