Submitted by Mad Scientist on
“Technology is destructive only in the hands of people who do not realize that they are one and the same process as the universe.” – Alan Watts. (1915 – 1973)
This prediction of the future by Alan Watts will leave you speechless.
The Premise
Watts began the lecture noting that the extension of the network by electronics may abolish individual privacy. During the lecture, he made some astonishing predictions about the world we live in today.
The Approximate Time and Place
Watts died in 1973, it is safe to say that the lecture that this information was summarized from was delivered to a group of people, in the afternoon sometime in the late ‘60s or early ’70s near a military base. The author is vague about the year but specific on the time of day only because of clues heard in the recording. At the beginning of the talk Watts states that during a lecture that morning the subject of privacy had come up and he was going to address it now. In the middle of the lecture, a jet is heard to roar overhead. Followed by silence then Watts exclaims, “Complete with bombs!”
The Predictions
Watts with the help of some futurist and possibly advertising from Bell Telephone Watts predicted a few familiar devices we use every day and some still futuristic devices and processes. Some predictions were very accurate, some are still waiting for the right time to appear.
Your Information is Out There
Even in the 1960s insurance agencies, credit agencies, law enforcement, and all manner of the establishment were collecting information on people and reducing the information into computer data. Watts warned that an enormous amount of information can be instantly known. At the time that progress was made using keypunch operators and very little networking. Watts never imagined the information we would freely divulge instantenously today.
Desk Top Computers
Watts described the desktop pretty accurately as a box on your desk with a TV screen and a dial. With this, you could send a code to the Library of Congress and Read any Book ever written. If he added a typewriter to the equation he would have had everything correct.
Mobile Telephones
Alan Watts just about nailed this, here are his words:
“…they project that not many years hence the ordinary telephone will disappear and every individual will carry it around with him a thing about the size of the old pocket watches one side of it will be a TV screen and a speaker the other side of it will be a set of buttons over which you just place your finger to activate them you will be able to dial world information who will give you the number of any given individual if he doesn’t answer he’s dead…”
Holograms or Zoom Meetings
Watts had great hope for perfect holograms that he described as TV with laser beams. He noted that if reproduction could become technically perfect, that will be a new kind of confusion.
“We can easily take this a step further when we develop a form of electronic communication such that you don’t even need to take a plane you want to see supposing I want to see my father in England we both have these laser beam TV jobs and just like that I can recreate in front of him myself and my exact environment everything around just if he was sitting in the room and I can do that with his set on the other end so that eventually we don’t need to take the plane…”
Replacement Organs
Plastic was the future in the 1960s according to the movie, The Graduate, and Watts thought this would be the answer to providing new organs as the old ones wore out.
If everything is replaced are you the same individual?
Not a Fan of Uber Eats
Watts noted:
“…you can conceive as some science fiction writers have what seems to us a rather appalling situation where you never never need to leave the place
where you’re sitting all food supplies and everything is automatically
delivered you just dial what you want.”
He was probably thinking more of something approximating food arriving through a tube rather than a mildly warm dish from your favorite restaurant arriving by car.
More than 3 Channels
Watts discusses that with electronic communications everyone sees the same thing on NBC and ABC news at 6:00 PM. He called this temporary, the more we develop microelectronic machinery, the greater discrimination on the dial. As technology becomes more perfect you can get an enormous number of stations. With a videotape machine costing $6,000 and a Sony television camera costing $250, you can do a tv show with only one technician. The average television show produced in a studio takes 14 technicians. There can be an increasing variety of the type of material presented.
The Real Message
Alan Watts was not a futurist, he was a philosopher who captured audiences on the West Coast with Eastern Thought through writings, radio, public television, and lectures. His recorded talks before audiences and broadcasts have survived and have found new life on YouTube.
In the 55 minute lecture, Watts uses predictions to support his thoughts on the nature of privacy and humanity.
Pros and Cons Regarding the Loss of Privacy
Pro: how great to have nothing to hide and to give up all worries of ownership. No worry about possessions, no worries about dirty little secrets.
Con: the more we do this with everyone thinking the same thing and owning nothing, then everyone becomes the same. It is the phenomena of each city looking just like the other with the same stores and restaurants.
Technology as an Extension of Humanity
Just as the wheel and all forms of technological transportation are extensions of the human ability to move. The radio, telephone, television and the computer is an extension of the human nervous system.
The Human as a Pattern
An old-established university will retain the same name through the decades even though the buildings, grounds, and people change. The pattern retains an identifiable continuity. A person is the same, changing throughout the years, but the soul remains the same, only the bodily expression keeps changing. “We are electronic echoes of ourselves being perpetuated through the ages.”
We will come to the astonishing conclusion that that is what we already are. We are the most remarkable electronic patterns from the standpoint of physics
The Etheralization of Humans
…Every need is eventually supplied through electronic stimulation until you finally have to get rid of the black box, the electronic gadget, you have become Etherealized. By then all privacy is gone, your thoughts are easily read. Humanity is converted to an anthill, this is to be dreaded.
Are Your Thoughts Really Your Own?
In your head lives thoughts that are not yours because you think in the English language and that was given to you by other people along with the prejudices that are inherent. You are in the sphere of public influences. Think of the tone of your thoughts and you will hear the tone of others that have told you those things. Myriads of voices and influences work on you even when you are alone. So you are not as private as you think you are. You influence others as well as they influence you, so your voice lives in the heads of other people. We are the sum total of all of society, and the reactions of people to you. You know who you are in terms of your relations with others.
Enjoy the View
He ends with a description of how living a plugged-in existence is not that different from an old Italian woman enjoying watching life flow by on the street below. There is something fundamentally good about that. but you see that that sort of thing of watching an ever-varying panorama of life is not completely excluded by electronic technology.
https://therecoveringeducator.medium.com/the-future-of-privacy-cb9559e6b87e