I Wanna Hold Your Five-Digit Cybernetic Appendage

I recently went through a phase where I read a lot of speculative non-fiction about the future of humanity, where things will progress in the next hundred years or so. It started with Ray Kurzweil’s The Age of Spiritual Machines. It turns out that this Kurzweil guy is one of the most prominent thinkers about the future of humanity, and although he wrote the book back in 1999, he made bold predictions about what would happen in the next few decades.

It was interesting to read… some of the things that Kurzweil predicted would be happening today were way off (convenient and cheap virtual reality? Microcomputers embedded in our clothing? Nope, not yet.), he did have some things right. Mostly that computers would become more and more something that we would come to grow dependent on and be unable to function without. And he also put forth an interesting idea… it’s a well-known concept that the rate of computer processing is doubling every year and a half (it’s actually called Moore’s Law). But he says that this pace can only be sustained if we *become* computers ourselves. It will start with implants for our bodies (which we’ve already started doing), then augmentations to our brains (imagine a chip that will help you learn languages, or master the math you were never able to understand!), and soon the difference between a person and a computer will be completely negligible.

That makes sense to me… although I found myself asking if a machine that thinks and acts like a person really is a conscious entity. But Kurzweil had an answer for that, and basically it’s this… it doesn’t matter. For example, how do you know that the people around you are conscious entities, real thinking people? Well, it’s because they act like they are. And since the only subjective reality we can know is our own, there’s really no point to asking whether a human-like computer is really a living being. By all definitions we have, it’s just as much alive as we are.

Something else that I’ve been hearing about it is how we’re approaching the point when a computer can do more than a human mind. It’s called “the singularity”, and the prevailing thought it that if we don’t make sure that a computer learns to be human – to have compassion, and to want to preserve human life – then the kind of thing that happens in the Terminator and Matrix movies not only could happen, but probably *will* happen. The computers will see us as irrelevant at best, or at worst, a threat. There’s actually a big consortium of important people in the computer industry who are actively working to figure out how we can stop this from happening.

It seems to be the most logical way to teach a computer all the things that make us human is to actually merge humans and computers.. This process has already begun, and it’s a trend called “post-humanism”… people today already have powers and abilities well beyond our actual physical human capacity. We’re able to communicate with almost anyone we want to at a moment’s notice, no matter how far apart we are… we can move in the physical world at speeds of up to 600 miles an hour (17,000 if you count those folks in orbit). We can store and call up facts and memories by flicking our fingers across a screen. Each one of us is already much more than a human ever has been, and it’s all because of our use of computers as tools.

When I first heard about what the future of humanity was shaping up to be, I found it completely depressing. This idea of losing ourselves as organic beings and becoming mechanical seemed bleak to me. But the more I think about it, it really sounds like this is the next step in evolution. We’re not turning humans into machines, we’re turning machines into *us*. From that standpoint, it’s actually more depressing to think that we now sit in chairs eight hours a day tapping keys, and then go home and do the same thing for recreation. In a hundred years it will seem entirely primitive. Computers won’t be something we do, it will be who we are!

Can you imagine a world where we aren’t shackled by having to have some kind of mechanical interface to be connected to the world? We will be part of that network, any time we want to be, just by thinking about it. Of course, that brings up another question: What will we do with our physical selves when our access to work and recreation on the Internet is freely available at any time?

Dreadful Tunes

I'm willing to bet that this happens to everyone... there are songs out there that, even though they're not supposed to, instill in you a strange feeling that is the exact opposite of what the song is supposed to convey, or at least one that probably isn't what was intended. It might have something to do with the circumstances of how you first heard it, or maybe it taps into something in your psyche in just the wrong way, but you can never hear it the way you know you should. For me, there are a small bunch of these songs, but I've waited until now to discuss them because I've never been quite able to articulate what it is about them. Now, I have three songs that I'm at least somewhat confident I can discuss what it is about them that, well -- not necessarily bothers me, but gives them a weirdly specific emotional resonance. Here we go...

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"Video Killed the Radio Star" by The Buggles (1981) - This, tellingly, was the first song played when MTV kicked off, and I’ll be damned if it wasn't prophetic. Music videos quickly became the propelling force behind the entire music industry for the next twenty years, and celebrity image became inextricably entwined with musical talent forevermore. This song always reminds me of all those artists who weren't photogenic enough to make the transition to video -- people like Peter Frampton, Steve Miller, and Christopher Cross come to mind.

The song itself, written and performed by future uberproducer Trevor Horn and keyboardist Geoff Downes (who would later be a part of my favorite 80s supergroup, Asia), delivers the exact message that the title implies. It's a message to an aging radio star about how different music is now, how the "golden age of wireless" is never coming back, and how the world will be poorer for it. You get lines like this, delivered by Horn in a tinny, lo-fi buzz:

"Now we meet in an abandoned studio"
"Pictures came and broke your heart"
"We can't rewind, we've gone too far"

The whole thing smacks of irrevocable loss, which I'm coming to realize is a real emotional hot button for me. To top it all off, there's the chorus, which is the title phrase delivered over and over by a pair of women's voices, which somehow manage to sound cutesy-poo and robotic at the same time. It's the musical underlining of the song's point: from here on out, folks, surface is all that’s going to matter.

Maybe the fact that MTV predicted its own effect on music is what really makes this song seem deeper than it really is. After all, within ten years, acts like Milli Vanilli and C+C Music Factory would try to prove that it didn't matter if the person in the video was the one who really sang the words (thankfully, we didn't entirely fall for the trick). But the music did become more a part of a package, instead of being the package itself. I'm not saying that music before was less about the celebrity of the musician than the music itself, but substance got pushed even farther to the side. Rock ‘n’ roll became less of a revolution than a movie about a revolution.

Then again, when this song comes on I can't help but wait for the stinger at the end, and it's the only part of the song that isn't delivered in a clipped staccato: it's a woman's voice, distant and echoey, that comes in and repeatedly intones "You are a radio star". It sounds like an afterthought, but I can't help but think that she uses the word "you" for a particular reason. Maybe we're all in the process of becoming obsolete.

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"Somewhere That's Green" from Little Shop of Horrors (1986) - I know, this song is supposed to be hopeful, or at least humorous. The character who sings it, an urban naïf named Audrey, is dreaming of a life away from the squalor of where she currently lives – an unnamed city’s Skid Row in the 1950s. Her dream is simple... what she wants is a husband, two kids, nice appliances, a 12-inch television, and a lawn. That's it.

Now, taken in the context of the film, it's supposed to be fun and clever. This woman wants the most simple things, and dreams of them so rapturously. But to me, a fourteen-year-old at the time it came out, it seemed completely bleak and hopeless. It said to me, "Well, there it is. That's the best you can hope for in life, kid. Not much, is it?"

I probably thought this because I was exposed, at a particularly young age, to the songs of French songwriter Jacques Brel, who I guess can be called the Morrisey of the 60s. The collection of his songs, "Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris", is one of those albums I actively dreaded as a kid for the same reason I hated "Somewhere That's Green"... it’s just too bleak and existentially brutal to be enjoyed on any level. Brel’s songs contain angstfests like "Next", in which a man reminisces about losing his virginity in a dehumanizing military brothel and contemplates suicide, or "The Old Ones", where an old couple waits to die in their increasingly small, silent home, or "Sons Of...", an even more depressing song about children growing up and leaving home than "Sunrise, Sunset"... I had all these memorized by the time I was ten.

So "Somewhere That's Green" hit all the same buttons for me. Mowing the lawn on Saturdays and watching TV in the evening? That's all life is, kid, and you'll be lucky if you even get that.

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"Don't Worry, Be Happy" - Bobby McFerrin (1988). I know this one is the most out of left field. I mean, it's right there in the freaking title. This song is supposed to be a happy one, maybe one to turn your day around when it's all going wrong. But I propose that it is anything but.

Again, I think my original feeling about it was because of the circumstances... the first time I heard it was at the tail end of the summer of 1988. I was away from home at camp for a week, and my girlfriend had just moved to Florida, so this might have influenced my state of mind at the time. The first time I heard the "ooh-ooh"ed chorus, I couldn't help but think that there was a different feeling lurking behind the just-smile sentimentality. I mean, it wasn't a carefree "la la" or its even more carefree cousin, the "na na". It was a string of "ooh"s that descends, and flips into A-minor before resolving. That's the part that got me. It's a vocalized version of a mournful whistle, the joy in which sounded to me like it was only halfhearted.

The verses aren't that much better... Bobby intones a list of bad things that may already be happening to you in a faux-Jamaican accent (if there was ever a shorthand for oppression, that's it!), from being loveless to homeless to being run through the legal system. The solution to all these ills? Be happy! That's it. Then we're back to that somewhat haunting "ooh-ooh" chorus again, each time with more harmonies laid across the top of it. In my opinion, it starts sounding quite desperate by the time the song ends.

One more thing that bugs me about the song... at several points Bobby flat-out states that you shouldn't make *everybody* *else* feel sad by acting that way yourself. Now, I'm all for the idea that changing your physical demeanor and outlook can't help but make you actually feel better, but do we really have to start worrying about how other people feel when they see us struggling? Not helping, Bobby.

As a postscript, let me state that I think Bobby McFerrin is a ridiculously talented musician and vocalist. If you haven't seen his Spontaneous Invention concert video, I suggest you do so immediately. Or at least do a Youtube search of his version of the Beatles' "Blackbird". I just don't think that "DWBH" is what America naively embraced it to be. It's a much more sly commentary than that. But then again, there are plenty of songs that the rah-rah American public took at face value in the 80s (Springsteen's acerbic-in-retrospect "Born in the USA" comes immediately to mind).

As I've said, I'm sure that all these songs are influenced by my state of mind when I first heard them, or what they came to represent afterward. But isn't all art, really? There's some absolute musical crap that I (and you too, I imagine) completely adore, and that love hinges entirely on factors that exist outside the music itself. It's something to consider, when you take a look at what you like and what you don't.

The Moon Illusion

For a long time, I was convinced that the Moon Illusion wasn’t true. No matter how many scientists discussed what it was and theories about why it might work, I just didn’t believe it. Maybe you've heard about this trick our eyes play on us... when you look at the moon low on the horizon, it appears to be huge, much larger than when it is seen up higher in the night sky. However, if you really take the time to analyze it (maybe by checking to see if there are any features that are clearer when the moon is nearer the horizon, or by holding up a penny at arm's length for size comparison between low and high moons), you'll find that there really is no difference in the apparent size of the moon, no matter where it is the sky. Sure, while it's on the horizon, the moon might be a little distorted and orangey, thanks to the larger amount of atmosphere you're looking through to see it, but for all intents and purposes, the moon appears no bigger on the horizon than it does when it's directly overhead.

Like I said, I used to be skeptical of this. My eyes told me that the moon had to be bigger when it was low in the sky, just had to. I could look and verify it on any clear night. There was no shaking me from that thought. Now, I have to admit, I realize that I was wrong. And what brought me to this conclusion was a simple thought experiment that taught me not to believe everything my eyes think they see.

Start off by thinking about how you judge the distance of objects, especially objects overhead. The ceiling above you right now, for example. If you're sitting down, the ceiling of an average room would be, say, about four feet over your head. As you look at the ceiling toward the corners of the room, the amount of space you have to look across goes up markedly. If you're at the end of a long hallway, the distance from your eyes to the upper corner of the ceiling at the far end is longer than the actual hallway itself, because you're looking across the space at a diagonal. This holds true even when you’re outside -- the distance of clouds near the horizon is clearly much farther than clouds that are directly over your head. So this is the framework your mind is constantly working in, in terms of perspective: directly overhead is closest, the horizon is very far, and the more you lower your gaze, your distance from objects at the same level goes up exponentially.

Now think about the moon. Your actual distance to the moon when it's on the horizon and when it's directly overhead differs by only about 4,000 miles (the radius of the earth -- sketch it out on a piece of paper and you'll see what I mean). Given that the moon is almost 250,000 miles away, that's not a lot of difference. So while in every other earthly situation, items an equal height off the ground will be hundreds of times farther from your eye depending on whether they're right over you or just above the horizon, when it comes to the moon there’s only a change of less than 2%.

And that's how your eye gets fooled. In this unique instance, you're looking at an object that barely changes distance from when it's overhead to when it's actually coming over the horizon. Your brain processes it in the same way it processes perspective to any other object, and the result is that it thinks the moon on the horizon has got to be much larger than when it's above. That’s the only way your mind can figure that it looks to be about the same size. This conflict between its apparent size and the brain's judgment of how far it must be given that it's close to the horizon is what causes the Moon Illusion.

I've heard many people talk about the Moon Illusion, how it's perplexed scientists for centuries, and I've also heard it explained in confusing ways like "because it's near the horizon, your mind processes it like a background object instead of a foreground object", but once I realized my own personal explanation for it, all my confusion just drained away. It made me realize what power there is in scientific acceptance, that beautiful moment when you realize that what you were so sure of five minutes ago is dead wrong, and that it’s okay.

I think a lot of what causes the problems the world has today is our inability to realize when we've been wrong, and to shift our beliefs accordingly. There are so many people holding onto antiquated ideas and dogmas, simply because it's what they're familiar with. I realize that it's scary to give up a belief system you've had for so long, even for so long that it's one you inherited from older generations you love and admire. But keep in mind that many truths we now know, at one time was thought to be either wrong or simply unknowable. Hold fast to what you believe, but not so tightly that you can't let go when it's time to.