Prison of Mirrors

Information is a disease. Our bodies are filled with fragments of what has happened. We’ve documented it every way conceivable: words, photos, film, audio recordings, memories, emotions.

We use this information to try and distinguish patterns to see if yesterday can illuminate tomorrow.

These memories start phsyically and then get digitized, so we can store them for infinity, look back at them when necessary, and transmit them from one person or place to another.

Our senses, once used simply to survive, are now conditioned to require constant stimulus, less the dreaded boredom seeps in. We awake and need our newspapers, television shows, radios, and RSS feeds to go along with our toast and coffee.

Every day we prompt ourselves to take in information that, when carefully analyzed, does not provide anything beyond the superficial.

Emails are scanned, cell phones checked for texts, voicemail listened to as if these fragments of communication each hold some vital message needed to survive.

We like to believe we are collecting all of this data, but we’ve reached the point where the data is collecting us. It knows our patterns of consumption, where we are at what time, the music we enjoy. The data then uses this to attract us to more distractions — shopping, games, political causes, low mortgage rates, vacations.

It is now moving beyond just collecting behavior. It is attempting to discern why you make these choices. Why? — the ultimate question. The question for God, for teachers, for a partner’s infidelity, for the death of children. Once it knows why, it can better serve your needs. Advertising is moving away from being a simple distraction or disruption and towards a marketer's heaven: a bell not unlike that used by Pavlov. Of course, these are false needs.

These needs have been created to collect the second most powerul thing ever created: currency. The first most powerful is time. Without clocks to divide our days and categorize us into neat demographics, money has no way of determing its own value. Mathematics: created by us to give us scientific answers to our own questions. And science — progress — is a tough enemy to be against. We can take data and represent it visually, which appeals to our logic and our need for empirical evidence. Feelings? Emotions? Instinct? They can’t be easily graphed (yet), so they take on the air of an imperfect magic, susceptible to the easiest kinds of criticism.

This data, this empirical evidence, creates an illusion of ourselves. Data points assigned to geographical locations begin to form maps. These psychic maps begin to show us a representation of ourselves, reflecting back on us.

We stare at screens telling us stories about ourselves. These aren’t windows, allowing us to peek through at the lives of others, but rather mirrors reflecting back our own bodies. Instead of glass, these mirrors are constructed of data points, millions of them, based on the language of infinite ones and zeros.

Our imprint is now so all encompassing, our surrounding environment — earth, our womb — is now a secondary concern. Once revered and worshipped, it has, in some contexts and places, assumed the role of enemy. If wars on terror are designed to last a thousand years, this war with the environment triumphs it, since it can last forever.

When presented the images of a human or a tree, we choose to ask more about the human. Their age, name, location, income, likes and dislikes — all common inquiries. The tree just exists; the human transcends mere existence. Each cell is a point of data ripe for collection and further analysis. The human is a branch of a kind of tree, whether you call it the tree of life or choose other esoteric terms, like the noosphere or Akashic Record.

God or no god, those left remaining reflect as humans. These indescribable forces shaping the universe work well when personified. Even the stars in the sky, massive collections of burning gas, signify much better when aggregated into the form of archers and kings, beasts we’ve long dominated, creatures from the sea.

We have unparalled access to information and we use it for work, for science, for entertainment. Information reigns supreme. If intellectual endeavors (either good or evil) had a currency, information would be its tender.

Technology companies have built prototypes of a machine in which you are surrounded by screens. These are tied in to a map and photo database which simulate any location on earth. Inside this machine, you can go anywhere in the world without going anywhere at all.

The use of a machine like this might initially be seen as entertainment, like a life-sized videogame or film. But imagine other applications. Homes built of screens, allowing the user to live in differnt virutal locations. Even if your home is in the suburbs of Los Angeles, there is no reason to limit your view to that; a tropical setting or mountain retreat are realistic. And gone are those ugly constructs like electrical towers and billboards, though the inevitable in-screen ads would be generated -- though now manifesting as stimulus/response -- as advertisers and marketers are always battling to promote on every space in existence. All of this data gathered to allow you to live your dreams and be where you can’t. You can live the life of anyone, not just yourself.

Apply these screens to prison cells and prisoners are now under the illusion they are somewhere serene. Or, depending on the country and laws, hellish scenarios are displayed to further punish the incarcerated.

These displays, reflections of collected data working together synergistically, are a prison of mirrors. And its easy to construct them as a panopticon. The world, slowly surrounded by mirrors, with information projected in ways we want it to be.

It is over? Is there no escape?