Build-A-Culture & The Obsolete Concept of Citizenship

Before I start with this blog post, let me say that I welcome all comments and critics as I'm sure they will be constructive. I am about to tackle a very sensitive subject that may anger, scare or infuriate some readers.

In my first blog post ever titled "Culture shifting" back in 2007, I intended to describe how modern telecommunication technologies shaped our present at that time. What I wrote, back then, couldn't be more true now.

Most of us, now, have the technological means of immersing ourselves in a totally different culture than the one we geographically live in. Thanks to the Internet, our everyday newspaper can be one from a city located in a distant continent. The same goes for the television shows we watch or the books we read. We even have the ability to almost call anyone on the planet for free thanks to VoIP.

So what does that really mean?

Our Alternate Plane Of Existence

As members of a biological species, we are all made of organs, cells, molecules and atoms. The specificity of biological species is that they reproduce and are in constant re-arrangement of the matter that they are made of. Every second, millions of cells in our body die and are replaced by brand new ones that are made of reprocessed biological material. This never-ending (at the phylogenetic level) recycling machinery has been at work for at least 3.5 billion years on our planet.

Being in this constant re-arrangement state and spreading our molecules around us seem to have given birth to our ontogenetic desire to leave traces of our existence after our death. One could consider that artistic expression, literature, accomplishments in sports etc... are no more than a mere unconscious attempt at fulfilling our phylogenetic programming at the ontogenetic level.

Recent advances in technologies have had a profound impact on this aforementioned process. We are now all leaving traces of our existence everywhere. This is not restricted to the Elite anymore. And the most fascinating aspect of this phenomenon is that the traces we leave are not only non-biological (we don't spread dead cells around us) or static (when it comes to writing on paper in the attempt to reach literature fame), they are capable of self-reproduction. As a matter of fact, all the tweets we send are instantaneously sent to thousands of computers, stored locally or just passed on to another computer. They continue to exist on hard drives after they have disappeared from the user searchable information. Consequently, all the information that originates from us is transcended to a silicon plane of existence where it will continue a life of its own. We have to be aware that our pictures, videos, texts end up in the primordial silicon soup that is the Internet. I see in this realization a very close parallel to the primordial soup that was once the cradle of life on Earth. Could it be at the origin of a new type of life or for that matter intelligent life? Could it be at origin of a digital double of each and everyone of us?

I can't wait for my digital double to taste a digital hamburger!

The Internet Addiction Urban Legend

This post aims at addressing the concept of Internet addiction. As a psychiatrist, I'm baffled to read articles written by fellow psychiatrists (usually the ones that have never used a computer in their entire life) emphasizing the dangers of Internet addiction.

To me, they just don't get it. The Internet is a medium. There is no such thing as being addicted to it. You can certainly be addicted to some online games or say, online porn. But, to me, talking about Internet addiction is, simply put, the proof that the person talking don't know what they're talking about. Many psychiatrists have applied the DSM-IV ("Psychiatry Bible") addiction criteria to the Internet to give birth to the concept of "Internet addiction". To me, it is as stupid as writing about breathing addiction (aren't we all addicted to breathing air? We can't spend a single day without doing it) or feeding addiction (we all feel the urge to eat whenever we've been deprived of food for a few hours...). The same could apply to "reading addiction".

Once again, the Internet is a medium. You can do thousands of different things online. Spending hours in front of a computer doesn't mean that you're addicted to doing the same thing as you can do so many different things on the Internet. People, specially mental health professionals, need to understand this paradigm shift.

Neoconsciousness Through Technological Advances

Cellular devices have evolved at an incredible speed in the past fifteen years. We have come from a world in which owning a cellular phone was a distinctive social achievement proof to a place where cellular phones are ubiquitous and as common as key chains.

The mass availability of these devices has changed the way we see and use them.

At the dawn of the cell phone era, the lucky owners of such coveted devices would justify their purchase by the need to be reachable at all times for they would be or see themselves as very important people. In this regard, cell phones would nourish their owner's narcissistic needs and stand for some sort of phallic prosthesis. Laying a cell phone on a restaurant table would act as a beacon of power and wealth.

As cell phones became more affordable, their mass adoption lead to the decline of their phallic prosthesis function. They, however, contributed to the creation of a new sense: the sense of connectivity that every new user would experience after carrying such a device in their pocket on a day-to-day basis. At that time, cellular devices became counter phobic objects, relieving their owner's fear of not being able to call for help in case of an emergency and enabling them to feel freer in their social interactions at the same time.

The Web 2.0 revolution introduced a much greater but less apparent paradigm shift. Social media are evolving at an ever increasing pace and they are consistently creating new connections, mimicking in that respect the constant rearrangement of neuronal connections present in our brains. When the internet became widespread, many visionaries described the web as a neuronal network and fantasized about the possible advent of its own potential consciousness.

Are we ever to witness the creation of such an event, whether you call it an anomaly or as Bergson would put it “the essential function of the universe, which is a machine for the making of gods” in the sense that we could consider ourselves the creators of this “artificial”’ consciousness? If so, it is more likely to be thanks to the increasing speed at which social media users create new links between one another as these connections share so many common characteristics with our own brain synapses.

Let’s have a look at “Twitter”. Its success might be related to its appeal on many different levels: narcissistic, voyeuristic, introspective, fashionistic etc… It is more importantly the vessel to a wealth of social interactions whether they be passive or active. When you pull up Twitter’s home page, you experience a feeling that Freud once called “Das Unheimliche” (a disturbing strangeness) as you are beholding the world, yet it is not the same world as the one you have been used to see before your eyes.

What is most striking when attempting to extract the quintessential aspect of Twitter is the way it allows users to connect to one another. You can indeed choose to “follow” people which will enable you to read whatever they are posting and people can in return choose to follow you back. You have in this concept the exact neuronal paradigm representation.

Basic neurobiology describes what happens in a synapse between two neurons: the terminal (axonic) end of a neuron transmits a signal through a gap (synapse) to the postsynaptic dendritic end of a second neuron. This is very similar to the way one can follow another Twitter user and become the recipient of their messages. The similarity doesn’t stop here. As we are indeed capable of replying to one user’s Twitter updates, this is absolutely similar to what neurobiologists call retrograde neurotransmission where the dendritic end of a neuron transmits a signal back to the axonic end of the original neuron, thus replying to its message.

One less known neurotransmission mechanism is called “volume neurotransmission” where a neuron can release a specific neurotransmitter outside of a synapse. This neurochemical will be able reach the dendritic end of many neighboring neurons, thus allowing for message transduction on a larger scale. This last example is very close to the way one Twitter user can “spread” their updates to a number of followers without necessarily following them back in return.

Humans are seen as social animals as most of us share the inherent will to create new connections to one another. Those unable to do so usually suffer great anxieties and are seen as sick by the majority. Now that we have come to a time when so many of us carry social interaction devices 24/7, we keep creating new connections at the literal speed of light. It is, therefore, inevitable that these connections change the very fabric of our world. The main question that still needs to be addressed is: will this change lead to the advent of an artificial consciousness that will co-exist with us Humans or will it change our own individual consciousness and perception of the world on an idiosyncratic scale?