Htjela bih vam svima reći da ste svi u stvarnosti kiborzi, ali ne kiborzi na kakve mislite. Niste RoboCop, i niste Terminator, ali ste kiborg svaki put kada pogledate kompjuterski ekran ili koristite jedan od vaših mobilnih telefona. Pa šta je onda dobra definicija kiborga? Tradicionalna definicija je organizam "kome su dodane vanjske komponente u svrhu adaptiranja novim okolinama." Ta definicija je iz eseja o putovanju u svemir iz 1960. Jer, ako razmislite o tome, svemir je prilično neugodan; ljudi ne bi trebali biti tamo. Ali ljudska bića su znatiželjna, i vole dodavati stvari svojim tijelima da bi mogli otići na Alpe jedan dan i onda postati riba u moru sljedeći.
I would like to tell you all that you are all actually cyborgs, but not the cyborgs that you think. You're not RoboCop, and you're not Terminator, but you're cyborgs every time you look at a computer screen or use one of your cell phone devices. So what's a good definition for cyborg? Well, traditional definition is "an organism to which exogenous components have been added for the purpose of adapting to new environments." That came from a 1960 paper on space travel, because, if you think about it, space is pretty awkward. People aren't supposed to be there. But humans are curious, and they like to add things to their bodies so they can go to the Alps one day and then become a fish in the sea the next.
Pogledajmo koncept tradicionalne antropologije. Neko ode u drugu zemlju, kaže, "Kako su ovi ljudi fascinantni, kako su im alati interesantni, kako im je kultura čudna." I onda napišu esej, možda ga nekoliko drugih antropologa pročita, i mislimo da je to jako egzotično. Pa, ono što se dešava je da smo odjednom otkrili novu vrstu. Ja, kao antropolog kiborga, sam odjednom rekla, "O, vau. Odjednom smo novi oblik homo sapiensa. I pogledaj ove fascinirajuće kulture. I ove začuđujuće rituale koje svi obavljaju oko ove tehnologije. Oni klikaju na stvari i bulje u ekrane."
So let's look at the concept of traditional anthropology. Somebody goes to another country, says, "How fascinating these people are, how interesting their tools are, how curious their culture is." And then they write a paper, and maybe a few other anthropologists read it, and we think it's very exotic. Well, what's happening is that we've suddenly found a new species. I, as a cyborg anthropologist, have suddenly said, "Oh, wow. Now suddenly we're a new form of Homo sapiens, and look at these fascinating cultures, and look at these curious rituals that everybody's doing around this technology. They're clicking on things and staring at screens."
Postoji razlog zašto proučavam ovo, umjesto tradicionalne antropologije. I razlog je taj što upotreba oruđa, na početku, hiljadama i hiljadama godina posle, sve je bilo fizička modifikacija sebe. To nam je pomoglo da produžimo fizičku stranu sebe, krećemo se brže, udaramo stvari jače, i postoji granica na tome. Ali ovo što posmatramo sada nije produžetak naših fizičkih bića, nego produžetak naše mentalne strane. Zbog toga, sposobni smo putovati brže, komunicirati drugačije. Druga stvar koja se desi je da svi nosimo sa sobom malu Mary Poppins tehnologiju. Možemo staviti što želimo u nju, i ona ne postaje teža, a onda možemo izvaditi što god želimo. Kako ustvari izgleda sadržaj vašeg kompjutera? Pa, ako ga isprintate, on izgleda kao petsto kilograma materijala koji nosite sa sobom u svako vrijeme. I ako izgubite te podatke, to znači da imate taj gubitak u vašem umu, odjednom se osjećate kao da nešto nedostaje, osim što ga ne možete vidjeti, pa se to čini kao vrlo čudna emocija.
Now there's a reason why I study this, versus traditional anthropology. And the reason is that tool use, in the beginning -- for thousands and thousands of years, everything has been a physical modification of self. It has helped us to extend our physical selves, go faster, hit things harder, and there's been a limit on that. But now what we're looking at is not an extension of the physical self, but an extension of the mental self, and because of that, we're able to travel faster, communicate differently. And the other thing that happens is that we're all carrying around little Mary Poppins technology. We can put anything we want into it, and it doesn't get heavier, and then we can take anything out. What does the inside of your computer actually look like? Well, if you print it out, it looks like a thousand pounds of material that you're carrying around all the time. And if you actually lose that information, it means that you suddenly have this loss in your mind, that you suddenly feel like something's missing, except you aren't able to see it, so it feels like a very strange emotion.
Druga stvar koja se dogodi je da imate drugog sebe. Sviđalo vam se ili ne, počinjete se pojavljivati na internetu, i ljudi opće s vašim drugim ja i kad vi niste tamo. Zato morate biti pažljivi s ostavljanjem svojih prvih redova otvorenim, što je, u osnovi, vaš Facebook zid, zato da ljudi ne bi pisali po njemu u sred noći -- pošto je to postalo jako slično. Odjednom moramo održavati naš drugi život. Morate se predstaviti u svom digitalnom životu na sličan način na koji biste to uradili u vašem analognom životu. Pa, na isti način na koji vi ustanete, otuširate se i obučete, morate naučiti to raditi za svoje digitalno ja. I problem je u tome da mnogo ljudi sada, posebno adolescenti, moraju proći kroz dva puberteta. Moraju proći primarni, i to je već neugodno, a onda moraju proći kroz pubertet svog drugog sebe. I to je još neugodnije, pošto postoji stvarna historija stvari kroz koje su prošli na internetu. Neko kome je ta tehnologija nova, je adolescent na internetu, sada. I zato je vrlo neugodno i vrlo im je teško činiti te stvari.
The other thing that happens is that you have a second self. Whether you like it or not, you're starting to show up online, and people are interacting with your second self when you're not there. And so you have to be careful about leaving your front lawn open, which is basically your Facebook wall, so that people don't write on it in the middle of the night -- because it's very much the equivalent. And suddenly we have to start to maintain our second self. You have to present yourself in digital life in a similar way that you would in your analog life. So, in the same way that you wake up, take a shower and get dressed, you have to learn to do that for your digital self. And the problem is that a lot of people now, especially adolescents, have to go through two adolescences. They have to go through their primary one, that's already awkward, and then they go through their second self's adolescence, and that's even more awkward because there's an actual history of what they've gone through online. And anybody coming in new to technology is an adolescent online right now, and so it's very awkward, and it's very difficult for them to do those things.
Kada sam bila mala, otac bi me posjeo navečer i rekao, "Naučiti ću te o vremenu i prostoru u budućnosti." A ja bih rekla, "Odlično." Jednog dana me pitao, "Koja je najkraća udaljenost između dvije tačke?" Ja sam rekla, "Ravna linija. Rekao si mi to jučer. Mislila sam da je to jako pametno." On je rekao, "Ne, ne, ne. Evo ti bolji način." Uzeo je komad papira, nacrtao tačke A i B na jednom i drugom kraju i savio papir tako da su se A i B dodirivali. I rekao je, "To je najkraća udaljenost između dvije tačke." Ja sam rekla, "Tata, tata, kako se to radi?" On reče, "Pa, samo saviješ vrijeme i prostor, za to je potrebno jako puno energije, i tako se to radi." Ja rekoh, "Želim to raditi." On reče, "Pa, uredu." I tako, kad god bih krenula na spavanje sljedećih 10 ili 20 godina, razmišljala sam po noći, "Želim biti prva osoba koja će napraviti crvotočinu, koja će natjerati stvari da ubrzavaju brže. I želim napraviti vremeplov." Uvijek sam slala poruke budućoj sebi koristeći diktafone.
So when I was little, my dad would sit me down at night and he would say, "I'm going to teach you about time and space in the future." And I said, "Great." And he said one day, "What's the shortest distance between two points?" And I said, "Well, that's a straight line. You told me that yesterday." I thought I was very clever. He said, "No, no, no. Here's a better way." He took a piece of paper, drew A and B on one side and the other and folded them together so where A and B touched. And he said, "That is the shortest distance between two points." And I said, "Dad, dad, dad, how do you do that?" He said, "Well, you just bend time and space, it takes an awful lot of energy, and that's just how you do it." And I said, "I want to do that." And he said, "Well, okay." And so, when I went to sleep for the next 10 or 20 years, I was thinking at night, "I want to be the first person to create a wormhole, to make things accelerate faster. And I want to make a time machine." I was always sending messages to my future self using tape recorders.
Ali ono što sam shvatila kada sam krenula na fakultet ja da se tehnologija ne usvoji zato što radi; ona se usvoji jer je ljudi koriste i napravljena je za ljude. I zato sam počela studirati antropologiju. I kada sam pisala svoju tezu o mobilnim telefonima, shvatila sam da su svi nosili crvotočine u džepovima. Nisu se transportirali fizički, oni su se transportirali mentalno. Pritisnuli bi dugme, i odmah bi bili spojeni kao tačke A i B. Pomislila sam, "O, vau. Otkrila sam to. Ovo je super."
But then what I realized when I went to college is that technology doesn't just get adopted because it works. It gets adopted because people use it and it's made for humans. So I started studying anthropology. And when I was writing my thesis on cell phones, I realized that everyone was carrying around wormholes in their pockets. They weren't physically transporting themselves; they were mentally transporting themselves. They would click on a button, and they would be connected as A to B immediately. And I thought, "Oh, wow. I found it. This is great."
Kako vrijeme prolazi, vrijeme i prostor su se kompresovali zbog ovoga. Možete stajati na jednom kraju svijeta, šapnuti nešto što će se čuti na drugom kraju. Još jedna ideja koja se pojavi je da imate drugu vrstu vremena na svakom uređaju koji koristite. Svaki prozor u browseru vam daje drugačije vrijeme. Zbog toga počnete roviti u potrazi za vašim eksternim sjećanjima -- gdje ste ih ostavili? Sada smo svi paleontolozi koji kopaju u potrazi za stvarima koje smo izgubili na našim eksternim mozgovima koje nosimo u džepu. To stvara jednu vrstu arhitekture panike. O ne, gdje sam ostavio ono? Svi smo mi "Ja volim Lucy" na velikoj tvorničkoj traci informacija, i nismo sposobni stići sve to.
So over time, time and space have compressed because of this. You can stand on one side of the world, whisper something and be heard on the other. One of the other ideas that comes around is that you have a different type of time on every single device that you use. Every single browser tab gives you a different type of time. And because of that, you start to dig around for your external memories -- where did you leave them? So now we're all these paleontologists that are digging for things that we've lost on our external brains that we're carrying around in our pockets. And that incites a sort of panic architecture -- "Oh no, where's this thing?" We're all "I Love Lucy" on a great assembly line of information, and we can't keep up.
Ono što se desi je, kada unesemo sve to u društveni prostor, počnemo konstantno provjeravati svoje telefone. Tako imamo nešto što se zove ambijentalna intima. Nije da smo uvijek povezani sa svima, ali možemo se u bilo koje vrijeme povezati s kim god želimo. I da možete isprintati sviju iz vašeg mobitela, u sobi bi bila velika gužva. To su ljudi kojima imate pristup baš sada, općenito -- svi ti ljudi, svi vaši prijatelji i porodica s kojima možete biti povezani.
And so what happens is, when we bring all that into the social space, we end up checking our phones all the time. So we have this thing called ambient intimacy. It's not that we're always connected to everybody, but at anytime we can connect to anyone we want. And if you were able to print out everybody in your cell phone, the room would be very crowded. These are the people that you have access to right now, in general -- all of these people, all of your friends and family that you can connect to.
Postoje neki psihološki efekti koji se dese s ovim. Jedan koji me ozbiljno zabrinjava je da ljudi više ne uzimaju vrijeme za razmišljanje, i ne usporavaju i ne prestaju, biti pored svih tih ljudi koji su u sobi stalno, koji se takmiče za njihovu pažnju na simultanim vremenskim sučeljima, paleontologija i arhitektura panike. Oni nikad samo ne sjede. U stvarnosti, kad nemate eksternih ulaza podataka, to je vrijeme kada stvarate sebe, kada možete dugoročno planirati, kada možete pokušati shvatiti ko ste vi zaista. I onda, kada to uradite, možete smisliti kako da predstavite svoje drugo ja na legitiman način, umjesto da se samo nosite sa svime kako se pojavljuje -- i o, moram uraditi ovo, i moram uraditi ovo, i moram uraditi ovo. Zato je ovo jako bitno. Zaista sam zabrinuta da, pogotovo današnja djeca, neće imati to slobodno vrijeme, da imaju instant kulturu klikanja na dugmiće, i da sve dođe njima, i onda postaju jako uzbuđeni oko toga i jako ovisni o tome.
And so there are some psychological effects that happen with this. One I'm really worried about is that people aren't taking time for mental reflection anymore, and that they aren't slowing down and stopping, being around all those people in the room all the time that are trying to compete for their attention on the simultaneous time interfaces, paleontology and panic architecture. They're not just sitting there. And really, when you have no external input, that is a time when there is a creation of self, when you can do long-term planning, when you can try and figure out who you really are. And then, once you do that, you can figure out how to present your second self in a legitimate way, instead of just dealing with everything as it comes in -- and oh, I have to do this, and I have to do this, and I have to do this. And so this is very important. I'm really worried that, especially kids today, they're not going to be dealing with this down-time, that they have an instantaneous button-clicking culture, and that everything comes to them, and that they become very excited about it and very addicted to it.
Ako razmislite, ni svijet nije stao. Svijet ima svoje eksterne proteze, i ti uređaji nam svima pomažu da komuniciramo i općimo jedni s drugima. Ali kad to vizualizirate, sve veze koje stvaramo sada -- ovo je slika mape interneta -- ona ne izgleda tehnološki; čak izgleda vrlo organski. Ovo je prvi put u cijeloj istoriji čovječanstva da smo povezani ovako. Nije stvar u tome da mašine preuzimaju; stvar je u tome da nam pomažu da budemo više ljudski, pomažu nam da se povežemo jedni s drugima.
So if you think about it, the world hasn't stopped either. It has its own external prosthetic devices, and these devices are helping us all to communicate and interact with each other. But when you actually visualize it, all the connections that we're doing right now -- this is an image of the mapping of the Internet -- it doesn't look technological. It actually looks very organic. This is the first time in the entire history of humanity that we've connected in this way. And it's not that machines are taking over. It's that they're helping us to be more human, helping us to connect with each other.
Najuspješnija tehnologija nam se skloni s puta i pomaže nam da živimo svoje živote. U stvarnosti, na kraju ona postane više ljudska nego tehnološka, jer svi zajednički stvaramo jedni druge sve vrijeme. Ovo je bitna tačka koju volim proučavati: da su stvari prelijepe, da je sve to još uvijek ljudska povezanost; samo na drugi način. Samo povećavamo svoju ljudskost i svoju sposobnost da se povežemo jedni s drugima, neovisno o geografiji. I zato ja proučavam antropologiju kiborga.
The most successful technology gets out of the way and helps us live our lives. And really, it ends up being more human than technology, because we're co-creating each other all the time. And so this is the important point that I like to study: that things are beautiful, that it's still a human connection -- it's just done in a different way. We're just increasing our humanness and our ability to connect with each other, regardless of geography. So that's why I study cyborg anthropology.
Hvala vam.
Thank you.
(Aplauz)
(Applause)