Nicole D. Wheatley

Would Techno-Utopia be Heaven or Hell?

               After my first research posting, “Social media web-based Utopias – do they exist?” I discovered the term Techno-Utopianism. To me, since I am completely enamored with Social Media and its effects on society as a whole, it was like being a kid in a candy store. I could not find enough information on the term, and it led me into so many different realms, of not only, social media but also utopias. Techno-utopianism is defined as any ideology based on the belief that advanced science and technology will eventually bring about a techno-utopia, a future society with ideal living conditions. I find this very intriguing. The premise of Techno-utopianism reads like many popular science-fiction blockbusters. Imagine a world where you are free from death, danger and poverty. You are able to download your entire mind into any computerized device on the planet (or planets) and live forever. You can talk with the greatest minds of the last million years about everything from baseball to lunar cycles. An android body allows you to visit Yosemite where it’s been painstakingly put back into near-perfect shape with the help of nano-bots and archived photos. You cannot die and the universe is your oyster. Would this be Heaven or Hell? I sat down and thought about Heaven, if it existed, what would it really be like? You could do anything you choose, even explore the ocean depths or visit other planets. But how many times could you talk with Einstein before even he got boring? The same can be said for Utopia. Without fear of death, things like skydiving, river rafting or sailing the open ocean do not hold the same fear. You could skydive without a parachute and it would not matter, you would still be fine. Would you find Heaven repetitious? Boring? A sort of Heaven vs. Hell predicament where you cannot decide if this is your utopia or if one really exists?

               Man has been searching for this utopia, or perfect paradise, since the beginning of civilization. The ideal of ‘the city’ has stood as the most physically accessible representation of Utopia since the days of Plato’s Republic; the mental playground from which philosophers and writers have played with the subject of human: Plato (through Socrates) constructs an ideal “city in speech,” a theoretical city of theoretically perfect justice. Yet Plato constructs this theoretical city not only to examine the most just city imaginable, but primarily to discover how individuals themselves should best live (Rourke 1). Possibly Plato if he were around today might perceive many of The Republic’s theoretical boundaries alive and well in the real world cities that power our modern lives such as: New York, Chicago or Houston. Yet these awesome chaotic entities in their exponential growth towards progress have changed little in their fundamental conception for thousands of years.  In their glistening imitations that symbolized the future, it is now the stacked-up, sprawling, impromptu city-countries of the third world. The idea of the total, centralized, maximally efficient city plan has long since lost its futuristic appeal: its confidence and ambition have turned to anxiety and besiegement, its homogenizing obsession has constricted the horizons of spiritual possibility and induced counter-fantasies of insubordination, excess, and life-forms in chaotic variety.  As matters of human culture, economy and the one on one interaction between people begins to slowly re-emerge anew in the data streams of the internet, so the physical city is about to find itself superseded and replaced.(Rourke 2). “The City is a human habitat that allows people to form relations with others at various levels of intimacy while remaining entirely anonymous,” founder of MachineMachine.net, Daniel Rourke said. The internet has dissolved this conception to nothing, for now the location of human on planet Earth is in no way reflective of their connections with other human beings, with culture. The City was once a nucleus of connectivity and now it is under attack by techno-utopian, hyperrealism society that is feeding on the internet. Yet the metaphor of the city is strong, even in virtual space with web-based networks such as: Second Life, Facebook, Twitter, Chamber of Chat, Entropia Universe, or Web City Office Towers 3-D World and many more.

               The virtual Third World metropolis is becoming the symbol of the new. Techno-utopians argue that science will soon give us the means to straighten the crooked timber of humanity and even to remake our species into something “post-human” (D’Souza 1). Lee Silver, Molecular Biology Professor at Princeton University envisions, with biotechnology moving beyond cloning it will offer us a momentous possibility: designer children. “Parents are going to be able to give their children genes that increase athletic ability, genes that increase musical talents, and ultimately genes that affect cognitive abilities.” Techno-utopians believe this is just a small step. The fact that cloning or genetic alteration are possible does not, of course, mean that they should be done. Cloning and genetic engineering are, however attracting criticism. A recent book communicating that sense of outrage is Jeremy Rifkin’s, The Biotech Century. Rifkin alleges that we are heading for a nightmarish future “where babies are genetically designed and customized in the womb and where people are identified, stereotyped and discriminated against on the basis of their genotype” (D’Souza 2). These criticisms techno-utopians meet with ridicule. When a new major technology is developed they point out that it will deliver amazing medical benefits, including cures for genetic diseases. So how can it be ethical, techno-utopians, ask to withhold these technologies from people who need or want them? This is the very premise Singularity University was founded on by Peter Diamandis and Ray Kurzwell.  Singularity University  is an interdisciplinary university whose mission is to assemble, educate and inspire leaders who strive to understand and facilitate the development of exponentially advancing technologies in order to address humanity’s grand challenges. With the support of a broad range of leaders in academia, business and government, Singularity University hopes to stimulate groundbreaking, disruptive thinking and solutions aimed at solving some of the planet’s most pressing challenges. Singularity University is based at the NASA Ames campus in Silicon Valley. All of this relates to the definition of tech-utopianism, of a future society with ideal living conditions for all citizens.

               Are you convinced this is Heaven yet? Or is Hell? Bruce Willis’s 2009 action movie Surrogates, a thought provoking look at the idea of taking our virtual/avatar online selves to a whole other level may help answer these questions. In the film, it has been 14 years since Lionel Canter developed the first generation of a technology that allowed robots to be controlled completely via thought. The technology became so advanced and its use so widespread that eventually almost everyone has their own personal robotic duplicate. These duplicates (which of course are idealized completely different “fantasy” personage) go out into the world and interact with other people via their surrogates. In this film, due to 98% of the world’s population using surrogates, crime has plummeted and people are able to lead more supposedly satisfying lives. They are able to engage in all sorts of dangerous and risky behavior with no fear of getting hurt. The movie is based on a comic book miniseries written by Robert Venditti, which promotes an intriguing concept by extrapolating from people’s growing dependence today on sites like FaceBook and Twitter, as well as virtual communities where you only exist to others via your online avatar (Holtreman 1).

               After all this research on Techno-utopianism it seems digital reality is able to provide a closer match to the Utopian ideals of its inhabitants. Could the perfect city paradise of Plato’s Republic finally find a realistic set of foundations from which to compose itself? Real world metropolises have come to far exceed the depths of vision prevalent in the ideal city of Utopian fantasy – a credit to the technological evolution to outstrip any matter of thought the human is capable of (Rourke 3). Whether you choose to extend your cultural self in real or virtual cities is at present a matter of choice. But in the next few years, as the virtual city becomes the paradise your personality will be forced to adapt to keep up with the encroaching tide of virtual culture. The lesson here is that we keep waiting for a better life for ourselves and those around us. We want to live longer and have the ability to experience things that we have not yet been able to. We might wish for immortality, but I do not think we can imagine what it means. In order to die you would have someone erase you, wipe your memory banks and remove you from existence, and to believe that these changes are the prelude to some transhumanist singularity is to miss the point that Utopia is what we strive towards, not something we can ever reach.

Works Cited

D’Souza, Dinesh. “Staying Human: The danger of techno-utopia.” National Review, Jan. 2001 3:6. 7 July        2011.

Holtreman, Vic.  “Surrogates” Screen Rant, Sept. 2009:27:3. 7 July 2011.

Rourke, Daniel. “The Digital Rebirth of Utopia.” The Huge Entity, April 206:11:4. 7 July 2011.