Subtopic: General

The sharp-edged technology of the NII can cut a number of ways: It can enlarge the domain of the commodifiers and controllers; it can serve the resistance to these forces; it can saturate us all, controlled and controllers alike, in a virtual alternative to the real world. Meanwhile, most of humanity will live and die deprived of the wonders of the NII, or indeed the joys of adequate nutrition, medical care, and housing. We would do well to regulate our enthusiasms accordingly – that is, to remember where love and mercy have their natural homes, in that same material world. Otherwise we will have built yet another pharaonic monument to wealth, avarice, and indifference. We will have proved the technophobes right. More to the point, we will have collaborated to neglect the suffering of the damned of the earth – our other selves – in order to entertain ourselves.

Building the NII, we create a vast and productive niche for the enlargement of [Manuel] de Landa’s “machinic phylum,” worlds in which machines can grow and evolve, and this eventually may have profound implications for human consciousness. Even in the relatively primitive forms it takes today, information technology seems to encourage a fixation on virtual rather than real experience – on technologically mediated perception, not direct apprehension. It can also saturate us in a hypnotic image-repertoire that works to render us passive and dream-struck no matter who, if anyone, controls it.

The pitchman’s hyperbole and the government’s bland assurances alike should tell us that we are being hustled, worked – like a crowd standing in front of the ring-toss stand at a traveling carnival.