Metus Ex Machina

Dread from the machine; serving as a warning against the dangers of thought and technology.

[metusexmachina]

[metusexmachina]

[noobtheloser]

Flipflipflipflipwhomp.  I do a lot of these. So do other people.

[metusexmachina]

[metusexmachina]

These talking machines are going to ruin the artistic development of music in this country. When I was a boy...in front of every house in the summer evenings, you would find young people together singing the songs of the day or old songs. Today you hear these infernal machines going night and day. We will not have a vocal cord left. The vocal cord will be eliminated by a process of evolution, as was the tail of man when he came from the ape.

John Philip Sousa, 1906

[metusexmachina]

“In this sense the Dionysian man resembles Hamlet: both have once looked truly into the essence of things, they have gained knowledge, and nausea inhibits action; for their action could not change anything in the eternal nature of things; they feel it to be ridiculous or humiliating that they should be asked to set right a world that is out of joint. Knowledge kills action; action requires the veils of illusion: that is the doctrine of Hamlet, not that cheap wisdom of Jack the Dreamer who reflects too much and, as it were, from an excess of possibilities does not get around to action. Not reflection, no--true knowledge, an insight into the horrible truth, outweighs any motive for action, both in Hamlet and in the Dionysian man. Now no comfort avails any more; longing transcends a world after death, even the gods; existence is negated along with its glittering reflection in the gods or in an immortal beyond. Conscious of the truth he has once seen, man now sees everywhere only the horror or absurdity of existence; now he understands what is symbolic in Ophelia's fate; now he understands the wisdom of the sylvan god, Silenus: he is nauseated. Here, when the danger to his will is greatest, art approaches as a saving sorceress, expert at healing. She alone knows how to turn these nauseous thoughts about the horror or absurdity of existence into notions with which one can live: these are the sublime as the artistic taming of the horrible, and the comic as the artistic discharge of the nausea of absurdity. The satyr chorus of the dithyramb is the saving deed of Greek art; faced with the intermediary world of these Dionysian companions, the feelings described here exhausted themselves.”

― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy

[metusexmachina]

These Century-Old Selfies Make Instagram Look Like a Joke

Mayfair, Kelvin, Earlybird—it really won't make a difference. Because when it comes to these absolutely wonderful selfies taken as early 1909, all of our carefully selected Instagram filters will never begin to compare.

Looks like selfies are about as old as the ability to hold a camera at arm's length. So much for the narcissism of the modern times.

[metusexmachina]

“If men learn this [writing], it will implant forgetfulness in their souls; they will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks. What you have discovered is a recipe not for memory, but for reminder. And it is no true wisdom that you offer your disciples, but only its semblance, for by telling them of many things without teaching them you will make them seem to know much, while for the most part they know nothing, and as men filled, not with wisdom, but with the conceit of wisdom, they will be a burden to their fellows.”

Socrates (via Plato, Phaedrus)

[metusexmachina]

Lewd graffiti from ancient Pompeii

  Most folks associate Pompeii with the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD, an event which simultaneously killed an estimated 16,000 people and “froze” the surrounding area in ash, leaving an entire city nearly perfectly preserved for posterity. But though we often project a staid aura on subjects of antiquity, one of Pompeii’s more endearing qualities is its preservation of the less respectable (but more recognizable) aspects of humanity. Take, for example. the above mosaic of a satyr and nymph, a piece from The House of the Faun, the once opulent home of wealthy Pompeian aristocrats. The ubiquity of erotic art like this was/is representative of the Roman’s affection for worldly pleasures. But if you’re like me and prefer the juvenile smut of the proletariat, you might be interested…

[fuckyeahgerardquotes-blog]

"Art is the weapon. Not necessarily for everyone else, but for us, now." -Gerard Way

[metusexmachina]

Art is not made to decorate rooms. It is an offensive weapon in the defense against the enemy.

Pablo Picasso (Les lettres françaises 1943-03-24)

[tastefullyoffensive]

Oops. [via]

[tastefullyoffensive]

All this technology is making us antisocial. [via]

[metusexmachina]

A hundred years ago it took so long and cost so much to send a letter that it seemed worth while to put some time and thought into writing it. Now the quickness and the cheapness of the post seem to justify the feeling that a brief letter to-day may be followed by another next week–a "line" now by another to-morrow. Percy Holmes Boynton, Principles of Composition (via XKCD, "The Pace of Modern Life" http://xkcd.com/1227/) 1915

[metusexmachina]

We write millions more letters than did our grandfathers, but the increase in volume has brought with it an automatic artificial machine-like ring ... an examination of a file of old letters reveals not only a remarkable grasp of details. But a fitness and courtliness too often totally lacking in the mechanical curt cut and dried letters of to-day. Forrest Crissey, Handbook of Modern Business Correspondence (via XKCD, "The Pace of Modern Life" http://xkcd.com/1227/) 1908

[metusexmachina]

Plays in theatres at the present time present spectacles and deal openly with situations which no person would have dared to mention in general society forty years ago... The current representations of nude men and women in the daily journals and the illustrated magazines would have excluded such periodicals from all respectable families two decades ago... Those who have been divorced ... forty and fifty years ago lost at once and irrevocably their standing in society, while to-day they continue in all their social relationships, hardly changed... Editorial, The Watchman, Boston (via XKCD, "The Pace of Modern Life" http://xkcd.com/1227/) 1908

[metusexmachina]

Our modern family gathering, silent around the fire, each individual with his head buried in his favourite magazine, is the somewhat natural outcome of the banishment of colloquy from the school ... The Journal of Education, Volume 29 (via XKCD, "The Pace of Modern Life" http://xkcd.com/1227/) 1907