IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Winter 2014 - 11

OPINION

Are We Enslaved
by Technology?
The comments of Dr. Michael Eldred below,
dated Sept. 27, 2014, were received in response
to the IQ2 "Big Ideas" Debate held August 12,
2014, in Sydney, Australia.

hat Rachel addresses as outsourcing
and John as inversion (screening by
screens, etc.) is an historical metaphysical destiny inexorably arriving as a counter to Descartes' positing the ego as the supposedly
unshakeable foundation. This positing in the first
person singular of the ego encapsulated in its consciousness contrasts with the lead role of the third
person singular in the Greek beginning of philosophy
xk fvxkof "What is...?" Behind the positing of the
ego as foundation lies the metaphysical will to efficient power that comes into its own with such positing.
In the 20th century, the ego becomes the observer
in Einstein's relativity theory, sensuously receiving
electromagnetic signals at the speed of light. But the
observer's consciousness then has to be given the role
of collapsing the wave equation of quantum indeterminacy in the motion of photons, electrons, etc. to
get sensuously real, determinate, experimental data.
This is a quandary that modern physics has not quite
worked out even a century later. Quantum indeterminacy, upon which modern physics stumbled in the
early 20th century, indicates that mathematical physics is losing its grip; in truth, its calculative grip on
motion was a fudge from the outset, but the absolute
will to effective power dictated it.
At the latest with Hegel (cf., die verkehrte Welt
of the Ph.d.G.) and Marx (cf., the value-things that
begin to dance on the table in a topsy-turvy world in
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MTS.2014.2364021
Date of publication: 1 December 2014

IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

MICHAEL ELDRED

the famous fetishism chapter of Das Kapital, vol. 1),
the ego-subject loses its subject status (as underlying,
zugrunde-liegend) to the objects that take on a life of
their own. Had to happen, because the encapsulated
ego is cut off from the outside.
Now ego-consciousness has apparently (in truth
it was out there all along) externalized itself by outsourcing its clever algorithms to the electromagnetic
medium of the cyberworld. The billions and billions
of circulating algorithmic bit-strings now hit back at
the supposed ego-subject, weakening its subject status
even further. What was supposed to under-lie (subject) now becomes a plaything of copulating bit-strings
directing its life-movements in multifarious ways.
The ego-subject, however - as the recent ABC Big
Ideas debate shows - sticks to its delusion that it is
still in control and can "choose." It laments nevertheless occasionally that the artificial cyberworld is subsuming the "real," physical world; the physical world
is fast becoming the plaything of the cyberworld that,
in turn, is the really real world running and controlling
subjects' lives.
With the realization that the cyberworld is algorithmically outsourced mind, the ego-subject could
gain the insight that its encapsulation was only ever
a power-fantasy of control and that consciousness
was never encapsulated inside - in the cranium, in
the brain (which serves as dogma in today's neuroscience). "Mind" now becomes the cyberworld of circulating (algorithmic and data) bit-strings. So maybe
"we" get closer to the insight that mind was already
outside, never encapsulated, returning to Anaxagoras'
insight that mind (oqyw) is out there.
Just one more step - or rather leap - and it becomes
apparent that mind itself is the unmoving, pre-spatial,
(continued on page 34)

WINTER 2014

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Winter 2014