Human Connection and Technology: Transcending Physical Space and Time In the Name of Desire and Survival
June 18, 2008
“already on the international level, the major contradiction is no longer between Right and Left, liberalism and socialism, fascism and communism, ‘totalitarianism’ and ‘democracy’. It is between those who want the world to be one-dimensional and those who support a plural world grounded in the diversity of cultures, between those who defend the cause of peoples and those who defend the rights and duties of the citizens who constitute them.”
— Alain de Benoist
Have you ever lost your love in terms of distance? You feel a longing for that person. Now, let us travel back in time to the start of Communism in China. Before marriage, my father, in China wrote letters to my mother in Canada once a week, my mother replied every two weeks for four years across the Pacific Ocean. Today, I ache for my boyfriend across the border. Today is the age of instant gratification. I am part of a generation that grew up on microwave leftovers, instant rice cookers, and granola bars that tumble out of vending machines after pressing a few buttons. My generation does not need to wait for Mr. Right or Ms. Perfect before engaging in sexual pleasures. While we grew our breasts and pimples, Google grew with us, answering every curiosity we may have in lightning speed.
Today, my love is a country away, and we are connected by landlines, Facebook, Gmail, and text messages. Distance is measured by a slight change in currency. Timing and personal ownership of money obstructs my ability to be together with my love. The question for Tomorrow, is, will lovers have to worry about unrequited love (i.e. unreplied messages), distance (being physically apart) and societal status (i.e. ownership of commodities, titles or ranks)?
Speaking of currency, today, it is our inflating dollar. I am waiting for the next depression in the economy, and earthquake in Vancouver. I question whether or not I, personally, should rely on money or on immobile property for survival. Perhaps knowledge is the current and most valuable commodity that will last through the changes in space and time. Knowledge and all types of perceptions of truth are bought in books, distributed freely on the internet, and lent out by public libraries. Our technology today enables knowledge to be continuously more easily distributed and received. Does the future require the strict exchange of commodity for another, such as knowledge for survival, or will it continue in
It is tempting to connect with our lovers. One way to connect: a lover receives a mixed CD: Love is depicted, and feelings groove in tune with music. Time is an element that defines the groove; Music carves valleys, and emotion flows with the traveling water. Space and time are required for this type of human connection.I once invited a friend to the beach over the phone. She caught the flu, and did not want to transfer it to me. I realized that emotions could be communicated through the phone with our choice of words, phrasing, and tone of voice. Fortunately, her sneeze did not spray itself out of the receiver with the message. Which leads me to ponder future prospects in terms of human connection beyond space and time!
Imagine touch and feeling. Our reality includes all our physical senses: touch, hearing, seeing, smell, and taste. A telephone is an exchange of information by audio. The internet is also a place to exchange facts, opinions, thoughts and feelings. From those sensations, we draw conclusions based on our past experiences.
Simulation of events at parallel, or an appropriate time between two individuals is an idea that online games use. Real-time games are played between two people. Applications such as email, voice mail, or even primitive notes are used to leave messages, when another person is not present close enough in physical proximity to communicate, at that particular moment in time. The problem is the delay in exchange. Events, meant to be affected by the message, may have occurred before the message was received. In this case,
However, nostalgia and thinking about a person or an event, revisits some of the sensations or inner thoughts that were circling inside the heart and head. Repeated or similar physical sensations can enhance the past event.
Innovation comes when the thoughts are reformed with the newer experiences that came after the initial event and before the recall. Physical sensations can accompany the memory with . Visuals may also bring a closer feel to the past experience, although it may be presented from a different perspective. This is fantasy.
Perhaps virtual simulation of sinful events will replace actual events.
Integration of technology with our physical bodies in the future.
Reducing prejudice, understand, connect, expand polarized views. Then, we can build effective and form a mature conclusions on how our ideals can be realized. (pg. 7)
One friend, approaching her mid-twenties recently exclaimed her impatience with the younger folk’s pre-occupation over striving to present their cool factor. They have obviously not reached her level of maturity or jadedness. Enough teenagers have committed suicide to reserve the suicidal teen stereotype. Did she forget that acceptance from peers is a remedy for lack of confidence in a young person, dependent on it for survival? Obviously, whatever the commodity, be it knowledge, experience, or membership to an exclusive club etc., the human experience will accompany new technologies.
“What will happen during the transhuman era is that mind and matter will blend. And, as the separate fields of bioengineering, artificial intelligence and robotics converge, the division between carbon-based life (as we currently know it) and artificial life will become less and less detectable.”
Utopia in this essay, is not the only utopia possible, or necessarily the best interpretation of my personal ideals, based largely on my influences living in this time and place.
Technology uses logic to . Ideas and innovation are answers, and are derived from emotional and practical needs.
In the case of the physical closeness that usually accompanies love in an ideal situation, new technology would work towards enabling the physical closeness. There may be debate about the temptation of accessing a certain individual a number of times. In the future, it may even be possible to save a reaction from a certain individual and continually access the situation on demand, quite like playing a favourite DVD to access a certain story or experience.
“The task for Utopia is to support and emphasize the positive human values in the spiritual search, and to weed out the dysfunctions.” (Ch III, Pg. 43)
“No to organizations… which put the public safety in danger.” (Ch III, Pg.44)
On slogans such as “freedom of religion”: “they are not absolute. We made them nearly absolute because we could not trust authorities to distinguish between the valuable and the damaging.”(pg 44)
Faith is an essential component of most action.” (Pg 45)
“Utopian faiths must be based on the free commitment of individuals and the continuing quest for further enlightenment, understanding, and truth.”
Glimpses of Heaven, Visions of Hell; Virtual Reality and its Implications
Pg 169
The car led indirectly to the dispersal of families. Virtual Reality may put the process into reverse as we make fewer car journeys. There may be a lot of virtual visiting. Driving the twenty miles across London can be two hours’ worth of sheer trauma. Families will be able to get closer without their meeting so often; it will be far easier for them to collide in a virtual space. The same applies to friends. And as we have seen from the effects on work, shopping and schools, VR will replace other car use, as well as pubic transport use, In turn this will create unemployment within the car, transport, and related industries, A percentage of this will be long term, leading to an increase in the underclass. But the car effect will also save the countryside from more concrete, cut pollution, make cities more attractive and so easier to live in. This may awaken an interest in the city and, after a lengthy period, start to reverse inner city decline. (Chapter 15 Unifier or Divider? Morals, Society and Religion Pg. 169-170)
Gender will be a problematic area, with VR keeping everyone guessing; it will be a cross-dresser’s paradise. The home will become one constant thing in our lives, although it will be the base for at least two realities, day-to-day and virtual (Pg. 170)
The War of Desire and Technology at the Close of the Mechanical Age
Usually sex involves as many of the senses as possible. Taste, touch, smell, sight, hearing—and, for all I know, short-range psychic interactions—all work together to heighten the erotic sense. Consciously or unconsciously phone sex workers translate all the modalities of experience into audible form… what was being sent back and forth over the wires wasn’t just information, it was bodies. The majority of people assume that erotics implies bodies; a body is part of the idea of erotic interaction and its concomitants, and the erotic sensibilities are mobilized and organized around the idea of a physical body which is the seat of the whole thing. The sex workers’ descriptions were invariably and quite directly about physical bodies and what they were doing or what was being done to them.
Works Cited
Book:
[] Clayton Glenn, Jerome. Future Mind: Artificial Intelligence. Acropolis Books, Ltd. Washington, D.C., 1989. p. 7,
[] Dewdney, Christopher. Last Flesh: Life In the Transhuman Era. HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. Toronto, Canada, 1998. p.
[] Belshaw, Cyril. Choosing Our Destiny: Creating the Utopian World In the 21st Century. Xlibris Corporation. United States, 2006. p.
[] Rosanne Stone, Allucquere. The War of Desire and Technology at the Close of the Mechanical Age, The MIT Press. Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, England, 1995. p.
[] Sherman, Barrie & Phil Judkins. Glimpses of Heaven, Visions of Hell: Virtual Reality and its Implications, Hodder and Stoughton Ltd. SevenOaks, Kent, 1992. p.
Appendix
From nation to emanation : planetary culture and world governance / William Irwin Thompson. Findhorn, Moray : Findhorn, 1982.
| A return to innocence : philosophical guidance in an age of cynicism / Jeffrey M. Schwartz, with Annie Gottlieb and Patrick Buckley. |
Schwartz, Jeffrey M. New York, NY : ReganBooks, c1998.
Habits of the high-tech heart : living virtuously in the information age / Quentin J. Schultze ; foreword by Jean Bethke Elshtain. Schultze, Quentin J. (Quentin James), 1952-
Baker Academic, c2002.
Power failure : Christianity in the culture of technology / Albert Borgmann. Borgmann, Albert.
Brazos Press, c2003.
| The religion of technology : the divinity of man and the spirit of invention / David Noble. |
by Noble, David F.A.A. Knopf : Distributed by Random House, 1998.
Exit to reality / Edith Forbes.
by Forbes, Edith, 1954-
| Seattle, Wash. : Seal Press, c1997. |
| Remaking Eden : cloning and beyond in a brave new world / Lee M. Silver. |
by Silver, Lee M.
Avon Books, c1997.
Call #: 174.25 S58r
| Artificial reality II / Myron W. Krueger. |
by Krueger, Myron W.
Addison-Wesley, c1991.
| Electronic eros : bodies and desire in the postindustrial age / by Claudia Springer. |
University of Texas Press, 1996.
Call #: 302.23 S769e
wow! virtual reality sounds like taking drugs without the worry of having a bad trip. would we be able to manage a virtual reality or would the virtual reality manage us. what would happen if we removed cause and consequence to continually experience a truly blissful reality? if people continually plugging into the same experiences day in and day out (or which ever cyber time scale you want to use) we may no longer want to survive our physical reality. (enter Keanu Reeves to save us all)