Intervolution, by Mark C. Taylor (preface)

Intervolution Mark C. Taylor

SMART BODIES SMART THINGS

Preface

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gricultural Revolution. Industrial Revolution. Information Revolution. Internet Revolution. When revolution becomes the normal condition, emergent developments no longer seem revolutionary. Nevertheless, as disruptive technologies appear at an accelerating rate and global networks continue to expand and become more invasive, the world seems to be rushing toward some kind of inflection point. This turn of events provokes both utopian and dystopian visions of the future. For some of Silicon Valley’s true believers, new digital and networking technologies are converging with innovations in neuroscience, nanotechnology, and genetic engineering to usher in what has been dubbed “the Singularity,” which promises to launch human beings into a new stage of evolution where all ills will be cured and even death will be overcome. Entrepreneurs and investors with more worldly concerns are convinced that the same technologies create the prospect of expanding markets that will generate vast wealth. Many

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thoughtful critics, however, interpret these developments differently. The optimism of the early days of personal computers and the Internet has given way to anxiety about a panoptical world in which privacy vanishes as personal images and data are bought and used for pernicious economic and political purposes. Technologies that had been promoted as vastly increasing freedom of choice for individuals now threaten the very foundations of democratic societies. As the reach of an invisible network state grows, more and more citizens and politicians are calling for the regulation and even the dismantling of the high-tech companies in which so much hope has recently been invested. Right or left. Red or Blue. Technophilic or technophobic. Utopian or dystopian. As always, both extremes are misleading.

While there is no doubt that digital technologies are changing our minds and bodies in many unpredictable ways, the Promethean dreams of technological gurus like Ray Kurzweil, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and their epigones are, unbeknownst to them, the latest version of Nietzsche’s will to power and Heidegger’s will to mastery. While a few may thrive, many more struggle and even suffer. When the will to control is out of control, natural processes and disempowered human beings become standing reserves exploited by those who hold the digital advantage. The dreams of some people are the nightmares of others. Technologies that were supposed to unite different people around the world and increase communication and cooperation have turned out to be so divisive they are creating disagreements and conflicts between and among groups that no longer even try to understand each other. Social

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media, paradoxically, are antisocial. Furthermore, the combination of high-speed computers, networked mobile devices, proliferating cameras and sensors, and Big Data has created a condition of asymmetrical transparency that has led to a surveillance state designed to support surveillance economies. Whereas, in industrial capitalism, those who owned the means of production had the power, in surveillance capitalism, communism, and socialism, those who own the networks and control the data have the power.

As the abuses of digital technologies spread, there are louder and louder calls for regulation and reform. A growing number of informed and informative books and articles sound the alarm about current and projected developments.

While in no way minimizing the importance of these works, I undertake a dierent task in this book.

Without a doubt, there is an urgent need for thoughtful assessment and oversight of the technologies that are shaping our future. Eective policies must be developed by people who understand not only the dangers but also the potential for these technologies to improve life and alleviate human suering. Nowhere are these possibilities greater today than in the area of medical research and development.

In the following pages, I will consider some of the ways in which the same image-processing and voice recognition technologies, as well as tracking devices that are being used for political, economic, and even criminal surveillance, and apps that are being used for real and fake targeted political ads and customized marketing are also being used to monitor patients and deliver precision medical care. Networked medical devices monitored by vigilant algorithms are allowing patients to live longer without the debilitating

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complications that so many terrible diseases often bring.

Technology is never neutral—it can always be used for good and for ill. It would be a serious mistake to allow the abuse of advanced information and networking technologies to disrupt medical research and prevent the deployment of digital devices that are already saving lives.

Finally, a word about the title of this book—Intervolution.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, intervolve was first used by John Milton in 1667: “Mazes intricate, Eccentric, intervolv’d, yet regular, Then most, when most irregular they seem.” In 1850, Nathaniel Hawthorne used intervolution in The Scarlet Letter: “Making one little pause, with all its wreathed intervolutions in open sight.” Intervolve derives from inter + volvere, to roll, wind, and means to wind or coil together. In contrast to evolve, which means to unfold or roll0ut (e, ex + volvere), and coevolve, which means to evolve jointly or in parallel (co, joint, together + volvere), intervolve means to intertwine. Intervolution involves a developmental process in which seemingly distinct entities are braided together in such a way that each becomes itself in and through the other and neither can be itself apart from the other. Though the word is old, it accurately captures something new about the interplay of smart bodies and smart things in the proliferating webs and networks that constitute our world. Friedrich Nietzsche’s words in Thus Spoke Zarathustra have never been truer: “All things are entwined, enmeshed, enamored.”

How technological change is weaving together new forms of life “Intervolution is at once informative and thought-provoking—a fascinating exploration of the ever-narrowing gap between men and machines.

Mark C.Taylor uses his own experience of chronic illness to probe some of the central questions of our time.” j Elizabeth Kolbert, author of The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, winner of the Pulitzer Prize

“Imagine your body. Imagine in it an artificial pancreas, and in the pancreas, an artificial brain. Now imagine that brain networked to—and learning from—thousands of matching pancreas-brains. What you are now imagining Taylor has experienced and turns here into an absolutely riveting introduction into how artificial intelligence will transform us from the inside out.” j Jack Miles, author of God: A Biography, winner of the Pulitzer Prize

“Stimulated by his experience with the insulin pump, Taylor elegantly explores the potential of high-speed networked computers, mobile devices, miniature sensors, big data, and artificial intelligence to create breakthroughs for the human condition. Machines will enable humans to transcend our biologic roots. This is an intellectually provocative glimpse at the future of human health.” j Toby Cosgrove, CEO Emeritus, Cleveland Clinic

Mark C. Taylor is professor of religion at Columbia University. He is an artist and also the author of more than thirty books, including, most recently, Last Works: Lessons in Leaving (2018), Abiding Grace: Time: Modernity, Death (2018), and Seeing Silence (2020).

NO LIMITS Cover design: Lisa Hamm

Columbia University Press/New York cup.columbia.edu PRINTED IN THE U.S. A .

ISBN: 978-0-231-19820-2