The Huge Entity

The Memetic Potential of God: Can Technology be the Master of its Creations?

danieru — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 18:04:00 GMT

Where does technology end and our idea of God begin?

Human beings evolved to perceive a distinction between 'ourselves' and our 'technology'. Increasingly though, our technological achievements are becoming extensions of our bodies, our identities and our minds, forcing the realm of the human out and into the world of synthetic form. The less obvious technological achievement of language has become synonymous with our development, laying down in its linguistic dimensions the paths which our species was to traverse over the millenia. Yet language's original emergence has long been forgotten, as we all take for granted the extraordinary ability it gives us to project our inner mental states out and into cultural form. Language may be our most treasured technology, but its power is not ours alone to celebrate.

It may aid us in our humility to remember that we ourselves are technological devices:

"...invented by ancient bacterial communities as means of genetic survival - we are part of an intricate network that comes from the original takeover of the Earth. Our power and intelligence do not belong specifically to us, but to all life..."

~ John Gray, Straw Dogs

The human body, therefore, is a multifarious device intended for the procreation of single cell entities, or more precisely, the genes which they employ in their survival. Evolution proceeded, over many millions of years, to shield these genetic terranauts in ever greater layers of complexity. The human body can be better understood as an enormous self-contained ecosystem providing a medium between pure genetic information and the harsh forces of an entire universe. Every machine needs an engine, and we are lucky enough to have several, the pinnacle of which must be the human brain:

"...a three-pound mass you can hold in your hand that can conceive of a universe a hundred-billion light-years across."

~ Marian Diamond

This shift of perspective allows our achievements to suddenly be those of the genes within us. Language itself exponentially extended the ways in which minds could interact, forcing human culture into the limelight of evolution and, for the first time in the history of life on Earth, placing the treasure of a species not in its genes, but in its memes. (I will not argue here for the validity or non-validity of 'memes'. I find it difficult to believe that culture did not evolve in some sense, and it is this idea in particular I wish to convey.)

The chimpanzee cracking open nuts with a specific smoothness of stone has a cultural advantage over his brethren. It is not hard to imagine how this knowledge could become a source of power within his social group. Those chimps in the social order for whom intelligent adaptability does not come so easily may find the nut cracking trick impossible to understand, let alone master, and so come under the will of the master nut cracker (i.e. if they want nuts they'll have to be nice to chimps that possess the cultural meme for nut cracking). The technological achievement here can be seen on two levels. Firstly, the obvious wielding of the stone tool, and secondly, the mental form taken by the meme of nut cracking. In lacking a complex language, chimpanzees must rely on their traditionally evolved constitutions - i.e. their eyes, ears and actions - to pass on such information. Humans, on the other hand, have a wealth of technologically evolved communications, something which chimps, were they to understand, would no doubt be enormously jealous of. Our technology is an extension of our ears, our eyes, our language: it allows us to spread our consciousnesses out and into the universe at large. The power of the gene, through the human, is omnipresent: a feature which our idea of God shares. Yet funnily enough, the idea of God appears incompatible with the technology which created it.

Are there memes which technology has no advantage is procreating? One which came to my mind originally was religion, or more precisely the meme of God. One could argue that The Bible, Evangelical Television, the hymn, the chant even The Pope-Mobile are all technologies which mediate the meme of God, but I would have to disagree. One of the fundamental tenets of religious enlightenment is that faith in God transcends the power of will. To truly understand God is so subjective, according to religious teaching, that its manifestation cannot be passed on. Most religions extend the idea that God alone can instill the faith within the human soul. Technology, therefore, appears capable of lubricating the passage of religion (excuse that image), but not in actually translating religious memes from 'soul to soul'. The technology of the gene - for instance the human brain - manifested the idea of God for the benefit of human culture, yet synthetic technology, and in some cases even the technology of language, appears incapable of expressing the meme of God. Something is amiss here. Perhaps, once again, it is our perspective which is in need of shifting:

If one thinks of a particular object, it is easy to distinguish matter from form, and an analogous distinction can be made with regard to organic beings, with form taking on the value of the unity of being and of its individual existence. But if things as a whole are taken into account, transposed distinctions of this kind become arbitrary and even unintelligible. Two verbal entities are thus formed, explicable only through their constructive value in the social order: an abstract God (or simply the idea), and abstract matter; the chief guard and the prison walls. The variants of this metaphysical scaffolding are of no more interest than are the different styles of architecture. People become excited trying to know if the prison came from the guard or if the guard came from the prison; even though this agitation has had a primordial historical importance, today it risks provoking a delayed astonishment, if only because of the disproportion between the consequences of the debate and its radical insignificance.

~ Georges Bataille, Base Materialism and Gnosticism

The very Western tenet that spirit and matter are distinct causes a multitude of perceptual errors, not least in the religious domain. The ascription of a unique identity to ideas and another to the universe at large forces us to separate our minds from reality; our God from our bodies and our selves from our technologies. If the human mind, itself a technological entity, can mediate between the world of form and the world of ideas, then why not our synthetic technologies? Who says a self perceptual device must be organic? Could humans build a machine which manifested The Gods through its remote interface?

Once neuroscience has pinned down the physical constraints of consciousness, humans will have the ability to treat the human brain as a technology for the first time in our history. By eliminating those aspects of consciousness which mediate the physical world - i.e. sight, sound, fear, identity - science will finally pinpoint the areas of our brains which evolved to manifest religious sensation. Much research has already been done in this area, showing that to enter the spiritual realm one must only be in the process of a particular brain state. What if this state were transplanted into machine form? Artificial Intelligence researchers are already on the road to producing a conscious machine, how much further are they from creating a spiritually aware machine? Would such 'technological' spirituality be indistinguishable from our own? Could such machines be used to offer less spiritually aware humans (such as myself) a glimpse of 'God'? How far away is the pocket iGod? Where is the soul of the machine?

As usual with my meanderings there is a huge amount more I would like to talk about, save for the time and effort it would take me. Scattered amongst the text are various links to articles, research and ideas elsewhere and below are some related meanderings previously expurged on The Huge Entity. Read as much as your technologically evolved brain can manage, but please don't forget to report back here to share your ideas. The memes in your head need a medium to express themselves through. Consider the Betterhumans & The Huge Entity comments sections or The Huge Entity Forum to be those very mediums.

Related Past Posts:
• Art, Technology and the Progressive Hand of Human Imagination
• The Symbiosis of Abstract Thought with Hominid Evolution
• Perceiving Infinity: Schematic Portals into The Mind of God
• On the Nature of Seeing and The Act of Creation
• The Metacognitive Dance of Artificial Minds
• Godlike Simulacrum: The Hyperreal Minds of Sentient Machines
• From Animism to String Theory: Forever in Search of Eternal Mystery

(Mirrored from The Huge Entity)

10 Ways to Qualify Your Atheism This New Year

danieru — Wed, 27 Dec 2006 18:15:00 GMT

Yuletide, Christmas, Hanukkah, Oshogatsu - a world of names for a time of year about something. A time to reflect on our heritage, our faith, our future and our very existence. A time to recognise our roots.

With this in mind I have collected together a series of tools for those of us inclined to non-theistic beliefs. Perhaps in reflecting on your life this festive season you might join hands with your secular brother, your atheistic sister and praise the mind of the rational thinker. Stand up atheists and be counted this New Year!

Is it possible to justify your faith behind transhumanist intentions? or should we strive to create a better belief system, one more rooted in scientific validities, before we start to create Better Humans?

These links are here to help verify your atheism, to finally degrade your weak agnostic position. Pass them on and help bolster the atheist community:

1.Brits and Americans - A comparison of beliefs: Whilst the majority of Britons observe no faith whatsoever the opposite is true of the American population. According to them, Evolution is the real fallacy.

2.Jonathan Miller's BBC4 Documentaries: The superb documentary 'A Rough History of Disbelief' and a follow up series of interviews, 'The Atheism Tapes', can be seen in full here.

3.Sam Harris on 'The End of Faith': In this short video exposition, Harris delivers a series of stunning blows against the vagaries of religious belief. In this article he exposes some of the myths and truths about atheism.

4.Beyond Belief Conference 2006: Lively video debates on the status of religion. Including thoughtful contributions from Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, V.S. Ramachandran and many other forward thinkers.

5.The Rational Response Squad: Will you take the blasphemy challenge? Join the most rational of Internet phenomenas and inject your belief system with a shitload of intent.

6. Fallacies: Take the quiz What do you REALLY know about the bible? or explore the The Creation Fallacy, a blog about the multifaceted fallacies of the fundamentalist, Christian position.

7.The Carnival of The Godless: One of the most inscrutable Blog Carnivals on the web. Browse here for a plethora of Godless intent.

8.The Wikipedia Atheist Pages: Browse the painstakingly referenced Atheist articles in Wikipedia (donate to keep Wikipedia free!)

9. The Huge Entity on Religion: Explore this site's massive variety of articles about religion here, or visit their links section here, here and here.

10.Atheist Bibles - Carry one of these with you at all times:

Religion Explained: by Pascal Boyer	A History of God: by Karen Armstrong	The End of Faith: by Sam Harris	The God Delusion: by Richard Dawkins	Breaking the Spell: by Daniel C. Dennet
(Browse this full catalogue of Random Reads for some more book ideas)

Any other related links you'd like to share, please don't hesitate to post them in the comments section or, alternatively, start a discussion or two in The Huge Entity Forum...

Here's to a God-free New Year!

(Originally posted as a Christmas message on The Huge Entity)

The Metacognitive Dance of Artificial Minds

danieru — Sat, 23 Dec 2006 19:33:00 GMT

Far from being extracts from the extreme end of science fiction, the idea that we may one day give sentient machines the kind of rights traditionally reserved for humans is raised in a British government-commissioned report which claims to be an extensive look into the future.

Visions of the status of robots around 2056 have emerged from one of 270 forward-looking papers sponsored by Sir David King, the UK government’s chief scientist...

“If we make conscious robots they would want to have rights and they probably should,” said Henrik Christensen, director of the Centre of Robotics and Intelligent Machines at the Georgia Institute of Technology...

...Robots and machines are now classed as inanimate objects without rights or duties but if artificial intelligence becomes ubiquitous, the report argues, there may be calls for humans’ rights to be extended to them. - link

Evidence has been mounting for decades that many of our animal brethren are capable of advanced forms of thought, but this has not yet granted them the same rights as humans. Should we observe signs of consciousness in machines is it therefore logical to assume that society will naturally issue moral precepts of a similar weight onto our silicon-brained companions? I think not.

Metacognition, that is evidence of an ability to know the contents of one's thoughts, has been recognised in many of the great apes, dolphins, elephants and even pigs over the last few years. Except for some apes, which have been granted moral rights in a tiny handful of countries, none of these meta-able animals have yet garnered the respect this report considers we give to conscious machines.

Humans have an innate capacity to place their species at the centre of every perceptual sphere. Whether we see the universe as created for us (Anthropic), the Earth as the midpoint of the cosmos (Geocentric) or our species as the chosen leaders of God's Kingdom of animals (Creationism) we have a hard time distancing ourselves from our egocentric arrogance.

Artificial Intelligence, even by name, continues this human tradition. In considering it our moral imperative to grant 'them' human-like rights we still distance ourselves from their position as self aware, consciously capable and independent entities. If machines ever do achieve a state of awareness we would label 'conscious' won't that instantly void their artificiality? As soon as the very first law of morality for machines has been drafted it should be our imperative not to govern the machines as if they were human, but to grant the machines the rights to govern themselves. The last time humans lived on the planet with creatures of equal intelligence was over 25,000 years ago and sadly, those conscious cousins of ours, the Neanderthals, died out quicker than the mammoths we both hunted.

The separation between animals and humans is zero. We are animals. The first conscious machine to come off the human production line might have trouble empathising with the fleshy, organic creatures which created it, but it is how we deal with that confusion of identity, of anthropic terror, which will dictate the next era of our (co-)existence.

We have a lot of philosophical groundwork to cover before that day comes. Let's share this evolutionary dance in the meantime...

UPDATE: BBC coverage of the story plus The 2006 Robot Award winners are announced

(Mirrored from The Huge Entity)

Then a Miracle Occurs: The Singularity in Parasitic Retrospect

danieru — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 03:45:00 GMT

George Dyson asks:

Are we learning to manipulate life or is life learning to manipulate us?

A plausible scenario for how we arrived at life as we know it is that primitive organisms were infected by self-replicating parasites, learned to adopt those self-replicating processes, and became eukaryotic cells. Now, our still-primitive life-forms have again been invaded by self-replicating parasites (a network of code-consuming and code-spewing microprocessors) and life will, once again, adopt these self-replicating processes, on its own terms, for its own ends (with our help). Life (and evolution) as we know it will never be the same.

- Link to Constructive Biology

I live in nothing but awe of such concepts as these. Assuming that humankind survives the next couple of hundred years with our technological capacities intact, it would be naive to suggest that we are not now living the final evening of the homo sapien. The process of evolution is so over arching that once technology is factored into its mix the entire history of mankind becomes a mere homage to those first "primitive organisms ... infected by self-replicating parasites". But which way around is one best to view the dawn of this new (imagined) age?

Perhaps our anthropic arrogance is the only thing which can truly stop us from destroying ourselves. Perhaps it is not technology which has infected us - its parasite sustaining host - perhaps it is us who have infected the universe, manipulating fundamental evolutionary forces to our own ends. What too is to come of every ounce of our culture, our literature, our art, our historical knowledge, if in the final instance we will seem as if self-replicating amoeba to the hyperaware digital beings set to inherit 'our' universe?

What I suppose I am saying is... Can humanity assume any control over the future of its species; of all species? Will the rise of the next stage of life come at a cost to our heritage or is all our history merely an irrelevant shimmer on the surface of this reality?

I welcome the supersedence of organic life, and in doing so I beckon the destruction of everything it is I live for each day of this oxymoronic existence. How can we justify the continued emergence of complexity when its very being will leave us as nothing but evolutionary whale food?

(...Mirrored at The Huge Entity Forum...)

Art, Technology and the Progressive Hand of Human Imagination

danieru — Fri, 21 Apr 2006 06:12:00 GMT

Imagination and creativity are the parts of our personal conscious lives most able to manifest themselves in the objective world around us. The variety of tools, both physical and cognitive, we use to channel those creative urges is truly astounding.

The 'real world' is processed by the human senses and given metaphorical substance as the content of our conscious minds. In this space, several hundred thousand years ago, metaphors manipulated to perceive the objective world around us suddenly took on an entirely new character. These metaphors began to examine themselves.

There are many theories surrounding this internal reanalysing of our metaphoric brain-states. The emergence of language may have caused it, or maybe it was the other way round and language actually came from it's early evolution. What we now label 'art' first appeared around this time in the form of simple ornaments (such as bones threaded onto twine) and the infamous cave paintings conjured up by modern man to represent homosapien's early self awareness. However this conscious self perception emerged though, and under what circumstances, I am not directly concerned with today. I want to talk about how this imaginative capacity came to formalise human society, technology, language and, in self referenced simulacrum, creativity itself.

In a recent post I talked about how language, or more specifically the semantic references it formulates, can be understood as a powerful tool we wield. I want to stretch this idea a little further because it will give basis to a leap of imagination I want to make later. Steady yourselves...

Language has come to be the natural manifestation of our consciousness. Many revered scientists and philosophers of mind, such as the ever vigilant Daniel Dennet, would take this idea further suggesting that consciousness is not possible without language. Others go further still...

In his book 'The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind', Julian Jaynes outlines a theory that consciousness as we not know it did not manifest itself fully until only 4000 years ago! Up until this time mankind had followed the hallucinatory voices of the 'Gods', which emerged from the right temporal lobe of our brains, issuing commands which resulted in external behaviour we may equate with consciousness, but which internally required no concept of a 'self' to function. This theory is indeed fascinating (although a little outdated) because it further suggests that the emergence of consciousness can be traced to the metaphorisation of this internal voice. Written language allowed to to analyse and externalise our self awareness up until the point where the voices of the Gods were not needed to give us access to our inner metaphoric reference.

Could it be the case that with each new tool we create our inner metaphoric space, or self aware referenced consciousness, is given greater depth of identity with reality? Spoken language allowed us simulate the world and thus analyse it internally. Written language, in this conception, gave us the ability to compartmentalise the 'self' and in doing so opened the selves of external agents (i.e. other people) to our understanding of the universe.

I believe that it is on this path from consciousness through metaphor and most importantly imagination that we truly gain access to fundamental reality. The tools we manipulate to realise this consciousness (through the vague sequence I just outlined) better outline our world and ourselves within it.

So far so good.

Now it comes to the methods used, the tools wielded, to achieve this effect. Language is powerful indeed, but no-one would claim it is perfect (see Wittgenstein and Russell for a run down of why). On a more simple level think of the poem. A self contained entity of conscious imagination realised through the tool of language to expose a certain aspect of the author's inner life. The poem in a sense can be thought of as creative consciousness almost materialised in the real world. Other consciousnesses can access it, through spoken and written language, and they themselves will internalise that poem, all be it in a different way to that intended (if a particular intention existed at all). The poem is a way to share a slice of consciousness which goes deeper than a simple sentence or paragraph of text. Music too can be understood in this sense. A whole series of tools has been created to manifest the inner life of the musician. All the way from harmonic structure, musical annotation right up to the mouth piece on their saxophone. The outcome, in a sense, is THEIR CONSCIOUS MIND MADE REAL!

Amazing stuff if you ask me.

So now the conceptual leap I warned you about before.

Here goes...

Modern technology is coming to a stage where it can access our consciousnesses most directly. I am not talking here about implants on the front of your brain (although I am sure that will come at some point in the future), no, I am talking about artificial intelligence (AI) and the way it can manipulate referents in a way the human brain could never dream of doing.

The computer program is capable of analysing ALL ASPECTS of its 'sensory input'. Whereas our conscious perception of the world is but the tip of a sensory iceberg, the processing space of the computer computes every aspect of the datum contained in its metaphorical, inner 'mental' space. The computer is not conscious, at least not as we are, but in terms of raw power this is to its advantage. The possibilities of this tool, when manipulated by our inner conscious imaginations, is truly awe inspiring. I hand you over now to Will Wright, author of the upcoming, universe building computer game 'Spore' and manipulator of all manner of inner creative type programming coolness:

"More games now include features that let players invent some aspect of their virtual world, from characters to cars. And more games entice players to become creative partners in world building, letting them mod its overall look and feel. The online communities that form around these imaginative activities are some of the most vibrant on the Web. For these players, games are not just entertainment but a vehicle for self-expression.

Games have the potential to subsume almost all other forms of entertainment media. They can tell us stories, offer us music, give us challenges, allow us to communicate and interact with others, encourage us to make things, connect us to new communities, and let us play. Unlike most other forms of media, games are inherently malleable. Player mods are just the first step down this path.

Soon games will start to build simple models of us, the players. They will learn what we like to do, what we're good at, what interests and challenges us. They will observe us. They will record the decisions we make, consider how we solve problems, and evaluate how skilled we are in various circumstances. Over time, these games will become able to modify themselves to better "fit" each individual. They will adjust their difficulty on the fly, bring in new content, and create story lines. Much of this original material will be created by other players, and the system will move it to those it determines will enjoy it most.

Games are evolving to entertain, educate, and engage us individually. These personalized games will reflect who we are and what we enjoy, much as our choice of books and music does now. They will allow us to express ourselves, meet others, and create things that we can only dimly imagine. They will enable us to share and combine these creations, to build vast playgrounds. And more than ever, games will be a visible, external amplification of the human imagination."
- link to full article

Consciousness, it seems to me, is about to take a step towards its greatest horizon of realisation. The ability of human tools to formalise our imaginative minds has finally grown to maturity. Could we be seeing, in the birth of virtual internet realms, artificially conceived computer game algorithms and mentally manipulated interactive entertainment systems, a new era of consciousness realisation about to dawn?

What would happen if an AI routine was so complicated, so intricate in its connection to your conscious and possibly subconscious mind, that it was capable of realising your metaphorical mental space IN ITS ENTIRETY!? They'd be no need for the inferior, out dated tools we express our inner selves with at the moment. In the digital universes spawned by these superior systems humankind will for the first time witness their reality at its most fundamental level. The middle men of sense organ, brain process, inner metaphor, semantic referent and physically wielded tool will be out of a job.

The realities our imaginations will create will begin to exceed the depth of detail we now perceive in the objective world around us. In a sense, consciousness in the concept I have just outlined, IS reality. Creativity IS the universe. And perhaps, in my most outlandish mental leap to date, the true nature of reality can be better understood. If, in the future, virtual realities directly given form by our imaginative conscious minds can attain even greater depth of realisation than the entity we now label 'the real world', what then is the difference between reality and consciousness in the first place?

All is consciousness; there has only ever been consciousness; there will only ever be consciousness. But now, at the dawn of a digital, simulated future, human creativity will for the first time in the history of this universe come to manipulate that consciousness like the primeval clay we originally evolved from. I am not saying that we will come to be the Gods over this reality. Because to be honest, this reality is nothing compared to the realities about to be simulated in the virtual realms of human imagination.

Put that in your digital pipe and smoke it...

Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution...

- Albert Einstein

(Cross-posted here...)

The Digital Rebirth of Utopia

danieru — Mon, 17 Apr 2006 07:38:00 GMT

The ideal of 'the city' has stood as the most physically accessible representation of Utopia since the days of Plato's Republic; the mental playground from which philosophers and writers have played with the subject of human:

Plato (through Socrates) constructs an ideal "city in speech," a theoretical city of theoretically perfect justice. Yet Plato constructs this theoretical city not only to examine the most just city imaginable, but primarily to discover how individuals themselves should best live.

Perhaps if Plato were around today he might perceive many of The Republic's theoretical boundaries alive and well in the real world cities which power our modern lives. In these hubs of reality society finds its purpose. Each human being, replete with desires known only to their subjective selves, becomes a neuron in the cerebral matrix of the city - emergent processes casting the collective thoughts of human culture out onto the world. Yet these awesome chaotic entities in their exponential growth towards progress have changed little in their fundamental conception for thousands of years. As matters of human culture, economy and the one on one interaction between people begins to slowly re-emerge anew in the data streams of the internet, so the physical city is about to find itself superseded and replaced. Yet, the concept of 'the city' as its own entity has altered little, if at all:

"The city is a human habitat that allows people to form relations with others at various levels of intimacy while remaining entirely anonymous."

We now find this definition of the city fits equally well with communal hubs prevalent throughout the internet. As I noted in a previous post (Hyperreal Wikipedia...), active participation in these hubs by individuals from every corner of the globe is beginning to alter the nature of identity itself. Push back the hands of time as little as 10 / 15 years and the connections between members of society were relatively easy to draw. One could still 'join the dots' between people and find that physical relationships were generally mirrored by personal relationships. Yet the internet has dissolved this conception to nothing, for now the location of a human on planet Earth is in no way reflective of their connections with other human beings, with culture. The physical city as a nucleus of connectivity is under attack. Viral, hyperreal society is feeding on its substance. Yet the metaphor of the city is strong, even in virtual space:

One synthetic world, Second Life, offers no game-play as such but sells virtual real-estate that users can build almost anything on. One real-estate maven, 'Anshe Chung', a Chinese teacher based in Germany, is reported to make $150,000 a year buying, improving and reselling virtual homes in Second Life. Others have businesses designing virtual clothes or selling virtual advertising... ...When will synthetic worlds become economies worth reckoning with? They are already real, and are the fastest-growing economies in the world... - link

The inhabitants of this new breed of 'virtual world' may focus aspects of their imagination on intergalactic battles or the slaughter of orcs and demons, but when it comes to interaction with other players the ideal city is still their hub of choice. The physical constraints of our real world are merely tweaked before being reborn in cyber-realities, and players' utopian imaginations have ventured little farther than the real world cities within which they now link themselves to the internet. If the city is being copied brick for brick into virtual space, what will be the fate of the physical, modern metropolis our hyperreal culture finds refuge in? It appears its character is about to be shifted also:

...the Third-World metropolis is becoming the symbol of the new. This is all the more thrilling for its utter improbability: surely those suffocating piles of slums and desperation are too exhausted, too moribund, to bring forth futures? But it seems to me this is exactly what is happening. If, for the better part of the 20th century, it was New York and its glistening imitations that symbolised the future, it is now the stacked-up, sprawling, impromptu city-countries of the third world. The idea of the total, centralised, maximally efficient city plan has long since lost its futuristic appeal: its confidence and ambition have turned to anxiety and besiegement, its homogenising obsession has constricted the horizons of spiritual possibility and induced counter-fantasies of insubordination, excess, and life-forms in chaotic variety. Such desires flee the Western surveillance cameras and bureaucratised consumption to find in the Third World metropolis a scope, a speed, a more fecund ecology...

...Our fast-moving media culture, groping always for any image of the new that can be used to produce more astonishment, operates in a zone slightly ahead of knowledge. The rise of China may remain for many a fantastical rumour, but as the blind sense of such large-scale shifts accumulates, it becomes possible for the media to peddle a new form of futurism: a strange and dazzling hypermodernity that bewilders western understanding but that seems to harbour the plenitude of ideas and aspiration that the west no longer finds within itself... - link

Perhaps the multilayered chaos of the 'third-world' metropolis better reflects the cultural disorder we know to exist in our internet-savy psyche. Indeed, as the media has relished to show us of late, in one such third world country the first signs of mental absolution from objective reality have started to make themselves known. China's current economic boom in the physical world is shadowed by a subclass of its subjects for whom virtual economy, virtual identity and virtual relationships have the addictive capacity to overpower their connection with 'external' reality. Could we be heading for a time when the physical city is nothing but row upon row of internet connectivity centres, bubbling as if from the urban decay of our once proud environments? Digital reality seems to be able to provide a closer match to the Utopian ideals of its inhabitants. Could the perfect city paradise of Plato's Republic finally find a realistic set of foundations from which to compose itself? Real world metropolies have come to far exceed the depths of vision prevalent in the ideal city of Utopian fantasy - a credit to the capacities of cultural and technological evolution to outstrip any matter of thought the human is capable of. The shallow simulations of city hubs now manifesting themselves in cyberspace and the chaotic third world urban sprawls which offer their hand out to the Western imagination are where the future economies of civilisation will be built, balanced and maintained. Whether you choose to extend your cultural self in real or virtual cities is at present a matter of choice. But in the next few years, as the virtual city comes to fruition, the malleable aspects of your personality will be forced to take on ever more hyperreal qualities in order to keep up with the encroaching tide of virtual culture. To believe that these changes are the prelude to some transhumanist singularity is to miss the point that Utopia is what we strive towards, not something we can ever reach. Just as scholar and laymen alike glances at Plato's Republic with the arrogant foresight of 2000 years of change, so the hyperreal identities who inhabit the virtual cities of the future will stare back at our Utopian visions and laugh at our lack of imagination. If you really want to see how the future will look you only need look into the past, or reflect on the present.

Plato's ideal city

Thomas More's Utopia

Techno-Utopianism

Hitler's Welthauptstadt Germania

Post-Modern urban-design

Ecumenopolis

link

You want to push us closer to a virtual realm of unimaginable paradise beyond the real? You're no different from the countless dreamers who came before you. Humans are not capable of extending beyond their capacities, imaginative or otherwise. The infinite rebirth of the ideal city is proof of that at least.

(Cross-posted here...)