Monday, February 8, 2010

When can I buy an iMe?

Great observations from an outsider can help shed a guiding light on those mired in the stifling interconnectedness of contemporary techno-centric culture. When an insightful observation is cast over seven decades ago, it surely must cause one to stop and try to think, as objectively as possible, about the implications of such a statement. Wirth argues coherently that cities are less a question of quantifiable values and more a question of modes of communication. Surely, one usually doesn’t understand cities to consist of a hermit living miles from the nearest human though wired more thoroughly than a motherboard; a certain requisite density of human and infrastructural objects currently represents the most commonly understood idea of city form. Urbanism, in the current sense, describes the exponentially increased massing of humans coupled with an overall degeneration of evolved communicative relationships.

Seventy years, or so, from the penning of Wirth’s observations, we live in a time of increasingly degenerate interpersonal communication. Fellow humans that we could describe as being the closest to us – family – generally live tens, if not hundreds or thousands, of miles away from us and are seldom seen in the flesh. Our multitude of friends and colleagues number in the range of a small municipality yet we still maintain some level of connection with nearly every last one of them. This amazing ability to interface with so many humans and maintain relationships with them is all facilitated by ever growing object networks. The communication required to found relationships is stripped from the body.

All this loss of interpersonal communicative ability is both liberating and incredibly dangerous. The very mechanisms that enabled humanity to survive in the wild for thousands of years have already been lost; due largely to extermination of native peoples and the hegemonic oppression of capitalistic forces. Never fear! Such technology is invariably sleekly packaged and marketed so you won’t feel any twinge of remorse for pulling the plug on the hard-wiring that has evolved in your brain thanks to countless generations of ancestors.

Liberation from evolved modes of communication enables us, as humans, to live a more interconnect, de-centered lifestyle. It provides the opportunity for people, as a species, regardless of place (physical, economic or otherwise) to commune – for celebration, for revolution, for entertaining masturbatory activity. Great potential for the human species to evolve beyond our old ways that have created such horrible miseries such as homelessness, poverty and other injustices could be combated on a global scale. Such is a desire held by many people that have a stake in both the technological objects that could facilitate this reality and those that are humanitarian.

True danger resides in the fact that TECHNOLOGY CAN’T/WON’T SAVE US… EVER. Most of the world’s most confounding and dangerous problems are the result of the search for, creation and possession of technological advances. Take the atom bomb, for example. Or, for a less drastic example, remember how your ability to remember phone numbers plummeted after purchasing your first cell phone. Technology is antithetical to the soft, organic, malleable nature of the natural world – animal, plant or mineral. It can’t save us, no matter how we attempt to engender our best characteristics and sensibilities within it.

However, given the fact that technology has the possibility of use for means of manipulation of broad portions of humanity by narrow interests it doesn’t negate the possibility of that same technology to be harnessed for the good of human kind. It can help us connect with one another, to form communities and to learn a sense of place where once the neighborhood or familial unit would have fulfilled that role. In the same breath, it can be used for surveillance, for control, for dominion and destruction. The fact that the most pervasive technological societies are also those responsible for the most tragic crimes against humanity and war should create a sense of disgust and disdain deep within the soul of every human.

A saying states that fiction always precedes reality and the fiction is displaying an antagonistic relationship between technology and humans, regardless of the attempt to make such technologies user friendly (i.e. Robocop, Terminator, Maximum Overdrive, etc.). Technology will never replace human interaction. Sure, it may attempt to supplement human needs but it should never been used to replace interpersonal relationships. In any case, your techno-gadgetry won’t get you into heaven.

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