The Dark Mountain Blog
The Barcode Moment, part 1
posted by Paul Kingsnorth
1st May, 2012
It was in religious education classes at school (classes which always seemed to be headed by evangelical Christians, in my school at least) that I was first introduced to Satanic Barcode Theory. If you’ve no idea what I’m talking about, it works like this. First, take a quote from the Book of Revelation:
‘And he ['the Beast'] causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is six hundred threescore and six.’
That’s the Christian Bible, informing you that a time will come when no-one will be able to ‘buy or sell’ without the ‘mark of the Beast’, apparently tattooed on his or her head or hand. That number is 666.
Next, take a look at this (borrowed from here):
This is a barcode. Every barcode, as you can see above, has three ‘guard bars’ on it, and each of these guard bars is the equivalent of the number 6 on the barcode, thus:
Every barcode, in other words, has the number 666 running through it like words through a stick of rock. So, the barcode, without which it is pretty tough these days to ‘buy or sell’ anything, is the mark of the Beast, according to the Bible and my old RE teacher. Satan is capitalism. Or trade, or digitisation of commerce, or supermarkets or multinationals, or something. There are a few flaws in this theory, of course, not least of which is that no-one has barcodes tattooed on their head or hand. But this, apparently, was a detail; my teacher was pretty convinced that, within a few decades, some version of the barcode would end up embedded in or imprinted on human bodies, to allow us all to transact our lives away with minimal fuss.
When I was 15, this conspiracy theory was exciting. I wasn’t religious, and wasn’t in the habit of listening much to RE teachers, but this lesson grabbed me. It satisfied the Manichean part of my nature. The world was, in this telling, black and white: a straight battle between good and evil. And once people started tattooing barcodes on their skin it was going to be damn clear which was which. At that point, those of us who were good would be able to see what was coming, and we would have to cut loose: run to the hills, form communes, get guns, prepare. It would be frightening, but also thrilling – and, most importantly of all, morally simple. There was no complexity here. You had the mark, or you didn’t. And when the moment came, I’d never let them mark me.
You’re quite susceptible to this kind of worldview when you’re fifteen, you’ve read The Lord of The Rings twice and you watch Star Wars every Christmas. Then you grow up and you realise, with some regret, that life is more morally complex than this. You realise that the barcode moment – the moment when the grey areas fall away and you are forced to choose, and you can take a stand with clarity – will never come.
And then you see this:
This is Project Glass, pioneered by the increasingly evil Google. Project Glass aims to – well, you can see for yourself what it aims to do. It will allow you to stream the internet directly into your eyes, providing you, literally, with a new lens through which to see the world: one manufactured by a big corporation. One which defines and explains that world to you, according to your own consumer criteria, and which will doubtless make every effort to sell bits of it to you as well. As a breathless review of this infant technology by a geek magazine explains:
The Google goggles can give weather information when you look out the window, show you a text message and allow you to reply with voice dictation and more. One section of the video shows the glasses informing the user that the underground system is suspended before they enter the station and goes on to give turn by turn walking directions to the destination … We don’t know how far away from getting hold of a pair of these we are but we hope it’s sooner rather than later.
I bet you do, you ridiculous nerds. Google has been regaling us with possibilities. Wearing these, you’ll be able to look at a tree and be informed what species it is; look at a cloud and get a flashing message in the sky giving you its meteorological name; look at a product and get a price. The whole world will be explained. You’ll be an excited, well-informed robot-person, all day every day, and there’ll be no need at all for even minimal interaction with your surroundings or with other living creatures.
I’m not qualified to say whether Google is in actual fact the Antichrist, though nothing would surprise me anymore. Perhaps my old RE teacher would know. But I think that, if this technology ever becomes a reality – and it will – this could be my barcode moment. This could be the moment at which I run for the hills. Because this crosses some ill-defined but strongly-felt internal line. This is the moment at which technologies which up to now have merely been irritating and sometimes a bit worrying – smart phones, mobile Twitter feeds, handheld web devices and the like – become actually sinister. This is the moment at which our dive headfirst into narcissism - our declaration that we will not interact anymore with anything but ourselves and our machines – becomes stark and impossible to deny.
But what would I be running from, and how could I escape it? This is the future. It is the direction this culture is headed in. It is the ultimate endpoint of the progressive narrative, which sees us escaping from Nature and merging with – becoming – machines. It is the remaking of everything in the image of the hive mind of the consumer West.
I have seen this future already, as it happens, in human form. Last year I had a debate with a man called Kevin Warwick. Kevin, a mild-mannered academic from the university of Reading, sells himself as the ‘world’s first cyborg.’ He’s a computer scientist who a few years back inserted several microchips into his arms to allow him to communicate with computers outside his body, and control objects he wasn’t touching. He thinks this is the first step towards the Singularity – the event long anticipated by Silicon Valley nerds (not to mention HG Wells) in which humanity merges with its technology and gives rise to a new and better species. You can watch that debate here, if you have an empty half hour or so.
I thought Kevin did a pretty bad job of selling what he was trying to present as a Utopian future, particularly when he happily agreed that it might lead to a Terminator-style war against the machines, as the computers realise they don’t need us after all. He didn’t seem too bothered by this possibility; perhaps it was just supposed to be natural selection in action. Perhaps carbon-based lifeforms are the past, and silicon-based lifeforms the future; I’ve heard it said.
But presentation aside, two things really grabbed me about the cyborg’s take on the ‘post-human’ future. The first was that he was being a lot more honest about things than a lot of techno-progressives are prepared to be. It seems to me that post-humanism, or transhumanism, or whatever you prefer to call it, is indeed the inevitable endpoint of the particular model of progress which Western industrial culture is currently chasing. The Ray Kurzweils of this world are currently laughed at as fringe geeks, but then that’s what they said about the guys pioneering the internet in the 1980s, and who’s laughing now? It seems to me, anyway, that we are already merging with our technologies. I have sat in pubs with people who play with their iphones rather than talk to me (perhaps it’s just me) and walked down country lanes with people who are too busy Tweeting to notice the tweeting. Ten years ago this stuff would have been unthinkable. In ten years time it will look primitive.
‘Give a Western man a job of work to do’, wrote George Orwell eighty years ago, ‘and he will immediately set about inventing a machine to do it for him.’ Today perhaps we could update this rule for the digital age: give a Western man a choice between engaging with his internal world through a machine or engaging with the external world via his body and its immediate environment, and he’ll increasingly choose the former. Perhaps it’s only a small step from the chip in your iphone to the chip in your arm (or in your head or hand …). I’m not sure I’d count anything out – and neither would some people who have been at the sharp end and are frightened by what’s in the pipeline.
But there was something else about what Kevin Warwick said which grabbed me too, and it was the total absence of non-human life from his vision of the future. Again, this is simply a distillation of our wider cultural attitudes and assumptions. Kevin blithely dismissed my talk about climate change, mass extinction, our culture’s divorce from nature. None of this was happening, he said – or if it was, it could be solved more quickly by charging towards post-humanism. If the climate is changing, he said, and we’re incapable of solving it now, perhaps it will be solved better by post-human technologies. Perhaps. Anyway: onwards!
The endpoint of a culture which focuses on human desire above all things, rejects all previous ways of living, worships machines, sneers at the spiritual and sees the world as a collection of components to be taken apart and analysed in the service of utility, is a world in which humanity disappears further and further into narcissistic virtuality, ‘improving’ its own capabilities with its technology while the world burns around it. And here we are. Could it have been any other way?
There are plenty of reasons, of course, to suggest that the Singularity will never be reached. Even if you don’t believe that humanity will get its act together and reject it (and why would we? We’re lovin’ it!) it seems likely that nature will rebel – that the resource crunch and the collapse of the Earth’s systems which we are busy engineering will pull the rug out from under the progressive narrative before Skynet really gets going. But it’s worth asking a question: what if it doesn’t?
In the next part of this post, by way of a slight digression, I’ll have a stab at an answer.
Posted by Paul Kingsnorth on 1 May, 12
Comments: 24 comments - Read them and respond
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There’s a couple of points that this brings to mind. The first relates to Newton’s Third Law: For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. I think it is wrong to be utterly depressed about (all of) humanity’s trajectory. With the rapid rise of electronics, communication and technology generally there has been a re-awakening, and at an accelerating pace, of alternatives that are grounded more in nature than in science. One’s that connect us to what it is to be a living, breathing human. Take for example organic food, allotments, micro breweries, artisan bakers and cheese makers and even things such as the huge surge in interest in cycling. These are feasible alternatives to what technology and corporations would force down our throats…..and they are much more grounded in nature. The needs addressed by technology are, more or less, the needs that corporations have to turn us into ultra efficient conduits for consumption. As the rate of change of technology accelerates I see this last point as the weak point in the corporate domination of the human. It would be interesting to overlay the growth in mental illness and the growth in deployment of this type of technology over the last few decades. As we continue to head into an era of ever increasing ‘peaks: peak oil, peak resources, peak destruction (of nature), maybe we should add peak mental illness to this ever increasing list.
I’m more optimistic. I think an ever increasing percentage of the population will start to resist these technologies, as the degree to which we become disconnected to what is important to us (social interaction, interaction with nature, etc) increases. Whether the technologists like, or even acknowledge it, we (as humans) are still ‘nature’ and nature has a habit of fighting back..
Whenever I am trying to see my way through all of this madness, I find it easiest to keep coming back to the point that almost all of this nonsense is as a consequence of the (misallocated) ‘gift’ of cheap, easily accessible fossil fuels. It is only our ‘energy slaves’ that have allowed us to indulge ourselves in this ‘tehcnotopia’. Without them we’re growing cabbages, cutting logs and being awfully nice to the soil. We are nature and we will go back to nature; although perhaps not so many of us. I just hope we do it remembering some of the ‘good’ learning that came from this era……….. Dark Mountain Monasteries anyone ?
For a dose of philosophical theory to undergird this line of reasoning, read Albert Borgmann. http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/author/B/A/au5291604.html
Have you read Daemon and Freedom by Daniel Suarez? These two books are an interesting and somewhat fresh take on how our future can be different (and better?)
Maybe you should consider becoming an occupier then…
In a nutshell, the process works like this: To survive, each capitalist must seek ever more profit by investing in more, newer, and better machines, and to keep pace with his competitors doing the same. These investments can increase the productivity of the workers’ labour, and even replace workers in the workplace, thus reducing the capitalists’ production costs for each unit.
While I’m not one to have my phone in my hand 24/7, I do find it a little hypocritical to go on about the evils of technology… on a blog. You’re using technology right now to reach out to millions of people. Countless small operations have reached a world-wide audience thanks to technology, and many of those small operations encourage community, sharing, and simplifying. I personally have learned so many things about simplifying and making my life for fulfilling thanks to the Internet. Not because I didn’t want to interact with anyone or anything (well, maybe a little- introvert here), but because the information just isn’t easily accessible to me.
I’m confused as to why being shown the species of a tree or the scientific name for a cloud is repulsive to you. Would that not encourage some people to learn more about that tree, or that cloud, and feel a little more connected to nature? Maybe I’m optimistic but I don’t see why technology can’t be used in a productive fashion to help us help ourselves so to speak.
I believe it’s important to be able to live without being constantly plugged in, but I believe technology has done a lot of good. It’s not technology’s fault that humans like to pervert things and turn them into marketing schemes. That’s on humanity.
I don’t know, I’m a fan of this project but this particular post was a little off-putting for me.
Dear Celia,
you sound quite outraged. The thoughts expressed here are meant to make you think. So, please, contemplate. None of us can or want to escape completely from technology. This blog just tries to make you think about your personal participation with technology and what it actually means to be human. What could be more important?
Both a thought-provoking and entertaining read!
I am definitely ambivalent in relation to new “smart” communication devices, social media and so on, but I tend to me slightly more positive than Paul. For example I´m not sure I would have found the Dark Mountain Project if it wasn´t for internet, friends putting up links, retweeting etc. To quite a large degree I find my friends are using facebook for linking to different political articles and blogs and quite often an interesting discussion is started. On the other hand it´s very absorbing and time-consuming and it sure invades and shapes IRL social interaction in a bad way a lot of the time.
One approach to this is to go back to basic questions about what a good life is, what has value, and how to shape habits and social norms that promote this, for example norms about when and when not to play games in the company of friends. On the personal level I guess it´s about having the courage to discuss these things, express feelings and needs and direct other peoples attention to what they are missing or how they fail to care for their fellow creatures and surroundings.
One last thought: I find it sensually joyous to print away at an keyboard or use a nicely designed interface such as that for iPad or a smartphone. This pleasure surely is connected to the embodied cognitive system that nature has given me. I don´t find it that easy to draw the line between natural interaction and unnatural machine.
By the way I´m a teacher from Sweden and I´m coming to the festival in august (bringing a colleague) so I´m trying to feel my way into the conversation.
Best regards!
Singularity=Hive Mind.
“We are the Borg.”
“You will be assimilated.”
“Resistance is futile.”
It may seem like an either-or thing, but I don’t believe that.
Let those who would go there go – and good riddance….
Thanks for the comments all.
Andy – I hope you are right, and I hope I am too fatalistic. I suspect a resource crunch may have to kick in before all this stuff begins to pall, but you are also probably right, on reflection, that somewhere in us in an animal that, in some people anyway, will rebel. I hope so.
Annie – I’m not sure this is an answer to this particular problem, any more than I am convinced that occupying anything will make a dent in capitalism. But I’m glad it’s happening anyway.
Celia – I didn’t mention ‘the evils of technology.’ Have another read. ‘Technology’ is a meaningless word. Two sticks are ‘technology’ when you light a fire with them. This post is about the degree to which immersive virtual technologies are taking us from from the non-human and pre-abstract world. We may all have very different opinions about why and whether this matters. If you are happy to wander around with google goggles on, however, we’re going to have to agree to disagree.
I find Ran Prieur quite interesting here: he’s trying to develop a method of judging whether a particular technology represents progress or a step backward.
http://ranprieur.com/tech.html
Kalle – thanks for this. When you say ‘I don’t find it that easy to draw the line between natural interaction and unnatural machine’, I think you hit the nail on the head. It’s a spectrum, isn’t it? I touched on this a bit in the post but may expand on it. It is very hard to draw that line, and people often get defensive about hi-tech-driven changes in this culture. We love it, and it enslaves us.
As I was reading the post I was thinking of a comment along the line of Andy’s… I am easily repelled and overwhelmed by the seemingly relentless march of tech devices over our lives and ways of being in the world; but i also see and live in an ever widening circle of people who may dabble in their devices but also return increasingly to a well-earthed, handmade, self sufficient, thoughtful and sensual way of being. I do believe this is happening and on many fronts, from the handmade craft revolution to the rise of organic food and the change in parenting and birth practices….I don’t believe this will ‘save the world’ but I do think there are of lot of like minded like hearted people who are standing on the side of the light, flying in the face of the barcoded beast (!) and loving the small things…hence the popularity of the dark mountain project! Even if we are not out there marching or occupying, and thanks be to those who are, we are here….quietly dyeing wool to knit, hand sewing our children’s clothes and celebrating the changing seasons together, dancing the sun up…lots of us, as always…just being in the days and nights and that is enough. No news worthy revolution to be sure. But enough. Today.
As ever such a insightful and wisely worded post, thanks Paul.
Annie – I’m not sure this is the answer to this particular problem…
Paul – Yeah, I didn’t think you would…
… I mean you start off talking about the “barcode moment”, the point when one will choose between good and evil. You go on to say how it will never happen, but “and then you see this” referring to Project Glass. You say the release of that product just may be your “barcode moment” in which you will head for the hills, thus Project Glass is on the wrong side of good vs. evil for you.
You call Project Glass sinister, your modified Orwell quote is hardly supportive of any immersive virtual experience. Negativity simply abounds in this article and makes no comment or reference to any of the positive things brought to us by virtual experiences (since we want to focus on that) such as the burn patient whose pain was subdued by a virtual world or the myriad other medical uses of this tech.
It’s all well and good to tell me to read again and pick at my word choice. I also realize this project is not one about sustaining this current society and that’s fine. I do feel, though, that it’s important to not get caught up in extremism and acknowledge when something (or someone) you oppose has done something good. Again, I know this is not at all the point of the project but I don’t see why science and nature could not form a synergy for the benefit of all.
Ran Priuer’s project is quite interesting, I would love to see more content there. His categories are very thought provoking.
Perhaps I just feel this was the wrong technology to target as I feel the potential good outweighs the potential bad. If this had been an article about nuclear power, for example, I probably would have left a comment full of glowing praise haha. But this isn’t my blog and in the end you can only form your opinion based on your own experiences and values which will clearly not coincide with the opinions of everyone who is a fan of your project. So I do appreciate the opportunity to read a well thought-out article which offers an opinion different from my own, I’m just trying to offer some thoughts from another side for the sake of balance (or my ego, or something).
The talk with Kevin Warwick reminded me of Steve Fuller’s arguments about Humanity 2.0: “Let’s put it this way: we’ve always been heading towards a pretty strong sense of Humanity 2.0. The history of science and technology, especially in the west, has been about remaking the world in our collective “image and likeness”, to recall the biblical phrase. This means making the world more accessible and usable by us.” http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/sep/25/steve-fuller-time-for-humanity
scary stuff…
I don’t wish to pick on any of those who have commented here about the good uses for technology, but I always find it interesting that more and new technology is seen as an antidote the results of two hundred plus years of industrial technology disconnecting us from the natural world and our human community. As Neil Postman pointed out so clearly, there is no such thing as a “neutral” technology, every technology has a “bias” and way way of altering how we look at the world.
I am not optimistic about a reaction against the modern industrial system towards the local, organic, and human scale ever “making a difference”, at least in the sense of a massive societal shift. The whole world has become so dependent on the global industrial machine that there will be no real effort to stop it until, like you said, the rug gets pulled out. I’ll be most interested to see your reply, but I’d like to offer that in the end, we should probably not concern ourselves too much. Not in the sense of apathy (though that is an acceptable response in some cases), but in the sense of going down the path we feel is correct, regardless of what the world around us is doing. Too much of the response to the destruction wrought be the modern industrial system is cast in terms of a conflict, and the desire for the side of nature and authentic humanity to win. But what if we are going to lose in the end? What if it will be our fate to be wiped out by the transhumans before they are themselves destroyed by their own hubris? Does that or should that change how we conduct our lives? Too much “activism” begins with the premise that the fight against whichever particular evil is being opposed can be won. Perhaps it is time to at least consider how we could maintain our humanity in the face of defeat.
Rade – I have a lot of sympathy with this view. It ties in a little perhaps with the ‘monastery’ comment that Andy made above. I agree that this is not about the us/them mindset, in that sense. It’s more of a counter-cultural attitude, and yes, we do it because it is right or we feel it is, rather than because we think we will ‘win’ some war for cultural dominance against ‘them.’ Thanks for your thoughts.
Yep that’s what I was trying to say!
Annie – not sure what that’s supposed to mean. I was in at the beginning of the movement that resurfaced as Occupy ten years ago, so I think I have a pretty good grasp of both its strengths and weaknesses. The problem we’re discussing here is not a problem of capitalism, it’s a problem that pre-dates it and will doubtless post-date it.
Celia – funnily enough, I find Project Glass considerably more sinister than nuclear power. Just goes to show how attitudes to technology can differ, I suppose.
I think Rade has it right. I agree that some people are going ‘human scale’ in reaction to this march towards the Machine, but we shouldn’t kid ourselves: they/we are few in number. How do we maintain our humanity in the face of our self-willed desire to transcend it? I don’t know the answer.
Perhaps the answer to that question, when seen in the light of a holistic perspective, is that by taking a full responsibility for, not just maintaining, but in fact evolving our conscious sense of humanity within the personal field of our self, we are creating a practical and effective focus that is reflected within larger encompassing wholes such as humanity and the biosphere.
The long term, ongoing evolution of the human brain in its honest relation to conditions and circumstances can be subscribed to freely, and at will.
It can of course also be shared to good effect.
Someone has just sent me this.
http://bit.ly/IlMYRY
Modern technologies seem to have unintended consequences and effects on the user. Anyone who uses a keyboard (so..pretty much anyone) will tell you how their handwriting from school has degraded. I imagine that the current generation of people who have never had to look things up in books, but rather do a google search, have different mental makeup and structures.
The google-glasses in my mind are a step too far. Something so invasive, pervasive will have a far greater and long term negative impact than positive. People can get around cities fine at the moment, using their own brains to map out and plan routes, remember things and understand things. If you navigated a city for 10 years wearing google-goggles then some mugger snatches them off your head, literally imagine the disconnect that would ensue.
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Interesting website, and I’ve only dipped into two posts so far ~ I was a little disappointed by the aAi talk’s lack of depth / length, but I understand the format.
@Paul.
That picture sent to you, despite seemingly being part of the ancient ‘wouldn’t-it-be-cool-if-I-had-a-tattoo-of-a-barcode-on-me-as-counter/cultural-protest’ meme is anything but:
http://www.hitmanseries.ru/images/lg-hitman.jpg
The reference is a computer game; specifically a genetically enhanced hitman who amorally kills for corporations.
Hmm. Perhaps your sender is a very perceptive individual, esp. with reference to ‘enhanced perception’ and the military applications that Kevin Warwick briefly mentioned in his part of the aAi discussion? *innocent wink*
Anyhow ~ very interesting blog; I’ll look forward to reading more.
Good wishes from a sympathetic reader.
‘Modern technologies seem to have unintended side effects on the user.’
I have a sudden death syndrome. Stress, shock, sudden loud noises, physical exertion can all trigger a cardiac arrest. My cardiologist’s solution, having tried drugs to no avail was to insist (along with my partner) that I have an implanted cardiac defibrillator. There was no discussion. I was told that without it I would be an invalid if I wanted to live.
I have since been diagnosed with PTSD and generalised anxiety disorder (along with my pre-existing depressive disorder) because of the impact that this ‘angel on my shoulder’ as many Americans of my acquaintance call it; a term that makes me feel sick whenever I hear it. I have had one catastrophic battery failure which meant emergency surgery and the unit only lasts five years so I’m currently waiting for my next replacement. I’ve been told to listen for the beeping which will indicate that it needs to be changed, a charming and inane piece of advice that means I have now added a benzodiazepine to my daily list of drugs – I try not to take them – but panic attacks are not fun and I’m still working fulltime. I cannot take part in so many things that I used to love because of the ICD and the risk of damage to either the unit or the wires; I have worse mental health; I have major surgery every five years; I have to notify the DVLA of every change to medication or programming of the unit and then cannot drive fore one month. I live in fear of having a shock at any time day or night or some failure of the unit.
There is a huge push in the UK for more of these to be implanted as if they are some kind of miracle. In the US virtually everyone who has a cardiac complaint of any kind is being sold one. There is no discussion of the severe and ongoing physical and psychological consequences of these devices. They cost a fortune to purchase, implant and maintain. Everyone behaves as they are nothing but good. Nobody wants to hear the truth – yes if you have a cardiac arrest outside hospital you will (95%) survive. However, the price is a massive one – especially for the young. I was 36 and may have decades of this to come.
I often think about having it removed, but my family will not hear of it and my doctors just keep making me psychiatric appointments.
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