The understanding of technology as rational means to well-defined ends does not make sense anymore. To a still greater extent the usage of digital technologies is compulsive, and without clear purpose. It would be tempting to interpret such repetitive and useless behaviour in a Batailleian sense as an accumulation of excess energy, which would cause a state of ecstasy that encounters the hegemony of utility. However, the compulsive behaviour is only apparently useless. The circuit of exuberant energy produced by the compulsive user is the very life nerve of the anonymous digital industry, which absorbs every click, finger slide, retweet, like or Google-search – deliberately as well as compulsively – to ensure its growth and power. In this sense, technology seems to be neither a sheer material extension of human rationality, nor an abundant source of excess energy, but a blind, ravenous, and limitless will to nothing but itself. Bataille’s notion of excess energy is indeed an obvious choice for interpreting the compulsive behaviour of digital culture. Although Bataille’s reception of Nietzsche is evident, he only slightly touches upon the obvious relationship between his notion of excess energy and the will. Adopting the metaphysics of will, developed by Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and others in the 19th century will help to diagnose an already arrived future, where no energy is left to transgress binary logic.
Why bright city lights dazzle and illuminate: A cognitive science approach to urban promises