At the dawn of the 20th century, the field of Psychology was coming into its own throuogh a long, and arguably misguided divorce from Philosophy. These days, Psychology and Philosophy often enjoy a friendly drink now and then, but during Psychology's years of coping with its newfound singledom, it got a little experimental with its tastes, much of which resulted in some bogus practices, but not all of it resulted in perceived sexual attraction to MILFs or electrocution as acceptable therapy.
One of Psychology's darlings from this time was the often misunderstood Schizophrenia, a condition characterized by extreme paranoia, delusions, splintered or "split" thinking, and more classically, hallucinations in the form of paracusia (hearing voices that aren't there). How we diagnose and view schizophrenia has experienced its own evolution over the century, examined with much more clarity now that Multiple Personality Disorder and Dementia are their own seperate and evolving things, but patterns emerged, even in its early history.
Shift now to another concept that was really starting to see the shape if its own shadow in the 20th century's first light; the computer. Between the design for Babbage's 'Difference Engine' alongside Lovelace's early programming for it, and the increasingly complex textile looms created for the booming fabric industry, looking back, it was almost inevitable that the computer, as we know it, would be invented.
But there was something more sinister swimming in those early computational thoughts, something that still echoes in our modern media-based technologies no matter how estranged they seem from Jacquard's loom or mechanical calculators. This questionable zeitgeist, might have been taken as a warning by a select few with one eye on the future at the time, but for patients suffering from Schizophrenia, it was a relentless terror. This phantoma paranoia was usually referred to as the Influencing Machine.
The name, self describing as it is, still doesn't fully land on the longevity of the concept. The Influencing Machine was a recuring delusion that surfaced with Schizophrenic patients enough to recognize it as a pattern, and despite small variances in its imagined construction, the concept always involved a device that, from afar, caused the patient to experience all sorts of human discomforts such as tingling in the limbs, involuntary ejaculation, burns or damage to the skin, pathological and maladaptive behaviors, and visual or auditor hallucinations. This machine was fear broadcaster, and the patients were the antenna.
However, the Influencing Machine was, as far as this author is aware, never described as being autonomous. In patient descriptions, as well as third party accounts of those who studied said patients, the Influencing Machine needed an operator, and in most cases, many operators. The Schizophrenic patients believed they were being persecuted by this group which builds and operates such devices for the purpose of controlling the target.
If this is started to sound somewhat familiar as you sit surrounded by our modern electronic conveniences, you are not alone. More than a few individuals through the decades of the 20th century, some perhaps of sounder mind than others, looked at radio and television with a certain level of distrust, even going so far as to birth a sort of "Kill Your TV" movement as media moguls drove increasingly high dollar amounts into influencing public opinion. These technologies evolved, becoming both more advanced and cheaper to manufacture, making it easier for more and more people to consume their message, to be influenced from afar, sometimes dangerously designed to trigger an emotional reaction.
The evolution didn't stop. If one were to drop a frog in a pan of boiling water, the frog would immediately try to jump out. But if the water is cool when the frog is placed in the pan, and the heat slowly increased, the frog is boiled alive. The Influencing Machine, if we are to use such a name for the pervasive media that permeates every aspect of our modern lives, reached a critical temperature in the 90's with the advent of the Internet. On a sufficiently long timeline, it seems like the Internet exploded out of nowhere, but we look at it from the perspective of our deleriously short attention spans, the Internet was a slow-moving mudslide of information. In short, we never really noticed the increasing temperature, and are now being boiled alive.
The Influencing Machine and its operators are nothing short of alive and well in this increasingly divided world of 2022, and each of us is experiencing the effects of this nefarious device as we navigate the stresses of a global pandemic, idealogical tensions, paroxysms from hypothetical threats, bruising from banging on the steel bars of the Capitalist Cage, the existential dread of climate change...the list goes on, and forms a recipe for an insanity cocktail. This mashup of realities, some very real and others very imagined, continues to boil, boil with toil and trouble until, perhaps, our collective minds break.
To this end, the point at which we can no longer tell the difference between our own thoughts and those generated by the Influence Machine, the operators drive us. Asking why is almost a moot point, and I am not sure knowing the answer would help us stop the engine, but until then, smith yourself a tin foil hat if you must, and resist.