We are entering the cloud. We digitize ourselves. Our desires and work are becoming more and more digital technology. The wormhole, which we were looking for earlier, somewhere in the universe, we now carry with us. It’s in our pocket. You can extrapolate yourself somewhere else.
Why digital technology is an inseparable part of life
My position is that we are currently experiencing a relocation of life, meaning and cognition from the real world of matter to the abstract world of ideas. Ivan Illich, an Austrian philosopher, said that if you were born in a city, everything you have ever seen or touched was or is artificial. If you were born in the city, you have never seen anything real. Even the tree in the park is only there because an official has thought it would be nice there.
“With Digital technology, we are moving to a digital, artificial world, and we have to ask ourselves what that means for who we are.”
Even if you take your backpack and leave for India to meditate for half a year. Even there you can not be in contact with reality, because the invisible shield of our society follows and protects you wherever you go. You have your business card in your back pocket and your phone in your front pocket. And you have your Dutch citizenship and you know that if you run into problems, the government will do everything to help you. So even a natural environment we see from the perspective of a developed, but unnatural civilization.
digital technology
This digitization is another step in the artificiality that people naturally create around them. So, for example, everything on earth is subject to a force that we call gravity. Everything falls down unless it is supported. In the digital world, this does not have to be true. There are no rules except those that we create ourselves. So if I want to build a simulated room, gravity is optional. I should program it. If not, everything can float. There are no rules except those that we take with us from our experiences with the real world.
I see computer programs, applications, or code language as the most advanced form of mythology. It is the most exact form of mythology, but it still remains mythology. It allows you to create things that are not real. And whether a person is more authentic in an abstract, non-existent world of symbols, or not … that is a question of a philosophical nature.