ArtTech

nextTechnology as Spectrum A Martian S.A.T. question
(from the Earth Studies Subject Test):

On Earth, 650 nanometers means:
a. "go"
b. "stop"
c. "evaporate"
d. "slow down"

Technology as Spectrum

This is the first of several ways of talking about technology that I’d like to highlight.

The conversation about technology gets polarized pretty quickly because we see it as an add-on to human existence. But this idea — life after technology vs life before technology — isn't accurate. Just as gravity is fundamental to the Universe, technology is to the way we are human.

And though technology is pervasive, it’s also fuzzy. That is, just as the electromagnetic continuum is vast and fuzzy — a gradient flowing from one frequency to the next without interruption — so is technology. Literally, every thing is technology: shoes, pencils, cars — these tools extend and amplify us, and in fact complete us.

But the idea of technology is larger than any a specific instance of a tool. Technology is not a thing in itself. Rather, it’s like the weaving together of gesture (the movement of our body through space) and the desire for that gesture to leave a trace of itself. This desire is our need to understand our world, to be autonomous, to have some control.

By this view there isn’t a substantial difference between a piece of charcoal, a ballpoint pen, and a supercomputer. Each belongs to the gradient of desire. To the extent we insist on seeing them as separate entities, however, we isolate ourselves from ourselves.

For example, the technology of a pencil is part of my body because I think with it, like a gesture as natural as moving my hand. For example, I understand my position in space when I draw a map for a friend from out of town, or my position in time when I make a note on the calendar while on the phone.

This gestural transparency shows the pencil as a material from which I construct meaning out of experience. I don't stop to ask which end of the pencil is the writing end, and which is the erasing end. This is because I feel the pencil integrated into my body. But no one would argue that the pencil makes me less fully autonomous because of this integration. This kind of transparency is in fact unremarkable.

This is why it doesn't make sense to talk about technology as hovering at the boundary between human and non-human experience, as either native or non-native. It makes more sense to say technology is a continuum of behavior motivated by our embodiment in the world, something like the electromagnetic spectrum that flows through us and around us.

One result of seeing technology this way is that it becomes a smorgasbord from which we are free to choose. But these choices are somewhat arbitrary, dependent on taste, or on fleeting requirements. In terms of the spectrum, from our human perspective, we say "red" or "green" or "blue,” but to the Universe these are meaningless distinctions. In fact, non-human life forms would surely have to rely on mnemonics to learn what “red” means for us — while suspecting that they never really get it. But we are human; we get it.

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