The internet doesn’t really exist – at least not as a distinct culture. It’s just people exchanging thoughts, information, good and services, as we’ve always done. It’s never going to be anything but a perfect mirror of what we are individually and collectively. It’s not going to change us, make us better, more charitable, more honest, more courageous or compassionate. The internet is not “rewiring our brains”. It’s not going to make our lives more exciting or interesting or satisfying. There’s no evidence that it’s made us any happier or unhappier. It’s not going to redefine privacy, or identity, or copyright or ownership.
The internet is not going to do away with national borders or poverty or tyranny or censorship. There was a famous adage which bravely proclaimed that ”the internet treats censorship as a malfunction and routes around it”. But the CEO’s of Google, Yahoo and Microsoft saw censorship as an opportunity and they leapt at it, like a Wall Street banker would leap in front of a subway train if you tossed a dollar bill onto the tracks. It was the “cost of doing business in China”. The internet never has and never will stop the firing of so much as a single bullet. Ask the residents of Burma, the first national insurrection to have a global online audience of concerned spectators. No new tool or technology is ever going to accomplish revolutionary – or even evolutionary – change for us because everything we create can only be a projection of our fundamental characters and natures. That’s as inevitable as the laws of thermodynamics. I think it’s going to apply to the artificial entities we create later this century as well.
Our creations may be fascinating and superficially exciting. They may make certain aspects of our lives more convenient, but they’re never going to change who we are in any meaningful way. We can change our natures, improve ourselves and strive to create a better society. But as always, we still have to do that ourselves. That’s the real meat of science fiction for me – it’s not about technology changing us, it’s about us having the vision to change who and what we are. A future in which every child can read, in which poverty doesn’t exist and no one ever goes to bed cold and hungry, a future of universal equality and opportunity and liberty – THAT is science fiction to me, much more “out there” than a future of warp drives or mind uploads, hyperlongevity or “spiritual machines”.
That future is just as achievable as any technological utopia. But no technology is going to get us there any faster. Not by so much as a single day. I think it’s even dangerous to assign hope in technology to facilitate an evolutionary role for us because that hope ultimately diminishes our sense of personal responsibility in creating a better world- a responsibility we will never be able to escape no matter how far our technology and our ability to “connect” with each other develops.
Anyway, I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this blog. If you’re interested you can look me up on Facebook, where I’m spending most of my online time these days. ( Do a search for “Chris Wren, Ajijic”) I’d love to hear from you!
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