WE IMAGINED THE TELESCREEN and got the Essence right. But the Symbol we did not. We didn’t see that we’d not have them as TVs, but as computers. And we imagined them bolted down. And we never imagined they wouldn’t be mandatory, but sought after as prizes and status symbols. And we didn’t imagine we’d not try to slip out of their sightline, as Winston did, but that we would strip down naked and dance in front of them at nearly every opportunity.
TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY ARE FUSING at such a fast rate there’s not enough time even to consider all the ethical and sociological implications. But an obvious one is that there is no longer much of a separation between Them, Us, and It.
Here’s one of the better uses of YouTube and best examples of creating a short only from computer screens and still shots that I’ve come across lately.
One thought that rises in my mind is at the end when the video talks about all those things that we have to rethink…”borders” should have been a word. We see that the way we see “borders” is a construct of the past. And yet some are stodgily, dinosaurusly talking about laser concrete super-robot fence-walls. And in the face of today’s desperate migrations from a place of economic strife that our economy has worsened with imbalanced dealings! As if walling off the people but keeping the practices in place can accomplishing anything. Because their minds cannot imagine a world that treats a border differently than the ways they’ve imagined in the past. It reminds you of the old SciFi books where they would try, unsuccessfully to imagine the future. Sometimes you’d see devices that seemed futuristic to a mind from a past time, but revealed the confines of their mental arena. Like in Isaac Asimov’s Foundation (which is a brilliant and unique series), wherein generations of people set themselves to a task of writing a multi-generational encylopedia for the future generations as they feel history will be lost. It is a wiki, in fact, before wikis. But they imagine it written on paper!
Mexico City’s own Alfonso Cuarón (director of Y tu mamá también) puts it well.
“I enjoy doing children’s films and I enjoy working with children, but in every single film I’ve done, the people I care to communicate with are young people,” [Alfonso Cuarón] explains. “I don’t know how good a communicator I am with older people in the sense that I just feel more comfortable trying to communicate with young people. For me, that’s where hope resides.”
The way he sees it, evolution has moved at lightning speed when it comes to technology and knowledge, but at a snail’s pace when it comes to ethics and politics. His hope is that this will start to change with the generation behind his own. For while he acknowledges that plenty of people of his generation and older are struggling to address issues such as global warming and immigration, he has no faith in the politicians.
Cuarón points to the tale of two walls as an example, recalling that when the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, the democratic world celebrated. “Because walls don’t work. Now the conversation is, ‘Let’s put a wall between Mexico and the States.’ Everything’s going into very archaic solutions, very archaic ways of seeing things,” he says.
“I do believe in the younger generation, people that were born in this reality,” he adds. “Part of the problem of the older generation is that everything is a regressive thing, ‘Let’s go back to this paradise.’ That’s not going to happen. The younger generation, they know that this is the world they are living in. They have to transform this world.”
Getting back/around/under/sideways to the topic of our Borgness, I look at the YouTube above, I see how Google owns and see everything in the New Frontier, and I connect that to this:
Yes, The Cloud. It’s a liaison “area” that connects your computers together, owned by Apple. Or Apple/AT&T, think of it almost as a room that has been installed…a pipeline or valve that connects all your information to itself so you can access that valve anywhere. And remember there are other parties sucking from that valve.
Tell them what you are about to do from moment to moment with Twitter. Share all your documents and business cards gained and receipts kept with the text-scanning and foto-scanning Evernote. Take fotos of your environment as you move about and Geotag them with Flickr. Instant message the dialogue all your ongoing relationships with AIM. Let everyone know where you are and where you spend your cash with Whrrl. And all the while we are watched by the Google Eye Mapmaker Gods. And every day new modes of surveillance are proposed or enacted. Drone planes, border towers, razor wire, laser skies.
Are we feeling safer yet?
We imagined the telescreen and got the Essence right. But the Symbol we did not. We didn’t see that we’d not have them as TVs, but as computers. And we imagined them bolted down. And we never imagined they wouldn’t be mandatory, but sought after as prizes and status symbols. And we didn’t imagine we’d not try to slip out of their sightline, as Winston did, but that we would strip down naked and dance in front of them at nearly every opportunity. We imagined generations compiling databases of information….but didn’t see that we’d be using them to construct these databases for the government, and not for the People. Nor that this great new technology would be used for the building of new walls, when the global information highway so obviously erases so many barriers.
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I *should* feel more connected to other people thanks to the internet, right? No! I don’t! I find it isolating.
this reminds me of a foto i once saw of two people sitting not a foot from each other and…it’s titled “connected.”
I wonder how many of us feel that way, meep, and think we are the only ones? Because I do, and have always, felt wary of the internet.
That picture does say it well, Nez, I like it.
As you already know, Nez, whoever else in the internet pipeline that is reading my scribble is making me nervous. I don’t mean the blog readers, I mean the AT&T spyroom readers, the FBI, and whoever else is INSIDE the machine. I have self censored my comments and activities on line and in emails. Yet I still feel not so happy about the dynamic. My only sense of security is that I am the proverbial small potato, that there are millions of bloggers, billions of emails, and so on. However, I fit a profile and I am on government videos already. So have they connected the dots or not, and is my odd little life of any interest to anyone? I hope I am doing the boring thing as well as is necessary to deflect interest.
RC> you have reason to be weary, especially after the FISA bill was signed. I got so mad I called my Congressman and then I called my grandma to tell her that Solomon Ortiz had been lying to us this whole time because he voted in favor of the bill…
Anyway, just be careful, and use an anonymous proxy service if you have to.
Nez & Janna > that picture is totally how things are. I’m on the MAX every day and see stuff like that. It’s surreal. I wonder how disconnected we really are.
Thank You Meep.
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sigh… I don’t know. I feel like there is something wrong with the internet, and no one else feels it besides a few of my friends. Perhaps because I have dared to look at the Machine (unlike other anthropologists - because I never got along with people) and seen that it’s just bits of twigs and gum holding things together. We’ll destroy the world by being hyperconnected, and this is the truth.
I *should* feel more connected to other people thanks to the internet, right? No! I don’t! I find it isolating. Because I poke my head into the “other” parts of the web, I find my experience doesn’t mirror anyone else. And in the real world, I alienate people by talking about what really matters to me.
Until the computer trash comes floating on our shore, we won’t know what we have done.