Devouring the Zeitgeist

It's a new month, a time to switch the lens the reflecting pool will gaze through as we unpack the multi-faceted phenomena of everyday life.  Last month, we talked about patriarchy, a system that arguably grows out of our evolutionary history and has infested human interactions for perhaps as long as there have been humans.  This month, we swing to the opposite end of the spectrum as we explore the cutting edge of the human tool-making process:

technology.

More particularly, I'll be putting together pieces that explore the feedback loops that exist between technology, culture, and human evolution.  If you like sci-fi, futurism, or complaining about the kids these days, February is going to be great month for you at TFP!  To get the ball rolling, I'm starting today with a broad observation about the relationship between new modes of information consumption and our understanding of the world.

Information Overload

The graphic novel and film Watchmen  [spoiler alert, this analogy contains substantial references to the plot] both prominently feature billionaire super-genius philanthropist character Adrian Veidt, a former freelance superhero who capitalized on his renown and incredible intelligence to build a corporate empire.  Veidt's many public enterprises are geared towards an overarching aim: the ultimate improvement and salvation of human civilization.  And to that end, he also conducts a series of secret operations in a Machiavellian attempt to engineer a massive global conflict that will push humankind to the brink of extinction, in order to teach them necessity of peace and cooperation.

Why would a humanist like Veidt resort to such horrific measures?  Because, in his analysis, borderline apocalypse is the only thing that could bring us all together.  In his sub-antarctic lair, Veidt often sits in front of a giant wall of televisions air broadcasts from every corner of the Earth as a means to distill and digest the global zeitgeist.  In so doing, he's confronted from all corners by narrow ideological entrenchment, hate, fearmongering, and threat construction.  Veidt is in the unique position of being able to consider all of these perspectives simultaneously, and watching from that farm removed vantage point, he's brought to the brink of despair at the prospects for successfully building bridges of mutual understanding between the various gangs of homo sapiens.

Watchmen was originally published in the late eighties and is set in the alternate nineteen-seventies, technological epochs where rapidly analyzing media from all around the world would only be possible for super-geniuses with access to massive economic resources.  In the present, the capacity to rapidly collect information from thousands of different sources and deliver it directly into one's pocket is available to any person with a twitter account and a smartphone.  The internet has exponentially increased open access to information from anywhere and everywhere, so theoretically we should all be drifting towards a more pluralistic, tolerant worldview, right?

Not really.  Where before divisions were enforced by physical proximity, now most people voluntarily segregate themselves from any meaningful engagement with viewpoints or people that make them uncomfortable.  Collectively, we've engaged in a willful balkanization that confirms and violates all of our biases, rather than challenging the perspective we carry into situations.

All of this meant to preface February discussion of technology with an overarching thought.  All technological innovations are tools.  By themselves, they are devoid of moral and ethical content, and manifest positive or negative tendencies based on the uses to which they're put.  Uninhibited global communication could bring us all together, but only if we engage with that communicative network with an appropriate attitude of ideological and emotional openness.  Our goal must not be to win, but to understand.