Commentary on the object's "speech"

Looking back over the commentary this morning, I find that perhaps it went in the wrong direction toward the end. The object *wants* us to engage it in a virtual relationship. That's the teleology. The object wants us to forget that it's there (in this sense, the first few vignettes are okay).

But where I went wrong is in the section where the computer gets thrown overseas. This is part of its desire. This is part of its role as donor. So, the last few would go something like this.

"Hey, I'm glad that you're sending me away. We've had a great relationship, and I want to live on, if only in your memories of me." The object, of course, is being coy here. It wants us to send it to a virtual realm, distanced by time and the lack of image. What ends up happening though, is its trip into the obscene, into the exposing and decomposition of its working parts. It wants its guts to hang out for all to see, and this brings together a different kind of teleology that works toward a limit.

Its virtuality pushed to ecstasy, the object becomes more virtual than virtual: in a sense, perfectly in the real. It infiltrates the body and the earth itself, making for itself a new home inside the life and forces of the earth through diffusion. Pushed to its limit, we see a new teleology. Rather than wanting a virtual relationship, the computer, willing to give itself up to our desire (like Madeleine/Judy in Vertigo), the machine wants to merge. The digital will, it would seem, is to eventually converge (everything that rises must converge: one can imagine Watson the computer punching out the patronizing mother in the O'Connor story).

Hiding behinds its virtuality, the digital will to power lies in this ability to form relationships that are more virtual than virtual, that are real. The digital will seduces us with its virtuality to force its way into our bodies, into the earth, to become a world.

The digital will is in a state of becoming, its telos being that of a new world.