Deconstruction is a critical outlook concerned with the relationship between text and meaning. Jacques Derrida's 1967 work Of Grammatology introduced the majority of ideas influential within deconstruction. According to Derrida and taking inspiration from the work of Ferdinand de Saussure, language as a system of signs and words only have meaning because of the contrast between these signs. As Rorty contends "words have meaning only because of contrast-effects with other words...no word can acquire meaning in the way in which philosophers from Aristotle to Bertrand Russell have hoped it might—by being the unmediated expression of something non-linguistic (e.g., an emotion, a sense-datum, a physical object, an idea, a Platonic Form)". As a consequence meaning is never present, but rather is deferred to other signs. Derrida refers to the, in this view, mistaken belief that there is a self-sufficient, non-deferred meaning as metaphysics of presence. A concept then must be understood in the context of its opposite, such as being/nothingness, normal/abnormal, speech/writing, etc.
Ask yourself
Ever put your faith
In a machine
Ever prayed to silicon
Or a static screen
Science as a guiding light
Will not shine eternally
Down with technology
And what little
Future i see
Chorus:
We have failed
Addicted
Dependent
Enslaved
Ask Yourself
Ever regressed
To a remote past
At Rudimentary Altars
Adoring primitive gods
Where is your strenght now
Your instintct to survive
Is there hope for us
With machines ruling
Our Lives
(Chorus x 2)