I recall in my youth, long, late-night discussions with friends about the brain the in jar quandary. (Yes, it was a thrilling group of friends.) One friend was always reading philosophy, and if I recall the idea closely enough, it could be stated: How do we know that our five senses are legitimate reflections of actual things rather than some stimuli that make us believe the world around us is actually there and real? How do we know that we are not just a brain in a jar with connections false stimulation? I guess one could say this is a philosophic Turing test. (I understand the updated version of this philosophic quandary involves a grand computer simulation.) It wasn’t too long after these conversations that the Matrix trilogy explored this idea at some length (and possibly depth).

Recently a friend introduced me to an article from The Atlantic : https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/02/how-generate-infinite-fake-humans/606943/ an article by Ian Bogost (or someone or something claiming to be). I really enjoyed reading the article even as the content concerned me deeply.

A great article quote: “The internet has made it worse, by evaporating physical bodies into digital phantoms and then pressing them into ever-denser slums of infinite scrolling. The sheer profusion of actors online has foreclosed their need to be real at all: the armies of bots and the Russian sockpuppets, the corporate tweeps and the AI deepfakes. One can just as easily get into a heated dispute with a bot account generating random replies, or with an automated customer-service agent matching inputs to outputs, as with a human foe who is frantically tapping words into a glass rectangle. Humankind has remedied the shock of modern life with pleasures from its reverberations.” 

Reading this article it struck me: we have created the vat, the jar, for our own brain. Our Matrix saga begins as we realize our fears by creating them. Our “social” accounts isolate and our “likes” and “views” fuel our loneliness. Our fearsome demons take shape as idols in our hands. We worship with our time even as we curse the mechanism we are tweeting, posting, and blogging on. The prophet Isaiah was right, we should know this is artificial, it was fashioned to be just that. It is only designed to be realistic enough that we can control it from our jar and still imagine ourselves as its central and only ultimate agent. But “is this thing in my right hand a lie?”

Ok, now I don’t think it’s the end of everything real or good in the world, but I do think the most important words I share are spoken in person and the most important likes, shares, and snaps are actually hugs, handshakes, and cheers. I guess if anything this article reminds me that I have to place limits on my virtuality and avoid a neo-Gnostic praxis. To live embodied, present, and awake to my physical surroundings and proximate persons is increasingly a discipline to be developed and maintained.