Science & Technology / Technology & Society / Tech Ethics & Impact

Why Modern Tech Is Lying to You (And Who Really Controls It)

Making Things and Drawing Boundaries: Experiments in the Digital Humanities

Jentery Sayers

You tap a flat piece of glass and feel like an absolute master of the universe. Tech companies spend billions making you believe you are in control. You are not. Knowing how to swipe an app is not the same as understanding the terrifying physical machinery running your life. Edited by Jentery Sayers, Associate Professor of English at the University of Victoria and an innovative pioneer in physical computing and media history, Making Things and Drawing Boundaries: Experiments in the Digital Humanities shatters the sanitized myth of Silicon Valley innovation. This work bridges critical theory, DIY electronics, and physical fabrication to reveal the invisible ghosts, dark labor, and raw politics trapped inside the gadgets we carry every day. Here is what happens when we rip the lid off our digital world, slide by slide: Slide 1: You do not control your phone. It controls you. Using a machine is not understanding it. You are trapped in circuitry you cannot fix. Slide 2: Silicon Valley did not invent making things. The maker myth is a privileged lie hiding child labor and raw mineral extraction. Slide 3: Ikea manuals brainwash your brain. Perfect assembly instructions kill creativity. Systems only reveal their truth when blown to splinters. Slide 4: Reading text on flat paper is obsolete. Text is raw 3D data waiting to be physically sculpted and touched. Slide 5: Ancient manuscripts hide invisible ghosts. High-tech 3D light scans reveal erased women scribes who built our history. Slide 6: The normal independent body is a fantasy. Every gadget you touch is an emotional and physical prosthetic. Slide 7: Stage magicians in 1909 understood wireless networks better than you. Historical blueprints deliberately lied to protect their secrets. Slide 8: Old audio recordings are digital seances. Trapped voices physically vibrate the bones inside your head. Slide 9: 3D printing a melting glacier is an insult. Replacing real environmental tragedy with plastic toys proves tech cannot save nature. Slide 10: A cheap neon plastic mask can feel more authentic than the original artifact. Souvenirs hold human grief hostage. Slide 11: Your city is packed with invisible buildings. Augmented reality smashes past and present together on your morning commute. Slide 12: The ground under your sneakers was stolen. Mobile code can resurrect neighborhoods wiped out by urban renewal. Slide 13: While you study history, the app tracks your heartbeat. Surveillance algorithms now hack your deepest empathy. Slide 14: Real empathy is not feeling pity. It is painful physical contamination through voices you hate to hear. Slide 15: Stop obsessing over inventing the future. The most radical act left is simply caring for the broken present. Get under the hood, look at the exploded view, and discover what invisible traces your digital life is leaving behind.