The Human Condition
Adam and Eve’s family tree is a complicated phenomenon and this complexity is astoundingly apparent when we simply study the constructs that we’ve build for ourselves by ourselves. The conceptual design for such constitutions i.e. legal systems, educational institutes, religious establishments, media publications, Toys R Us – serve a rather hierarchical precedent for a transformative purpose. Keeping in mind that humans have ironically been evermore striving to master the art of convenience, yielding the need for innovations to simplify complex tasks and later on even ideas. Therefore, the existence of these organizational bodies helped the bourgeoisie in some point in history to systematically control the outcome. It was designed for there to be an order to how the class could achieve total enlightened laziness and the rest utter obedience. However, in this bleak representation of mankind’s journey to our existence today – the ‘system’ falsely identified human’s urge for uniqueness. Which is inspired by maybe a simple matter of genetic abnormalities or could be chalked down as rebellion through observation and oppression.
When we look back at humanity's footsteps in the technological path in particular, we can unquestionably pick out the bigger leaps taken. Therefore, it's immensely crucial to understand the notion of why we advanced or even disadvanced in its entirety. Basically, its perhaps better linked to the old saying “necessity is the mother of inventions” – but its weight is only realized once we define what’s necessary for humanity to survive. Therefore, one must practice self-awareness to be able to achieve the minimal requirement for worldly-clarity and understanding, which makes the two variables directly related (self-awareness and the systematic understanding of the self and all its effecting elements).
Also, it’s always worth noting that when it comes to the latest technological advancement, we’re not there yet – though we feel like we’ve just reached the pinnacle stages only to look back at the previous generations and establish that they once had the same realization. But by studying the status quo one might be compelled to think we’re approaching a certain limit, one’s aftermath that might result in a stalemate. Nevertheless, our technological process albeit not the next generation’s trendy subject, it surely is today’s.
Appendix 1
“The last few years have been marked by an inverted millenarianism in which premonitions of the future, catastrophic or redemptive, have been replaced by senses of the end of this or that (the end of ideology, art, or social class; the “crisis” of Leninism, social democracy, or the welfare state, etc., etc.); taken together, all of these perhaps constitute what is increasingly called postmodernism. The case for its existence depends on the hypothesis of some radical break or coupure, generally traced back to the end of the 1950s or the early 1960s.
As the word itself suggests, this break is most often related to notions of the waning or extinction of the hundred-year-old modern movement (or to its ideological or aesthetic repudiation).” (Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, Or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. 1991)
In the twenty-first century, this extinction of the hundred-year-old modern movement has urged one’s self to prove or at least realize alternative idiosyncrasies. Which the magnitude to which the digital communication technology has penetrated mankind’s existence has backed up. As it’s merely impossible to operate in today’s setting without adapting to the new norm.
I’ve subcategorized this paper into 4 different levels to explain the human condition and how its affected by technology:
• Purpose
• Uniqueness
• Identity
• Today
Purpose
Here we don’t refer to deity interventions or circumambulation of any sorts. However, more earthborn perceptions and motives. Humans are essentially bound by a survival instinct, the race’s most powerful drive. Ever since animals climbed out of the primordial muck and as our ancestors rose from all fours to walking upright, evolution has been guided by its ability to help us survive and reproduce. But emotions evolved to be mankind’s greatest survival benefit. In my opinion, its emotions that created the discrimination amongst humans which resulted in all the -ism(s) – racism, sexism, criticism etc. It’s the impulse of belonging and the need for contradictory biases.
It is through this instinct and distinctiveness did we clamor to justify our superiority, but once man learned and mastered the ways to self-sustain, we drove towards self-distinctiveness and social grandeur. Which was made easy by the proliferation of technological methods to release the physical aspect and focus on the mind.
Martti Lahti’s article discusses the relationship between the body and technology, as represented by computer games and suggests that as the evolution progressed, instead of separating users from their bodies, it actually grounds us in them. According to him, “cyborg envy” is the desire to merge with the machine, the avatar, but to what extent? This described desire to cross the human-machine boundary, represented by various games in which you can change yourself. By impersonating as an opposite sex, species, race, or in any subjective way to upgrade the physical body. Even though the article concludes that we can never cross this boundary and leave our bodies behind.
Because he ironically describes any out of body experience to be restricted in the body. Even though he doesn’t rephrase it in that way, it is true. Video games here represented the first steps and the underlining need to free ourselves from our bodies in order to ride the metaphorical high. As he also mentions physically ducking and leaning in response to stimuli on the screen as evidence of a cybernetic loop between player and computer. That loop he refers to could be evidence of the direction we are taking by advancing technologies.
Lahti notes that "games commodify our cyborg desires," referencing the mechanization of the body as in industrial capitalism. Which is a safe way to transgress socioeconomic and binary societal constructs without acknowledging or contemplating real-world power relations and ideology. In that, we can find humans susceptibility or rather an inclination towards real-world transformations. Through his observations and input, Lahti whether intentionally or not sparked the notion of re-materialization and re-activation of theories of media spectatorship/engagement by reincorporating the body and contexts of play. He finally concludes that "we remain flesh as we become machines.”
Identity
Self-identity could arguably be best described as the product and development of gained knowledge and understanding based on our personalities, interests, relationships, capabilities, and experiences. There seem to be many ways to develop one’s self-identity. But primarily through only practicing self-awareness can we evaluate our behavior, emotions, and thoughts on the past experience, current desires, and future objectives. However, we can also shape self-identities by studying the world around us and how we deal with it. Especially, because we are profoundly social beings and our development is measured by finding our place in the social context. Primarily affected by the feedback we receive from this social world which severely impacts the evolution of our self-identities.
But as mentioned earlier, with the expansion of the social world it is apparent that there seems to be a somewhat disproportionate influence by external forces when compared to previous generations. Mainly attributed but not limited to the recent explosion of technology. Yet another factor that molds our self-identities even though some of us might not realize the extent in which it does.
But recently, we witnessed a drastic change in the social world where people lost their way or found it due to the dissonance of the latest technology. The mass dissemination of a unified message glorifying the same guideline to what you are supposed to be. Exploring our urge to be unique by fitting in ironically. Because exclusion and acceptance are mighty drugs in today’s world. Which in turn makes the term self-identity archaic as it no longer reflects the self but rather a replicate of the culture’s projected image. Therefore, many have persevered in the perfection of alternative escapism methods. Ones that don’t limit us in this categorized identity or maybe a search for an easier affirmation path.
Uniqueness
The human drive for distinctiveness, this idea that everyone needs to be unique is a major catalyst in recent social psychology. Which technology, mainly social media, and other monitoring applications, have taken full advantage of. It altered the very definition of self-identity and moved towards false pretenses that we felt the need to abide by. Recently, the human objective heavily focuses on outside acceptance, popularity, and, by extension, naive self-esteem based on others’ opinions of us. Self-awareness and self-expression give way to impression management and self-promotion.
Here we all are, seeking uniqueness, looking for those things that neatly express the idiosyncrasy of our peculiar personalities. And yet, our uniqueness (at least as consumers) is mostly a sham. We come to see our identities as those we would like to have or that we want people to see rather than who we really are. The line between person and persona becomes blurred or erased completely.
Bizarrely, in our relentless effort to seek uniqueness in today’s world, technology helps us legitimately forgo our real self-identities and alternatively re-define it to fit worldview conformity. Therefore, the fact that we are all turning to another advanced way to achieve this distinctiveness sameness should not come as a shock. Technologies that will aid us to be physically the same and it won’t be limited to the “unique way we apply makeup or the rhinoplasty surgeons we go to” instead it would probably be an artificial cyborgian arm. As the writer, Anne Balsamo observed in her 1995 article in "Forms of Technological Embodiment: Reading the Body in Contemporary Culture": Of all the forms of technological embodiment, the disappearing body is the one that promises most insistently the final erasure of gender and race as culturally organized systems of differentiation. Bio-engineered body components are designed to duplicate the function of material body parts."
Linking it back to survival and uniqueness; the increasing desire to escape the flesh has come at a time where the bodies and minds have become vulnerable.
Today
In Lahti’s context, “games’ importance lies in the fact that they challenge us to rethink audiovisual theories […] as a passive process that dematerializes the body and foregrounds a psychic or cognitive experience. But the body, too, is a site where sensory stimuli are registered. And increasingly, it is precisely the carnal pleasures of gaming that are being mobilized by producers and sought out by consumers. If something is left behind when we play, it is not the body. We may be toying with the body when we play, but we remain flesh as we become machines."
We may be closer to new scientific breakthroughs than most people realize. In a not so distant future; innovations currently in infant stages, in computer technology and biotechnology will emerge and change the world beyond recognition. (Appendix 2 shows the rapid growth in technology. Just during the last 100 years the progress in technology has exploded.)
Appendix 2
Figure 1. The Promise Of Accelerating Growth In Technology. A graph that demonstrates the accelerated rate in which technology has advanced and in ways supports the idea that cyborgs aren't farfetched.
“The ‘cyborg’ – the technological-human – has become a familiar figuration of the subject of postmodernity […] this merger relies on a reconceptualization of the human body as a boundary figure belonging simultaneously to at least two previously incompatible systems of meaning – ‘the organic/natural’ and the ‘technological/cultural.”
Anne Balsamo mentions that body and technology are actually linked in more than a philosophical way or a technical term that might describe man’s dependence on technology. She argues that machines can function organically and the body is materially redesigned through the use of corporeality. She hints that the Western ideas and medicine have been assuming the prevalence of this bio-technological merge since the 1980s.
Techno-bodies are healthy, enhanced and fully functional – more real than real […] in our hyper-mediated techno-culture, body awareness is amplified such that we can technologically witness, if not yet manage, the molecular functioning of bodily processes.
Therefore, our net conclusion should not shy away from the fact that though there is a grounding force linking cyberspace and the body in a philosophical sense, it might potential manifest itself on a physiological level. Because we already seem to have made so many incremental concessions lately as it’s always easier to surrender an inch at the time.
Philosophers always dealt with what it means to be alive, and maybe we will take it one step further by saying at a certain point, there’s no difference between synthetic and organic life.
According to futurologist Dr. Ian Pearson, we could connect external IT to the nervous system, eventually the brain, and this would lead to IT-enhanced senses, memory, processing, higher intelligence, which he calls homo cyberneticus. All of which is a part of an entire timeline he created (see appendix 3). He also references another evolutionary species named homo optimus; genetic enhancement and optimization of selected features. Dr. Pearson says that in the future we can converge the two for what he refers to as homo hybridus where people would have a perfect body and an enhanced mind.
Technically, biotech will assist humanity in redesigning the body with all different properties desired and will break down all the constraints
Referencing games, Dr. Pearson states that we could still add AI into computer games long after it becomes comparable with human intelligence, so games like EA’s The Sims might evolve to allow entire civilizations living within a computer game, each aware of their existence, each running just as real a life as you and I. At the same time that games encourages a merger of perspectives and subjectivities with the onscreen world, Lahti argues that video games simultaneously invite players to take pleasure in the visual representation of avatars onscreen. This pleasure comes from the spectacularizing representation of self-onscreen, the ability to control and construct the body we desire and the ability to ‘try on' different bodies – to ‘trespass or toy with racial and sexual boundaries.' ‘Games, however, impose clear restrictions on our potential desire to toy with different bodies. ‘We are lured into a supermarket of bodies and body-parts from which the player’s representative, her virtual self can be created and customized. Unhinged from contexts of social inequalities, the body is here aestheticized as variety itself, turning it into a mutable fashion statement, an adaptable task-orientated instrument, or a toy with which we can play.’‘ready-to-be-invaded vessel of the other' which carries with it none of the real-life social inequities.
Appendix 3
Figure 2. A future evolution timeline by Dr. Pearson predicting the biological human crossover. (The more accurate guide to the future. Dr. Ian Pearson. 2014)
Is the next human evolution a cyborgian one? Have we already started? See appendix 4 – Neil Harbisson, the world's first cyborg.
Appendix 4
Neil Harbisson: the world's first cyborg artist
"I can have phone calls to my head," says Neil Harbisson, sitting across the table from me. Dangling over his forehead is an antenna that curves up and over from the back of his skull. The device, which he calls an "eyeborg", was recently upgraded, meaning his skull is now Bluetooth-enabled. "I can either connect to devices that are near me," he says, "or I can connect to the internet. So I can actually connect to anywhere in the world."
"He believes we humans have a duty to use technology to transcend our senses. "Becoming a cyborg isn't just a life decision," he explains. "It's an artistic statement – I'm treating my own body and brain as a sculpture." (The Guardian, 2014)
Many theorists concocted their research on the idea of this increasing desire of immersion into technologies to ultimately update oneself or free it. In one way or another, there seems to be a reluctant force towards this transformative demand. Technology will gradually transform the world to a place where there are no longer distinctions between races or classes but instead literal divisions between those who are genuine, born humans and those who are one cyborg. Blurring the line between what it means to be "real," whether you are flesh or pixels.
My discourse is that the next specious evolution could, in fact, be one that includes Cyborgian toddlers.
MIC DROP