Et is definitely time to rethink. What our fathers and grandfathers called progress is destroying our planet. Science is not an end in itself, not everything that is technically feasible is good, not everything that is fun and satisfies our senses is useful. Now we keep hearing from many quarters that we should concentrate on the small steps ahead of us, that this is the only way we can move forward together. This may be true at times, but it distracts us from the essentials. Where do we actually want to go?
Does it make sense to fly into space and burn up our Earth in the process? Is it really a good idea to jeopardize our extremely complex biodiversity here in order to search for water on a desert planet and think about how we can artificially create the most basic conditions for life there? Why do so many people believe that this makes sense?
Knowledge structures
There are indigenous peoples who have lived in harmony with nature for thousands of years. The wealth of experience grows very slowly and is passed on orally from one generation to the next. This oral tradition is a bottleneck. On the one hand, oral tradition requires narratives. Secondly, the flow of information is limited. Knowledge dies with the bearer of knowledge. Only what is passed on and remembered survives. There is no significant accumulation of knowledge. Outdated knowledge dies out and is replaced by new knowledge. There is a concentration of knowledge and selection.
In 'advanced civilizations', on the other hand, knowledge is archived. Everything is stored in knowledge repositories, such as libraries or networks. It is accessible to many people and allows for extreme specialization. This specialization loses sight of the context. Arbitrary maxims become leitmotifs: Wealth, power, pleasure. Knowledge is instrumentalized to serve these maxims. We call this the freedom of science. Knowledge has been detached from the grand narratives and liberated. We call it secularized or modernized (Galileo).
Now we have this tower of accumulated knowledge. In a Babylonian confusion of languages, we no longer know where we want to go. We are breaking the master narrative and releasing micronarratives. We call this plurality or postmodern (Lyotard).
Much has been written about all of these. We have created a world that is wonderfully complex. There is a dazzling tolerance in many places, our creativity has been unleashed and our minds have been given wings. We have technology that allows us to transform our knowledge, our communication, our bodies, space and time. There is certainly no point in trying to turn back time. Not everything was better in the past.
Biological and mental knowledge repositories
What seems important to me is the direction of view. In the industrialized nations, we focus on technology. What is on the Internet is real. We have long since arrived in the hyperreal (Baudrillard). Only slowly are we (re)recognizing the complexity of biological and mental knowledge repositories. If knowledge is stored in living 'archives', then it is part of life. This does not mean that it is always good, on the contrary, it is probably value-neutral. But it is part of a complex system. However, we should not understand this 'system' in cybernetic terms. The aim is not decoding and imitation or simulation (biomimicry). Rather, the aim should be to reintegrate ourselves, to become part of nature and consciousness again.
I don't think this has to be a step backwards. I just doubt the belief in a technological singularity. The Silicon Valley ideology that the next big step will be to transfer consciousness to a hard disk, to integrate it into the network or hyperreality will really help us. For biological humans, it would be more of a nightmare. The question remains as to why we are striving for this. The dream of immortality is the driving force, in essence the preservation of the self. But it is precisely this illusion that needs to be overcome. If we succeed in doing so, whose part do we want to see ourselves as? Computer processors, nature and/or consciousness?
