Meredith's Mistake – a Science Fiction Writer Resists the Urge to Get Messianic.
In 2007, I was – very flatteringly – approached by the magazine Index on Censorship to write a speculative article on the future of the internet. This is it. Hope it wasn't too cautious or conservative for them – Ray Kurzweil, I ain't...
There's a scene in the 1998 Hollywood movie Disclosure, where the evil corporate schemer and temptress Meredith Johnson (amply and lovingly portrayed by Demi Moore) addresses the staff of a cutting edge software company on the subject of information technology networking. The scene fades out as her speech begins, what she says here isn't important in the movie as a whole, but before the fade, we get the gist. This cutting edge firm will be offering humanity (at a price, naturally) the opportunity to shrug off the physical body. The products they make will provide freedom from the constraints of specifics like race and gender, and instead allow individuals, through technology, to relate to each other as "pure consciousness".
It's not quite clear whether this is intended to sound like slick and meaningless bullshit or not. Meredith Johnson's software industry credentials are, by the end of the movie, in tatters; she is, after all, the bad guy. But with or without the intention, bullshit is pretty clearly what these sentiments add up to. In fact, the concept behind what Meredith says is emblematic of a general misconception about the sterile squeaky-cleanness of the future as a whole, a kind of cheery post-human super-autism to which science fiction is distressingly prone. And it's way off base. The future, of the internet or of anything else, is not going to be like that at all.
If it's the work of a fiction writer to ask the question "What if..?", then – in the words of Philip K Dick – the work of a science fiction writer is to ask the question "my god, what if..?!!" Expletive, italics and exclamation marks are considered part of the territory. We have an assumed duty to dream big, brash, uncurtailed dreams, (which may be why SF does especially well in the United States), to seek out new limits and new extremes, to boldly... well, you know how it goes. So when faced with the explosive advent of high-speed data-systems and global connectivity, it's very tempting to throw restraint to the wind and predict a major paradigm shift for the whole human race or something very like. Well, I'm going to let the side down here, and resist that particular temptation. So if that's what you came in for, my apologies; you might want to file quietly out now and ask for a full refund at the door. I'm not going to get messianic. What I'm going to do is just talk a little about people. Because that's what the future, in all its gritty, messy, complicated and fucked up glory, is going to be made up of; people, very much like you and me.
If we take a quick glance back at the historical record and the way people have acted around science so far, one very obvious fact emerges; technology, however advanced, will not provide us with an escape hatch from our humanity. That is not how it works. We will adapt, we'll learn to live with whatever gifts and curses science provides, but whatever we do with our extended technological reach, human nature will be coming along for the ride. It's a template we never stray far from. At base, and despite the mixed blessings inherent, we like being human, we're hardwired for it after all, and we aren't likely to be giving it up any time soon. The internet is not going to change that in any significant way. Technology, however fast moving, follows a track our evolved human tendencies lay down.
Take Meredith Johnson's specific example, the matter of identity and its race, creed or gender overtones. Yes, of course, it is possible to hide your gender, race or other identity component when communicating by internet – but how often do we do it? How many websites have you visited recently where it's unclear whether the site owner is male or female? How many message board posts or e-mails come gender free? The answer, certainly in my experience, is close to none, and even those very few e-communications from people who could pass as either male or female are mostly accidental ambiguities caused by unfamiliar names. The reality of the situation is that mostly we like to identify ourselves as male or female, just as we do (albeit with less conscious effort) in the real world – personal websites habitually carry personal photos and life details of the site owner, and message boards are mostly frequented by people who post under their own names, or under pseudonyms that tend to signal gender rather than obscure it.
The issue of race or creed is slightly less clear cut, in that a name alone will not necessarily tell you anything about the person's racial background, or what they believe. But what you do tend to find is that where that person is concerned about such things, they will telegraph their related identity aspect clearly enough. A politically committed fellow writer and e-cquaintance of mine runs a website subtitled "The Bro-log' – now guess if he's white or black. Websites oriented specifically towards the wants and needs of different ethnic groups abound, and advertise their existence loudly. Okay, on general message boards, it is true posters probably won't identify themselves by race or creed as long as a topic is general. But if an issue related to race arises, remarks will start to be prefaced with "I'm African American and...", "I'm not black but I think... " , "I'm a British Pakistani and..." And a similar revelation of political or religious affiliation is also likely to occur if political or religious topics arise. "I'm not religious, but... " "I'm a life-long Catholic and... " "I converted to Islam because..."
Which is all very human, and pretty much the way information about creeds is handled in a face-to-face conversation as well. (Of course, you don't need someone to tell you if they're black or white when you're sitting opposite them in the pub - but their race is unlikely to be remarked upon unless the topic of conversation has some specific relevance to race-related themes. The comment "You're black, what do you think?" or "I'm white and I don't believe..." doesn't – outside of a BNP meeting – arise just for the sake of it.) In general terms, people on-line are no more shy or deceitful about identifying what race, religion or political creed they belong to than they are about admitting gender. And the lesson of all this is pretty clear – we go to the virtual world with our human attitudes and preferences pretty much intact. Meredith Johnson is missing the point. Humans don't want freedom from their identity, whether technology can make it available to them or not. Far from signing up for disembodied pure consciousness, we're mostly busy shouting our flawed and specific humanity from the roof-tops.
But what about paedophiles, comes a voice from the back, pretending to be twelve year old girls so that they can get closer to their prey? Or, (to pick a rather more palatable example), deliberate game playing where people in chat rooms fool each other about gender or age or what size breasts they have? And what's going to happen to all that in the future, when it'll be possible to go on line not as just a name and a set of emoticons, but as an avatar, a 3D walking and talking image in a virtually generated environment? Well, yes. But let's think about that for a moment - is it so different from the real human world? Think of Ray Davies in the pre-computer sixties, drinking champagne and dancing all night under electric candle light, falling in love with this girl called Lo-lo-lo-lo-lola – until the numbing realisation dawns that Lola is not actually a woman at all. Isolated case, strictly a subculture thing? Think, then, of the multi-billion dollar cosmetics and fashion industries, all built around exactly the conceit of trying to kid other people we're younger than we look and have bigger breasts (or whatever). Think of masks, and the occasions on which we wear them.
The truth is that deceit is just one more age-old human game. It's something that we carry with us into the virtual arena, not something we've discovered since we arrived there. And it's worth pointing out, when deceit is discovered on the web, it's usually received with much the same kind of identity-conscious hostility (or, in special circumstances, humour) as it would be in the real world. Message board posts pertaining to be from someone they aren't usually receive pretty short shrift from the board community as and when the fact is discovered. E-mails purporting to have a personal message for you but in reality carrying only a sales pitch are treated in much the same fashion as door-to-door salesmen. And World of WarcraftTM role players who buy (for real, off-line money! I kid you not!) character attributes and upgrades they have not earned through actual gameplay are held in huge contempt by their more honest on-line peers. Moreover, and perhaps more importantly, it seems those peers can tell rather rapidly from the gameplay if that's what a particular player has done. Just as in the real world, we have in cyberspace emerging strategies and counter strategies, checks and balances, and we apply a piecemeal set of moral and ethical criteria to it all to make it work. And that framework is informed by the same human template that governs our behaviour elsewhere.
The future of the internet, then, is not going to be too much of a shock for anyone who knows much about human nature and whose eyes are open. In fact, regardless of the technical innovations that we may or may not see in the next few decades, virtual reality looks as if it's going to conform pretty ordinarily to the existing human tendencies we so know and love. The pointers are already out there now. Second LifeTM participants spend their time buying or building places for their avatars to live, decorating these places to their personal taste and then showing them off to other visiting avatars – so we already have house hunting, DIY and social display no different to a real world St Albans dinner party or one of those stunningly irritating how-clean-is-my-house-in-France TV shows. Meanwhile, the Chinese government (this just in!) throws its cyber-weight around thuggishly on the net in exactly the same way it throws its geopolitical weight around in the real world – and then hotly denies it's doing anything wrong with exactly the same neo-imperial arrogance we see deployed with regard to such off-line properties as Tibet and Taiwan. And elsewhere, smart-arse young freelance vandals go around gratuitously damaging other people's software through viral attack in much the same way their less tech-smart cousins smash up phone boxes and bus shelters for fun in the real world.
That's the downside, of course. The human online experience may end up being glossily virtualised and up-close touchy-feely, but at a basic level it won't be any prettier than the human experience anywhere else. Pornography, gossip and simulated (or sometimes all too real) violence are going to pull in the big crowds, just as they do now, just as they always have. The writing is on the cyber-walls already. Some people rush around on an Xbox live network, shooting at each other's armoured forms with ludicrously baroque weaponry. Others prefer to download video of journalists or aid workers being murdered for the camera. (And some, in this welter of infotainment, do both and don't seem able to make a category distinction between the two). And everybody – and I mean everybody – will sooner or later find their way to the porn sites. Government and religious hierarchy will continue struggling to throw a net over it all, because that's the undying instinct of those who float to the top in any power system, and they will ultimately fail, as they always do, because humans are a stroppy, monkey-curious lot and don't react well to being told to look away.
You can see this last as a positive thing if you like, and on some days I do too. After all, news of human suffering and political evil can now be shunted around the planet to millions of eyes and ears in a matter of minutes. Global appeals can be made and tens of millions of dollars collected for worthy causes in a few days. It's that much harder to cover bad things up these days, and high speed connectivity enables a degree of co-operation and engagement which can often highlight the more attractive elements of our nature. But let's not get carried away here. That same connectivity also empowers race hate and jihad – because no matter what kind of moron or moral retard you are, you can always go on line and find a few more like you. White supremacist websites and message boards exhorting the followers of radical Islam to acts of ever-increasing brutality aren't hard to locate. The same technology that helps the parents of a child with a rare genetic disease find information and emotional support worldwide also enables men with murder in their hearts to make friends.
And for anyone who thinks that getting closer to our neighbours in the global village is going to make us less generally likely to hate or go to war with them, it's worth pointing out that in places like Rwanda and Bosnia, neighbours in actual, not global, villages had absolutely no problem slaughtering each other after decades of peaceful co-existence. Worth pointing out also that the United States of America is undoubtedly the most web-smart nation on the planet, and still manages to be home to some of the most virulently hateful political and religious jingoism this young century has yet seen. Go on line, and you can find it right there with the rest of our bright new future. All the blogging and data exchange and internet chatter in the world could not prevent the US throwing itself enthusiastically into the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and nor has it yet succeeded in bringing the American troops home. Global connectivity will not gift us with angel wings, nor turn us into a race of Dalai Lamas. In the next hundred years, the internet will undoubtedly continue to make life easier and more pleasurable for those human beings lucky enough to have access to it, in much the same way that electricity or the internal combustion engine have done for the last hundred. But the work of being human will still present us with the same moral and emotional toil it always has. Hyperlinks there may be in our future, but there will be no escape hatches and no short cuts.