HammerBlog

Ever hear of Jaron Lanier? If you’re not a geek who lives on the cutting edge, you probably haven’t, but he’s been putting out some interesting ideas about the blurring of boundaries between technology and religion (a theme touched upon in my own book HAMMERJACK–in between chases and stuff getting blown up, of course). Lanier recently penned an article for the New York Times that distilled a few of these themes, which is well worth checking out if you’re interested in the philosophy of tech. Be warned, though: the view can be a bit chilling, depending on your views.

What I find most compelling is his take on concept of a Singularity event, which has actually become rather mainstream among some members of the technological elite:

[The] story…goes like this: one day in the not-so-distant future, the Internet will suddenly coalesce into a super-intelligent A.I., infinitely smarter than any of us individually and all of us combined; it will become alive in the blink of an eye, and take over the world before humans even realize what’s happening.

Some think the newly sentient Internet would then choose to kill us; others think it would be generous and digitize us the way Google is digitizing old books, so that we can live forever as algorithms inside the global brain. Yes, this sounds like many different science fiction movies. Yes, it sounds nutty when stated so bluntly. But these are ideas with tremendous currency in Silicon Valley; these are guiding principles, not just amusements, for many of the most influential technologists.

It should go without saying that we can’t count on the appearance of a soul-detecting sensor that will verify that a person’s consciousness has been virtualized and immortalized. There is certainly no such sensor with us today to confirm metaphysical ideas about people, or even to recognize the contents of the human brain. All thoughts about consciousness, souls and the like are bound up equally in faith, which suggests something remarkable: What we are seeing is a new religion, expressed through an engineering culture.

Lanier also goes on to extrapolate that the current culture–with all of the blind faith we put in our gadgets, from cell phones to personal computers to Twitter–has actually primed human beings to accept such a thing as no big deal, simply an evolution of where we’ve been headed for years. It’s a scary concept when you think about it, but I believe the thesis is sound. Human beings are cross-culturally hardwired for faith, and will instinctively search for an outlet to fulfill that need. In a secular age, where God has largely been banned from the public square, is it any wonder that people would turn to something else? Farfetched as it sounds, we’ve already seen it happen in areas like enviornmentalism and politics, where reason has largely given way to almost dogmatic beliefs. Suddenly, the concept of a digital savior doesn’t seem so abstract.

Fiction, it seems, is going to have an even harder time keeping up with the science.

There’s an old saying that as time goes by, you turn into your parents. I think I always believed that in the abstract, but over the last twelve hours it somehow turned into a tangibe reality. Granted, it’s a “Family Circus” kind of reality, but reality nonetheless.

Exhibit A: My son Christian wandered into mom and dad’s bedroom round about midnight all scared from a bloody nose. We cleaned up him, and then daddy cuddled with him on the couch for a time while he caled down and feel asleep. Afterward, I carried him back to bed.

Exhibit B: Christian dashes in again early this morning, panicked because one of his pet gerbils has escaped! On the fly, the old man has to devise a rodent trap to safely snag the errant critter and return him to his cage. Fun ensues as I try to bait said gerbil out of his hiding place and lure him into a laundry basket. Happily the plan works, more from dumb luck than any actual skill on my part.

Exhibit C: One of the kids’ Super Mario figurines (Luigi, in case you were curious) loses his head. Dr. Dad’s surgical superglue skills are requested, stat.

All of this before breakfast. And as I finally sat down with my bagel and orange juice, I fondly recalled how my own dad used to do exactly this same kind of stuff when my sister and I were growing up. He’s a lot like Scotty on Star Trek–always good natured, with a seeming ability to fix any problem in the nick of time. By watching him, I learned the ropes without even realizing it. Little did I know how handy those lessons would be. Because I have, as of this morning, officially turned into my dad.

And there’s no one else I’d rather be.

You remember the old commercial that went, “When E.F. Hutton talks, people listen”? Well, after 2,000 or some odd counts of fraud and some shady ties to the mob, Citigroup gobbled up their remains and people pretty much stopped listening; but the old tag line stuck in my head, and came back to mind when Neil Armstrong–a notoriously private man who rarely steps into the spotlight–penned a letter to the White House along with fellow Apollo astronauts Jim Lovell and Gene Cernan to express his concerns over the cancellation of NASA’s Constellation program.

“For The United States, the leading space faring nation for nearly half a century, to be without carriage to low Earth orbit and with no human exploration capability to go beyond Earth orbit for an indeterminate time into the future, destines our nation to become one of second or even third rate stature,” they wrote. “Without the skill and experience that actual spacecraft operation provides, the USA is far too likely to be on a long downhill slide to mediocrity.”

Now loudmouths like me have blogged about this very thing before, but when the first man to walk on the moon has something to say on the subject–well, people listen. Coming as this does just when the president is outlining his own vision for NASA, Armstrong’s statement packs an even greater punch. He’s not the kind of person who chases cameras, or tries to one-up a sitting president. He means every word of it. And if he’s worried about America’s role in the future of manned spaceflight–not to mention its role as a world leader–then all of us have a reason to think twice.

Certainly all the talk about landing on asteroids and sending people to Mars sounds good and lofty–but seeing the president’s speech, it’s more than obvious that his heart isn’t in it. And this notion that private industry can take up the slack in developing systems to launch people into low Earth oribit, while laudable on its face, ignores some pretty important fundamentals of the marketplace. The amount of money required to design and build that kind of technology–versus the decades it would take to see any potential return on that investment–makes the cost prohibitively expensive for most if not any company that might want to try. That’s the reason that manned spaceflight has largely been the undertaking of governments. They’re the only ones who can afford it.

Sadly, I don’t see anything changing at this point. The White House has its own agenda, which consists of domestic initiatives that we can’t afford. When you’re shelling out nearly a trillion dollars in stimulus money, there ain’t a whole lot left for space exploration. But how long will it be before we start to realize what we’ve lost, not only in terms of technological innovation but the American spirit? This nation once sent men to the moon! How did we lose sight of that?

Decline, indeed.

As Lucy once said to Charlie Brown, the fact that I realize I have a problem indicates that I’m not too far gone. And it helps to know that I’m not the only one in the family with this particular issue.

That’s right. The Gillers are now suffering firm acute digitalitis.

Need proof? Well, let’s see… Right now, the kids are on the iMac playing online Super Mario games. The wife is sitting next to me watching “General Hospital” on the DVR. And I’m writing this blog post using the iPad I picked up today. Is there a better example of modern life?

I suppose it could be worse. I mean, it’s not like Lexie carries around a Nintendo DS or that Christian is booking his appointments on a PDA. We even have a paper Fly Lady calendar that sees a little bit of action now and then. Still, I gotta wonder how long it would take for withdrawal to set in if we were all deprived of our gadgets. It’s hard to believe that when I was a kid, high tech was that handheld Merlin game and a tabletop VCR.

Maybe we should all have a Luddite week and give it a go. We could roast marshmallows and sing songs. Come on, everyone! “When the moon is in the seventh house, and Jupiter aligns with Mars…”

Wait a sec–is that my cell phone I hear ringing?

There’s just something special about the day a new book is launched. The interview on Good Morning America was fun, but that was nothing compared to the ticker-tape parade through Times Square. Then afterward, it was off to Vegas for a little high-stakes action, followed by a dip through L.A. to attend one of those literati glitterati parties you hear so much about! It was simply fabulous–except for the part when Dave Barry got into a slap fight with Amy Tan, but that’s what happens when you start playing quarters before noon on a Tuesday.

Okay, I made some of that stuff up.

Well, all of it really–but I did spend premiere day engaged in my solo ritual, which involves slinking over to the local Borders and checking out the bookshelf. There, displayed proudly among the other series sci-fi, I had my first public encounter with SEVEN DEADLY SINS. It’s one of those little payoffs you get as a writer, something outside all of the contracts and the deadlines. The real fun is seeing people stop by and check out your book (buy a copy, dammit!), all the while unaware that the author is standiing right there. I’ve often wondered what would happen if I sauntered up to one of those folks and mentioned offhandedly, “You know, I wrote that.” Would they make a fuss? Ask for an autograph? Demand their money back? Come to think of it, maybe that isn’t such a good idea…

Anyway, the book is now available for your reading pleasure! It took a couple of years, but there it is: out of the Coming Soon window and into the stores. There’s nothing else quite like that feeling. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go back to Borders and make sure that someone else’s book isn’t covering up mine–not that I’m obsessive or anything.