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Today's "1984" ad would have to include someone throwing a sledgehammer through an iMac, and similarly destroying an iPhone. It wouldn't be an advertisement fo

Today's "1984" ad would have to include someone throwing a sledgehammer through an iMac, and similarly destroying an iPhone. It wouldn't be an advertisement for any corporation though, because a truly game-changing act today would be to opt out of the extractive and coercive cycle of modern proprietary technology.

robertlagrant 2y ago
It was totally incongruous when it was made as well. Buying a computer from a company was never an act of rebellion.
- rvense 2y ago
  Rebellion can't be bought, but in the 1980's I think it was still an open question whether computers would ever be something that non-nerds wanted. In hindsight, it seems inevitable that general purpose, user friendly computers would crush everything, but was that really a given? Isn't there a possible world where IBM and/or Xerox do own everything and never make it past huge, expensive systems that were only made for specialists? For everyone here that loved our C64 or DOS PC, how many of our peers actively rejected early computers because they weren't fun to use?
- fanatic2pope 2y ago
  Besides which it seems to me that Apple has never really been against having a single giant corporation controlling everything you can see, do and say, they were just against that corporation not being Apple.
  - robertlagrant 2y ago
    I think they're pretty good at resisting that tendency, IMO. They're not pre-Musk Twitter or anything like that. Do you have examples?
Nasrudith 2y ago
What about rebelling against the cultural elements of rebelling? Much of the image of rebellion has been a futile cycle of (ironically) trying the same thing repeatedly and failing to make any changes. Not falling into the bullshit of old bearded white men who never had to work for a living, were total economic illiterates even if they called themselves economists, and have been dead-for centuries.

robertlagrant 2y ago

It was totally incongruous when it was made as well. Buying a computer from a company was never an act of rebellion.

rvense 2y ago
Rebellion can't be bought, but in the 1980's I think it was still an open question whether computers would ever be something that non-nerds wanted. In hindsight, it seems inevitable that general purpose, user friendly computers would crush everything, but was that really a given? Isn't there a possible world where IBM and/or Xerox do own everything and never make it past huge, expensive systems that were only made for specialists? For everyone here that loved our C64 or DOS PC, how many of our peers actively rejected early computers because they weren't fun to use?
fanatic2pope 2y ago
Besides which it seems to me that Apple has never really been against having a single giant corporation controlling everything you can see, do and say, they were just against that corporation not being Apple.
- robertlagrant 2y ago
  I think they're pretty good at resisting that tendency, IMO. They're not pre-Musk Twitter or anything like that. Do you have examples?

Nasrudith 2y ago

What about rebelling against the cultural elements of rebelling? Much of the image of rebellion has been a futile cycle of (ironically) trying the same thing repeatedly and failing to make any changes. Not falling into the bullshit of old bearded white men who never had to work for a living, were total economic illiterates even if they called themselves economists, and have been dead-for centuries.