Gadget Magic

July 21, 2006

Filed under: Uncategorized Future

Author's note: I have found it difficult to write anything of substance lately. The absurdity of national politics in my home country, increasing pressures related to my career, the desperate sadness of the Middle East, my girlfriend's trip abroad, and some unfortunate financial stresses have left me little interested in writing about the structure of information, Style, and/or things with LEDs that blink. After all, who cares about breathless futurism when the present is such a fucking mess? After some weeks of struggling with fading inspiration, I decided that no matter how inconsequential it feels compared with death-n-taxes, I must write about the things that catch my fancy, or else the Disorder has already won.

koff koff All right. Thank you for indulging me for a paragraph. Now:

Gadget Magic

*Photo: Olivier Daaram*

Most of you have heard the quote about sufficiently advanced technology and magic (about a thousand times), and if not, it's not hard to figure out the idea. Fly over a caveman in an ultralight, he'll be convinced you've got a magical flying wing. Somehow keep the essential bits of a 'dead' person around with a machine, you've got a 'ghost'. Do people feel this way now? Will they in the foreseeable future? Should they feel this way?

No. Likely not. Maybe.

First, do people feel this way now? Some of the technorati cart boxes full of silicon that do things completely beyond the understanding of the technorati themselves, much less the man on the street. No one really believes that we're dealing with 'magic', though. Individuals have confidence that while they don't understand how something works, someone they know might know a little bit more about the functions, and surely someone within 6deg separation will have a good grasp on the 1s and 0s of the thing. Widespread communications technology and a fairly open society guarantee this.

Unless we fall into an almost impossible comic-book dystopia, this is practically guaranteed to continue. Perhaps in thirty years, we'll be able to tease things out of the laws of physics that will be indistinguishable from the idea of magic in today's popular culture. Even if that happens, the kids in Shanghai will know it's because of Technology. Maybe science's victory over nature will be so extreme that we'll lose our innocence in a way that fantasy stories will no longer be seen as inspiring/whimsical/surreal, but naive. Deep down, everyone will know that the box isn't magic, but some may find themselves treating it as if it was.

Even today, there are people who need to rationalize their absurd religious practices by convincing themselves that they aren't literal, but just a set of symbols for the best way to think and live. I know this - I've met them. I attended a college affiliated with a church, but with a strong academic tradition. The mental adventures my classmates used to reconcile their intellect and religion were amazing.

I can see this happening with technology. I can see it not being such a bad thing. For example: do the computer-savvy really think that their "files" are "in" "folders" on their "desktop"? Literally? No. But I bet a lot of people who use computers to get work done and don't have the time or interest level to think about how the box works have really internalized the metaphor. If you ask, they wouldn't say that the computer case has a collection of physical folders in it, but they'd never think about it any other way.

I cast Cone of Spotlight

*Photo: David Beneteau*

This level of comfort with interface metaphors is essential to using increasingly complex systems. Apple is showing signs of taking this abstraction and running with it, with the advanced search tool Spotlight in OS X 10.4 Tiger. The user doesn't even need to know that the lowest levels of the system present the data on the hard drive to higher levels of the system as a hierarchy of folders; the user just needs to tell an even higher part of the system, Spotlight, a couple tokens of information related to the file. "Vacation photo" "Italy" "Zoe". That sort of thing. No need to save brain space for the string "~/Photos/Vacations/Italy/Zoe".

This idea becomes more useful as computers become more powerful and less visible. Many people who make dubious amounts of hay writing about the future (I'm looking at you, Sterling and Doctorow) envision a network of smart Things talking to each other and processing data on a massive scale. At this point, you can't say that at the top of your LCD the computer ends and the world begins. How do you interact with a computer the size of the world? It's like an extra set of the laws of physics. It's too much for someone to cope with without tons and tons of abstraction.

By letting technology be magic, even if we know it isn't really magic, we'll be able to stay afloat in the sea of information - walk on water if you will. Extremely abstract interfaces will let us make meaningful use of data sets bigger than we can currently imagine.

For example, imagine that you wish to defend yourself from spam. In this future, the state of the art in spam has evolved from email and SMS to devices that hijack something like Bluetooth to force the unwanted ads onto the screen of your phone In the inevitable spam arms race, these have been countered by devices that project jamming signals, which have been countered by counter-jamming devices, which have been countered by... and so on. The defenses and counter-defenses have limitations related to battery life, interfering with legitimate communication... and so on. This is impossibly complex for you to handle, even with all the click-wheels and LEDs in the world, but if you aren't vigilant, your phone (which may be embedded in your skull) will be overwhelmed (as will your skull). What better, then, to invest in the best anti-spam talisman and trust it to enchant you against unwanted marketing?

Perhaps if the passive defense didn't pass muster, a Harry Potter arm wave and keyword could actively protect you. "Halto spamium!" At this point in the shiny bullshit future where we don't have anything better to worry about, software is smart enough to figure out what you probably want it to do -- not just the anti-spam software, but the computer thinking that runs pretty much all of your life. (If this sounds unappealing or Matrixy to you, consider your computer-controlled car, your laptop, your cell phone, air traffic control, your blobject furniture, the LA stoplight computerbrain, et cetera). You just gotta trust it, and for your sanity, let it interpret your natural human reactions and interact with the impossible wave of data on its own.

This attitude will apply to any bits of wire you stick in your body as well. Maybe for a couple decades you'll say "that girl has a night vision camera in her eye" or "he has metal plates in his knuckles" but a couple decades after that it's "she has the power to see in the dark" and "in the ring he is more than a man". It's not what things do but what you can do with them.

If we can't do it, the computer can

Of course, systems of such complexity won't be able to be directly designed by mere mortals. They'll have to carefully manage and interact with insanely powerful computers - the final product won't comprehensible save for the very select few (could they be called.. technopriests maybe?) - lower intercessors would massage the information to the point where the lay masses would understand that the Information was Good and to Trust In Its Mercy. But even at this point, save for the comic book dystopia mentioned at the start of the article, deep down, people will know that Magic is essentially manmade, despite the fact that they treat it like the Force, or the Holy Spirit, or whatever.

Author's second note: This has gone quite far off-track - this is probably nothing new for you science fiction fans, but the idea that we could be on the verge, or more on the verge than the last time someone said so, is exciting to me. I'll just forcibly re-rail the article and wrap this up with a few links and a heartfelt conclusion.

We can at least get a good start

The artists and designers (and artful engineers) are of course leading the way:

We live in weird, cool times, and it's important not to let the fact that we also live in crushingly human times make us forget about that. There are more places to input our efforts and intelligences than ever before, and the past few years have shown us that these investments will return to us tenfold as long as we don't blow ourselves up. As long as we can keep communicating and collaborating (please don't nuke the internet), the power of software will continue to grow at an insane pace. It will be interesting to see how we handle it.

Comments

#1

the daniel commented, on December 5, 2007 at 6:23 a.m.:

The idea that we might slide into a voluntary irrationality to cope with a world that’s getting too complex (even if only at a certain level) is certainly reasonable, at any rate.

I'd go so far as to say the act of living itself is the lowest-level example of this - avoiding existential terror is just avoiding a massive data overload of a particular stripe. At that point I'm probably overanalyzing, though.

I think it's interesting that you think that superstition is unkillable. As long as there is fear of death, public misunderstanding of probability, and imperfect access to information about the physical world, you're probably right. Hm. I guess that is approximately forever.

#2

Rob commented, on December 5, 2007 at 6:23 a.m.:

This is such an awesome semiotics area to be explored. I don't mean only in the passive analysis of the signs and symbols we use to interact with technology, but also in the active construction of a new symbology that could handle the overload in communication/information/enhancements.

The idea that we might slide into a voluntary irrationality to cope with a world that's getting too complex (even if only at a certain level) is certainly reasonable, at any rate. It also raises the question of the supernatural and the magical as a surprisingly familiar element to us. Many of us are more at home with concepts of supernatural action than with a world of transistors, fibre-optics and (hell) quantum processors. Here in Brazil anyway almost everyone believes in some form of spirituality or supernatural, even if only instinctively. A lot of really good friends of mine are floored when I say I don't believe in the existence of a soul. We grow up bombarded by ideas of magic, ghosts, religion, etc. What should be an unwieldy concept is second nature to most of us (not many kids talk about how the Harry Potter universe doesn't make sense. They accept it as working on a different set of rules).

Despite being an enthusiastic atheist, I've long subscribed to the idea that religion and superstition are unkillable in the big picture. It'd be interesting to see our capacity for creative irrationality being used as a useful information-organizing tool, even if it creates elitism and a form of theo-technocracy. (yeah, elites and social hierarchization are unkillable too).


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