My biography is increasingly mediated by the net , even more than it was in college . I ’m blogging more , using OKCupid , and repping the shit out of my composition all over Facebook . I detain up late imbibing and claver with multitude , which is what I also did when I was in mediate school ( without the drinking ) . It ’s in time like these that the lyrics of Gary Numan seem to speak to my lifestyle , one that I ’m sure many share .
Gary Numan , the enigmatic , robotic man behind the reach single “ car ” ( ‘ 79 ) , might just have been a heavy seer during the ’ fourscore and unwittingly prognosticate thing like the internet and Facebook – in the film man , the same might be said of David Cronenberg ; his films scanner ( ‘ 81 ) and Videodrome ( ‘ 83 ) for sure have a special place in media theory Shangri-la .
With Numan ’s first album , Tubeway Army ( ‘ 78 ) , it was already clear that Numan ’s songwriting was concern with the human relationship between man and machine and what we would now call the post - human condition . It include language like “ Me I ’ve just died / but some machine hold open on humming / I ’m just an extra slice of dead meat to keep run , ” from the track “ Life Machine . ” Anyone listening to a lot of Gary Numan will comment that the Holy Writ “ me ” figures intemperately in his lyric . The vocal “ My sexual love is a Liquid ” from the same record album feature the business “ ca n’t meet you face - to - face / There are no corners to hide in my elbow room / No doors , no window , no fire place . ” In our clip , this is a clamorous comment on the way the net mediates social relations .
Numan ’s following record album , Replicas ( ‘ 79 ) , could n’t be more drenched with prophetic visions of the internet and Facebook . The orifice line of “ Me ! I Disconnect from You ” – in itself a charged title – are metaphors for bodge Facebook relationships : “ The alarm rang for days / you could tell from the conversations / I was wait by the screen / I could n’t recognize my photograph / Me , I disconnect from you ” – the line about the screen does n’t make a lot of sense in the context of the recent ’ seventy , unless Numan was specifically talking about an conceive of form of communication . It much goes without saying that “ disconnecting ” from someone entail end a Facebook relationship or , even bad , Diamond State - friending someone . It does n’t even ask depth psychology to see why the next track , “ Are ‘ admirer ’ electric car ? ” is racy with Facebook signification . The track “ You Are in My Vision ” expect critiques of television by theorists like Marshall Mcluhan , Jean Baudrillard , and though not a theorizer , by nature Cronenberg in Scanners and Videodrome , with its lines “ Fade to screens of ferocity / Like a TV CRT screen but silent / Where the victims are all paid by the hour . ”
The Pleasure Principle ( ‘ 79 ) , recorded after Replicas , is Numan ’s most laud record album and certainly his most pop , mostly because of the hit “ Cars . ” Again , this album is like a treatise on the post - human condition , and its song “ Metal ” wait to the Japanese cyberpunk picture Tetsuo : The Iron Man ( ‘ 89 ) , feature the strain “ the sound of metal I want to be you . ” The follow - up to The Pleasure Principle , Telekon ( ‘ 80 ) is likewise ripe with songs and song title that are evocative of the internet , such as “ I Dream of Wires ” and “ Joy Circuit . ” It ’s not difficult to make the casing that these other Numan albums in exceptional are highly suggestive and obvious metaphor for something that did n’t even subsist yet as we know it now .
After Telekon , Numan ’s popularity diminished until he jump to gain a new audience interested in various subgenres of music like “ dark wave ” and industrial with the 1997 album Exile . During his period of relative unpopularity , however , he maintained his devotee infrastructure and even released a live record album ennoble White Noise in 1985 , the same year Don Delilo ’s postmodernist novel on media saturation and consumerism , White Noise , was published – yet another rum phylogenetic relation with ethnical currents and trends .
Like Cronenberg in the motion-picture show world , Numan produce Song and albums that have a aerofoil appeal for their spectacle and voguish sounds ( Cronenberg ’s moving-picture show have the appeal of being vulgar - out horror films while also making compelling argument about medium and society ) that at the same metre emit of a near prophetic , insightful vision of a culture increasingly mediated by machines .
This article by Dan Hoffmanoriginally come out at Thought Catalog . You should watch over Thought Catalog on Twitterhere .
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