THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN
The "information" gadget non plus ultra is the computer. Don't we just love our computers? It really does not matter what size, shape, color or speed, we love them. They are everywhere, too. Our traffic is controlled by computers, they help us fly and land planes, they control much of our driving ability, they collect data against terrorists (or innocent people, it doesn't matter, as long as they are collecting data), they get us to the moon, Mars or Jupiter, they guide our missiles, they give us our passports and they send us notices from the finance authorities. They are simply everywhere. We can't work without them anymore. In fact, we cannot live without them anymore: from copy machines, to (not-so) smart phones, to laptops, notebooks, and desktops, they are an intimate part of all our lives. We can't get enough of them and we have no idea what they do to us. We think we know what they do for us, but it is a lot less "for" than "to".
Still, I just love the words we use to describe them: fast, powerful, smart, and – my personal favorite – sexy. They are machines. They are things. OK, Steve Jobs and Apple tried to make them accessories and furniture, but they didn't quite succeed. Computers have receded into the nethermost corners of our lives, and these are the most nefarious, because we take them for granted. But the ones we "have to have", that we flash around, are accorded a reverence that they may not deserve. What is so special about them anyway?
They sit on our desks and stare us down workday in and workday out. They spit out reams of tables and figures that we don't have the time to double-check so we take them as correct. They give us access to others because we hardly get out at all anymore. They get us things (downloads), make our lives convenient (just ask Amazon), and control every move we make, every thought we think, and every moment we would like to rest. That is not what I call "special". But, in spite of it all they can get more bits to more places faster and more reliable that has ever been possible before. And, it is this simple illusion that makes us think that, as Roszak puts it, "we are making real cultural progress – and that the essence of that progress is information technology".
So, is that progress? Is this what we understand progress to be? It is becoming ever more difficult to distinguish between what is real and what is not. Is that what we want? Have we ever stopped to ask ourselves how substantial all this information technology is? I don't really want to believe that progress is an illusion, but when we stop to take a look, things may not be as real as we would like to believe. Simply pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
The promotion of data to information and the reduction of knowledge to information have farther-reaching consequences that we may want to admit. This is particularly true when we link it to our obsessive compulsion with "having", with owning, with property. Remembering Mr. Eliot, we can say that wisdom is a priceless pearl, knowledge an expensive luxury, but information … well, that is a commodity that can be bought and sold just like any other. IPR shouldn't stand for "intellectual property rights", it should stand for "information property rights", for in so many cases that is all we are really dealing with.
Our current motto "s/he who dies with the most information wins" loses its whimsical nature. It used to be (at least in Francis Bacon's day) that knowledge was power, today information is power. Ergo, whoever has the most and can process it the fastest, turn it around and fire it back the quickest, who can generate and accumulate the most is the winner (read: the best, the smartest, the most powerful …). And what can do just that? Of course, the computer. And so we raise the machine to our ideal, we yield to its unerring accuracy, its lightening swift sifting, sorting, and filtering, we pay homage to its power. Yes, in a sense, we begin to worship it for its godlike power.
You think I'm exaggerating? You should think again. This might be how I observe things, but I'm certainly not the only one to have noticed.
As I pointed out at the beginning of this series, Günther Anders, the contemporary German philosopher has gone so far as to argue that we have in fact become ashamed of our humanity, of being born; we wish deep down, in our heart of hearts that we could be made like our computers. The first time I read this, I was taken aback, I will admit, but if you take the thought seriously, Mr. Anders is onto something. Have you ever heard the argument that a given course of action is the best, because someone had "crunched" the numbers and that is what came out. In that moment, we don't even think of questioning the outcome: they are numbers, the computer said so, who are we to argue? Money never sleeps, electronic trading never tires nor errs, businesses are bought and sold, hundreds of millions of lives are affected, both directly and indirectly, business deals are automated all without ever being touched by human hands. One of our secret-most desires to is simply get those fickle humans out of the equation. Whenever they get involved, let's face it, they just screw things up. We place way too much faith in digital technology, in information processing. The information-processing model of mind is the dominant theory these days, but it could not be farther from reality. It might seem like a mere metaphor to describe an exceedingly complex phenomenon. But we've gone beyond the metaphor and now mistake it for the reality. That's the dangerous step, but it is one we should perhaps think about stepping away from.