Friday, December 22, 2006
Words as ideas,
From the days when I confused words for ideas. This one reflects my fascination for the cinematic experience (rather than movies themselves). The other one is a look at the evolution of media tools and why its hegemony is illusory. A total write-off this one. Words, more words, and then some more with the odd sparkling sentence thrown in. Spot it if you can. Definitely not my finest hour!!
At the formula movies
Life is a movie formula. We, old fans who have always been at the movies, do not let prescience of the end (death = end of the movies) bother us too much. We sit back in the dark as the projector runs itself out on the glassy screen, in alternating, pulsating shades of incandescent, dull and sombre, as hombres bursting out of the projector’s luminous alchemy spread themselves out on the white screen (but we will call it silver, not because of bromide, but because we worry about the image, of the things we see and the way they show us and the way we see ourselves in them), once vitreous diamond, one sweating, glistening coal.
And we return every night so that we can sit in masochistic darkness blacker than the tenebrity outside, and watch shafts of light overhead torch the silk(y) screen that we have built for ourselves in a distant, visible, conspicuous yet where-else corner of our daily theatre, so that it flares into life (illumining only the smoothly stretched, taut screen, but we feel a soothing glow , and our grateful eyes sparkle and our shining clothes always crackle in movie halls) and onereic, phantasmagoric yet so veritable figures (that we credulous folks, believe that we are going to be just like them, and they are just like ‘me’) twinkle into vivification and we really don’t care whether these apparitions laugh or cry or brood or exult or suffer (for they are pretence anyway !), all that we want to do, while we have the time, while the movie runs and we are more animate than the projector’s people, is to be happy, to make the best out of it.
Our whole life is onanism to these movies, and the movies are peccavis of our hieratic wet- dreams. We sit like paramours with inamoratas, in the last row of the balcony, gazing at the unnaturally clear, epidermal screen, the cleanest part of the theater, a sacred palimpsest of our guilt and desire apropos our neighbor in the theatre and the searing pilgrim urge for exoneration (or exorcism), whilst the screen flickers and crumbles into vitality; but across our uncertain exculpation hangs the pallid aureole of impotent remorse, because we cannot help knowing that every time a movie begins it begins to end. We have amortized the movies with our pertinacious solipsism. We have become the movies. We are the movies.
Is this then the formula? The lord said: let there be life, and there were movies. We, old fans, who have always been at the movies, know this formula by heart, and thrive on its empathetic benison. We are ashamed for we know we are as parasitic as fetus, but we still buy umbilical chords at ticket counters and flee into wombs where these shadowy projectors wait for us amidst deception of the nocturne, with their ephemeral light and their quasi-catoptric grasp and suzerainty over our gullible sentience. We sleep among them because they are our oldest friends and their life makes our own lives luminescent by proxy. We go to these chthonian places because they are ‘it’, because there is no other place to go. Amidst all the prestidigitation, we have no illusions. Yet, we hasten lest we miss the beginning, but everyone knows the end. The formula rules. We know that the gamin will get the gamine, but will it be a happy ending? We have always wondered.
This then is the formula. We like to fly so high that our wings melt and we fall from the sky. But the formula stares me so close in the eye; it is too far for you, too near for I.
And we return every night so that we can sit in masochistic darkness blacker than the tenebrity outside, and watch shafts of light overhead torch the silk(y) screen that we have built for ourselves in a distant, visible, conspicuous yet where-else corner of our daily theatre, so that it flares into life (illumining only the smoothly stretched, taut screen, but we feel a soothing glow , and our grateful eyes sparkle and our shining clothes always crackle in movie halls) and onereic, phantasmagoric yet so veritable figures (that we credulous folks, believe that we are going to be just like them, and they are just like ‘me’) twinkle into vivification and we really don’t care whether these apparitions laugh or cry or brood or exult or suffer (for they are pretence anyway !), all that we want to do, while we have the time, while the movie runs and we are more animate than the projector’s people, is to be happy, to make the best out of it.
Our whole life is onanism to these movies, and the movies are peccavis of our hieratic wet- dreams. We sit like paramours with inamoratas, in the last row of the balcony, gazing at the unnaturally clear, epidermal screen, the cleanest part of the theater, a sacred palimpsest of our guilt and desire apropos our neighbor in the theatre and the searing pilgrim urge for exoneration (or exorcism), whilst the screen flickers and crumbles into vitality; but across our uncertain exculpation hangs the pallid aureole of impotent remorse, because we cannot help knowing that every time a movie begins it begins to end. We have amortized the movies with our pertinacious solipsism. We have become the movies. We are the movies.
Is this then the formula? The lord said: let there be life, and there were movies. We, old fans, who have always been at the movies, know this formula by heart, and thrive on its empathetic benison. We are ashamed for we know we are as parasitic as fetus, but we still buy umbilical chords at ticket counters and flee into wombs where these shadowy projectors wait for us amidst deception of the nocturne, with their ephemeral light and their quasi-catoptric grasp and suzerainty over our gullible sentience. We sleep among them because they are our oldest friends and their life makes our own lives luminescent by proxy. We go to these chthonian places because they are ‘it’, because there is no other place to go. Amidst all the prestidigitation, we have no illusions. Yet, we hasten lest we miss the beginning, but everyone knows the end. The formula rules. We know that the gamin will get the gamine, but will it be a happy ending? We have always wondered.
This then is the formula. We like to fly so high that our wings melt and we fall from the sky. But the formula stares me so close in the eye; it is too far for you, too near for I.
An architecture of the media
The industrial society was arguably the first to rush headlong into the future. During ancient society and medieval feudalism, time was at best a tertiary given – ineluctable yes, but seldom imperative, on account of the sharply defined but seemingly eternal elitist hegemonic order (best exemplified in the Annalist historiography which subordinates ‘event’ and ‘structural’ time to the ‘langue duree’), and technology that was evolutionary rather than revolutionary.
The age of the ‘techne’ marked the crossing of a Rubicon – for the first time in human history the notoriously futuristic credo of progress and development became immediately available and the impending became inextricably enmeshed with the quotation. In every, sphere life was suddenly agog with ‘marvels’ – Newton, steam engines, Darwin, the Bessemer patent, the serendipitous invention of the Montgolfier brothers, and more. Factory life and production opened new vistas of possibility and the human horizon of expectations has since been bounding exponentially.
Doomsayers of various ilk, from Spengler to Henry Adams (and we may also include the pessimistic visions of such as Schumacher and George Miller) have often focused attention towards growing socio-political labyrinths and fragmentation, the perilous state of resources, historical cycles and slipstreams, thermodynamic discharge and akin factors, and raised plausible visions of apocalypse but the bubble has stubbornly refused to burst. Discontent with going around the world in eighty days, generations have successively diminished the temporal expanse of the world and as we enter the post-modernist world of ‘chaos’ ‘uncertainty’ and ‘relativity’ we ‘inner and outer’ in techno-time more than ever before.
It is a matter of no little significance in the history of our racer civilization that the media has grown in scale and stature in tandem with the coeval ‘technologisation’ and democratization of the common society. The advent of the scientific revolution and capitalism broke feudal strangleholds and emasculated the various versions of the ‘estates’ order that had been perpetuating their stultifying influence around preponderate parts of the world. Social and philosophical notions of the individual arose. Even while tenets of egalitarianism were distant, more and more men rose to participate more freely and actively and in many more spheres than had been hitherto possible.
Greater involvement logically entailed greater generation of information, which had to be spread over greater distances and a greater spectrum and in lesser time. Indeed, before the world shrank it bloated, but the technology that engendered it also made the proportions of this tumescence manageable, even beneficial. The post office and mass media were both the handiwork and handmaiden of the information driven manufacturing society.
It may indeed be irrefragably averred that the institution of mass media could not have been envisaged or derived even until late feudalism. In those days information was expensive (custom-made, to use later terminology that is most befitting), scarcely traveled large distances and concerned only a handful of people (mostly elite) and remarkable events, and was disseminated with only as much celerity as quadruples could manage. However unlike medieval systems capitalism was an open and outward looking phenomenon that was impelled by its innate, expansionist logic to forever draw and co-opt more and more elements to fuel its dynamics.
Quite inevitably the cost effective, technologically efficient and wide-reaching method of mass media became its natural messenger. The invention of the Guttenberg press was a magnetic event around which all the forces presiding over the passing of the feudal era clustered. The invention, apart from being the harbinger of technological promise, was an important step towards the democratization of the most critical implement of power, i.e., knowledge – it was no longer the sole prerogative of monastic ivory towers and fittingly many great inventors and ideologues rose from the ranks of common society.
The tide soon turned into a deluge even as more and more specialized target audiences for mass media were created. From books arose magazines, journals, comic books, posters and pamphlets. Progress in other technological avenues gave birth to radio, television, cinema video, compact disc, audiotapes etc and today we are on the cybernetic brink of interactive TV and ‘virtual reality’. All along the reach (market = mass base = mass participation) of the mass media (and even popular culture) has shown steady acclivity, so much so that it is now among the cardinal signifiers of our society much in the same way as the elitist activities of the past such as art and architecture symbolized the cutting edge of their respective eras.
Any architecture of the media must be characterized by its triumvirate of coefficients – time, technology and democracy (by which is meant general involvement and not its strictly political connotation), and this combinatory is geared towards the production and regurgitation of information. It is in this light that we must comprehend that mass media can never afford to be either entirely didactic or mindless and refrains like Doordarshan’s pontificatory shibboleth – to educate and entertain – must be assiduously discarded.
The animadversion becomes clearer if the most transparent facets of the mass media such as hard news, features, documentaries, drama, fiction, editorials etc. are neglected in favor of the more subtle messages that are transmitted to the subconscious of the receiver, thus influencing his subjectivity and future choices. Popular cinema is a fine exemplar and the persistence and popularity of formula in various guises around the world a most suitable giveaway. If cinema were to be reduced to mere plots, the medium would soon become redundant and it is the medium’s efficacy as a carrier of sub-textual information that has kept it vivified.
The most commonly understood of these sub-textual signs are perhaps prevalent fashion, socio-politico-cultural trends and boundaries and technological prowess or limitation as the case may be. The prevalent knowledge of and about the world draws barriers for popular cinema that it cannot deny and as such they are reflected in the message- medium. Thus Ramanand Sagar’s Sita showed greater fidelity to Raja Ravi Verma’s prototypes than to some informed opinion that suggested that a topless Sita would bear greater affinity to a historical reconstruction of the germane age’s fashion tastes.
Similar paradigms abound (however it must be specified forthwith that the above and segueing are not intended to establish the primacy of the sub-text over the text or the vice-versa, but rather the endeavor is to piece together the sprawling nature of the mass-media). News selection is a case in point that aptly reflects upon the mass media as a disseminator of collective intellectual information, or the dominant knowledge structure of the world. The triumph of hegemony lies in compliant subjectively and when the mass media, ostensibly of its own volition, chooses to highlight starvation deaths in Ethiopia rather than in Kalahandi or to discuss Booker entries in greater detail than Jnanpeeth winners its susceptibilities become immediately lucid.
The old hat about whether railway accidents should count as news comparable to air-crashes may also be mentioned. A pattern may easily be described in the way news items are carefully selected, classified or discarded by all sections of mass media and this ineluctably denotes the medium as a carrier of hegemonic information more than anything else.
This hegemony should not be construed in the sense of precepts emanating from the upper echelons of the society or else mass media would violate the democracy coefficient aforementioned and would be indistinguishable from propaganda machinery (communist Russia is an example of didactically organized media set up which was destined to be an aberration). The consent I have in mind is a democratic one that pervades common society and is not monolithic. The history of the past two centuries bears ample testimony to the fecundity of such an understanding of hegemony and the mass media has not been bereft of its implications. At an intellectual level it has been witness and party to an unprecedented democratization ideology – never on prior record have so many prominent ideologies jostled for space on a global level and it would not be improper to say that minus democratic mass media such would not have been feasible. All modern ideologies from Marxism to environmentalism owe this debt to the mass media, which has not only spread the word but also lent these ideologies a degree of authenticity that can only come from cold print.
Putative media issues like Bofors and RJB-BM imbroglio may be understood in this context. The media must not be made the hero or the villain of the piece (if holistically considered) for it serves merely as a conduit and not as a demiurge. Its powers are limited by the co-efficient driven nature of its existence. Similarly at the consumerist level mass media constantly alters and establishes points of reference sometimes stretching, but never violating the democracy co-efficient, and also simultaneously reinforces the time principle. An explicardum lies in advertising. It functions at twin pedestals: -
Thus mass-media would appear to be our culture’s prime mode of ‘talking’ – in the context of getting information across to our ‘circle’ (which is often global in the modern and post-modern case). Undeniably there are other modes of communication, telephones and computers being two of them with global reach but these can never achieve mass media’s influential status unless they venture out of the personal sphere -- computers with their vast and inter connected information pools seemingly have the potential to compete and it is apprehended in several quarters that in alignment with mass media it would inexorably lead towards the de-privatization of our society thus hearkening towards a simulacrum of the primitive commune.
Marshall Mcluhan’s vision of a global village borne out of tetradic permutations is an augury of such a fate. He envisions a world wrapped by inter-connected, disembodied voices in the noisiest era of human history and an altered nature of institutional life towards which we seen to be heading with our telegenic leaders, sound bites, prime time mania and excessive consumerism etc with time reduced to a channel zap. The nature of the individual and democracy shall indubitably be restructured and technology remolded in accordance.
Mass Media, while it shall survive will not remain the same. The portents are already visible. Modern audiences have greater freedom and access than ever before and information embargo appears to be a thing of the past. Modern media so fills our sky that any one with an antenna can pluck gleanings from it. Choices are unlimited and round the clock specialized channels under one flag (thus de-centralizing without losing a central identification plank) are rapidly becoming the norm with the fare doctored to meet international tastes.
The movement is towards ‘totalled specialisation’ and even in India mass media networks are diversifying to include as many servers as possible – thus e.g. Bennet Coleman has acquired a stake in television. Abroad too large-scale mergers have take place with Time Warner being among the notables. Time magazine is also available electronically. It may never perhaps be possible to spread information evenly around the world but it will definitely not be for lack of trying.
The age of the ‘techne’ marked the crossing of a Rubicon – for the first time in human history the notoriously futuristic credo of progress and development became immediately available and the impending became inextricably enmeshed with the quotation. In every, sphere life was suddenly agog with ‘marvels’ – Newton, steam engines, Darwin, the Bessemer patent, the serendipitous invention of the Montgolfier brothers, and more. Factory life and production opened new vistas of possibility and the human horizon of expectations has since been bounding exponentially.
Doomsayers of various ilk, from Spengler to Henry Adams (and we may also include the pessimistic visions of such as Schumacher and George Miller) have often focused attention towards growing socio-political labyrinths and fragmentation, the perilous state of resources, historical cycles and slipstreams, thermodynamic discharge and akin factors, and raised plausible visions of apocalypse but the bubble has stubbornly refused to burst. Discontent with going around the world in eighty days, generations have successively diminished the temporal expanse of the world and as we enter the post-modernist world of ‘chaos’ ‘uncertainty’ and ‘relativity’ we ‘inner and outer’ in techno-time more than ever before.
It is a matter of no little significance in the history of our racer civilization that the media has grown in scale and stature in tandem with the coeval ‘technologisation’ and democratization of the common society. The advent of the scientific revolution and capitalism broke feudal strangleholds and emasculated the various versions of the ‘estates’ order that had been perpetuating their stultifying influence around preponderate parts of the world. Social and philosophical notions of the individual arose. Even while tenets of egalitarianism were distant, more and more men rose to participate more freely and actively and in many more spheres than had been hitherto possible.
Greater involvement logically entailed greater generation of information, which had to be spread over greater distances and a greater spectrum and in lesser time. Indeed, before the world shrank it bloated, but the technology that engendered it also made the proportions of this tumescence manageable, even beneficial. The post office and mass media were both the handiwork and handmaiden of the information driven manufacturing society.
It may indeed be irrefragably averred that the institution of mass media could not have been envisaged or derived even until late feudalism. In those days information was expensive (custom-made, to use later terminology that is most befitting), scarcely traveled large distances and concerned only a handful of people (mostly elite) and remarkable events, and was disseminated with only as much celerity as quadruples could manage. However unlike medieval systems capitalism was an open and outward looking phenomenon that was impelled by its innate, expansionist logic to forever draw and co-opt more and more elements to fuel its dynamics.
Quite inevitably the cost effective, technologically efficient and wide-reaching method of mass media became its natural messenger. The invention of the Guttenberg press was a magnetic event around which all the forces presiding over the passing of the feudal era clustered. The invention, apart from being the harbinger of technological promise, was an important step towards the democratization of the most critical implement of power, i.e., knowledge – it was no longer the sole prerogative of monastic ivory towers and fittingly many great inventors and ideologues rose from the ranks of common society.
The tide soon turned into a deluge even as more and more specialized target audiences for mass media were created. From books arose magazines, journals, comic books, posters and pamphlets. Progress in other technological avenues gave birth to radio, television, cinema video, compact disc, audiotapes etc and today we are on the cybernetic brink of interactive TV and ‘virtual reality’. All along the reach (market = mass base = mass participation) of the mass media (and even popular culture) has shown steady acclivity, so much so that it is now among the cardinal signifiers of our society much in the same way as the elitist activities of the past such as art and architecture symbolized the cutting edge of their respective eras.
Any architecture of the media must be characterized by its triumvirate of coefficients – time, technology and democracy (by which is meant general involvement and not its strictly political connotation), and this combinatory is geared towards the production and regurgitation of information. It is in this light that we must comprehend that mass media can never afford to be either entirely didactic or mindless and refrains like Doordarshan’s pontificatory shibboleth – to educate and entertain – must be assiduously discarded.
The animadversion becomes clearer if the most transparent facets of the mass media such as hard news, features, documentaries, drama, fiction, editorials etc. are neglected in favor of the more subtle messages that are transmitted to the subconscious of the receiver, thus influencing his subjectivity and future choices. Popular cinema is a fine exemplar and the persistence and popularity of formula in various guises around the world a most suitable giveaway. If cinema were to be reduced to mere plots, the medium would soon become redundant and it is the medium’s efficacy as a carrier of sub-textual information that has kept it vivified.
The most commonly understood of these sub-textual signs are perhaps prevalent fashion, socio-politico-cultural trends and boundaries and technological prowess or limitation as the case may be. The prevalent knowledge of and about the world draws barriers for popular cinema that it cannot deny and as such they are reflected in the message- medium. Thus Ramanand Sagar’s Sita showed greater fidelity to Raja Ravi Verma’s prototypes than to some informed opinion that suggested that a topless Sita would bear greater affinity to a historical reconstruction of the germane age’s fashion tastes.
Similar paradigms abound (however it must be specified forthwith that the above and segueing are not intended to establish the primacy of the sub-text over the text or the vice-versa, but rather the endeavor is to piece together the sprawling nature of the mass-media). News selection is a case in point that aptly reflects upon the mass media as a disseminator of collective intellectual information, or the dominant knowledge structure of the world. The triumph of hegemony lies in compliant subjectively and when the mass media, ostensibly of its own volition, chooses to highlight starvation deaths in Ethiopia rather than in Kalahandi or to discuss Booker entries in greater detail than Jnanpeeth winners its susceptibilities become immediately lucid.
The old hat about whether railway accidents should count as news comparable to air-crashes may also be mentioned. A pattern may easily be described in the way news items are carefully selected, classified or discarded by all sections of mass media and this ineluctably denotes the medium as a carrier of hegemonic information more than anything else.
This hegemony should not be construed in the sense of precepts emanating from the upper echelons of the society or else mass media would violate the democracy coefficient aforementioned and would be indistinguishable from propaganda machinery (communist Russia is an example of didactically organized media set up which was destined to be an aberration). The consent I have in mind is a democratic one that pervades common society and is not monolithic. The history of the past two centuries bears ample testimony to the fecundity of such an understanding of hegemony and the mass media has not been bereft of its implications. At an intellectual level it has been witness and party to an unprecedented democratization ideology – never on prior record have so many prominent ideologies jostled for space on a global level and it would not be improper to say that minus democratic mass media such would not have been feasible. All modern ideologies from Marxism to environmentalism owe this debt to the mass media, which has not only spread the word but also lent these ideologies a degree of authenticity that can only come from cold print.
Putative media issues like Bofors and RJB-BM imbroglio may be understood in this context. The media must not be made the hero or the villain of the piece (if holistically considered) for it serves merely as a conduit and not as a demiurge. Its powers are limited by the co-efficient driven nature of its existence. Similarly at the consumerist level mass media constantly alters and establishes points of reference sometimes stretching, but never violating the democracy co-efficient, and also simultaneously reinforces the time principle. An explicardum lies in advertising. It functions at twin pedestals: -
- As a rapid informant of production news with the concomitant sub-textual information similar to the one discussed in the case of popular cinema; and
- As a lever and control on mass media as result of the complex interaction between producers and consumers in the contemporary society.
Thus mass-media would appear to be our culture’s prime mode of ‘talking’ – in the context of getting information across to our ‘circle’ (which is often global in the modern and post-modern case). Undeniably there are other modes of communication, telephones and computers being two of them with global reach but these can never achieve mass media’s influential status unless they venture out of the personal sphere -- computers with their vast and inter connected information pools seemingly have the potential to compete and it is apprehended in several quarters that in alignment with mass media it would inexorably lead towards the de-privatization of our society thus hearkening towards a simulacrum of the primitive commune.
Marshall Mcluhan’s vision of a global village borne out of tetradic permutations is an augury of such a fate. He envisions a world wrapped by inter-connected, disembodied voices in the noisiest era of human history and an altered nature of institutional life towards which we seen to be heading with our telegenic leaders, sound bites, prime time mania and excessive consumerism etc with time reduced to a channel zap. The nature of the individual and democracy shall indubitably be restructured and technology remolded in accordance.
Mass Media, while it shall survive will not remain the same. The portents are already visible. Modern audiences have greater freedom and access than ever before and information embargo appears to be a thing of the past. Modern media so fills our sky that any one with an antenna can pluck gleanings from it. Choices are unlimited and round the clock specialized channels under one flag (thus de-centralizing without losing a central identification plank) are rapidly becoming the norm with the fare doctored to meet international tastes.
The movement is towards ‘totalled specialisation’ and even in India mass media networks are diversifying to include as many servers as possible – thus e.g. Bennet Coleman has acquired a stake in television. Abroad too large-scale mergers have take place with Time Warner being among the notables. Time magazine is also available electronically. It may never perhaps be possible to spread information evenly around the world but it will definitely not be for lack of trying.
A versicle in edgeways; or floundering juvenilia
- The sun has set on the night.
- The winter night, ardent pursuer of the semidiurnal, is yet again inveigled into evanescence by time feigning stasis.
- The dawn has dawned.
- A bellicose, recrudescent sun peruses contumacious, flocculent clouds, seeking ingress.
- The dew, vitreous vesper of the night, wangled from the clouds, ensconced in the grass; and upon it a misty apparition of the quasi morning. It blinks.
- She blinks, she winks, she hood winks.
The gump? Nay – the gumption of the cognoscenti. The skirt is scattered, and the day is araised. Oddity! I have fallen in love. The heart, perfidious instrument, conjures and abjures, abducts and reneges, musters and disimmures… the precocious sensation. Far away from me, cloistered by serendipitous prolepsis, cajoled by sententious inefficacy, and yet sequestered by claustrophobic vicinity, the hoyden and the hobbledehoy amble moodily into the purview – and when she tramples his shadow, trespasses into his being, traverses his soul, the stultified hedonism, soporific within him, thrives again; and when their askance glances converge, from her squint-eyed masquerade there shimmers affection, or affectation; from the inchoate swivel of his eyes there gleams trepidation. Speak, I enjoin, let the words roll. The recurrent rhyming, the echoing encores, the awry alliterations! But I butt into rebuttals, I can’t cant, I ascribe, proscribe, I weigh, inveigh… Far away from me the hoyden and the hobbledehoy trot - - and when she unfurls her arms as riposte to a fellow’s hullo-ed humdudgeon, he meanders towards his rescinded persona, stammers thingummy poetry; and when the redolent Samina ruffles his olfactory glands, the atavistic instincts fulminate, the impending perdition prevaricates… Ah! I am maladroit and a goop. Far away from me she shall retreat. I walk away. Chaotic!
Quixotic! The women eh, they make men out of us.
- The hour is a transvestite.
- The air bristles with divested moorings, and embellished paraphernalia.
- Dishabilled: heart in monologue.
- Accoutred: heart in soliloquy.
- I am too pudent for chivalry.
- The sun descants.
- Get thee to a nunnery.
- The sun descants.
- How about it.
Net naiveté
More sex! I wrote this one when the Internet was only something you read about. And guess Virtual Reality sleaze was the easiest way to get my editor’s attention! This one is a little tamer. A description of my first encounter with the Internet at a college laboratory when ‘Windows’ was still a magical word.
Surf's up
Published in 1997 - or thereabouts
Manoj Naik, research student at Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, is hunched over his terminal at Gateway Sleepy on the Internet. Cyberspace is the part of the world he knows best and today he is giving me a ride across this wondrous frontier.
I am especially curious because Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd. (VSNL) has just announced that anybody who has a personal computer, modem, and a telephone can register himself and hook onto the Internet. But what do you do once you get there, and what is the big hurry anyway?
Naik clicks open the windows in his computer and lets me peer at the fascinating parallel world inside. Colored bands float across the screen and he keys in appropriate instructions. "Internet is a virtually inexhaustive source of information" he tells me. "Here you can find something about almost anything on earth."
But that must make Internet a vast jumble of information. How then do you locate whatever you are looking for? " Very few people are ever sure of the locations. So we have Web Browsers - friendly software like Netscape and Mosaic - which are directories to the Internet" explains Naik. "They are navigational charts which take you wherever you want to go."
Right now we are trying to locate information on Dire Straits, the rock band. The mouse in Naik's hand is a magic wand as it traipses across the screen to reveal layers of information. Our catchword is Dire Straits and soon enough a picture of the familiar steel guitar begins to form on the screen.
Even with the high technology it has not been particularly easy. The Indian Internet link functions on a very narrow bandwidth, which limits the amount of information, it can carry. The way I figure it, it is rather like transporting petroleum in tubes instead of pipelines. Information filters through painfully slowly, taking minutes rather than seconds. Pictures come on even more leisurely than the text and Mark Knopfler's guitar forms in little dabs on the screen.
Pretty soon however we have hiccups with the telephone line. Despite its technological pretensions Internet is a no go if old-fashioned telephone lines do not work. Our connections are finally 'alive' after consuming quite a bit of our patience. Naik still does not trust his luck entirely and repeatedly opens the magic window on the screens to confirm that the telephone connections have not been delinked.
When we are finally ready to read, the information available is a fan's dream. Critical articles, interviews, discography, biographical details; news of forthcoming plans, etc, are all there and what is more this information is constantly updated. On Internet nothing is ever behind the times.
All the information is not merely a blink on the screen. Unlike big screen movies these can be preserved forever and for no cost; finally books for free! And what is more even picture can be stored.
So far the information we have been looking for has spiraled one way towards us." The beauty of the Internet line in the enter -activity," says Naik, " If you are looking for a conversation there are a host of discussion groups that you can latch on to and discuss anything under the sun."
This is where the worries come in. Internet is likely to provide access to loads of information, which is likely to be not only useless but also tasteless. A lot of folks are likely to spend most of their time downloading cyber-porn or cyber-babble.
Freedom, however used, is a very serious issue on Internet and computer aficionados who have developed the network without any active assistance from Governments are extremely touchy when anything regulatory infringes upon their domain. B.N. Jain, Professor at the Computer Science Department, IIT, say Internet will always stay ahead of Governments. “To describe cyberspace as uncontrolled or chaotic is to miss the point entirely, " he points out " It is far more fruitful to describe it as distributed control. We are now moving beyond the stage where nodal agencies had enormous clout. The goods are distributed far more equitably in cyberspace. Let's see what we can make out of it".
Some uses, of course, suggest themselves automatically. Entertainment is likely to be redefined and the commercial prospects enjoined by the unprecedented information dissemination are immense. People sitting at home will now have fiber-optic nerves doing everything for them. They need never go out. I could have written this article sitting are home, talking to my sources on the computer and then just unloaded the file in my office computer. Would I be tempted to do just that in the very near future?
Jain is not too sure. "Technology does not necessarily diminish human contact. Internet will make work more efficient but you would still need to meet people. I would not have granted this interview without seeing you. You may make a million faceless friends on the computer but you will still want to hold someone's hands."
Manoj Naik, research student at Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, is hunched over his terminal at Gateway Sleepy on the Internet. Cyberspace is the part of the world he knows best and today he is giving me a ride across this wondrous frontier.
I am especially curious because Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd. (VSNL) has just announced that anybody who has a personal computer, modem, and a telephone can register himself and hook onto the Internet. But what do you do once you get there, and what is the big hurry anyway?
Naik clicks open the windows in his computer and lets me peer at the fascinating parallel world inside. Colored bands float across the screen and he keys in appropriate instructions. "Internet is a virtually inexhaustive source of information" he tells me. "Here you can find something about almost anything on earth."
But that must make Internet a vast jumble of information. How then do you locate whatever you are looking for? " Very few people are ever sure of the locations. So we have Web Browsers - friendly software like Netscape and Mosaic - which are directories to the Internet" explains Naik. "They are navigational charts which take you wherever you want to go."
Right now we are trying to locate information on Dire Straits, the rock band. The mouse in Naik's hand is a magic wand as it traipses across the screen to reveal layers of information. Our catchword is Dire Straits and soon enough a picture of the familiar steel guitar begins to form on the screen.
Even with the high technology it has not been particularly easy. The Indian Internet link functions on a very narrow bandwidth, which limits the amount of information, it can carry. The way I figure it, it is rather like transporting petroleum in tubes instead of pipelines. Information filters through painfully slowly, taking minutes rather than seconds. Pictures come on even more leisurely than the text and Mark Knopfler's guitar forms in little dabs on the screen.
Pretty soon however we have hiccups with the telephone line. Despite its technological pretensions Internet is a no go if old-fashioned telephone lines do not work. Our connections are finally 'alive' after consuming quite a bit of our patience. Naik still does not trust his luck entirely and repeatedly opens the magic window on the screens to confirm that the telephone connections have not been delinked.
When we are finally ready to read, the information available is a fan's dream. Critical articles, interviews, discography, biographical details; news of forthcoming plans, etc, are all there and what is more this information is constantly updated. On Internet nothing is ever behind the times.
All the information is not merely a blink on the screen. Unlike big screen movies these can be preserved forever and for no cost; finally books for free! And what is more even picture can be stored.
So far the information we have been looking for has spiraled one way towards us." The beauty of the Internet line in the enter -activity," says Naik, " If you are looking for a conversation there are a host of discussion groups that you can latch on to and discuss anything under the sun."
This is where the worries come in. Internet is likely to provide access to loads of information, which is likely to be not only useless but also tasteless. A lot of folks are likely to spend most of their time downloading cyber-porn or cyber-babble.
Freedom, however used, is a very serious issue on Internet and computer aficionados who have developed the network without any active assistance from Governments are extremely touchy when anything regulatory infringes upon their domain. B.N. Jain, Professor at the Computer Science Department, IIT, say Internet will always stay ahead of Governments. “To describe cyberspace as uncontrolled or chaotic is to miss the point entirely, " he points out " It is far more fruitful to describe it as distributed control. We are now moving beyond the stage where nodal agencies had enormous clout. The goods are distributed far more equitably in cyberspace. Let's see what we can make out of it".
Some uses, of course, suggest themselves automatically. Entertainment is likely to be redefined and the commercial prospects enjoined by the unprecedented information dissemination are immense. People sitting at home will now have fiber-optic nerves doing everything for them. They need never go out. I could have written this article sitting are home, talking to my sources on the computer and then just unloaded the file in my office computer. Would I be tempted to do just that in the very near future?
Jain is not too sure. "Technology does not necessarily diminish human contact. Internet will make work more efficient but you would still need to meet people. I would not have granted this interview without seeing you. You may make a million faceless friends on the computer but you will still want to hold someone's hands."
Sex and other adventures in cyberspace
Originally published in The Pioneer - circa 1993-4.
In today's world, sex and technology make generally un-wholesome bedfellows. If you're the kinky sort, you can make love to, or with machines; if you staid enough to restrict your urges to your fellow species, you can make do with the disembodied services of telephone sex or stare at pre-programmed images on movie or video screens. Understandably, most of us feel a shade disinclined to go hi-tech and sex is generally accomplished in close confines in a manner easily recognizable to our earliest ancestors, perhaps even to animals.
Hang on though, the portents appear brighter. MTV addicts may have seen a trailer of the future in the Aerosmith video Amazing and the naughty sizzler makes ‘teledildonics’ or long-distance inter-personal sex appear simplicity itself. The trick will perhaps be in dressing for the occasion: you will need an intimate, snug and transparent bodysuit meshed with tiny tactile detectors coupled to vibrators of varying degrees of hardness that will be able to transmit a realistic sense of ‘touch’ and ‘feel’. You will then need to top yourself with an HMD (head-mounted display), don sensor-webbed gloves and you'll be ready to copulate in cyberspace. Dial your partner's telephone number, enter the computer password and you'll soon be immersed in VR (virtual reality), a life-like but totally artificial representation of your bodies in cyberspace where you can whisper in her ear or bite it or do anything else and those detectors in your bodysuit will be triggered at just the right frequency and sequence to convey just the right scratch and squeeze you prefer.
‘Smart skin’ aided intercontinental sex will be as easy as that in a world encompassing relatives of Aldous Huxley's ‘feelies’. But wait, how long before we can fast-forward into the age of these not-so-innocuous telephone connections and portable telediddlers? Well, perhaps the middle-aged and the elderly will have to resign themselves to making the best of available technologies, but the young can take heart. Computational load capacities will doubtlessly expand in the future and the promise of fiber-optic networks webbing the earth should occlude any hitches concerning the high bandwidth that tactile telepresence requires. The spoilsports at the moment are the sense receptors that will require myriad computer calculations to duplicate the minutest nuances and emotions of the human body. Still, the fantasy continues to inch towards verity.
Before that, however, a look backwards and a definition. Sci-fi writer Willian Gibson who coined the term cyberspace in his 1984 novel Neuromancer described it thus: ‘Cyberspace -- a consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators in every nation by children being taught mathematical concepts...a graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system’. It means a whole new artificial world that exists only in our collective consciousness and within our computers. A communications revolution.
Its deliciously homebrewed story connects with the PC revolution and networking, a phenomena that we indubitably owe to the hordes of amateur computer ‘hackers’ who diligently, if sometimes mischievously, found ways of breaking into other people's computers, thus creating the earlier instances of cyberspace. As with all pioneers, the activities of these ‘hackers’ (whose fame was initially spread by the movie War Games) were not viewed very kindly by the established authorities who found their computer systems infested with unauthorized accessors and the FBI believing them to be an advanced crime ring, often swooped on the ‘hackers’, seizing every bit of electronic equipment they could lay their hands on.
However, with time and demonstrations of manifold utility in everything from telecommunications to toys (indeed, video games experts and Hollywood deserve special place in the story), cyberspace has gradually ceased to be the derelict frontier and its whiz-kid cowboys now strut their stuff in some of the most gilt-edged laboratories in the world.
Virtual reality adds a dimensional doorway to cyberspace. In this three-dimensional world, the user does not merely peer at a fixed perspective through a screen, as in the two-dimensional world of ‘simulators’ used to train pilots, but can instead, immerse himself in the artificial world within the screen and use a gesture to remold it. If this sounds abstruse, imagine that you're a gifted architect adept at envisioning complex three-dimensional structures which you cannot possibly illustrate for your clients except via simulacrums like models or diagrams. Factors like seismic stress or acoustics beat even your skilled mental techniques and your clients often remain vague till much work has been done on the actual building. Here virtual reality offers the possibility of creating ‘architectural walkways’, meaning that you can fit the entire building into a computer screen, and then entering it observe it from any angle, or better still, enter any of the rooms, open windows, rearrange the furniture and feel even intangibles like the sunlight on your body. If you don't like anything, you can change it right there.
Sounds convenient, but does it convince? Science writer Howard Rheingold has surveyed the terrain and he reports some amazing inventions from artificial reality labs across the world. At NASA he commandeered repair boats in ‘virtual outer space’; in Japan he had an eerie out-of-body sensation watching himself through the eyes of a telerobot; at Cambridge, Massachusetts he ran his fingertips over ‘virtual sand paper’ by means of a texture-sensing joy- stick and watched scientists create animated creatures that will live in tomorrow's semi-sentient virtual worlds; and in arty France he fulfilled the ultimate ambition of every armchair musician -- he moved his hands in empty space as if playing ‘air violin’ and presto, the glove covering his hand transmitted the actual sensation of drawing a bow against a taut violin string.
And thus the line towards ‘teledildonics’ continues to be drawn: artificial intelligence no longer threatens to make humans redundant but instead appears to augur human intelligence amplification. We may indeed be on the brink of a unique historical opportunity as the high bandwidth networks of the 1990s and beyond link billions of homes and unprecedented cyberspace opens up for colonization. Detractors will have qualms about ‘electronic LSD’ -- potentially addictive 'sensory’ experiences that may make reality pale in comparison -- and more seriously about the uncontrolled, chaotic nature of cyberspace that even today includes inter-cultural, multinational networks ranging in size from amateur bulletin board systems in high-school students' bedrooms to the mother of them all, the Internet.
But we need to view retrospectively how every change in technology, from the earliest civilizations to our very own steam engines to TV and even our earlier generation computers, has enriched our lives and in the process expanded far beyond the expectations of their inventors. Cyber- space should turn out to be a medium of great social power. Infrastructure and even belief systems are likely to cluster around it. As a brand new communications network reaches its apogee, we need to perhaps remind ourselves of McLuhan's prophesy of an altered ratio between senses and brance ourselves accordingly. Alternatively fall prey to making love in cyberspace and never ever being able to come of it.
In today's world, sex and technology make generally un-wholesome bedfellows. If you're the kinky sort, you can make love to, or with machines; if you staid enough to restrict your urges to your fellow species, you can make do with the disembodied services of telephone sex or stare at pre-programmed images on movie or video screens. Understandably, most of us feel a shade disinclined to go hi-tech and sex is generally accomplished in close confines in a manner easily recognizable to our earliest ancestors, perhaps even to animals.
Hang on though, the portents appear brighter. MTV addicts may have seen a trailer of the future in the Aerosmith video Amazing and the naughty sizzler makes ‘teledildonics’ or long-distance inter-personal sex appear simplicity itself. The trick will perhaps be in dressing for the occasion: you will need an intimate, snug and transparent bodysuit meshed with tiny tactile detectors coupled to vibrators of varying degrees of hardness that will be able to transmit a realistic sense of ‘touch’ and ‘feel’. You will then need to top yourself with an HMD (head-mounted display), don sensor-webbed gloves and you'll be ready to copulate in cyberspace. Dial your partner's telephone number, enter the computer password and you'll soon be immersed in VR (virtual reality), a life-like but totally artificial representation of your bodies in cyberspace where you can whisper in her ear or bite it or do anything else and those detectors in your bodysuit will be triggered at just the right frequency and sequence to convey just the right scratch and squeeze you prefer.
‘Smart skin’ aided intercontinental sex will be as easy as that in a world encompassing relatives of Aldous Huxley's ‘feelies’. But wait, how long before we can fast-forward into the age of these not-so-innocuous telephone connections and portable telediddlers? Well, perhaps the middle-aged and the elderly will have to resign themselves to making the best of available technologies, but the young can take heart. Computational load capacities will doubtlessly expand in the future and the promise of fiber-optic networks webbing the earth should occlude any hitches concerning the high bandwidth that tactile telepresence requires. The spoilsports at the moment are the sense receptors that will require myriad computer calculations to duplicate the minutest nuances and emotions of the human body. Still, the fantasy continues to inch towards verity.
Before that, however, a look backwards and a definition. Sci-fi writer Willian Gibson who coined the term cyberspace in his 1984 novel Neuromancer described it thus: ‘Cyberspace -- a consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators in every nation by children being taught mathematical concepts...a graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system’. It means a whole new artificial world that exists only in our collective consciousness and within our computers. A communications revolution.
Its deliciously homebrewed story connects with the PC revolution and networking, a phenomena that we indubitably owe to the hordes of amateur computer ‘hackers’ who diligently, if sometimes mischievously, found ways of breaking into other people's computers, thus creating the earlier instances of cyberspace. As with all pioneers, the activities of these ‘hackers’ (whose fame was initially spread by the movie War Games) were not viewed very kindly by the established authorities who found their computer systems infested with unauthorized accessors and the FBI believing them to be an advanced crime ring, often swooped on the ‘hackers’, seizing every bit of electronic equipment they could lay their hands on.
However, with time and demonstrations of manifold utility in everything from telecommunications to toys (indeed, video games experts and Hollywood deserve special place in the story), cyberspace has gradually ceased to be the derelict frontier and its whiz-kid cowboys now strut their stuff in some of the most gilt-edged laboratories in the world.
Virtual reality adds a dimensional doorway to cyberspace. In this three-dimensional world, the user does not merely peer at a fixed perspective through a screen, as in the two-dimensional world of ‘simulators’ used to train pilots, but can instead, immerse himself in the artificial world within the screen and use a gesture to remold it. If this sounds abstruse, imagine that you're a gifted architect adept at envisioning complex three-dimensional structures which you cannot possibly illustrate for your clients except via simulacrums like models or diagrams. Factors like seismic stress or acoustics beat even your skilled mental techniques and your clients often remain vague till much work has been done on the actual building. Here virtual reality offers the possibility of creating ‘architectural walkways’, meaning that you can fit the entire building into a computer screen, and then entering it observe it from any angle, or better still, enter any of the rooms, open windows, rearrange the furniture and feel even intangibles like the sunlight on your body. If you don't like anything, you can change it right there.
Sounds convenient, but does it convince? Science writer Howard Rheingold has surveyed the terrain and he reports some amazing inventions from artificial reality labs across the world. At NASA he commandeered repair boats in ‘virtual outer space’; in Japan he had an eerie out-of-body sensation watching himself through the eyes of a telerobot; at Cambridge, Massachusetts he ran his fingertips over ‘virtual sand paper’ by means of a texture-sensing joy- stick and watched scientists create animated creatures that will live in tomorrow's semi-sentient virtual worlds; and in arty France he fulfilled the ultimate ambition of every armchair musician -- he moved his hands in empty space as if playing ‘air violin’ and presto, the glove covering his hand transmitted the actual sensation of drawing a bow against a taut violin string.
And thus the line towards ‘teledildonics’ continues to be drawn: artificial intelligence no longer threatens to make humans redundant but instead appears to augur human intelligence amplification. We may indeed be on the brink of a unique historical opportunity as the high bandwidth networks of the 1990s and beyond link billions of homes and unprecedented cyberspace opens up for colonization. Detractors will have qualms about ‘electronic LSD’ -- potentially addictive 'sensory’ experiences that may make reality pale in comparison -- and more seriously about the uncontrolled, chaotic nature of cyberspace that even today includes inter-cultural, multinational networks ranging in size from amateur bulletin board systems in high-school students' bedrooms to the mother of them all, the Internet.
But we need to view retrospectively how every change in technology, from the earliest civilizations to our very own steam engines to TV and even our earlier generation computers, has enriched our lives and in the process expanded far beyond the expectations of their inventors. Cyber- space should turn out to be a medium of great social power. Infrastructure and even belief systems are likely to cluster around it. As a brand new communications network reaches its apogee, we need to perhaps remind ourselves of McLuhan's prophesy of an altered ratio between senses and brance ourselves accordingly. Alternatively fall prey to making love in cyberspace and never ever being able to come of it.
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