ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, January 28, 1996 TAG: 9601260114
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: F-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ELIZABETH STROTHER
THE BIG snow swept me, ready or not, into cyberspace, and it was a nice place to visit. But I wouldn't want to live there.
Don't get me wrong. I am not a Luddite, an ugly accusation the boss hurls at me when, in an always thoughtful and rational manner, I wonder where people will end up in a society in which computers do our labor and our thinking for us.
Leaving us to ... what? Play computer games? How will we afford them when computers decide not to pay us for jobs they are able to do much faster and free of what they will come to speak of, sneeringly, as human error?
Despite such heretical misgivings, I was grateful for the electronic age as I dug a path down my driveway, then up the steps to my front stoop where, I knew, the morning newspaper was buried under a couple of feet of snow. (The paper, sheathed in bright orange plastic, was pressed up against the glass of the storm door, sealed tight by the snow. So tantalizingly near ....)
I was grateful because I was among the lucky few at the newspaper who could do my work from home, at least for one day. I didn't have to face the prospect of walking downtown that crucial morning after the storm, when few four-wheel-drives or drivers were able to negotiate the roads, and even Valley "We Go in the Snow" Metro shut down.
I was among those lucky few because I could write on my home computer and file an editorial electronically.
I was grateful for that, all right, but not nearly as happy as I was the following day, when I could get a lift into work and abandon my solitary labor - though I confess the trudge home from the bus stop that evening rekindled my warm regard for telecommuting.
Such was the conflicted frame of mind I was in when the boss passed along a newsletter, "The Cyber Future: 92 Ways Our Lives Will Change by the Year 2025." I presume there are at least 93 ways, actually. If, 30 years from now, I am still working toward ever-retreating Social Security benefits, the World Future Society will no longer be mailing this little publication, but sending it electronically - straight to a little computer chip in my brain.
That's one development the society's president, Edward Cornish, foresees: chip implants that will serve as "a combination credit card, passport, driver's license, personal diary. ... A chip inserted into our bodies might also give us extra mental power."
And are we ever going to need it, if life is not to be too grim to be worth living.
Cornish speculates about an array of cybernetics' possible effects on society. Some seem fantastic - microscopic machines injected into our bodies to repair muscle and brain cells "so we could enjoy perpetual youth." Some already seem to be happening - people freed to work at home and live not where their jobs dictate, but where they choose, in "areas with attractive natural and cultural features plus low taxes, little crime, and modest living costs." (Brace yourselves.)
In short, the futurist predicts "unprecedented power to do whatever we want to do," but power which we have no idea how to use wisely.
There are huge benefits to the leaps occurring in computer technologies: increases in productivity, access to libraries full of information, instant global communication, unprecedented availability of education. But in such glorious opportunities, he sees the seeds of a society, or rather a nonsociety, that grows increasingly selfish, shallow and antisocial.
The solitary entertainment that computers can provide will reduce people's need to associate with others. We might become "a poorly integrated mass of electronic hermits," he writes, "unable to work well together because we no longer play together. Institutions such as the family, community, church and nation will face the challenge of seeking support from people whose loyalty is almost entirely to themselves."
"The globalized media will create a world of gods and clods," Cornish predicts. There will be the rich and famous, "created for our adulation by the media." Then there will be the rest of us, unknown in our own communities, where ordinary folks now earn respect and a sense of accomplishment, because everyone's attention will be plastered on these clowns in cyberspace who have achieved nothing except celebrity.
Besides poor socialization and a serious lack of self-esteem, we will become increasingly narcissistic - though why such self-loathing creatures will become infatuated with themselves presents a bit of a problem in the overall scenario. But this could come to be, Cornish says, because individual consumers will shape the content of information technology, and to get their attention, information providers will make the audience feel all-important. "As television and other electronic entertainments absorb more and more time, people will feel ever less motivated to do things for anyone but themselves."
Gosh. See ya' in cyberhell.
Such is the vision of one man, anyway. To be sure, he predicts many wonderful advances among the 92 ways cybernetics might change the world. If all of them come to be, but we trade the common bonds of our humanity for the virtual pleasures of fictitious worlds, they will not be worth their cost.
That path is not unavoidable, though. I can't help but believe that our yearning for meaning, something larger than ourselves, will save us once again. When the snow came and isolated us from each other, we struggled like the dickens to get out. Then the sun came, and what a joy it was to rejoin the life of the community.
LENGTH: Medium: 95 linesby CNB