Digital Delirium

Throughout previous evolution, we have protected the central nervous system by outering this or that physical organ in tools, housing, clothing, cities. But each outering of individual organs was also an acceleration and intensification of the general environment until the central nervous system did a flip. We turned turtle. The shell went inside, the organs outside. Turtles with soft shells become vicious. That's our present state. ---Marshall McLuhan Now we know why the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are so important in the POP culture vortex. They amplify our condition as future-(Now) fallout within a hyper-outering. The Kroker's have been mapping digital implosions since the mid-eighties with works such as: Hacking the Future, Data Trash, Spasm, The Last Sex, and Panic Encyclopedia. Their virus continues to spread with their latest installment; Digital Delirium a cold printing from the "severed NET", for those who don't have access to www.ctheory.com on a daily basis. Now that Deep Blue has erased the postmodern mind with digital chaotics. Your groovy techno-job is not far behind--this is the book you'll need to sit on as your begging for some spare change from some floating Laptop--mumbling the Kroker mantra: Speed economy, but slow jobs. Speed images, but slow eyes. Speed finance, but slow morality. Speed sex, but slow desire. Speed globaliztion, but slow localization. Speed media, but slow communication. Speed talk, but no thought. Digital Delirium invokes the spasm of pan-capitalism becoming its Other--virtual surplus. In post-media space reality twins itself as "unequal" flesh overcoming itself through mirroring digital mutation. The body reconfigures with "Micro-soft hearts," "real video" eyes, and PUSH lips. These are the new hyper-(soft)-shell organs, for transparent turtles snapping at their own shadows. Karen Eliot

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