Quasi means sharing similar attributes even though at the outset any similarity was not intended.
A smart phone is a quasi totalitarian device, meaning its primary role is to accomplish a totality of functions for the user. Functions that were previously segregated in the past.
With a smart phone a user can make a phone call, take a photo, surf the Internet, buy groceries, book a flight, make a payment, write, send and receive mail, watch the news or view a movie, read a book, check the time, the weather, check various elements of your health, use your phone as credit card or use it as a GPS navigational app, etc.
A few decades ago you needed a separate medium or source/venue to accomplish any of the tasks enumerated above. An individual used a telephone to make a call, a camera to a take photo, a TV to watch a program, a book to read a novel, a newspaper to read the news, a computer to surf the Net, and go to different stores to buy food or goods, etc…
The fact merely underlines the point that “the medium is the message” because it is the medium that shapes and controls the scale and form of human association and action.
Marshall McLuhan
If Marshall McLuhan’s analysis is right about the role of a medium in shaping and controlling “the scale and form of human association and action”, then a smart phone is potentially creating a totalitarian mindset with the user who is unknowingly submitting to a single medium, like Google, which is a global corporate entity, to control and manipulate all functions for an individual, generating a totalitarian system.
To what extent did a device like a smart phone become instrumental in creating what Michael Rectenwald describes as a totalitarian threat hovering our democratic institutions and government?
The most pressing matter facing advocates of liberty today is the prospect of the political and economic establishment completing the institution of a totalitarian state. There is no other way to read the multipronged approach and the political maneuverings that political operatives are taking to rule under “Biden.” I put “Biden” in quotation marks here because the current president of the United States is not a singular person named Joe Biden. It is a politburo consisting of party rulers and advisers, ruling by executive fiat, plus, as I’ll discuss, corporate-state apparatuses. Make no mistake, the power grab that is underway poses the most grievous threat to liberty in recent history.
The signals could not be any clearer. In addition to the swath of executive orders, clearly composed by politburo members and aimed at extending federal power, the political establishment has initiated a growing body of laws which would, if passed, consolidate uniparty rule for the foreseeable future…
An Historical Juncture, Michael Rectenwald
