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The Digitally Divided Self: Relinquishing our Awareness to the Internet

Ivo Quartiroli — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 13:04:35 +0000

The Digitally Divided Self: Relinquishing our Awareness to the Internet is on Amazon.

ISBN 9788897233008
274 Pages – Format: 6″ x 9″ – $17.90 (discounted on Amazon)

It is nearly half a century since Marshall McLuhan pointed out that the medium is the message. In the interim, digital technologies have found an irresistible hook on our minds. With the soul’s quest for the infinite usurped by the ego’s desire for unlimited power, the Internet and social media have stepped in to fill our deepest needs for communication, knowledge and creativity – even intimacy and sexuality. Without being grounded in those human qualities which are established through experience and inner exploration, we are vulnerable to being seduced into outsourcing our minds and our fragile identities.

Intersecting media studies, psychology and spirituality, The Digitally Divided Self exposes the nature of the malleable mind and explores the religious and philosophical influences which leave it obsessed with the incessant flow of information.

I am deeply touched and extremely grateful to the people who took the time to read, support and endorse The Digitally Divided Self. Being my first English book, and basically self-published, I didn’t expect to receive many reviews, much less from such leading thinkers and writers – nor such positive responses.

It was also a surprise to find common interests around eastern spirituality with so many people into technology and media. This makes me hopeful for an evolution of the information society – from chasing external stimulation to inner explorations and silence.

Detailed table of contents, introduction and chapter 1.

Order on Amazon.

Praise for Digitally Divided Self

“Quartiroli’s The Digitally Divided Self is a must read for anyone seeking to understand the ever-increasing hegemony of the digital world in the individual psyche. Drawing on diverse fields and traditions, the author analyzes numerous mechanisms by which IT separates us from ourselves. Readers stand to benefit from such an understanding that is a prerequisite for mounting a defense of one’s individuality.” —Len Bracken, author of several novels and the biography Guy Debord—Revolutionary

“With great insight, Ivo Quartiroli captures the subtle as well as the gross impact that media use has on our individual and collective psyches. The challenge before all of us is how to adapt to the new technology in a healthy way that allows us to retain our essential humanity. He offers us a solution born of his experience and confirmed by neuroscience. This is a must read.” —Hilarie Cash, PhD, co-founder of reSTART: Internet Addiction Recovery Program

“It is difficult to offer a spiritually based critique of today’s network culture without sounding like a nostalgic Luddite crank. Immersed in the tech, but also in various meditative traditions, Ivo Quartiroli is the perfect person to offer integral wisdom-tech with clarity and bite.” —Erik Davis, author of Techgnosis and Nomad Codes: Adventures in Modern Esoterica.

“Aware of the profound and rapid psychological and social metamorphosis we are going through as we ‘go digital’ without paying attention, Ivo Quartiroli is telling us very precisely what we are gaining and what we are losing of the qualities and privileges that, glued as we are to one screen or another, we take for granted in our emotional, cognitive and spiritual life. This book is a wake-up call. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates should read it.” —Derrick de Kerckhove, Professor, Facoltà di sociologia, Università Federico II, Naples, former Director of the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology.

“The Digitally Divided Self alerts us about the insidious dangers of our growing dependence on Information Technology. Ivo Quartiroli warns us that Internet can easily develop into an addiction that undercuts our connections with nature, with other people, and with our deeper inner reality. The spiritual nourishment coming from genuine relationships is then replaced by the empty calories of fake relationships, with the resulting deterioration of our personal and social lives. Using an incisive style, Ivo Quartiroli can be provocative, iconoclastic, at times exaggerated, but never boring. Behind each observation there are pearls of wisdom that are guaranteed to make you think.” —Federico Faggin, designer of the microprocessor.

“Global culture is not only the latest step in the human evolutionary journey. It is also, as Ivo Quartiroli shows in The Digitally Divided Self, a critical opportunity to apply non-Western techniques of awareness to ensure healthy survival in the 21st century.” —Michael Heim, author of The Metaphysics of Virtual Reality, Virtual Realism, and Electric Language.

“Question the merits of technology in the past and you’d be called a Luddite. But now technologists are leading the way toward a new, more balanced view of our gadget-driven lives. Drawing from his fascinating expertise in computer science and spirituality, Ivo Quartiroli presents a compelling critique of the corrosive impact of the Net on our humanity. It’s a warning we must heed.” —Maggie Jackson, author of Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age.

“A profoundly premonitory vision of the future of the 21st century, The Digitally Divided Self unlocks the great codes of technological society, namely that the very same digital forces that effectively control the shape and direction of the human destiny are also the founding powers of a new revolution of the human spirit.” —Arthur Kroker, author of The Will to Technology and Canada Research Chair in Technology, Culture and Theory.

“People today, especially young people, live more on the Internet than in the real world. This has subtle and not-so-subtle effects on their thinking and personality. It is high time to review these effects, to see whether they are a smooth highway to a bright interconnected future, or possibly a deviation that could endanger health and wellbeing for the individual as well as for society. Ivo Quartiroli undertakes to produce this review and does so with deep understanding and dedicated humanism. His book should be read by everyone, whether he or she is addicted to the Internet or has second thoughts about it.” —Ervin Laszlo, President, the Club of Budapest, and Chancellor, the Giordano Bruno Globalshift University.

“The Mind-Body Split is a pervasive condition/affliction in the developed world, wholly un-recognized; yet fundamental to the great worldwide problems of health, environment, and economic inequity. Ivo Quartiroli’s Digitally Divided Self masterfully examines the effects of the insulated digital experience on the mind and the body self: exacerbating illusions and the Mind-Body Split; and contrasts it to the processes of self-discovery, growth, and healing: true inter-connectedness with nature, each other, and our selves. If the digital age is to solve our real problems, rather than create them, it will be with the knowledge contained in The Digitally Divided Self. Well done!” —Frederic Lowen, son of Alexander Lowen, Executive Director, The Alexander Lowen Foundation

“Ivo Quartiroli here addresses one of the most pressing questions forced upon us by our latest technologies. In disturbing the deepest relations between the user’s faculties and the surrounding world, our electric media, all of them without exception, create profound disorientation and subsequent discord, personal and cultural. Few subjects today demand greater scrutiny.” — Dr. Eric McLuhan, Author and Lecturer

“The internet is an extension of our central nervous system. When you operate a computer, you are extending yourself, through its interface, potentially all over the world, instantaneously. Extending yourself in such a disembodied, discarnate fashion only further entrenches your separateness, your ego self. In contrast, the introspective freeing from the physical through meditation also has the effect of creating a discarnate, disembodied state. That state is one that is progressively less identified with the ego self. This is the dichotomy that Ivo Quartiroli explores in The Digitally Divided Self. This book is well worth investigating.” —Michael McLuhan

“We should all be asking the questions Ivo Quartiroli asks in this bold and provocative book. Whatever you think right now about technology, The Digitally Divided Self will challenge you to think again.” —William Powers, author of the New York Times bestseller Hamlet’s BlackBerry

“It isn’t easy to find an informed and critical look at the impact of digital media practices on human lives and minds. Ivo Quartiroli offers an informed critique based in both an understanding of technology and of human consciousness.” —Howard Rheingold, author of The Virtual Community and Smart Mobs.

“Ivo Quartiroli is mining the rich liminal territory between humans and their networks. With the integrity of a scientist and the passion of artist, he forces us to reconsider where we end and technology begins. Or when.” —Douglas Rushkoff, Media Theorist and author of Cyberia, Media Virus, Life, Inc. and Program or Be Programmed.

“You might find what he writes to be challenging, irritating, even blasphemous and sacrilegious. If so, he has proven his point. The Internet, Ivo suggests, might just be the new opium of the masses. Agree with him or not, no other book to date brings together the multitude of issues related to how the seductions of technology impinge upon and affect the development of the self and soul.” —Michael Wesch, Associate Professor of Digital Ethnography, Kansas State University

“The Digitally Divided Self is a refreshing look at technology that goes beyond the standard, well-worn critiques. Ivo Quartiroli charts new territory with a series of profound reflections on the intersections of computer science, psychology and spirituality.” —Micah White, Senior Editor at Adbusters magazine.

Detailed table of contents, introduction and chapter 1.

Order on Amazon.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: From Awareness of technology to technologies of Awareness .. 1
Chapter 2:“It’s only a tool” .. 17
Chapter 3: The Roots of It .. 39
Chapter 4: The Digitization of Reality .. 53
Chapter 5: Intimacy and Sexuality.. 73
Chapter 6: Commoditizing and Monetizing.. 89
Chapter 7: Politics, Participation and Control .. 97
Chapter 8: Come together: the Rise of Social networks.. 115
Chapter 9: Digital Kids ..125
Chapter 10: Literacy and the Analytical Mind.. 133
Chapter 11: Lost in the Current .. 143
Chapter 12: The Digitally Divided Self.. 165
Chapter 13: The Process of Knowledge .. 189
Chapter 14: Upgrading to Heaven .. 205
Chapter 15: Biting the Snake.. 223
Appendix: The People of Contemporary It and what Drives them.. 233

Introduction

Like many people nowadays, much of my personal and professional life is related to technology: I use the Internet for keeping the connection with my work projects and friends wherever I am in the world. I published the first book in Italy about the Internet. I run a blog and a Web magazine, do my investments online, shop on the Net, do interviews by email and Skype, and have even indulged in cybersex. Right now I’m in Asia developing this book – which is full of references to Web articles, blogs and material found only on the Internet – with online support: an editor and writing coach in California, copy editor in India, book designer in Italy, and a printing and distribution service with multiple locations in USA. My life is immersed in the digital loop.

I have been involved in IT since I was a student. As I learned meditation and explored spiritual paths, I developed an inner observer and discovered states beyond the mind. Thus, I found myself going back and forth between processing consciousness and information. Slowly my focus has shifted from what we can do with technology to what technology does to us. As a first-hand explorer, I’ve observed the subtle changes of our massive use of the Net.

Just as a spiritual researcher can go beyond the mind only after having observed and mastered it, it is necessary to enter the digital world to step beyond it. We can’t become aware of its effects without being engaged in it. Since digital technology is unavoidable now, we need to master it without becoming lost in it, using its tools with our full awareness.

In this time, the intensification of mental inputs is a phenomenon that must be kept in balance. Our contemporary culture does not acknowledge anything beyond the mind, but in other traditions the mental world is just one of the aspects of our wholeness. In the West a sort of Cartesian “pure thinking” has been given priority. Although the mind is the best-known organ of thought, it is not the only cognitive modality. Nervous systems have been discovered both in the heart and in the belly, and the global awareness that can be accessed by spiritual practitioners is pervasive and non-localized. Yet these modalities cannot be represented digitally, so they are relegated to the sidelines.

Our technological society militates against uninterrupted conscious attention. Several authors have documented the effects of IT on attention, literacy and intellectual skills. It also intrudes on the silent time needed to be aware of inner transformations. We don’t realize we have become servomechanisms of IT – precisely because IT has weakened the inner skills of self-understanding. Shrinking of the rich range of human qualities to privilege only those which can be represented and operated digitally arises from the nature of the ego-mind and our particular Western history which has engendered – then valued – mental representations of reality. My focus here is to understand why the mind can be lured by the magic of the tools, while forgetting the person who is using them.

We believe we are empowered individually and politically as we post articles on our blogs and participate in social networks. In actuality, we feed the machine with our “user-generated content” which becomes candy for advertisers who then design ads based on what we say on Twitter, Facebook, and even our emails.

Jumping from information to self-understanding is necessary if we are to regain real freedom, a freedom from conditioning of our mind and the manipulation by information – whether self-created or from external sources. We mistake the transmission of gigabytes of data for freedom.

In our advanced technological society there is a reticence to acknowledge the inner, spiritual or metaphysical dimensions of life. What cannot be calculated – which is, thereby, “not objective” – is considered unworthy of investigation. Even more strongly denied is the relationship between technology and the impact on our psyche. Technophiles declare that it’s only a tool, as if our psyche could remain untouched by continuous interaction with digital media, and as if we could control its impact on us. We can indeed be in control of digital media – but only after we become fluent in those cognitive modalities which can’t be reached by such media.

To be unaffected by digital media, we need a Buddha-like awareness with sustained attention, mindfulness and introspection. Yet these very qualities which are needed to break out of the automated mind are especially difficult to access when we are drowning in information – information that is predominantly ephemeral and transient, and which lacks a broader narrative. Awareness is what gives meaning and depth to information, but for awareness to expand we need to empty our mind. A story will illustrate this. A university professor approached a master to learn about Zen. Tea was served, but when the cup was full, the master did not stop pouring. The cup, like the professor’s mind with its concepts and positions, was full. It must first be emptied to understand Zen. So, too, for the digital world.

The world over, people using the Internet click on the same icons, use the same shortcuts in email and chats, connect with people through the same Facebook modalities. This is the globalization of minds. In the process of the digitization of reality, regardless of content, we use predominantly the same limited mental channels and interact with the same tools. We bring the same attitudes, gestures and procedures to working, dating, shopping, communicating with friends, sexual arousal, and scientific research. And most of these activities are impoverished by this phenomenon. Everything is seen as an information system, from the digitization of territory (like Google Earth and augmented realities software) to our biology.

Judeo-Christian culture places nature and the world of matter at man’s disposal. Acting on them is a way to garner good deeds and regain the lost perfection of Eden. In this culture that has considered miracles as proof of the existence of God, we have developed technologies that resemble the miraculous and the divine. We are compelled to welcome the advent of new technological tools with the rhetoric of peace, progress, prosperity and mutual understanding.

The telegraph, telephone, radio, TV and other media have been regarded as tools for democracy, world peace, understanding and freedom of expression. The Internet is just the latest in a succession of promising messiahs. Yet we don’t have more democracy in the world. In fact, big media and big powers are even stronger, while freedom of expression has ceded to control by corporations and governmental agencies. The Internet, like TV, will be entertaining, dumbing people in their own separate homes where they will be unable to question the system. The Internet might already be the new soma for a society experiencing economic and environmental degradation. But with the huge economic interests connected to it, criticizing its effect is akin to cursing God.

Many technological developments appeal to people because they answer psychological and even spiritual needs – like the quests for understanding and connection with others. Already digital technology has taken charge of truth and love – the drives which are distinctly human. Those primordial needs have been addressed, on the mental level, with information. Reflected only at that level, our soul is left empty with craving for the real qualities, and our mind is left restless, craving more information and chasing after satisfaction in vain.

The need to extend our possibilities through technology derives from the need to recover parts of ourself that were lost during the development of our soul – the states of sharp perception, fulfillment, and peace. Information technology (IT) also satisfies our ancient drives for power and control, even giving us several options with a simple click or touch of a finger.

The endless multiplication of information can keep the ego-mind busy – and thus at the center of the show. IT is the most powerful mental “pusher” ever created, feeding the duality of the ego-mind (which is symbolically mirrored by binary technology). More than TV whose attractions are framed between the beginning and ending time of a show, the Internet, video games, and smartphones have no structural pauses or endings. Hooked on a “real-time” stream of information, they take us farther away from both the real and the appropriate time frames.

The computer charms us by reflecting our mind on the Net. Like Narcissus, we mistake the reflected image and enter a closed loop, charmed by our reflection. The Internet, since the beginning, has been considered a technology which could crumble central governments and organizations. Perhaps that forecast was an external projection of what can happen inside us: disturbance of the integration of our psyches.

Meditation helps us recognize that we construct reality and that the mind leads us astray. Meditation is a path back to reality, to truth, to knowing and mastering our minds – instead of mastering the computer as a way to outsource our mind’s skills. It is a way to expand our awareness and join the other global “Net” – of awareness that permeates everything.

Though I am Italian, I am publishing this book for the English market because it is a post-digital book which can be better appreciated in countries where digital culture has spread throughout society. In Italy, one politically powerful tycoon owns most of the media, and uses it to demonize the Net. In that setting, being critical of the Net invokes the accusation of aligning with power to castrate freedom of expression, which is the polar opposite of my intention.

I welcome every medium which expands our chances of expressing ourselves, but I am aware that true self-expression can happen only when there’s a true self, which can hardly be shaped by screen media.

I am grateful to my spiritual teachers who opened new dimensions for my soul in my journey toward awareness, especially the intensity of Osho and the brilliant clarity of A. H. Almaas. I thank my copy editor Dhiren Bahl (www.WordsWay-Copyediting.com) for his painstaking corrections of my English text and my editor David Carr (www.MovingWords.us) for his clarifications and stylistic improvements. I’m grateful to my friends, too many to list here, for the numerous talks bringing together heart and mind in sharing our passion for truth.

Detailed table of contents, introduction and chapter 1.

Order on Amazon.

Technological salsa

Ivo Quartiroli — Tue, 06 May 2008 10:13:01 +0000

[en]

Joseph Weizenbaum, who died recently, had documented in the 1970s in Computer Power and Human Reason (W. H. Freeman and Company, 1976) the natures of compulsive programmers, disinterested in their bodily needs and detached from the world around them.

Such figures are come across in a market economy country where advanced technologies are part of everyday life, and we don’t pay much attention to them.

The famous McLuhan phrase, “The medium is the message,” and before this the Taoist affirmations according to which the use of instruments transforms us into them had never seemed as self-evident to me as in Cuba some years ago.

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Joseph Weizenbaum in Il potere del computer e la ragione umana (Edizioni Gruppo Abele. Torino. 1987), da poco scomparso, aveva documentato già dagli anni ’70 la natura dei “programmatori coatti”, che dedicano la vita alla programmazione, disinteressati dei bisogni del corpo e distaccati dal mondo che li circonda.

Finché si incontrano tali figure in un centro di calcolo di una nazione con economia di mercato dove le tecnologie avanzate sono di casa ci si fa poco caso.

La famose frase “Il medium è il messaggio” di McLuhan e prima di questa, le affermazioni del taoismo secondo cui l’utilizzo degli strumenti ci trasforma negli stessi, non mi sono mai sembrate tanto evidenti quanto a Cuba alcuni anni fa.

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[en]

I was in a small town and used to connect to the Internet from one of the few places where some computers were available, which were almost as obsolete as their pre-revolution cars. A couple of technicians managed the computers and worked for the installation and maintenance of the network.

The Cubans are lively people on average, with a direct human contact, sensual people, related to the reality of the “here and now.” It was striking to see these technicians, on the contrary, detached, immersed in their own worlds, neglecting themselves, silent, with short “digital” answers. One could imagine that such people already had such personalities and consequently looked for compatible occupations. Without getting into the conundrum of whether the chicken or the egg came first, there is probably a mutual feedback between personality and life choices, but doubtlessly technology also shapes our psyches.

It is peculiar to realize how the modalities of thoughts received from a medium – which in this case was a computer and programming – can have more importance on the sociality and (partially) on a man’s personality than the collective conditioning received from his own society. It is equally surprising to see how the history and culture of a country which shapes the collective soul and the modalities of interaction between people get rewritten by daily contact with a tool which has existed for only a few years.

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Ero in una piccola città e mi connettevo a Internet da uno dei pochissimi luoghi dove si trovavano alcuni computer, obsoleti quasi quanto le loro automobili pre-rivoluzione. Vi erano un paio di tecnici che gestivano i computer e lavoravano per l’installazione e la manutenzione della rete.

I cubani sono mediamente persone vitali, dal contatto umano immediato, sensuali e connessi con la realtà del “qui e ora”. Faceva impressione vedere questi tecnici che erano al contrario distaccati, immersi nel loro mondo, trascurati, silenziosi, dalle risposte stringate e “digitali”. Ora, si potrebbe ipotizzare che tali persone già possedevano tale personalità e che di conseguenza si sono trovati un’occupazione coerente. Senza entrare nel problema dell’uovo e della gallina, probabilmente vi è un feedback reciproco tra personalità e scelte di vita, ma senza dubbio la tecnologia stessa ci forgia la psiche.

E’ singolare notare come le modalità di pensiero ricevute da un medium quale il computer e la programmazione, possano avere più peso nella socialità e in parte nella personalità di un individuo dei condizionamenti collettivi ricevuti dalla propria società. E’ altrettanto sorprendente vedere come la storia e la cultura di una nazione che danno forma all’anima collettiva e alle modalità di interazione tra le persone vengono riscritte dal contatto quotidiano con un mezzo che ha solo pochi anni di vita.

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The myth of freedom through technology

Ivo Quartiroli — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 21:43:12 +0000

[en]

The New York Times article “In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop” provoked a certain sensation on the Web.

Advertisements of cars still show them in the deserts or on isolated mountain roads. The reality: lines of heavy traffic, traffic lights, stress, costs, social isolation, poor quality of life. Even after many years during which cars went from being portrayed as symbols of freedom to the sardine cans that are imprisoning us, the image of freedom associated with them refuses to die.

But since a few years a new image of freedom in the collective mental imagery has been promised by advanced technologies, which permit us to be free from fixed timetables and workplaces. Wi-fi, Web on mobile phones, and always-on Internet connections promise to let us work when and where we want to, free from the obligations of time or place, with our laptop on the top of a mountain having an uninterrupted view in front of us.

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L’articolo del New York Times In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop, che racconta la morte di un blogger per stress e la pressione a cui sono sottoposti i blogger, ha provocato un certo scalpore sul web.

Le pubblicità delle automobili le ritraggono tutt’ora mentre vengono guidate in deserti o in strade isolate di montagna. La realtà: code, semafori, stress, costi, isolamento sociale, bassa qualità della vita. Dopo tanti anni in cui le automobili sono passate da simboli di libertà a scatole di sardine che ci imprigionano, l’immagine della libertà associata alle automobili non muore.

Ma da alcuni anni, nell’immaginario collettivo, la nuova immagine di libertà è stata conquistata dalle tecnologie avanzate, che ci promettono di liberarci dall’orario e dal luogo di lavoro fissi. Wi-Fi, web sui cellulari, connessioni alla rete sempre attive ci promettono di poter lavorare quando e dove ci pare, liberi dalle costrizioni del tempo e dello spazio, con il nostro portatile in cima alla montagna avendo di fronte un panorama incontaminato.

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In reality, everyone having to rely on the Internet for work or for writing articles for his blogs needs a fast and stable connection. Thus, the choice of places from where to get connected necessarily gets restricted to cities rather than to the countryside, and to the developed nations rather than underdeveloped ones.

In 1997 I used to connect to the Internet in the Tuscany countryside from my old hippy camper through a Psion 5. I could read and send emails and connect to the Web. This was enough for keeping connected with work, colleagues and acquaintances. But it is different now. Sites are getting “heavier” and thus take more time to load, the number of social networks and the daily information to follow has multiplied. To keep pace, calculation power and fast connections to the Internet are needed.

And time is needed for reading blogs, technology news, upgrading software, reading the world news, and responding to emails. People we are connected to on the Net expect quicker replies. If some years ago it was acceptable to respond to emails after a few days, later, one was expected to answer the same or mostly the next day, and now we expect people to reply to messages after hours or even minutes. It becomes almost unmanageable to let emails get accumulated for several days.

But email is already considered too slow: social networks, instant messaging systems and Twitter are substituting email as means of communication. Always-on communication implies a powerful computer, a fast connection, a place where this connection is stable and where there is a certain quietude. In other words, preferably at home or in a good hotel if one is elsewhere.

Therefore, the point about freedom from a place is an illusion. How about freedom from timetables? One is free from “9 to 5” work, but the hours and days when one is connected have got expanded further. I have contacts with people living on different continents both on the personal and work levels, as, I think, it is with many people who work on the Net. There are different time zones and holidays, and an intangible urge to be available as much as possible, irrespective of the time of day or night or brief pauses on the job.

Marshall McLuhan said in Understanding Media:

“Work,” however, does not exist in a nonliterate world. The primitive hunter or fisherman did no work, any more than does the poet, painter, or thinker of today. Where the whole man is involved there is no work. Work begins with the division of labor and the specialization of functions and tasks in sedentary, agricultural communities. In the computer age we are once more totally involved in our roles. In the electric age the “job of work” yields to dedication and commitment, as in the tribe.

Today’s dedication and commitment are toward the communities of our websites and readers of our blogs, for a tribe of contacts in the social networks or for the software programming group. People of such communities are perhaps dispersed over the continents and we probably know only a tiny part of them in real life.

This return to the dedication prevalent in pre-literate societies has returned now after having been immersed in the literate societies where we have privileged the mind and its contents. Our total involvement in the new extended tribality of the Net consequently assumes the aspect of information overload, of mental compulsion – and even of addiction.

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In realtà chiunque abbia a che fare con Internet per lavoro o perché scrive nei blog necessita di una connessione stabile e veloce. Quindi la scelta di luoghi da dove potersi connettere si restringe necessariamente alle città piuttosto che alle campagne e a nazioni sviluppate piuttosto che in via di sviluppo.

Mi ricordo che nel 1997 mi connettevo ad Internet nelle campagne toscane dal mio vecchio camper da hippie tramite uno Psion 5. Leggevo, mandavo le email e potevo anche connettermi al web. Questo mi bastava per rimanere connesso con il lavoro, i collaboratori e i conoscenti. Però ora è differente. Ora i siti sono sempre più “pesanti” da caricare, il numero di social network e di informazioni quotidiane da seguire si è moltiplicato. Per mantenere questo ritmo si necessita di potenza di calcolo e connessione veloce ad Internet.

E si necessita di tempo per leggere gli articoli dei blog, le novità della tecnologia, aggiornare i software, leggere le news mondiali e per rispondere alle email. Gli interlocutori si aspettano una risposta in tempi sempre più brevi. Se qualche anno addietro era accettabile rispondere alle email dopo qualche giorno, si è passati ad una risposta quotidiana e poi a più volte al giorno. Lasciare accumulare le email solo per qualche giorno diventa quasi ingestibile.

Ma l’email è già considerata troppo lenta, i sistemi di instant messaging, i social network e Twitter stanno sostituendosi alle email come modi di comunicazione. Una connessione sempre attiva significa un computer potente, una connessione veloce, un luogo dove questa connessione è stabile e dove si sia una certa tranquillità. In altre parole, preferibilmente una casa o un albergo attrezzato se ci si trova in giro.

Quindi la libertà dal luogo è un’illusione. E a proposito della libertà dagli orari? Si è liberi dal lavoro con orari fissi ma le ore e i giorni in cui si è connessi si sono espanse ulteriormente. Come credo avvenga a parecchie persone che operano in Rete, ho contatti con persone che vivono in diversi continenti sia a livello personale che di lavoro. Vi sono diversi fusi orari e diverse festività, e la tendenza è quella di essere disponibili per quanto possibile a prescindere dalla rotazione locale del sole o pause dal lavoro.

Marshall Mcluhan in Gli strumenti del comunicare affermava:

In un mondo non alfabeta comunque non esiste il concetto di lavoro. Il cacciatore e il pescatore primitivo non lavoravano, come non lavora il poeta, il pittore o il pensatore d’oggi. Non c’è lavoro dove l’uomo è coinvolto nella sua totalità. Esso incomincia nelle comunità agricole sedentarie con la divisione della mano d’opera e con la specializzazione delle funzioni e dei compiti. Nell’era del cervello elettronico siamo di nuovo totalmente coinvolti nelle nostre funzioni. Il lavoro come “impiego” cede il posto alla dedizione e all’impegno come nella tribù.

La dedizione e l’impegno di oggi sono per una comunità di lettori dei nostri siti e blog, per una tribù di contatti nei social network o per un gruppo di programmazione software. Le persone di tali comunità sono forse sparse nei continenti e probabilmente ne conosciamo dal vero una piccolissima parte.

Questo ritorno alla dedizione che avveniva nelle società pre-alfabete ora si rimette in atto dopo che siamo stati immersi nelle società alfabete dove avevamo privilegiato la mente ed i suoi contenuti. Il nostro coinvolgimento totale nella nuova tribalità estesa della rete assume quindi l’aspetto del sovraccarico di informazioni, della compulsione mentale e anche della dipendenza.

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Facebook and the sorcerer’s apprentice of the Net

Ivo Quartiroli — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 05:14:10 +0000

[en]

Analysis and interpretation of symbols has always been considered more a magical than a technological act.

While once magical skills were applied to celestial bodies and the flight of birds, the symbols to be interpreted nowadays are computer programming codes and financial analysis charts, so complex that their interpretation often seems to require abilities closer to magic than to science.

Historicaly, exclusive languages have always been an instrument of power, as Latin was for the Church.

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Interpretare e analizzare i simboli è sempre stato considerato un atto magico prima ancora che tecnologico, lasciato ai sacerdoti, agli astrologi.

Gli astri e i voli degli uccelli, riportati ai giorni nostri sono i codici di programmazione dei computer e i grafici delle analisi finanziarie, la cui complessità interpretativa richiede spesso attitudini che si avvicinano più alla magia che alla scienza.

Nella storia, i linguaggi di uso esclusivo sono sempre stati uno strumento di potere, come lo è stato il latino per il clero.

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[en]

Computer experts are called gurus or computer wizards. The symbols to be interpreted are programming codes. The ones who master such media, supported by powerful hardware, own the keys of technological, therefore social development. By now, technology is shaping the modes of social interaction: one just has to think of mobile phones or social networking sites like Facebook, Myspace, and Second Life.

Computer programming is done by a set of symbols the rules for whose use and whose languages are known and under the control of a few. In spite of open source projects that without doubt expand the knowledge of software functioning to a much larger number of people, programming is still quite an elitist activity.

Programming codes, wisely arranged, can bring sudden success on the Net. The success of a technology depends much on its software architecture, its usability and on the fulfillment of a need. Without doubt big money and human resources help, but we have witnessed many successful projects started by a few people with a good idea, excellent technical skills and the ability to connect with the collective unconscious and the needs that this conveys.

Starting with Bill Gates and coming to Facebook, we see young persons in their early 20s engaging tens or hundreds of millions of people in using their technological creations. The market society allows these possibilities. I prefer that young nerds define the ways we interact with the computer and with people in social networks, rather than military officers, as appropriate in a democracy. But is not the whole story.

Sudden – even instant – success that comes to young men reminds me of the sorcerer’s apprentice. A website that quickly attracts millions of people requires a commensurate responsibility and human vision. It’s a bit like suddenly becoming president of a country. Inasmuch as the latter may turn out to be inadequate to their roles, at least in the democratic countries they are elected and liable to control by other elected politicians. The impact on society of a single site like Facebook, which engages tens of millions of people, is more powerful than many political resolutions.

The modalities of social interactions of a site which attracts millions of people would need rules mutually agreed upon with the users of the site’s services. Some time ago we read about Facebook’s Scoble case and the non-respect of privacy issues concerning Beacon. We can’t expect much wisdom from people whose priorities arefinancial and technical.

If on one side the possibility of ruling the world through a site is the fulfillment of the American dream, on the other there is the risk of imposing predominently advertising, where a small group of technically-skilled kids establish the modalities of interaction of social networks and a large percentage of the time of an evergrowing number of people in the world. The technical language becomes a new Latin language for a new clergy.

One could object saying that those engineer the architecture of a site or of an operating system actually create empty containers, while the contents are generated by users themselves. But as Mitch Kapor, co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation referring to the open structure of the Internet said, “Architecture is politics.” The technical structure, the operating modalities and the social rules that derive from technical-architectural choices have wide implications on the way we interact. Every mouse click is not just a practical interface, it is as well an inner click in our psyche and moves something on our inside.

Programming and self de-programming

Ivo Quartiroli — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 16:04:39 +0000

[en]

Software programming is a meta-activity. It deals with becoming aware of a process in its details, even though it is limited to the area regarding the information flow. Recursive algorithms are a good metaphor for self-reflection.

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[en]

Software programming is a meta-activity. It deals with becoming aware of a process in its details, even though it is limited to the area regarding the information flow. Programming is a bit like observing the processes in slow motion in order to re-create their sequence, like pulverizing a process in its informative details and analyzing them separately. It is basically a reductionist approach, even though in the object oriented programming and event-driven programming, every object is put in relation to other objects and procedures, in a more “connected” vision.

In the attempt of simulating reality in an ever more accurate and realistic way, there is the quest, only from the mind point of view, at going into the essence of reality, in the inaccessible Kant’s thing in itself. It is a never-ending research, similar to the investigation about the ultimate particles in atomic physics.

In computer graphics and in virtual worlds programming, any simulation, for example a human being movement, requires a careful observation ability, a first step towards meditation.

One of the effects of meditation is the slowing down of mental activity in order to be able to observe the spaces in between thoughts; in certain meditation techniques thoughts, emotions and states of awareness are analized and classified. An approach that could seem reductionist and rational. Even in programming, there is a slow motion analysis of procedures which will subsequently be automized, but the difference lays in the fact that in meditation, as opposed to programming, the observer and the object of observation are part of the same awareness and consequently there is a constant feedback between observer and object of observation which feed each other.

On a programming level this continuos cycle of feedback corresponds to recursive algorithms. Recursive algorithms are procedures that work with a feedback criteria, folding back on themselves and generating results through self-interaction. Recursive algorithms are a good metaphor for self-reflection. Programming a recursive algorithm is not the same as meditating but, somehow, the way of thinking involved when we arrange a recursive procedure brings in that slight vertigo sensation and that fascination we feel when we look into our own awareness.

When I read Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter I felt a mixture of amazement and unease in perceiving the Infinite in the recursive themes expressed. Even simply looking at a fractal can give a similar sensation. But doing recursion on ourselves is even more disorienting, as awareness itself is transformed by self-observation.

Another difference between programming and meditating is that the act of observing in programming is goal oriented, whilst meditation requires a careful observation without having any objective nor anything to change; this procedure is more difficult for the ego that always wants to change “what is”. The attitude of a programmer is oriented towards having the ability to foresee and control, therefore towards power, whilst in meditative observation there is letting go and accepting.

Some skilful programmers deal with meta-programming, as in they program systems which simplify or support the work of programmers themselves: programming language compilers, programming interfaces, automatic generators of programming codes and so on. It looks like there is a need to build a program that can substitute the programmer’s task, in the search for the “program of all programs” in an endless meta-programming, which at one point could turn to the programmers themselves and their thinking mechanisms.

Once reached a certain level in programming, it is almost inevitable that our attention cannot just focus on the understanding of the computer working mechanisms, but also to the inside of our own mind, investigating the way of thinking itself which allows us to deduce, discriminate, program, and associate things and events. The attention could turn towards exploring our inner motivation, behavioral schemes and psychological needs. Programmers could activate a reverse engineering process on themselves.

The introspective potentials of programming are not normally associated to programmers, mostly considered as technicians who are absorbed in their own world, detached from reality and from their bodies. And this is often true. Programmers are described by Joseph Weizenbaum as “compulsive”.

Wherever computer centers have become established, that is to say, in countless places in the United States, as well as in virtually all other industrial regions of the world, bright young men of disheveled appearance, often with sunken glowing eyes, can be seen sitting at computer consoles, their arms tensed and waiting to fire their fingers, already poised to strike, at the buttons and keys on which their attention seems to be as riveted as a gambler’s on the rolling dice. When not so transfixed, they often sit at tables strewn with computer printouts over which they pore like possessed students of a cabalistic text. They work until they nearly drop, twenty, thirty hours at a time. Their food, if they arrange it, is brought to them: coffee, Cokes, sandwiches. If possible, they sleep on cots near the computer. But only for a few hours – then back to the console or the printouts. Their rumpled clothes, their unwashed and unshaven faces, and their uncombed hair all testify that they are oblivious to their bodies and to the world in which they move. They exist, at least when so engaged, only through and for the computers. These are computer bums, compulsive programmers. They are an international phenomenon. [...]

The compulsive programmer is driven; there is little spontaneity in how be behaves; and he finds no pleasure in the fulfillment of his nominal wishes. He seeks reassurance from the computer, not pleasure. The closest parallel we can find to this sort of psychopathology is in the relentless, pleasureless drive for reassurance that characterizes the life of the compulsive gambler. [...] Psychoanalysts, beginning with Freud, saw megalomania and fantasies of onnipotence as principal ingredients in the psychic life of the compulsive gambler. [...] The compulsive programmer is convinced that life is nothing but a program running on an enormous computer, and that therefore every aspect of life can ultimately be explained in programming terms. [...]

Science can proceed only by simplifying reality. The first step in its process of simplification is abstraction. And abstraction means leaving out of account all those empirical data which do not fit the particular conceptual framework within which science at the moment happens to be working, which, in other words, are not illuminated by the light of the particular lamp under which science happens to be looking for keys. [...] The extreme phenomenon of the compulsive programmer teaches us that computers have the power to sustain megalomaniac fantasies. But that power of the computer is merely an extreme version of a power that is inherent in all self-validating systems of thought. Joseph Weizenbaum. Computer power and human reason. W. H. Freeman and Company, 1976.

Weizenbaum’s description reveals without a doubt some typical characteristics of programmers and warns us against the risk of considering reality as a logic sequence of events connected by a cause-effect mechanism and by binary/informative logics, trying to make the world fit into programming procedures. But, whoever has had the chance to deal with programmers knows that most of them are also fond of matters concerning states of conscience and inner search.

The abilities that come into play when programming, have something to do with the ability to be able to detach oneself from an aspect of reality in order to see it in objective terms and observe it in its essence. This detachment is a double-edged weapon. It can lead us to a schizoid detachment from reality and particularly from the self and at the same time, if the same observation skills were turned inwards, we would witness a de-programming of our own mental patterns.

Programmers often consider themes related to inner search on an intellectual knowledge level, or in terms of reaching certain states of mind as if it were a technical or biochemical procedure. However they also have the chance to observe the limits of computational thinking. The approach to different states of conscience and psychedelic experiences have often led to that visionary attitude that has ultimately stimulated the creation of new technologies. Both Steve Jobs and Bill Gates have admitted during interviews to have taken LSD or some sort of mind altering substances.

Substances can expand states of mind that, once the effect is finished, cannot be maintained. Too, using substances carries psychological and physical risks. Nonetheless, they can give a momentary glimpse of wider states of conscience, beyond the mind. Afterwards though the mind wants to incorporate the discoveries made in the field it can control. It invents technologies and models in order to recreate them, as it is not completely aware that it can only simulate a pale reflection of them. However, even a limited reflection of the real creates an inner echo that, as the sound of a distant drum, fascinates us and hypnotizes us.