The Question

Whatever happened to tech gnosis and techno-utopias? Has digital technology become so ubiquitous that it is, as was predicted a decade ago, receding into the background? Is digital technology finally interfering with our ability to experience nature, social life and our own selves to such an extent that we fail to see the story, the intent, the goals, be they philosophical, salvationist, aesthetic, ethical, political behind digital technologies? Are we unable to see any future at all, since the future seems to be at our back and call via the universal machines cooperating to produce second lives, or third, fourth and fifth lives?

Web 3.x

One possible answer was given when interactivity on the web was finally made possible on a mass scale shortly after the millenium. But what does interactivity actually give us? What does it mean to be able to talk, exchange videos, have video conversations, chat via text on all and every device possible? When we finally connect all data sources and sensors and recording devices etc, what exactly is going to change?

The answer has little do with Nirvana, the Singularity, or, unfortunately for hopeful fools like me, tech gnosis. We will not transport our souls onto a new level of experience. We have not suddenly proven that Neoplatonism has found a new home in digital metaphysics.

What we have re-invented is a version of gnostic religion(s): we have not changed our lives and we have not changed our ways of relating. We have not changed our stories and our histories. If memory serves, Gnosticism and its many versions was the beginning of what we today would see as a religion that covers large segments of the population, but serving religious knowledge giving privileged access to a truth not perceptible to ordinary mortals. Needless to say it was wildly popular. And naturally, the promise of new truths didn't help it when new syncretisms like Christianity and medieval mystery religions, and the established Manichaean Churches took over and scooped up the remains of previous teachings and cults.

Take a hard look at facebook or mash-ups and various mixes of media streams and data. There is so-called intelligence behind social networking, but frankly, except for the ability to find people who share interests and tastes, so far, I fail to see whatever else has been improved.

There has been an increase in access possibilities (quantity), but no progress of any kind (quality). We can get at amazing amounts of knowledge, but we just have not known

Similarly, I am not convinced that the coming of Web 2.0 (and 3.0, as it will be doubtlessly called) gives us any new truths, new ways of relating, make us better philosophers or business men. We are making information exchange more efficient. But we have been making information exchange more efficient at a price, which is quite plainly that we are unable to judge the quality of thought processes and interactions , relationships and implicit contracts concluded "online".

More later, folks.

-Frank