our reality is glitching

I don’t usually notice that I’m wearing glasses. I don’t usually think about how I scroll on TikTok. Then my lens smudges, my screen buffers, and my world is interrupted.Humans have an uncanny way of dissolving into their tools. When you swing a hammer, you don’t really conceive of it as separate from your body. It is instead an extension of your arm—what Heidegger calls ready-to-hand. Same with your smartphone. As you scroll, you melt into your screen.Most of our lives are experienced in this state of flow. Sure, you can pause to theorize about hammers and smartphones, but you mostly just consider them when they stop working. You only perceive a table that wobbles; you only think about a television that fills with static. We typically find these glitches annoying, but they’re incredibly powerful opportunities to understand our media. An eraser smear or ink blot disrupts the process of reading, reminding you about the writer on the other side.The glitch calls attention to mediation. A…