Runaway and Uncontrollable as a Defining Feature of This Century

The sad and fascinating feature of our times is that an increasing number of things that make up an inseparable part of our everyday lives is out of our control. From Google mail, internet applications, fossil energy, and risk estimations to our own selves. The irony of the situation is that both the trappings of modernity that surround us have come of age somewhere between 19th and 20th century, and therefore are not new or exciting in themselves. To this adds a seemingly subterranean shift in our self-perception, self-representation and self-development that we try but not always succeed to control. Indeed, decades if not centuries of development of social and human sciences do threated to reduce humans to nothing much than bundles of more or less idiosyncratic reactions that invariably follow same probability laws that do large collections of bees, animal herds and plain random samples. Economies of scale march forward, offer us ever cheaper and perfect material world, and put increasing premium on ephemeral and unstable factors. If to change ones sense of self is as easy as taking a medication, downloading a software and receiving a therapy session, then the core of our decision making power also shifts from within the sphere of our life-world into the non-human systems that surround us and that increasingly take lead in how we spend our time, how we perceive ourselves and how our moods are swayed. Cinema as an essentially a scientific and scholarly instrument can be a case in point.