I read the following blurb on
this website promoting
this book by Shane Hipps.
Like the magician’s sleight-of-hand, we are distracted and enamored by the entertainment and efficiency of our technologies. But most of us stand oblivious to trick played on our mind. Despite our best intentions, and regardless of what information our media convey, all media have a hidden bias with the power to shape nearly every aspect of life without our ever knowing it.
I haven't even read the book (and frankly, I stopped reading the review after this paragraph, mostly because I was walking around in a state of euphoria exclaiming "Oh man!"), but I think Mr. Hipps has a word on the tip of his tongue here. And I think that word is presticogitation.
Presticogitation, according to linguist James VandenBosch is defined as "rapid mental processing that commands compliance because of its speed and beauty." Nathan Bierma devoted his Chicago
Tribune column to the the word
here, and has a nice collection of related links on his
website.
But is presticogitation the right word here? After all, presticogitation presumably presupposes a certain individual with a motive and a means. But there's not a person (or even a group of people) behind technology. It's like this big abstract being out there controlling it. (This abstract being is probably also the antecedent of
they, as in
they should lower taxes.) Maybe it's God. Maybe it's 'The Man' (or its more gender-inclusive variant, 'The Person'). Whatever
it is, I have a hunch that there are at least moderate levels of presticogitation involved.