This
has two important consequences:
1)
the formation of Homo technologicus, a symbiotic
creature where biology meets technology intimately and is subject to a continuous
transformation; and
2)
the formation of a sort of Planetary Creature
that originates from the interconnection of the individual man-machine symbionts and is
heralded by the Internet and by the communication activities occurring in the Internet, in
particular those taking place in the so-called social networks.
The
Planetary Creature is a single world-wide structure where important communication and
cognitive processes occur, developing into a sort of connective intelligence that tends to
absorb individual intelligences. This encroaching process can produce resistance and
dissent as well as suffering, but can also enhance individual abilities. Actually, the
growing efficiency and the decreasing costs of the communication mediated by technology
offer unprecedented opportunities for augmenting knowledge and creativity and for
eliciting novel forms of intellectual activity. On the other hand there might be negative
consequences such as addiction to computers and virtuality, delegation of activities and
abilities to machines, vulnerability of complex systems, undue control on individuals and
economic exploitation. Some important consequences of these developments are examined
concerning the body, the time and space categories, and in particular the identity
concept.
The
communication explosion
We
are witnessing a rapid and huge increase of communicative exchanges caused and mediated by
the information and communication technology (ICT).
The
main causes of such communication outburst are
1)
the increase of technical efficiency
2)
the dramatic decrease of costs
3)
the weakening of the traditional filters that hindered the spreading of information
(religion, school, family, the society at large). Such filters were supported by the cost
of communication, by the widespread illiteracy and by the slowness of communication
exchanges.
The
ICT has made communication increasingly rapid and cheap and has contributed to the
formation of what is called Information Society.
A particular aspect of that technology is the increasing integration and convergence of
different technological areas:
1)
convergence between telecommunications and computers
2)
digitalization of all sources and channels of information
3)
development of multimedia interactive services
4)
concentration of a host of functions in pocket-small devices
The
judgements of the technological progress vary from utterly positive, such as:
the
information society offers unprecedented opportunities for increasing knowledge and
creativity, and for strengthening democracy and participation
to
totally negative, such as:
dependency
on computers, delegation of activities and abilities to machines, vulnerability of complex
systems, undue control on individuals by a sort of orwellian Big Brother, addiction to
virtual reality, anxiety from faster and faster interactions, new forms of illiteracy,
threatens to democracy, loss of the sense of communication and possibly of life.
What
such a variety of contrasting judgements suggests is that we are facing a dramatic
revolution, largely rooted in the interaction between technology and society. It is
becoming evident that the true vocation of computers is not number crunching or data
processing as much as interactive connection among individuals. Computers are more and
more seen as nodes of the communication network that is rapidly extending all over the
planet.
Communication
is a complex phenomenon, hence it can (and has to) be described at different levels and
from several different points of view, none of which can give a thorough description: as a
result, the phenomenon of communication gives the impression of ambiguity. In other words,
both positive and negative assessments can be justified by different observers with very
convincing arguments.
No
matter whether we judge positively or negatively the fact that everybody can communicate
his or her own thoughts, sensations and impressions, however significant or insignificant,
to a large number of individuals at a very low cost, we should not forget that under the
surface of the communication phenomena there is a powerful economic system aiming at
gaining money and power through cunning market policies and advertising strategies.
Homo
Technologicus
When
we consider the problem of the relations between humans and technology, we often assume
tacitly that man and technology are distinct and separate entities. Moreover, we assume
that technology evolves very quickly, whereas human evolution is very slow or even still.
My premises here are different: on one hand, the distinction between man and technology is
not sharp, since technology has always had a big role in shaping the intimate nature of
man and, on the other hand, technological evolution, more generally cultural evolution,
has gradually taken the place of biological evolution and has become a sort of
continuation of it.
These
two evolutions have become striclty intertwined and have formed a "bio-cultural"
or "bio-technological" evolution which has set the stage for the appearance of a
new (pseudo)species, Homo technologicus, a
symbiotic creature where biology meets technology intimately. Homo technologicus is not simply "Homo sapiens plus technology", but rather
"Homo sapiens transformed by
technology": it is a new evolutionary unit, which undergoes a new kind of evolution
in a new environment.
The
bio-technological evolution is ruled by a mixture of Darwinian and Lamarckian mechanisms.
We know that the mechanism of inheritance of acquired characters proposed by Jean-Baptiste
Lamarck to explain biological evolution does not work, because it would soon lead a
species into an evolutional dead-end. But it does work in cultural evolution, where
imitation and learning are powerful and quick mechanisms that shortcut the long and slow
selection process proposed by Charles Darwin to explain biological evolution. Due to
Lamarckian mechanisms, technological (and in general cultural) evolution is rapid: quick
adaptations to novelties tend to root immediately into the deep structure of society. The
rapidity of this evolution, however, also causes its products to be fragile.
If
the scenario I am sketching here is credible, and if Homo
technologicus will really emerge from history and evolution, what are to be the
consequences? Rather than in the continuity aspects of the shift from biological evolution
to bio-technological evolution, I am interested in the discontinuities and in the mismatch
between the organic and the artificial components of the symbiont. No doubt, the two
evolutions are somewhat heterogeneous and, consequently, the two components of the
man-machine hybrid are heterogeneous. This mismatch can cause certain kinds of suffering
which would add to those due to our organic nature, although technology contributes to
relieving some "conventional" forms of pain.
The
deepest human characteristics, those associated with emotions, communication, expression,
the atavic inheritance linked to the body and rooted in the most ancient layers of
evolution, which played a fundamental role in the survival and development of our species,
would not disappear at once only because technology would insert in our bodies and brains
its nanometric prosthetic devices. And in the contact area, in the infinitesimal interface
between "us" and "our" protheses, serious rejection processes could
show up. Even today, when Homo technologicus
is still in an early stage of development, we can observe troubles and difficulties due to
the mismatch and incompatibility between man and machine. As an evidence of this, remark
that a great deal of research efforts are being devoted to the construction of “user
friendly” machines, which should create an anaesthetic zone in which the artificial
components are allowed to creep. In other words, the ancient body components try to oppose
to the encroachment of the newer mind constructions and we purposefully try to weaken this
resistance.
The
consequences of this course of action are difficult to predict, but all this could be a
source of problems. In the technology cage that we are building around ourselves as a
tight suit, some of our skills will be as useless as prehistoric relics, but will
nevertheless continue to demand to be put to use or will ake as phantom limbs. Other
skills will obviuosly be enhanced: technology will operate a sort of selective filtering on our persons (complex units of mind
and body).
In
Homo Technologicus the original biological base is increasingly invaded, hybridized and
transformed by artificial devices: thus Homo technologicus is gradually becoming a cyborg.
And such evolution is more and more rapid, since technological innovation is accelerating
due to a positive feedback: the presence of technology facilitates the introduction of
more technology. Positive feedback loops cause an acceleration in processes, but also a
dangerous instability that can even lead to breakdown or runaway phenomena.
Potential
knowledge and actual knowledge
Thanks
to a series of communication instruments, represented by spoken language, writing,
printing, all the way down to the ICT tools, among which the Internet is the most recent,
human beings have increased the amount and velocity of exchanged messages, by which they
can influence one another's thought processes. So the brains of different individuals
united by language can be harnessed together in ways which would be impossible without
language. A whole group on individuals can be integrated and can start to behave as a
single thinking entity.
With
the develepment of the ICT, the range over which this integration could take place has
extended gradually to the whole planet: in such a “global village” the amount of
exchanged messages and of shared knowledge, stored in larger and larger memories,
increases steadily. As a consequence, thanks to the ease of access, the potential mass of knowledge available to each
individual augments constantly. On the other hand the amount of actual knowledge, i. e. knowledge that an
individual can pour into his personal memory and can procèss remains more or less
constant in time. There is an increasing gap between the collective (potential) knowledge
and the individual (actual) knowledge.
The
communicative unification produced by language and its supporting technologies extends
into a cognitive unification: thought and knowledge achieve a cooperative dimension, so
that some scholars have coined the expression “collective intelligence”, meaning
that the social communication activity supports a social cognitive activity at a
superindividual level.
This
is partly a metaphor, but there is no doubt that some intelligent activities of great
importance, e. g. some significant scientific or industrial enterprises, are only made
possible by a vast collection of cooperating minds connected by language and
communication. No single mind could ever perform experimental or theoretical activities
whose complexity exceeds a given level.
In
other words, the communicational overheating supported by the ICT brings about the
formation of a sort of nervous system of the planet,
or Planetary Creature, a web-like structure
whose meshes connect human beings and computers to perform cooperative cognitive
activities. Between such collective intelligence and the individual intelligences there
are quantitative as well as qualitative differences. Quantitatively, the collective
intelligence is more and more powerful, whereas individual intelligences have been more or
less constant for thousands of years. On the other hand, from a qualitative point of view,
each individual intelligence is rooted in a particular body and is accompanied by
emotions, feelings and by an individual consciuosness that belongs to the holder of the
intelligence. The Planetary Creature, or collective mind, does not possess, at least for
the moment, emotions or a consciousness.
It
is interesting to note that the development of the Creature is not guided from outside,
rather it is self-organized and emerges from chaos.
The
widening gap between the individual and the collective cognitive abilities demands an
increasing recourse to a sort of technological delegation: to procèss the increasing
amount of information we have to resort to machines, which in turn allows an increase in
the information amount that can be procèssed, in a positive feedback loop. Such
delegation process might extend to the decision process, and this would make the
attribution of responsability equivocal and problematic.
Bio-technological
evolution
As
I said, differently from biological inheritance, cultural inheritance is not limited to
parent-offspring transmission: it works also among individuals of the same generation by
imitation and learning processes. Hence cultural novelties can spread very quickly through
society and among societies, thus cultural evolution is much more rapid than biological
evolution, although its products are more fragile and volatile. It should be emphasized
again that the two evolutions are not independent: on one hand cultural evolution is
conditioned by biological constraints, on the other hand every cultural novelty can play a
role in biological evolution, especially - but not only - when it concerns the process of
reproduction: new fertilization techniques, social mating rules, retention and support of
handicapped children, genetic manipulations, etc.
The
increasing speed of biocultural evolution and the resulting acceleration in the formation
rate of the successive symbionts are significant phenomena, as they are the main cause of
the mismatches and sufferings that are always present in hybridation phenomena and their
products.
It
seems that today the velocity of the man-machine hybridation overcomes our ability to
adjust the two components to each other, and that brings forth suffering and pain. In
particular this is true of mind machines, that are the most subtle and pervàsive devices
and are responsible for the most remarkable transformations in humans.
In
the XX century along with the traditional machines for processing energy and matter, we
started to construct machines that process information. Also, miniaturization allows
implantation of micro and nanodevices directly in the body or brain, enhancing traditional
capabilities or even creating new, unprecedented ones. Such hybridation processes bring
forth a continuous wave of emergent properties that foreshadow the so-called post-human
stage of evolution, the more so as electronic communication has made worldwide integration
of human beings a reality in the form of the Planetary Creature.
In
past times the continuous transformation of Homo
technologicus and its hybrid nature were not visible, which justified the conception
of man as a steady and stable species. Today, however, the rapid development of technology
has shown that Homo technologicus undergoes a
continuous series of changes. Among such changes, let me single out the consequences of an
early exposure of children to computers, playstations and the like. It seems that the
brain connections of those children tend to develop in a different way relative to
children that are brought up traditionally, e. g. reading, writing, and playing with
mates. As a consequence, school teachers and children have different brain structures, as
teachers were brought up in a more traditional environment, hence teachers and pupils have
difficulties in communicating with each other. This might be one of the reasons of the
difficulties in which school struggles today.
The
phenomena that I have briefly sketched out. i. e.
-
the man-machine hybridation leading to Homo
technologicus,
-
the world-wide integration of humans bringing about a cognitive Planetary Creature,
-
the mismatch between biological and artificial components of the symbiont, with consequent
sufferings,
-
the technological delegation of abilities and resposabilities to machines,
-
the emergence of new and unpredictable abilities in Homo
technologicus, together with the weakening or disappearance of traditional abilities,
and
other related phenomena that I will touch upon later, show how deep and strong is the
influence of technology on society. Without lapsing into a sort of technological
determinism, I wish to stress the importance of mind machines in shaping social
activities, first of all communication, learning, trade and business. It is on the basis
of such considerations that the adoption of new technologies should be evaluated.
In
cultural evolution the engine of change resides in conscious finalism rather than in
random mutations. Finalism, operating through a more and more powerful technology, is a
strong catalyzer of social, cultural and even biological transformations. The real source
of innovation is probably the still mysterious mechanism of creativity, which we qualify
as random for lack of a deeper understanding. But to be implemented, new ideas have to
pass the sieves of cultural compatibility, social acceptance and economic feasability: due
to these filters many innovations do not even reach the stage of embryo and die unknown to
people.
However,
the results achieved by conscious finalism often do not coincide with the planned ones:
the outcomes of biocultural evolution can be at variance with the wished outcomes, in
spite of all earnest and industrious endeavours. Such a phenomenon originates from the
interaction of human plans and designs with the complexity of the real world, that limits
and constrains the scope, extent and direction of our projects. As a consequence,
uncertainty breaks into history, evolution, market. In particular, the relations between
society and technology are unpredictable, and this partly is why sociology is an
interesting discipline.
Moreover,
the uncertainty in the evolution of socio-technology is increased by the fact that many
innovations are unfinished and do not have definite boundaries. Designers often construct
seeds or embryos of innovations, that later evolve under the effect both of design rules
and of random interactions with the environment. Those embryonic innovations intertwine
with existing systems to form inextrìcable tangles. Such is the case of genetically
modified crops that come in contact with traditional plants triggering unpredictable
developments. Think also of software programs, that are launched on the market to be
tested and improved by users. Or think of social networks, whose evolution depends on the
contributions of thousands or millions of users and, within the technical constraints, can
undergo unpredictable developments and twists. This is self-organization at work: coherent
phenomena emerging from chaos.
To
make a long story short, our ability to act and construct has now surpassed our ability to
understand and foresee. In this sense technology has outdone science.
Let
me now go back to the Planetary Creature to remark that this cognitive entity represents a
further evolutionary stage with respect to Homo
sapiens and Homo technologicus, a stage
where collective or connective intelligence holds sway over individual intelligences. The
whole of mankind seems on the way to become rapidly a virtually single organism, or a
single community like a bee-hive or an ant colony. Social insects exhibit a collective
intelligence, and a collective behaviour, that depend on the intense and permanent
communication activity among the units. The same is happening to human beings connected by
language and by ICT.
Mankind
will continue to evolve, more and more rapidly, but intellectually rather than physically.
There is, however, a basic difference between the Planetary Creature and an ant or bee
colony: as far as we kwow, the individual intelligence of social insects is very low,
whereas human individuals have high cognitive abilities and also feelings, emotions and
consciousness. This raises the question whether humans are willing to give up these
characteristics, partly or totally, to merge into the Planetary Creature. They might
oppose a diffuse resistance to renouncing their most intimate and personal qualities and
experiences, including free will. Moreover, certain ancestral traits, such as competition
and aggression, could oppose the formation and development of the Planetary Creature.
On
the other hand, many collective or coherent behaviours are to be observed in contemporary
society, especially among young people, and this might denote a shift towards cooperation,
which could ease collective conducts and actions.
As
to the issue of democracy on line, some observers believe that the cheap and easy access
offered by the Internet could allow an exercise of democracy based on a direct and
immediate knowledge of events. For instance when totalitarian governments obscure or ban
newspapers and radio and tv stations, the Internet might be the only source of information
for people, thus triggering and supporting popular movements and initiatives. Under normal
circumstances, everybody could put any issue to the vote just pushing a button after
gathering enough relevant information. Actually, however, this raises many problems:
-
who, and on what basis, decides when information is enough?
-
who, and on what basis, decides when a piece of information is relevant?
Actually,
news are put online by someone, hence they are chosen and filtered depending on overt or
hidden interests. Checking the news is difficult and time-consuming, and this would
inevitably lead (as in fact has already led) to the creation of mediation organs, as is
usual in more traditional media with press agencies. People would resort to these organs
rather than to the primary sources of information (i. e. the events themselves), difficult
to identify and to check, so democracy would be severely limited. Should one insist on
having first-hand news, he would risk spending all his time online, thus renouncing his
real life.
Since
the Planetary Creature is one and only, it has neither companions nor competitors with
which to hold a dialogue or to contend. Therefore it would lack one of the most powerful
driving force behind change and evolution.
In
principle the Planetary Creature might govern its own further evolution following rational
criteria and exercising a perfect control over its own progress. But this raises a
problem: what would urge the Planetary Creature to evolve? Why should it evolve? In other
words: what would be its needs, deficits, or longings? Why should it modify its blissful
and rapturous state since no competitor would threaten it and no one would complain about
ist flaws and limitations? Actually, the Planetary Creature might persist forever in a
stationary and unperturbed state, without any advancement.
Social
networks
The
main issues are:
-
time
-
body
-
identity
-
contents
As
to the contents of the messages, it is extremely variable. The enormous increase in
quantity probably goes with an average decrease of quality with respect to the past, where
only important messages were exchanged due to the high transmission cost. Today innovative
and significant messages go with trivialities, mental gurglings, narcissistic and
egotistic trifles (this morning I had cornflakes at breakfast - oh, great!).
At
the same time there is always someone in the huge audience that is interested even in the
faintest information ripplings and is willing to reply, possibly triggering a lively
dialogue that can expand rapidly and die out rapidly.
The
increase of exchanges increases the communicating amount of people and consequently the
human thinking mass. Beyond a given threshold, this quantitative increase can lead to
qualitative variations of intelligence. In any case, the technological interface tends to
wipe out many components of direct communication, such as metamessages, nonverbal
messages, tone of voice and the like.
A
substantial part of interlocutors, assuming that this term is still valid, never had
direct, face-to-face contacts, so people address to a public of unknown individuals, whose
identity is vague or identifies with a name, or a pseudonym, or a nickname. This may lead
to a sensation of irresponsibility, even impunity, that in turn pushes to counterfeit
one's identity, sending messages that could have been sent by a completely different
subject. On the other hand, identity is not defined completely by the sender, rather
emerges from a cooperative construction in which the receiver is involved too. Different
receivers attribute more or less different identities to the same sender. Thus we discover
that identity, like information or beauty, is a relative entity, i. e. originates from the
interaction between the sender and the receiver. In fact, we do not have a precise and
explicit notion of our own identity until we are obliged to specify it, e. g. when we have
to submit it to other people (possibly forging it).
We
are caught in an interplay of mirror images, we are conditioned by the representation we
offer of ourselves to other people, there might be an underlying psychological mechanism
connected with mirror neurons, an imitation game that we play with ourselves: you should
be careful when you present an identity to other people, because that identity might
become your real identity. If you pretend to be honest and fair or mean and base, you
might become fair or mean. Moreover, the
conventional identity we offer to other people usually persists stable whereas we undergo
a sequence of transformations. Neurophysiologists tell us that each of us possesses many
personalities, one of which, in turn, holds sway: how do we get away with being considered
different from what we feel we are in that moment? Identity could readily become a
cliché.
There
are other problems concerning identity: in a restricted sense, if 'identity' coincides
with a set of personal data that we entrust to the net, identity can be forged, and even
stolen, by someone willing to commit illegal deeds. This raises the problem of privacy and
abuses, such as the construction of profiles of potential customers of goods or services
or the selection of applicants for a given job.
This
has to do with the thorny issue of the relation between security and freedom, in the light
of possible abuses by authorities or financial groups, companies or other institutions.
Many prefer security and are prepared to sacrifice privacy and freedom, at least partly.
Others, to oppose abuses and data thefts, might choose to construct paranoid armoured
online communities, giving up the traditional, or promised, transparency of the web.
As
I said, the messages posted in the social networks are extremely varied. Sometimes they
are assertive and self-assured, lacking however rationalization and strong arguments. This
is typical of the web culture, and exhibits the mosaic structure of that culture, in which
every piece is interesting, but none is really fundamental. Many users only wish to assert
their existence and presence, sort of waving to the invisible (or partially visible)
audience. It is an ongoing reality show, or web-show, that overflows into the 'real'
everyday reality to erase it or at least to blur it.
The
consequence of this confusion between real reality and virtual reality is not that virtual
reality emerges as real, rather that real reality emerges
as virtual: the virtualization of all experiences is one of the many facets of
epistemology that technology has brought to the forestage. Such a virtualization exhibits
the traits of epistemological constructivism: reality is out there, but we cannot reach it
directly and our experience of it depends on our interactions with it: it is the filter of
interactions that transforms reality from virtual, or potential, into actual.
Another
consequence of this emphasis on virtuality is that some people try to escape into virtual
worlds: they create fake identities, more gratifying than those offered to relatives and
other close people in everyday life and hide behind those forged identities. E. g. shabby
housewives distressed by daily chores or discouraged man afflicted with a thankless job
strive sometimes to disappear into the web. Of course this is not possible, but many
people spend a lot of their time online. Diving into a social network can be very
gratifying and can even have some of the effects of a drug, including addiction phenomena.
The addiction syndrome and the corresponding withdrawal symptoms can appear also at the
elementary level of e-mail.
As
an extreme example of escape from reality into the net, I mention the “hikikomori”
phenomenon, well known in Japan, by which many teenagers refuse to live a normal life,
with face-to-face relations with their parents and friends and turn to contacts mediated
by the net. Their virtual world absorbs them completely and were not for some minimal
vital needs, like eating and drinking, they would happily or unhappily disappear into the
cyberspace. We can only try to imagine what the experience of time, space, and reality may
be for these youngsters.
As
the hikikomori phenomenon suggests, spending the majority of one's time in the cyberspace
not only modifies the notion, perception and experience of time, but also results in a
gradual vanishing of the body, whose importance for our identity and ontology I have
already stressed. Semantics, i. e. the sense of the world and of our presence and action
in the world, stems from the primary necessity of preserving body's integrity and to
satisfy its basic needs. Hence, if the body disappears, our semantics is deeply disturbed.
By the way, these phenomena confirm the deep influence that technology exerts on our
categories, cognitive abilities and weltanschauung
(view of the world).
Even
if we ignore such pathological cases, whose consequences on the psycho-physical well-being
are devastating, also a moderate (or normal, in the West) use of technology has important
consequences. The increasing speed of communication brings about compulsion, anxiety,
mental overload, restlessness, inattention to other activities. The pressure to react
immediately to the stimuli (messages) may hinder careful reflection.
We
wish and tend to be connected all the time, lest we be excluded from the big communication
game. We have to be always reachable, we have to be at disposal of anybody who might make
an offer, a proposal, a suggestion, put a question or make a remark. At the same time this
exposes us to a myriad of incoming messages, most of which unwanted, that invariably take
our minds off track. It is as we were particles in a fluid subject to a random Brownian
motion: communication is fragmented, and so is time, and the fabric of our relations is
torn up. Thus, on one hand such communicative perturbations increase our possibilities, on
the other hand they destroy our concentration.
Moreover,
the expression “free time” has lost its meaning: since the Internet has crossed
the thresholds of our houses, it has increasingly absorbed our time and has blurred the
distinction between labor time and free time. We are always busy. Life-long learning is
one of the signs of this ceasless slavery. And, no matter how much effort we put in it, we
cannot catch up, since we are crushed by the huge, and increasing, disproportion between
us and the Internet (i. e. the massive horde of other people). For whom do we work so
hard?
Time
is really the key resource, not only we parse our activities, perceptions and feelings in
time, but we live in time. Time is the only thing that we cannot increase or expand. Time
is irreversible, so we have to be careful as how we spend it. Either we live our lives or
we observe other people's life. Either we privilege action or we privilege communication
or observation. We can do both things, of course, but time is limited, if we devote more
time to one thing we subtract it from other things. If we pursue and watch other people's
activities we are diverted from our own time, activities and life.
Be
wise administrators of your time!
And
now it's time for me to stop and thank you for the time you have devoted to me.
Urbino (Italy), 29th June 2009