As a User: The Revolution of Energy Users and Producers

yuxi
Jan 19
11 min read

Updated: 7 days ago

By Yuxi Pan, HappyPower

French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, in The Seminar, Book XVII: The Other Side of Psychoanalysis (1969–1970), proposed the concept of the “four discourses” (les quatre discours):

the Discourse of the Master
the Discourse of the University
the Discourse of the Hysteric
the Discourse of the Analyst

Each discourse represents a different function of language.

The Master establishes ideals through language — such as the nation, God, or dominant ideologies.

The University institutionalizes these ideals, turning them into systems of knowledge and regulation.

The Hysteric questions these ideals through speech, exposing their contradictions.

And the Analyst listens to language itself, revealing the gap between ideals and the questions that unsettle them.

This idea first came to me through Units of Thought: Flatland Philosophy Publications & Theory by Stuart Bannocks. It was a recorded online lecture stored in the folder of my first-year course, Ecology, Philosophy & Design. I was genuinely glad that I finally had the time to sit down and properly engage with it, because understanding this lecture also shaped how I understand the spirit behind HappyPower.

More importantly, it raised a question that I want to open up not only for myself, but together with everyone who uses HappyPower: why, in our current era, is it so important to emphasize our identity as “users,” or even as “producers”? Why does HappyPower insist on guiding people toward a world of producers rather than a world of consumers?

According to Lacan, the “master” in modern society is no longer a strong, singular figure. Ideals have shifted from being embodied by individuals to becoming collective ideals. In other words, the master is no longer a person, but a system. In the past, ideals were often projected onto specific figures such as kings, popes, fathers, leaders, or gods. Contemporary society, however, increasingly relies on collective ideals—nations, markets, brands, algorithms, and communities—to maintain order. This means that we are no longer governed by individuals, but by distributed, systemic machines of ideals.

These ideals are no longer shaped by a single subject. They are collectively produced through networks, media, algorithms, and public discourse. The language we use, and the ideals we construct through that language, are also the very systems that act back upon us.

As Kurt Vonnegut once wrote, “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” Choosing an ideal, therefore, is never neutral. Choosing the language through which we describe ourselves, choosing how we position our relationship with the world, and choosing a single word—producer or consumer—means recognizing that this word carries the power to reshape everything that follows.

Starting Point: Looking from the Perspective of “Energy History”

On the level of technology and history, we should continue to revisit Renjie Ding’s series on the history of technology. I mention “energy history” here not simply as a technical category, but because one particular explanation Xiaogua gave about HappyPower reminded me of the idea of a “producer revolution.”

As Renjie puts it, history moves upward in a spiral.

Contemporary human society is not lacking in its pursuit of “high-efficiency” energy. Coal, oil, and nuclear power have all been driven by this logic. Some of today’s most efficient energy sources—such as nuclear fission—reach astonishing levels: the fission energy released by just one gram of uranium-235 is equivalent to burning three tons of coal, enough to supply electricity for a household for two years.

From a macro perspective, the Earth receives approximately 4.3 × 10²⁰ joules of solar energy every hour—an amount sufficient to meet the entire human population’s energy consumption for a full year. In this sense, the efficiency of energy production has already been pushed toward its limits. Yet we remain locked in anxiety and competition over how to extract energy “more efficiently.”

Within this upward spiral, Renjie Ding argues that the next turning point of human energy systems is not about becoming higher, faster, or stronger. Instead, it requires a return—a shift in attention toward micro-energies generated through human action and emotion. This represents a transformation from centralized systems to distributed ones, and also a return from abstraction to the body.

From Centralized Energy to Bodily Energy: A Three-Layer Energy Structure and HappyPower’s Reframing

We can understand “energy” as operating across three distinct layers.

The first is primary energy. This refers to energy forms that come directly from nature, such as fossil fuels (coal, oil, natural gas), nuclear energy (for example, uranium-235), and renewable sources including wind, solar, hydropower, biomass, and geothermal energy. The defining characteristics of primary energy are concentration, intensity, and the fact that it is either non-renewable or difficult to obtain. These energy forms enabled the expansion of human civilization, while also shaping our collective imagination around efficiency and growth.

Energy that has undergone conversion—the energy we actually use in daily life—is secondary energy. This includes electricity as the most typical energy carrier, as well as transportation fuels such as gasoline and diesel, fuels used for urban heating, thermal energy, and newer carriers like hydrogen and energy storage systems.

Today, nearly all of our interactions with energy are mediated through secondary energy systems. Whether it is a power socket, an electric vehicle charging station, a gas station, a water heater, or a gas boiler, energy no longer comes directly from a single “power company,” but from a complex network of intermediaries: electric grid operators, oil companies, gas utilities, heat suppliers, data centers (as providers of cloud-computing energy), and even mobile telecommunications operators, which now account for a portion of digital energy consumption.

These systems make energy use convenient, but they also render our relationship with energy increasingly abstract and passive. We become accustomed to purchasing energy rather than producing it. Energy turns into a bill, a service, rather than a form of perception or action.

After entering the digital era, the form of energy becomes even more abstract. We are no longer only consuming electricity; we are also consuming computing power, attention, time, and emotion.

This leads to what can be described as tertiary energy (or post-energy / symbolic energy): an energy economy built around information, emotion, and data. Data centers require electricity, social networks consume psychological energy, and each click or moment of attention is converted into new forms of “energy value.” Energy systems have thus shifted from physical infrastructure into social and psychological structures. We are no longer simply consumers of energy; we are individuals whose behavior is actively used by energy economies.

The emergence of HappyPower is a reflection on—and a response to—this deeply mediated relationship with energy. Rather than proposing yet another power-generation technology or an alternative energy source, HappyPower asks a more fundamental question: how can an individual who uses energy move from being a passive consumer of electricity to becoming an active producer of energy?

What we aim to do is not to patch an existing energy system, but to write a new chapter in a human-centered history of energy. From centralization to distribution, from passive consumption to active generation, and from abstract systems back to bodily action—this is a genuine revolution of users and producers.

Killing the Consumer

——Jon Alexander's Killing the Consumer on BBC Radio 4's Four

This section draws on a talk by Jon Alexander, titled Killing the Consumer, broadcast on BBC Radio 4’s Four Thought programme.

Jon Alexander argues that consumer culture originates from a dream rooted in a particular ideology: the belief that individuals can change the world through consumption. But has this idea been taken too far?

“On January 24th, Apple will introduce the Macintosh. And you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like 1984.”

Spoken in a persuasive American accent, these words became the voiceover to what is often regarded as one of the most influential advertisements in history—an interpretation of George Orwell’s 1984. In the commercial, uniformed men with shaved heads march in formation through a futuristic, authoritarian corridor, while the voice of Big Brother echoes from a massive screen. The sequence is interrupted when a young woman runs in and hurls a hammer, shattering the screen bearing Big Brother’s image.

This advertisement did more than announce the arrival of the Macintosh. It did more than introduce Apple as a brand. It delivered something far more consequential: a declaration that the “consumer” had come of age, becoming the dominant force of society. The world would now cater to them—to us—providing everything we desired. Otherwise, there would be consequences.

That same year, a series of events further reinforced this declaration, transforming it into what felt like a golden dream. In this dream, we—as consumers—could not only obtain everything we wanted, but could also help solve the world’s problems through shopping. In the Western world, Levi Strauss launched a brand manifesto that echoed Apple’s early message. The idea that “saving the world through consumption” was possible entered the mainstream. Charity initiatives such as Band Aid told us that global poverty could be addressed through purchasing power, while the commercially sponsored Los Angeles Olympics promised that shopping itself could fund global culture.

It seemed that we could have everything. But what followed? How did we travel from this golden dream to the present moment—a world where poverty remains unresolved and inequality continues to deepen both domestically and globally; a world increasingly pushed toward ecological collapse; a world marked by widespread mental illness and depression?

The truth is that, despite all the promises once made, the concept of the consumer is now killing us—and it must be killed first.

This experiment was first published in 2012 by social psychologist Paul Bain and his colleagues in Nature Climate Change.

The researchers distributed nearly identical questionnaires measuring social attitudes and environmental concern to two groups of participants. The only difference lay in the title printed on the first page. One group received a survey labeled “Consumer Reaction Study,” while the other received one labeled “Citizen Reaction Study.”

Participants were not explicitly prompted to reflect on the difference between the two titles. Yet the results were striking. Those who saw the word consumer expressed significantly lower levels of social and environmental concern, whereas those who saw citizen were more inclined to express a sense of public responsibility and collective awareness.

A single word—consumer—proved sufficient to weaken an individual’s sense of social concern and agency at the psychological level.

Put differently, this is not merely a matter of wording. Especially in this case, consumer is never just a neutral label. We are gradually confronting a deeper truth: language does not simply describe the world; it actively constructs how we imagine our own identity, our social role, and the boundaries of our possible actions.

This is also the central argument in Killing the Consumer by Jon Alexander. To “kill the consumer,” in his terms, is to dismantle this hidden assumption—to refuse to define ourselves primarily through consumption, and to return instead to the identities of citizen, user, and producer.

“As a User” as a Form of Subject Politics

The wave of consumerism ignited by Apple and the social currents that followed promoted a simple equation: consumption equals freedom. We were encouraged to adopt the posture of buyers in order to obtain energy, agency, and choice. How, then, can this logic be reversed today?

The history of the word user itself reveals a structurally passive position. Emerging from the language of computer systems and industrial management, user originally referred to those who use resources at the terminal end of a system—positioned in contrast to engineers, programmers, and managers. The term encodes a power structure in which people are defined as endpoints rather than creators.

By the 1980s, User-Centered Design became a new creed in industrial design. Don Norman advocated for returning design to human experience. Yet this form of “care” remained paternalistic: designers anticipated, predicted, and corrected on behalf of users. Users became more compliant and more measurable, but still lacked the power to create.

With the arrival of the internet era, the meaning of user shifted again. Platforms and algorithms learned to understand, optimize, and appropriate users. Our registrations, clicks, purchases, and data trails in turn shaped us. “User experience” became a commercial metric, while “user growth” became a managerial objective.

At the same time, countercurrents began to emerge. Movements such as Open Source and Right to Repair sought to restore people’s ability to open, modify, and remake the systems they use. “If you can’t open it, you don’t own it.” This slogan became a symbol of resistance. It does not refer only to physical repair, but to the reconstruction of subjectivity itself.

Artist Olia Lialina writes in The User’s Rights: “The user is not a customer. The user implies active participation, not consumption.” She proposes a “Bill of User Rights,” which includes the right to withdraw and export one’s data, the right to offline use, and the right to scripting and free modification.

Central to her argument is the idea of the “Turing Complete User”—a subject capable of reprogramming, one who possesses agency and creativity within technical structures rather than merely operating at their surface.

At the same time, scholar Benjamin Bratton argues in The Stack that within layered structures of digital sovereignty, a “user” who lacks both the right to write upward and the right to modify downward will remain permanently fixed in the position of being used.

**A Day in One Terabyte of Kilobyte Age by Olia Lialina - The Influencers 2019**

From this perspective, the right to repair and the so-called user revolution represent a deeper reconfiguration of power. They are not merely about opening devices or loosening screws; they are about the return of subjectivity itself. We can only truly own what we are able to open. We can only truly use what we are able to modify. And we can only truly produce what we are able to co-create.

This is the underlying spirit embedded in HappyPower: it redefines use as a generative act. Through bodily actions—cycling, swinging, running, generating power—people are no longer positioned as endpoints of a system, but as nodes within an energy network. They do not merely consume energy; they create it. They are not only designed for; they participate in redesigning the world.

Within this entanglement of language and power, the word user is reclaimed. As a User becomes a re-invented political identity. It points toward a new structure of social energy—one in which energy is no longer concentrated in the hands of a few centers, but circulates among acting bodies; where power is no longer granted by systems, but co-generated through use.

It is in this sense that HappyPower is not a technological invention, but a declaration of subject politics: a practice that teaches people to use the world again—and, in doing so, allows the world to be re-used differently.

From Sustainability to Stewardship: A Shift in Energy Ethics

If the “user revolution” can be understood as an act of reclaiming agency, then it is also, at the same time, an ethics of continuity.

In many Indigenous cultures of North America—particularly within the political philosophy of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy—there exists a belief known as the Seven Generation Principle: that in every collective decision, leaders must consider the well-being of the next seven generations.

This principle originates from The Great Law of Peace, one of the earliest constitutional documents in North America. It reminds us that genuine use is inseparable from responsibility—that to act is always to leave behind a sustainable balance and a form of care for the future.

Seven generations is roughly one hundred and thirty years—enough time, perhaps, for a single grain of dust carried by the wind to slowly become a mountain.

At this temporal scale, use is no longer an individual act, but a generational cycle. The electricity I generate today, my movements, my jumps, my laughter, do not belong only to the present moment. They leave behind warmth for others—for the next generation, and the one after that. This is not symbolic inheritance, but a material continuation: bodily action leaves traces in time, energy travels across generations, becoming a gentler form of nourishment.

So let us become users together, and initiate a revolution of users and producers. No longer merely endpoints of the power grid, we become interconnected nodes in an energy network. In the world of HappyPower, laughter and energy speak the same language.

We believe that joy can supply power, play can generate light, and that use itself is a form of production.

As a user, I produce energy.

As a user, I take part in the world’s metabolism.

As a user, I generate light and power,

and participate in the circulation and movement of the world.