“All men desire knowledge.” Aristotle
Keats, when presented with the question of what he was going to do with his life, chose the path of surgery. It was a one-year trades course at the time. He had seen several members of his family die of tuberculosis; it was happening a lot at the time. Not long after getting his qualification, he coughed up red foam and knew his fate was sealed.
He couldn’t be a surgeon with this disease, so he set out to become a poet and had all the poetic craft of a trained surgeon. “Truth, beauty, beauty, truth” is considered one of the worst lines of poetry ever written. He envisioned life as walking down a long corridor into a large room full of doors— next is to choose one of those doors and go make your life. “Without freedom of choice, there is no creativity.” Captain Kirk of Star Trek. He noted that he would not be walking one of those corridors as his young life would be taken by a lung-rotting bacterium. Towards the end of his short life, a friend came to visit him. His friend noted that it was the fashion among young Londoners to look like he did. Apparently, you die of tuberculosis looking angelically beautiful.
This was the first teen ID trip— Goth. Up until that time, a teenager identified with what they were given, and what they were given came from nearby. You didn’t choose an identity; you were given it, and only a few were willing or able to break with tradition. But now the industrial world presents our youth with a vast array of options which they have to navigate to find their identity. A world where the philosophers are saying there is no meaning, so we have to create our own.
“How then are souls to be made?” Keats
Now this issue of identity and choice in a meaningless world is being brought into the realm of our sexuality. People are being given choice over their physical sexuality from a very early age. Along side an increasingly classical view of sexuality with only a few taboos. This presents a challenge to identity that is unprecedented.
Our identity has found an entirely new medium of expression. As a result, criminals can now steal our identities. Our identities are associated with numbers, codes, and biometrics, data in the machines we rely on to carry out our daily lives. “In the social jungle of human existence, there is no feeling alive without a sense of identity.” Erik Erikson
Now, artificial intelligence comes into play. These things can come up with their own ideas, and no one knows what goes on inside them. We will be carrying them around with us soon. These things will get to know you really well and will be able to speak on your behalf. The criminals are going to have them too. How challenging to our sense of identity will it be when we can’t be sure whether we are talking to the person or a machine that speaks like that person?
It is possible that in the future, they will be able to gather a mass of information about someone, give it to an AI, and create a simulation of that person, a symbiotic machine-human cybernetic entity – which then leads to the possibility that this has already happened and we are already in the simulation. As this clearly is already happening, it is more of a matter of where to draw the line between reality and simulation. “If you assume any rate of improvement at all, games will eventually be indistinguishable from reality….We’re most likely in a simulation.” Elon Musk. “What is human memory? It certainly is not a passive recording mechanism, like a digital disc or tape …. The brain creates and recreates the past, producing in the end, a version of events that may bear little resemblance to what actually occurred.” Arthur C. Clarke.
“A future made of virtual insanity.” Jamiroquai
Robots will put manual labour in the realm of old arts worth maintaining. Artificial intelligence will do the same to academics. “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Arthur C. Clarke. How will we identify when machines take care of the things we used to identify with? There will be no replacing nurses, barristers, hairdressers; some things require a human touch – but much of what defined our identity will be taken care of by machines; what will we value in this world? “We must strive to be more than we are. It does not matter that we will never reach our ultimate goal. The effort yields its own reward.” Data from Star Trek. “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.” Friedrich Nietzsche. Time is money; not anymore – information is money. “Information is the oxygen of the modern age.” Ronald Reagan. Our information will have value and not all information will be equal. Our information will be properly identified with us. The property will be exchangeable, inheritable, and thief able. Our identity will outlive our bodies. “It is not that we have a sort of time to live, but that we waste so much of it.” Seneca.
“My blood runs cold; my memories have just been sold.” P!nk
So how do you identify?
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