The End of Absence: Reclaiming What We've Lost in a World of Constant Connection by Michael Harris Page A
Authors: Michael Harris
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the technology, and it will adapt to provide us what we want while massively expanding of its own accord. Destruction of the climate and of earth’s ecosystems is the inevitable outlook. It is this that worries me—not whether they are amoral or not.
Blackmore’s vision for our children’s technological future may seem nightmarish to the point of fantasy, especially since she seems to be constantly reporting the future, suggesting eventualities that cannot be determined the way we like.
Yet when I think now of all that Blackmore told me, and of the eerie promise of decoded neurofeedback, when I think of the advancing multitudes of youths (and adults, too) who seem so perilously entranced by inanimate tools, I do sometimes lose heart. Then again, I want to counter all that with an opposing vision.
The best way I can describe this optimistic alternative is to call up a scene from that 1999 gem of a movie
The Matrix
. In the Wachowski siblings’ film, a population enslaved by computers has been turned into a warehouse of mere battery cells, kept complacent by a mass delusion, the Matrix, which is fed into human brains and keeps them thinking they are living their own lives, freely, on the sunny streets of the world. In fact, as they dream out their false experiences, their physical bodies are held in subterranean caverns, each sleeping human jacked into a womblike pod. In my favorite scene, Neo, our hero, is torn from this dreamworld and awakens in that great dark chamber. Gasping for air, the first real air he has ever breathed, Neo stares out with stunned eyes and sees the raw world at last. 5
The Matrix is a technologically derived web of illusions, a computer-generated dreamworld that’s been built to keep us under control. The people in its thrall are literally suspended, helpless in their servitude to a larger technological intelligence. The solution to this very real human problem is the same solution presented by Buddhism and Gnosticism—we must, like Neo, awaken.
• • • • •
It’s becoming more and more obvious. I live on the edge of a Matrix-style sleep, as do we all. On one side: a bright future where we are always connected to our friends and lovers, never without an aid for reminiscence or a reminder of our social connections. On the other side: the twilight of our pre-Internet youths. And wasn’t there something . . . ? Some quality . . . ?
I began this chapter lamenting little Benjamin’s confusion over the difference between a touch-sensitive iPad screen and a hard copy of
Vanity Fair
. But now I have a confession to make. I’m not much better off. This is not a youth-only phenomenon. A 2013 study from the University of Michigan found that those of us in our late thirties have now reached the point of having as many electronic interactions as we have face-to-face interactions. What a dubious honor that is—to be the first generation in history to have as many exchanges with avatars as with people. I wonder, sometimes, if this means I’ll start to treat friends and family as avatars in person. Occasionally, I’m hit with how weirdly
consistent
a group of people appears during a dinner party—how weird it is that they aren’t changing or scrolling like thumbnail portraits on a Twitter feed, being replaced, or flicking off. I’m suffering the same brain slips that young Benjamin suffered when he tried to use a hard-copy magazine as a digital interface. The only difference is that I’m more freaked out.
Increasingly, I notice small moments when I treat hard-copy material as though it were digital. I’ve seen my fingers reach instinctively to zoom in to a printed photo or flick across a paper page as though to advance the progress of an e-book. These slips are deeply disturbing, a little like early signs of dementia. And they crop up in more meaningful scenarios, too. Just the other day, while discussing a particularly dreadful acquaintance with a friend of mine, I
Blackmore’s vision for our children’s technological future may seem nightmarish to the point of fantasy, especially since she seems to be constantly reporting the future, suggesting eventualities that cannot be determined the way we like.
Yet when I think now of all that Blackmore told me, and of the eerie promise of decoded neurofeedback, when I think of the advancing multitudes of youths (and adults, too) who seem so perilously entranced by inanimate tools, I do sometimes lose heart. Then again, I want to counter all that with an opposing vision.
The best way I can describe this optimistic alternative is to call up a scene from that 1999 gem of a movie
The Matrix
. In the Wachowski siblings’ film, a population enslaved by computers has been turned into a warehouse of mere battery cells, kept complacent by a mass delusion, the Matrix, which is fed into human brains and keeps them thinking they are living their own lives, freely, on the sunny streets of the world. In fact, as they dream out their false experiences, their physical bodies are held in subterranean caverns, each sleeping human jacked into a womblike pod. In my favorite scene, Neo, our hero, is torn from this dreamworld and awakens in that great dark chamber. Gasping for air, the first real air he has ever breathed, Neo stares out with stunned eyes and sees the raw world at last. 5
The Matrix is a technologically derived web of illusions, a computer-generated dreamworld that’s been built to keep us under control. The people in its thrall are literally suspended, helpless in their servitude to a larger technological intelligence. The solution to this very real human problem is the same solution presented by Buddhism and Gnosticism—we must, like Neo, awaken.
• • • • •
It’s becoming more and more obvious. I live on the edge of a Matrix-style sleep, as do we all. On one side: a bright future where we are always connected to our friends and lovers, never without an aid for reminiscence or a reminder of our social connections. On the other side: the twilight of our pre-Internet youths. And wasn’t there something . . . ? Some quality . . . ?
I began this chapter lamenting little Benjamin’s confusion over the difference between a touch-sensitive iPad screen and a hard copy of
Vanity Fair
. But now I have a confession to make. I’m not much better off. This is not a youth-only phenomenon. A 2013 study from the University of Michigan found that those of us in our late thirties have now reached the point of having as many electronic interactions as we have face-to-face interactions. What a dubious honor that is—to be the first generation in history to have as many exchanges with avatars as with people. I wonder, sometimes, if this means I’ll start to treat friends and family as avatars in person. Occasionally, I’m hit with how weirdly
consistent
a group of people appears during a dinner party—how weird it is that they aren’t changing or scrolling like thumbnail portraits on a Twitter feed, being replaced, or flicking off. I’m suffering the same brain slips that young Benjamin suffered when he tried to use a hard-copy magazine as a digital interface. The only difference is that I’m more freaked out.
Increasingly, I notice small moments when I treat hard-copy material as though it were digital. I’ve seen my fingers reach instinctively to zoom in to a printed photo or flick across a paper page as though to advance the progress of an e-book. These slips are deeply disturbing, a little like early signs of dementia. And they crop up in more meaningful scenarios, too. Just the other day, while discussing a particularly dreadful acquaintance with a friend of mine, I
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