Children of the New World by Alexander Weinstein

Author:Alexander Weinstein
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781250099006
Publisher: Picador

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE FAILED REVOLUTION

WHILE KROTSKY WASN’T the first to propose that the work at the Consciousness Institute was political rather than scientific, he was the most outspoken of the critics. In his essay The Global Interface as Political Machine, he argues, “If we see consciousness as belonging to an individual, in much the same way that we consider personality, free will, or even the notion of soul as his/her own possession, then we must concede that any technological intrusion, cybernetic or electronic, is a forcible one. As such, the individual should have a right to reject it.”1

That private ownership of consciousness was Krotsky’s main objection to the Global BrainWeb Interface certainly weakened his argument. For as Dksvoskny pointed out, if consciousness is claimed as private ownership, then “soon enough perfume, music, even the wind will be up for debate, for are not all of these consciousness-intruding elements?”2 Dksvoskny was thus the first to formally question what constituted proper objection to technological intrusion outside of the subjective like/dislike standards proposed by anti-interfacers. Ethics, he stated, was hardly the basis to reject a leap in human/computer intelligence, conceding that if, and only if, such an intrusion were dangerous (i.e., a stench so foul, it caused vomiting; a noise so loud, it produced deafness), then, indeed, prohibition would be up for debate.

The BrainWeb Interface, however, increased brain/computer function without any such violent intrusions. And while the initial test models complicated this due to their primitive designs (SkullCartridges, Internal DSL, VeinWiring, etc.) these prototypes were quickly replaced by the nonintrusive, marketplace models available from the construction of the Towers. The technology that allowed the web to function directly off bioenergetics rather than internal hardwiring, in short, its nonphysicality, invalidated the anti-interface objections.

Wittger, who separates behavior into internal-drive and external-drive behavior, sees the crux of the debate as residing in the misconception of consciousness as being purely word/thought based rather than word/thought/html based.

Who exactly gave anti-interfacers divine right to hold neural function under lock and key still remains a mystery to me. An antiquated notion of sovereign control of brain function is, in part, at fault. Religious dogma is probably more culpable (with its notions of spirit, reincarnation, ad infinitum). When religion established the intangible soul as a safe haven for consciousness, it compromised technological evolution by creating a mind eternally hidden and impossible to access. The advance of Global Interface Technology has proven that the neuroscience of the early twenty-first century provided only a limited understanding of brain function. Human internal drive has had cybernetic interface at its disposal all along.3

Wittger proved that, in the same way electricity or gravity was present before its discovery, human cybernetic capability preexisted the technology, and to deny this was to prove universal imbecility. Indeed, the short-lived attempts of anti-interfacers to remove themselves from the Global Streaming Network (ostriching, metal helmets, the Spelunk Architectural Movement) gave merit to the imbecility Wittger prophesied. None of the gloom and doom that anti-interfacers warned about occurred, and while

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