Naked in the Global Village

In the list of anime, “Paprika” is one of my favorite. For those not in the know, the movie details the theft of an experimental device that allows the possessor to see into the dreams of someone wearing the monitors mate. Packed with stunning visuals the movie also brings up several interesting questions that while now are science fiction may soon become fact. As the movie evolves the people monitoring the dreams take on the ability to enter the dreams of the sleeper. As the movie progresses the dream state becomes the reality with our lives becoming the stuff that dreams are made of.
The movie came back to me while listening to “The Google Story” by David Vise the book detailing the early days of Google and hearing the Google godfather Sergey Brin say that he envisioned a day when Google would have a direct interface into someone’s mind- so that all the information in the world would be available to us at once. While of course the Faustian correlation occurred to me but I also wondered who would own that data. Who would own your past if you shared it with the world. And would we have to share what we know would our memories become a common currency that other people could browse. But what about the results of their access; would our memories become a Wikipedia page that someone else could enter, fact check and comment- could we find some way to keep our privacy private? Would our consciousness constitute our homes in the global village or would we all be naked and exposed even in the farthest reaches of our mind. Would your memories have the same value as other digital assets?

All I need is everything

I have been reading a lot about cybersecurity lately. That is the idea that the information that we share with others kept securely and that we can work under the reasonable assumption that the information we share with a business will stay with that business. Now, we know that companies have the right to sell our information and to share it without our permission but is the inverse true? Could companies withhold information from us for our real or perceived “own good”? We know the government keeps information under the guise of National Security but what is there that is too powerful for us to know? And then what about the question as to who owns information could someone say, “E=mc2” is mine and you can’t think with it? As the internet give us more access to information, is it giving us access to new information or more access to what we already know? If the truth will set us free what happens when that truth is owned and available only those who can afford it?

For those of you who find the tile referential, hear the song here, yeah, it took me back too (Thanks Fletch)

Another interesting thought on the matter; while I don’t totally agree with their methods, I see their point.

Technology is a virus from outerspace

While I first heard the term sung by Lori Anderson, the quote-”language is a virus from outer space” originated with William Burroughs . It seems that today one could also say the same thing about technology. It seems to have inserted itself in our lives and convinced us of the need to keep feeding this beautiful thing that consumes more and more of our time and our consciousnesses. A recent 2011 article in Quinnipiac Magazine, author Jamie A. Kloss, describes the panic that she felt at the beginning of her experiment in digital isolation. A virus can only live by replicating itself in a living host and our technology virus seems only to live as long as we feed and nurture it. Perhaps there will come a day when the virus no longer needs us to live or has found a way to replicate itself with out us. Imagine the heartbroken person clinging to the phone that no longer needs to speak to us.

Looking forward, looking back..

It goes back a few years ago I was reading “Conversations with God” by Neale Donald Walsch and I was fascinated by the idea that the God, that which is, could not know itself fully without something that it is not, in short being everything God could not experience itself as something separate from itself. Walsch goes on to say that God then split itself into infinite forms so that God could know the world that is not itself and thus experience itself. It is this ability to step outside of one’s self and see one’s self that came back to me the other day while looking at my Facebook page. Is it possible that the idea that God had for knowing himself is really a metaphysical selfie? Isn’t a selfie just another way to know and document ourselves in the world and to share that information? Perhaps God is more tech savvy then we thought.