Digital Technologies and Changes to Human Perception: our Venture into the Impossible.

by J.G. Horta

         What is impossible?

          Events and inventions in the past century have challenged the concept of impossibility in practically every ambit of human experience, from life expectancy to large-scale warfare, all made possible by technological development. Today, scientific theories such as Quantum Mechanics, Chaos, Systems, and Relativity, present conceptions of the universe that perhaps only our most superstitious ancestors deemed possible. The acceptance of quantum superposition by the scientific community defied the impossibility that a rational man, let alone the elite of rational men, could believe that a cat can be both dead and alive until we observe it, or that a single particle can be in two places at once.[1] Quantum superposition contravenes not one, but the three traditional laws of thought that have commanded scientific and philosophical ventures for over two millennia.[2]

         Thus, in the sense that something may be beyond the bounds of possibility, what is truly inconceivable is for the world to stay the same.

         As technology develops, it reshapes the confines of our reality, as well as our perception of and interaction with time and space. Digital technologies are setting the stage for the disappearance of politics as we know them, by interconnecting the world in a way that is changing the structure of our perception and experience, with practical and conceptual implications proportional to those of the written alphabet.

         As we will explain, literacy gave rise to a series of private experiences that provided a rationale for the individual within society. The political systems here in question were developed on the basis of this technology, and are therefore concerned with concepts like property and privacy, often of an elite. Digital technologies are not only rendering these notions and their legislators obsolete, they are also reminding us that the individual is but a node of information in absolute symbiosis with its environment, and that its survival depends on the resources available in it.

          After centuries of trying to circumscribe the universe and alienate ourselves from nature through reason and civilization, humankind has created tools that both invite and require us to reconnect with our surroundings. This will inevitably yield unprecedented changes in the administration of both resources and power, the goal of politics.

         This essay is a short exercise in creative and critical thinking, as well as groundwork for a broader understanding of the relationship between digital technologies, natural, ideological and economic resources, and our political reality.

         Methodologically, we will first define the concepts implicit in the question, and then propose a response that addresses the dynamic above. To conclude, we will review the argument, and pose questions for further consideration.

         Politics, in their broadest sense, deal with the empirical world in which people relate to each other, in thought and action. These relationships take place in the realm of public space, the substratum of all politics. Also, like any interaction of energy in the universe, these relations entail power, which is why it is imperative to speak of resources when we speak of political relations – Politics consider how the power implicit in the relations between people can be best administered, as economics do with the resources that represent this power, mediate said relations and make it possible for us to live.

         All political and economic systems, whether implemented or not, consist of sets of principles and criteria that legitimize certain power relations over others. Under a monarchy, for example, the line of sovereignty is determined by lineage; in a democracy, it is set up by popular election; while in a meritocracy, power is bestowed on the basis of merit. Likewise, resources are allocated differently across populations by free-market, socialist, or communist economic regimes.

         For brevity and unless otherwise specified, when we speak of resources in this essay, we refer mainly to energy supplies. For the sake of intellectual clarity, however, we must make a distinction between natural, ideological and economic resources. The first term refers to the finite earthly supplies that provide the material conditions for our survival: clean air, clean water, earth and food; the second, to the resources that condition our inner development, providing intellectual and/or spiritual nourishment; and the latter, to the financial assets and products that represent acquisitive power.

         The substances that concern this essay – non-renewable energy sources like fossil fuels – are the natural, finite earthly resources on which most technology currently depends, and which also play a significant role in the economy. Also, their misuse and abuse cause unnecessary destruction of the environment, generating scarcity and waste. Scarcity, in turn, is the basis of our current economic system, tilting the political scales for those who control access to the remaining resources.

         Technology refers to the plethora of techniques and tools that human beings have developed, consciously or unconsciously, to participate in the world. These tools and techniques function as extensions of ourselves, and range from artifacts and mechanisms that extend our bodies in space, like hunting spears, microscopes, and satellite networks, to techniques and procedures that allow us to stretch time or to compress it, like mnemonic devices, time zones, and metaphorical constructions that transcend generations.

         Digital technologies are those that incorporate the electronic circuit. The electronic circuit is specified over the electric because the former conveys information while the latter conveys only energy. Both circuits differ in the extensions they entail. The electric circuit is an extension of our nervous system in that many of the impulses that travel through our nerves are purely electric until they reach designated centers in the body that translate them into stimuli. The electronic circuit, in contrast, is an extension of the more sophisticated features of our nervous system that interpret stimuli into meaningful experiences. Artificial intelligence, then, is understood as the extension of our sentient capabilities.

         Much like our nervous system, which uses the energy that the body extracts from the nutrients in our food, digital technologies require electricity to function, which is why they are wholly dependent on sources of energy for power.

         Political reality is based on technological development insofar as different technologies shape both the societies that use them and the perceptive faculties of their members. Technology, in turn, responds to socio-economic and political changes, creating a mutually dependent relationship that is nevertheless not reciprocal; for although technology is profoundly influenced by the spirit of its time, it often evolves according to the interests and needs of those with the means (power) to develop it. Its long-term impact on political structures, however, is often unexpected.

         Theoretician Walter Ong offers the compelling argument that our current political reality is based on the technology of the written alphabet. Its pinnacle is the paradox created by the Declaration of Human Rights, which defines most rights according to the knowledge accumulated throughout history with the help of literacy, so it is not applicable to oral cultures.[3]

         This unexpected paradox regards the freedom and autonomy of oral cultures because, in order to benefit from these rights, people must either renounce their orality for autonomous access to said body of knowledge, or else forgo their autonomy in favor of their orality, allowing literate outsiders to preside over their rights.

         Both possibilities change the power structure of society. The loss of autonomy has obvious political implications, but it is the transition to literacy that interests us here the most, because, once writing is introduced, knowledge becomes less dependent on experience and collective processes.

         In literate cultures, knowledge is available to anyone who can read. This means, first, that much more information can be gathered because not all of it needs to be remembered; second, that youngsters with both, access to knowledge and the vitality to implement it, are empowered over elders whose roles in society, together with the value of experience, diminish; and, third, that participating in this knowledge and power are no longer necessarily communal experiences. The fact that we can read and learn on our own, or keep a secret journal, fosters consciousness of the self as an individual, and feeds the delusion that our beings and behaviors can exist in isolation from the environment. Superseding this, knowledge and power became commodities to be traded or even stolen, where they were once processes experienced and shared.

         This marks one historical instance where technology changed politics irreversibly; by introducing the written word, it caused former power structures to become untenable. Digital technologies are having a similar effect on current political relations; take the position of Secretary (of State or the UN), for example, which is practically and symbolically entrusted with the institution’s secrets and powers. Intervening phenomena like hacktivism and WikiLeaks are challenging not only the legitimacy of these positions but also their usefulness.

         Electricity precipitated the Second Industrial Revolution, also known as the Technological Revolution. Whereas the First Industrial Revolution introduced the factory system, and with it a fragmentary and mechanized perception of workflows and processes, the Early Technological Revolution introduced the railroad and the telegraph, commencing a process of decentralization that would shorten distances and compress time, culminating in globalization. While the printing press popularized the use of information for political organization under oppression, subsequent integration made possible by digital technologies introduced a virtual layer to this substratum of politics that is the public sphere. In this new sphere, we use a single concept, the Arab Spring, to refer to the wave of social uprisings that swept over ten countries demanding democracy, fueled and followed by the world in real time on social media. The success of these uprisings is up for interpretation,[4] but the many revolutions that brought colloquially spoken Arabic into written form[5] have proved that digital technologies are empowering marginalized groups and individuals to challenge hierarchical structures, while government politics struggle to preserve the integrity and legitimacy of these very institutions. This too is untenable.

         People opposing these developments in favor of prior political structures and values might not realize that digital technologies are not merely offering the possibility to partake in this process, but as theorist Marshall McLuhan explains, our electrically-configured world has forced us to move from the habit of data classification to the mode of pattern recognition. We can no longer build serially […] because instant communication insures that all factors of the environment and of experience coexist in a state of active interplay.[6]

         In other words, the process is reshaping the fundamental structure of our relations, and the legitimacy of power at the level of our perception, experience, and interactions, much like the written alphabet did.

         While dominant agents, such as record labels and movie studios, are pushing evermore zealously for tougher legislation and penalties for infringing on patents and copyrights, digital technologies are enabling collaborative platforms that renounce concepts of individual intellectual property at the onset, changing the way creative people relate to each other, gradually rendering former legislations obsolete.[7]

         Legislation is the preferred way to establish the legitimacy of power because it is expected to replace violence as the acting arm of politics; but if we consider it closely, slavery was once legal, and some totalitarian regimes are still undergirded by the law. This means that legality, and the legislation that upholds it, are a matter of power, not of justice. Legislation cannot provide a sound rationale for the legitimacy of power because it is subordinate to it.

         Digital technologies are forcing us back into our environment in two strategic ways, perceptually, by introducing us into the virtual public sphere in which it is impossible to exist if unconnected, and physically, because despite their promise to craft a virtual reality of unlimited resources, to function, they depend on finite energy supplies, so they actually force us back into the physical world, where they threaten to exacerbate our resource crisis. This apparent contradiction, when thoroughly considered, absorbs us into a multilayered environment where we need to reconsider this dynamic as omnidirectional, both in mind and body. Buddhism refers to this state of interconnectedness as interdependent co-arising. Herein lies the potential of technology to change the focus of our social strains, from the struggle for equality that gave rise to the paradox of human rights, to the accomplishment of equanimity – a state in which people learn to manage their own power in relation to themselves, their environment, and others. If, as philosopher Kitaro Nishida suggests, we are all vectors of the universe, and it is indeed an infinite sphere, then every point is its center, and everything we do to the world we do to ourselves.[8]

         If people can learn to self-organize, then we no longer need to beg the question of legislation as both master and serf of power. This point of relatively stable equilibrium would mean reaching homeostasis in a truly free political system, that, even if humanity achieves, it will not be within our lifetimes. Thus, while digital technologies may set the stage for this transformation, we mustn’t get ahead of ourselves.

         What we are likely to live through, is the total consumption of petroleum. The problem of energy that began with the Industrial Revolution has only become more severe. Fossil fuels in general, and oil in particular, are the monetary-financial system’s most coveted resources (apart from the information that shapes public opinion regarding the legitimate ways to obtain and administer these resources) because they represent the power to keep the world moving. This representation is not merely symbolic or ideological; it also relates to natural resources – the materials for our survival, a prerequisite to participate in any relation. This is why the economy wields so much force over politics, and why people do whatever they can to control it.

         In this short essay, it is difficult to explain the metaphysical principles underlying the proposition that power struggles have always existed, and will forever continue, for it is the dynamic tension between opposing forces that weaves the fabric of reality. Though, if the reader will grant me this much, I will argue that just as sports present a healthy outlet for the same competitive impulses that drive many a soldier to war, alternatives that satisfy the will to power will become not only possible but preferable, once we taste the ripe fruits of solidarity. Prior to that, we will have to harvest energy from renewable natural sources, through local, readily available technologies that will further the process of decentralization and empower communities to disrupt hierarchical political structures. These transitions are neither even nor smooth throughout the world, but they have already begun. [9]  Of course, a more apocalyptic scenario in which we irrevocably consume and pollute all our earthly resources is also possible, but this essay is too short to be so fatalistic.

         Some implications of digital technologies may still be unpredictable, but the return to a state of aware interconnection with our multilayered environment and the inversion of hierarchical structures that we have discussed, do present cardinal transformations to power relations, even before we consider those to education, healthcare, social media, religion, and other realms of human interaction.

         To consider these, we must ask what is the future of digital technologies? Will they make good on their promise to deliver abundance where there is scarcity? If so, what kind of political structures will this resource-based economy make possible? Further still, in what kind of processes do people want to partake?

         In his book Technology, Joseph Agassi suggests that if our primary criterion for the legitimacy of political power is rationality, we are bound to justify only scientific utopias.[10] This understanding incited much of the canonical anti-utopian literature of the 20th century, which envisioned dreadful political realities but failed to predict the Internet. Interestingly enough, technology in the 21st century is becoming more intuitive than rational. Virtual Reality, for instance, promised to denude our minds from our bodies and immerse us in an alternate reality, yet one of its unfathomed effects was helping people with spinal cord injuries awaken dormant neural connections and regain sensibility and mobility in the very impotent limbs they were training to shuffle off. Augmented Reality will soon unfold a layer of digital information over our physical world creating a blended environment – Will this allow us to be in two places at once?  Will we need to, once most everyday objects are internetworked around us?

         We began by considering the notion of impossibility, asking whether digital technologies are making politics impossible, and answered that, in this context, it is only impossible that things go on unchanged. We then defined politics as the administration of the power implicit in human relations, economics as the administration of the resources that make these relations possible, and technology as the plethora of tools and techniques we develop to participate in these relations.

         We assessed the surface of the dynamic between these elements, where technology is powered by the same resources that mediate political relationships; political structures guide technology insofar as they allocate the resources for its development, while technology delivers not only human relations that define said structures, but also the application of the resources on which they depend. In this dynamic, the more digital technologies reconnect us to our environment, ensuing collaborative experiences and sustainable economic practices, the more our hierarchic political system will be transformed.

         As quantum mechanics suggests, the observer too creates reality, so as our world interconnects both through and around us, we are reminded that we define ourselves through each other, in an omnidirectional dynamic. The hubris of rationality has prevented us from comprehending this universal truth, but as digital technologies – like virtual and augmented reality – vindicate intuition, our political relationships will follow suit, just as they did with the advent of literacy.

         This exercise in critical and creative thinking was conceived as the groundwork for future, in-depth consideration of this dynamic. In the meantime, may the ends that were left loose inspire us to thread coherent patterns into the uncertain future ahead.

 

 

Notes:

[1] Two classic examples of the Superposition Principle, which states that a system is in all of its possible states at the same time until measured, are: 1) Schrödinger’s Cat thought experiment – a cat inside a sealed box with a flask of poison that may or may not break, will be both dead and alive until we look inside the box, when our observation will determine whether the flask is broken or not, and the cat is therefore either dead or alive; 2) The double-slit experiment – two slits in a barrier allow for the passage of a single electron. The result suggests that the single electron has gone through both slits at the same time unless observed while being shot; if so, it will go through either slit but not both.
Source:http://physics.gmu.edu/~dmaria/590%20Web%20Page/public_html/qm_topics/superposition/superposition.html (Accessed January 22, 2017).

[2] The law of identity, the law of non-contradiction and the law of the excluded middle, were the pillars of Aristotelian logic, and remain an important part of the academic curricula of many disciplines until this day.

[3] His argument explains how, on the one hand, human rights are universal, …based on an inherent dignity, and on the facts that all human beings are born free and equal, endowed with reason and conscience, while, on the other, certain rights (to education, a fair trial, or medical care), can only be provided by those with access to written knowledge. This knowledge is, in fact, a collection of recipes for power, so that knowledge of medicine, for instance, bestows the power to heal.

Ong, W. (1982). Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word, London: Taylor & Francis, 2012.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/index.html (accessed January 12, 2017).

[4]  There is ground to argue that any success these uprisings may have had was short lived, but this shall not obscure the fact that these historical events created a pattern of unprecedented proportions in terms of speed and reach, and that we were immersed in the process. It may also be argued that digital technologies are a smokescreen, nothing but the impression of transparency, power, involvement and freedom; also, that we are exposed to so much so often, that we participate only superficially in every event, and become numb as a result; or that it allows politicians and marketers alike to promote their own interests and manipulate people. All arguments fall under how the same technologies service anyone around the globe, from peace activist, corporations, and governments, to terrorist groups and criminals. Yet, these are precisely the collective forces that politics deal with, the realm where freedom of choice and action plays out, and that will become what we make of it. This essay is limited to a different perspective of this relation: What technology makes of us.

[5] Due to the central role played by social media in both the organization and news coverage of the Arab Spring, participants began writing vernacular varieties of spoken Arabic with the same written alphabet that had been strictly reserved for the standardized form of formal Arabic until then. This changed over a thousand years of tradition.

[6] McLuhan, M. (1967). The Medium is the Massage, Hamburg: Ginko Press 2002.

[7] All open-sourced programs and systems are an example of this, but my favorite case is that of HitRecord.org, a creative online community that works as a production company. The only condition to participate is not to infringe on copyright laws outside the community, that is, you must be the author of the work you upload to the site. Then, simply by uploading, you grant every member of the community the right to use and modify your content freely. In addition, you grant the company non-exclusive rights to monetize your work. If and when any part of your work is used in a project that generates revenue, you get paid according to the weight of your contribution as decided by the community. The quality of the work earned the company an Emmy Award in 2014, as well as commercial partnerships with LG and other companies. Recently, it completed a global project in collaboration with the American Civil Liberties Union, which analyzes the impact of the Internet on democracy. It is entitled Are you there, Democracy? It’s me, the Internet, and features contributions by Edward Snowden, among others. This project has now been nominated for an Emmy in 2017 in the category of Outstanding Original Interactive Program.

[8] Nishida, K. (1945), “La lógica del lugar de la Nada y la cosmovisión religiosa,” Pensar desde la Nada, ensayos de filosofía oriental, Salamanca: Sígueme, 2006.

[9] Digital currencies are other examples of technologies that are dismantling core hierarchical economic-political structures. Bitcoin was the first non-profit grassroots project that created a currency supported by cryptography, networking, and open-source software. This makes it hard to forge and easy to store and trade without a bank. Moreover, it is completely decentralized and does not depend on any financial institution, which means it is not subject to the kind of inflation that national currencies face when the government decides to print more money. Its value is granted by mathematical algorithms and the consensus of its independent users.

[10] Agassi, J. (1985), Technology: Philosophical and Social Aspects, Dordrecht: Springer 1986.