wired Man & machine
Modern Arcadian Norms of Engagement
In the Spring of 1979 I decided I would return to graduate school and attempt to obtain a masters degree in urban design. From that decision Arcadian Norms of Engagement have been promulgated in my life so far.
All kinds of wires have cluttered my life.
I chose Kent State University in Kent Ohio which is in the north east quadrant of the State of Ohio. The college had a school of architecture. I could afford in-state tuition, the program was as good as could be expected for this region of the country. The return to the academic environment was pleasant, inspiring and fruitful. The number of books read, as well as the classes that I attended, were exceptional. There was one class that I had a difficult time comprehending having to do with real estate and urban development. To you this day, I can't believe I still have a difficult time with real estate and urban development, although there is really nothing hard about it.
The story I want to express has to do with a thought. It was a written thought, I do think it remains in the archive, but it certainly has manifested itself exponentially in a number of ways, beginning that ’79 Spring. The notion of the man and the machine, as I labeled it back then, and again here, I'm going to use the phrase ‘wired Man and machine’. That description had come from a variety of sources, looking in the past, observing the present and gazing into the future. I saw that there were inventions, some changed the World from the lines of wires attached to the telephone, or the lightbulbs flooding with strings of light fixtures.
All kinds of wires have cluttered my life where as long as I can remember, however in the age of technology, they have become overwhelming. One says:
wires for charging cell phones can I plug into the cigarette lighter port in my automobile
wires for charging my cell phone in my house or at your office
wires for headsets and my phone earplugs
wires connected to my smart phone or iPod, iPad or iPhone
wires with USB ports to charge my electronic watch
wires to connect my thunderbolt to my computer, then adapters to make sure that happens, there are networking wires
wire sets for spark plugs and overhaul wiring harness
wires to connect devices be they windows or moonroof or high beams or flashing emergency lights
The human species and its wires, hmmmm?
… and all her miraculous ways.
Because our world is revealed in wires, have our human senses been accentuated such we can smell better than an elephant?
Does our species smell and detect a burning pine tree that is ten miles away from us so we can gather food, do our mating, or protect an embryo as does the Jewel Beetle?
Is our hearing as sensitive as the cavefish hearing? Don’t think so!
Has our taste become better than the catfish with its cat-like whiskers using 17 times the taste sensitive cells with its four pairs of whiskers, because of wires and machines?
Does our touching detect and trace the point where something begins, say a vibration made by another, as well as that of the spider? Our web is not so sensitive except perhaps the dark one.
How’s your eyesight compare with the mantis shrimp, that has 16 types of photoreceptors detecting visible and ultraviolet light? It would be problematic for you to sense light depth with one eye while separately moving the other, yes?
The human species thinks very highly of itself be it through their five known senses and the hidden six or seventh through eighth senses, knowing little or nothing about? Just as the examples above suggest our senses compared to others in the animal kingdom are far inferior, extremely so, and yet we somehow think we can master nature and all her miraculous ways.
Speak your mind here if you dare.
Perhaps it's time for the human species to take a break. By break, we can suggest to do practically nothing. Let our fields go fallow for a year, that our minds open up, to let our wires, less machine use, keep ourselves bridled to the land and above the sea.
You may have noticed in the year 2020 the environment that we lived in breathing made a comeback globally, from a cleansing from the lack of human activity, in terms of its daily pollutions spewed into the air, drowned in the water, drilled into the crust. It is said people were able to breathe more easily, see more clearly, taste more profusely, and hear what was important. Rather than maintaining this new found lifestyle that benefited individuals, collectively the all of us, for the common good of the planet and the species, we too soon reverted to our less intelligent ways.
It baffles one to see the ignorance the global society especially the decision makers, policymakers, warmongers, venture capitalists, among some, controlling others in ways that do not benefit the whole. Speak your mind here if you dare.
Somehow …
The wires, not unlike our human nerves, travel in our machines, and from one machine to another, as if our nerves shielded from outward pressure, travel to our nerve endings and then report back the information to our central command in our brain.
Somehow … the biomimicry of our translation of the wiring system used, does not match the divine creation that is contained within each of us.
Somehow … we chose the Edison lightbulb, maybe, it should've been the Tesla lightbulb? What was of better, more complete, forward thinking, human compatible, value to the planet and ourselves? Are machines the solution or the problem? What the device does, often, is not in concert with what the device should do. Take for instance the simple typical gun, loaded, fired, and becomes a killing machine. Take the same ideology, make an atomic bomb, load it on a plane, drop it on people, kill hundreds of thousands of earthlings in one 30,000 foot drop.
Somehow … take the telephone lines as a utilitarian tool. Call 911, help is on the way. Yet the same telephones are used by so many to do such harm each and every second of the day throughout the world. Take an unsolicited call, aanswer it, and someone tries to sell or promote a service for an activity you do use or want to use, and on our cell they tell us how to use or and how they abuse.
… something like this Transcription:
“Yes this is Morgan Wilson at 555-786-0172. I'm calling in reference to your SBAE ideal business loan. I need to discuss your loan increase options with the new changes that have recently taken affect, be sure to give me a call at 555-786-0172 thank you…”
… 100% of it.
What good did those wires do for mankind with this lie perpetrated to the unsuspecting today? Would we collectively be in a better situation if we did not have telephones to use and abuse?
Back to the automobiles.
wires for your battery cables
wires to warm your engine
wires to charge your battery
wire harnesses
I use to own an Opel Kadett, a cute little copper foreign German car. For unrealistic reasons I thought I could be a mechanic and do my own auto repairs, although I never could figure out how to fix brakes. I bought a second Kadett, similar year and model. I cannibalized the pickled green Opel car from a fellow college student. I had purchased from her for a few hundred dollars. I'm sure there were parts that I may have used like a water pump or an alternator, or the like. What I explicitly remember is extracting the entire electrical harness from the car, 100% of it.
… rendered against the universal goodness of earthly providence.
I used this harness as my Halloween costume to parade up and down Court Street one year. I did it to the chagrin of the previous owner of the little pickled green Opel. I wrapped the harness about my head and body and walked down the street announcing and introducing myself as “wired Man and machine”!
We can continue to harp on how our wires, our wires and machines, and our machines, and their machines, torment us. Or one can take a fresh start, a different outlook, first on the machines we make, and secondly on their proper purpose as it relates to our human destiny.
Yes the machine world dominates, machinery casts a central factor in life, be it your car, your bulldozer, your computer, your vacuum cleaner, your toaster, your uninvented machine, and is central to your life, then therefore, be it as it may, regrettably.
If the other hand one finds the ‘real machina’ is the human heart, and the connectedness to one's brain, emotions, spirit, and soul, then the acts and thoughts, words and deeds that one lives in the short years of life, will be altered in ways yet not experienced.
As a machine maker shall we not also be called a humbler? May our designs show we have empathy and are not apathetic? In our spoken word will our wires allow temperate tenderness? Operationally, blamelessness is the hallmark of the end use of our creations. The machine we use is softhearted, without malice or hurtfulness in any form. In this manufactured apparatus an internal purity of souls will be unconcealed, promoting an accord such that nothing is rendered against the universal goodness of earthly providence.
A zoetic message…
A zoetic message ask us to sense that there is a slot to our passage that expands our total being, not only in a linear direction, yet in all directions. Arcadian machines touch us all, humans, plants, and animals, in concert with the nurturing care of the earth, which we fondly call Mother Nature, we plead.