The importance of independence of mind

Devoid of other means to recover a Paradise Lost, technology's promise to enable a complete simulation of paradise, and thereby the fulfillment of desire, prompts enthusiasm for the technological project. What we've lost in ourselves, in immediacy with others, technoloy will restore. Who would question it?

Memory is always allied to the simulation of these private utopias. In fact it is memory itself that is being simulated, a selective memory of a desired sensory experience. In the film Solaris, Gibarian tells Chris Kelvin in a recorded message: "We don't want other worlds. We want mirrors." The movie plays itself out as the unfulfilled past of the characters return to haunt them in perfect simulation - including Kelvin's (dead) ex-wife. At the end, Kelvin appears to choose simulation over mundane reality, to live the simulation of what he loved, the mirror of himself and of his memories.

On a more familiar level, Chief John Anderton in Minority Report uses holographic images to help him re-experience some of the joy he felt when his son was still alive. He is replaying his memories in a near visual 3 dimensions.

The danger of virtual reality does not correspond to a supposed increase in sensory atrophy, because conceivably technology will develop to the point where the relevant brain pathways are activated to allow a completely simulated experience. It will not be soon, but some day this will not seem so strange.

More worrying is that the owners and benefactors of technology will be in charge of the means to regulate our innermost thoughts, memories and desires as simply as we operate software today (which is to say, with some difficulty, but when it works it works). By comparison today's media and its effects on our consciousness (its partial ownership of our consciousness) will look old hat and superficial. The important question that arises is, will much independence of thought still be possible?

The case against an affirmative answer is that if even our memories are not our own then the ability to remember a real event, an event that hasn't been transformed or diluted as it passes hands and pockets and minds, will be hard to find. In such a mess the status quo thrives easily - even if it is questioned any reason with appeal to real past events become unreliable and increasingly fallible.

Since it is currently hard to conceive of this state of things not arising some day, the ability to maintain an independent mindset is imperative.