One
thing that a human being needs in order to make his life meaningful is
stories. I am not just talking about the
stories that an adult tells a child or the stories that a person reads. I am talking about a meaningful flow of
events and experiences within a person’s life that leads to meaningful imprints
both on the person himself as well as on other people around him. These lived stories form the foundation, both
directly and indirectly, for told stories.
Even imaginary stories have a connection to lived human events and
experiences. And rich vibrant lived
stories lead to rich vibrant told stories.
Of course, to have the opportunity to live a rich vibrant story, one
needs to live in an environment with some organic grounding. The organic grounding acts as a template for
meaningful encounters with other people or with different aspects of the living
environment. As people today live
increasingly submerged in modern technological living environments with ever greater
participation of more sophisticated machines that do more and more things, it
becomes more and more difficult to have the opportunity to live meaningful
stories. Activity in the living
environment becomes increasingly reduced to formal mechanical processes –
free-floating activity segments (temporal figures) in a vacuum that are created
as a result of the detachment from the organic grounded flows and cycles of
more natural environments. Each
mechanical activity segment, consisting of defined steps, has a precise
discrete beginning, a precise discrete middle and a precise discrete end, and
the segment is repeated over and over without variation. In such an environment, there is little in
which a person can engage that will provide the substance for a good
interesting coherent story.
However,
some people have attempted to overcome the difficulties generated by modern
technological life by creating certain situations in which they can begin to
develop some kinds of coherent stories.
In Chicago, a new kind of theater was developed in which groups of
people can develop life stories together.
It was called improvisational theater, because groups of actors would
work together to create life situations and characters, and from these
premises, to improvise funny comedy skits through the interaction spontaneously
created by the actors. Sometimes, the
audiences suggest the situations and the characters for the actors. The actors have to be very quick in creating
organic interactions that lead to something happening.
Traditionally,
actors have taken on the lines written for them in plays by playwrights. This, of course, can be a very satisfying
experience. But some actors today have
needs that exist beyond the traditional parameters of theater. These are actors using a theatrical
experience to put some coherent narrative theater in their own personal
storylines. Improv (a nickname for
improvisational theater) serves to pull many actors out of the experiential
vacuum in which their lives are stalled.
But
it is not only the actors that develop the storylines through the improvised
skits. Many times, members of the
audience are asked to suggest ideas or characters for skits. In so doing, they are not simply acting as secondary
participants in the theater activity.
They are also helping to build stories for themselves. In this way, one could say that improv
theater acts as a psychologically rebuilding activity where people can try out
new roles and new situations both directly, if they are actors, and indirectly,
if they are members of the audience.
One
key element of improv theater is that the fundamental theatrical unit is a
relatively short skit. The reason is
that when one is starting to build meaningful life stories, one has to take
small steps at the beginning, before one can move into longer life
narratives. And these small improv steps
seem to be effective, because improv theater seems to be everywhere that you
turn in North America. People are trying
to organically grow meaningful stories for their lives.
And
yet there are developments in modern technological society that indicate a
future of technological control and manipulation of just about everything such
that organic story development will be suppressed. Internet connections and communication are
moving way beyond computer devices and are invading all kinds of everyday
mechanisms and things. Sensors to pick
up data that are used for sorting and protection, and, on a deeper level, control
and manipulation of people are present in the tags of all kinds of retail
merchandise. Sensors are present in
pacemakers, and they are beginning to be present in cars that drive
themselves. They are in towel dispensers
and faucets and toilets in public washrooms.
They are present in credit cards and passports. This whole category of internet inlay in
everyday objects and devices is called the “Internet of Things” (IoT for
short). It is also called
“Machine-to-Machine (M2M for short).
Emily Adler wrote in Business Insider, an online magazine, on November
22, 2013 about “the transition of once-inert objects into sensor-laden
intelligent devices that can communicate with the other gadgets in our lives.” According to Adler, there are presently 1.9
billion such devices in the world, but by 2018, there will be 9 billion. That will be equal to “the number of
smartphones, smart TVs, tablets, wearable computers, and PCs combined.”
In
order to maximize productivity, minimize risk and create security, we are
moving towards turning the world into one enormous mechanism. A mechanism where humans are increasingly
needed less and less. Actors and
audience members may work to create the foundations for richer more vibrant
storylines in improv theater, but, in the real world, increasingly to where
will they graduate? If every movable
object increasingly has a sensor to allow it to be controlled and manipulated
by some remote computer, where does one graduate into the real world from
improv theater?
Yes,
some of the projects that these sensors will do seem very important. Waste management and water management are two
excellent examples. And pace-makers keep
many people alive. But all in all, these
different manifestations of IoT are coming together to create an environment
where all organic friction – necessary to help people stay vibrant and truly
alive – is eliminated. And without
organic friction, people cannot create or participate in stories in their
lives. And without stories, people are
just going through the motions in their daily lives. In this transition period, where there is
still work that people have to perform in their engagement with machines,
people become like the machines they use.
More and more, the people perform impersonal mechanical processes in
conjunction with their machines.
Without
organic friction, people cannot engage in the events and experiences that
bundle together into stories that form templates over time for the creation of
meaningful organic imprints. But what
really worries me is that the need to put internet sensors into everything
might one day extend to human brains.
Right now, sensors are planted under the skin of pets for purposes of
identification. A move to the control of
humans would be an easy progression. It
might start out at first with convicts to keep order in prison. Then it might extend to anyone who seems to
be a troublemaker, however that may be defined.
Hyperactive kids, addicts of all kinds, political dissidents and other
kinds of freethinkers, and just plain eccentric people. And eventually, to keep society running
smoothly, internet sensors could be put in everybody’s brains. And this will be a means by which people will
become cyborgs: human robots.
This
is why we need to have government agencies that regulate the use of this
technology and think tanks as well as departments in universities that deal
with technoethics. Technological change
is happening so fast, and it is like a runaway bulldozer. We have to find a way to slow it down and
even apply the brakes sometimes. If not,
there may no longer be people capable of doing meaningful improvisational
theater, let alone making, preserving and receiving organic imprints within the
context of fully developed life stories.
© 2013 Laurence Mesirow
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