In the 1970s, a new kind of television set was developed—QUBE (Question Your Tube). Question pointed to its interactive features. The device had a keyboard that allowed the viewer to choose among articles of clothing depicted onscreen, for example. It also made it easy to vote. For instance, the screen might show candidates for principal at a local school. With a keystroke, viewers could make their choice.
Flusser recognizes a fundamental distinction between choices on the QUBE system and existential decisions. A “temporal and existential abyss”1 gapes between the latter and their unforeseeable consequences. No one can experience the consequences of a real decision right away. Thus, doubt attends all existential decisions; they are beset by hesitation and wavering. Yet Flusser claims that the QUBE system enabled people to break down existential decisions into “dotlike, atomic decisions”—in other words, actomes, which are “instantaneously effective” [augenblicklich wirksam].
On the model of QUBE, Flusser pictures the politics of the future. Such a system would enable “direct village democracy.”2 Flusser dreams of a “deideologized democracy” where knowledge and qualification count above all: “It means that, in the QUBE system, the competency [Kompetenz] of a given participant and the weight of a given area of responsibility [Kompetenz], freed from all ideology, come into plain view.”3 In this deideologized democracy, politicians would be replaced by experts who administrate and optimize the system. As a result, political representatives and parties would become superfluous. Furthermore, Flusser associates QUBE with a utopian way of living, where leisure and political engagement coincide:
For QUBE subscribers, leisure is already the site of effective decisions. Now the screen is the site of their political, social, and cultural engagement, and their private space is already the res publica—a communal concern [die öffentliche Sache].4
Politics is leisure. In the idyllic future that Flusser envisions, political participation would move along without any stressful, long-winded “discourse.”
Today, the “exceptionally improved QUBE system involving a great portion of humanity”5 that Flusser dreamed about has become reality. Indeed, digital voting occurs at every hour of the day. Now, politics occurs “in passing,” as it were. The like button is the digital ballot. The Internet or the smartphone is the new polling station. And clicking a mouse or making a quick keystroke has replaced “discourse.”
Like his idea of networking, Flusser’s “direct village democracy” exhibits utopian features. Counter to what he claims, a political decision, in the proper sense, always represents an existential decision. “Dotlike, atomic decisions” that are “instantaneously effective” sink to the level of nonbinding, inconsequential purchases. The difference between voting and buying is wholly suspended on the very screen of QUBE. One casts a vote just as one purchases something at the store. “Leisure” amounts to shopping. Here, the subject is not Homo ludens but Homo economicus.
Shopping presupposes no discourse. Consumers buy what they wish, following personal inclination. Like is their motto. They are not citizens. Responsibility for the community defines citizens. Consumers lack responsibility, above all. In the digital agora—where polling place and market, polis and economy, collapse into one—voters behave like consumers. The day is coming when the Internet will replace polling places entirely. Then, as with the QUBE system, voting and shopping will take place on the same screen—that is, on the same level of consciousness. Campaign advertisements will fuse with commercials. Indeed, government already resembles marketing. Political surveys and polls are like market research. Data mining sounds the mood of voters. Negative climates of opinion are eliminated by means of new, more attractive offers. Today, we are no longer active agents—citizens—but passive users.