“If I write all that makes me what I am, ME, then my blog, which I call a Construct, will theoretically reach one point where it’s a copy of me.”
Connected, by Kasey McMahon (http://atypicalart.com/)
I was chatting with Schoenheit a few days ago, and one thing leading to another, we ended up talking about the impact the Internet is having over human relationships, be it business, friendship, or love, and the (dis)likeable possibility to end up having all said relationships over the wire exclusively.
We talked about physicality, blogging… and I also gave Schoenheit a clear definition of my blog. Rather than summarizing the chat, we mutually I agreed it would be better to post the transcript of it. Here’s what has been said. No modifications were made to the text, apart from correcting minor typos and capitalizing to improve readability. I hope you enjoy the complimentary treat, and share your input. And now, without further ado…
Hiddenson: Now that Dorota is not around… I hardly eat properly, don’t sleep much, don’t shave… she better come back soon, or I’ll turn into an otaku
Schoenheit: What’s an otaku?
Hiddenson: It’s a japanese term for people who get so much involved with their passion (comps, consoles, geek tech) that they end up doing nothing else. They seclude themselves from all the rest. It’s a serious neurotic/social problem in Japan now. How someone can actually live virtually nowadays: the Net has everything… blogs, forums, IM, knowledge, data, games… you *could* live and work through it. Then, physical life is no longer necessary, except to sustain yourself and have a crap
Schoenheit: Ok, I read about that… They even IM their buddy who’s in the next room
Hiddenson: Yeah, stuff like that. I… admire that, in a way
Schoenheit: Seriously???
Hiddenson: Not IM in the next room, but to detach oneself from physicality
Schoenheit: But why would one wanna do that? Humans aren’t meant to be detached. It’s not mentally and emotionally healthy
Hiddenson: Look at how much we’ve talked about, all these months, through this tiny window… Else we’d never have met!
Schoenheit: Yeah but we still have a life!
Hiddenson: Sure, but what is humanity? And what am I? I think I am a brain more than a muscle. So, if I can still express my brain out, I’m alive. Then, one day, this body will wither and die. But my mind… Open an encyclopedia, it’s alive. Go to a cemetary, it’s dead. This is perhaps the main reason why I blog. If I write all that makes me what I am, ME, then my blog, which I call a Construct, will theoretically reach one point where it’s a copy of me. Then, when I die, my grand grand kids could use the search box, enter a keyword, and have a reasonable idea of what I, Hector, thought about it. Does it make any sense to you?
Schoenheit: Yes, it does. But going back to the detachment bit… If we were really made to function more as a brain, we wouldn’t physically look the way we do. we could eventually evolve into something totally different, kinda like speciation
Hiddenson: Who cares what we physically look? That’s a beauty of the net… All kind of disabilities are suppressed through it. We talked to each other because of travel, not because you or I looked gorgeous, which we do, of course
Schoenheit: Hehehe. But humans thrive on physical contact, many newborn babies die if they are deprived of human contact
Hiddenson: Yes, but do babies die because of no contact, or no attention? tricky…
Schoenheit: I’m using contact as in interaction
Hiddenson: But we are interacting now!
Schoenheit: Physically, touch talking
Hiddenson: Bah… who cares
Schoenheit: bleh!
Hiddenson: I understand your point of view, but ultimately, we are evolving into my theory, not coming back to yours. Like it or not. I know it’s a difficult subject, and I’m not totally convinced of my own arguments… But, aside of what I think, we are evolving into this. The net allows much more interaction, AND simultaneous interaction, than you will ever have in real life. Example: I’ve just had a few words with FCP. This would be impossible IRL without interrupting each other, or dropping one subject completely
Schoenheit: I’m just saying that I don’t think it’s healthy to totally detach oneself from the rest of the world. Trust me, I’m a great advocate of the internet, I wouldn’t be spending so much time on it if I weren’t. But I did get a little depressed at one point because I stopped going out and meeting friends just because I’d gotten so hooked onto the net.
Hiddenson: I understand. I think we’re in agreement, in general. But you’d like to retain some physicality, whereas I think it will eventually be dropped, and I’m not too sad about it
Schoenheit: If that were to happen, it’d better be waaaay past my time. I NEED the physicality. I’d go nuts if I didn’t have it
Hiddenson: Hehehe. What you’re saying is that you need physical contact
Schoenheit: Meet people,talk face to face… Though i guess all that can be done via camera…
Hiddenson: Of course I enjoy cuddles and sex, but I’d go nuts without mental exercise first. I could live with someone in a wheelchair and have no sex, but I couldn’t live with a drop dead gorgeous bimbo with nothing interesting to say EVER
Schoenheit: true true… I’d feel the same
Additional reading:
- Otaku, a definition
- William Gibson: Neuromancer, Monalisa Overdrive, Idoru
- Tad Williams: Otherland
- Douglas Coupland: Microserfs
- William Gibson Forums, where I posted a link to this post. Some of the discussion is going on here, and some there. Such is life
- whatis.com: real life vs virtual life
Interesting discussion. I think I tend toward Schoenheit’s side of the debate: and as an alternative perspective, the reason we tend to live our virtual lives in the study or the basement is because our computers are too big to lug around. Think if your computer was the size of an iPod nano you’d still be sitting inside on a beautiful day? I’d be down by the beach or something. So while our mind/bodies might be evolving toward a virtual existence, never forget that our machines are evolving, faster, in whatever direction. It will be their changes, not ours, that make the difference: and we, collectively, have some control over those changes.
Very interesting indeed; it will probably, as usual, end-up in some hybrid of How Things Are and What Things Can Become; we’ll have the superficial isolatinist nature (with truly social interactions, as was mentioned), and you’ll also have those who reject the new trends as furiously as others try to advance them; some people in my business send things via fax that they typed on a typewriter! This will never change.
hey Hid, i did the XFN thingy… happy?
Delighted beyond words!
Wow, Hiddenson, nice place you got here. I love this debate, how interesting that the first time I come here there is something that so closely interests me. I find this study fascinating in all its aspects.
I am more in alignment with you Hiddenson, honestly.
Have you ever read Otherland, by Tad Williams? I find that a lot of the science-fiction I read has reams of social commentary and of course prediction.
What I love about reading science-fiction is the realized concept in society being played out. Instead of conjecture, the author takes us to the next step. I think we can take our cues more from those stories than theory. But hey, that’s just my opinion.
?If I write all that makes me what I am, ME, then my blog, which I call a Construct, will theoretically reach one point where it?s a copy of me.?
This quote reminds me of a book I just finished reading. Douglas Coupland – Microserfs. Ever read it? One of the characters in the book is a coder, anyway, in the early days of the internet (before it went mainstream) he met an “entity” online and fell in love with this thing called BarCode. He didn’t know if it was a he or a she because he simply fell in love with the entity of this being.
There’s a lot of discussion in the book about how technology is changing our lives, and how our online identities are photocopies of ourselves. It is also quite interesting because this book was written in the 90s when the internet was for geeks and hackers.
First and foremost, thank you for your insightful comments! Interesting patterns to the subject have appeared, and we can all enjoy two more sources of inspiration by ways of books mentioned above: I’ll update the additional reading list on the post for completeness. I have not read them myself, but am looking forward to!
Bravus, your approach of relative isolationism due to hardware constraints is original, though I doubt it would change anything in practice. Point in case: portable consoles now allow to play outside, but you still keep your autistic behaviour by doing so. You’re not more accessible simply because you sit at the park.
Beltane, agreed about sci-fi litterature. By taking the time to set a grounded hypothesis, authors invite us to consider what is coming next, as opposed to an ever-changing present with little to no scope. More often than not, said predictions come true, in which case we can apply the projected scenario.
SeLiNa, I don’t know if online identities are mimics of ourselves. This is what I aim for, as you could read it in the chat excerpt, but many people prefer staying anonymous and air some rage they would otherwise not display. Interestingly, one wonders if the true personality ends up in cyberspace or in meatspace.
Ikn, taking the middle ground, aren’t you?
And where do you stand in these troubled waters? Physicality or detachment?
I can’t wait to read some more.
I come from a biological background so you could say I’m pretty much clueless when it comes to tech talk. While I agree to a certain extent, with many of the points put forth here and the WG Forum, I think Fuldog made a pretty valid point about humans not being able to ignore their ?organic needs?. When Hidd and I had this conversation we were referring to modern day Humans: Homo sapiens sapiens. We are made up of organic matter, cells that WILL die, not due to the lack of nourishment (I?m assuming everyone living the virtual life would still eat), but through the lack of exercise and utilisation. Certain parts of the human body will eventually deteriorate and be rendered useless in future generations.
Quote:
“Someday you will be online 24 hours a day. Not your computer. You. You will have an implant or a external link that will allow you direct access to all the information on the web at any point. Most people will no longer need to think; everything they need to know will be provided by a direct feed.?
If a person is gonna be hooked online 24/7, he?d literally be deteriorating in his seat. Same goes for the brain. Thinking is the brain?s form of exercise and neurons will die from the inactivity. Result: a shrunken brain.
Quote:
“There may even come a point when reproduction and population replacement will be a hot issue because no one is doing it.”
IVF is already being used to help with reproductive difficulty and there will be other ways to ?create? offspring. After all, cloning is being explored?
So what I?m saying is, homo sapiens sapiens would eventually die out, and a new breed of, I guess humans, would emerge.
All this talk keeps bringing to mind that scene from The Matrix where humans ?live? in their own little cocoons of liquid with their minds hooked up to a computer mainframe (if that was what they were hooked up to) I would say they were living a virtual life? Certainly NOT one I?d wanna live
Great talk again.
i’d like to introduce some aspects of human being I haven’t read here (or have I been reading too fast ?). Those are important aspects in my point of view and make human being something much more complex than being able to cut oneself totally out of the world.
First : feelings in general. Feeling the niceness of the cold air of the starting automn when you leave your house in the morning like nowadays, or the heat of the sun in the middle of the summer, when you feel its rays are literally refueling you with energy. Art feeling : seeing a piece of art in a Museum will never be replaced by seeing it in a computer. Was in Vienna last year, visited Museum of Art where half the remaining Bruegel’s paintings are. Still got my gut vibrating ! No virtuallity could give me that ! Feelings of beauty you can only get in front of the magnificiency of Nature !
And allow me not to speak about love to not make this full of clich?s
And then there is freedom : how I choose to live my life, today and the next one, and the rest of it ?
And desire too : when you can’t help but crave for something.
I recognize craving for playing some games, being online, read mails, blogs, etc. exists. But this desire for me can not replace the complexity of life, which I choose personnaly.
I only got one life and I’m totally responsible of it. Would I choose to live it virtually, I personnaly would have the feeling I’d live it only partially and would have cut myself from major parts of what life can be. And this is a handicap too. There is such a thing as social handicap and that’s because human being is a social animal.
Now there are still many very interesting things you’re telling here, leaving a trace for immortality, for your childrens, etc. And I also prefer exercising my brain than my other muscles. Just don’t forget brain IS a muscle too
Enough for now, life awaits for me outside this Virtuality…
Schoenheit, please reassure me by restating your assumption and telling us that you do use our brain when you are online! If a brain dies from inactivity, how could it die when you’re actually busy doing something? You’d have more chances to pass out in front of tv than flatlining on the Net.
Toreson, I totally agree about the sensorial aspect, and somehow to the emotional aspect. About desire, you can only crave about what you know, which is why you or I don’t crave about a heroin fix. Perhaps it is too late for us to live totally online, but who knows what future generations will come up with.
You say that if you were to live virtually, you’d have the feeling of living only partially. Well, this my friend is how you live your life already. Reality is only what you make of it. As a poet said: “The star only shines because we think of it”. Another classical example would be Plato and its myth of the cave.
Do you know about the seven steps of communication? From the moment you think something, form it into words, say it; the moment it takes to the sound to cross the air (and perhaps get polluted by noise); until finally it reaches your audience, who translates those tonal words into meaning, and interpret that meaning as they see fit… How many chances are there that your original message reached your audience in its cristalline sense? None.
Sadly as that sounds, no one ever understands totally what you try to convey. Sadly as it is, you never see or hear yourself as others do. Mirrors and microphones simply don’t do the trick. So, what is this reality we’re talking about??
What I want to point here, is that Humans are isolated individuals craving for communication. And to achieve their goals, they will adhere to any form of “reality”, no matter how flawed it is.
Human nature, what makes you think this reality is real? What if we were already being misled, hence proving why many are dissatisfied?
A classical example of Descartes’ hyperbolical doubt. Descartes answered: “I think, therefore I am”. Would I stop thinking if I were constantly online? Certainly not.
Hi Hiddenson:
Thanks a lot for paying a visit to my blog.
I see your point of view, but feel that a “virtual life” is inherently unstable for the reason that Man is essentially a social creature. Contact, and advances in language and communication, led to his ability to becoming “homo economicus”, the backbone for our merry existence. Further, ability to use emotions to decision – making, as Edward De Bono has pointed out, has led to even further advancements (e.g. law-making, art etc.). Any technology advancement that threatens the fundamental state will lead to a drop in our ability to retain our social and (therefore) economic state. Hence, this situation would become inherently unstable as no technology can support itself i.e. technology is no “Perpetual Motion Machine” !!
On the second issue of “is this reality real”, I fully agree with your view that there are alternate realities. Actually, this is statistically supported. In a freakish mood, I wrote in August in a post titled “Ain’t got no time for time”, that there is a very tangible probability that there are several existences. However, the view that we are being misled by a Higher Intelligence, well…no views on that one! Maybe it’s because I’m guilty of being a cautious optimist.
Would love to hear several views….
Cheers
Hazycolours, I fail to see how social interaction is not achieved online. You and me have just interacted in ways not possible before. Mind you, I’ve been in Mumbai but did not meet you. Agreed, Man is a social creature, which is why the Net is very much alive. Even the words Net, or Web have a highly symbolic social meaning.
You do however make a valid point that so far, technology cannot support itself. Therefore, we cannot all live online at any given time.
Lastly, I was not referring to a Higher Intelligence in particular, more so that we are being misled by our senses, hence by ourselves.
It’s been a pleasure socializing with you
Touche
Fully agree with your view that we are almost always misled by ourselves. Actually, I was making a point in response to earlier statement on “Matrix”-like lives.
However, I always look at the “Online World” as being eventually supplemented by a physical channel, failing which the online channel becomes self-defeating.
Take the world of retailing, for example. The WebVans and PeaPods have failed, and even Google and Yahoo! are in the process of buying into media companies. Even those that have succeeded, such as eBay and Amazon, are dealing with physical products / commodities. Pure-play online banks have been sold to players with a “brick-n-mortar” presence.
In the world of socializing, purely online socializing have either led to strange consequences on personality, or have led to nowhere, or have led to very limited success, based on frequency and intensity. The need to communicate through multiple channels cannot be met through the online channel alone, at least sustainably.
“Online socializing” does open boundaries, but cannot succeed in isolation.
Hazycolours: now this is good! Very true. As it is, we are certainly not ready for the full online. But who knows, maybe one day…
I tried recently to think of myself as just a brain expressed through the Internet and it was very messy. Sleep deprivation and too much screen time does not a healthy mind make! My consciousness fractured to a certain amount and I became obsessed with self-disclosure of the most base parts of my psyche. Urgh. Makes me shudder just typing this.
Reflecting on what happened to me, I think people _live_ in the physical world (well most of them!) which is why I eagerly await the arrival of consumer-grade pervasive and wearable computing.
The Japanese have a term for everything. I wish English could adapt and evolve so effectively.
This continues to proove my (our?) theory on LCD – did you happen to read on that? Thanks for your comment, and enjoy your afternoon =)
Sorry I don’t have much more to say, just the simple fact that I agree. And by the way, wonderful blog. I’ll be back more =)
Nothing more to say….
Just one thing
‘A healthy mind in a healthy body’
That’s what makes us Humans
Man I wish I kept up on this conversation, but alas, weekends kill my ‘online time’ :p
You know, many many sci-fi authors have already delved into this debate quite a bit. Greg Bear, Tad Williams, William Gibson (of course!) and Vernor Vinge, just to name a few.
All of them have also concurrently handled the issue of post-humanism, where we have evolved beyond our carbon shells.
Our consciousness is not the sum of our parts, it can be deconstructed and moved out of the carbon realm. At least, that is what people are working towards. Once we can upload our consciousness to exist on a silicon level, our means of thinking will expand exponentially. Everything about learning and indeed, evolving, will speed up because living in a silicon medium will allow us to.
Since we’re ruled by our nervous systems and indeed ‘live’ in this world through our senses.. they can be fooled surprisingly well. Just because a program is telling you that wind is blowing on your skin in a ‘virtual’ environment doesn’t mean it is not. Your body tells you it is after all. If we define what is real by what we can see, hear and feel, etc, then truly accurate virtual environments will essentially be ‘real’.
NRG, there is wisdom in your words… The reason why “full online” can quickly become a mess is, as you pointed out, lack of sleep. The Net, like our planet in its entirety, is alive, and does not experience night/blackouts. When a time zone sleeps, the other is awake. This can lead to frustration, as going offline would mean to lose momentum. MMO players know this very well, and I guess we are all endangered by this trap. I guess if we were to accept our biological rhythms better, our experience online could be more efficient.
Mayo: LCD Liquid Crystal Screen? Lowest Common Denominator? Don’t think so… Could you please expand?
Acheron, my formulation would be that “a mind in a body” is the curse we endure. And “a mind freed from the body” is what we crave for. I don’t want to switch to a mystical debate, but fact is that all religions consider the end of it all as a redemption of the mind over the body (Heaven, Valhallah, Nirvana…). Whether religions are true or not matters little here: it is the way man deeply expressed his feelings of an afterlife, a goal to reach. So, what is happening with the Net could potentially turn in a new form of paradise, where the carbon shell Beltane speaks about would simply be discarded.
Beltane, agreed. Though I think the individual would never reach true immortality this way. My thoughts may well be confined in a Construct, but the essence of me will still wither and die. Hmm, interesting theory!
Hi
I couldn’t resist taking a quick look at which way the discussion was moving! You know, if one were to see human existence as beyond the human body and into the realm of consciousness, then Immortality may not be so crazy an idea. Yes, the human body will eventually decay, but the works of the consciousness will continue.
Incidentally, various philosophical treatises speak of streams of consciousness inhabiting human bodies at various stages of evolution. This is referred to as re-incarnation. Scientists and Sci-Fi writers are dreaming of a situation of migrating the Mind to a different life-form. I wonder who is crazier! The philosphers who state that Immortality already exists and is a natural state of being, or scientists who dispute by saying it is unnatural, and try to re-produce it in their labs!
Hazycolours, I don’t have qualms with immortality or reincarnation. But the thing is, unless I find the elixir of eternal youth, or I become a vampire, I, known here as Hiddenson, will cease to exist. Perhaps my soul will move to another plane, and inhabit another body. It will still be the same soul, but never again Hiddenson.
The virtual world may allow us to keep a copy of ourselves for others to enjoy, but will that be us? It will be a form of our consciousness, but will it equate as us?
Oh, and do not hesitate to come back, resistance is futile
My husband and I have this debate every so often. The one about whether the copy of you is indeed you.
My take on it is that it is a new entity, but now there are TWO yous. Two yous with differing experiences, so they change accordingly. The only way this would be meaningful is if our original ‘died’ in the process of creating the copy. Then we could say we ‘moved’.
You know, I love thinking about this. The idea of existing in two (or many) places at once. In string theory, we technically already do.
Beltane, you keep fueling the debate, that’s very nice of you.
Are you simply interested in string theory and the like, or are you a scientist?
“Then, when I die, my grand grand kids could use the search box, enter a keyword, and have a reasonable idea of what I, Hector, thought about it. Does it make any sense to you?”
had not thought of this before. thanks for directing me here, and thanks for comments on eu.
i’m coming to this discussion rather late, but it is fascinating. i’m surprised that no one has talked about jean baudrillard, and that it took so long for someone to jump in with quantum physics and string theory (thanks, beltane).
baudrillard tells us that we are a simulation of a simulation; thus we are already living a virtual life, even without the computer. the computer is simply another remove, another filter, that reinforces hyperreality — which is the only reality we can ever know. baudrillard suggests that reality exists, but because we are in bodies that require sensation to interact with the world, and that sensation requires a brain and the concept of metaphor to interpret the sensation (all parts of “the seven steps of communication” hiddenson mentioned) we are totally incapable of ever engaging with reality — which further suggests that the death of our bodies and a purely mental engagement with the world — devoid of sensation — is the closest we could ever come to reality, although even then we wouldn’t be truly engaged with reality.
regardless, i enjoy sensation too much to give it up. it is a purely selfish motive, and i enjoy the ability to construct my own hyperreality with my mind and my metaphors to much to even want to know reality. i am content to live the hyperreal, content to know that i can’t know the real, while trying always to get as close to the real as i can.
but i think hiddenson is on the tack of our futures. why would we live life, a physical life, when the copy is just as effective if not more so? the simulacra we create for ourselves supplant the original so quickly and so effectively that we are living in the simulation, or living the simulation, before we even know it, and once we’re inside it, it is hard to see the original.
but i am off on a hyperreal ramble now.
back to my pseudo-physical world, i guess.
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