The first step toward maintaining autonomy in any programmed environment is to be aware that there's programming going on. It's as simple as understanding the commercials are there to help sell things. And that TV shows are there to sell commercials, and so on.
When you look in the mirror, what do you see? Do you see the real you, or what you have been conditioned to believe is you? The two are so, so different. One is an infinite consciousness capable of being and creating whatever it chooses, the other is an illusion imprisoned by its own perceived and programmed limitations.
I grew up doing sitcoms and theater and even playing with the Beach Boys, where you're programmed to perform, your body gets into a rhythm and you know it has to perform.
I will argue that in the literal sense the programmed computer understands what the car and the adding machine understand, namely, exactly nothing.
I don't text, I don't have a Blackberry. Literally, I just have a cell phone that I haven't programmed and the whole Bluetooth. No. I don't even have an earpiece for my cell phone.
I've always loved the mixture of crushing live drums with a programmed groove, that really cool blend, like in the verse there's a really funky drum beat that is programmed then it comes in to the chorus; you've got that enormous human feel where the band kicks in.
I'm horrible at quoting movies! Even my very favorites are not easily recalled or programmed to memory. When people start movie quoting around me, I'm that person who just smiles and then looks up the reference later.
The worst possible turn can not be programmed. It is caused by coincidence.
Evolution has programmed our brains to find two things particularly interesting, and therefore memorable: jokes and sex - and especially, it seems, jokes about sex.
Disney is thrilling and informative and important and beautiful and suspect. Butts was a detail I observed later and definitely ties in. I suppose I was programmed, yeah.