A Techumanist Manifesto


We shall not cease from exploration and the end
of all our exploring will be to arrive where
 we started and know the place for the first time.” 
 T.S. Eliot

            The future is calling but what does it want?
            And is anyone home to answer?
            Recent history has been an object lesson in diminishment.  Einstein’s Theory of Relativity debunked absolute time, Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle defined the limits of determination, Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem described the limitations of complex systems.  Freud suggested that our conscious minds are not in control and Darwin that our ancestors were goops.  Meanwhile, what is the news from the machine world?  It is not about mastery that is for sure.
            So far we have relied on the quaint humanistic notion that life is going somewhere, that better is better, that change is progress and that progress is our salvation.  But is that enough in a world of systems evolving beyond our intentions?  What can we truly control?  What can we decide?
            We are all both amazed and appalled by our stunning Gizmos and we have come to rely on it even as we worry that it is out of control.  Every day seems to bring new wonders, exhilarating and exhausting.  And the speed of these changes continues to speed up.
            What is needed is a way of thinking that will keep our human needs at the center of our concerns but still acknowledge our deep and abiding to the machines.  In a word, a kind of Techumanism.
            It means thinking in human terms even as we morph into something more.  Asking not just how does it work but how does it work on us.  Focusing on not just the software but the emotional wear...and tear.  Considering not only what it does but what it does to us as people.  Is the technology we are using helping us do what we need to do or is it simply doing what it does best and is that good enough?
            We have to acknowledge that there is such a thing as evilution too.  Technology for the worst.  Himmler had some good ideas about that.  And so did Ted Kaczynski even as he warned about it: “of course if my crime, (and my reasons for committing it) gets any public attention, it may help to stimulate public interest in the technology question and thereby improve the chances of stopping technology before it is too late…”
            Note to all maniacal Neouds: it is already too late. 

            Remember the Borg, those human/machine zombies from Star Trek that caused such a mess?  The techumanist approach is not to learn to fight the Borg but to understand that we already are the Borg.  The technocosm is us.  Put on a pair of sneakers or glasses or brush our teeth and we are instantly a mix of human and machine.  Hopefully the zombie part is still up for grabs.  We can choose to be a different hybrid, maybe a cross between a mench (a real human being) and a machine (a device)…in other words, a menchine.
            A few basic gizmological truths might help here.
            First, the tech of the technocosm is not just tools.  The computer is not a tool, nor is the Web, any more than the Industrial Revolution was just a tool.  These are world changing systems that guide our evolution just as surely and unevenly as we do theirs.  Rather than trying to control the future, we ought to understand what we can manipulate and what we cannot.  Humanize the first; get out of the way of the second.
            Second, no technology is all good or all bad.  All technodes are morally neutral but humans are not.  We always have the opportunity to beat our swords into plowshares and even in the worst uses of our technology lie the seeds of promise.  The single most significant impetus for the advancement of surgical techniques, for example, is the technology of warfare.  But the opposite is true too.  Even the gentlest tools can be weapons in the hands of madmen, as a study of the history of torture proves.  We need to focus on compassion as well as computing.
            Third, it’s not us against the machines, although that makes for great sci-fi, because we are the machines and vice versa.  The Gizmos is an evolving system of humans and devices, always has been.  Our future is not about control; it is about awareness.  All sorts of crashes, crumbles, and catastrophes are likely to happen since these words merely refer to unexpected results, which are unusually normal.  We should think through these and do what we can to be prepared for them.  In other words, we ought to be  Lipshitzean about this...paranoid optimists.  And always make backup copies of our files.
Gizmotics, an understanding of technology at the most personal level, should therefore be an essential component of global citizenship.  After all, the latest supercomputers that can process info at 100 billion bits per second.  Pretty much like a rat.  But we can handle 100 trillion bits per second.
            We still have an edge…for the moment.

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