consumptive disorder

like slow growing bacterium dividing and consuming itself, the corporate reflection of ourselves gives birth and devours itself endlessly.
as google sets its conglomerate teeth into youtube, another aspect of our social environment withers and our message of medium, loses a few words, shrinks, retracts and is no more. and we become less for it.

aside from the concerns of the twin giant of advertising/marketing, what becomes available is another database of consumption. another data goldmine of social interactivity, network and habits, compiled, catalogued and vulnerable to future's plundering. and mark my words, every database will be plundered. simply a matter of time.

our development as a consumer society has touched every aspect of modern life, right down to our identities. too often people mistake products as a lifestyle or philosophy. i would even venture to suggest that some corporations benifet from this confusion and may even actively encourage it.

it is already well documented that google keeps records of searches tied to individual IP addresses, and as it expands (and contracts) so too will its records of human activity. lacking a morally objective founding directives, as with a centre of study, all this information will inevitably be put to subjective use, whether the intention be good, bad or indifferent. the things we buy, read, and watch, will be shaped by the way we engage with what is made available to us. formulating our identity, cultural interations, human relationships and encroaching further into the private domain of our lives.

by trying to give people what they want based solely upon our consumption habits, we become in danger of simply regurgitating into the dinner we are about to consume. diminishing our world into a highly personalized reflection of the same article, picture, and lifestyle. one nation under one available possibility.

there once was a physical illness of Consumption, (now known as tuberculosis). so named for it seemed to consume people inside out with bloody cough, fever, pallor, and long relentless wasting. there now is a social illness of consumption threatening us from within. one can only hope that our prognosis is not terminal. coincedentally, tuberculosis has become drug resistant due to our overconsumption of antibiotics, and is slowly on the rise.

we must combat this disease before it consumes us whole. we must subvert the available, invent the impossible, and protect the present from shriveling up into nothingness.