Everything is Connected (Human Waste Edition)

One of the fun things we have to look forward to as global warming advances: Rivers of raw sewage pouring into public waterways. 

According to a new report by the nonprofit environmental group Climate Central, when Hurricane Sandy hit the East coast, more than 10 billion – billion! – gallons of raw and partly treated sewage poured directly into lakes, rivers, streams, and the ocean. Some of the overflow “bubbled up” (as the New York Times charmingly put it) onto streets and into homes.

The reason was simple. Treatment plants, most of which are built in low-lying areas near large bodies of water, were unable to handle Sandy's storm surge, especially when they lost electrical power. The only recourse was to start dumping. The report said enough overflow was released to cover New York's Central Park with a pile of poop more than 40 feet high.

One way or another, this will be one of the myriad ways we’ll all pay for climate change as the frequency and intensity of storms increase and sea levels rise. Either we pump massive amounts of taxpayer dollars into upgrading sewage treatment facilities or we get used to wading through shit.

"Everything is Connected" is a recurring feature named in honor of the late Barry Commoner's four laws of ecology: Everything is connected to everything else, everything must go somewhere, nature knows best, and there is no such thing as a free lunch.  

Photo credit:  JL Johnson via flickr via Treehuger.com

 

Digital Dualism and the Cannibal Cop

Gilberto Valle, the "Cannibal Cop"

And if my thought-dreams could be seen
They’d probably put my head in a guillotine

                                        Bob Dylan, It's All Right Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)

I've been slightly surprised by the lack of attention paid in tech theory circles to the Cannibal Cop case, now in the hands of a jury in Manhattan.

Certainly it's a remarkably lurid story, but its luridness shouldn't distract us from the fact that it places in stark relief what at first glance might seem some relatively esoteric questions regarding where the line can be drawn between fantasy and reality in the era of the Internet. Specifically it relates to one of the more hotly debated topics in the philosophy of technology at the moment, digital dualism.

For those who haven't been following the headlines, the Cannibal Cop is a New York City police officer named Gilberto Valle. Valle's wife, stealing a glance one day at the browser history on her husband's computer, discovered to her horror that he'd been discussing with his online buddies detailed plans to rape, torture, murder, cook, and eat a number of women, including her. He was also a regular visitor to a fetishist web site that featured videos supposedly depicting acts of a similarly horrific nature.

Valle's wife, Kathleen Mangan-Valle, testified during the trial about what her husband had in mind. "I was going to be tied up by my feet and my throat slit," she said, "and they would have fun watching the blood gush out of me because I was young."

Valle had also discussed online plans to rape two women in front of each other "to heighten their fears," as well as the logistics involved in roasting another woman alive. A computer-forensic examiner subsequently found evidence on Valle's hard drive of searches for “human meat recipes” and “how to cook a human.”   

Courtroom sketch by Jane Rosenberg, New York Daily News

The question at issue in the trial is straightforward: Did Valle really intend to carry out these acts, as the prosecution contends, or was he merely indulging in online fantasizing and role-playing?

Although he did drive by the home of one of the women he'd talked about killing and visited another, no one was ever physically attacked. Nor was there evidence that Valle possessed the tools he would need to carry out the deeds discussed. The jury, which is set to resume its deliberations tomorrow, must decide whether Valle would have acted had his plans not been discovered. If convicted he could face life in prison.

Prosecuting attorney Hadassa Waxman told the jury that Valle's plans were "no joke" and that the evidence showed he had “left the world of fantasy and entered the world of reality.” "The law," Waxman added, "does not require that we wait until he carries out his crime.”

Valle's attorney, Julia Gatto, responded that as "disturbing and disgusting" as her client's online habits might be, they did not constitute a crime. “This is Gil’s porn," she said. "He’s had this unusual fetish for a long time, and no one was ever hurt.”

It seems to me that these two positions articulate in a fairly clear fashion the topographies of "digital dualism" as defined by the best-known critic of that stance (and coiner of the term), Nathan Jurgenson. 

Jurgenson's basic position is that it's a mistake to think there's a fundamental existential distinction between "online" and "offline." There's nothing more "real" about being offline than there is about being online, he says, despite what many popular writers (Sherry Turkle being a favorite example) would have us believe. In truth, he insists, the digital and the physical are "enmeshed." We carry our offline selves into our online encounters and vice versa. Jurgenson calls our current state of digital/non-digital enmeshment "augmented reality."

In a recent essay Jurgenson expanded this central argument by defining a spectrum of four basic positions people typically adopt on the question of digital dualism: 

Strong Digital Dualism: The digital and the physical are different realities, have different properties, and do not interact.

Mild Digital Dualism: The digital and physical are different realities, have different properties, and do interact.

Mild Augmented Reality: The digital and physical are part of one reality, have different properties, and interact.

Strong Augmented Reality: The digital and physical are part of one reality and have the same properties.

It's a fair guess that the attorneys in the Cannibal Cop case have never heard of digital dualism. Nonetheless it's also fair to characterize the prosecution's arguments as articulating a Mild or Strong Augmented Reality position, while the defense is arguing a Mild or Strong Digital Dualism position.
 
The Cannibal Cop case and digital dualism both resonate with a number of other troubling issues, from the concerns of women that pornography objectifies them in degrading and dangerous ways, to the claims that habitual exposure to violent movies or video games may help provoke some individuals to act out violently in real life ("IRL," as Jurgenson abbreviates it). Warfare from a distance via drones (or, for that matter, from conventional aircraft) fits, too. 

What constitutes "distance" in an age of high technology is one aspect of what I think is the central question, which is not only what the conceptual, theoretical relationship between online and offline might be, but what we can say about the influence of that relationship on actual behavior.

This is not a question the digital theorists have ignored. To the contrary, the roles social media might or might not play in the promulgation of political movements has been, from the outset, a central concern. From what I've read, however, the question of inter-personal violence hasn't garnered as much attention.

Gilberto Valle's fate presumably depends on specific points of law, points defined, no doubt, long before the introduction of the technologies involved. Regardless of the verdict, it certainly seems reasonable for his wife to divorce him, and for her to be extremely careful about the circumstances in which he spends time with their young daughter. Criminal or not, it would be hard to argue that fantasizing about cooking and eating women falls into the range of what we'd consider desirable mental activity.

When and why mental activity crosses over into physical activity, and the role digital technologies play or don't play in blurring the line between the two, are questions that will be with us for a long time to come. That's why the digital dualism debate is important, whatever the Cannibal Cop jury decides. 

©Doug Hill, 2013

 

Technology Fixing Technology, Augmented Reality Edition

Sergey Brin wearing Google Glasses at TED 2013

One of the more amusing characteristics of technological enthusiasts is their confidence that today’s brand new technology will fix the problems created by yesterday’s brand new technology.

Software programs that let you get some work done by temporarily turning off your access to emails and tweets are examples. Geoengineering describes a slew of technologies that might be able to save the planet from the slew of technologies that are destroying it.

The most recent example is the promise of Google co-founder Sergey Brin that his company’s newest product, Google Glass, will remedy the problems created by its previous product, the Android smartphone.

In a surprise talk at yesterday’s TED conference in California, Brin said that Google Glass will eliminate the need to shut out what’s going on around you in order to focus on your smartphone, a need he finds “emasculating.”

“You’re actually socially isolating yourself with your phone,” Brin told the audience, according to Wired. “I feel like it’s kind of emasculating…. You’re standing there just rubbing this featureless piece of glass.”

(The photographs from Brin’s appearance make it clear, by the way, that this once-geeky zillionaire has been working out, adding significantly to his personal masculinity profile.)

By layering data over our field of vision – “augmented reality” is what it’s called – Google Glass will free us  from the shackles of outdated technology, Brin said. He again showed an odd proclivity for phallic imagery by holding up a smartphone and declaring, “I whip this out and focus on it as though I have something very important to attend to. This [Google Glass] really takes away that excuse.…It really opened my eyes to how much of my life I spent secluded away in email or social posts.”

The last line in that quote bears repeating: “It really opened my eyes to how much of my life I spent secluded away in email or social posts.”

Members of Google’s sales staff may have cringed when they heard that, given that the company’s business still depends, for now at least, on people being immersed in computers and smartphones.

Brin added that Google Glass is a step toward the attainment of his ultimate ambition: Direct implantation of data streams into the brain.

“My vision when we started Google 15 years ago,” he said, “was that eventually you wouldn’t have to have a search query at all — the information would just come to you as you needed it. [Google Glass] is the first form factor that can deliver that vision.”

That digitally delivered information might itself be an intrusion, and that reality might not need any augmenting, are notions the technological enthusiast is not prepared to entertain.

Photo credit: TED/Flickr via Wired

Rethinking Embodiment at Yahoo!

 

As the tabloids might put it, tongues have been wagging in Silicon Valley over Yahoo's decision to eliminate telecommuting by its employees. It seems the company’s new CEO, Marissa Mayer, wants to promote creativity by insisting on proximity. 

"Some of the best decisions and insights come from hallway and cafeteria discussions, meeting new people, and impromptu team meetings," said the memo from the company’s head of Human Resources. "Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home."

Yahoo’s decision has been widely reported in the mainstream press, so I don’t need to rehash the details. I can’t, however, resist making three quick observations.

1. Mayer seems to be aggressively attacking a problem that stymied her predecessor, Carol Bartz: Institutional inertia.

I wrote a blog entry last October describing the inevitability of inertia at large, entrenched companies like Yahoo and Microsoft. The piece cited Bartz's response when asked during a conference if she had any advice for the woman who replaced her. Mayer shouldn't kid herself, Bartz replied, about turning things around overnight. 

“It’s very, very hard to affect culture,” she said. “And you can get surprised thinking you’re farther down the path of change than you really are because, frankly, most of us like the way things are.”

Mayer’s latest move seems designed to decisively shake up the status quo at Yahoo, and judging from the reactions the memo’s getting there, she’s succeeded. 

Marissa Mayer

2. Yahoo’s move deflates one of the reigning mythologies of the Internet revolution: That you don’t have to be in the same room to share genuine connection with your fellow human beings. “We need to be one Yahoo!,” the memo says, “and that starts with physically being together.”

Obviously this is not a philosophy Yahoo would hope to see adopted by its customers, whose communal needs the company would presumably prefer still be satisfied virtually.

3. Yahoo’s memo demonstrates a not-so-glittering side to Silicon Valley glamor. Ambitious young techies are lured to companies like Google and Facebook in part because they offer their employees the coolest possible office spaces and an endless supply of perks, from free cafeterias and on-site masseurs to pool tables, hot tubs, ice cream parlors, dry cleaners, and gyms. 

In truth, of course, all that coolness is there not only to promote collaboration and boost morale, but also to keep employees working at the office as long as possible.

The glamor in turn promotes another great myth: that technology is about freedom. The head of an outplacement firm, commenting on Yahoo's telecommuting decision in the New York Times, came closer to the truth.

“A lot of companies are afraid to let their workers work from home,” he said, “because they’re afraid they’ll lose control.”

©Doug Hill, 2013