The Machine

"The machine is a powerful auxiliary to equality by default; it levels the world.  In so doing, it lifts me up as a spectator in relation to this world put at my disposal.  Seated in front of my screen, I participate in the technological mastery of the world.  I am above it and attend to it as I wish.  My ego finds this quite satisfying.

Unfortunately, man-as-spectator is living an illusion.  He believes that the machine is at his service; he feels more or less consciously that with the help of the machine he is able to raise himself up to a viewpoint superior to the world, when in fact he is falling into a trap: the machine produces alienation.  Thanks to the information machine, the external world no longer stops at the threshold of the home; it penetrates, it resounds, it invades intimacy, and it does so in the form of a scintillating and meaningless spectacle.  Man-as-spectator, who consumes every God-given day his portion of televised news, distances himself from his own world in order to open the door to a foreign world devoid of meaning...

Man-as-spectator becomes blind to living realities." - Philippe Bénéton, Equality by Default