The Shape of Shit to Come by Alan McArthur

Author:Alan McArthur [Alan McArthur and Steve Lowe]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2012-09-21T04:00:00+00:00

Oh what a glorious thing to be: a healthy, grown-up, busy, busy bee

It is well known that H. G. Wells and Pete Townshend out of The Who invented the Internet. (Not together. Separately.)

Townshend invented the Internet for his aborted rock opera project Lifehouse in which pollution forces a future population indoors; everyone is connected to each other and fed a constant stream of entertainment through a computerised ‘Grid’. Rock’n’roll is dead, only to eventually be revived by rebels who break free from all the IT to get in touch with their inner primitives by putting on rock concerts in the woods (yes, Lifehouse would have been quite shit).

Wells first crystallised his more positive vision of the World Brain in his 1921 book The Salvaging of Civilisation. This Internet was a global network that gathered all possible human knowledge for improving society and eliminating poverty and war, and spreading beauty. And you could also post footage of your ex-girlfriend in the buff to get back at her for dumping you because she reckons you were getting on to her even though you, like, weren’t. (H. G. Wells hated being dumped.)

So from the start, the net could be a utopia or a dystopia. So are we evolving? Or devolving? Or just revolving? Certainly, anyone still capable of any individual thought can tell major changes have already occurred. Some people are taking to this new world of non-privacy with real relish. Too much relish. Here is my world. Welcome. Look over there. There’s my pants.

It is now fairly easy to imagine society shifting towards a collective hive-mind – like bees, only not working together to make honey so much as bickering and calling each other’s honey ‘a fucking shit waste of time LOSER’. Hey, perhaps the endless debate and discourse of the online world is, in fact, the very essence of Platonic dialogue … sorting out ideas, putting down crap ones, working through contradictions. You know, maybe.

But will we be losing more than we gain? In 2010, virtual reality pioneer Jaron Lanier produced a screed called You Are Not a Gadget, in which the geeky worm turned, or at least questioned. On the new so-called wisdom of crowds, he has said: ‘If you ask a crowd to do something creative or constructive, you end up with a dull average … The types of artists we get this way have a predictable, likable, non-controversial quality. I don’t think we’ll get a Kurt Cobain or a Clash through this.’ Because Jaron Lanier is pretty punk rock (that’s what he’s saying here).

Of course, in 1977 The Clash were loudly railing against everybody sitting round watching television – and yes, that was the 1970s, largely: kids watching telly all Saturday morning; blokes watching World of Sport all Saturday afternoon. A lot of set was going down. Are You Being Served? That was on a lot. I digress …

Anyway, Lanier wonders if we are surrendering too much of our humanity to technology. Are we? And are we also

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