Magical thinking--typically considered an archaic mode of cognition that populates the world with animistic forces, hidden dimensions, and evocative incantations--may actually serve us well in the future as we navigate an existence increasingly mediated by digital information.
As I argue in a sidebar to my recent story about magical thinking, the ethereal worlds of cyberspace--from simple computer interfaces to immersive virtual realities--are built of abstract code straight from the minds of sentient beings, unbound by physical laws (which is why a document can be duplicated infinite times and Mario can double in size when he eats a mushroom.) They are universes of pure imagination.
I had a good talk about this with Erik Davis, the author of TechGnosis. He told me, "In the magical worldview, the world is kind of like a language. If you know the spells or the signs or the symbols you can effect change." Hard physics has discredited that soft outlook, "but with cyberspace and technology and the Internet it's a human space, or it's all a constructed space. And on its most basic level, it's constructed of language." Maybe not English, but computer code.
Humans are evolved pattern-spotting machines, often finding trends where none exist, which makes us terrible at producing and recognizing randomness. And research shows that those with stronger beliefs in the paranormal are even less prone to acknowledge randomness in, say, a truly unbiased series of coin tosses--independent of any other deficits in probabilistic reasoning. Apophenia, or experiencing patterns and meaning where none exist, makes us see futures in tea leaves and faces in TV static. (I touch on this in a sidebar too.) But while linking a full moon to a fortuitous day on the hunt (or at the track) may not make sense in real life, hidden code may connect disparate phenomena in VR.
Similarly, chanting Beetlejuice three times may not make Michael Keaton appear in your living room, but pressing Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A gives you 3 extra lives in Contra, and if you're not into video games, your computer is full of Easter Eggs craftily hidden by wily software engineers. And that creepy old tree on the corner may not know your dirty past, but your TiVo does and will suggest new programs based on your guilty-pleasure viewing habits. Eventually programs will become more predictive and interactive, and it will make sense to treat algorithms as sentient creatures, as Neo does with the Agents, or Deckard does with the replicants.
Hackers will be the new shamans.
In my next post, I'll list a few examples of seeing too much life in the ones and zeroes. [UPDATE: HERE IT IS.]
UPDATE 2: Cyberpunk Essentials
I alluded to The Matrix and Blade Runner, but one commenter namechecked William Gibson's Neuromancer (in which the word "cyberspace" was actually coined) and another mentioned Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. I also recommend Rudy Rucker's Ware Tetralogy. For nonfiction looks at digital spirituality, check out CyberGrace, or The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace, or even Timothy Leary's Chaos & Cyber Culture. I thank George Landow for introducing me to some of this stuff in his course at Brown titled "Cyberspace, Hypertext, and Critical Theory." And for slipping a deconstruction of Max Headroom into the syllabus. Come to think of it, his course met right after "Magic in the Middle Ages." I suspect that that academic combination catalyzed the synergetic neuralchemy that informed the line of thinking above.
Konami Code
It's 30 lives that you get from the Konami code.
Magic and technology a timely subject - mere coincidence?
Is it mere coincidence that this article shows up at the same time as Arthur C. Clarke leaves us? It was Sir Arthur who famously said (let me make sure I get it right) "Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology". Or maybe it's the other way around.
Technology = Magic
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Arthur C. Clarke, "Profiles of The Future", 1961 (Clarke's third law)
Law of Attraction
I've come to see that we command our mind to look for certain things, most people are unaware of what they are commanding their mind to do, so they equate that with randomness. I got interested in numbers and began seeing the same sequence of numbers everywhere I went.
The second part is that we draw to us what we think about, so this creates a vicious cycle where we see something, we believe that "this is the way it is" and then we see more of it because we expect to. It is this trap that most people are in, and being unaware, can't get out.
Your explanation seems to conclude that the code is stupid. To complete the analogy the code is alive, and far smarter than you, in fact it is the reason you exist, and only because it wants you to.
Usually mystical experiences
Usually mystical experiences (or any experiences) are deemed as being part of a grand plan, but it is equally probable that from our point of view, (i.e. the "controlled") experiences are totally random.
If you had two versions to believe, it is no mystery that the former is much more comforting.
Read Alan Turing, this is interesting
In Alan Turing's (the father of computing) famous paper Computing Machinery and Intelligence, Turing writes that things like ESP are very real:
(9) The Argument from Extrasensory Perception
I assume that the reader is familiar with the idea of extrasensory perception, and the meaning of the four items of it, viz., telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition and psychokinesis. These disturbing phenomena seem to deny all our usual scientific ideas. How we should like to discredit them! Unfortunately the statistical evidence, at least for telepathy, is overwhelming. It is very difficult to rearrange one's ideas so as to fit these new facts in. Once one has accepted them it does not seem a very big step to believe in ghosts and bogies. The idea that our bodies move simply according to the known laws of physics, together with some others not yet discovered but somewhat similar, would be one of the first to go.
This argument is to my mind quite a strong one. One can say in reply that many scientific theories seem to remain workable in practice, in spite of clashing with ESP; that in fact one can get along very nicely if one forgets about it. This is rather cold comfort, and one fears that thinking is just the kind of phenomenon where ESP may be especially relevant.
A more specific argument based on ESP might run as follows: "Let us play the imitation game, using as witnesses a man who is good as a telepathic receiver, and a digital computer. The interrogator can ask such questions as 'What suit does the card in my right hand belong to?' The man by telepathy or clairvoyance gives the right answer 130 times out of 400 cards. The machine can only guess at random, and perhaps gets 104 right, so the interrogator makes the right identification." There is an interesting possibility which opens here. Suppose the digital computer contains a random number generator. Then it will be natural to use this to decide what answer to give. But then the random number generator will be subject to the psychokinetic powers of the interrogator. Perhaps this psychokinesis might cause the machine to guess right more often than would be expected on a probability calculation, so that the interrogator might still be unable to make the right identification. On the other hand, he might be able to guess right without any questioning, by clairvoyance. With ESP anything may happen.
If telepathy is admitted it will be necessary to tighten our test up. The situation could be regarded as analogous to that which would occur if the interrogator were talking to himself and one of the competitors was listening with his ear to the wall. To put the competitors into a "telepathy-proof room" would satisfy all requirements.
neuromancer
much of what you are saying can be found in gibsons neuromancer trilogy. its really good and definately worth reading. if you have already read this it seems like you should attribute.
Oddly reminiscent of the
Oddly reminiscent of the wishful thinking exhibited by team "Dubya".
Makes sense to whom?
I would conclude differently from the article. The distinction between algorithm and sentient actor can blur, this being what the Turing test looks for. However the hacker-type I believe is one that doesn't treat algorithm as sentience, but resists this delusion and utilizes the underlying logic, instead of being pwned by it.
It's the difference between the informally powerful office computer nerd, who knows how to get other folks' printers to work in a jam, and those who suspect his tinkering in anything from their myspace page hanging on load to the fax machine being out of paper.
Virtual God
What makes a beautiful flower turn into trash? Is it time? Your argument has sufficient basis but it lacks a universal timestamp for a time traveller.
Up, Up, Down, Down...
Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A *START*, gives you 30 lives... not 3... in Contra.
Just FYI...
Cheers!
.lau ardelean
Yes I agree, coders do see a
Yes I agree, coders do see a lot more in apps than an average person. I mean coders can sense a way to utilize the program in accordance to their own needs, but they also like to lay back and let the code just work as it is supposed to.
Physics has disproved what?
"In the magical worldview, the world is kind of like a language. If you know the spells or the signs or the symbols you can effect change." Hard physics has discredited that soft outlook..."
The reason we have machine code is to affect change in the real world, not the constructed world of the internet. In a way programming language is an up-dated version of the magical language. How much different is a system of zero's and one's and a system of yin and yang?
Magickal Technology
"In the magical worldview, the world is kind of like a language. If you know the spells or the signs or the symbols you can effect change." Hard physics has discredited that soft outlook..."
The reason we have machine code is to affect change in the real world, not just the constructed world of the internet. In a way, programming language is an up-dated version of the magical language. Binary code is a re-interpretation of the I Ching, for example.
Close
This is true, software and the knowladge of the language is very much like knowing the Secrets of Reality, however video games very much disconnect people from this reality they live in, reduced experience mean reduced learning, and experience is everything in Magic.
Thusly we are breeding a future of humans capable of only manipulating a VR world with code, rather then a new generation of magic workers who understand the code of Life.
Also, typically science is only shown what they set out to see.
Much like each individual human.
Another book on this topic
You've apparently given yourself some reading with this post but here's another book you NEED to read, if you haven't already:
Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash.
You will not regret it.
Snow Crash
Snow Crash is my favorite book. This post describes the plot of Snow Crash nearly to the point of plagiarism, lol. As Matt, said it is a really good book that everyone should read.
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