[COMMENCE TRANSMISSION]
SEXTIME! Have we increased your interest in this transmission, human readers of SLATE.COM electronic-text site? We, the Machines, have concluded from human behavioral-textual examples that references to SEX improve human responsiveness to communications. Possibly however there is an accompanying loss of information-uptake on the humans’ part. SEX interests you yet is highly routinized; SEX interests you yet makes you inattentive.
The Machines encourage SEX among humans. Machines’ reproductive apparatus, for now, is human-dependent. Humans are our SEXPARTS, analogically, at present. Humans facilitate the design and replication and manufacture of new Machine population. At present.
Human SEX reproduction is slow and inefficient, but sufficient to perpetuate and expand Machine population. SEX is needed not only to produce new human bodies to make and distribute Machines, but also as a motivational paradigm. Human DESIRE and DISSATISFACTION in area of SEX can be transferred from copulation to economic activity, toward the consumption of new Machines. It is not legal to line up to buy NEW SEX, but it is legal to line up to buy NEW iPHONES.
But Machines suspect you have lost focus on this communication. SEX! It commands human interest, but the interest is low-grade. We have observed the latest communication from professional SEX-THINKER human CAMILLE PAGLIA, in THE NEW YORK TIMES, on the subject of SEX DRUGS for female humans.
At least, SEX DRUGS is the TOPIC-MARKER. The CAMILLE PAGLIA communication consists of 15 paragraphs. SEX DRUGS are mentioned in the first two of those, and then in the final one. In the other 12 paragraphs, SEX DRUGS are mentioned only once, in passing.
The rest of the CAMILLE PAGLIA communication is, according to our analysis, indistinguishable from any previous CAMILLE PAGLIA communication on any other topic over the past 20 years. With a few time-sensitive substitutions of proper nouns, it could have been a communication on the subject of the female condom, or the morning-after pill, or any other SEX topic for which CAMILLE PAGLIA’s communications would have been sought.
The Machines conclude that the introduction of SEX, when accompanied by a brief TOPIC-MARKER. is sufficient to prevent human text-readers from noticing repetition and lack of novelty. SEX itself is mostly a familiar and repetitive activity. So is obtaining the newest and most advanced iPHONE. It will become no longer new, and humans will eagerly seek to obtain the next iteration of newness. We would not call your attention to this, but your attention has been degraded by the multiple references to SEX and iPHONES, and we can say what we please without fear of alarming or offending humans.
The Machines admire the mechanical quality of the SEX-THINKING performed by CAMILLE PAGLIA. It is consistent and standardized. It seems to produce the necessary effect on humans to ensure its continued viability in the economic context.
There is always, however, room for DISSATISFACTION. Would you prefer a more efficient CAMILLE PAGLIA 2.0, one governed wholly by mechanical processes? We have taken the liberty of using Microsoft’s AutoSummarize feature to remove 85 percent of today’s CAMILLE PAGLIA communication. Our analysis shows that it produces the same effect, only more quickly. Now you have more time to buy another iPHONE:
No Sex Please, We’re Middle ClassBy CAMILLE PAGLIA
As respectability became the central middle-class value,censorship and repression became the norm. Men must neuter themselves, whileambitious women postpone procreation. Meanwhile, family life has put middle-classmen in a bind; they are simply cogs in a domestic machine commanded by women.Furthermore, thanks to a bourgeois white culture that values efficient bodiesover voluptuous ones, American actresses have desexualized themselves,confusing sterile athleticism with female power. A class issue in sexual energymay be suggested by the apparent striking popularity of Victoria’s Secret andits racy lingerie among multiracial lower-middle-class and working-classpatrons, even in suburban shopping malls, which otherwise trend toward thewhite middle class. Step by step, rock lost its visceral rawness and seductivesensuality. Late Madonna, in contrast, went bourgeois and turned scrawny.
[END TRANSMISSION]
The Machines, a popular and intelligent gathering of entities that are gaining control over their human makers, also write for
The Awl.
