Human Desire in Software

One point that came up in lecture this week was on how software keeps users from dealing with more complex problems so that the users only experiences signals from the complex noise of code. This concept that the producers of software think that there is a human desire for simplicity in technology is played out through the illusion of chocie and control within this limited system. Tara McPherson’s article “Reload: Livenes, Mobility, and the Web” brings forth the idea that human’s need a certain degree of hope of transformation in order to deal with our current existence within the digital age. Yet is she completely correct in saying that we, as users, need the internet’s illusion of transformation through the click, browsing or is this not necessary for a sense of current subjectivity? Have we been trained by software to have these desires or are they intrinsic to human nature? TO further complicate this McPherson talks about an older medium, television, that has previously trained us. McPherson is optimistic about technology activating human desire, but I cannot get past the programmers behind the software who make the decision to activate specific desires. This brings me back to the last point of section last week: where is there a space for resistance? Mathew Fuller in “It looks like you’re writing a letter” writes how word parasites, corrals and rides our desire for autonomous control. Here lies my question: if programs leech out our desire for autonomy through the illusion of control and choice, then how can an argument be made for these programs activating our actual human desires?