This Human Equation

Holidays from both study and work leave me with spare neurons to devote to idle reflection. I decided to read extensively on media ecology and economics over my semester break in preparation for my Masters' thesis as well as work on my General Semantics studies.

Chatting to an acquaintance of mine (whom I hope to get to know better!) we settled that, amongst a great many other things, one aspect of commonality we shared was we "didn't understand humans properly" despite our chosen professions of reporting on what they do and why.

Therefore, I will embark on an ongoing project entitled the Human Equation project, the title inspired in part by Arjen Lucassen's Ayreon record of the same name and the motto of the American Psychological Association; "man is the sum of his parts." It is my contention that our society has willfully disconnected us from one another; we work longer and spend more money and time alone, purposefully separate ourselves and hole ourselves off from the world using a myriad of digital distractions. These will comprise three initial experiments.


1. The Ellis Experiment
As regular readers may know, Albert Ellis, Ph.D was the father of Rational Emotive Therapy, a widely successful cognitive behavioral therapy. By applying rational, empirical thinking to every day situations he found that people could live happier, calmer and neurosis free.

One of his earlier experiments involved talking to members of the opposite sex since he had an exaggerated fear of speaking in public during his adolescence. At age 19, he forced himself to himself to talk to 100 women in the Bronx Botanical Gardens over a period of a month. Although "he didn't get a date, he reported that he desensitized himself to his fear of rejection by women." I, along with several others will attempt this experiment on a smaller scale to reconnect with people in a meaningful way.

2. The Postman Experiment
Media ecologist Neil Postman was both in awe of and skeptical of technology - especially media technology. While many of us take it for granted he contended that media was a Faustian bargain. It both giveth and it taketh away. It takes our sense of community, ties to the real and tangible and forces us to spend time away from others. In his book Technopoly, he sets an assignment for his students - they must forsake their use of all media technologies for 48 hours. If they broke their media "fast" they were forced to start again from scratch. Set in the mid-90s before the advent of cheap and easily accessible hand-held devices with access to the internet, it will seem that media is unavoidable by design in 2010. Therefore me and my fellow experimenters will attempt 24 hours and record our experiences.

3. The Rushkoff Experiment
I think this one will prove the most challenging. This will be an attempt to re-create tangible value amongst the community by exchanging goods and services in real terms with other people. Instead of buying from corporations, I will try to buy locally and trade with neighbors and others using a modified principle of "comparative advantage" - what I can do well in exchange for something else another can do well that I cannot. In his Life, Inc. he argues that corporations have abstracted wealth from local institutions and people and clustered it towards a center, far removed from everyday life. If we can use the abundance in front of us instead of from somewhere inaccessible, we can add value to ourselves locally instead of an elite few.

These experiments have a two-fold purpose - for myself to further my personal development and re-connect with people in a true-to-fact and purposeful way and to "debunk" the givens of modern society. That we must be disconnected and that "bowling alone" is not the right way but merely the path we have chosen in the environment we find currently find ourselves in. If the map is not the territory, it is time to redraw the map and hopefully through our own action and effort, carve out our territory for the better.

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http://twitter.com/crushtor

A Silent Defeat

I have talked about Korzybski's Manhood of Humanity in great detail in a post here, contemplating if we have indeed entered such a phase. I refuted such an idea, instead postulating we are stuck in the adolescence - an unstable transition that sees us valuing erroneously, remaining fearful of the future and striving toward ideals that are equally transitory. Reading Life, Inc. by media theorist, documentarian and writer (in addition to practising general semantics) Douglas Rushkoff a rousing and chilling condemnation of the corporatism that pervades our entire waking life, I wondered if it would be more appropriately titled the Adolescence of Humanity instead. If we worshiped gods and insanity as children, we now supplicate to corporations, brands and unsanity as adolescents.

Corporate culture does not merely exploit that we as humans routinely mistake the map for the territory, it insists that the map is identical to the territory and manipulates us into believing no other possibility exists. Corporations and brands exist merely as higher-level abstractions and as such requires our blind faith, not reason, to validate their outlandish claims. The intentional confusion of logical levels (PC vs. Mac instead of classifying both as "computers") separates us into categories and demographics that equally require our belief and complete and total submission to that belief to keep us spending our money on their brand - the goods and services they produce are largely irrelevant. Only a cult-like devotion to a product would elicit emotionally charged responses towards any claims of inferiority - "Flash isn't necessary for the web experience" is like saying an index finger isn't necessary to make a hand functional, but iPhone and iPad zealots parrot the line nonetheless.

Corporations and special interests wish us to be blissfully aware of the dual-function of language as behavior and language forming behavior. Buying a coffee from an abstracted "coffee house" stand in a local shopping mall, there was an item that could be purchased called a "babycino" - a thimbleful of frothed milk given to children. It pacified the children into thinking they were adult and sophisticated using the sound "cino" in the name as well as giving the illusion of care and provision for the children as parents (it's for baby - why would one deny a baby the pleasure of a beverage?) making both parent and child feeling content and even attached to the product. The drink becomes irrelevant but the kinesthetic experience remains. I asked the barista why it had such a name. He said, quizzically, "because it's for babies." He missed the point. It's for the corporation that owns the coffee house and no-one else.

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http://twitter.com/crushtor

Doomsday Simulated

It seems that films depicting material threats to our continued existence - tsunami, large meteor, nuclear explosion - are much more horrifying than those about terror caused by technology. The T-800 is a protector in Terminator 2, the Matrix can be subverted to serve human ends and the detrimental effects of the programs on Videodrome seem so outlandish they could never be believed as real by any rational person.

Reading Neil Postman's Technopoly: The Surrender of our Culture to Technology, he offers a bold critique of "progress" as contextualized by the advance of technology and our uncritical use of it. By abandoning the deification of omnipotent creators, we instead worship at the altar of Intel, Apple and Microsoft instead. It is almost we as humans require these machines to make sense of the world when in most cases, it obfuscates and confuses many people.

Most people cannot see the "point" of Facebook. If you ask a random sample of people as to the purpose and function of Facebook, I do not believe anyone could point to an extensional or definitive answer. So many of us subscribe to Facebook uncritically much like the masses of the Middle Ages that had an unwavering and unquestioning devotion to Christ and God. Those Facebook "heretics" that refuse to open an account or deactivate it are looked at with suspicion, much like Atheists and agnostics are by Christians and other religious believers. Though it is arguable that this new digital culture has supplanted an "analog" conception of culture, its worth noting how one interprets the information given over such a medium.

For example, Facebook relishes in two-valued thinking - like and dislike - for the images, video and text that can be posted on the site. A "like" encourages others to share and provide an opinion on what is being presented. If our content cannot be "liked", we modify it to such an extent where it will fit the constraints of the medium. Likewise, we refer to Facebook as a complete abstract entity and not as a process that has no real solid form. When Facebook goes "down" we yell at Facebook itself, not the servers, nor the connection leading from it to our computers or the human staff that are responsible for them. "Facebook" in and of itself is not hilarious, malevolent or inane yet we think it to be without any further investigation.

Technology, as Postman explained, "giveth and taketh away." What exactly social media has given us is difficult to discern. But I can guarantee is that almost no one has asked as they blindly entered their name and email address as they signed up what it has subtracted from our culture as a whole and whether it's a thing to be "liked" or "disliked" in and of itself.

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http://twitter.com/crushtor