What are ya, on drugs?

I do love a good episode of Star Trek TNG. What does that have to do with technology and social media trainwreck we’re in in the 2020s? Maybe more than I originally thought. I’ve been indulging in some classic comfort TV during this current moment in the pandemic-that-never-ends, so please allow me a little bit of child-of-the-90s nerdery.

In “The Game” (Star Trek: The Next Generation S5EP06), an addictive game from the pleasure planet Raisa is unleashed onto the starship Enterprise. It’s “psychotropically addictive”. All the adults in the room are obsessed and acting tweaky and suddenly not paying attention to the fact the starship is about to be stolen. The only exception is young buck Wesley Crusher and his engineering compadre/crush Robin. Everyone’s on drugs but the younguns,, and the whipersnapper youth sense something’s up, try to save the day by going on a cute engineering date, and eventually all the adults in Wesley’s life force The Game on him and as he gets his first hit in a creepy Clockwork Orange type scene. The crew is saved (deprogrammed!) in the end by a series of flashing lights shone by Data, everyone’s favourite (programmed!) android. As a kid in 1991 this TNG episode was kinda beyond me and the DARE education high schoolers were getting but you get the drift.

SIDEBAR: Can we talk about flashing lights controlling people in sci-fi for a second here? It happens everywhere, and as a viewer I can’t get enough of seeing this trope come up. It’s oddball vintage pop psychology, and it’s visually amazing to look at. Number 6 in The Prisoner gets his fair share of flashing-light brainwashing, as does Baltar in Battlestar Galactica.

Anyways! How different is this blip of a 90s sci-fi Game from our current Instagram, Tik Tok, from Facebook (if any one’s even on Facebook anymore)? Would we give up the ship for one more hit of followers, for a few more likes or comments? Lately I’ve bene feeling like they’re coming for me with the Game headset and I’m the last one who doesn’t want a hit anymore. But while they’re coming for me and I’m here I might as well blather on: is the unnoticed addiction simply small little dopamine hits from red hearts on our screens? Of course it is. They designed it all this way, you know: “The success of an app is often measured by the extent to which it introduces a new habit”.

And now, we’re forever trying to find ways to shield ourselves from the relentless onslaught of our phones, of “everybody’s doing it!”. I was visting the CCA in Montreal (defo my fave museum in Canada and the bookstore is to die for) recently and saw the freshly launched A Section of Now: Social Norms and Rituals as Sites for Architectural Intervention exhibit. A reflection on how we live with life now, and a specific section on how we live with technology now. Also an entire room was devoted to death practices (I’ll have you know I’m Polish in background and culturally the black topic of end of life isn’t too terrifying). How about this chart from the death practices room:

Another room entirely is devoted to how we now try to drown technology out, and how technology shapes the built form. Streetlights in the sidewalks so you don’t have to raise your head from your phone to know it’s safe to cross the street. Talk about meeting users where they are at:

An entire poncho/cape woven through with metal so your phone isn’t able to pick up signals while tucked inside (a perfect surveillance culture piece):

Stacks of books on how to get your attention back. And a Paper Phone (ironically and maybe even comically owned by Google) that you print out. That you take with you. Like, you leave the digital thing at home. Yes. Like that.

Dear 1991: who’s playing The Game now? 2022 really, really wants to know.