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    Gadget Culture and the Pursuit of Happiness
    Gadget Culture and the Pursuit of Happiness
    Gadget Culture and the Pursuit of Happiness
    Ebook52 pages37 minutes

    Gadget Culture and the Pursuit of Happiness

    By Petra Rehling

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    About this ebook

    The late Steve Jobs has become a figurehead of our modern “gadget culture.” His ubiquitous “iThings” have bestowed meaning to our boring lives and profane identities and redefined the world for us. As everything is momentous now, we need to constantly search for more and often assign meaning to the simplest of things. We sanctimoniously accept that our modern existence as digital natives is ridiculed by Lolcats, which indulge in invisible objects and make fun of our skills, beliefs, desires and occupations, because in their own, linguistically-challenged way, they are in fact celebrating the endearing stupidities and idiosyncrasies of their “hoomanz.” There are accidental Internet celebrities, who move our hearts with “messages,” like Matt Harding, who has literally danced the “happy dance” around the world in our stead. While Lolcats hold up a mirror to a flawed humanity, Matt Harding and Steve Jobs have managed to “summarize” the world for us with however censored inventories. They also remind us that in times of GPS it is important to locate ourselves in the digitalized universe. In an era of intense discomfort, with disasters and apocalyptic visions all around us, iThings, memes and viral videos guide us through our lives and have taken on a central role in our daily pursuit of happiness.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPetra Rehling
    Release dateJan 6, 2014
    ISBN9781310871757
    Gadget Culture and the Pursuit of Happiness
    Author

    Petra Rehling

    Petra Rehling is a German sinologist, freelance journalist, artist, and independent scholar. Until recently she has worked as Associate Professor in an English Department at a Taiwanese university. Her main research is in popular culture, especially film, media and cultural studies. She has spent extended time periods for her research in Hong Kong and Taiwan, and her publications include a German book on Hong Kong cinema (2005), articles on Wong Kar-wai, science fiction, wuxia, cyberculture, and the Harry Potter phenomenon. She publishes both in English and in German.

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      Book preview

      Gadget Culture and the Pursuit of Happiness - Petra Rehling

      Gadget Culture and the Pursuit of Happiness

      How digital technology is sending us on our bucket quest

      Petra Rehling

      Cyberculture Studies

      This eBook is an extract of the upcoming book

      Boring – The Pursuit of Happiness in Today’s Gadget Culture

      (Working Title)

      © Published by Petra Rehling

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favourite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy.

      Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      Alternative Title:

      Boom de yada, wheres mah bukkit? The world according LOLrus, Steve, Matt and the cats

      Kamen, Germany 2014

      Cover art by Petra Rehling

      This essay was presented at the Oxford Conference Visions of Humanity in Cyberculture, Cyberspace and Science Fiction, organized by Inter-disciplinary.net, in July 2012. Draft paper version available in Nicholas Van Orden (ed.), Boom de yada, wheres mah bukkit? The world according LOLrus, Steve, Matt and the cats, Navigating Cybercultures, Oxford: The Interdisciplinary Press, 2013, 31-39, eBook.

      Smashwords Edition

      Table of Contents

      I. Introduction

      II. LOLworld

      III. Celebrate Earth

      IV. Going Places

      V. The Bucket Quest

      Notes

      Bibliography

      About the author

      I.

      Introduction

      More than once throughout history, happiness has been mistaken for pleasure. From being a divine gift, being happy has slowly evolved into a human obligation, the foundation for, so Darrin McMahon, today’s semitragic and self-indulgent Western culture.1 Yet, the saturation of the media with images of destruction and violence during the decade of terror and natural disasters alongside the digital revolution has been quite challenging to general composure. This article focuses on two cyberculture phenomena from that time and their representation of the human condition. An earlier conference paper version of this essay is called Boom de yada, wheres mah bukkit? And there is a reason for this celebratory title. Matt Harding’s dance videos and LOLcat images stand for the self-congratulatory and cheerful presentations of the world of digital natives that have become the staple of everyday online culture; despite their different histories and backgrounds, they are creative actions that target the same audience. There is a certain playfulness implied in both cats and dance. Both pages are making their millions of visitors cheerful. Both sites, which invite users to consume as well as to participate in the projects, are closely related to advertising and exemplify a common cyberculture dynamic: the commercialization of user-generated content. The Internet has undeniably turned into a major supplier of pre-packaged emotions and destroyer of boredom.2 It appears that of late the last thing people want in their lives, in which simplification and ease have become major buzzwords, is complexity. Accordingly, some principles are beginning to sound more and more like advertising slogans: Simple pleasures! Easy going! Quick access! Fast learning!

      How have ubiquitous digital devices

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