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POSTHEAVEN Human Disembodiment in the Informational EraNestor Pestana, Design Interactions, Royal College of Art, 20149584 words
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INDEX I. INTRODUCTION 7 II. REHEARSALS FOR DISEMBODIMENT 11 III. MERCHANTS OF THE MIND 19 iii.i dream hunters 21 iii.ii libraries of consciousness 25 iii.iii towards disembodiment 30 iii.iv in search of eternity 33 IV. POSSIBLE REALITIES 39 iv.i the organians 41 iv.ii lacuna inc. 42 V. ARE WE LOSING OUR MINDS? 49 v.i loosing our minds 51 v.ii not losing our minds 52 VI. WORKS CITED 57 VII. BIBLIOGRAPHY 59
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LIST OF IMAGES FIGURE 1 Contract detailing the transaction of a dream. The Academy of Korean Studies. FIGURE 2 Status update box. https://www.facebook.com/ (accessed 1 September, 2014). FIGURE 3 Brain decoding. Vision Reconstruction, dir : Roxanne Makasdjian, 2011. FIGURE 4 Immortality Button. http://2045.com/about/ (accessed 20 September, 2014).
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I INTRODUCTION
Science fiction has always intrigued me with its depictions of alternative and future
scenarios. It is almost impossible to resist the excitement of watching an old science
fiction film and comparing its vision to the present reality.
Arthur C. Clarke’s novel 2001: A Space Odyssey1 may represent one of the most
well-known examples of narratives that have inspired or predicted2 aspects of our
contemporary society: the high dependency on digital screens, the worship of tech-
nology and consequent social punctuation3 are just a few examples. But the film has
also shown that our imagination has got ahead of our ability to deliver within the
given time frame: 1968 - 20014. This also suggests that rather than appearing dated,
the film remains ripe with opportunities for imagination, contributing to expand our
vision of our own future.
In the novel, four different monoliths, created by an alien species, are used as meta-
phorical elements to encourage evolution and technological developments. A mon-
olith first appears in the African Savannah, at the moment when primates started to
use tools. The second monolith appears on the moon’s surface, making a direct link
to the space race that was happening during the period over which the novel was
being written5. The third appears orbiting Jupiter, hinting at future space exploration.
1 Arthur C. Clarke, 2001 - A Space Odyssey - Based on the Screenplay by Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick. 3rd ed. (London: Orbit, 2000).
2 Vision of a Future Passed: The Prophecy of 2001, dir : Gary Leva, 2007.
3 “Social punctuation is the idea that as technology seeps between the interactions and moments between people, places and actions, traditional social interchange becomes fragmented as a result of the effect of simultaneous time upon individual connectivity. Usually exemplified by turning to a communication device when in the middle of another social exchange.” Amber Case. “Social Punctuation.” Cyborg Anthropology. (2011), http://cyborganthropology.com/Social_Punctuation (accessed July 14, 2014).
4 Gary Westfahl, Wong Kin Yuen, & Chan Kit-sze Amy, eds. Science Fiction and the Prediction of the Future: Essays on Foresight and Fallacy (North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2011) p. 128-168.
5 “Nasa at 40: 1960’s.” New York Times. (1998) http://partners.nytimes.com/library/national/science/nasa/index-1960.html (accessed September 11, 2014).
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When Dr. David Bowman, the protagonist, gets in contact with this monolith, a star-
gate opens up, taking him to a distant unknown star system. This is where the fourth
monolith appears. This last monolith has always fascinated me the most, due to what
it might be interpreted to represent. It appears when an elderly Bowman is in some
sort of futuristic hotel suite, lying on a bed, about to undergo a transformation into
a non corporeal life form. This notion of human evolutionary disembodiment by
means of technology serves as the inspiration for the theme of this dissertation:
human disembodiment in the informational era.
The question underpinning my explorations on this theme is as follows: Are we
losing our minds? It may sound simplistic, but the nature of the double meaning lies
at the heart of the issue as a whole. The first interpretation, which I will explore in
more detail, relates to whether or not we are literally disembodying our minds from
our bodies. The second touches on the ethical issues surrounding a possible disem-
bodiment of the human mind, less relevant for this study, but important to comple-
ment the first main interpretation,
My discussion begins in Chapter II with relevant background information to cite my
discussion within a context of contemporary discourse around disembodiment. I will
introduce the concept of posthumanism, as an attempt to instigate virtual environ-
ments that have helped us shape our current vision of what life might be, reinforcing
the idea that humans are creators more than servants of the contingencies of life.
Chapter III will be divided into four different sections, following a loose timeline.
The first section explores a system of beliefs concerning mind disembodiment that
may date back as far as the 7th Century AD. This will help me demonstrate that
the ambition to disembody the “immaterial goods” produced by the human brain
doesn’t entirely belong to the current informational era. In the second section I will
analyse two current informational systems based on digital environments (Facebook
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and Google), considering ethical issues regarding the transaction of personal data
and exploring possible future scenarios in the light of what is happening now. In the
third section I will analyse two scientific experiments that in my opinion explore the
very first steps towards an idea of a disembodied human being, demonstrating how
science is already shaping the near future in this direction. In the last section I intend
to explore two different subjects that will help us imagine a distant future. Firstly I
will explore the transhumanist goal of achieving immortality through a process of
disembodiment and mind upload, which will led me to also explore the relations
between this movement and the Buddhist spiritual tradition.
Building to a conclusion, in Chapter IV I will discuss two science fiction narratives,
chosen for the relevance of their possible ethical and philosophical visions of the fu-
ture to the subject. The first is an episode of the TV series Star Trek, set so far in the
future that it almost enters the realms of fantasy narrative. But it does raise ethical
questions regarding our understanding of materiality that are relevant to the topic
of this discussion. The second narrative, a film called Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless
Mind, is set in a future that seems much closer to our own reality. This makes it a
useful starting point for studying the ethical implications of a scenario where infor-
mation produced by the brain is disembodied or edited.
Finally, I would like to state that it is not my intention to put forward a definition of
the mind or consciousness. This lies beyond the scope of my discussion. Instead I am
interested in understanding and exploring the possibilities and implications of disem-
bodying the information produced by the human brain – consciousness for instance
– and how it can be stored and passed on.
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II REHEARSALS FOR DISEMBODIMENT
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This chapter aims to provide a background and an understanding on the idea of
human disembodiment. Hence, I would like to start by briefly exploring the concept
of posthumanism.
According to Cary Wolfe, Professor of English at Rice University, the term seems
to have originated in humanities and social sciences during the 1990s, in, among
others, the writings of Katherine Hayles, professor of literature at Duke University.
The concept embraces the idea of a human being not only defined by its biological
body, but most importantly by its contemporary technological environments, that
are in constant change. In other words, the body is seen as a prosthesis that can be
compared to the tools or technologies of its time. This raises the notion that human
beings are in a constant state of redefinition according to the historical moment
in which they exist. For example, in the current informational era, characterised by
computerisation and digital environments, what it is to be human is defined by and
exists in relation to these immaterial environments. This might explain the post-
human necessity to privilege immateriality above the materiality that defines us as
humans1. This tendency has in my view fostered the current ambition to disembody
the immaterial information contained in our biological bodies. In addition Katherine
Hayles highlights in her book How We Became Post Human that in the posthuman-
ist model there are no crucial differences between human beings and computer
simulation2. This idea will lead me to an exploration of virtual environments in the
following paragraphs, that will help me to better understand this posthuman con-
nection, supporting at the same time a more complete understanding of an infor-
mational disembodied human being.
Virtuality encompasses the idea that computers can be perceived as informational
environments capable of containing life forms - computer programs - able to evolve
1 Cary Wolfe. What Is Posthumanism? (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010), p. XI - XVI.
2 Katherine Hayles. How We Became Post Human. (London: The University of Chicago Press, 1999), p. 17-18.
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in ways that may not have been predicted by the creator3. This assumption is exem-
plified by the Evolved Virtual Creatures research project4. It was developed by Karl
Sims using a supercomputer, where virtual ‘creatures’, made of simple virtual blocks,
were created in order to simulate Darwinian evolution processes. These block
creatures were assigned specific tasks in virtual environments, like swimming or
competing with each other, in order to survive and evolve. Once a creature evolved,
multiple copies could be made containing its ancestors’ information, incorporating
successful mutations as the result of the learning process during the tasks. Each of
the creatures evolved independently from each other and in a variety of ways, aim-
ing to better adapt themselves to the virtual conditions to which they were subject-
ed.
The fact that the creatures were designed to adapt according to the Darwinian evo-
lutionary system, makes an interesting comparison with our own evolutionary path,
and of course it supports the idea that virtual systems can be ‘alive’ just as human
beings are. Additionally, if we take the post-humanist premise that information is
central in defining the universe, we can assert that virtual systems are governed by
informational codes just as we are governed by the informational codes contained
in our DNA. We may therefore posit that they are live forms in a similar way to hu-
mans. The Human Genome Database5 illustrates this idea. Completed in April 20036,
this public repository of human genomic data shows that the matter that makes
us humans can be deconstructed to a pure data format, paralleling the codes that
were used in the Evolved Virtual Creatures project mentioned before. Moreover, the
database contains sufficient instruction and information about humans to potentially
3 Katherine Hayles. How We Became Post Human. (London: The University of Chicago Press, 1999), p. 11.
4 Karl Sims, “Evolving Virtual Creatures,” Computer Graphics, Annual Conference Series SIGGRAPH ‘94 Proceedings (1994): p.15-22.
5 Stanley Letovsky, Robert Cottingham, Christopher Porter & Peter Li, “GDB: the Human Genome Database,” Nucleic Acids Research 1 (1998): p. 94-99.
6 http://unlockinglifescode.org/timeline?tid=4 (accessed 22 July, 2014).
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enable scientists to build a (virtual) human being from scratch in the future.
In the late 1940s, the Hungarian Mathematician John Von Neumann proposed a
formal model of self-replicating machines7 that can be seen as a precursor to the
Evolved Virtual Creatures project. This idea came about in response to the ques-
tion of whether machines can build other machines as complex as themselves, in a
similar way to biological organisms. In his model, he considered that machines like
automatons were composed of small parts working together to form a unified
system. Following this model, he designed a two-dimensional universe called the
cellular automata, where an automaton followed a set of predetermined instructions
recorded in a tape, allowing it to replicate itself. Since the tape of instructions itself
was also reproduced, successive generations of automata were also capable of repli-
cating themselves. In effect, the instructions functioned as their ‘genetic’ code.
Neumann’s self-replicating system achieved great visibility and spawned many
further projects, among them John Horton Conway’s Game of Life (known also as
Life)8 later in the 1970s9, which kick-started an entire research field called Cellular
Automata. The game is based in a virtual bi-dimensional universe where cellular
automata are governed by simple lifelike rules: birth, death and survival. Each of the
cells in this universe can be in one of two states: alive or dead. The game starts with
a single initial pattern of live cells, and from there the pattern evolves without any
need for external input. Whether a cell is born, survives or dies is determined by the
number of live neighbours it has.
The game not only demonstrated that virtual environments could evolve inde-
pendently, but also that complexity could develop from simple beginnings. This idea
7 John Neumann, Theory of Self-reproducing Automata (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1966), p. 64-87.
8 Martin Gardner, “Mathematical Games: the Fantastic Combinations of John Conway’s New Solitaire Game `Life’,” Scientific American 4 (1970): p. 120–123.
9 Mark Grimshaw, The Oxford Handbook of Virtuality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), p. 553 - 555.
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prompted the theorist Stephen Wolfram to compare cellular automata systems to
biological patterns10. As already seen, the principle behind cellular automata is a very
simple one: a group of cells are generated by an external source, which then evolves
independently into very complex patterns. What Wolfram suggests is that complex
biological systems, like humans, evolved according to this same principle. In fact, ac-
cording to evolutionary biologists11, humans and other living species are descended
from simple unicellular organisms, like bacteria, which generated successive branches
of increasingly complex organisms. This theory could support Wolfram’s notion that
reality is merely a program run in a cosmic computer:
“Could it be that in some place out there in the computational universe we might
find our physical universe? Perhaps there is even a simple rule, some simple program
for our universe?” (Wolfram Stephen)
The notion that a computer like this might exist, capable of holding all the infor-
mation that encodes all forms of life, matter and energy, is fascinating. Equally re-
markable is the thought that it would have been previously set up by an external
entity,based on simple duality rules: “on” or “off ”. The link with the cellular automata
system is clear, and even author Katherine Hayles states that it is a “robust way to
understand reality”12.
I agree and believe it is feasible that an informational Big Bang of simple duality con-
cepts implemented billions of years ago could well have created all the richness and
complexities of the universe. If such a scenario did happen, it could be argued that
the binary concepts that make up the basics of life – “dead” and “alive” for example
10 Stephen Wolfram, “Computing a theory of all knowledge,” TED (2010), https://www.ted.com/talks/stephen_wolfram_com-puting_a_theory_of_everything (accessed 10 August, 2014).
11 Carl Zimmer, “From Bacteria to Us: What Went Right When Humans Started to Evolve?,” The New York Times (2006), http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/03/science/03zimm.html?_r=1& (accessed 4 September, 2014).
12 Katherine Hayles. How We Became Post Human. (London: The University of Chicago Press, 1999), p. 11.
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– represent the remaining informational particles of this epic event.
To conclude this section, I would assert that virtual environments like cellular au-
tomata give credence to the hypothesis that the information contained within the
human body - and I am specifically referring to what we call consciousness - could
potentially exist without the body or in other formats. To continue our analogy
between the (albeit far less complex) virtual block creatures mentioned before and
human beings, we can imagine situations where the information held by these block
creatures is edited and stored in different media or even modified to run in differ-
ent programs. The fact that we created and understand this information gives us the
power to manipulate it. Could the same be done with consciousness, if it were fully
understood?13
13 David Chalmers, The conscious mind: in search of a fundamental theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996) p. 3-6.
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III MERCHANTS OF THE MIND
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III.I DREAM HUNTERS
The desire to disembody and store information produced by the human mind is
not exclusive to the present technological and informational age. . In South Korea,
a system of beliefs and traditions has existed for centuries dealing with the literal
transaction of a specific type of information produced by the brain: dreams. As we
will see in this section, in South Korean culture dreams are not wholly intrinsic and
intangible; instead they may be disembodied from the dreamer and treated as an
economic asset, capable of being transacted from one person to another. An exam-
ple of this is documented in an old Korean chronicle in Samguk Yusa (History of the
Three Kingdoms). A legend has it that Kim Mun-hui, daughter of general Kim Yusin,
bought a dream of good fortune from her sister, Kim Pohui, which made her marry
King Muryol of the 29th Silla Dinasty (654–661), enabling her to become Queen
Munmyeong of Silla. Her wish came true1.
Before going into more details about the South Korean dream transaction tradition,
it is important to understand that dreams are fragments of information produced by
the brain and unique to the dreamer, conforming to the theories of John Allan Hob-
son, an American psychiatrist and dream researcher. Hobson developed the activa-
tion-synthesis hypothesis of dreaming (AIM model), suggesting that after neuronal
processes activate the REM sleeping state, the brain assigns meaningful integrations
to the random and creative experiences during the dream2. These meaningful inte-
grations are generated according to the psychological characteristics of each person,
which explains why dreams are so unique to the dreamer. This fact gives also an
implicit sense of possession to the dreamer: the dreamer owns the dream because
the information contained within it is generated by him or her while asleep and ac-
1 Ilyon, Samguk Yusa: Legends and History of the Three Kingdoms of Ancient Korea (Seoul: Yonsei University Press, 1997) p. 80-82.
2 Kelley Bulkeley, Wilderness of Dreams: exploring the religious meanings of dreams in Modern Western Culture (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), p. 53-58.
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cording to his or her psychological state and characteristics. This sense of ownership
enabled the development of the trade system in the contemporary South Korean
culture, whereby ‘dream hunters’ acquired dreams from individuals and sold them
on. In many ways, it resembles modern-day transactions involving manufactured
goods. In this analogy, the brain becomes the factory, the dreamer becomes the
manufacturer and the dream hunter equates to the investor. Because of this similari-
ty, from now onwards I will refer to this system as the dream trading system3.
Figure I, bellow, shows a document discovered by the Jangseogak Archives at the
Academy of Korean Studies. It is a very good example that illustrates this type of
transaction. According to Kim Hak-soo, a chief researcher at The Academy of Korean
Studies, this document is a contract that details the transaction of a dream, formulat-
ed in April 1900.
According to the researcher, the dream transaction was made by Park Hae-myeong,
the dreamer, and a man called Yi Byeong-yu, the buyer. The dream featured a dragon
and a tiger, considered animals of good fortune in South Korean culture, which is
precisely why the buyer showed interest in buying the dream.
3 Kim Hak-soo, “Dream Interpretation in 19th-century Korea,” The Korea Times (2014) http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2014/09/628_158622.html (accessed 25 September).
Suzy Chung, “Pig dreams, good dreams; tooth dreams, bad dreams,” The Korea Blog Blogging - Korea, Sharing Experiences (2012) http://blog.korea.net/?p=7646 (accessed July 2, 2014)
Figure 1 - Park Hae-myeong. Contract detailing the transaction of a dream. 1900.
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The dream trading system can only exist within a community sharing the same tra-
ditions, beliefs and superstitions. We can identify three main factors playing key roles
within the transaction: secrecy, trust and superstition. I will now address each briefly,
and in turn.
The first factor, secrecy, is required because the dream needs to be kept secret in
order to be fully owned and to retain all its value and characteristics. It is believed
that if the dream is voiced to the world, it will immediately lose its power.
Trust is also required, mainly from the person who is going to acquire the dream.
He or she must believe that the dream that is being told and sold was genuinely
experienced by the dreamer while sleeping.
Finally, each dream is embedded with symbolism and meaning, depending on its spe-
cific content. Dreams may have positive or negative connotations, and within each
category, there may be differing levels of relevance for the dreamer and/or the buy-
er. Dreams involving pigs, for example, are believed to signify wealth for the dreamer.
The effect is increased if many pigs appear, or if they interact with the dreamer. But
there are also negative dream archetypes; the most well known being one in which
the dreamer loses his or her teeth. For dreams like these, South Korean culture
prescribes a simple cure. It is advised that if a bad dream is experienced, it must be
forgotten. Since these interpretations are unsupported by scientific evidence, con-
siderable superstition is therefore required from participants in the dream trading
system.
The most compelling motivation for a transaction is what South Koreans call a ‘lucky
dream’, where symbolism implying a favourable outcome for the dreamer occurs.
Or in other words, dreams of good fortune. Once the dream is experienced, the
dreamer can choose whether to sell it to another person or not. If the dreamer al-
ready possesses what is promised by the dream (such as wealth, for example), they
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may wish to sell it to someone who does not. If the dreamer decides not to sell the
dream, it must be kept secret as already mentioned.
A transaction can only take place when the dreamer finds someone willing to
buy the dream. This could be anyone, from a family member to a friend or even a
stranger. The process starts when the dreamer shares the details of the dream with
the chosen person and, in exchange, receives a token from the buyer. This might be
a sum of money or a specific item that represents something to the person buying
the dream. When this process is complete, all symbolism and significance of the
dream passes automatically from dreamer to buyer. Of course, because the latter is
now the owner of the dream, all the repercussions and effects of the dream migrate
into the new person, almost as if a material exchange such as an organ transplant
had occurred.
As discussed, in Hobson’s AIM model, dreams are the result of one individual’s
unique psychological characteristics, as they consciously4 experience information
generated by the brain. From this, we can conjecture that dreams form part of the
information that constitutes a person’s individual identity. After Moravec5, who pro-
posed that human identity is essentially informational patterns rather than embodied
instances, we could consider the South Korean, dream-transaction system to be ul-
timately a transaction of mind and identity. The information undergoes a process of
disembodiment and consecutive re-embodiment into the new source. To Western
ears this sounds like science fiction, but in fact it reveals human beings’ longstanding
desire to control, manipulate and even disembody informational patterns produced
by the brain. This is a dream many of us have been trying to realise for many dec-
ades, as we shall see in the next section.
4 Christof Koch, “Dream States: A Peek into Consciousness,” Scientific American (2010), http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/dream-states/ (accessed 4 August, 2014).
5 Hans Moravec, Mind Children The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence (London: Harvard University Press, 1988) p. 116.
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III.II LIBRARIES OF CONSCIOUSNESS
In the Post-Fordist technological environment of today, as defined by Ash Amin in
his book Post-Fordism: A Reader6, data represents a huge source of potential profit.
The computer has not only brought us a new form of work, immaterial labour7,
but also a new means of making profit based on data, itself equally intangible. Con-
sciously or otherwise, human beings, and more specifically the information we
generate, plays a crucial role. Databases or libraries containing detailed information
about each of us are harvested by corporate entities for profit.
Next, we will examine two case studies - Facebook and Google - in order to un-
derstand how the process of disembodying the mind is already happening to some
degree in today’s economic system. . I have chosen these examples due to the sheer
scale and pervasiveness of their influence on humanity in today’s society. Their activi-
ties raise ethical issues that can help us understand how our society might deal with
possible future technologies.. It is important to remember that the data they use
is generated by the human brain and uploaded into their systems by us. We might
therefore conceive of these systems as another type of brain, artificial or electronic
. This idea is not far from the South Korean dream trading system, of disembodying
fragments of the human mind and transplanting it into another person. The major
difference is that here we have a transplant from humans to machines, which facili-
tates the manipulation of humans by other humans, or maybe even by the machines
themselves.
6 Ash Amin, Post-Fordism: A Reader (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 1994) p.16-17.
7 Maurizio Lazzarato, Radical Thought in Italy - A Potential Politics, (Minesota: Univeristy of Minesota Press, 1996), p. 132-147.
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The first case study is Facebook8, an online social platform Founded by Mark Zuck-
erberg in 2004, that allows people to share moments, memories, feelings and even
thoughts with friends, family and of course, Facebook itself.
As illustrated by the image above, by simply asking “What’s on your mind?”, Face-
book invites millions of users to disembody and upload their consciousness to the
online platform9, in quantities sufficient to enable it to tailor its news feeds to differ-
ent users, by means of a complex ranking algorithm based on machine learning10.
This can be seen as an example of how machines, without the need of humans,
are already using the disembodied information produced by our mind, to make
decisions for us, and therefore to control us, at least in terms of what we see on
the platform. Advertisements, news and brand messaging are among the elements
tailored for different users. This obviously contributes for the current economic data
system, giving marketeers great opportunities to target their audiences far more
accurately.
Some of the current ethical implications of this scenario come into play because
Facebook has become so habitual and pervasive for so many people that they may
not realise how much personal information they are giving away on a daily basis and
how valuable it might be.
8 http://newsroom.fb.com/company-info/ (accessed 12 September, 2014).
9 “Data Blog - Facts are Sacred,” The Guardian (2014), http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2014/feb/04/face-book-in-numbers-statistics (accessed 21 August, 2014).
10 Matt McGee, “EdgeRank Is Dead: Facebook’s News Feed Algorithm Now Has Close To 100K Weight Factors,” Marketing Land (2013), http://marketingland.com/edgerank-is-dead-facebooks-news-feed-algorithm-now-has-close-to-100k-weight-fac-tors-55908 (accessed 19 August, 2014).
Figure 2 - Facebook. Status update box. 2014.
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Once a piece of information produced by our minds is uploaded onto the serv-
ers of an online platform, we are no longer aware of exactly how it is being used.
According to Facebook’s Data Use Policy11, the platform does share information
with its partners and although it claims that any information personally identifying
the user is removed, it still ‘belongs’ to the person who uploaded it. This raises the
question of what Facebook should and should not be allowed to do with this infor-
mation. Perhaps people are ‘paying’ more than they think. Facebook’s sign-in page
states ‘It’s free and always will be.’ Perhaps a truer statement would read ‘It’s not free,
and never will be.’
To this ethical question we can also add another one: If what is shown on an online
platform can be manipulated according to the data uploaded by its users, could the
opposite also happen? Can users themselves be manipulated by the data they are
exposed to and therefore manipulated by machines? We shall explore this issue in
the following paragraphs using the same case study - Facebook.
In 2012, Facebook conducted an experiment published in the Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences where around 700,000 users’ news feeds were ma-
nipulated without their knowledge, adding happier or sadder stories than normal. It
revealed that users exposed to more negative content posted more negative com-
ments, and vice versa12. The uploaded data - or the uploaded disembodied informa-
tion produced by our minds - was analysed by computers. These same computers
were also serving content in order to achieve predetermined results, demonstrating
how vulnerable humans are to the possible manipulative powers of social networks
and machines. It’s not a great leap from this to the notion of mind download, where
a piece of information is artificially produced (a thought, for example) and saved
11 https://www.facebook.com/about/privacy/your-info#your-info (accessed 21 August, 2014).
12 Adam D. I. Kramer, Jamie E. Guillory & Jeffrey T. Hancock, “Editorial Expression of Concern and Correction,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) 29 (2014): p.2-3.
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into a medium (say, a social network) to be accessed later by a user, who will down-
load and translate the information into their mind.
The second case study illustrating how people’s information may be used and ma-
nipulated by humans and even by machines relates to Google13 and the healthcare
industry. This example was chosen because it deals with a different type of infor-
mation of a more tangible kind as I will now going to explain. 23andMe14 is one of
12 healthcare companies15 financed by Google. Its core business is selling genetic
screening kits that use saliva samples. By analysing the DNA in samples provided, the
company can advise customers on matters such as their risk of developing certain
medical conditions. But what happens to the data that is collected? Can Google
access it?
It is important to consider that genes contain a huge amount of information not
only relating to physical characteristics but also personality traits16. This informa-
tion could potentially be used for a whole variety of purposes, research or studies.
Holding such detailed information on human beings in computational systems, ready
to be used at any time, might enable economic systems to be built to manipulate
other humans in more sophisticated ways. This is because more detailed analysis will
enable complex algorithms to be created, capable of manipulating our moods by
analysing what is on our minds. This would make it possible to build a concise infor-
mational version of each of us, allowing even more powerful manipulation, not only
by humans but also computers. Of course, there is no reason to believe that users
of the kits are aware of these possible implications.
13 https://www.google.com/about/company/ (accessed 12 September, 2014).
14 https://www.23andme.com (accessed 1 Setember, 2014).
15 http://www.gv.com/portfolio/ (accessed 1 Setember, 2014).
16 D. R. Ladd, Dan Dediu, A. R. Kinsella “Languages and genes: Reflections on biolinguistics and the nature-nurture question,” Biolinguistics Vol. 2, No. 1 (2008): p. 114-126.
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These two examples show how rich and diversified the information uploaded to
digital environments, and ultimately to machines, can be: from data relating to phys-
ical features to the complexity of thoughts, ways of thinking and so on. The preci-
sion is such that even exact locations and times of uploads can be recorded. The
examples also show how easy it is to upload data through online social networks
or other mediums like online forms or search engines. This means organisations like
Facebook or Google can amass the information in complex databases that can be
easily accessed for various purposes. This form of data management is very powerful
because it deals directly with personal information, making it easier to define targets
and to be more specific when interacting with these same targets. Content can be
tailored for different users to make it more relevant and appealing than data served
for a general audience.
What is also interesting to note is that these organic libraries use intelligent algo-
rithms to update and enhance their own content and complexity every time a user
performs an upload. This means their growth is constant, because uploads to these
libraries are constantly occurring17. The fact that we are permanently uploading our
mind, consciousness and other detailed information onto machines gives credence
to the possibility of dystopian future scenarios like those conceived by Arthur C.
Clark in his novel The City and the Stars18, in which intelligent machines have ac-
quired enough information about the human race to be able to build humans from
scratch. It is also interesting to note that when the novel was being written, impor-
tant advances in the way we understand machines were taking place, among them
experiments on self-replicating machines carried out by the Hungarian mathemati-
cian and physicist John von Neumann, which we have already explored in Chapter
II. Such influences led the author to envision Planet Earth in a distant future where a
17 Josh Halliday, “Facebook: four out of five daily users log on via smartphone or tablet,” The Guardian (2013), http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/aug/14/facebook-users-smartphone-tablet (accessed 3 September, 2014)
18 Arthur C. Clarke, The City And The Stars - It Was the Last City Built on Earth (London: Transworld Publishers, 1956). p. 159-162.
30
city named Diaspar is run and maintained by machines. Instead of a human authority,
the city is governed by a central computer by which (or whom) all the people in
Diaspar have been created. This computer stores people’s minds at the end of their
lives so it can rebuild them. This technology made the people of Diaspar immortal
through a process of mind storage, which is something that we will explore in the
next sections of this Chapter.
III.III TOWARDS DISEMBODIMENT
The ambition to disembody the human mind and translate it into different media
goes far beyond a simple upload through digital environments, like social networks.
Scientific experiments have been currently conducted demonstrating how serious
humanity takes its ambition of achieving literal disembodiment of the information
produced by our brains. We will examine two of these experiments in this section
in order to lay the foundations for the final section of this Chapter, concerning our
most far-reaching aspirations.
In a TV programme called Breaking the Set19, Michio Kaku, Professor of Theoretical
Physics at the City College of New York, was interviewed about his latest book The
Future of the Mind20. He described an experiment led by Professor of Physiology
Sam A. Deadwyler, in 2012 at Wake Forest University in Los Angeles, in which a
mouse had to learn which of two levers to press to receive a sip of water. A silicone
microchip recorded the signals produced by the mouse’s brain during the learn-
ing process, storing the interactions made by the two regions of the hippocampus,
19 Author interview with Manuel Rapalo, Writer & Producer, 29 March, 2014.
20 Michio Kaku, The Future of the Mind: The Scientific - Quest To Understand, Enhance and Empower the Mind (London: Allen Lane, 2014).
31
CA1 and CA3, that are responsible for the storage of long-term memories21. As
part of the experiment, an artificial hippocampus was also built which was able to
duplicate the electrical patterns of these two regions produced during the learning
process of the task. This allowed part of the experience generated by the mouse’s
brain to be replicated using artificial processes, also meaning that the consciousness
of the mouse’s experience was also replicated to some degree by the device. If this
technology is developed further, together with the appropriate hardware, it may
in future be possible to recreate consciousness in a way reminiscent of the mood
machine in the science fiction novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K.
Dick. The novel starts by describing a couple interacting with their personal mood
machines, which are capable to alter their emotional states on demand, by sim-
ply inserting the code that corresponds to the desired emotion. Hence, humans
in this scenario are capable to control one of the most irrational features of the
human nature22.
The second experiment related to the disembodiment and displacement of in-
formation produced by the brain is being developed by Jack Gallant, a professor
of psychology and neuroscience at UC Berkeley in California. Focusing his work
on vision23, he has developed an experiment aiming to understand how the brain
responds to films, in order to understand how we process natural vision. The exper-
iment consisted of recording the brain activity of people watching a film, analysing
the patterns produced by the visual cortex of the brain and finally decoding the
information in order to translate it back into a reconstructed clip of the original film,
as Figure 3 illustrates in the next page.
21 Sam A. Deadwyler & Robert E. Hampson, “Anatomic model of hippocampal encoding of spatial information,” Hippocampus 9:397-412 (1999): p. 397-410.
22 Andy Hopkins, Do androids dream of electric sheep? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008) p. 1-4.
23 Vision Reconstruction, dir : Roxanne Makasdjian, 2011.
32
The concept of translating neurological interactions inside the brain into viewable
content seems once again to belong to the realms of science fiction, yet it is feasible.
Combining cutting-edge brain imaging systems and computer simulation, one can
envision scenarios where visual memories or even dreams and imagination itself
could be captured in film formats and shared with others who would undergo the
same visual experience as the originator of the information. I use the word origina-
tor intentionally here because such technology could potentially be applied not just
to humans but also other beings, assuming of course that animals for example also
generate visual information in their brains24.
In addition, these scientific achievements tell us more than just the nature of human
imagination. They represent, in my opinion, progress towards a post-humanist vision
of disembodying the informational patterns produced by the brain. But would it
even be possible to fully achieve this aim? In the next section I will explore how the
transhumanist movement responds to this question.
24 Sana Inoue & Tetsuro Matsuzawa, “Working memory of numerals in chimpanzees,” Current Biology 23 (2007): p. R1004-R1005.
Figure 3 - Jack Gallant. Brain decoding. 2013.
Presented clip Clip reconstructed from brain activity
33
III.IV IN SEARCH OF ETERNITY
Transhumanism is a cultural and intellectual movement with a focus on post-human-
ist topics. Adherents’ main goal is to develop speculative and emerging technologies
to further human well-being, maximising their interactions and envisioning a future
where human capacities are expanded by the use of technology25.
Far from representing a possible dystopian scenario, the transplanting of conscious-
ness is seen among the community as a means of extending humanity’s life span.
Achieving immortality is one of the movement’s goals. Aubrey de Grey, a British
transhumanist who conducts research into ageing, claims that the process could
be considered a disease and, therefore, should be treated. This approach takes an
engineering point of view26, repeating the analogy between humans and machines. If
ageing were to be defeated and immortality achieved, all the systems around which
we base our lives would have to change dramatically, including the very notion of
what being alive is. After all, what is life if death no longer exists?
“alive ► adjective [predic.] 1 (of a person, animal, or plant) living, not dead: hopes of
finding anyone still alive were fading” (Oxford Dictionary of English p. 41)
One way to imagine such a scenario, would be by applying what Bart Kosko calls
fuzzy logic. With this system we wouldn’t approach propositions using the traditional
Aristotelian logic of absolutes (true or false)27, rather we would replace them with
a spectrum of what is in between. In the absence of death, for example, we would
conceive of different stages of being alive. Moreover, the very concept of ‘being alive’
25 http://humanityplus.org/philosophy/transhumanist-declaration/ (accessed 13 September, 2014).
26 Aubrey de Grey, “A roadmap to end aging,” TED (2005), http://www.ted.com/talks/aubrey_de_grey_says_we_can_avoid_ag-ing?language=en (accessed 13 September, 2014).
27 Bart Kosko, Fuzzy Thinking (London: Flamingo, 1994), p. 18-21 69-75, 119-123.
34
would probably become obsolete, replaced by another notion of existence more
suitable for this hypothetical world. But this is just one of a multitude of questions
concerning the very materiality that confines us.
In my opinion, Aubrey Grey’s approach, in which the biological body is maintained
as if it were a machine, is somewhat short-sighted. What if someone has suffered an
extreme accident in which the body has been completely destroyed? In such cases
restoration would be impossible.
Other transhumanists have already responded to this issue, suggesting a system in
which immortality is achieved by a process of consciousness and mind upload. The
human brain is permanently ‘backed up’ like data on a hard drive, so functioning cop-
ies could survive a global disaster, for instance. Futurologists like Ray Kurzweil, direc-
tor of engineering at Google, envision that in this scenario complete brain emulation
will allow direct modelling of the entire human brain. It will be possible to scan in
detail the structure of a specific brain and build software capable of functioning in
exactly the same way as the original version, when run in a specific type of hard-
ware built for the effect28.
Projects are currently in progress to accomplish these aims, one being the Interna-
tional 2045 initiative29, founded by Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov. The project
aims to create an artificial medium to which human consciousness could be trans-
ferred, thereby achieving cybernetic immortality, by the year 2045.
28 Anders Sandberg, Nick Bostrom, “Whole Brain Emulation: A Roadmap” Technical Report, Oxford University (2008) p. 7-8.
29 http://2045.com/ (accessed 20 September, 2014).
35
Figure 4 shows a section of the 2045 initiative’s website, where users can create a
“personalized immortal avatar” of themselves at the click of a button. To my surprise,
I hesitated before clicking. This moment of truth made me wonder whether we
genuinely do want to achieve immortality through technology.
In Western civilisation, religions such as Christianity, have been promising us im-
mortality in the afterlife, espousing the idea that such power can only be held by
supreme beings. Humans have proved relentlessly ambitious in our attempts to
control our destiny, exemplified by the aspirations of futurists like Ray Kurzweil
who aims to defeat death. On the other hand, achieving immortality could exacer-
bate current issues facing our planet, such as overpopulation and food shortages. If
we are to be disembodied and transferred into another body, perhaps these new
forms could be designed to better adapt to our environments. A project by Arne
Hendriks called The Incredible Shrinking Man, explores the implications of simply
downsizing humans. Decreasing humans in size would address the aforementioned
issues. Since being smaller means less space, and fewer resources would be re-
quired to sustain us.
In the book The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace, Margaret Wertheim introduces the
idea that our technological environments have left little room for pre-existing
notions of spirituality, leading us to explore new forms of spirituality through
technology. It is interesting to note that the 2045 project has the support of
Figure 4 - 2045 Initiative. Immortality Button. 2013.
36
spiritual leader the Dalai Lama30:
The main science mega-project of the 2045 Initiative aims to create technologies enabling the transfer of a individual’s person-
ality to a more advanced non-biological carrier, and extending life, including to the point of immortality. We devote particular
attention to enabling the fullest possible dialogue between the world’s major spiritual traditions, science and society. (2045
Strategic Social Initiative)
Buddhism has been shown to be open to dialogues with science as well as technol-
ogy. It may initially sound strange that two apparently antagonistic fields – science
and religion – might happily coexist. However, the Kalama Sutta31, states that the as-
sessment of evidence to explain the universe should not be replaced by the reliance
on faith or superstition common in most religions, highlighting the importance of
some key principles of the scientific method.
In a talk given by the Dalai Lama at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuro-
science on November 200532, Tenzin Gyatso, the Dalai Lama, shows enthusiasm
towards discoveries in cosmology, biology, neuroscience and quantum mechanics,
stating that these and other scientific fields might offer greater understanding of the
human condition. The same article mentions a number of commonalities between
science and Buddhist thinking. They share a deep suspicion of any notion of abso-
lutes, such as the existence of a soul. They also share an understanding of life based
on causality and empiricism. The Buddhist leader also states that traditional tran-
scripts should be updated according to scientific discoveries. Furthermore, the Bud-
dhist interpretation of reality, as stated by the Dalai Lama, is based on overcoming
suffering and a quest to perfect the human condition. This seems in harmony with
advances in the fields of neuroscience we have touched on. It also sits easily with
the transhumanist quest for a more wholesome and fulfilling way of being, facilitated
30 Liz Bacelar “Dalai Lama Supports 2045’s Avatar Project,” PRWEB (2012), http://www.prweb.com/releases/2012/4/pr-web9456373.htm (accessed 20 September, 2014).
31 Kalama, Sutta. “Preface.” In The Buddha’s Charter of Free Inquiry. Sri Lanka: Buddhist Publication Society, 1977.
32 Tenzin Gyatso the Dalai Lama, “Science at the Crossroads,” Mind and Life Institute (2005), http://www.dalailama.com/messag-es/buddhism/science-at-the-crossroads (accessed 25 September, 2014).
37
by achieving greater control over the positive and negative fluctuations of the mind.
To conclude, this convergence proves that ancient spiritual traditions like Buddhism
can coexist with technology and science, in a similar way to how posthumanism is
constantly being redefined by contemporary technological advances. If we are to
see spirituality in this way we can then imagine a new category that is not limited
by obsolete dogmas and beliefs. Instead, it could freely evolve alongside emerging
technological, economical, medical and informational environments; a ‘postspirituality’
in effect.
39
IV POSSIBLE REALITIES
41
IV.I THE ORGANIANS
These ideas, relating to the separation of the mind from the body and inherent im-
mortality enabled by technology, lead us once more into the realms of science fiction,
exemplified by the likes of the TV series Star Trek. I will now explore this in more detail.
In the episode Errands of Mercy1 (first broadcast 1967) an advanced civilization
known as the Organians, evolved in such a way that their bodies became superflu-
ous. They were depicted as superior entities, with intrinsic Neo-Humanist principles
of universality2 that forbade them from harming all other creatures. A civilisation
as advanced as the Organians could be used as inspiration to develop the human
species. Instead of replacing the current human biological machine with another as
suggested by the 2045 initiative (bringing its own implications and imperfections),
perhaps it could be replaced by nothing at all. This could represent a far greater
step. The resulting being, made without matter, could be described in Spock’s words:
“Pure energy. Pure thought. Totally incorporeal. Not life as we know it at all3”. If so,
could it be that this would in fact be the equivalent of being dead?
This post-humanist idea of separating information from the body is discussed by
Professor Katherine Hayles:
“But when we make moves that erase the world’s multiplicity, we risk losing sight of
the variegated leaves, fractal branching, and particular bark textures that make up
the forest.” (Katherinw Hayles p.12)
1 Errand of Mercy, dir : John Newland, 1967.
2 “The ideology of Neo-Humanism is derived from monistic religious belief that everything is a manifestation of Supreme Consciousness and should be treated as sacred. Sarkar said that the sentiment human beings share toward one another should be extended to include all animate entities. He claimed that adopting this point of view would be an aid toward self-re-alization and establish its practitioners in universalism.“Taylor Raymond, The encyclopedia of religion and nature (London: Thoemmes Continuum, 2005), Volume 1, p. 48.
3 Coon Gene, Roddenberry Gene (Writers), & Newland John (Director). (23 March, 1967). Errand of Mercy [Television series episode]. Roddenberry Gene (Executive producer), Star Trek. California, Desilu Studios.
42
She highlights the importance of considering materiality when trying to define
information because, according to the author, for information to exist it needs to
be instantiated somehow. The Organians in Star Trek, for example, had to be instan-
tiated in a material environment in order to be understood by physical beings, like
Spock and Kirk. But for the Organians themselves, embodiment and materiality was
unnecessary. They could perceive and comprehend themselves without bodies. But
we live in a physical world. I therefore agree with Professor Hayles. For embodied
beings like us, information must be instantiated in order to exist at all. We need the
Organians to be corporeal so that we can understand them. This is because we are
not the Organians; our comprehension of information is limited to what our body
can perceive, as stated by Carl Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist, in an
interview with politician John Freeman, dated 1959:
We are born into a pattern. We are a pattern. We are a structure that is pre-established through the genes. There
is a biological order of our mental functioning as influences our biological or physiological function (…) Man have a
certain pattern, that makes him specifically human and no man is born without it. We are only deeply unconscious of
these facts because we live all by our senses and outside ourselves. If a man could look into himself he will discover it.
And when a man discovers it, you think he is crazy. And he might be crazy. (Jung Carl)
IV.II LACUNA INC.
If humans are to be translated into pure informational ‘Organian’ formats by the year
of 2045, firstly we will have to overcome many current issues with regard to the
way we see and manage information.
Before we establish a scenario where humans translate themselves into pure infor-
mational formats that can be easily accessed by other humans, we will need a sys-
tem to minimise corruption and establish a regulated socio-economic environment
where such a reality could exist. Taking this idea further, this system might include
for example the possibility of trading information resulting from past experiences or
43
memories, comparable to the South Korean dream trading system explored ear-
lier in this discussion. Imagine a scenario based on a consciousness trading system,
where someone could buy the experience of a holiday in the Caribbean islands,
or the experience of a happy childhood to replace memories of a bad one. In this
system, governments could for example punish corruption by implementing bad
experiences: life imprisonment could be replaced by eternal depression or the con-
sciousness of being imprisoned.
This scenario brings its own challenges, specifically in terms of how to measure and
evaluate this form of data: an experience or memory. Returning to today’s economy,
immaterial transactions such as those involving ideas and concepts are performed
in a very similar way to material transactions. This raises questions like those in the
following excerpt from a New York Times article.
You have a dollar. I have a dollar. We swap. Now you have my dollar. And I have yours. We are no better off. You have
an idea. I have an idea. We swap. Now you have two ideas. And I have two ideas. That’s the difference. There is an-
other difference. A dollar does only so much work. It buys so many potatoes and no more. But an idea that fits your
business may keep you in potatoes all your life. It may, incidentally, build you a palace to eat them in.
(Unknown author 1917, p. 3)
If the information that contains an idea is difficult to trade because of its immate-
riality and abstraction, how can we give value to the consciousness of a memory
or an experience? I will try to explore this issue further by analysing two different
approaches to the subject. The first briefly takes us back to the South Korean dream
trading tradition already explored in Chapter III in order to introduce the second
example, which will be analysed in more detail.
The South Korean system is deeply embedded in secrecy and most importantly in
belief. By not revealing the dream, third parties can’t posses it. And only when the
dream is voiced to the buyer can the transaction take place. This is when all the
superstitions around the dream are automatically transplanted into the buyer. One
might argue that the dream has not been fully transacted, since it still exists in the
44
brain of the seller. This is why belief is so vital within this system: both seller and buy-
er need to believe that the superstitions around the dream have been fully transact-
ed, and this is the only way that the system can make sense for the community.
Although belief can be a powerful factor, as demonstrated by culture-bound syn-
dromes such as Koro4, I would suggest that there are ways to improve the trans-
action so that it doesn’t rely on belief alone. For example, if memory loss could be
implemented in the seller’s brain, his recollection of the sold dream could be erased
or removed. We can therefore assume he would not have enjoyed the benefits. This
idea leads us to the second example.
The film Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind5 envisages a memory-erasing technol-
ogy in the context of a future close to our own. A similar technology was depicted
in the TV series Star Trek, used by the Klingons in a distant, imagined future to obtain
information from their rivals.
The film’s beauty and believability relies on its skilful use of skeuomorphic narrative
techniques. Although the technology of erasing memories seems very advanced, it
is implemented in a mundane world, familiar and similar to ours, calling into play “a
psychodynamic that finds the new more acceptable when it recalls the old that it
is in the process of displacing and finds the traditional more comfortable when it is
presented in a context that reminds us we can escape from it into the new”6.
In the film, a company named Lacuna Incorporated performs secretive and presum-
ably illegal treatments using a technology that can erase memories. Joel Barish (Jim
4 “Koro is a syndrome described in South-East Asia, China and India, where a person presents with an acute panic reaction in-volving fear that their genitals will suddenly retract into their bodies, resulting in possible death. The onset is sudden and rapid.” Poul Rohleder, Critical Issues in Clinical and Health Psychology (London: SAGE, 2012) p. 75.
5 Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, dir : Michel Gondry, 2004.
6 Katherine Hayles. How We Became Post Human. (London: The University of Chicago Press, 1999), p. 17.
45
Carrey) and his ex-girlfriend Clementine (Kate Winslet) willingly undergo treatment
in order to erase undesirable memories of their relationship and subsequent break-
up. For the treatment to work, patients must provide artefacts or ‘mementos’ direct-
ly related to the memories they wish to erase. These artefacts are used to trigger
neurological activity in the brain that is then traced by a machine, allowing it to erase
the memory. It resembles the mouse experiment described in Chapter III, where
the signals produced in the hippocampus by a certain experience were detected, re-
corded and subsequently replicated, recreating the experience to some degree. This
makes the memory-erasing machine of the film even more credible.
“Man is a composite of his yesterdays” (William Atkinson p. 5)
In today’s society, memory is of unquestionable importance in all aspects of life.
According to a study developed in the University of California7 forgotten memories
may lie dormant in the subconscious mind, ready to be recalled into the conscious
mind if triggered by certain situations8. It is unsurprising that humans have evolved
and created complex systems organised around memory, like methods of learning
for example. On the other hand, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind also raises
ethical questions concerning not the making and recalling of memories but the
more controversial other side of the coin: their eradication or removal.
The film is careful to reserve its judgment concerning the ethics around memo-
ry-erasing technology, hinting a possible standpoint without offering a clear position.
For example, the fact that Lacuna Incorporated performs its activities illegally and in
secret might signify that the society in which it exists is not yet ready to accept the
procedure.
7 Brandon Keim, “Forgotten Memories Are Still in Your Brain,” Wired (2009), http://www.wired.com/2009/09/forgottenmemo-ries/ (accessed 1 September, 2014).
8 William Atkinson, Memory Culture: The Science of Observing, Remembering and Recalling (London : Psychic Research Co., 1903) p. 5.
46
Moreover, when the character Joel’s memory is erased there is a lingering sense of
tragedy that culminates in uncertainty towards the end of the film. A key ‘moment
of truth’ occurs when Joel, during the treatment, realises that he does not want to
surrender his memories of Clementine. It is as if he finally understands the wider
consequences of what is about to happen.
In fact, there are unfortunate consequences for all those who use the machine.
When Mary (Kirsten Dunst) discovers that she has also undergone the procedure,
she decides to return all medical records to the patients, with profound conse-
quences for all of them. Joel and Clementine decide to reunite after reading their
medical records. Note that this reunion would not have been possible had the
couple not erased their memories from each other. But we never see what happens
to the couple afterwards, so it is up to the viewer to judge whether they will have a
happy ending or not. There is no positive endorsement of the technology to con-
clude the film.
When a person’s memories of another person are eradicated, the ‘’erased’ person
becomes non-existent to the person who has undergone the memory-erasing pro-
cedure. Initially, this sounds negative from an ethical perspective, but if we approach
the situation from a classical utilitarian point of view9, it can be seen in a positive
way. According to utilitarian philosophy, the best action in any given situation is that
which increases the sum of human happiness for the greatest number of people.
The decision the couple took in the film can be seen, in the light of this theory, as
the best possible one since it brought ignorance about a painful event, in effect
increasing the sum of happiness for the couple at no apparent detriment to anyone
else.
9 Henry Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics (London: Macmillan and Co., 1877) p. 379.
47
Note the use of the word ‘apparent.’ This positive point of view is conditional upon
the net sum of happiness increasing for everyone in any way connected. I personally
think it would be extremely complicated to measure this and indeed prove it. A ma-
jor issue would be establishing who is affected and how to even the smallest degree.
The long-term consequences suggested by the film after using the memory-erasing
machine do not seem overwhelmingly positive, even from an utilitarian perspective.
There was not a clear increase in overall happiness. It could be argued that unpleas-
ant memories could have positive effects; that they are lessons with potential future
benefits – as in the expression ‘Once bitten, twice shy.’ But probably such learnings
could be acquired by less harmful and more efficient means.
The work of Robert Nozick offers a useful ethical point of view, adding another ele-
ment to the utilitarian principle. In order to illustrate his idea, Nozick builds an imag-
inary scenario where an “Experience Machine”10 exists, capable of recreating any ex-
perience in the brain. The subject sits inside a tank with electrodes attached to his or
her brain. Before getting inside, he or she can choose any experience they like. While
inside, the person fully ‘lives’ the generated experience. They have no awareness that
they are inside the tank. The question the philosopher raises is the following: would
you plug yourself in for life? There are three main reasons why we hesitate, which we
also relate to the situation in the film and the subject of this discussion.
Firstly, having an experience matters to us humans as much as the activity of experi-
encing it. If we imagine a scenario where humans can transact the consciousness of
a memory for example, the obtained memory cannot replace the full act of having
the real experience, because it does not and cannot include the activity itself. Selling
the memory of a holiday in the Caribbean islands does not include the holiday itself.
10 Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd., 1999) p. 42-45.
48
Secondly, humans have the desire to ‘become someone’ in relation to the material
world, and plugging in such a machine would be a “kind of suicide”11, to use the au-
thor’s words. The person in the tank exists in some sort of limbo or vegetative state,
not bad nor good, not violent nor peaceful, not hateful nor loving. This idea raises
deeper questions about our existence here on Planet Earth, returning us to the cel-
lular automata question proposed by Wolfram. We could imagine a cosmic tank that
recreates, through an advanced computer program, every single experience that we
have on Earth.
The third and final reason given by the author is the lack of contact with reality and
all its consequences. The “Experience Machine“ is only a recreation, a man-made
reality and not reality itself. It doesn’t contain the richness of the real world. Erasing
a memory means creating an artificial reality that only exists for the person who has
the memory erased. The reality of the experience remains true for everything and
everyone who hasn’t had the memory removed. When I use the word everything
I am referring not only to humans, but to the cosmos itself. In other words, the
Butterfly Effect cannot be edited (or erased in the case of Eternal Sunshine of the
Spotless Mind). This would require more than a memory-editing machine; we would
need a time-travel-machine, like in the film Back To The Future12, but this is a subject
for another dissertation.
11 Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd., 1999) p. 43.
12 Back to the Future, dir : Robert Zemeckis, 1985.
49
V ARE WE LOSING OUR MINDS?
51
To conclude this dissertation, I will use the question that inspired me to develop my
thoughts and explorations in the previous sections. This chapter will be divided into
two different parts to show how my investigations have helped me to develop my
answer to this question.
V.I LOSING OUR MINDS
The desire to control the information generated by our own minds is not entirely
new to current post-Fordist informational environments. Instead it appears to have
existed far before that, evolving into complex traditions and beliefs that tell us about
our desire to control the immateriality of our own existence.
This necessity to understand and to control seems to be embedded in human
nature, as much as we have changed the world around us. Virtual and artificial
intelligence have also reinforced this idea, using information in the form of codes to
programme virtual life forms that have replicated or simulated to some extent the
biological ones in virtual systems, offering us the promise that one day we might be
able to control and create life. This thought is so intrinsic to our culture that even
theorists like Stephen Wolfram have compared our own existence to virtual envi-
ronments. These theories reached an important milestone with the human genome
project, where our own materiality is translated into an informational, immaterial
format, giving us a much higher ambition that we might one day be able to fully
control and shape the human form.
Gradually, a post humanist definition of human started to crystallise around the idea
that information is what primarily defines who we are, as is the case for intelligent
machines or virtual life forms. The information generated by our own brains be-
came, at least in theory, separated from the body. This echoes the way that Dr. David
Bowman became a disembodied starchild in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Redefined as
52
information, the new soul can now dwell in the technological age.
Our ambition is leading us to believe that this theory can be put into practice,
allowing us to imagine futures where we take charge of the powers that we for
so long attributed to the Gods. It’s not just scientific experiments leading us in this
direction. Entire movements, ways of thinking and living anticipate a new kind of
transcendent human being, disembodied and capable of controlling his own destiny
through science and technology.
Although some of these promises could seem far beyond our capability, I believe we
should keep imagining them and setting out timescales for two reasons. Firstly, be-
cause they can give us the impetus to keep moving forward and secondly because
they may lead to other discoveries on the way, which may be of greater value than
the ultimate achievement.
V.II
NOT LOSING OUR MINDS
If we are to imagine a future where the innovations described above are achieved,
I believe we must debate their ethical implications. This is necessary to help us
define our aims and intentions, as well as the possible consequences, intended or
otherwise. As shown during this discussion, science fiction has proven useful for this
exercise. Importantly, I believe that ethical issues should not limit our own imagina-
tion or our ambitions to propel our evolution forward. Instead we should use them
to prepare the ground for a more promising future.
As already mentioned in this discussion, achieving complete disembodiment of the
mind will mean that profound transformations will have to take place in our lives,
53
our planet and even in the universe itself and the way we perceive it. However, if
we look back to our own history, we can identify important evolutionary steps of
similar magnitude, that also had a profound impact on the way we are and perceive
the universe. Taking once again the film 2001: A Space Odyssey as an example, the
landmark event that opens the film - the use of tools by primates - had a colossal
impact on the destiny of humanity, paving the way for where we are today.
As history shows us, humanity has undergone radical change on many occasions
throughout our existence. To change is to evolve, and to evolve is to be human.
57
VI WORKS CITED
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SPECIAL THANKS TO:
James McCarthy for being an incredible friend (and for proofreading my dissertation)
Angus Melville for being a great library companion