One of the common literary (and sometimes literal) devices being deployed surrounding this project of an increasingly globalized, interconnected world is that of the Tower of Babel:
All peoples using technology to speak the same language, united in a common project to reach and understand God.
Eventually, “God” (defined broadly as the otherworldly, incomprehensible nature of our reality personified) gets tired of humanity’s shenanigans, comes down from behind the clouds, and sows enough discord to cause the project to collapse catastrophically.
Misunderstandings arise, arguments ignite, communication breaks down. Suddenly, what seemed at the outset like a common noble vision that everyone could agree on comes to mean completely different things for all involved. Soon it’s as if nobody’s speaking the same language even when they’re using the same words. At this point, humanity goes tribal. The tower crumbles, and the people scatter.
Up high, God mops His brow. He leans back in his throne as he watches the human specks—once so close you could see the whites of their over-eager eyes—go back to hopping around Earth’s surface like so many fleas.
He shudders, “Close one.”
It’s interesting that this myth, which is older than the oldest Holy Bible, is told in part from God’s perspective. As if what happens to the humans who try to get too close to the divine is a result of an almighty entity’s insecurities. Especially when what’s playing out in real-time across the internet requires no omnipotent entity at all. You don’t need a deus ex machina to stop the singularity by confounding the typing fingers of billions of internet users across the world. You just need to give us all enough time.
What began as an effort to network the globe and provide universal access to knowledge is now a parallel dimension of illusions and propaganda. A place where a once innocuous phrase like “Make America Great Again” can be both a veiled threat to immigrants and an open season sign for wannabe Nazi-punchers. Where you’re free to spread terrorism or impersonate non-famous people on Twitter but will get banned for cursing or nudity.
Those acid-tripping nerds who started this endless computer network were trying to recreate that ego-death connection high by building a machine God. The generals and spooks who funded DARPAnet wanted God-like control over the world. And then, on the eve of finally reaching the pinnacle of some kind of singularity—not between human and machine, but between human and all other humans—the whole damn thing is inverting. In a world of global connectivity, we’re now more disconnected from each other than we’ve ever been. Our kids lack the social skills to get past first base. The longer we spend in cyberspace, the more alienated we become from meatspace. As a society, we’re feeling more paranoid, confused, and lonelier than ever.
Maybe we can only get so close to the nature of our reality. Maybe there’s only so much progress we can make towards deluding ourselves into believing we’re becoming gods (sorry Yuval Harari) before it all goes belly up.
Maybe what’s worse than a deus ex machina, i.e. a god in the machine, is to have the machine without a god. You’d think that without God’s meddling, the people of Babel would have reached heaven and become gods themselves. What we’re discovering instead is that God might have done those people a favor. Fake News, Deep Fakes, algorithmically-generated social media echo chambers, and porn aren’t just making it increasingly difficult to communicate, it’s making it impossible to discern reality itself.
To understand how our attempts to create a better reality are causing its collapse, I turn to one of the oldest works on the nature of reality, Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching. It says that “The Tao which can be named is not the Tao”, suggesting that there will always be aspects of our reality that cannot be fully understood, known, or recreated. Those who ignore Lao Tzu’s advice and persist in trying to control the impossible may even delude themselves into thinking they’ve done it. In actuality, they’ve merely followed their obsession into madness, entering a state known as “short-circuited into hell” (走火入魔).
Can you think of a better description of the current state of the internet?
LOL. Maybe the Internet is an absolutely faithful reflection of who we are!