Automation, a curse or a blessing?

One of the most fascinating subjects of present-day information technology is called multimedia.

A first step is formed by upgrading linear word processing to hypertext. Storing fragments of text in which all kinds of links can be applied, so that it becomes possible to create ones own story, as it were. When applied to this piece of work, for instance, it would mean that you are not obliged to read it from start to end, but that you could create your own fantasy version. The question is whether this is merely fun, or actually useful.

To make things even more spectacular, we can add photographs, sound fragments or even video clips. A further perfection of the virtual prison in which we are already living, under the impression that we are ‘free’.

With multimedia, however, man is still a spectator, with or without identification. The next step consists of making connections between the computer and our body. Participants are wrapped in all kinds of special instruments, such as spectacles and gloves, with two-way connections with the computer. A simulated reality is visualised on our retinas, different images for either eye, even. With such interaction, man is as it were (caught) inside the machine. Computer freaks have given this new discipline the almost magical name of virtual reality.

On the one hand, we are offered a technology to open up large quantities of data of various nature, but on the other hand, there is an enormous threat that everything will be related to everything. In stead of storing acquired knowledge (or systematic relationships) we are storing manifestations (or occurrences, in computer terminology) of that knowledge. Digital cameras, scanners, cassette recorders and computers are unravelling reality into ‘zeroes’ and ‘ones’. Subsequently, these data packages are jostled together, whereupon they are distributed and communicated by means of multifunctional telephones, television/computer combinations and super hi-fi installations with digital technology.

With this kind of automation it is wise to remember the central theme of the teachings of Krishnamurti: ‘The description is not that which is described[25].’ For before you know it, you will have built a computer analogy of Plato’s cave[26]. You know, the myth in which Plato tries to explain to us that we usually confuse the shadows of things with the actual things.