I was talking with some sharp colleagues today and we were discussing technology. By far the philosophy of technology is my favorite thing to think about these days. And I'd been trying to formulate a thought for a while: what is the position of the internet in relationship to Heidegger's four-fold.
Heidegger says that objects, any THING, gathers the four-fold. The four is earth, sky, mortals, divinities. Heidegger claims this is what makes a thing a thing.
So here's his example: a jug. The jug comes from clay. Clay is nurtured by the sky, rain and what not. Then we pour wine in the jug and we get together and toast to the gods. (All toasts are to the gods - it matters not if you are an atheist.) So we have earth, mortal, sky, gods.
Okay - this all made sense to me - I wrote my thesis on Heidegger and Beckett. But during that process I could never figure out how the internet gathered. I got the earth and sky and the mortals, but I could never figure out the place for the gods.
Today in conversation the thought came together and I sort of blurted out - I imagine, until they read this it might have appeared I had worked this thought out - the internet is theological. It is both everywhere and nowhere and it has all "knowledge" contained within. (omniscient, omnipresent, as omni-benevolent as any other god, I guess) Technology has become theology. I'm not even sure that's hyperbolic. Perhaps - but I doubt it will be for long.
I can imagine living without a computer. I love it. But I don't require it. (well I do for work but not for ontological well-being) In a major sense I still see it as a tool. The generation after me, does not see the split between reality and virtual reality. I actually think they are probably more correct, but it will probably take someone from my generation to articulate it, only because we intuit a difference.
If I was looking for evidence it would be this: watch someone who is in their 20's lose their phone. They immediately experience despair. My generation often laughs at this - I mean I'm not much older - I'm 31, but I was right on the cusp; I remember not having the internet - not having a cell-phone. My generation doesn't feel as ontologically dependent. We still believe we are "selves" that use technology. The younger generation see themselves as technological beings. They are cyborgs. It just turns out that cyborg doesn't look like the movies told us it would. And make no mistake - I'm becoming cyborg - it's just going to take longer.
The architecture of my day has changed profoundly in the last 15 years. I didn't have email until 1999 - my Freshman year at college. Before that I got on the internet occasionally, but mostly found it slow and annoying. Now I wake up, check my phone, go to the office, check my email - check 4 or 5 standard internet sites, look at Facebook, scoff at Facebook, post on Facebook, and then teach.
If the architecture can change that quickly - I mean seriously, nobody my age would have ever guessed in 1995 that people would actually start sending typed script again - who knows what's going to happen in the next, say 5 years. But I know that technology is driving itself and it's agenda is unclear - is technology the kind of thing that can have an agenda? Well if it's a theological being, perhaps. Why can't objects have agendas? Magnets prove this all the time. They relate differently depending on how you turn them. They are objects that have orientations - that's close enough for me. To figure out, say, how to make a battery work you must assume that the object has it's own set of desired relations to other objects.
Certainly a lot to think about. I will leave with this - when I watched The Matrix I thought the only character that made any sense was the guy who decided to go back into the Matrix - he sold out his buddies and in the scene I remember he's eating a steak. He says something like - I know it's not real - but I experience it as real. So what's the difference. That is the merger - in that moment the real and the technological - the theological and the biological in some sense seem to come together, just not in the way anybody ever imagined. At this point the appropriate pill might just be Valium. I kid. Sort of.
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