In
a previous article, I wrote about the possibility that some authoritarian
government might find the means to start planting computer chips in the brains
of its citizens in order to better control them. These computer chips would be of the type
that are found in all the sensor mechanisms of the Internet of Things: the
passport chips, credit card chips, clothing tag chips, etc.
Such
a possibility goes against everything people stand for as free independent
citizens living in a democracy. And
inside our minds, we say that could never happen here, that won’t happen
here. That would truly be a revolution
in how human beings would be configured and perceived.
But
other things are already happening that are gradually changing how humans are
configured and perceived without requiring any internal physical alteration of
the human essence. People can merge
experientially with technological devices without actually merging physically
with them. I am talking about the whole
world of wearable computers: devices that are worn by a person so that the
person is constantly interacting with computer technology. The most well-known of such devices is Google
Glass – a device that goes over the head, that performs many different computer
operations, but that essentially reinterprets human primary experience in terms
of computer information.
There
are many people that see this development as something fundamentally
positive. They like the idea that humans
are merging with machines. After all,
unlike the computer chip implants about which I speculate, people are free to
physically separate at any moment from their wearable computers, and become
free-standing, organic mammalian human beings again. In modern democracies, wearable computers
don’t create obvious inalterable changes in people that would destroy
freedom. At least, that is the way it
would appear to be upon first examination of the matter.
Merging
with machines is something that gives some people a sense of immortality. Being made partially at least of plastic
and/or metal rather than simply of perishable organic flesh means that one has
transcended above perishable nature and has found a way to preserve the imprint
of his existence into an indefinite future that is experienced as eternity.
Nevertheless,
there are unforeseen effects of wearing computer devices on an ongoing
basis. These devices increasingly
mediate the primary experience world of a person such that he becomes
reconfigured to absorb primarily the defined discrete stimuli of computer
data. In other words, not only does a
person become more open to these defined discrete stimuli and more able to
absorb them, but he becomes less and less capable of absorbing the organic
blendable flowing continual stimuli of immediate sensory experience. In other words, he becomes more and more
dependent on these wearable computer devices to even stay connected to an
external world. This is where it could
be said that a person becomes uncontrollably a part of the network of
shallow-bonding computer devices that surround him in his modern technological
living environment.
I
have defined modern machines as those phenomena that come into action
exclusively through defined discrete stimuli.
The newer machines being built as they are with digital technology, with
different combinations of discrete ones and discrete zeroes, are made to act
with precise movements to correspond to particular combinations of these
digits. And wearable computer devices
produce ongoing precise computer data as the product of the defined discrete
stimuli of combination of digits. It is
these data that provide the stimuli that can move modern humans to action. As people start using wearable computers more
and more, they will become gradually reconfigured to respond more and more to
these data to the exclusion of organic
blendable flowing continual stimuli.
Unlike smartphones, which have to be turned on and off, activated and
deactivated, wearable computers are always on.
The smart glasses, the watches, the arm bands, the bracelets, the rings,
and even the clothing are not implanted in a person the way a computer chip
from the Internet of Things would be.
But experientially, the wearable computers become a part of the person.
With
their computer data, wearable computers create an overlay of stimuli that
simply diminishes the importance of primary experience in a person’s life. The connection to primary experience is
weakened. The ongoing perception of the
computer information overlay prevents the deep-bonding with any sensory
phenomena.
In
one manifestation of the augmented reality of the computer information overlay,
one can get computer information from smart glasses as an overlay describing
something one is looking at directly.
Just as one gets a brief description to explain each painting in a
museum exhibition, so data can be brought up by smart glasses to give verbal
data on anything one is seeing.
Imagine
this being done with people. One could
look at a person and, through facial recognition, find out all the salient
points of his life history. A lot of
people have a lot of personal information being displayed on Facebook, LinkedIn
and Google. It would represent an
incredible invasion of privacy, an incredible breaking down of boundaries of
sense of self.
In
another manifestation of augmented reality, wearable computers can transmit
images in real time of a person while he is living his life. In such a case, a person is voluntarily
giving up his own privacy for a sustained period of time. In the process, he weakens the boundaries of
his sense of self. Much more than
posting his thoughts on Facebook to his hundreds of Facebook friends, a person,
in this case, is posting his life. And
we’re not talking about posting special performances, as when a person posts
songs from a concert or a studio recording on You Tube. We’re talking about posting ordinary trivial
life actions.
In
still another manifestation of augmented reality, a swimmer or a runner can get
information from goggles regarding their bodily stress reactions while they are
in a race. In that way, they can pace
themselves accordingly. In my opinion,
in such a case, a medal should be given to the best computer device as well as
the best athlete, ha ha.
All
of this truly represents the destruction of human nature as we have known it up
until now. We don’t have to wait for the
hypothetical implanting of computer chips in the brain to realize that with
wearable computers, we are approaching a time of real merger of humans and machines. The person side of this merger goes through
profound changes. As the wearable
computer increasingly mediates the interaction of the person with his field of
experience, it is this computer that does the prehensile grabbing of direct
experience, while the person sees the world passively and flat through the
screen with the computer data. It is the
machine that becomes the assertive partner in the external involvement, while
the person wearing the machine becomes the passive recipient of experience.
Before
we fully embrace these seemingly harmless little accessory devices, we better
think through the situation carefully.
It is true that some of these devices have simple focused purposes like
monitoring the heart rate for a person with heart problems. But most of the more commercial devices
totally disrupt a person’s journey through life as a human being. These are the ones to particularly watch out
for.
(c) 2014 Laurence Mesirow
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