Rocco D’Ambrosca: 05/17/2010
The coming of every technological revolution brings many new tools and inventions to help man pursue both his needs and wants. And just as any other technological revolution, the information revolution has brought both at truly astonishing levels. In many ways, the gifts of these revolutions can serve dual roles. The information revolution has brought us the computer, the first truly universal tool. But of course that universality is as powerful as it is dangerous. Will man be consumed by the bounty of hedonistic pleasures offered by the computer? Or will he rise above such frivolous pursuits and maximize his true potential in ways never before possible? This is the issue here to be discussed. It will be shown that the information revolution makes it extraordinarily more likely that the individual will make something of himself and truly maximize his potential, so long as he doesn’t succumb to the unrelentingly plentiful myriad of hedonistic distractions that are simultaneously offered.
What does it mean to make something of oneself? It amounts to nothing less than the maximization of your individual potential as it relates to your interests and ambitions as informed by your identity. This should be the goal of every man, not simply because it would greatly benefit himself individually, but all of mankind. Hence, this is an ethical issue. Anything less than the pursuit of reaching one’s full potential is cheating yourself and everyone else by not sharing your gifts with the world. Each man is a unique individual with specific capacities exclusive to himself, that when fully developed, can be combined with those of other men, furthering the progress of all. Computers and the internet allow us the capability to reach so many more people than ever before, allowing exponential worth to our individual pursuits. The ethical offense of not pursuing one’s full potential is equally exponentiated in light of this potential benefit to all. Krystyna Gorniak expresses the global power of the internet by comparing the computer to the printing press. “Computers, like the printing press, allow human minds to work faster and more efficiently, because of their groundbreaking impact on the communication and exchange of ideas. Like the printing press, they are creating a new type of network between human individuals, a community existing despite the spatial separation of its members.” (Gorniak2).
The most fundamental variable in this equation of individual potential is of course identity. Without a fully developed understanding of self, how can someone ever have the hope of making something of them self. Your identity is what informs your interests, ambitions, talents, and strengths. Some have stated that currently finding meaning and personal identity has been compromised by the computer and information revolution. But, this is incorrect and most likely informed by irrational fear in the face of radical change.
Mads Troest expresses the postmodern view of the situation, commenting on a scientific paradox regarding quantum mechanics, specifically that of light. When studied at the atomic level, light paradoxically is both a particle and a wave. Such a discovery has been verified many times and is no illusion or mistake. Troest comments that as a result of this revelation, “the established view of science starts to loose its meaning, and so, consequently, must that of Reality.” (Troest3). Science being our foundation of reality, this single paradox is seen as the undoing of the reliability of our perceived order of things.
Neil Postman sees this modern dissolution of order not as caused by a scientific discovery, but as a direct result of the overflow of information created by the computer and the information revolution. Postman argues that, “the average person today is about as naïve as was the average person in the Middle Ages. In the Middle Ages people believed in the authority of religion, no matter what. Today, we believe in the authority of our science, no matter what.” (Postman4). Postman then makes the leap to say that, “There is almost no fact – whether actual or imagined – that will surprise us for very long, since we have no comprehensive and consistent picture of the world which would make the fact appear as an unacceptable contradiction. We believe because there is no reason not to believe. No social, political, historical, metaphysical, logical, or spiritual reason.” (Postman4). If such were true, the ability to find meaning and personal identity would be a fool’s errand.
Thankfully both of these accounts of disorder are misconceived. They are misjudging, or quite simply ignoring, the power of the internet to bring order to all the information, both general and scientific. The internet helps us gain perspective of reality and our personal identities through the exchange of ideas and information. Scientists can quickly and easily compare their findings and more accurately form an understanding of our reality and the order of things despite any occurrence of a single paradoxical discovery. The individual has resources, such as Wikipedia and Google, to quickly and easily find practical information specifically meaningful to them as an individual. The tremendous wealth of knowledge and remarkable ease of access offered by the information revolution is a sure catalyst for identity formation and potential maximization.
Charles Freund establishes just how valuable the information revolution truly is in light of his exploration of human identity through culture. Freund analyzes consumer culture and consumption in various historical circumstances, with a surprising result for the critics he is addressing. “The point of the various musical countercultures under the Soviets was not simply to hear music. What the authorities never understood, and what many cultural critics in the West similarly don’t understand, is that the fans who inhabit such ‘vulgar’ and disruptive subcultures are not being exploited. It is the fans who are using the music scene and the paraphernalia that surrounds it for their own expressive purposes. If there is no one to sell them paraphernalia – the clothes, the imagery, the recordings – then the members of these subcultures will not go without it. They will create it themselves.” (Freund8). Freund’s greatest revelation is that, “Culture is built around meaning, and meaning proceeds from one’s self.” (Freund13). Such a revelation informs us of how truly valuable the internet can be in the development, formation, and cultivation of personal identity.
Freund’s revelation shows that the individual always, without failure, will reach out and collect what is meaningful to him to foster and nurture his own identity. No matter how much clutter or how many barriers are put in his way, man will seek out and assimilate what is meaningful to himself as a reflection of his identity. The internet is the absolute perfect tool for such. A musician can listen to music streaming on the internet to broaden his influences, get lessons in text or video format, record his music with the computer, and then complete the cycle through publication on his own webpage. Any interest can be fostered and nurtured in this way, thanks to the cornucopia of information available on the internet. The internet can then in turn, serve as the means of expressing and sharing an individual’s ambitions, talents, and insights with everyone else on a global scale. The internet creates an alternative to traditional broadcast culture, allowing the individual to more freely search out what is meaningful to himself and his own identity.
Another extremely interesting and exciting endowment of the information revolution, as an aid to making something of ourselves, is the potential for transhumanistic improvements. Nick Bostrom defines, “a posthuman as a being that has at least one posthuman capacity. By a posthuman capacity, I mean a general central capacity greatly exceeding the maximum attainable by any current human being without recourse to new technological means.” (Bostrom1). Such general central capacities include lifespan, cognition, and emotion. If even the single possibility of lifespan improvement was realized the inherent benefit to maximizing our individual potential is nearly unlimited. Transhuman improvement to health consists in the end of disease and aging. If we were capable of living nearly limitless years free of disease, our lives would have incredible capacity for physical and mental productivity. Such an improvement, would give the single greatest development of the information revolution to make something of ourselves simply, because we would have more time to do so.
Such radical change does however have a possibility of altering our identity, while helping us maximize our potential. Langdon Winner comments that, “As the nature of human beings begins to change, so too will concepts of what it means to be human.” (Winner28). Of course this is true of transhumanistic capacities, but such can be said of many things which have already occurred. With advances in modern medicine, we have already greatly changed the conception of man by greatly increasing his natural lifespan. Artificial hearts already exist, and we don’t think of such people as profoundly different. Even on the topic of cognition, it can be said that education has changed us. Who can argue, that we aren’t more intelligent now than our cave dwelling ancestors? Such fear of changing our identities through transhumanism is warranted, but not to the degree that we should not attempt to do so or continue to explore the limits of human potential. We should just do so carefully and thoughtfully, just like anything else.
As stated in the introduction, the information revolution, just like any other revolution, brings new ways to meet both our needs and wants. The internet is an extremely powerful resource to be used to better ourselves and mankind, allowing us to reach our full potential collectively and individually. But, the internet is also a means of distraction from our idealist pursuits. We can be overwhelmed and consumed by the unlimited array of hedonistic pleasures offered up, most of which are free. Hours upon hours can be consumed excessively through video games, absurdly pointless comedic videos, pornography, and countless other hedonistic pursuits. Although these things can be used occasionally without limiting our ability to reach or maximum potentials, their incredible capacity for an addictive quick fix of pleasure, is always there tempting to pull us away from pursuing our personal fulfillment and actualization. So, as long as we stay focused on our real potential and don’t succumb to gluttonous pursuits of hedonistic pleasures, the information revolution will only strengthen our capacity to make something of ourselves.
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