Messing Around in the Garage

Messing Around in the Garage

I was just watching the video Google and the World Brain via my old buddy, Curiosity Stream.  The video examines the contemporary implications of H.G. Welles' book, World Brain, a compilation of his essays and addresses from 1936 to 1938, published by Methuen Publishing in 1938.

Welles' book, and Curiosity Streams' take on it, both raise very interesting questions all of which center on the issues raised by the potential existence of an entity - human or AI - that actually is able to collect, index, continually update and distribute all of humanity’s extant information. For me the important variable is individually. If Google and/or other tech companies gather all the world’s information and allow access to that information at minimal cost (assuming that even at minimal cost, "access" generates necessary corporate profit) then simple possession of that information loses much of what was its traditional unique or inherent value. Instead value gets reconfigured or reconstructed by the ways in which individuals mold or structure that information so that it yields results that are pleasurable to humans. Obviously that “pleasure” can take myriad forms. Profit, power, etc., are those "pleasures" that have traditionally motivated individuals and cultures. The great sweep of those pleasures often also implies the power to implement, distribute, provide, them.  Historically, art has been shaped by political or religious power; presidents, chiefs, royalty, popes, cardinals, sultans, imams, lamas,  abhyasi, etc.  So the subject matter of much "art" was usually predetermined by the orthodoxy of the purse strings of the patron. 

However, in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries those purse strings led more or less directly to major companies, [From Ford, Westinghouse, General Electric, General Motors up through Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Tesla, etc.] whether their products were powered or produced by steam, internal combustion, or electricity. These new patrons often enjoy significant political support as well.  The concern expressed in "Google and the World Brain" is that access/control of all of the world's information would - assuming the continued concentration of that information in one or a few corporate hands - determine how said information could or would be used. It occurs to me that nothing could be further from the truth. 

Humanity's evolution - artistic, scientific, cultural - has always grown out of unique, individual applications of information driven by human curiosity. Capital, marketing, profit, those seeming impenetrable barriers to success, are in reality merely problems that can be overcome. What has actually foiled significant advances for humanity has been lack of access to information that allows the transformation of ideas into reality.  Information like what filament can burn in a lightbulb? what fuel can lift a rocket into orbit? how do you fit thousands of transistors on a single chip? When all humanity gains access to Welles’ "world brain" - a concept more recognizable today as the World Wide Web or some improved version of the Internet - what we can expect is an unprecedented explosion of those notions of artistic, scientific and cultural evolution.

Would that it would all be positive.  I read today of a couple of teens running a multimillion dollar NFT [Non-Fungible Tokens] art scam out of their version of the same kind of "garages" that originally gave us Apple and Microsoft. Equally prevalent are stories covering "cybercrime," "cyber warfare," "cyber attacks," etc. So what I am suggesting is NOT that access to the “world brain” would usher in some kind of digital panacea for the world's ills; that horse has left the barn.  Rather what does occur to me is that such access could usher in a potential shift in the locus of influence from the the traditional potentates of power - religious, political, corporate - to unaffiliated individuals. 

In the fascinating video, Tom Dowd and the Language of Music, iconic guitarist Les Paul [Lester William Polsfuss] talks about how, in his day - mid 1950s - the most creative new strains of music were coming from "kids in their bedrooms or garages messing around with guitars and computers." Paul's own messing "around with guitars and computers," with his equally talented wife, guitarist and vocalist, Mary Ford, led to the first examples of 8-track recording.  Which, in turn, led to more complex and layered sounds in the evolving genre of what is now broadly defined as rock. I find it fascinating and exciting to imagine what might result in all areas of art, culture and society from "kids in their bedrooms and garages messing around on their digital devices with access to 'the world brain.'"