諸行無常

"... the introspective slash emotional slash confessional mode predominated. For a time, it appeared as though this would continue to be the case prior to the advent of the modern cellular telephone, which heralded a new kind of technology that would eventually enable one to take a picture of oneself, embellish and augment those pictures, then instantly transmit those images to the cellular telephones of other individuals, simply with the press of a button."

"Don't listen to that stuff," Moon said. "It's anti-sapien propaganda." The holo-girl flickered as her projector circuits misfired, cutting out audio and skipping ahead. Every now and again this would interrupt her, resulting in a pause where she would look around the room, as if she had lost her train of thought, before resuming her script.

"... sense of self worth rapidly shifted from the internal to the external. This technological epoch allowed for near instantaneous dissemination of the image and saw most industries increasingly invested in appearance and 'brand' with the subject matter of most popular songs following suit."

Dita looked closely at the holo-girl. She was designed to look young. Her cheeks were healthy and plump, her lashes long. Her model was very well done. The folds of her skirt tousled themselves realistically with the movements of her torso, as if they had real weight. Dita had read books about how humans long ago loved objects with a kind of sacred intensity. How they admired the beauty of statues and paintings so much they installed them in their homes. Dita looked up at the holo-girl whose eyes scanned the room blindly as she talked. Emotionless, blank eyes that did not see, deaf ears that did not hear.

"... that the image holds power. What began as an act of sharing cherished moments and information with a few special people soon turned into an exercise in solipsism, in dominance and promotion and influence -- an insidious shift from, 'haha, hey look at this' to 'look at me.'"

Dita recalled reading a book written by a human about what the future might look like and was so struck by how wrong and how simplistic it was. Apparently there were many of these kinds of books. The humans it seemed spent an inordinate amount of time recording their predictions about the future. She marveled at how they used their intellect to justify absurd inventions and wild fantasies - and also at how bleak and terrible these imagined futures collectively were. It was as if the humans actively resisted anticipating anything other than moral and sociopolitical decline. That things could not keep getting better. That they could only get worse.

"... to perpetuate the duplicity and disingenuity of living as if unwatched -- to feign non-performance on a platform invented for the sole purpose of broadcasting broadcasting broadcasting..."

The holo-girl had apparently suffered some kind of critical error. She repeated the word over and over again, like a car stalling against a very steep hill. How long had she been talking for? Dita wondered. Would she snap out of it perhaps, or would this be her final loop. Maybe they had something in common after all. An obsolete design for an obsolete purpose. Death by repetition.