… We could conceive of a society in which men practically never meet face to face – in which all business is conducted by individuals in isolation who communicate by typed letters or by telegrams, and who go about in closed motor cars. (Artificial insemination would allow even propagation without a personal element). Such a fictitious society might be called a ‘completely abstract or depersonalized society’. Now the interesting point is that our modern society resembles in many of its respects a completely abstract society.
Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies (Vol I: The Spell of Plato)
Since Popper wrote that little passage, during World War II, while he was sidelined in New Zealand with little to do but defend democracy from the scourge of the Ancient Greeks and their latter-day disciples, Western society has come to resemble that ‘completely abstract or depersonalized society’ even more, thanks to the Internet. All that’s missing, perhaps, is the propagation by artificial insemination, but that’s easily taken care of. I suspect it actually has been, it’s just that the on-line egg and sperm sales aren’t going through E-Bay so I haven’t actually noticed.Â
Popper’s discussion of this ‘completely abstract” society – which he identifies with the open society (the opposite being the closed, concrete society of the Greek heroic era which was a lot like Maori tribal society) notes that there are some obvious costs. Costs which might blind us to the potential benefits that justify the open, abstract (depersonalized) society as superior to the older, tribal form (as depicted in the Greek hero myths):
Personal relationships of new kinds are possible where they are freely entered into rather than determined by accidents of birth…
(op cit or is that ibid? Not that it matters – I’ve just typed it up from old notes in one of my busy books, where it appears in condensed form with a lot of dropped pronouns and copulas)
Much as I find Popper an irritating read, I have to concede him the point there. Thanks to the internet, it is possible to freely enter into personal relationships, unconstrained by the accident of birth that is geography. You want a drunken row with an American (any topic will do)? Just get shit-faced and connect to a blog where Septics are known to hang out. It’s much cheaper than the air-fare from Sydney to LA, and you won’t have to spend fourteen insomniac hours in cattle class.
Let’s not quibble over whether this is genuinely a personal relationship of a new kind, or merely a social and technological elaboration of an old, established form of relationship – that just shows a lack of vision. When human beings turn the mighty cognitive engine of the neo-cortex to devising new ways to satisfy the ancient desires they inherited from their piscine, reptilian and simian forebears they’re capable of producing marvels. Especially if there’s a profit in it. Or, even better, an orgasm. Or, best of all, both.
Combine the desire for an orgasm with computer technology and you get teledildonics; the use of the Internet to pleasure a distant, possibly anonymous person, with a sex toy hooked up to a PC. I haven’t paid the field much attention until recently but I wasn’t surprised to discover that there’s already an open source teledildonics movement (one open source project is to develop a way to interface sex toys with Microsoft’s XBox, thus making it a XXXBox I guess). Unfortunately open source teledildonic hardware development is still pre-pubertal; the for profit, closed source, sector of teledildonics development definitely has the lead. And in this area, hardware definitely counts for more than software.
Once physical sexual gratification is available on-line where to next for Popper’s abstract society? Apart from putting out the garbage, what need will we physically disconnected, depersonalized netizens have to venture into the last vestiges of the closed, concrete society of yore?
says Gummo to the abstract community known as Larvatus Prodeo…
I couldn’t conceive of any “completely abstract” society -people want and need personal relationships, even in “economic” relationships.
I recall that Asimov had such a “completely abstract” society in one of his Robot or Foundation books, but it was completely abstract - there was no personal communication and there was the melodramatic aspect that each person’s “estate” (consisting of their dwelling, a large amount of property and a very large entourage of robot workers) also “died” (their power source disappeared) when the owner died. They very much valued their privacy.
Read Michel Houelebecq’s latest, ‘The possibility of an island’
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Possibility-Island-Michel-Houellebecq/dp/0297850989
Nah, I reckon you’ve got to be able to smell people to have a relationship with them. At least come within range of their pheromones.
But I see you can now buy them in a bottle too.
Interestingly, Plato, a denizen of that funny old closed Platonic world that Popper so deplored, imagined the first virtual world in the form of “Plato’s Cave.”
Thus, a denizen of the concrete world imagined the archetypal virtual world.
Will denizens of the infinite number of potential virtual worlds imagine the real world?
Can they have any choice but to imagine the real world?
These virtual worlds have to connect to the real world if only because someone has to pay the power bill to keep the computer running.
That de-hellenisation project the Pope complained of is more extensive than I imagined!!!
I agree with Brian… this technology is not going to supersede good old closed society sex until it can more or less perfectly simulate the entire experience (not to mention improve on it). Until then its just an expensive handjob.
Heh heh.
Katz: “…Interestingly, Plato, a denizen of that funny old closed Platonic world that Popper so deplored, imagined the first virtual world in the form of “Plato’s Cave.â€? Thus, a denizen of the concrete world imagined the archetypal virtual world.”
On the other end of the spectrum, Plato also lent his name to “Plato’s Retreat,” if anybody here knows what *that* was. [snickers]
It seems my man Plato worked both sides of the street… Cave canem…
Well, depends doesnt it. I’d like to see current stats on the hybrid form: meeting people online for the purpose of shagging and/or romance. Ive been ensconced in a relationship for 5 years now - not sure what the youth of today are up to!
This teledildonics appears to me to upgrade previous forms of masturbation, rather than sex.
Lefty E: “…I’d like to see current stats on the hybrid form: meeting people online for the purpose of shagging and/or romance.”
As one standup comedian put it: “Oh, right. Online dating, eh? Isn’t that the thing where you write mash notes to pretty girls and then they don’t write back?”
Well spotted Lisa!
It’s a bit of an embarassment to think that I could have missed that obvious little irony.
The owners/operators of that establishment possibly meant to call it “Pluto’s Retreat.”
A little learning is sometimes less dangerous than a little less learning.
Cave canem.
It’s true, if there ever is a fully abstract society, it will only be for those who can afford it. Not everyone can afford a computer, let alone a broadband connection. Sure, it might be indicative of a larger trend that will eventually spread to all classes, but I’m guessing human labour will still be cheaper than mechanised, especially in poorer countries.
I don’t know about romance, but I’ve made a lot of good friends over the internet. I don’t think it’s a phenonemon of the last few years either; my mother met my father through penpals. She still writes to people in Canada who she’s never met, from a penpal organisation she joined in the 70s.
I’ve often thought about what will happen with virtual reality. I’m think they might eventually be able to simulate complete disembodiment… such that you are ‘in’ a virtual world that is as immaterial as any software program. Then I was thinking that if we get that far we must have learnt a great deal about how the mind works… so then I was thinking that it could be possible to separate the mind in two parts such that people can do their everyday boring jobs (whatever they might be)… but at the very same time their conscious mind would be connected to the virtual world… I’m not sure if that’s theoretically possible though…
… then I thought that if they had that kind of technology they’d just get robots to do all the work.
Shucks, it ain’t as bad as it seems. Y’all drop in and visit some time, heah?
The fact is we already “live” in an abstract society or a virtual reality “culture”. In other words we “live” almost entirely in a virtual reality “world” of brain generated language games which more often that not have no relationship whatsoever to any organic reality and in fact are quite often hostile to the organic realities of our bodies and the world process altogether.
We are mind based (and generated) unconscious robots!
And quite literally trapped in the Matrix of our machine mind generated reality.
The Matrix film was an examination of this theme.
Everything seemingly knew immediately gets gobbled up and replicated by the individual and collective machine mind of the World Mummery.
Symbolised by the replicating machines of the Matrix and the Stargate series. Almost unstoppably gobbling up and destroying anything messy and organically human.And at the same time integrating any new forms of intelligence in to the system. Resistance therefore becomes futile because the machine already knows everything about you and your own relatively independent cultural meme.
Also rather like the BORG in Star Trek. “Who” relentlessly destroy and integrate all other possibilities into the collective BORG machine/mind with its drive to total power and control.
We have all been quite literally BORGED!
Machine un-”consciousness” rules OK!
And all of that process has at least 3000 years of “cultural” momentum behind it.An immense psychic force. The patriarchal drive to total power and control.
“…The patriarchal drive to total power and control.”
Well, looks like there’s at least one machine out there that’s set to ‘autopilot’ today…
“The Matrix film was an examination of this theme.”
The first one perhaps yes. The second two were an examination of writer/director/producer hubris.
“We have all been quite literally BORGED!”
Except in your case it seems. Clearly assimilation is futile. Please report to Central for reprogramming.
Back when I was casting my luridly ineffable glow on alt.folklore.urban, that group boasted a large number of regulars ending up as cohabitants back when dating someone met online was considered very strange indeed. If I wasn’t already married I quite easily could have ended up being one of that number, as I’ve met up with quite a few of the afu denizens around the world over the years.
I suspect online hookups for casual shagging have greatly increased in number over the last decade as online forums have ballooned, but back then meeting up IRL was a pretty big step undertaken after months of online interaction, whereas now it appears to be more often a perfunctory step in the courting dance, and may well not result in long-term friendship, let alone romance.
Short answer: I dunno.