Son of Apocalypse How?

[N.B., Here is the new version of this piece, which I just sent to Salon.com.]

As we head into the last year of the decade, I’ve been thinking about what they’re going to call our roll into the 21^st century. You know, those who write the history books, the pundits, the same guys who come up with lines like “Tiger is a Cheetah.” What will the era ultimately be named? 

Undoubtedly we dwell in the Information Age, a time of pervasive digitization, and that seems to offer an easy appellation. But maybe it’s more the effect this development has had on our hearts and minds that defines the tenor of the times: our stepping back from human relating and stomping toward our digital devices like the zombies in Night of the Living Dead.

As we seem to become increasingly detached, I wonder about the arc of this ostensible advance. Could it signal the beginning of our impending obviation on Planet E? Is human life meant to off itself not with a grand, Jesus-strewn apocalypse, but, ironically enough, through its very own efforts at “development”?

Some say we are moving toward a time (roughly circa 2050) when human presence on Earth will be edged out, as technology rushes headlong to a point of “Singularity.” Futurist thinker Ray Kurzweil defines this era as a time when technological advances begin to unfold so rapidly that normal humans cannot keep pace and are cut out of the loop. At that point, Strong Artificial Intelligences and cybernetically augmented humans will become the dominant life forms, thus showing human history the door. Perhaps this is the backstory to Cormac McCarthy’s Road.

I can buy that eventually technology may trump biology but find it hard to believe that such a threshold could be crossed within 41 years. Then again, Kurzweil’s predictions have come to pass before, and technology evolves infinitely faster today than could have been fathomed as we flipped through our floppy discs a decade ago.

For many, digital devices and culture now consume a huge hunk of our daily bread. Just 25 years ago, few individuals could boast a computer in their homes, practically no one had cell phones, and a “hi-tech” household sported a cumbersome cable TV box and a 20-pound VCR it took an hour to convince to record one sit-com.

Today it’s a rare person who doesn’t own both computer and cell–frequently both in one–to which they’re often fanatically devoted. Some have designated these times the Attention Age, as we create and consume media and information like water, funneling it along the channels of our social media canals like gondolas through Venice.

This Brave New World seems to be riddled with paradox, however. Walt Whitman once advised, “Only connect.” And people are apparently connecting more often than ever before. With all the cell-phoning and texting and emailing and Smart Phoning, we seem to have sprouted digital umbilical cords with those closest to us. Yet this form of relatedness can feel woefully inadequate. Like fast food, it projects a semblance of nourishment. But can we be said to be deeply communicating via a text message? A tweet? A thumbs-up response to a Facebook post? At the heart of our hyper-presence lies an eerie absence, a self-perpetuating void we try to overcome by slapping our friends’ virtual backs on Facebook and sending quick texts and forwarding emails to let them know we “care.” Yet ultimately, the result can feel like drinking skim milk when we long for a rich, silky cream.

But if we are indeed moving toward absenting Mama Earth of our humanity, perhaps this is how it’s meant to be. Maybe what I might call the “Age of Detached Connection” is a step in the evolutionary progression toward the Global Android Village. Perchance this is a weaning process, and the Internet has become the transitional pacifier before we cut our cyborg milk teeth. And just maybe the Jetsonian children of tomorrow will honestly prefer a Zhu Zhu Pet to a living, breathing hamster, and we who pine for heartbeats and hamsterly élan vital will be considered hopelessly superannuated.

But it’s hard to blame them. Children have lived their whole lives with screens and keys. And with all the simulated connection in cyberspace, it’s easy for any of us to imagine we’ve got it going on. People “meet” without ever laying eyes on each other; they “talk” without ever opening their mouths; they “hang out” without ever hugging or touching or gazing into each other’s eyes. If it weren’t so life-forsaking, it would be pretty damned convenient.

Teenagers seem particularly ripe for this technological plucking. A recent NPR report noted that the number of teens pursuing driver’s licenses has decreased by millions. In the late 70s when I raced to get my license on the morning of my 17^th birthday, it was generally considered a rite of passage, as eagerly awaited as legal drinking age and high school commencement. But many kids now have such well-stocked rooms, loaded with Blu-Ray and DVD players, gaming systems, computers, musical instruments, Wii, cell phones, and iPods, that they feel little compulsion to leave, save for the dreary obligation of school. They can game online with people across the world, so that in-person friendships assume less importance, and friendly relating takes the form of a specific, targeted activity. This is quite different from my memories of getting together with other kids just to “hang around,” an amorphous term that implied a distinct lack of goal orientation. A lot of great creative projects emerged from that free-parking time.

But with its easy-to-navigate alternate reality and predictable set of responses, technology can be an irresistible Siren. Its largess of anonymity offers the opportunity to be more honest in some ways and more deceitful in others. Within its maws, each one of us gets the chance to create an entirely separate identity, an avatar that may bear little resemblance to the one we appear to have in 3-D. Added to these de facto identities are literal avatars populating such metaverses as Second Life (and its corollary, Teen Second Life), the highly nuanced virtual community that offers the options to socialize with other avatars, spend “money,” own “land,” display art, perform live music and theater, practice religion, and even have online sex. As of October 2009, more than 16 million residents had passed through Orientation Island.

Each of us citizens of cyberspace creates his or her own holograms, abstract models of what human connection looks like in screenless reality. And of course, for many, this adaptation to our timidity in social situations is great news. We have successfully engineered a series of high-tech workarounds for human discomfort within the 3-D landscape of flesh, blood, and emotion. But is creating such skewed identities really improving the scenario? The act of holograms’ colliding with holograms still can’t provide the soft nurturance and engagement of the senses that our still-human brains and bodies require to support healthy life.

Is this the time to stop and admonish, to prophesy doomsday if we don’t mend the error of our ways? Or are we bumping up against simply “what is,” based on some foregone conclusion about the fate of human life on Earth? Can individual humans have an impact, opt out of such a strong tidal wave, the Macy’s Day technological marching band? And is such a backlash even desirable, or would it serve as a roadblock in the development of consciousness? What would The Tao say about attempting to push against what feels like a river—though one so desiccated that it may be antithetical to life itself?

Perhaps our very weaknesses as human beings have flung open the door for another “life form” to enter and develop qualities that have eluded us. This calls to mind some of the classic sci-fi android films, such as A.I., Westworld, and Blade Runner, in which the drones can more readily show empathy and compassion than their human counterparts. In the heartbreaking trajectory of A.I., a young droid travels the world for more than 2,000 years, feverishly searching for the love of a mother who abandoned him. In Blade Runner, the cyborgs express the height of compassion by sparing the life of the main character, a human intent on killing them.

Have we come down with the ultimate spiritual ailment? That the human race needs to outsource our love, to create machines capable of its expression because we have so botched the job? If a machine can love better than we can, then really what is left for us to do besides strum a few chords on Guitar Hero and tweet about it? At which point, it might just be time for Armageddon to sling around a few locusts and smite us with ulcers.

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Apocalypse How?

For the last week, I’ve been mulling what might be an apt name for the last decade, our roll into 21st-century America. What will the era be dubbed in the history books? Over the last 10 years we have become increasingly digitized. So, yeah, patently we dwell in the Information Age. But I’d argue that it’s more the effect this progression has had on our hearts and minds that defines the tenor of the times. A distinct detachment, a stepping back from human relating and a greater affinity toward machine relating. Does this signal the beginning of our impending obviation on Planet E? Perhaps human life is meant to off itself not with a grand, Jesus-strewn apocalypse but, ironically enough, through its very own efforts at “development.”

Some say we are moving toward a time (roughly estimated at 2050) when human presence on the Earth will be edged out, as technology accelerates so rapidly that we will reach a point of “Singularity.” Futurist thinker Ray Kurzweil defines the Singularity as a time when technological advances begin to occur so rapidly that normal humans cannot keep pace, and are “cut out of the loop.” He posits that Strong Artificial Intelligences and cybernetically augmented humans will become the dominant life forms, essentially marking the end of human history as we know it. Perhaps this is the backstory to Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.

I can buy that ultimately technology may trump biology but find it hard to believe that such a transition would be feasible within 41 years’ time. Then again, Kurzweil’s predictions have come to pass before, and technological development progresses infinitely faster today than could have even been fathomed a decade ago.

For most people, technology now consumes such a huge proportion of our lives. Just 25 years ago, few individuals had a computer in their homes, no one had cell phones, and household “high-tech” translated into a cumbersome cable TV box and a 20-pound VCR it took an hour to convince to record one sit-com.

Today, the techno ante has been upped, and it’s a very rare person that doesn’t own both a computer and cell phone, to which they may quite possibly be slavishly devoted. People create and consume information instantly and freely, and share it on the Web via social media such as Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and YouTube.

This Brave New World seems to be riddled with paradox, however. People are supposedly connecting more frequently than ever before. And certainly with all the cell-phoning and texting and emailing and Smart Phoning, we seem to have created digital umbilical cords with those closest to us. Yet, anyone who’s ever watched the infant-screams-while-mom-cell-phones phenomenon knows that this form of connection can feel woefully inadequate. Like fast food, it has the semblance of nourishment, but can we be said to be deeply connecting via a text message? A tweet? A thumbs-up response to a Facebook post? Within our hyper-presence there is a certain distinct absence. It’s as if we are trying to make up for the emptiness we feel by slapping our friends’ virtual backs on Facebook and sending quick texts and forwarding emails to let them know we “care,” but the end result feels like drinking skim milk when we long for a rich, silky cream.

But if we are indeed moving toward absenting Mama Earth of our humanity, perhaps this is how it’s meant to be. Perhaps what I would call the “Era of Detached Connection” is a step in the evolutionary progression toward the Global Android Village.

And with all the simulated connection occurring in cyberspace, it’s easy to get fooled. People “meet” without ever laying eyes on each other; they “talk” without ever opening their mouths; they “hang out” without ever hugging or touching or looking into each other’s eyes. Young people now use the term “talk” to mean texting, emailing, IMing, or gaming with—not anything that involves sound utterances. A friend of mine recently complained that she used to at least be able to monitor her kids’ phone conversations, but now with everything done through texting, she has no clue about even the tone of the “conversation.”

Teenagers do seem particularly ripe for this technological plucking. A recent report on NPR noted how the number of teens getting driver’s licenses has decreased by millions. In the era when I first got my license (on the very first day I was eligible), it was generally considered a rite of passage, as eagerly awaited as legal drinking age and high school commencement. But many kids now have such well-stocked rooms—filled with Blue-Ray and DVD players, gaming systems, computers, musical instruments, Wii, cell phones, iPods, etc.—that they feel little compulsion to leave, except for the dreary obligation of school. They can also play games online with people across the world, meaning that in-person friendships assume less importance. Again, it is noteworthy that their friendly relating takes the form of very targeted activity. This is quite different from my memories of friendships, when you got together with other kids just to “hang around,” and generally lacked goal orientation. As I recall, a lot of great creative projects emerged from that free-parking time.

But technology can be a slinky, seductive temptress, with its easy-to-navigate alternate reality and predictable set of responses. It affords a great deal of anonymity, which offers people a greater opportunity to be honest in certain ways and more deceitful in others. It gives users the chance to create a whole separate identity, an avatar that may bear little resemblance to the one we appear to have in 3-D. I’m speaking metaphorically, about the de facto identities we all construct as cyberspace residents. However, there are also the literal manifestations of this phenomenon in such arenas as Second Life (and its corollary, Teen Second Life), a metaverse in which one wanders a highly complex virtual world, socializes with other avatars, spends “money,” owns “land,” displays art, performs live music and theater, practices religion, and can even have online sex. As of October 2009, more than 16 million accounts were registered.

Anyone who spends time in cyberspace has essentially created holograms, abstract models of what human connection is generally believed to entail. Is this an adaptation to our inherent reticence in social situations? Are we simply engineering high-tech workarounds for human discomfort within the 3-D landscape of flesh, blood, and emotion? Is creating a skewed identity really helping the problem? Obviously, the act of holograms colliding with holograms doesn’t provide the soft nurturance and engagement of the senses that our still-human brains and bodies require to support healthy life.

Is this the time to stop and admonish, to prophesy doomsday if we don’t mend the error of our ways? Or are we bumping up against simply “what is,” based on some foregone conclusion about the fate of human life on Earth? Can individual humans have an impact, “opt out” of such a strong tidal wave—the technological march ever forward? Is such a backlash even desirable, or would it serve as a roadblock in the development of consciousness? What would The Tao say about attempting to push against what feels like a river—though one so desiccated that it is possibly antithetical to life itself?

Perhaps our very weaknesses as human beings have opened the window for another “life form” to enter and develop qualities that have eluded us. This reminds me of some of the classic sci-fi films about androids, such as A.I., Westworld, and Blade Runner, in which the androids can be more capable of showing empathy and compassion than their human counterparts. In the heartbreaking trajectory of A.I., one of my favorite films, a young android travels all over the world, in a span of more than 2,000 years, feverishly searching for the love of the mother who abandoned him. In Blade Runner, the androids express the ultimate in compassion by sparing the life of the main character, a human who is intent on killing them.

Can this be interpreted as the ultimate spiritual ailment? That the human race needs to outsource our love, to create machines capable of its expression because we have so failed at it? And does that bring a certain rightness to the notion of an Apocalyptic slate-wiping?