The real 1984 has come and gone (as has Walter Mondale but not, strangely, Geraldine Ferraro) but Orwell's point still rings true: the relentless march of technological progress makes it ever-easier for the few to exert control over the many. Not to say that this has not been the case throughout human history; it is simply much easier today to place thoughts in someone's head that are not their own or to monitor their activities. And, while any comparisons drawn between the direction the U.S. is taking today and Orwell's novel are alarmist at best, I would be remiss if I didn't call attention to the gradual nudging of select civil liberties toward the chopping block in favor of technological supremacy. It can occasionally be infuriating to see leaders who should know better failing to go to bat for a sacrosanct piece of paper. Who among us is not tempted to use Emmanuel Goldstein as a metaphor for the latent political courage of his favorite political party? Still, it should be stressed that the unsavory political potential of modern technology is nowhere near to being utilized to its full capacity anywhere in the world that I'm aware of, but then I don't get out much.
The natural flip-side to this coin is that technology can be a defensive weapon against overbearing governments. This is part of the reason that some governments have placed restrictions on the import of cryptography technology ; the shield such tools provide to political dissidents—or any citizen who believes he has a right to privacy—is something some states do not feel comfortable allowing. More than that, technology (specifically the interwebs) is supposedly the great democratizer, the vanguard of Lady Liberty. Any complete nobody with a bag of Cheetos and an internet connection (i.e. people unlike Teshale and myself) can hear and voice ideas. And the give-and-take of democracy is the antithesis of totalitarianism.
But democracy is about talking to people, not at them (and make no mistake, since the comments here are so severely underutilized, I am most definitely talking at you). Over a decade ago, Robert Putnam wrote a paper, which he later spun into a book (coauthored with Teshale, I think), called “Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital.” His point, grossly truncated, was that the connections between us are eroding. People bowl more now than they used to but they do it alone these days instead of in leagues, engagement in politics and government has plummeted to worrying lows, and so on. Among the culprits Putnam identifies is the "technological transformation of leisure." The growing popularity over the past half century of isolating technology has been crowding out bona fide human interaction. For a little perspective (particularly vis-à-vis democracy), I'll share a note made by Putnam in the paper:
When Tocqueville visited the United States in the 1830s, it was the Americans' propensity for civic association that most impressed him as the key to their unprecedented ability to make democracy work. "Americans of all ages, all stations in life, and all types of disposition," he observed, "are forever forming associations. There are not only commercial and industrial associations in which all take part, but others of a thousand different types--religious, moral, serious, futile, very general and very limited, immensely large and very minute. . . . Nothing, in my view, deserves more attention than the intellectual and moral associations in America."
Today, sometimes it seems that Google is my closest friend, the Alfred to my Bruce Wayne (that's right, the Michael Caine incarnation). The Vietnam-era mass mobilizations of young adults have apparently been replaced by a plethora of “I bet I can find 1,000,000 people for ___, lolz!!!1!!11!” Facebook groups. Everything from groceries to brides (probably) can be ordered online. You don't even have to round up eight people and 2 Xboxes for a rousing game of Halo anymore. The Internet will take care of you. But the sealing of people into technological bubbles that sometimes overlap but often are merely echo chambers is not conducive to democracy. In addition, I've seen no indication that the Internet is exempt from Michels' iron law of oligarchy. Even in a medium where everyone has a voice, some voices will drown out the rest.
In the world of Nineteen Eighty-Four, perhaps the most palpable element is the isolation. The protagonist, Winston Smith, notices it acutely because there is little else to occupy his mind. Apparently even Orwell could not envision a world in which the technology used to impose the isolation could simultaneously fill minds with all manner of distractions and white noise to the point that the isolation becomes nearly imperceptible. Whether corroding democracy by buttressing totalitarianism or fostering apathy and disengagement, technology may well be a wolf in sheep's clothing, an agent with profoundly anti-democratic potential in the guise of a democratizing force. Buyer beware.
*Actually, I first read a free version online. How that fact impacts the debate here is a question I'll leave up to you.
6 comments:
I agree that there are good and bad sides of technology, and I don't think you can argue against one side or the other--Big brothers don't have to be oppressive and little sisters can be wicked she-devils at times. There are too many other factors that go into the mix like the kind of technology, who is governing its use, etc. So I'll just leave that alone. Maybe we can spark some other discussion here too. I do want to touch on the reality vs. virtual reality topic for a bit. I guess I'm of the mind that technology won't really be taking over our lives as a permanent substitution for reality (unless we live in the matrix...which would beg the question of who let the cat out of the bag to make the movies). This argument is also going to be difficult because it's based on so many assumptions. Besides from being completely wired to a computer, having your thoughts fed into a machine and being able to download the "thoughts" of anyone through the World Wide Interweb, I feel like reality is always going to show its ugly face one way or another. We're constantly reminded of how human we are, being frail and weak and whatnot, that I'm not so sure we can escape our "humanness." I guess one could also make the argument that virtual reality (at least, so far) depends on reality to function. For example, even the shapes that objects are formed from in virtual reality take their meaning from our realities. How do you even make a virtual reality that isn't in some way based on an existing reality? Now for people who choose to exist almost entirely in a virtual reality, we'd have to ask why virtual reality is preferable to their reality. It could be that they want total control over their life, in which case it's probably better that they want to exert their autocratic tendencies somewhere other than our reality. Maybe it's fun, or it lets you achieve what you could not otherwise accomplish? What the hell is the appeal of the internet? I guess I would always rather to talk to someone face-to-face rather than see their avatar on a computer screen. I am curious though as to how many people, if forced to chose between sitting in a room for the rest of their life with a computer or ditching the computer for the real world, would actually pick the computer. I'd like to think that not many would. We're humans, after all...not cyborgs.
I don't mean to suggest that society is necessarily evolving toward a point where virtual reality rivals or even supplants non-virtual reality (you know, the REAL reality), though it may be for all I know. I was mostly getting at the fact that real-world associations feel--in a way I can't quite describe or even conceptualize quite yet--substantively different from online associations. And this may contribute to the degradation of the ties that are supposed to be binding society together.
Clearly an argument can be made that online association is just an extension of the real world. In the case of this blog, for instance, that's certainly the case, as I personally know just about everyone who visits it. As far as online groups facilitate real-world interactions, I think there's no real difference. But those that bypass the real world altogether are the ones that seem to me to be somehow different, less legitimate (that's probably the wrong word because I don't mean to imply that they're "bad" or even necessarily undesirable). Perhaps my concerns are misguided but the existence of exclusively online groups seems to me to be a threat to the cohesion real-world groups offer people. An avatar and a live face are very different, just as pushing a button on a console that causes a Predator drone airplane to kill a man seems psychologically and perhaps even morally different than face-to-face combat (I think we could step back and consider the social effects the technological advances that led to long-range weapons like guns over real face-to-face weapons had on warfare, if we wanted to).
But turning to your broader point about the role of virtual reality, if you look at some of the things futurists like Ray Kurzweil are predicting, it's terrifying. Kurzweil paints a picture of technology alleviating human want but, the stuff that's alarming to me, also:
*Direct brain implants allow users to enter full-immersion virtual reality--with complete sensory stimulation--without any external equipment. People can have their minds in a totally different place at any moment. This technology is in widespread use.
* Most communication occurs between humans and machines as opposed to human-to-human.
* Most conscious beings lack a permanent physical form.
* The world is overwhelmingly populated by A.I.s that exist entirely as thinking computer programs capable of instantly moving from one computer to another across the Internet (or whatever equivalent exists in 2099). These computer-based beings are capable of manifesting themselves at will in the physical world by creating or taking over robotic bodies, with individual A.I.s also being capable of controlling multiple bodies at once.
* Individual beings merge and separate constantly, making it impossible to determine how many “people” there are on Earth.
* This new plasticity of consciousness and ability for beings to join minds seriously alters the nature of self-identity.
* The majority of interpersonal interactions occur in virtual environments. Actually having two people physically meet in the real world to have a conversation or transact business without any technological interference is very rare.
This is only a taste of it (follow that link for more and be sure not to miss the "waking up" the universe stuff), all of it supposedly by the end of this century. The social and political ramifications of this course for technology are way beyond me (try back in a year or two--or a decade). But it's deeply unsettling and not just because I'm old-fashioned like that.
I think the reason real life relationships feel more solid is that it's much harder to pretend in real life. People know what gender you are, what race you are, your location, what you look like, etc. It's trickier and more expensive to construct an alternative identity in the real world. Online, you can spend hours crafting an email response to someone and make it look spontaneous. There are no awkward pauses, no misheard words. You can send them flattering photos of yourself, or none at all. You can very easily avoid them, or leave them behind forever if you want to. It only takes a few minutes to create a new email address or username, and the internet is way, way too vast for for most people to bother tracking someone down. All internet relationships are inherently more fragile than RL ones in that respect.
The internet's starting platform is trust. Trust that people are who they say they are, trust that people aren't quickly Googling information about things to pretend that they like the same things as you do, trust that people aren't getting to know you in order to try and swindle you somehow. That's where much of the distance comes from-- why should I bother opening up to anyone online if it's so easy to get burned?
The point about long-range warfare is very interesting to me. I just wrote a long paragraph about it, but it's a little-off topic so nevermind.
Here's a question. Would you see a any difference between playing World of Warcraft online and playing Dungeons and Dragons with a group every weekend? I guess I just don't see how an online-only group dedicated to x subject is much different than a real life one, apart from a wider variety of people meeting each other, and apart from participants being judged on how well they write rather than how socially comfortable they are.
I don't think that online-only groups are in much danger of usurping real life ones, I guess. For most people it's a supplement, rather than the be-all-end-all. I personally think television is a more worrying piece of technology. At least the internet encourages interaction, while television encourages a passive mindset.
Also, you can order brides online.
-Teshale
You make some good points, particularly the bit about the fragility of online social links. That certainly seems to me to be a big part of why they might be less legitimate than real-world contacts. The Internet is a world where you can have almost nothing at stake in your interactions with others. As you pointed out, you can play pretend the whole time and ultimately face few or no serious repercussions for it. You can abruptly cease contact with someone--forever!--with the push of a "block" button.
Moreover, there is no imperative to "make do," as it were. A big part of social contact is coming to terms with people who are different from you, annoying to you, or perhaps even offensive to you simply because life has put you into regular contact with said people. Perhaps I'll betray my anti-social tendencies by saying this, but the real social world can be a bit like trench warfare at times. And sometimes the most enduring and meaningful social relationships are formed between you and a handful of people who've survived the trenches with you.
The Internet may allow you to form groups with others who share your unusual niche interests but the ease with which you can withdraw from social contact (and avoid imperfect relationships) diminishes some of the long-term social value of it in my eyes. Online social relationships risk being too polished, too sanitized, and too easy. Real social relationships--warts and all--need the frictions and tensions, the speed bumps and discomforts to lend them weight. That's why real social ties are often stronger than techno-enabled ties can hope to be.
And yes, I find it somewhat bizarre that I'm making this argument.
Food for thought: Is Google Turning Into Big Brother?
Being a fair man, I'll also put up evidence that undermines my argument when it arises: take a look.
"The first national survey of its kind finds that virtually all American teens play computer, console, or cell phone games and that the gaming experience is rich and varied, with a significant amount of social interaction and potential for civic engagement. The survey was conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, a project of the Pew Research Center, and was supported by the MacArthur Foundation."
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