I sometimes wonder if I'm completely deranged. In fact, it's seldom that I cease to wonder if.
I'm going to speak fairly simply and plainly, just because I'm tired, as usual, and that makes it easier for me.
I was interested to read this article, recently, about the psychologist Dr. Sigman saying that social networking sites are bad for you, because they actually reduce your ability to socialise, and lack of social activity is bad for your health etc. I sent it to a friend in a spirit of "I told you so", not to him in particular, but just to the world in general, and he wrote back saying Dr. Sigman's views were a load of tosh, and that he had no evidence to back them up. Perhaps if Dr. Sigman is specifically targeting social networking sites like Facebook, then he doesn't have much of a case. I'm really actually beginning to think, however, that the Internet has altered the structure of my brain – as some drugs are said to – in an unpleasant manner. I realise that I now find it much harder to concentrate on things than I used to. The Internet is like a new channel in my brain, permanently open, and endlessly distracting. I'm not going to talk at length here, but I do find my relationship with the Internet to be at least partly unhealthy.
I think that one reason people reject such ideas out of hand is that anything new enough, technologically speaking, has now become beyond criticism. Technology is cool, in the same way that Nike trainers once were, or perhaps still are, for all I know. To argue against something that is cool, is simply to make yourself uncool, and therefore you cannot win.
I do not see technology as it now exists as at all benevolent, but closer to the opposite of that. I see it as voracious and domineering. Kurzweil's technological singularity does not excite me as it seems to excite everyone around me. It sickens me with horror that so many should so willingly, droolingly and idiotically scramble to sell their souls, for the sake of being cool, or whatever their generational equivalent is.
I reviewed the new Morrissey album a couple of days back, and I was thinking about the question of whether or not – as some have said – the lyrics are crap. In particular, there are the lyrics from Something Is Squeezing My Skull: "There is no hope in modern life", and "No true friends in modern life". Such lines seem very trite and generalised. And yet, I can't help thinking that, they're just, basically, true. There is no hope in a society that only looks forward to technological singularity. No hope. And no, there are no true friends, only 'friended' Facebook 'friends'.
This was brought home to me (I suppose I mean clarified or something) by a recent Morrissey interview. Morrissey gets so much bad press that even a long-time fan like myself, by mere osmosis, or subliminally or something, begins to take some of it on board. However, every time I see him interviewed (rather than just read it in print), my impression has always been very favourable – the impression of someone thoughtful and frank, not trying to impress. Here's what Morrissey says in the interview, in connection with the song Something Is Squeezing My Skull:
As time speeds up, nothing changes. People become more lonely. And the more they surround themselves by electronic gadgets, they become more isolated and lonely. And I think there'll be a reaction against that.
I hope that there will be a reaction against it. I feel that there must be. I feel that the time is well past at which we must realise that there is more to progress than technology, and that technological progress has actually become malignant, like an ingrowing toenail.
I'm perhaps not the best spokesperson for these kinds of idea, because I tend to express myself negatively rather than positively. Some kind of technology, I think, must continue, but I think it must be a radically different technology than that which currently exists, with a radically different philosophy underpinning it than the current philosophy of Kurzweilian megolamania.
I think that I would like – I have no idea how successful I will be – to devote my creative energy from now on to imagining alternative technologies. I'm not a techy at all, and it's probably too late for me to become one, so I don't think I can help here practically. But I hope that if I can project a different future than that advocated by Raymond 'Cyberman' Kurzweil that it might at least imaginatively open up other possibilities to people.
Technology will not save us. That does not mean we can scrap the idea of technology – though, if we could, that would be fine. Perhaps we just need to save technology from the materialists.
I think all that’s happened is that the concept of “face-to-face” has expanded to include things like internet messaging in the minds of young people. I find it interesting that people like Sigman consider communicating with people through the internet to be “not interacting”.
I don’t want to devalue anything that might actually be of value, but speaking for myself, I notice I find it harder to simply be where I am since my own internet saturation. In that sense, it’s harder for me to be face to face. As a small example, I’ve decided to switch off the computer now when I’m talking to someone on the phone, otherwise I seem to miss what they’re saying. The Internet seems to the mind like an open door in an aeroplane at altitude. Kind of.
The internet has allowed me to show my work to more people. While I’m still not making money, at least I am pleased that people view it and enjoy it. Otherwise, it sits in my house collecting dust. Showing my work in exhibitions costs too much money unfortunately.
Peter A Leonard writes:
Technology as villain? The creation, dominating the creator (Shades of Frankenstein)? To quote Wilde (Oscar that is, not Kim), as I so often love to do, “I think that God in creating Man somewhat overestimated his ability.” So is it possible that man has overestimated his ability to control/use/develop technology? And what exactly do we mean by technology any way?Nishitani keiji in his 1961 work “Shukyo to wa Nanika” (English translation “Religion and Nothingness”) expresses the firmly held conviction that nihilisim is the central philosophical problem of modern life (sans Nietzsche, Heidegger, Stirner, etc) and that science is a major factor contributing to this nihilisim.Modern science, he suggests, involves objectification of the natural world, and of the human subject itself; this in turn results in the depersonalisation of the human being, as well as the denaturalisation of nature. Such a situation leads to an acute sense of alienation and of “derootedness” (what a word!) in the human consciousness – features of the “nihil” that cuts through human existence. The almost worship-like attitude to science aggravates the issue. Our attitude to “scientism”, Nishitani suggests, is based on classic but faulty epistemology separating subject and object (I, me, mine) as an independent entity standing apart from the rest of the world (or the rest of the universe, come to that). This fundamental illusion is responsible for a rift in human consciousness, and the rift lies at the root of the nihilisim confronting modern industrial society. So is it science that’s the villain, or the products of science? Advances in science lead to new technologies. Or is it materialism that’s the root core of the problem? The way we “use” those technologies in the marketplace where the only rules are those of the marketplace (maximise profits, regardless)?I’m not sure. But I have to say I find Nishitani keiji’s arguments very robust and consequently quite persuasive. His solutions, on the other hand, are not so convincing.RegardsPeter
The internet has allowed me to show my work to more people. While I’m still not making money, at least I am pleased that people view it and enjoy it. Otherwise, it sits in my house collecting dust.
Showing my work in exhibitions costs too much money unfortunately. I’ve also enjoyed advantages. My life would undoubtedly be very different if there had been no Internet. I can’t say for certain, however, that it would be worse. In any case, what I am thinking at the moment is simply that I need to modify my relationship to the Internet in some way. The world already exists as it is. If we identify what we think is a problem, it’s not a question of turning the clock back, since that can’t be done anyway, and would presumably only mean having to face the problem again, but thinking about a way forward. Perhaps every new thing that comes into the world brings blessings and curses. Perhaps those that are first thought to bring blessings later make their curses clear. In any case, personally and overall, I find the importance placed on technology, and the sweeping acceleration of it, to be a growing problem that I wish to address in my own life, at the least, if I can.Our attitude to “scientism”, Nishitani suggests, is based on classic but faulty epistemology separating subject and object (I, me, mine) as an independent entity standing apart from the rest of the world (or the rest of the universe, come to that). This fundamental illusion is responsible for a rift in human consciousness, and the rift lies at the root of the nihilisim confronting modern industrial society.
So is it science that’s the villain, or the products of science? Advances in science lead to new technologies. Or is it materialism that’s the root core of the problem? The way we “use” those technologies in the marketplace where the only rules are those of the marketplace (maximise profits, regardless)?All of that seems an admirable summary, and I’m not sure I can add anything to it. I’m also unsure myself about what or who the real villain is, but there is something. I tend to call it materialism, but there are probably ways of defining materialism that are innocuous or something. There just seems to be an aggressive fixation on the wrong things. I feel I can understand why, too, since being human seems like a raw deal, and since organised religion has done a grand job of discrediting any ideas of spiritual evolution. Still, I can never quite bring myself to go over to the sneering side of materialism. It seems to me like it can only ever be done as a sort of act of absolute spite. I have plenty of spite in me, but nothing as absolute as that.
Justin Isis writes:
My definition of immaterialism is “incredulity at matter.”The inherent dualism of the West means that science and technology are seen as opposed to or replacing spirituality. But I see no reason why cell phones and plasma screen monitors can’t be manifestations of the divine in the same way as a rock or a cloud. Matter is spirit in its most condensed form.
But I see no reason why cell phones and plasma screen monitors can’t be manifestations of the divine in the same way as a rock or a cloud. There’s not, of course, except in as much as these things are the product of attitudes that are themselves dualistic, if you see what I mean, which is what I meant about the philosophies underpinning technology. I find there to be something controlling in the culture of technology as it currently exists. I’d like to imagine a different kind of technology.There is also the question, that fascinates me and troubles me, as to how anything can be, to borrow some convenient jargon, out of tune with the Dao, if the Dao is all and allows all. There is a paradox here, I think. The legend of the Fall is about the tragedy of human self-awareness, and this is where dualism entered in. I think that if you were really cured of dualism, you’d not only be able to see the beauty in things that are ugly, you would also probably not go on producing those ugly things, but would, quite naturally, produce things of greater beauty. But I’m just guessing. My attitude towards these things is necessarily paradoxical. I need to find beauty in whatever happens to be around me right now. At the same time, I can’t help feeling that the direction we’re going in, focusing on material things and being credulous of matter only, is disastrous.In the end, it’s all much bigger than me, and there are more factors at work than I could ever account for, but I have the views I have natural to my place within those factors. Some day I’ll try and give a more panoramic overview of these things than I’ve so far attempted. If there’s something divine in a cell phone, which I wouldn’t dispute, there’s also something divine in my opposition to, well, not necessarily to cell phones, though I’m looking forward to not having a cell phone, but to whatever I happen to find ugly and soul-destroying. I suppose one question to ask is, what would happen if those with a materialist, mechanistic worldview got their way and everything was artificially controlled by humans? Actually, who would be artificially controlling everything in the end? If there’s no free will, which is what a mechanistic view implies, then, it wouldn’t be humans in control, anyway. It would just be some sinister cosmic joke. In other words, the materialists can only acheive their ultimate ends if they are right and the universe is therefore ‘on their side’, which is an appalling idea, in which case, there’s nothing that can be done about it anyway, since the universe was always a horrible place. UNLESS… there is such a thing as free will, but people are choosing to give up on it by emulating the mechanistic creations of their materialistic philosophies. In other words, unless the world is actually shaped by us, so that it could be something other than merely material, but that the dominance of materialistic thought patterns actually destroys all but materialistic possibilities. In that case, materialism can only be a kind of cosmic crime since it reduces everything to the most limited set of possibilities. My concern is that this is what is happening when people become fixated on the escalating spiral of ‘technological advance’.The other thing I think might happen is that materialism seems to dominate the world, but, since it’s not really humans who are in control anyway, there emerge from the situation unforeseen ‘bugs’, so to speak, in the programming that completely destroy all the old paradigms, and through its very dominance, materialism falls apart.
Anonymous writes:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBtZk13miAE