haha, I was wondering if anyone would grab that one. This is probably the biggest and geekiest thread I've ever seen. Good job to all!

The show must go on!

First off, dystopic, any noteworthy updates on the book?

Secondly, did anyone see the meteor that passed within a couple lunar distances of Earth? It was on Tuesday, and supposedly it could be easily seen with a telescope, but I don't have one.

Thirdly, to actually reboot the thread: I read an article in Wired magazine about a couple of computer programmers who were focused on creating true AI. One of them wasn't totally stable in the head, and unfortunately he ended up killing himself, but in any case, he always said that the goal of his project was literal immortality. Once he has discovered how a computer could store intelligence, he would upload his consciousness into the computer, thus no longer needing his human body. So I'm wondering, assuming people were willing to do this, would this be a feasible or even more efficient alternative to sending colonists with bodies (and all appropriate life support)? Or, feasibility aside, is this just cool? Heck, so many people play games like WoW, I wouldn't be surprised if people wanted to stay in cyberspace permanently.

But they would still need to do something worth the server support it would require to keep an entire human being online. What I mean is, they would still need to have a 'job' of some sort in order to earn the things they need. Technical Support for instance, what if they're 'brain' (hard drive) gets corrupted? UH OH! lol

first not only do you need to know how a computer stores info. You also need to know how the brain stores info. A human brain stores more info than it's design would suggest. True most of it is hardwired but it still contains more info than it should.


Second you might be able to transfer the info but I don't think you can transfer what makes you you.

I understand that we are far, far from achieving anything like this, and that it probably wouldn't suit the sort of sci-fi dystopic is aiming for, but I was just thinking what the implications would be if it were possible. Would some people outright choose to live in a virtual world? Would it be easier/more beneficial to "store" people in computers, and then possibly regrow their bodies on whatever colony world and download the consciousness back into them, or perhaps put them in humanoid robots? What about (Insert question here)?

Very interesting. Probably on the same note (or perhaps an evolutionary step to your note), why about using the brain as a computer? Our brains do control a lot.

Imagine A pilot of a ship, instead of using phyical controls, actually plugging his brain into the ships computer. He/she would essentially embody the ship, Sensors, controls, etc would all be "felt" by the person, instead of read off a screen. It could be a very interesting prospect

not really... i'm getting to the point where i'll start beating myself up if i don't work more seriously on writing. does that count as noteworthy?



ah, classic sci fi. i've seen this plot device used in Ghost in the Machine, Star Trek: TNG, and Cowboy Bebop. just to name the ones that come to mind quickly. more to follow later, i gotta get to work right now.

actually, i decided to take the bus instead of walk. it's cold out.



sadly, no.



yeah, i think so.



sounds kinda like the Asgard from Stargate.

i don't think current computer hardware could support a mind as we have them. the wiring is fundamentally different. computers operate, at their most basic level, on a if/then (or yes/no) paradigm. the human brain is more of a more/less paradigm. it's true that most neurons have a "critical point" to which they must be excited before activating, kind of like a logic gate, but the factors influencing their activation are not like bits at all (linear packets of stimulus electricity). neurons activate for many numbers of reasons, giving human circuitry a much less linear arrangement.

this isn't to say the human brain couldn't be software emulated via brute force computation. if things continue to move as they are now, i could imagine it even happening potentially within out lifetimes. but it'll take understanding out own brains at a level we might not reach within out grandchildren's lifetimes.



like "Pilot" in Farscape? i think that'd be possible, but i have one, i guess, concrete tether to add. an adult human mind can't gain new senses, but a child's mind could. if you could interface a computer and a brain, you could feasible give a human being the ability to "see" radio waves, or otherwise sense some part of the physical world we can't directly sense now. but an adult mind (the software or operating system, if you will) is so fine-tuned to its hardware that it can't really 'learn' to have, say, extra arms it can control. and obviously out brains, as they genetically are, aren't wired for that. so we'd need to engineer "expansions" for the brain that'd allow the mind to run new add-ons.

but, interfacing a computer and a brain and sending the brain sensation signals it already knows how to process should be a bit easier. the thing is, all those signals would have to be on the brain's own terms. so the pilot wouldn't "have" radar because the plane does; rather, the pilot would have to have some sort of interface, as s/he does now, using one of the 5.5 senses humans are born with (i consider language half a sense).

you forgot the original star trek and mudd

oh yeah, it's just the first few i could think of. this kinda thing has been a mainstay in SF for a very long time.

though on a further note, and echoing theStormWeaver's previous comment, i think my biggest fear of "downloading" my mind into an electronic device would be reliability. if there's one thing i've seen (one thing i think we've all seen) about computers is that they're prone to f***ing up. what would happen if your "mind" crashed, or your "brain" experienced hardware failure?

i mean, to be sure these things do happen with our organic hard and soft ware. i can easily imagine comparing neurological trauma and defects to hardware malfunction, and i don't think it's too much a stretch to look at psychological and cognitive disorders as bugs in our software (with a state of total catatonia being akin to a BSOD ).

however, along these lines, would such problems manifest differently in an electronic brain and computationally emulated mind? i'd imagine so, since it'd involve (at least in the way i imagine it) 'build up' a human mind with an extra layer of foundation (the software needed to emulate a brain). the presence of new kinds of psychosis could definately make for an interesting plot device.

A team of scientists experimenting with remote manipulation technology found that a chimp could understand and utilize an extra prosthetic arm relatively quickly. They placed the chimp in one room that had a window looking into another, and in the second room was the arm attached to the wall and a piece of fruit. The arm was attached via electrodes to the chimp's brain, and the chimp seemed to realize fairly quickly that it had influence over the arm and was eventually able to grab the piece of fruit and place it in a chute. So I wouldn't say its impossible for an adult to gain new senses. There has also been work with blind adults who attach electronic devices to their tongues, and then a low resolution camera is able to translate an image into a stimulus on the tongue. After a year or so the adults can "see" through their tongues. Even though this is utilizing an old sense, such a radical transformation is arguably a "new" sense, indicating that anyone with enough experience using such a device should be able to train their brain to do stuff.



To the best of my knowledge, that would bring the total up to 7.5 senses. Our sense of balance is commonly overlooked, and we also have the sense to know where and how our body is positioned without actually looking at it (there's a technical term for this, but I don't remember).

body position is usually lumped together with touch, as is balance IIRC. most of our sense are actually an array of senses. touch, for example, is actually the ability to feel pain, pressure, temperature, body position and the direction of gravity ('balance'). vision, likewise, is an amalgamation of several sub-senses (seeing contrast, seeing movement, seeing faces, etc.). each of these sub-senses occupies a different section of the visual cortex. neurologically speaking, we have a sensation hierarchy, rather than five unique senses.

so i should have prefaced what i said a bit more. i'd actually forgotten about that chimp experiment, so yeah, learning to use a new limb obviously isn't as hard. but a couple caveats. IIRC the chimp learned to use the arm, not to feel with the arm. it's brain lacks an area with which to process any sensation such an arm could generate. could you "splice" it with the area of the brain that feels the other arm, but that'd make it very difficult to tell which arm was feeling what.

let's take vision, as an alternate. as i assume you know, the visible spectrum of light is only a very small portion of the EM spectrum. if we could "hear" (and emit) radio waves, we'd basically have telepathy. or better yet, if we could learn to see, say, gamma rays, it could be a major biological advantage (avoid areas where you might suffer radiation poisoning). however, i don't think an adult brain could learn to "see" a new color. we could wire the brain to detect gamma as blue instead of normal blue, but not a color we can't already see. there are 3 and only 3 primary colors in our spectrum because (ready for it?) there are exactly 3 color receptors in the eye. if we could engineer a receptor to pick up another wavelength and wire it to the brain, i think a developing brain/mind could learn to parse that data. i suspect this because of what's been observed in the opposite situation. when children are born with major eye defects leaving them blind, there's a critical window in which physicians have to correct the defects or the child will be blind permanently. while part of the brain is wired to see, it won't develop if there's no input. after about 6 months, that part of the brain starts to re-organize itself, bolstering other senses and cognitive abilities. this also happens, albeit to a significantly lesser extent, with adults who become blind.

so perhaps i'm wrong. maybe an adult could learn to make sense of a new sense (ha), but i have to believe it'd be vastly more difficult than a child picking it up.

actually, along those lines i have an idea i want to discuss later. it's actually about computers. i think you'll all find it an interesting idea. i don't have time right now to explain in full detail because i'm about to go out, but basically it's my take on a computer you wear (glasses instead of monitor, gloves instead of a keyboard, etc.). yes it's been done, but i think what makes my vision interesting are the particulars... the UI, networking, and the various discreet processing components computers might take on.

we've never really discussed computers in great detail here, so i think i'm interested in taking it up now.

...8 days later, my idea has fermented quite well.

since i've built my PC i've also started learning a great deal about computer technology. in light of some current trends and new technologies that i think will be readily available, i've sort of created this idea of how computer systems could come to play a role in everyday life, and i'd like to share it and see what you all think--and even add to this idea and help develop it further.

in the way that telephone lines are part of current infrastructure, i don't think it's too much to think that whole computer systems will continue to form more and more integral parts of possible furture infrastructures. the real question is one of what form(s) this could take. and given that i'm thinking of humans my sci fi universe in terms of a diaspora rather than a single, coherent culture, there needn't be only one form that computers integrate themselves into human life, let alone at all. in other words, this is just one possibility, and there are many.

it's interesting that i can go into almost building at UCSD, which is really the size of a small town, and login to almost any computer, and get to all my files and any network-supported programs (as well as anything the local terminal has). with so many things becoming wireless, i can easily imagine a world where one could simply walk about town, remain logged into to her or her account, and need only carry basic human interface hardware to have basic functionality. private commerce or government supply wireless systems to support whatever legitimate users happen to be in their area.

so here's the basic setup: a pair of clear glasses with a matrix of light-emitting conductive polymer chains ("monitor specs" if you will); a pair of eye sensors adhered to the face, used to track information on eye movement, which is then used to adjust the monitor specs for optimal display; a pair of ear buds and a voice receiver, with a noise filtration switch; and finally, something like a pair of gloves that would serve both to track hand and finger movement and create minor magnetic resistance to simulate tactile interaction with virtual objects and other, stationary interface devices (more on that later).

i'm not sure if all of the details i mentioned in these hardware devices make sense. essentially, i'm imagining a computer system that integrated itself into the actual world you live in. you wear these glasses, and you can see virtual objects, hear them, and even in some cases think you're touching them to some degree. networked computer systems would keep track of the 3D world to basic degrees, and they would allow you to 'pin' various objects to your world in different ways. you could place a virtual object in a specific location in the (otherwise) real world, and keep it there (like pinning a note to the fridge)--but you could also specify viewing rights. or you could pin an object to your local environment, like your left, so that whenever you looked left you could view your calendar, or the news, or for that matter, porn (i mean, be honest here... you know people would). finally, you could pin an object to your visual field, so that, for instance, no matter what direction you looked, you'd see the time in the lower right of your visual field.

the glasses are also capable of simulating depth by off-setting the appearnce of virtual objects on a per-lens basis. i'm sure that for those who need corrective lenses (if such eye impediments continue to exist), the visual interface capabilities of this system might even be able to help the visually impaired in ways beyond those of normal corrective lenses.

an interface tablet could be one additional piece of hardware that could prove useful. but i think it wouldn't have to be more than a portable, wireless touchpad capable of generating a mild magnetic field to interact with touch gloves. the monitor specs could skin the pad to look like anything, from a newspaper to a keyboard.

i could even imagine lots of people opting to get the sensor hardware installed subdermally. little 'sensor dots', powered from the body's heat and electrical field itself, that need only transmit a signal a matter of a foot or two at most, and could be "installed" in a simple outpatient procedure (and good niobium alloys have an incredibly low rate of tissue rejection).

i think the use of magnetic fiels to create a tactile interface would have to be pretty limited in most cases. too strong a field will mess up the computer systems themselves. while most circuitry can potentially be made optronic (using photons instead of electrons to communicate data), i don't know if a non-magnetic solution for RAM. i could see future arcades having magnetic virtual rooms (it's a lot easier to shield a room with strong magnetic fields than it is to shield every device sensitve to them). wealthier folks could probably have them at home, but i don't see that being something the average joe would afford (basically a holodeck).

i mean, this is all similar to the idea of holograms. in ST they're 'photons and force fields,' but since i can't even fathom how to do that, monitor specs and all this stuff seems more practical (and economically feasible).

going below the hood, so to speak, the trends in computing we see now are towards the "3 D's" or processing: diversified, dedicated, discrete. every system has the (multi-core) CPU, the northbridge and southbridge, a GPU of some sort and typically an audio chipset of some sort. the consumer market also sees physics processors and RAID controllers, not to mention all the MOSFETs used every whichaway.

i think we can expect to see at least one additional dedicated processor: the BPU, or behavior processing unit. the basic function this chip has in a given system is to make sense of the human user. it's the core of a sub-system dedicated to adapting the computer interface to the individual user, aspects of their psychology, intellect, knowledge base, and so on. in time it could be the core that manages verbal interaction (or even cognitive interaction... the technology really is closer than you might think).

the other thing i think we can expect to see change is the nature of the CPU itself. in a few years i imagine quad core CPUs could be the standard on most mid and low end machines, but what comes down the road? i mean, when i play GalCiv and look at my resource manager, one core maxed out and the other core never peaks above 15% unless a virus scan starts or something. if i wanted to blow my credit score on the best machine money could buy, GC2 would still only use one core. graphical rendering tends to benefit from as many cores as you can get, as long as you configure them well. at present home user applications don't tend to be multi-threaded, but that's changing and i'm sure it will continue to. and the ability for systems to multi-task and for programs to run lots of threads will continue to scale with the number or processing cores each system has.

i wonder if the 'next big thing' could be some kind of master core. these needn't necessarily be more powerful than what'd be needed to run an operating system, but their key function i think would be at the hardware level. i don't know what'd be needed to create allow processing cores to act alternate on separate threads at the same time or in unison on a single thread as a single core--perhaps some kind of bridge or switch. to make a comparison to GPU technologies, something that could turn SLi on or off dynamically, depending on current needs. so i've got a die that's divided physically into 9 zones. the 8 outter zones are processing cores, and the center one is the master system core. it runs the OS and gives the OS or user the ability to access the needs at hand and configure the system resources accordingly. if i was running one single application, it could configure the 8 other zones to function as a single core; but the more i had going on at once, the more likely it might be to "break off" a core to work on separate processing threads. i'm sure public systems would leave this automated (or at least not up to the consumer user), but i could definately see personal home systems supporting custom/manual configurations for home users.

i don't know if what i'm saying about this kind of CPU technology has any merit at all--it could well be that this is impossible, or that for that matter that computers already work this way and i just don't understand them as well as i think i do. my knowledge isn't as firm as it could be.

anyway, that's just the silver lining aspect of the ideas that've been floating around in my head. this doesn't even get into all the dystopian possibilities, which is where the real intrigue can lie for many stories.

thoughts and reflections are appriciated as always.

Just a small idea; perhaps this system would include simple integrated GPS. Then, there would be no need for any sort of physical signposts or anything. Imagine driving down a blank highway, but with the glasses on all the road signs whizz by you virtually. A whole city could be composed of featureless white buildings, but with the glasses on it would appear to be Las Vegas. Store owners would have to communicate with a central "city planning" computer, where they would upload schematics for their advertisements or whatever they needed. This system could even have some functionality of our current internet; your preferences could be tracked by cookies and targeted advertising could be implemented, showing you only the newest video games when you drive by "Advertising zone 738".

I don't know about you but I would not want to wear glasses all the time and I have to wear glasses all the time.

What about contacts then? I'm sure there would be comfortable or otherwise unnoticeable eyepieces that people could wear in this future. But yeah, I could see how that might get slightly annoying.

Anyways, the only problem a fully integrated computer system poses is sheer logistics. If everyone is was on the internet requiring high-resolution data at lightning speeds at all times, they would need one hell of a connection.

and one break down.

well yeah, this is the future after all. but consider that computer power doubles every 1.5 years. i'm sure having a phone line in every home one seemed logistically impossible.



who said anything about wearing them all the time? you can take them off.

Ohhh, I like this conversation! My Iner geek has been woken.



That's been done, I believe. Intel/AMD were working on a system where a multicore proc would "pretend" to be a single core proc. Essentially a Divider would divy up commands between the cores and then combine the outputs. I remember reading about it a few years ago. I can't remember what it was called, but I haven't heard anything of it recently, so I'm figuring it was a flop; especially since developlers are willingly making thier software multicore compatible, with the exception of older programs (and games), but modern processors (and future ones) should be able to run them with out the need for multpiple cores.



We have a similar system here in the city, expect we don't have computers, they are true terminals. The monitor, keyboard and mouse acutally plugin to a glorified newtork device/modem. There's actually 2 systems. Some terminals have access to the meta frame for the City, which essentially gives you windows XP ( the terminal version - yes there is a such version) in all its glory on your terminal (hence we have internet access, and network drives, etc). All the terminals are linked into MIS, The city's intranet which is used for city specific services (police, fire, etc)


I think the key components for having a true, wearable, mobily computing solution as you suggest would be two key things: usability and need.

Most of us are kinda dorky, we build our computers, debate science, enjoy working with electronics, the majority of the populace doesn't. Take Apple, for example. Their sucess comes from making easy to use, powerful products. My significant other hates the fact that I have 5 remotes in my living room. Actually, I hate having 5 remotes in my living room too. We just want to push one button watch the DVD, or listen to music, etc..

Also need. Fortunately we are having a mobile electronics "revolution" with the introduction and widespread acceptance of the cell phone. Where once, people with blackberries were considered dorks, everyone now has a "smart phone" that does everything from GPS to email, to photos, to oh yeah, phone calls. People already have those little bluetooth earbuds they walk around with. Its really only a matter of time, till someone builds a simple eyepeice for their Iphone so they can check their email, etc with out touching the device.

I'd imagine at first it would be touch or voice controlled. Using the Iphone as an example, the person would still touch the screen, but the images would go to the glasses. Or alternatively the bluetooth headset, since they can do voice activation would simply take voice commands. Imagine a bus full of people shouting "Scroll Down!" I mean everyone, especially kids, is usually shouting on their cell phones anyway.

That brings me to an interesting question. How would this affect edicate and person to person interaction? As a child, I was taught that the person infront of you was more important than the person on the phone (in most cases). I've noticed, to my surprise that kids these days do the opposite.

good point about how programming is changing, and really good (rhetorical) questions and ponderings about how technologies will change human relations. that's why this stuff interests me and one of the themes i could dwelling on in more than one story.

before getting into that, what you were saying about the mobile electronics revolution is, IMO anyway, one example of a larger trend in our economy: that supply can create demand almost as easily as demand creating supply. new products are constantly pushed with rigorous marketing campaigns that created demand for a product that wouldn't have been there otherwise. so all you really need to move products like these is the ability to make money selling them and a good marketing team.

but yeah, when it comes to social interaction, i think i could tell a really interesting story with these sorts of things in mind. there's a certain stigma against people who choose not to keep up with the jones. two of my bosses don't have cell phones, and i've heard several quips about how they need to get with the times (and made a few myself). i myself don't have a car, and especially living in southern CA, people sometimes act like i'm crazy.

there's that notion, as cliche as it is, of being alone in a sea of people. well, imagine how much more magnified that feeling could be if you were one person who simply didn't enjoy being plugged in all the time. and what about personal appearances. if you had these monitor goggles, and they covered both eyes, could you create some programming that'd make you appear 20 pounds lighter and 10 years younger to others, as long as they kept their monitor specs on? perhaps. and if that became common enough, might people simply prefer to keep them on all the time? see and live in a world that's created virtually? it really doesn't matter if you think you're blasting music at 180 decibles because the guy in the next cubicle can't hear it at all.

this makes me think of Lord of the Flies. one thing i've noticed is a lot of online communication is that people are way more likey to say and imply things they'd never do in person, and i call that "the mud mask effect." and that sort of social vulture like behavior leads to isolation. but where Holden Caulfield experienced his isolation physically, a similar person in a future society like this might see it in a bus full of catatonic-looking people with synthetic light reflected in their eyes.

I think with the social stigmatism, you have some very good points. We actually teased the hell out of one of my coworkers casue his wife wanted a cell phone, and he thought it was a waste. My father's new boss, was computer illiterate. After some training, he's learned how to use a computer, but before, he was used to using a typewriter for the last 50 years, so why change? It was comfortable.



What about the opposite too? What about a person who is soo used to "electronic" interaction, that they don't really develope normal human to human social skills. Interestingly, there was a gentleman on John Stewart's show (crap what is it called, Today Show?)last night speaking of the same thing. He pointed out how some people are more attatched to the online world than the real world. Take for example, the middle schooler that committed suicide cause of being harrassed on Myspace. Imagine what would happen if she was harrassed in real life? You can turn off, delete an account on line. How would she cope with real unavoidable life?

When I was an RA, every year I had a freshman that was "Video game Addicted." Essentially they were one with the computer/xbox, more than they got along with real humans. Ususally they would fail out as they stopped going to class, hanging out with others, etc.

Their Best Friend online could be the guy they work next too and are too afraid to start a conversation with. Hell they could even hate their respective selves in the real world and complain to eachother about thier crazy co-workers online with no idea it is themselves.

that'd be The Daily Show



that's the main reason QWERTY keyboards are still the standards. there are several more efficient designs, but since everyone already knows QWERTY, it's not easy to change things (though individuals do take it upon themselves).



one thing i learned in sociology is not to take the term "normal" lightly, though i don't think they way you use the idea here is too radical by any means. for us, polite, in-person interaction with strangers might be normal, but in another society, it might be unusual.

of course there's something to be said for in-person interaction being "normal," since it's presumably the only means of interaction we've ever known that doesn't require some kind of technology (in a broad sense of the word; written langugage is just as much a technology as the telephone).

however, think about the diversity of in-person interaction that might be possible in different societies. in more traditional, small-scale societies, the idea of "anonymous" interaction might not exist, since you're likely to know everyone you'll interact wtih. different contexts require different modes of interaction and communication. even in these societies, speaking to a cheif is very different than speaking to a fellow hunter.

similarly, in our own society dealing with a stranger by phone is different than a close relation by phone. all of those things are different than dealing with someone in person, by email, or by the lost art of the hand-written letter.

so i guess the point i'm getting at is that the dichotomy of real life vs. virtual interaction is simiplistic. it's not useless, especially because it's something most people can readily understand. but from a social scientist's point of view at least, it is a simplification, and you can learn equally interesting things by paying attention to the particulars of every form and circumstance of communication.

bringing this back into sci fi, there's some interesting examples of virtual interaction in Arthur C. Clark's The City and the Stars, where people could project virtual selves (images of them selves that would appear to others and sensory impressions from an appropriate point of view) anywhere throughout the city of Diaspur, or into a complete virtual world. i don't think he developed the idea as far as he could have, but then i don't think it was meant to be a central focus of the story. another interesting take is (amusingly enough) "the metaverse" from Neil Stephenson's Snow Crash, where people could be killed with neuro-viral jpeg files that could scramble their synapses.

Very true, I was speaking more along the lines of individuals retreating to the virtual world as its more comforting than the real world.

While there still are heirarchies in both, the heirarchies are different. The internet is largely anonymous. We can be anyone, anything we want. It's also ordered. Take this forum for example, everyone has a turn to speak and is given equal oppurtunitiy.

Also as you add layers of technology, communication is lost. A good amount of communication is non spoken. Tone of voice, Body Stance, Eye contact, etc... Sure we have analogs for these things in the internet, but AM I EXCITED OR ANGRY OR JUST HAVE MY CAPS LOCK ON? On top of it, the analogs are defined. X means happy, etc. In a sense we pigeon hole our body language so that others can try to understand what we are saying subliminally. Thus communication on line (like a forum!) is more... certian, scientific, translatable. Where Human to human interaction is not.

There's enough differences that some would prefer surfing message boards or playing Halo rather than going out on a date or out with friends.

I'm just wondering if adding more technology to the human experience, ala "The City and the Stars", would tend to "dehumanize" human interaction to a more defined, classified set of expressions ("I have a happiness rating of 7 today" or "lol" vs. "rofl").



And oh yeahh, The Daily Show, thanks! I totally mind blanked on that one.

hehehe denyasis, you'd make an excellent dystopian writer (or a sociologist!). specifically what you're describing kind of reminds me of a book by the marxian cultural theorist Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, but reading that wiki link won't give you much of a hint as to why. sooo.... (dystopic busts out his copy):

"Under the rule of a repressive whole, liberty can be made into a powerful instrument of domination. The range of choice open to the individual is not the decisive factor in determining the degree of human freedom, but what can be chosen and what is chosen by the individual. The criterion for free choice can never be an absolute one, but neither is it entirely relative. Free election of masters does not abolish the masters or the slaves. Free choice among a wide variety of goods and services does not signify freedom if these goods and services sustain social controls over a life of toil and fear--that is, if they sustain alienation. And the spontaneous reproduction of superimposed needs by the individual does not establish autonomy; it only testifies to the efficacy of the controls."

now, that's a dense enough quote to begin with, and its relevance is also tied into a lot of my own observations and opinions about modern society. before i go on, i want to make something clear. i do see a plethora of problems in modern society, but i don't seek to blame. i might discuss the government, for example, in great detail when i talk about some problems, but i don't see "the government" as any more to blame than everyone else. this is society, and to some extent it includs everybody. so if there is blame to be assigned, in my mind everyone's at least partly responsible. but blame isn't my game. i don't care about how done it, i care about making it better. in my own way, i guess writing (and eventually teaching) are the best ways for me to pursue the goal of betterment for everyone; these are my greatest skills.

so, now that i'm done with the histrionic disclaimer, back to technology and the dehumanized society. i think it's interesting that you use that word. one work in that quote above that has a lot of charge in marxian rhetoric is 'alienation'. for marx, if you can't control the work you do in your own life, you become separated from it. but because it's the external proof of your existence--your measurable impact on the world--you also see yourself reflected in it. for marx when you don't have control over your own work, you lose an anchor to the immediate, physical world. but there's more. human empathy is based on the ability to see oneself in others, and see others in oneself. not being able to see yourself in your work, you also lose a lens through which to see others. it's no great shock that people bond at work and over work. the terms by which you know yourself are the terms by which you know others. and it's from that emotional relationship that we develop a sense of group identity--be it tribal, religious, national, or simply "human."

the think to understand marx, you have to understand what he thinks of work. marx looked at everyone who's ever lived as enslaved. at first, we were slaves to nature and our basic needs--and ultimately, that's the cause of all slavery. but as society's developed, we've learned to produce more than we need to stave off hunger, disease and the elements--yet everywhere, at least some people are still hungry, sick and homeless. and for marx, that's because now there are human slave masters. whatever you think of that, don't make a final decision until you think about his contrast. he publicly denied it, but i think marx was a bit time utopian. in his mind, if people weren't slaves to something, we wouldn't be lazy creatures. he believed that leisure activity was primarily something we do as a means of escaping the harshness of slavery, but if we weren't slaves, we'd spend the majority of our time working productively on... something. whatever made us happy, i think he's say (if he were drunk enough to admit his deeper, emotional pattern of thinking). i hope you can see the influence these notions had on the world of Star Trek, for example. but falling short of that, we exist in a condition marx referred to as alienation.

this all may or may not interest you, but i do have a point. this is at least a third of the reason i started writing science fiction. a few years ago between my 4th and 5th years of college, i was staying at home for the summer with my mom and working part time. i was thinking about marxian alienation. i was also thinking about the 1960s, a curve if not a turning-point in American cultural history (with antecedents in Europe as well). some call it the postmodern era, though if it's a truly unique era is a matter of some debate, but people generally agree that western society was more highly characterized, in one among several ways, by a general malaise that could be called alienation. that period also sees a sudden and exponential growth in the number of reported alien abductions, UFO sightings, crop circles, etc.

so reflecting on all this, i became drawn to the 'alien' as a potentially powerful symbol in writing. alien = extraterrestial. alein = cultural disenfranchisement. alein = an interesting and robust part marxian theory. it did result in a roughly 12,000 story, though i'm not enamored with the idea of sharing it. it became... strange. i wrote it for a "novella" (short novel) writing workshop about 4 months later, but it evolved into something at the behest of my peers that, in retrospect, isn't what i wanted.

in any regard, back to marcuse. he was writing in the 50s, 60s and 70s, and he believed one of the ways enslavement and aliention (i put them in italics to indicate that he was definately thinking of these terms along marxian lines)-- he thought one of the ways those things had developed during the 60s was into a paradigm of he called "operationalism." the widest definition would be something like, "the reduction of unique ideas, feelings, experiences and beliefs into uniform terms of exchange, function and operation." is that vague enough for you? it's vague because he saw similar things happening in government, business, academia and culture in general. in government (both U.S./capitalis and Soviet/communist blocs) he felt that bureaucracy had become so expansive that statecraft was less about policies and actions and more about workflow. in business and the workplace, he similarly felt that it was less about doing something and more about passing it on to the next person (even factory labor had become so piecemeal that what you actually did in the assembly line was less important than getting things on to the next people, since companies could afford to throw away defective models -- he called that, and the general and rapid out-dating of things, 'the production of waste'). he saw similar trends in academia, where it was becomming popular to reduce ideas to mutually compatible terms. in practical terms, the liberal arts had become and remain bogged down in didactic jargon, while the hard sciences consist mainly of input/output labwork without much regard of the consequences and benefactors of scientific discovery.

he didn't dwell much on general culture. he was a theorist, so he got his ideas from reading. when i say general culture, i'm talking about what this huge tangest started off with. today's 'general culture' (in those places and for those people affluent enough to enjoy certain parts of it)---the way people act to one another today, the "rotf" and "happiness rating 7" kinds of things you mention, that could be 'operationalism' as well.

take myspace as a perfectly horrid example. i was hanging out at a friend's house (well, i'm hoping he'll be more than a friend also part of the reason i haven't been meeting my writing goals  ), and his roommate made some side comment about how someone doesn't return his myspace comments.

that was interesting. there were just the three of us in the room, myself, "A" and "J" (anonymity for others was trained into me as a sociologist). i myself have a myspace but don't use it much. i definately don't respond to more than a third of the comments and messages i get, not including spam. A is apperantly similar. but A is also a phone junkie, both text messages and talking to people. i don't think i've spend more than a couple hours with him not being on the phone for at least 10 minutes. i barely talk on the phone. the few people i can stand to talk with for very long are a few of my loved ones i don't see often, but only my mom gets anything like a regular phone call. for that kind of emotionally rewarding interation, i prefer to spend time with people in person. but obviously enough, but intellectually stimulating interaction, i can do online interaction pretty consistently (thus the reason i'm not on myspace very much--i said intellectually simiulating interaction). J doesn't use his phone much either, but he's apperantly a bit of a myspace junkie.

so, three modes of communication. internet, cell phone (which is 2 if you count text messages separately), and direct communication. what is the proper etiquite for each? i think this relates very closely to what you said about communication being lost when you add technology. is it rude to stick to brief, 'operational' messages when text messaging with someone? (that's meant as a rhetorical question, but my own personal, humble answer is "it depends on the person"... i don't text my mom because she can barely work a cell phone as it is, and i don't text my friend T because she hates text messages, but A seems to prefer them because he spends his freetime playing City of Heroes).

i think there's a deeper part of your question. the rate modern technology is advancing is exponeitally faster than it's ever been before. while this might not change certain core parts of human nature, it can be as you so simply put, very dehumanizing. a lot of the 'need to keep up' (at least in the realm of pop culture) is manufactured by advertising. sci fi is the perfect realm to explore the limits of that trend, and in a sense, of the limits of human psychology.

whew, sorry for the uber long post.

PS: only 75 more posts to the big 1000!