There was an article in today’s Wired News that had a link to an earlier article by Quinn Norton called, “A Sixth Sense for a Wired World.” Both articles are highly relevant to an earlier post of mine here, “But What Is Real,” and to various discussions of reality in Bare Brains.
One of my goals for myself–which, of course, I think would be worthwhile for everyone–is to refine my understanding of what is real. I have an aversion to the possibility of waking up some day to find that I have devoted huge resources of time and energy to the pursuit of an illusion which has suddenly evaporated in the bright light of reality. Not to be pessimistic, but I don’t think we will ever get to anything we can be confident of as “ultimate” reality–the scope of our abilities, even augmented by science, is too limited. What is possible, however, is that we can come to a better understanding of our limitations, to understand the confines within which we operate. Any development of new abilities expands our horizons, but it also points out the prior limitations we have been operating under, and points to the likelihood that even more abilities await discovery.
In Norton’s article, she describes the effects of having a magnet implanted in one of her fingertips, which included the ability to sense the magnetic fields of electric currents in wires, her laptop, and numerous other artifacts of our modern environment. In today’s article, an account by Ryan Singel of a talk Norton had given at an O’Reilly conference, he wrote:
“The magnet is now gone, but its magnetic field still affects how Norton thinks about Lasik, obesity, erectile dysfunction, depression, elbow surgery for major league baseball pitchers and brainwave controllers for videogames.”
My point is that our senses, as they are, have shaped human culture and the human grasp of reality. Any change in our sensory abilities will further refine our sense of reality, and our attitudes toward it. The important thing to realize is that our current perception of reality is approximate and provisional. Our approximations are close enough to the way things “really are,” that we can build space ports and strip malls, and many of those approximations will survive as our appreciation of reality evolves, but it is advisable to grasp our more abstract conceptions loosely. The further we get from the nuts and bolts of this world, the more tentative our ideas become. Hang loose.
We Be Hangin’