User:Ffdssa/Books/Mechation

Mechation: How Evolution Changed

The idea of evolution formed as a human noticed a wide variety of bird beaks on finches on a group of Pacific islands. Each beak seemed particularly suited to procuring the food found on a particular island. Charles Darwin collected information and proposed that all living organisms evolve. He proposed that environments always present new challenges, and living things always adapt to the next set of conditions. At first, this meant moving from under water to above land. Later, it meant moving from land into the air. Each set of slow changes throughout the history of life could be documented by a changing continuum of modified organisms. Life in the water, on land, and in the air was gradually specified. Over time, the evolving continuation of all these forms has become well understood.

Looking around today, another process of change has become apparent. It is easy to document the constant modifications on this continuum, but the totality of the concept is hidden: literate humans cannot easily see it. As an idea forms in a brain and is input into a language or code, the brain cannot separate from the input. Human self concepts include this input: human identity is being forged from the codes. These codes can be thought of as the “DNA” of machines. This link between humans and machines has created such an intimate bond that it is almost impossible to draw or see a line. However, there are really two identities: a human being with oral language skills (precursors to code) and a machine with stored symbolic codes.

Is this evolution? Are humans evolving into super-intelligent, super-strong future forms? Are human beings becoming obese forgetful degradations of earlier ancestors?

Mechation is a new term that describes the modern changes we see around us. Unlike organic evolution (based on life forms containing carbon), this is an “inorganic evolution.” It parallels evolution because it’s processes are rapidly modifying the planet, but the process is slightly different. The plantetary changes have been dubbed “anthropogenic”, but “mechagenic” or “mechanogenic” would be a better term. We have been accustomed to viewing inorganic rocks as dead and carbon-based organisms as alive: a piece of igneous rock may go through the rock cycle in a billion years while a fly cycles in weeks. But mechanical or technological creations—inorganic forms like a cell phone—have quick cycles of regeneration. An anonymous viewer watching any temperate continent from a couple of miles above it could register huge evidence of change over the last century or even decade. On the ground, if the viewer walks to any road and then a connected highway, it would lead to a place where the vehicles stop and humans exchange things. Often, these things are mechanical. These markets of mechanical objects may contain hundreds or thousands of items in dozens of connected stores. Furthermore, if the viewer looked into some virtual machines, it would be easy to see codes manifesting themselves in myriad forms of “personal representation” that provide a second identity to many of the seven billion humans. For some, this second identity is more important than the first--973 virtual friends versus 3 friends. Millions of pictures have been abstracted from reality to help form millions of self-concepts based on virtual reality rather than human interaction.

Why set up a new branch of science? Can’t evolution and ecology just carry us on? Humans are obviously not progressing like the chimpanzees slowly did. Fish slowly created reptiles, and the DNA of both is similar. Humans slowly created machines, but the new codes (bits of information) do not look like DNA. Their only similarity is found in the replication process and their significant impact on Earth. The “extensions of man” aren’t human: some future being with an internet brain implant and a banded stomach eating medications may have human DNA but cannot really transition out of Homo sapiens. Machine/human modifications (telephones, driving) create an easily-visible symbiotic relationship, but much of the machine world is entirely independent from the average human and progress is continuing that divergence.

Intention and Fragmentation

The major force behind the shift from evolution to mechation is intention, whereby human endeavors are shifted from traditional non-machine related activities towards interactions with machines. The primary force at work here is advertising, but there is also a “what’s new” factor: humans now read news about current events. In oral cultures, this function was provided by couriers and storytellers; today it is provided by media. While people idealize traditional cultural norms from the past, human life could never again reorient around swords, quests, and traditional community life. Popular movies depict scenes from the Middle Ages, but towns in the world do not revert to such simple lifestyles. Even religious groups refusing the technologies of zippers and automobiles use cell phones.*

[See The Riddle of Amish Culture, by Donald B. Kraybill (Center Books in Anabaptist Studies, 2001)]

A second factor is at play which does not lead the direction of intent; it merely cuts off or fractures the attachments to tradition. This is fragmentation. Reading books is a tradition which has been going on for centuries. Two people sat in a room sharing quiet while reading two books. Books were at a premium long ago as they were passed around and talked about. In western cultures lots of discussion revolved around one particular religious book and its content. Someone would read aloud, and others would talk about it. Today, of course, a fragmentation has occurred as the two people in the room are now reading on two computers. A look at their reading “histories” would show widely divergent choices. Not too much gets shared out loud. Only infrequently (if at all) does text content get shared and discussed. Younger generations forego much of the reading and just watch audiovisual content. Dinner now is often a person eating and looking at a screen--maybe with headphones on their ears.

As far as reading goes, mass publishing in the twentieth century changed the numbers dramatically: more and more people began to read millions of books. This century has seen the act of writing swell as well. Millions of people have now self-published their books for free on their computer. Trillions of words online beg to be read.

Radio has also had a fragmenting effect on the human condition. Before this technology, people flocked around a human speaker—probably rooted in their community to some extent—listening and reflecting together.*

[In 1976, I walked on many weekday or weekend nights to Piazza Maggiore in Bologna, Italy, to find five hundred or more people talking in small groups on the huge plaza—60,000 square feet. Some groups consisted of just 5 or 6 people, but others had a dozen or more people sharing conversation about ideas or something in their experience. One of my most vivid lifetime memories is holding hands in a human circle that went completely around the plaza—a line 1000 feet long—as we participated in a political protest.]

As technology brought us radio and audio communication, everyone soon had their own favorite radio station and the process of human communication changed. The advance of mechation seems to require the retreat of the “tribal” situation. Compare a live conversation to the common situation of sitting and listening to another person’s telephone conversation. Assuming that the speakerphone is off, you hear one half of the participation. If you know and care about the third person involved, your consciousness gets jumbled around. If it is serious stuff, the call could last half an hour and somehow you participate as a truncated participant. In the tribal situation, all senses are involved in the communication.

Audiovisual images gain a strong hold on our consciousness when someone turns on a television. In the last century, there were just a few channels and there was some shared interest in choosing the channel together and absorbing the same information. By now, however, our minds float independently amidst billions of various audiovisual stimuli. One single link had a billion hits. We can share a link—a few people might click on it. We can talk about the cultural phenomena—a few people will know something about it. But our collective consciousness has been fragmented in the interests of our intentions and mechation.

To establish how evolution has changed into mechation and transformed the earth, it is useful to compare both processes:

Two Planetary Forces

Evolution	Mechation
1. Overproduction: Organisms produce more offspring than can survive. Some will die, but some will live on.	1. Signs and Symbols: Mechanical “inorganic” systems have been created by humans through the use of symbols and codes. This vast array of codes resembles the “DNA” of organic life. With manuals to assemble, service, and drive a car, we have information for a mechanical system.
2. Inherited Variation: Each individual has its own combination of traits which are similar, but not identical to its parents.	2. Information Bank: All codes are constantly being collected in huge databanks. Trillions of bits of information are constantly captured and stored. Creativity results in a constant barrage of new code: even "perfected" software changes in a year to a newer version. All machine processes are completely described and stored. Many obsolete machines could be recreated from collected information.
3. Struggle to Survive: Some organisms may be caught by predators, may starve, or may get a disease. Others will survive to adulthood.	3. Infrastructure: Mechanical systems require established infrastructures to spread and “reproduce”. Roads, conduits, and internet connections allow machines and codes to be exchanged. Fiber optics provides high speed interaction.
4. Successful Reproduction: The organisms that are best adapted to their environment are likely to have many offspring that survive.	4. Production Centers: Factories and assembly/ service locations insure that machines and codes will be produced and maintained. Many machines function for decades, get repaired, and many never "die".
	5. Market Advertising: Exchange areas and intentional messages allow machines to increase production and spread. “Intention” of the planet is controlled by this new “machine intention.” Humans are still writing the ads (for salaries) but almost all of the messages encourage the production and distribution of more machines. *
	6. Finance: The use of money and stock exchanges allow mechanical codes and products to be exchanged on a global scale.
	*One might argue that humans are propagating a “green movement” and turning back rapid planetary changes such as global warming. However the intention for machine progress is clearly inalterable: try to imagine a worldwide ban on oil/shale exploration. Try to stop the newly discovered trillion gallons of Arctic oil from burning into the sky. Worldwide automobile “population” is doubling every couple of decades. We have a billion cars now, but the Chinese and Indians have not even produced and purchased most of their cars yet. Machine intentions have even taken over the electoral process as purchased advertising has become a critical factor in U.S. elections. Planetary change at the end of the Holocene Period of the geologic time scale has shifted. Let's call this new period the "Mechocene". For a description of the development of "mechation", see "Whirlpool: A Memoir" at kindle.amazon.com (written at the high school/college sophomore level).