January 23, 2009
- Surveillance, Identity, and Meaning (part 3):
Enlightened by All Things -
Here is part 3 of this little escapade. If you haven’t already, you might want to read part 1 and part 2 first, as this basically concludes the thoughts from there. Also, I have not yet read Tim’s major post on what looks to be this same topic, as I wanted to bring my own thoughts to a close first.
We’ve looked at surveillance as a means of potentially getting to know our split (quantumly-superpositioned) selves better, and we’ve inquired whether the ability to switch our experience of reality from one person to another would be at all a good idea, despite sounding like a whole lot of fun. Now I’d like to tie these two ideas together, and try to answer some of the questions brought up by them.
It seems to me that the core problem inherent in switching perceptual fields is the possible loss of our identity while doing so. If our sense of self is not combined and focused enough to survive moving from one perceiving center to another, then we may run into cases where the constant flux of information causes people lose their “self” and end up either insane or permanently stuck in a infantile state of mind.
Luckily, as explained in the first part of this series, a world of open ubiquitous surveillance (a proto-version of which we are already living in, due to Web 2.0 and social networking sites) is a place where we can observe ourselves and others objectively, and change our behavior in accordance with these observations.
Although I have not read the entire PDF, the recent publication of Dana Boyd’s PhD thesis seems to shed some light on this process as it develops:
“As teenagers learned to navigate social network sites, they developed potent strategies for managing the complexities of and social awkwardness incurred by these sites. Their strategies reveal how new forms of social media are incorporated into everyday life, complicating some practices and reinforcing others. New technologies reshape public life, but teens’ engagement also reconfigures the technology itself.”
Social networking sites (i.e.: voluntary open surveillance) as a way of learning about ourselves, and technologies reshaping people just as people reshape technology (in a quantum sort of ‘observing-changes-the-observed’ kind of way)? Sounds like maybe someone’s been cribbing from my blog! (she wrote that when? um…never mind…)
The digital world seems like a pretty safe place to learn about who we are and how to interact with others, something we need to do to develop any sense of a social self at all. And since it’s not real, there is a much smaller chance that we’ll ever mistake that online persona as our own. The ease with which online identities can already be created and changed should be a hint that we might be better off considering all identity creation as just a story that we tell ourselves and others.
At the crux of these two ideas is our sense of “ego”, how we choose to define our “self”. The ego is necessary, to some extent, as a way of communicating who we are and what we want in order to successfully interact with others. But this success quickly changes into suffering as soon as we try to permanently base our sense of “self” in any one of these external “things” (whether this is a physical object or a set of conditions). This is illustrated by the Buddha’s second noble truth: “The origin of suffering is attachment”, and this suffering will become exponentially problematic in the world where bodes (i.e.: centers of perception) are interchangeable. If our entire perceptual field is shown to be impermanent, on what can we place our sense of having any kind of self?
What is necessary, then, is a way to integrate the development of an ego as part of the process of becoming a complete being. If we stop looking at “ego” as something bad that we need to transcend and get rid of and starting looking at it as something good that we need to develop and outgrow, we can create a worldview where ego growth is applauded as a step on the path toward true identification of the self-as-perceptual-field but is not confused as the be-all-end-all of identity.
Such a worldview integrates all the parts of our society which are based on supporting ego growth, while still allowing us a way to collectively move beyond the ego to a truer sense of self-as-beingness. This is where we need people pursuing #whatworks, rather than #whatmerelylooksgood, so that proof of the value of developing and outgrowing the ego exists.
Now, I do not mean that a complete, 100% conscious understanding of the self-as-perceptual field is required, but without injecting at least a subtle intuition of what this means into the culture, we risk being dissolved by the deluge of information that the future presents us with.
As we become more and more aware of the fact (whether consciously or subconsciously) that our identities are malleable, we become that much less likely to confuse these identities with any kind of “true self”. What we’re left with is either a screaming trip into the void as our “self” is sucked away from us, or a blissful state of true-self as-emptiness if we can let it go. This is our original face that we had before we were born.
So, from the looks of things, the internet is our way of training ourselves to take our “selves” a little less seriously, and by doing so, it is preparing us for the coming “rapid descent into novelty”, whatever form that may take. Let’s work to make it a good one, cause at this point, no one has any honest idea as to how this will all turn out anyway.
This science fiction author that is an MIT professor or something, Verner Vinge, predicted the singularity-I read a couple of his Hugo award winning books-He writes about civilizations that achieve “ubiquitous law enforcement” just before they self destruct.
I think there is a lesson there. I mean your assumption for ubiquitous surveilence working out is in the context of a bunch of freindly people in a totally egalitarian setting.
In terms of unequal power relationships, I see a lot of problems, you know like people being jailed for giving off “violent vibes” or dangerous MRI scans and thinking “terroistic thoughts.”
Plus there is the whole shadow side of human nature, that is always there, that we aren’ t aware of. How we are like animals and can be predatory and dishonest and how this stuff is already worked into the system as a given, but people don’t admit it. This is the part of the tao that is hard to work out, how there is no good and evil. That tigers aren’t evil for killing deer and that maybe an implication of that is that strong nations aren’t evil for dominating weak ones. Maybe Powerful corporations aren’t evil for putting other companies out of business.
Trying to “stamp out evil,” “correct human nature” “stop terrorism”
using ubiquitous surveilence will probably be a disaster.
Comment by Ted — January 24, 2009 @ 3:23 pm
The positive spin I see on reality manipulation through technology though is that maybe this is how we will “ascend into the 5th dimension” and be in direct contact with the pure posibility of the quantum feild, and be able to harness that creatively.
You know like build a machine for manifesting your dreams into reality, ways of augmenting that process and tracking it.
Have VR interacting with real time and creating a paradise.
I am excited about this.
Comment by Ted — January 24, 2009 @ 3:27 pm
Another thing I am thinking though is there may be a shift in the types of personalities attracted to the internet. As it becomes more ubiquitous and the less possibility there is for any privacy.
I think either all these INTP’s /enneagram 5’s may either opt out, since it no longer offers anonymity, or they will ascend the scale to enneagram eight and be more in control and master their environment and by extension other people.
And this is another aspect of this ego thing. The danger is that in a power struggle the weaker egos become subsumed by the stronger ones.
That already happens already but we may see a clearer picture of how this works through this body swapping stuff. Peoples bodies and skills can be requisitioned to a more powerful ego or a group ego.
That is the BORG.
Comment by Ted — January 24, 2009 @ 3:33 pm
I’m getting a blog up again to write about this.
Comment by Ted — January 24, 2009 @ 4:52 pm
Ok Here is my response on an old blog I resurrected:
http://quietanarchist.blogspot.com/
Comment by Ted — January 24, 2009 @ 6:14 pm
“people lose their “self” and end up either insane or permanently stuck in a infantile state of mind.”
Seems like many people are this way with or without technology…
Comment by omnivateLLC — January 26, 2009 @ 3:59 pm
@ Ted:
I just read your comments here (got caught up with some stuff earlier and never got here) and it’s funny to see how close what you’re saying lines up with my reply to your other comments on the caffeine post. I think we’re very much in agreement. I wrote something to speedbird (on part one of this series) about how surveillance/judgment done by machines with an algorithmic sense of right and wrong scares the hell out of me. And if there’s a human intelligence behind those machines, giving them legitimacy, well, that scares me ever more.
But the idea of the Borg doesn’t scare me as much, mainly because of the way I look at the situation. Yes, a Borg type society where the weak are subsumed by the strong would be bad. Very bad. But as Tim has point out at his blog, the technological basis for this is pretty much already around. I’d like to explore paradigms here that allow for this technology to be used in a way that promotes Great Things For Everyone All Around. Hence the fact that everything I write here usually has a positive spin or happy outcome to it. That’s what I’m writing for, that’s what I want to find.
If more people are aware of ways that this kind of technology can be used for “good”, than when they see it being used negatively, to hurt them, they’ll understand that other options are available. Hope is lost if a weapon can only ever belong in the enemy’s hands.
And to be honest, I’m not sure if just blogging about it really helps much in the end. But it’s all I’m capable of doing about the matter right now. I want to examine these things as closely as I can, and find good positive paradigms to encase them in. And if I ever get the sense that I should do more to bring one of these paradigms into being, well, I’ll worry about it at that point.
Comment by Ian — January 26, 2009 @ 9:02 pm
@ omnivateLLC:
I would be the last one to disagree with you on that. However, I still sense a potential danger involved in the swapping of perceptual fields, and I feel I’d be lax if I didn’t point it out.
Personally, if the technology was being worked on, I’d sign up as a test subject immediately (sometimes I feel like I have already…) because I understand that we are not really our thoughts and perceptions. We are also the field in which they interact. Of course, I think I understand that more intellectually than as an everyday experience, but I’m working on that. And I think technology like this would help me do that.
But with any technology, there is a good side and a bad side. Maybe I’m only acting the part of the overprotective parent. Maybe the only thing that would need to be done here is give the person a warning, and then like anything else, give them a chance to try it for themselves. But I think it’s dangerous to at least not point out potential problems when they are noticed.
I think that the continuance of some sense of I-AMness would have to be self-monitored, and prolonged swapping of perceptual fields, as well as quickly changing between multiple fields in one session, might be something to consider a sort of expert-level kind of thing.
So yeah, while I love the idea behind the technology, and I love the potential it offers, I just want to make sure I also keep a notation of any worries that pop-up during my explorations of these ideas. Cause it might save a lot of trouble if something like this ever does manifest.
Comment by Ian — January 26, 2009 @ 9:22 pm
Imagine how you’ll react if you’re in your holodeck and somebody interrupts you. Say, you’re halfway through your chess game with Darth Vader, when suddenly he disappears, Scarlett Johansson is no longer sitting in your lap, and pizza costs money again. You’d find the guy who turned off the machine and snap his damned neck. Dilbert creator Scott Adams jokingly points out in his book The Dilbert Future that the holodeck, “will be society’s last invention.” It’s no joke; once we had it, there’d be no reason to have anything else.
It’s not just that it would be addictive; it’s that it would literally fill every possible human emotional need and utterly eliminate all motivation to ever do anything ever. Everyone’s only goal would be to do just enough work to keep food and electricity coming into the holodeck, to keep those interruptions by reality to a minimum.
People would stop reproducing, your virtual Scarlett Johansson could have perfect virtual kids who’ll never wind up in jail or steal money from you to buy crack. If you get tired of them, tell the holodeck to blink them out of existence. If you’re saying that you’re a high-minded person who pursues spiritual goals and would never be sucked in by anything as crude as a simulation, hey, they’ve got a holodeck for you, too. You can sit down to dinner with Plato and Abe Lincoln and Gandhi and Jesus. If somebody yanked you out of that to go work at the post office all day, you’d barricade yourself in with a shotgun.
If aliens showed up to Earth 1,000 years later, they’d find an abandoned planet with ten billion mummified corpses laying on the floor of ten billion dusty holodecks, with huge smiles on their faces.
Comment by ian — March 18, 2009 @ 3:56 pm