INTERVIEW:
Question 1
What is a "futurism of the self"? How would you place it between the ever
increasing individualism and the trend toward virtual communities and globalization?
Answer
The futurism of the self really concerns how we imagine the self, our notions of it, who
we are, how we behave, the qualities that we attribute to ourselves, the prospective of
being human, the perspective of being part of a community, or how we define our individual
character. That self, which many people don't even agree exists, is a very important
causative agent in how institutions, technology and the shape of society develops, because
the expectations and notions we have about who we are determine everything from education
to our attitudes towards crime, the way politics is conducted, the use towards which we
put technology, and so forth. Given that the self is so important, and embodies so many
powerful social values, it is logical that there is a need to pursue the idea of how the
self is changing. Is it changing under the impact of technologies, and if it is changing,
what are the consequences of those changes? I think what we need to develop a vocabulary
of the futurism of the self, because it is such an abstract notion: the idea that this
internal abstract concept somehow has a concrete impact on institutions, on essential
choices of technology and so forth, is a notion that most people have trouble buying into.
So we need a vocabulary and methodologies to explore these ideas, and also create some
areas that show that there is that kind of causative connection. The self does change. If
you go to the extreme futurist vision of it, like a totally technological society as we
have seen it in a lot of movies, the image of the self becomes the self as robot, because
it is in a completely technological environment. Certainly our notions of what is to be
human have changed over the centuries and are changing all the time, especially with the
dramatic transformations occurring today in our societies and our technologies. So, a
futurism of the self would ask how this is affecting where we are headed, and how is where
we are headed affecting how we think of ourselves as human beings, and whether there are
reciprocal effects. In terms of individualism and the move towards virtual communities, I
think the futurism of the self speaks to those sort of issues, because what do we mean by
individualism? A futurism of the self would ask these sorts of questions and try and come
up again with scenarios and perspectives that help us understand what it means when people
are creating other identities on the Internet. Because that in itself is more important
than the identity they create. The fact that 39-year old businessman who has a family is
going on-line and pretending to be a woman and having sex conversation with nine other
people around the world. Are those connections important, or is what's important the fact
that that individual is making those choices?
Question 2
In your work, you refer to "coded identities" and to the "thinning
self". What part do these ideas play in a futurism of the self?
Answer
The notion of a coded identity is one scenario that I like to use, both because I think it
is interesting and because it illustrates one of the possibilities for a futurism of the
self. It is a rather abstract notion, but it is predicated on the idea that technologies,
as they become more prominent in a society, become the model for how we think about our
selves, how we think about social processes. For instance, we have the computer, which is
often used as a model for how we think about the mind. Technology has the power to
influence us and also to determine and even shape that reality, because technology is an
extension of who we are, of our senses, technology does what our hands do only much faster
and more powerfully. These things express who we are, we use them as metaphor, as natural
reference points. They shape us, they determine the rhythm of our lives, we think along
the lines that they set out for us. So, within the coded identity scenario I look at two
major technologies. One is biogenetics, which of course has a lot to do with technology,
because the genetic code determines to a large extent what we are as humans, even as
individuals. The other technology is the smart card. The smart card is an electronically
coded card, computerised on magnetic tape, that gives us access to things. We use it to
make telephone calls, we use it for the bancomat or ATM machine, we use it when we go
through a toll and a scanner reads it, and it says, your car is heading to the city for
the tenth time today. Smart cards are getting more complex, they are being able to
contain, not only contain a lot of information related to multiple functions, like your
medical information, your ATM information, but soon they will be able to be recoded, so
that if you go to the doctor and you put in your smart card, it might have your medical
history, the results of the latest visit can then be put on your smart card. Now, the
environment in which the smart card exists is an electronic environment, a cyber
environment, it is the environment of electronic commerce, the environment that allows us
to negotiate the marketplace. The marketplace is a source of identity for us as well: at
the moment in the United States everybody is part of many different marketing databases.
Almost everything you do gets sold to a list and helps create a profile of who you are.
For example, you buy a lot of chocolate and that is on your credit card so your name goes
to the chocolate makers. You are coded by your zip code, your postal code, by lifestyle
and so forth. Now, that coded identity of who you are is a commodity, it is bought and
sold, and more and more we are going to be using smart cards and negotiate that world. So
we have two technologies, biotech and the electronic market landscape in which our
identity will exist both metaphorically and in reality as codes. Therefore I believe that
as those technologies become more prominent in society and as they have success in terms
of convenience, medical advances, more and more we are going to see it as really a
paradigm for who we are. Politics is an example of this: every major campaign in the US is
carried out with the help of marketers, who tell presidential or senatorial candidates
what to say, who is more likely to be affected and what way. Reality is being shaped by
the power of the code, and the power of coded identity, and just one more aspect of this
is that DNA is becoming encoded on smart cards, being used on ID cards. Your DNA
information is very valuable, it is the ultimate commodity, of value to medical companies,
to insurance and marketing companies, it is valuable - unfortunately - in terms of
security issues and so forth. There is a scenario in which our coded identity is going to
be travelling around the information superhighways, the cyber-world, and in which we will
see our selves more and more as products of a code. These codes are manipulable, they are
replicable, they are disembodied, they are commodities. So how will that affect our notion
of who we are, how will that affect the sense of the integrity of the self, which that
alone underlies our notion of human rights and political rights? This is just one tendency
and there may be counter-tendencies that could upset it, but it is still something that I
think is going to be a major player in the way we think about ourselves.
Question 3
How does this perspective differ from the traditional critique of people becoming
"just numbers" or "cogs in the machine"? Has Information Technology
any role in this different perspective?
Answer
That's an interesting question. In Charlie Chaplin's movie Modern Times, we have one of
the greatest expressions of human beings as cogs in the machine. That comes from the
industrial, mechanical world. The nightmare vision is that we are all going to be stamped
out the same, that we are all numbers subject to the vast bureaucracy. This is a sort of
added dimension to that vision, because it is a different dimension, not the mechanical
world but the electronic world. This self is not that dull self that is stamped out and
works on the assembly line, this self has a very exciting life: it travels at the speed of
light. They are not interested in making you the same as everyone else: what they are
interested in is replicating you, the individual. Figuratively, of course, but there are
now computer programs that can be attached to your presence on the Internet and, without
your knowledge, they can follow you around and find out your Internet choices, and
construct an identity of who you are, based on your cyber-reality. There is something
called identity theft, where your electronic self is stolen, along with a lot of
information about you that can be used to run up debts and so on. So the new self is that
we are concerned about isn't just the number in the machine, it is very strange and fluid;
it is replicable but not in relation to others but in relation to itself. If you look at
Modern Times it is Chaplin's body that is a kind of revolutionary agent against the
factory. But if this is a disembodied self, where does it go and get the energy to rebel
against the machine? There is also a tremendous sense of power to this new self, and to me
there is a mythic aspect to this because if you look at the advertisements about the Net,
for instance, or any of the rhetoric about it, there is a sense of "you are the
master of this vast domain, where there are these infinite choices, all the is information
at your fingertips, and if you have a system like they have on the advertisements, you can
dart anywhere, you are the master surfer of the web. Who is this self in this market
economy who is supposed to have access and power over all these objects? These are the
modern myths of who we are and who we may become; the thing is we are not deities, we are
human beings and we have very strict limits on what we are capable of, and I think there
is a danger that the self will become exhausted as it becomes invested in all these other
choices, all these possibilities, but is it getting anything meaningful beyond just a sort
of plethora of individual choices? The self that has always choices on the Internet is
really the product that they are aiming at. So the subject becomes the object, when one
who has got all this control becomes the commodity that's sold throughout cyberspace and
throughout the electronic marketing world. I think in that sense we are playing into
certain sort of age-old yearnings for power, for connection, and the electronic
connections seem to provide this. But in my view it is a tremendous tool, but it is one
that has a subconscious effect on society as a whole as it becomes more pervasive. I see
that as affecting our notions of who we are, how we communicate, who we are when we meet
another person. How is one going to influence how we view the other? What are the
limitations that we assume exist within each of us, just because we no longer have access
to a more organic landscape?
Question 4
Can you offer mini-scenarios for this future environment of coded identities?
Answer
I think there are a lot of scenarios that certainly derive from biogenetics. For example,
who are we if human cloning eventually becomes a reality? Who are we when we know we can
be replicated? What is replicated? I think we are going to have genetic brokers, they will
take a smart card and tell you whether you are a good match with your fiancÈ. People will
even be able to have designer babies, and if the baby isn't quite up to snuff it will be
rejected, or put up for adoption. One of the scenarios that really interests me is the one
with smart cards and DNA. Where is the smart card headed? Well, I am not sure, but I
suspect they are going to eventually be insertable into the computers the way a disk is,
very powerful images, maybe even into virtual reality, when we communicate with another
person, when we meet somebody, when we get an interest in them. Are we going to trade
smart cards, and put them into virtual reality, into the other person's mind? Employers
are going to want to see employee's smart cards. How much will that tell them? Are we
going to have people who look at the DNA code and create a visual reality that will go on
to a virtual reality environment and say, this is who you are, these are your tendencies?
There will be people analysing that sort of information, for employers, for insurance
companies, for dating services. It will be interesting for education; I can see that the
child walks in, they have got a lot of information, there will be profiles: well, maybe we
should create the class this way, have this student with these students because they have
the right looks. The danger is that in the history of genetics, we have certainly seen
strong tendencies to abuse it. The Nazis derived some of their ideas and their ideology
from American eugenics in the early twentieth century, although those people did not have
the same objectives. But even in the United States people who were considered unfit to
have more children have been sterilised. There was an article in the Boston Globe about
four years ago on dwarfs, who were concerned about genetic testing: they were afraid that
it would create a paradigm of the perfect person. What happens when we start looking at
traits and say, these are undesirable traits? There's always been a tendency to abuse
genetics and to over-interpret the information. Yet this is a very powerful tool and once
you have got the knowledge people want to use it, and they want to use if for profit, they
want to use it for social control. That is one of our concerns.
Question 5
What do you think of the possibilities of changing one's own identity on the Net?
Answer
I am sceptical of that as a liberating force in people's lives, as I think again that
there is a lot of rhetoric about how liberating it is, how it allows people to try on new
identities, but really, how essentially different is it from a bunch of screenwriters
getting together and writing as a group. It may be a nice mental exercise, but what is the
environment in which people are acting, when they are changing identities on the net? They
are always going to be bound by their own input, and with that identity, if you go to
credit an identity on the Net it's going to reflect who you are. Anybody who has tried to
write fiction knows that one moment of real life is usually far more astounding and
surprising than all the scenarios that you might come up with, especially if you are
living isolated. I think it's much more important to ask, what is it doing to the self
that people are making those decisions and try to create those identities? What does it
say about how happy or unhappy people are with who they are today. What is going to happen
when they realise they are left, ultimately, with this reality that is in the body? How
much satisfaction can that electronic self really provide?
Question 6
Discussions of the future of the self often involve the idea that we are evolving towards
a new level of human consciousness. Your own vision seems more fatalistic or at least
sceptical. Do you believe that the impact of technology on the self is part of a broader
evolutionary scheme?
Answer
There is a lot of rhetoric about human evolution, that we are moving to a higher plan
of consciousness. I think that if you examine it, you'll find that human consciousness has
evolved, or has changed in some way. But I don't think that there is any evidence for an
evolving, that we are moving towards a more collective consciousness, a planetary
consciousness. I don't dispute that these consciousnesses exist, I think they do, but are
we evolving to that? Maybe we are just moving in fits and starts laterally, and just
changing consciousness. Maybe we are devolving. I think it expresses a very powerful and
very positive wish that we are moving towards something, but I think it's really based on
faith and emotional longing. However, there's nothing wrong with holding the evolutionary
model out as a positive model, that may generate positive results because we are thinking
positively. On the other hand I think it's important not to operate from a deluded
perspective; we have to look at the shadow scenarios, the darker side of where we are
headed, if only to prepare us better for it. If we are so sure that we are evolving in
certain ways, it justifies any disaster, anything that happens as a necessary step. Shadow
scenarios help ground us in the realities of where we are moving and how events unfold. We
are human and we are going to screw up, and virtually everything we create is going to be
a double-edged sword.
Question 7
How do we go about creating a futurism of the self?
Answer
I think what we need to do is create a vocabulary and methodologies: they don't have to be
rigid methodologies, but some way of talking about the self that isn't abstract. I think
we need to map the impact of our notions of self on institutions, on the development of
realities like technology. We have to show the connections, create complex or
sophisticated scenarios that actually show a government planner, strategic planner in
organisations or whoever that it actually can tell somebody where they are headed. We need
some kind of viable cognitive technology. The self has always been central to religion,
and so on - look at the Genesis, the Fall is about how the self changed over time in a
certain environment. I think what we need to do is create a vocabulary that suits the
needs of what our world today, and for that we need the methodologies, the vocabulary, the
mapping, showing the real impact. Once you can do that, I think it will be a fascinating
discipline and can make real contributions to how we think.
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