Op/Ed Writing Assignment: March 10, 2006 " "

In the last year I have become increasingly aware of an impending maelstrom threatening humanity. What is happening is that innovation is changing expression to repression. A high-pressure system, technology, is colliding with a low-pressure system, our lives, and a storm is building. Enter the blogosphere. Initially blogs began in the samizdat model, radical opinions and perspectives disseminated below radar and without consent. Blogs told stories of the golden handcuffs of IPOs, the rolling heads of restructuring in the swell of the bomb, and the blog even shared news from behind the lines during the invasion of Kuwait. It has spread full spectrum into details so mundane as to the behavior of one’s cat, or the images that appear on burnt toast. When I first heard about this “new” media I realized immediately it was already too late, though its poignant perpetuity has outlasted all expectations. A Fad it is not. Surely it is a fine method for maintaining virtual proximity, but it has lost entirely its power of voice, a key factor not only in its development but also its fame. The blog has been reduced to nothing more than incessant ranting and unknown disclosure. That unknown being two fold as no one reads, and no one cares. The repression occurs not through any force other than the current deluge of media data constantly being presented. The repression then becomes the near impossible chance for not only notoriety, but also the possibility of affecting any response within this global milieu. The tree has fallen in the forest, and indeed no one hears.

Initially it seemed that technology could achieve a higher order for expression. However, accessibility quickly flooded a shallow pool. Technology seems to have become a silver lining creation in and of itself, a self-sustaining protectionary concept created for the sole purpose of appeasing the latent passivity inherent in the modern mind, as well as promoting a near maniacal consumerist addiction. Culture does not exist outside of marketable influence. Witness the reality of our current panopticon. The inundation now possible through media, desensitizes, while it compels a near constant desire that is never fulfilled. Even in Art; when it is compelling, it is discounted, and undermined by hypercritical theorists determined to slow the possibility for a paradigm shift in perception. Every counter argument now becomes a rationalization for a lost utopia.

Could it be that interactivity as a goal is mired permanently within the fictionalized concepts of Bradbury and Asimov? Is the goal of interactivity simply transcendence, or has the fundamental concept of lucid communication been so diluted that a disconnection, and altered state of consciousness is viewed as the only method through which a true and affective message can be conveyed? Or has technology simply enabled the inoculation of a higher plane of thought into a readily accessible venue? A method that arguably is limited to the power of resolution within the audience. Is this inoculation simply the fulfillment of those fictions? Do designers within this field of new mediums then take the goal of statement of fact, the fulfillment of prophecy, or the asking of questions? Accessibility then seems to have become our quagmire. The urban inundation of increased imbedded ness simply further confines our cell into the submicroscopic. The choice then is but to follow, and trust no one. The red pill. As Baudrillard states in Simulacra and Simulations we have moved from representation, as in true existence, to simulation, or the depiction of the real with only a loose foundation. The Matrix.

Through the evolution of technology it is becoming increasingly difficult to even comprehend the steps that have taken us to where we are. This disassociation, daily removes not only the heart, but destroys the soul of the inspiration that brought us the very machines we adopt, and there becomes an inherent reliance and dependency to a source too abstract to comprehend. Standing on the shoulders of giants the view gets better, but so does the fall. In speaking with a retired electrical engineer I was presented with the complex difficulty found in the segmentation of data within the Fortran system. It occurred to me almost immediately that the same problem remains, though its application is now exponentially greater. The problem being the categorization of the infinite possibilities found within the natural world within a static framework.Technology is losing it’s secularization as we try to become god. Is technology now building a bridge as it was intended, or a tower? Though I could Babel on, or Babylon as this case.

The consumer culture has become an ethereal entity through which the mass of man retains not only its order but its salvation. Fears from our past haunt our reality in a statement readily attributed to marketing executives the world across:

“ Controlled by despots who were indifferent to the truth, the state was using military methods to organize the herd, while demanding from it the same obedience and devotion it formally gave to the church. “ – Nietzsche ( From a letter to his Mother 8-17-1886) Nietzsche: a critical life By R.Hayman; Penguin Books 1980

What is worse is that this culture is creating and promoting the very technology that fuels this cancer. We complain about the loss of interaction yet white ear buds stem from every ear. We complain about the loss of community but we have electrified gates and razor wire in the suburbs, we now have global cable networks instead of the local newspaper. Computer access is beginning to define our survival. Connectivity becomes imperative as big box stores close down the local family businesses and smaller stores, Tax forms are printed in limited quantities. Commerce is becoming nothing more than a warehouse and a web page. We have already lost our countryside to highways and sprawl. We are soon to lose ourselves.

I hadn’t been to Walden Woods since my childhood when my grandmother would take me swimming. I was surprised to see that the path around the entire pond was now fenced off. As though this wasn’t enough the site of Thoreau’s cabin had a billboard. The very essence of the environment had been robbed of its identity. I could easily see sound recognition software catching birdcalls during handheld virtual tours. As I sat by the shore I watched a tourist launch his self-inflated boat, drive to the center with a battery powered motor and photograph the scene with his digital camera while on his cell phone.

As we continue into the realm of Biometrics our fears become real. Neuro-muscular manipulation, bone conductivity, nano therapy of DNA, retinal scans and live tissue/ organ farms. And all of this beside the RFID implants. We are working to create a machine where once there was autonomy. What can so be done, can and will be done, by machines. Perhaps that is you? And this will occur until our very notion of self consists of nothing more than a walking coma. Even our minds shall bear the imprint of a necessity not yet imagined though requisite for that day’s survival. Many have chosen sedation for this curse, and proceed willingly. I, for one, realize the danger and will do whatever I can to insure that I remain in control, and most importantly aware, of the technology that surrounds and shall invade me.

“ and with that I ascend into the regions of the ice mountains and am lost forever.” -Franz Kafka The Existential Imagination By Karl and Hamalian; Fawcett Premier 1963 Pg.166