{"id":17361,"date":"2013-10-23T15:26:48","date_gmt":"2013-10-23T19:26:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/?p=17361"},"modified":"2013-10-23T15:39:00","modified_gmt":"2013-10-23T19:39:00","slug":"the-apple-event","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/2013\/10\/23\/the-apple-event\/","title":{"rendered":"The Apple Event"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"apple-event\"<\/p>\n

Confession: I watched the Apple event yesterday, and I\u2019ve watched at least part of every product announcement for the last several years. Apple announcements are the opposite of a guilty pleasure; they are a burden that I take on with pride.\u00a0 They are insipid and represent everything that is wrong with Silicon Valley and yet I feel obliged to watch them because they let me stare deeply into this heaving morass of Cronenbergian<\/a> lust for technology. It always feels like we\u2019re one year away from Phil Schiller offing himself with an iGun after screaming \u201cLONG LIVE THE NEW FLESH<\/a>!\u201d When I watch Silicon Valley spread out<\/a> on the Moscone Center stage I feel prideful (to a fault perhaps) that these events just seem so\u2026 transparent. They\u2019re so easy to read and so easy to critique they amount to social science target practice.<\/p>\n

First lets talk about the sex and gender politics going on here. The parade of white dudes showing sun-kissed blonde girls captured behind their beautiful retina displays sets the tone. Not a single woman took the stage at this event and I can\u2019t remember a time where one ever did. It is no surprise then, that so much of an Apple event is subject to the male gaze. The unmistakable, slow motion ejaculatory climax that occurs at 1:17 of this Mac Pro assembly video<\/a> is an excellent example. These machines aren\u2019t just sexy: they are<\/i> sex. The audience is encouraged to grope and gaze at these devices with the explicit promise that \u201cyou will absolutely love this.\u201d The devices are simultaneously masculine and feminine, but their queered identity never transgresses normative sex politics. When we want to treat the iPad as an object of desire<\/a> or a subservient assistant<\/a> it can be a woman. When it is a \u201ckiller\u201d machine capable of productive work the presentation shifts to talking about the collaboration between the masculine user and the efficient machine. Did we mention stuff goes in and out of the ports faster than ever?<\/p>\n

The efficiency and glamour of Apple products is also displayed through equal parts Platonic essence of computing and Puritanical cleanliness. No one\u2019s desktop looks as clean and orderly as the demo machines on stage. Our content is never that polished or interesting. Emails are always invitations to sushi and never your phone bill showing your data overage charges. A demo never contains a bad photo of your cat or a tedious expense report. The ideal Platonic form of computing demoed on stage is sexualized but never intimate. We\u2019re seeing the aspirant minority report computer<\/a>, not the cozy workstation. The iPad is the only divergence from this trend. The \u201cmagical and revolutionary device\u201c was first demoed in a lounge chair<\/a>. The reclining Steve Jobs described it as \u201cmore intimate than a laptop and more capable than a smartphone.\u201d The very first thing he does on it is read the newspaper. He suggests that the tablet might be sitting in the kitchen, waiting for you to pick it up and buy over-priced movie tickets from Fandango.<\/p>\n

Framing the machine in the world (rather than the machine framing the world as Heidegger might have it) is essential to giving it distinction and enrolling it in the target consumer\u2019s habitus. Here is a list of people and things that were used as subjects for product demos in this last event:<\/p>\n