In the image and likeness: machine, man, and imaginaries in circulation 235 private places and directed directly at consumers’ private places. The power of decision will not be explainable (Flusser, 1980, p. 1). Flusser’s imaginary society from the eighties material- izes today – 42 years later – particularly when considering the invisibility of processes shrouded in a discourse of complete freedom. On social media, I can be and show whatever I want; I can take control of my creation. I can be in contact with oth- ers on the other side of the world, just as we are here and now. I can interact with the machine that seems to feel and guess what I think. I can, but to what extent is the power of decision explainable or in my hands? It implies that the pseudo-transparency of the machine, all those machines we interact with daily in life (and the space where we undeniably live), turns obscure its presence and allow dreams and dystopian visions to remain linked to a distant future, a ‘when.’ Devoid of any apocalyptic undertones, the issue is that the current process of mediatization, gradual and continuous, not on the verge of happening but increasingly accelerating, places us in a present where being in mediatization is synon- ymous with being fused with the machinic dimension of life. Simple tasks like a bank payment, boarding at the airport, and identifying the next train become such a part of our daily lives that we hardly perceive the intersections of how we deal with time, others, and meanings in circulation. The black box pro- grams us and we remain caught in this game of programming and functioning. An even more emphatic example of this relationship involving the infrastructure discussed by Hepp, the dif- ferent media enunciators of Carlón, as an escalation of mediati- zation, is exemplified by virtual assistants, like the one in scene 3 that freed the subject from turning on the lights in the house and turning on the oven. There are many, including Alexa, Siri, and Cortana, all women, invisible in their physical materiality but effective in their transparency. Virtual assistants operate on our behalf according to our requests since we are in control, up to the point where Alexa, Siri, and Cortana know more about us than we do ourselves. Strangely, in such a complex world, our assistants continue to be portrayed as women to whomwe grant
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