Monthly Archives: January 2013

WHAT IT MEANS TO BE HUMAN TODAY

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There has to be something different and unique about human beings in the 21st century.  I am answering the question I asked some time ago: Is redefinition possible?

It is not only possible, it is necessary.

I believe we have become technological beings in a unique way. A hundred plus years ago, the growth of technology led futurists to imagine a synergy of technology with the physical body—it has come true in unpredictable ways. Mechanical hearts, and organs and children grown in petri-dishes and there is no limit to what can be imagined and executed. Another way of thinking led to how technology intervenes in our consciousness—the Matrix series of movies is just one example. Mostly it was about esoteric adepts who have played the Glass Bead Game. Today, it impacts the thinking of each one of us ordinary being.

So when does evolution cross a threshold—when change occurs in a few special individuals or large-scale in a whole race? For there is no doubt, we human beings are changing in a fundamental way. And it is not about our bodies. It is about our minds.

And that means that our culture, relationships, beliefs and attitudes—everything is changing.

Since we were always more dramatically creatures of the mind—this means that we are at the cusp of a massive change.

Is Shaw’s Superman finally coming to birth….Maybe, maybe not….!

Google is the new God of the TechnoBots

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The other day, a church tried to lure in believers by putting up on its notice board the statement, “Google does not have all the answers.” It got me thinking, God or Google, who answers questions better?

Ask Google something, and the search field never comes up empty. The answer might be as intelligent or ridiculous as the question is, but that is beside the point. If Google says the Answer to the Ultimate Question is not 42(as we found in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe) but 24, or 0, who is to argue with any finality? Is it not enough that there is always an answer in Google?

Ask God a question and all we have silence.  And since we are in desperate need for answers, and loosing patience we “look” back into our “souls”, look at intermediaries, signs and symbols, pundits and popes, and hit upon an answer. More likely they merely fulfill our emotional needs.

Considering that both Google and God give us the answers in our own images—as the question so the answer—do we need to quibble?

Can we just go ahead and declare, that today, as throughout human history, we are inventing a new god and are busily building a new religion around it? Google is the new god of the humanals and internet our new religion.

The best thing about this new god and religion is that we no longer to fight wars to prove that this one is better than any other religion.  After all, the whole world is an ardent believer of Google.