millsworks

I found this video and a link to a site called Pachube over on Bruce Sterling‘s always mind-wrinkling blog Beyond The Beyond and was overwhelmed by yet another leap forward in the growth of the web as an extension of not just our mind but also our consciousness.

I’ve ranted abut this before but everytime I stumble across another piece in this unfolding evolution of ourselves and our technologies my mind can’t help but start shoot out the top of my skull with the inherent possibilities of it all.

Ray Kurzweil likes to focus on the Singularity, that point in the not so distant future when our technology and ourselves will meet as equals, and Kevin Kelly has spun off in his writing of The Technium to explore the seemingly inevitable rise of the web and its attendant technologies as a real world metaphorical mind. My friend Bryan and I trade related news stories we find on the web alternating between “This is so fucking bizarre and cool all at the same time!” and “OMFG it’s Skynet! We’re all gonna die!”.

The overview of this strange perspective on how the web is putting truth to Marshall McLuhan‘s assertion that our technologies are extensions of ourselves and that media, our communications technologies, are an extension of our senses and if we don’t treat them as such we’re in danger of letting ourselves be controlled – if not by the technology itself then most certainly by those who choose to assume the mantle of power over where we direct our gaze, what sounds we allow to reach our ears and even, ultimately, if Kurzweil is accurate in his predictions, the sensations of touch and taste – perhaps even our emotional responses themselves.

“Once we have surrendered our senses and nervous systems to the private manipulation of those who would try to benefit from taking a lease on our eyes and ears and nerves, we don’t really have any rights left. Leasing our eyes and ears and nerves to commercial interests is like handing over the common speech to a private corporation, or like giving the earth’s atmosphere to a company as a monopoly.”

- Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, 1964

Freaky flaky shit to be sure but when you see the rapid deployment and ubiquity of these emerging technologies – the web itself is now but a mere foundation for what is coming down the pipe – it’s difficult not to nod in assent that we are bearing witness to the growth and development of a massive, collective extension of our senses that dwarfs the telephone, radio, television, and the myriad of other forms of reaching out to see and speak to the world (and the universe) around us.

Dystopian science fiction parables warning of technology developing the capability to think like and then out-think humanity abound. The Terminator franchise, lifted from a couple of Harlan Ellison tales, is but the latest iteration; along with the Matrix trilogy, the completely fucked up version of I, Robot and the deliriously dated but still delightful Colossus: The Forbin Project. I love all those films and I understand how the zeitgeist of fear manifests itself in such stories. Ripping yarns of zombies are the current fashion just as alien dopplegangers, like Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, were the narrative fashion in the McCarthy era.

These stories reflect our doubts and fears; they show us allegories and metaphors so we may better come to understand the changes which surround and confront us. But they aren’t an accurate depiction of any real world truths. Yes, during the McCarthy era (and, to a lesser extent, during subsequent political shifts) there was the real threat of imposed conformity. We live in times of torture and try to acclimate ourselves to that reality with entertaining tales of sadism like the Saw franchise. So too do we craft stories that put our evolving technologies in the role of antagonist, that thing we do not understand and so we fear it and so we must defend ourselves by destroying it. An age old narrative as entrenched in our bones as any fairy tale or campfire yarn.

But here’s the thing: aside from the sometimes seemingly vicious wrath of nature our only real antagonist is ourselves. That’s what we’re really afraid of – who we are and who we may become. McLuhan sought to open our perceptions to this so we can move forward on our own evolutionary path alongside our technologies, comforted and confident that they are not some ‘enemy from the outside” but an extension of ourselves.

That is not the hand of another which lays before me ready to strike – it is mine own hand – and I have the means to direct its action for good or evil.

A whole bunch of fucking words to lay out a simple point with all this Pachube stuff: It is real time tracking of sensorial input for the web mind.

Huh? Say what?

Make the leap with me. The web – an extension of our mind – is learning how to sense – and through that evolution, it will learn how to feel.

What the fuck?!

Oh yeah.

Imagine these inputs expanding (and they will) and becoming more detailed and more varied. It won’t remain as an interesting set of data that is collected, collated and displayed in pretty pictures. It will react and feedback upon itself. What kind of pictures will be displayed when the heart rate, breath rate, body temperature and EEG signals of every person on the planet is displayed in such a way? Will that fantasmagoric display of swirling coloured data show us the planet can blush? Or turn blue with collective sorrow? And what happens when those sensorial inputs, feeding back upon themselves, do more than just make pretty pictures but also trigger real world responses, to help or to hurt, to react. Whether it is by prompting people to act themselves to fix or exacerbate a problem – or providing an automated response with robotic intervention that outpaces our collective ability to say: “Wait a second, maybe we should think about this first.”

Good and bad can come from this.

The thing itself is neither good nor bad – because it is us. We will be very much like the image of the foetus hovering space at the end of Clarke & Kubrick‘s film2001: A Space Odyssey, playing with the world, McLuhan’s global theatre. A collective mind capable of collective thought, independent of each person and at the same time an extension of each person, and capable of real world action. It’s going to happen, folks; and in arriving at that point we would do well to make sure our collective young self has the smarts not to fuck everything up.

Cheers.

P. S. This is the kind of meandering shite I dwell on when I give myself a day off. – “Keep the boy busy, Martha, he’s starting to worry me.”