The computer screen is the retina of the mind’s eye

Computers are already having an outsized impact on our world and, if not controlled, will dominate it.

I want to gauge the impact of computers on the world, the potency of computers as a filter on our society, and explore the fact that the computer screen is the retina of the mind’s eye. This will, I hope, lead the reader to agree with me that computers are necessary for our survival, but also that for us to survive, computers must be significantly absent from our lives.

In a previous essay, I discussed what I call HSM’s Three Places, which is a corollary of Popper’s Three Worlds. Please read the other essay for more detail, but suffice it to say that:

How we think, our ideas, and the computers we build based on these ideas are in a repeating cycle:

1. How we think influences the ideas we come up with
2. Our ideas influence the computers we build
3. Our computers influence how we think

From this system, we can derive a few observations:

1. Computers are a trap

To put it simply, the tools you use condition the actions and ideas you think possible, and those actions and structures most natural to your tools condition what you create. Tools are, therefore, a trap: systems based on tables, hierarchies, that are closed-source or that are otherwise rigid recreate these things in the minds of the users and the next generation of tools.

For many, technology is a just-so story: what we have is just the way things are or even how they should be: if you read a little more you’ll know that most consumer/business computing is a copy of a copy of a copy, usually from IBM, Bell or Xerox; tabulating, telecom and photocopier companies respectively.

These companies had ways of thinking: tabulating is about crunching regular tables of numbers, telecom is about centralized networks, photocopying is about documents and secretarial work. When they got into the computer business, these ways of thinking emerged in the tools they created — and these tools, now on our desks, in our pockets, or (heaven forbid) in our fridges are passing on these ways of thinking to the new generation of tool-makers.

You might think of it like evolution: no living creature can actually create a new attribute, it can only adapt existing attributes; petals are from leaves, the bones in the ear are from the jawbones of distant ancestors, our limbs are from fins; our distant ancestors (perhaps very few of them) could yield today’s immense biodiversity because they were so basic (single celled). Evolution can work only with what it has and can adapt only that.

Indeed, apparently all life on Earth appears to be based on the DNA/RNA model: this isn’t necessarily the only way, it’s just that the biosphere is so intense and competitive that any new approach that emerged after the very dawn of life wouldn’t stand a chance.

Not so with technology: technology evolves, indeed, but it is only confined to the extent that our technological creators look only at what they have and what already exists when they are solving problems.

We create technology and can create it anew at any time, and implement truly novel features — it’s just harder and riskier. All that is required is neatly described by the juxtaposition of two quite simple words: one of Germanic and the other of Greek origin: new ideas. Thinking otherwise makes us the slaves of an unchecked technological ancestral tree, barely of our own creation.

2. Computers are a filter

Computers, thus unsupervised, stand between us and our true nature, allowing only what is normal for them. I’m not just talking about computability or Turing-completeness, I’m talking about the fact that the whole computer world is based on a narrow conception of information processing based on hierarchy, tabular data, one-way relationships, and exclusive, walled-off applications and data types.

This means that, until reformed, we should expect the technology of communication to diminish our vision and block legitimate, wonderful ideas from passing — all the while the technology creators and leaders will tell those whose vision may not pass that their ideas are faulty, unnecessary or incorrect, when in fact it is the opposite.

As such, we should be on the look out for two things:

1. This diminution will continue until we put a stop to it by adding new ideas to the computing field, particularly those that maximize the ethics of our systems.
2. Any choice, action or selection in computing should not be considered in isolation, but in terms of the possibility that it will gain mass adoption and therefore become part of the filter.

Thinking about the evolution comparison, one may ask from where all the profound biodiversity comes, when natural selection itself can work only on what it has. Astonishingly, all this biodiversity comes from random mutations: errors in copying that are usually harmful but useful enough of the time to generate all the traits that we see in nature.

We can derive two further claims from this metaphor:

1. As Nassim Taleb observes, tinkering, aimless wondering and true experimentation are incredibly important because it can take us to places that, before we stumbled into them, we didn’t know existed.
2. With respect to technology, we have the advantage over nature because only we can innovate by deliberate choice and design.

3. The computer screen is the retina of the mind’s eye

An image from David Cronenberg’s Movie “Videodrome,” featuring Dr Brian O’Blivion appearing on a television show, in the form of a physical television.

Computers are a totalizing force, swallowing everything, so much so that it feels as though people may be lulled into experiencing the whole world with a computer in the middle. This may sound outlandish, but remember the extent to which things are computer-mediated today: appliances, cars, media, music, business, information, statistics, news, etc. The way we think is computer-conditioned.

Given the fundamental limits of compatibility and the filtering effect described above, this means that this world of totally computer-mediated life will be much smaller than life in the real world. For a real-world example of this, see Fred Brooks’ wonderful The Mythical Man Month.

In his book, Brooks described how early software companies were concerned that customers might not accept computer systems that couldn’t replicate the customer’s existing way of doing things, such as accounting — companies thought hard about how to make things flexible.

In fact, customers merely adapted their own systems to match how the early inflexible computer did it.

Given, of course, that it is possible that the computer’s way was superior in some cases, and that standardization can deliver significant benefits, the terrifying aspect of this is that people (perhaps after some protestation and huffing) went along with the way the computer did it or the corporation said it should be done. They gave up on their own system, because the computer is powerful and inflexible.

This is to say that by blindly mediating all our lives through computers, we risk filtering out everything that doesn’t fit the modern computing conception of what information and structure is. This is a very narrow and depressing conception and we will apparently accept it, not with a bang, but with a whimper.

What do I mean when I say that the computer screen is the retina of the mind’s eye? This is a modification of “The television screen is the retina of the mind’s eye,” spoken by Brian O’Blivion in David Cronenberg’s film Videodrome:

“The battle for the mind of North America will be fought in the video arena: the Videodrome. The television screen is the retina of the mind’s eye. Therefore, the television screen is part of the physical structure of the brain. Therefore, whatever appears on the television screen emerges as raw experience for those who watch it. Therefore, television is reality, and reality is less than television.”

Videodrome, a movie released in 1983, was on the money: all of the above is true today with the computer screen, except wrapped back around itself: screens so high-fidelity that you can’t see the pixels (making you forget that they’re there), while interactivity simulates real play with physical objects. Of course, to make the metaphor complete, we’d need to incorporate the multimedia and processing aspects of computing: sound, touch, thought — but Cronenberg’s neat connection of two projective matrices (the retina and the television screen) is much more potent on its own.

I initially rejected O’Blivion’s statement that “reality is less than television” until I realized that reality is less than television or the computer if you let them filter your reality. Reality is less than the computer if your only account of reality comes from a computer (a computer can know of nothing outside itself). To avoid this, you must experience reality: unmediated and head on.

There are, therefore, two things that we must hold in mind:

1. Building this retina and using it is perhaps humanity’s only hope of survival; the Internet is a shining city of multicultural collaboration, and we need to develop it and better tools to coordinate sufficient to solve our problems.
2. Computers, as they exist today, have the potential to crush human individuality, spirit and consciousness, filtering out everything but that which conforms to a narrow view of existence.

Or more succinctly:

1. Computers are necessary for our survival.
2. Today’s computers are anti-human.

We must embrace computers: our future depends upon it. But we must at times (perhaps most of the time) shun them with the same zeal and build tranquil areas of our lives without them, or else we will forget what reality is. We must cultivate our experience outside them: silence, nature, randomness.

We must remind people (especially table- and hierarchy-heads who say “you can’t do that with a computer”) that their conception is often a copy of a copy of a copy, and that they are confusing the filtered world for the real world. To preserve humanity, computers must be reformed.

If you wish to be part of this reformation, reach out here.