Authors: David Jay Brown,Rebecca McClen Novick
Oz: Let’s wait a minute after that. I have to settle down after that one. No, I’ll try to follow you, easy-like. A couple of years ago I wrote a poem—now, don’t get worried—and it seemed particularly apt for this evening. So, if you don’t mind, I’d like to read it to you. Oddly enough, it’s about technology.
Considering That Mind May Just be Very Complicated Brain:
Some Furtive Afterthoughts
Said technology, letting down his defenses
The reason I’m getting so tense is
It’s perplexing to find
There is more in my mind
Then ever got in through my senses
If I were to take the position
Being conscious is but a condition
I’d be forced to admit
There’s no more to it
Than measles or malnutrition
But in contemplating the latter
I could go as mad as a hatter
And to save my poor mind
I’ll leave reason behind
And prepare to intuit the matter
The alternative isn’t too keen
To be plagued by a ghostly machine
And a brain playing host
To an erasable ghost
Doesn’t do much to brighten the scene
So here’s to the health of the Deus ex machina
Please, techno, don’t put a crack in her
And the trade is unfair
For some soft and hard ware
So! Let’s put the old spirit back in her!
Timothy: Oz is Allen Ginsberg’s cousin. Poets run in the family.
Rebecca: Laura, what do you think the purpose of technology is? Laura: There are a hundred purposes. It’s like asking what is the purpose of a human being? Technology itself doesn’t have a purpose, except what we give to it. However, one of the purposes of technology, it seems to me, is to have a few very intelligent people construct extraordinary machines. Then
the people who are not so intelligent can go and push the buttons and feel very good. That is one of the purposes isn’t it? (Laughter) We sit in our room, we push the button, and we go to the moon. And, oh, it’s so easy! But I think that it may even be too easy. I have an addiction—well, maybe more than one—to catalogues.
I receive all of these fantastic catalogues. One of them, which I have here, shows a young boy slouching in an executive chair. The boy is about twelve or thirteen years old, and he can push a button and be in the sky, or under the Earth—and do everything that he wants, just by pushing buttons. Now compare that to a boy that escalates a mountain, at his own risks, and takes the danger of going up. He exercises his muscles, gets disciplined, and puts himself at risk in order to have that same experience that the boy slouching in the chair has. Now which one of those two people will be a more lively human being, a more useful human being, or a more conscious human being? The choice is yours.
David: Timothy, as technology has developed, one could easily make the argument that it has made us more comfortable—but has it actually made us better human beings in any way? Do you think that technology has contributed to making us smarter, more conscious, more empathic, or in any way superior to the way that we used to be?
Timothy: This is absolute gibberish babble to me! What the fuck do you mean by “have we become better human beings in any way?” What technology are you talking about? The bow and arrow? The microscope? Penicillin?
David: I just mean technology in general.
Timothy: (Reading the questions for the panelists) “What is the evidence for
and against this?” Now we’re in a courthouse!
Rebecca: Maybe you could just talk about the technological progress of the last two hundred years, say since the Industrial Revolution, where it’s really taken off like wildfire. Do you see that as actually having improved our lives as human beings?
Timothy: When you say the word “our,” that’s a predatory pronoun. I just despise it when people ask ‘should we bomb Iraq?’ I just feel like, what the fuck you talking about white man? Keep me out of that!
David: Let’s put the question this way, Timothy, are there any technologies that you think have made us smarter, more empathic, or better human beings?
Timothy: How do you define a ‘better human being’?
David: More empathic, more intelligent, more conscious, more ecologically-aware, more creative, more imaginative, kinder, and more compassionate.
Rebecca: Timothy, you define it! You’re the one that we want to hear from. Timothy: What do these words mean? There’s no question that mechanical technology has made it possible to move around easier. Are you going to walk home tonight, Laura? Climb the mountain up there? (Laughter)
Laura: I have not decided yet.
Oz: It’s a full moon.
Laura: Well then, yes.
David: Timothy, you’re such a rascal! Okay, let’s put it this way. Towards the end of Aldous Huxley’s life someone asked him what he had learned about improving the human situation, and what wisdom he could pass along. Aldous said something like, I’m a bit embarrassed to admit this, but after all my many years of study and thought, the best advice that I offer is that I wish that people would just be a little kinder to each other.
Timothy: That was a beautiful statement. I think of that very often, Laura.
David: Timothy, do you think that technology has contributed to doing that in any way? Has any form of technology, in your opinion, contributed to making us a little kinder to one another?
Timothy: Who’s using it? It all comes down to individual interactions between interpersonal people. Everyone that I’m working with in this field—and there are many of them in this room here this evening—is kind, and we’re all in touch with each other. We’re communicating at rates that are much higher than most people. We feel that thrill of breaking through. I can’t generalize about the human race, and all that, but I can tell you that I know hundreds and hundreds of people in the new generation—under the age of thirty—who are very skeptical of all this stuff about the past and compassion.
It’s talk, talk, talk. You can talk about compassion all you want. But the new generation is high-tech, and they’re using technology to bring people closer. We’re working on programs that will allow people to be multi-linguistic, able to speak many languages—a global language, a global village. Yes, we’re going to bring the world together. It all goes back to Marshall McLuhan saying that we’ve got to make the global village with the new, inexpensive digital programs.
By the way, did you know that there is something like seven million electronic bulletin boards out there, in every country of the world? It’s mainly young people communicating with each other. There are thirty or forty million people communicating right now. Yes, we are learning how to use electric technology. I’m talking electrons and digital. Rebecca: How do you feel that electric technology has improved your life?
Timothy: I talk to my brain all the time, and she tells me, “Oh, Timothy, when you started using LSD that was great! You woke me up from my slumber.” Brains love light. Brains love to be stimulated. We’ve got a new concept now that I call RPM, which means ‘revelations per minute’. 25,000 years ago it would be one revelation a month, or maybe even a lifetime. The average ten year old kid in America today is watching T.V., just flipping around, has got fifty channels, maybe 500 channels. There’s more history that happens in one hour on the T.V. than a hundred years of the past. Then that kid goes down to the video arcade, and the video arcade is loaded with trillions and trillions of bits of information. Yes, my brain is happier. I’m happier. And the people that I work with, we’re operating at a much higher communication rates than most other people.
David: So you’re saying that it accelerates your mind, keeps you more informed, speeds up communication, and, for a certain subset of people, is changing their lives.
Timothy: It puts us incredibly in touch. We can be hundreds of miles away. It’s just like the telephone did for the ears. We can do it now with graphics.
David: Did you want to say something, Carolyn?
Carolyn: Yes, the electric technology goes beyond space and time. It makes you capable of doing things instantaneously, and doing a myriad of things at the same time. It speeds everything up to the higher frequencies. Again, it’s making something visible that we can do metaphysically.
Rebecca: We’ve heard from Timothy about a generation of high-tech people, skeptical about compassion. He’s talked about the speed of communication and stimulating the brain. The question was, although technology may have made us more comfortable, in your opinion, has it contributed to making us smarter, more conscious, or in any way superior to the way we used to be?
Laura: If being smarter means having more information, well then certainly we have more information. But the amount of distraction that we have is unavoidable, and I don’t think that so much distraction makes for more intelligence or more happiness. Naturally, the whole thing is always a choice. We always have the last word. It’s always what we choose for distraction or for everything. So the answer is always, either you can be a victim or you can be a beneficiary of these wonderful inventions. Of course, I must say that maybe my remarks are a bit tinted by envy because I don’t know how to use a computer. So you have to keep my remarks under that consideration.
Rebecca: Does anyone want to venture an answer to this question? In general, obviously, we have to talk about generalizations. It’s impossible to talk about every single little detail about everything, and to define everything.
Oz: When we can invent a machine that will make us more compassionate, make us more virtuous, make us more truthful—then I think that technology will get my vote. Until then, it seems to me that the jury is still out on it, as far as I’m concerned.
Timothy: How about the telephone? It’s terrible that people can stay at home and talk to people without leaving the house, without any real human communication. We should stop it! Particularly teenagers, who are going to want to use the telephone, and then they’re never going to want to go out and fuck a boy or a girl. I mean, really, come on. When Gutenberg invented the printing press, and books came out, people said, oh no, kids are just going to want to stay home and read books. But we now know that reading books stimulates the mind, and the faster that your mind goes the more you learn. The brain can handle twenty-five million signals a second!
Nina: Well, thanks to this man (she looks at Timothy), I was once in an altered state. You know, what can I say? In that altered state I had a vision where some enormous book of history was being opened up for me, page by page. I saw some very interesting scenes, and I always saw the same Adam and Eve—but differently. Maybe there was a different color scheme, or historical setting, but it was always the same Adam and Eve going through history. Then came the page that showed the Gutenberg Bible, and suddenly, behind that big, old book, up popped a clown. He was laughing and saying, Ha, ha, ha. Took a wrong turn there, didn’t you!
David: John, I’m curious what you think about this. Do you think that high technology has improved our lives?
John: Let’s see, what has technology done? Speed up communication, that’s for sure. It’s allowed individuals to access all other individuals on the planet, through the use of satellites. You can watch CNN anywhere in the world and find out what the news is, as long as it’s censored by CNN. It seems to me like a lot of the communication that’s taking place today is trivial. As a wave of peace is spreading over the planet, and wars are getting smaller and smaller, there’s a lot of bullshit that’s filling in the space. We don’t see any significant discussions on television about the mind or the brain, or intimate social relations.
Sex is cut out from practically everything but white H.B.O. shows. Seems to me like everyone should have an isolation tank and get free of all this! This is my addition to technology, the isolation tank. In addition to this, ParkDavis is giving us a technical advance by marketing ketamine, and this is creating a whole new subculture known as “ketamaniacs”—of which there are some on this panel. I won’t name them. (John looks at David) Anyway, if you get in the isolation tank for an hour a day you’re going to obliterate everything that CNN has taught you.