Human Adaptation to Cyberspace

Humans, from the very beginning of their history as a species, learned that combining physical and intellectual skill with technology enabled mastery of their environment. A rock picked up and thrown at an enemy was a machine for survival. Similarly, a stone chipped and carved into a spear and aimed at an unsuspecting animal provided dinner. The metaphor was clear: human-with-machine/tool was invariably better than human-without-machine/tool.

These ideas grew with the social, intellectual, and psychological development of humans. History is marked by the great technological discoveries: bronze tools (in the Bronze Age), the development of writing, the ability to cut and build with limestone blocks (constructing the Pyramids), trade and the production of goods (glass, wine, fabrics) . . . the list is endless. In later developments, advances in technology brought about revolutions in the very nature of culture and society. Consider Johannes Gutenberg's printing press in the mid 1400s and James Watts" steam engine in the 1760s Later technological breakthroughs were just as dramatic, such as the production of Henry Ford's Model T in 1916 and the easy availability of the television in the late 1940s.

The onslaught of technology carries heavy psychological and social tolls. Adaptation is not a clear, linear path but rather a process of change. Human intellectual and technological skills forces adaptation into a more complex, circuitous process than the rest of the animal kingdom. Charles Darwin observed that changing conditions can produce significant effects on organisms. For example, animals that live in cold climates develop thicker, shaggier fur than those in more temperate zones. Bats who live in dark environments have a highly developed "echolocation" system that enables them to pick up tiny insect footsteps, minute changes in air currents from vibrating insect wings, or the ripple in the surface of the pond from a minnow's fin.

Human adaptation is much broader. Heinz Hartmann suggests that people utilize synthetic as well as natural change that may involve the "psychophysical" system. "Human action adapts the environment to human functions, and then the human being adapts (secondarily) to the environment which he has helped to create" he wrote in his 1958 book, Ego Psychology and the Problem of Adaptation, Hartmann concludes that the process of human adaptation is influenced by the individual and the external environment as well as species-specific origin and development.

Humans not only have to adapt to the conditions and communities they have helped create, but also to those that have been designed by people who come before and during their lifetimes. The belief that humans-are-better-with-machines encourages more technology and in turn, more adaptation to a technological world. The fantasy that technology is synonymous with progress and growth is carefully nurtured. Human systems as they become more mechanized are increasingly eager to absorb new technology. History adapts to, and reinforces the acceleration of technological advances. This is apparent in the steady growth of the number and frequency of technological discoveries. After 100,000 years of human history, more scientists are alive and working than ever before. The more scientists, the more discoveries and the more advances in technology. The more technology, the faster the change, the more humans adapt to it and accordingly, produce the people and the machines adapted to the environment.

Human adaptation is unique in that it involves lessening the species-wide relationship with nature in exchange for the synthetic (machine or technology). The more machine, the more cyborg we become. The ultimate exchange of nature for the synthetic is through a world where "reality" is virtual, accessible only by machine.

It's called cyberspace.

Cyberspace is not a revolution but an evolution, a space humans have craved since the first tool was discovered. Online, people venture into simulations where they can assume multiple identities. Games can be played where you can be killed, resurrected, or put to rest at will - always exiting alive. Voices carry over tens of thousands of miles, at the flick of a keyboard, the click of a mouse, as if there are no limitations in space. Time becomes a relative phenomenon, easily manipulated. Information explodes in colors, words, and symbols that dance across a screen providing access in a metaphor of windows. Individuals assume the nomenclature of their browsers such as Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer. Some have referred to the internet as similar to falling through the looking glass into a fanciful world where backward, forward, up and down are all equally plausible. The power is heady, diving into the past, present, and beyond; creating new and inventive ways of simulation.

Is it any surprise that the internet "machines" are so compelling?

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