How wonderful Rosie, how wonderful... Nothing to add, no notes, except this tiny little one: the first time *I* came across the "Brain in a Jar" was pre-Futurama, pre-Matrix: 1997, first year of college, first term of Philosophy : I'm pretty sure it was Descartes : "What if we are all really just brains in jars, being fooled into thinking they are Living in the World by an Evil Demon who does this for their own amusement...?" I remember when we left the lecture hall, buzzing with it, all of us 18 and delighted to suddenly discover the Life of the Mind, horrified to contemplate that maybe that is ALL THERE IS... Can anything recapture that first thrill? Do kids these days have that too? Or do they grow up suspecting - hoping even - that they are all just Brains in Jars, filled with horror at their bodies, escaping constantly into a Virtual World that did not exist, back then, in the Before Time...?
Descartes before the horse, back in the Dark Ages of the 90s. John Higgs says that last century really ended sometime around 1992, then there was a kind of existential void (in which The KLF burned a million pounds, the ostensible subject of the book).
I was gonna spin the brain in a jar thing out into how The Youth think being brains in jars is a good thing but, Comrade, I had already said too much (17 minute read, according to Substack's metrics).
I finished this essay and picked up Angela Carter's book of essays Expletives Deleted, opening it at random. It opened to the middle of her essay about Jane Eyre, which I hadn't read. Carter: "Charlotte died in 1855, at thirty-nine years old... If she had not died so young, the course of English fiction would have been utterly different."
Charlotte outlived her Mother, who died when she was five; her two elder sisters, who died while they were at school; and her siblings Branwell, Emily, and Anne, who all died of tuberculosis between September 1848 and May 1849. Carter: "Few lives have been more unrelievedly tragic."
This old fragment of journal popped up elsewhere: "26 Sept 2013: Everyone on the bus plugged into their electronic devices (their masters- their portals-) as usual & me, no different in the matter of compulsion, plugged into my book. Except that they are taking in & I am putting out. I've been thinking lots on this subject lately, with GCSB, TICS, etc. [Government Communications Security Bureau, Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security)- a Bill before Parliament] Thinking about the implications of the direction of personal tech- specifically, the omnipresence, addictiveness, & the takeover of parts of the human mind. There is the argument that when the Greeks started writing, everyone said memory would die-
What I'm wondering about it the shape of a robust mind. That is, I think functions of the mind, the individual('s) way of thinking- & necessarily the body & heart too, since it's all entwined- are subtle & complex in their relationships. So to take away one function- memory say, the need & thus ability, habit- of remembering facts (a function which has been outsourced to a giant corporate, Google)- how do the ripples flow from that loss? Which other subtle functions are weakened?
Or this: the ability to be present. Presence which is viewed by our action-obsessed culture (world culture, homogenous) as useless idleness. Engagement, direct, unmediated, with one's own world. These things are threatened, given up, for the small change of entertainment, diversion.
And it's like the rise of digital photography- it doesn't matter what the individual does, it's a matter of collective change. So a person can resist Facebook, not go on it, go to a party, be photographed & put on FB & identified, by someone without a second thought. Because this BEHAVIOUR, the assumed ownership of someone else's very image, is the outcome of the march of technology...
Yesterday I watched J.'s avatar, in the game GTA IV, beating a lifeless corpse with a hammer."
How wonderful Rosie, how wonderful... Nothing to add, no notes, except this tiny little one: the first time *I* came across the "Brain in a Jar" was pre-Futurama, pre-Matrix: 1997, first year of college, first term of Philosophy : I'm pretty sure it was Descartes : "What if we are all really just brains in jars, being fooled into thinking they are Living in the World by an Evil Demon who does this for their own amusement...?" I remember when we left the lecture hall, buzzing with it, all of us 18 and delighted to suddenly discover the Life of the Mind, horrified to contemplate that maybe that is ALL THERE IS... Can anything recapture that first thrill? Do kids these days have that too? Or do they grow up suspecting - hoping even - that they are all just Brains in Jars, filled with horror at their bodies, escaping constantly into a Virtual World that did not exist, back then, in the Before Time...?
Descartes before the horse, back in the Dark Ages of the 90s. John Higgs says that last century really ended sometime around 1992, then there was a kind of existential void (in which The KLF burned a million pounds, the ostensible subject of the book).
I was gonna spin the brain in a jar thing out into how The Youth think being brains in jars is a good thing but, Comrade, I had already said too much (17 minute read, according to Substack's metrics).
I finished this essay and picked up Angela Carter's book of essays Expletives Deleted, opening it at random. It opened to the middle of her essay about Jane Eyre, which I hadn't read. Carter: "Charlotte died in 1855, at thirty-nine years old... If she had not died so young, the course of English fiction would have been utterly different."
Charlotte outlived her Mother, who died when she was five; her two elder sisters, who died while they were at school; and her siblings Branwell, Emily, and Anne, who all died of tuberculosis between September 1848 and May 1849. Carter: "Few lives have been more unrelievedly tragic."
This old fragment of journal popped up elsewhere: "26 Sept 2013: Everyone on the bus plugged into their electronic devices (their masters- their portals-) as usual & me, no different in the matter of compulsion, plugged into my book. Except that they are taking in & I am putting out. I've been thinking lots on this subject lately, with GCSB, TICS, etc. [Government Communications Security Bureau, Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security)- a Bill before Parliament] Thinking about the implications of the direction of personal tech- specifically, the omnipresence, addictiveness, & the takeover of parts of the human mind. There is the argument that when the Greeks started writing, everyone said memory would die-
What I'm wondering about it the shape of a robust mind. That is, I think functions of the mind, the individual('s) way of thinking- & necessarily the body & heart too, since it's all entwined- are subtle & complex in their relationships. So to take away one function- memory say, the need & thus ability, habit- of remembering facts (a function which has been outsourced to a giant corporate, Google)- how do the ripples flow from that loss? Which other subtle functions are weakened?
Or this: the ability to be present. Presence which is viewed by our action-obsessed culture (world culture, homogenous) as useless idleness. Engagement, direct, unmediated, with one's own world. These things are threatened, given up, for the small change of entertainment, diversion.
And it's like the rise of digital photography- it doesn't matter what the individual does, it's a matter of collective change. So a person can resist Facebook, not go on it, go to a party, be photographed & put on FB & identified, by someone without a second thought. Because this BEHAVIOUR, the assumed ownership of someone else's very image, is the outcome of the march of technology...
Yesterday I watched J.'s avatar, in the game GTA IV, beating a lifeless corpse with a hammer."