Flow

src: http://www.transparencynow.com/faustian.htm

src: http://www.transparencynow.com/faustian.htm

In order to achieve this goal, it is trying to make the world as transparent as possible, so everything can be seen and understood. It wants to hold all existence up to an x-ray, because what is known can be controlled.

In addition to the limits of the physical world, there is another set of limits we have to confront, namely the limits of our own personalities: our narcissism, primitive emotions and lack of ethical development. These are the most important obstacles we have to overcome, if we want to appropriately use these new technologies.

There are two philosophies, in particular, that emerged out of psychoanalytic theory, that we can use to construct a coherent philosophy for a new age. One comes out of the work of the utopian philosopher Herbert Marcuse, who asked how the new power and affluence made possible by technology would be used. As Marcuse saw it, it could be used to satisfy true or false needs, making possible exploitation and escape, or a breakthrough into a new kind of society, based on the right to live fully.

src: http://www.transparencynow.com/decon.htm

src: http://www.transparencynow.com/automate.htm

Not infrequently, these same technologies are depicted as trapping humanity in an artificial world in which people are isolated from nature and from the natural process of birth, aging and death.

what looks like a paradise of technology can turn out to be a cage in which we lose touch with both the world and ourselves.

We end up living inside an artificial environment that caters to our desires, in which we constantly manipulate technology in ways that expand our freedom and power, and allow us to transcend many of the limits of existence.

src: http://www.transparencynow.com/automate.htm

src: http://www.transparencynow.com/automate.htm

On a much larger scale, humanity’s “home” — our physical environment — is similarly being automated and controlled, moving us toward a time when we will perceive and manipulate events everywhere on the earth.

Inevitably, these changes are bringing about a new kind of society, in which people have advanced abilities to manipulate both the physical world and worlds of illusion.

We end up living inside an artificial environment that caters to our desires, in which we constantly manipulate technology in ways that expand our freedom and power, and allow us to transcend many of the limits of existence. The computer scientist, manipulating images to create virtual worlds, and the physical scientist, learning how to manipulate the elements of this world, become archetypal figures of the age.

In this new environment, simulations will almost certainly be much like “reality” and reality will develop many of the qualities of a virtual environment. The material world will begin to seem less substantial, and more like an environment of images that is open to our manipulations.

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As these simulated spaces begin to look a little too lifelike for comfort and promise to make every thought and desire seem to come true, they are unsettling our relationship with the larger world and offering us the allure of addiction and regression.