In the readings from last week, I noticed that the idea of binding organic matterial to a machine is not far from the next stage of where we are heading. My opinion of this fussion or new evolution isn’t based on the idea that we really are going to look like the Borg from Star Trek or anything, however, in examing how humanity fuctions today with technology ir seems clear to me that we ahve binded ourselves to technology.
The readings from last week often explore the idea of using technology as a archive that exists whithout time or limitations, such as books, archives and various other articles. These types of documents help the present understand the past and if we were to ever loose these written journals or fables we loose a piece of history as well. Today’s generation aims to fuss our past with our fututre by digitalizing these sources. These acts as a preservative for the past, however, it does much more than that. Due to the fact that we have used technology to protect our past we have in a sense murged with technology and have created a permanent need for technology. Now that computers and the internet and private buisnesses, such as Kindle, and whatever else is out there, we have abandoned the traditional book for a screen to give us the same message. We no longer have a system that links to our very identity and quite possibly it will be realistic that our culture is primarily technological based, at least in our daily practices. I don’t believe in the Sci-fi portrayal of the cyborg, one because it doesn’t make sense from a biological stand point. That doesn’t mean there won’t be a cyborg civilization.
We are constantly fighting to protect and connect with our ancestry, and everyday we look to yestarday, tomorrow pulls us further away. Technology acts as a barrier that can keep tomorrow away from missing out on our past and I believe the reading about the Library of Babel and Hypertexting go to the heart of these concepts. We as human’s cannot build a structure that is limitless, however, we can design a system that is as wide and dense as the space that surrounds our worlds. We use this cyber space to forever, preserve the past of today as well as the past of our future.
You mentioned the fact that “[by using] technology to protect our past we have in a sense merged with technology and have created a permanent need for technology.” As I read this statement, I couldn’t help thinking about that funny video called “The Medieval Help Desk.” While the video itself seems entirely comical, it does highlight an important, but often forgotten fact: which is the fact that the book itself is actually a form of technology.
Doesn’t it seem that there is an interesting parallel between what is taking place with digitization and what happened with the invention of the printing press? Both were innovative technological developments that enabled the mass production and preservation of human knowledge at a much larger scale than was previously available. I suppose if we were living in the 15th century, we may be saying the same thing about books that we now say about digitization: that by using technology to protect our past, we are merging with technology and creating a dependency upon it. Yet fast-forward six centuries and we discover that we have merged so extensively with that innovative technology called the book, that we no longer even consider it technology!
While parallels can definitely be drawn, I still remain a little reluctant to embracing an entirely digital form of cultural preservation. I suppose that my reluctance lies in the fact that digital forms can be corrupted or even permanently lost much more easily than material ones. In the past, you actually had to light a fire in order to eliminate a printed text. Now, all you need to do is press a delete key.
Modern technology has indeed made preservation of the past an incredibly vast field of material that is seemingly limitless. Of course, there are still boundaries as with everything in this world, so it’s not absolutely limitless. As for the whole binding organic material to machines, it brings me back to the notion of man merging with machine. I suppose that it is not biologically possible for a human/machine hybrid to exist, and maybe the farthest we can go in that realm is perhaps Pranav Mistry’s “sixth sense” technology where modern objects become platforms for technology, such as a simple piece of paper becoming a screen for a video game controlled by one’s own hand.
In a sense, man has already merged with machine, though we have done it by merely being extremely devoted to machines and new technology, such as being constantly connected to our smartphones, driving innovative hybrid and electric cars, and using the internet for nearly all of our communication. These things have all become an extension of ourselves, things that represent us, and so we have certainly bound ourselves to technology, as you said, and we allow to express us in today’s world.