A permanent state of desire > a permanent state of need.
The newspaper, economically, is a superior technology to X. But after a day of scrolling X , you don't trust the newspaper anymore. Newspaper news seems fake—or potentially fake, untrustworthy. It's not that X acts is inherently more trustworthy, hardly; it's just epistemologically destabilizing.
Meeting someone at a bar is better than meeting someone on Tinder, but Tinder is easier. You have more opportunities to fail. Going to the movies is better than TikTok—but TikTok is free, and you can watch anything. A book is better than the phone article—but with the phone article, you can scan in 30 seconds, extract your infotainment. The book might take a few days. Fast culture dominates, literally dominates, slow culture; slow culture will keep dying…
Do our sensibilities organize technology, or technology our sensibilities?
Arguably, the people who built the pyramids were the first machine; the Pharaoh cult was the first machine-learning software.
Priesthoods come into existence to justify the extraction of labor-time from the villagers.