Wednesday, April 26, 2006

Masking the Un-Masked

With Apple's release last week of boot-camp, allowing mac users to finally be able to run windows on their, um, macs, we have reached the final resolution of one of the great corporate struggles of the 20th century. Unfortunately, PC owners cannot use OS X, but that is to be expected. Reciprocation is over-rated in Steve Jobs' universe. Unless of course it is very lucrative, in the case of the iPod. Of course if Jobs stood on principle in that case and made iPods only Mac compatible he would have been a veritable iDiot--but let us not ignore the larger repercussions of this transition. A mac running windows. Think about it, its like the Cold-War is over. Coca Cola is being sold in a vendor by the Red Square. Plans of world domination usually end up in one of these pernicious compromises. So can someone tell me what it means to have a mac? Has it always been our dark hidden desire, as mac users, to finally be able to run free in the application-rich fields of Microsoft Windows? I agree with Lacan that the desire principle, unlike jouissance, is based on the impossibility of actual gratification--once that desire becomes a reality, it is no longer of interest. In fact, it could become a shock for a subject to realize that the thing that he or she desires is not only possible but now a reality. Or is it more like jouissance in the sense that you can now revel in it, almost masturbatory, a sort of final connection with the Other. When I saw the MacBook Pro running XP, I was flabbergasted--speechless for a moment, then I remembered all those versions of UnReal that were denied to me in my childhood, trying to convince myself that Photoshop LE was as much fun and performed better on my Quadra 650 than any PC. Why that mattered is hardly the appropriate question, the times they are a-changing--uniformity is the name of the game in a globalized world. You can't possibly have two different political economy systems, they have to be one. You can't have multiple capitals for cinema, it has to be one and it has to be hollywood. The next thing I predict is that Coke will invade Pepsi, and then the Capitalist Messiah will appear and begin the final End of Days Sale.

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