The Resonating Interval:
Exploring the Process of the Tetrad
By Anthony Hempell
The Global Village:
Global Video Technologies

Video and Global Robotism
The duality of consciousness afforded by video technology (the capacity to experience two "places" at once, simultaneously) allows a reacquisition of acoustic understanding. In effect, the networking of video channels (and later, computer networks) is an extension of the human central nervous system around the globe. This creates the capacity to become extra-conscious, what McLuhan called "Global Robotism."

The predicted effects of "Global Robotism" are mirrored in many of the common present-day analyses of the "Information Society": a shift from manufacturing to a marketing and information economy, specialization in cultural production through targeted databases, and a reversal of racial and cultural integration, with more fragmentation in American society between the older, predominantly white middle-class and a new social mosaic of heterogeneous immigrant populations.

The Dissatisfactions
The return of acoustic space through Global Robotism is not the basis for a technological utopia. The social order constructed by visual thinking will fade (and in some cases crash violently); power will decentralize in opposition to the concentrating power of paper and writing technologies. In an electronic society, all information is available to everyone at once; privacy is obsolesced, espionage (encryption) enters the realm of the individual and becomes an art form.

When channeled through the global nervous system of video and computer networks, culture will be organized like an electric circuit: each point will be as central to the next (a perfect example is the Internet itself). This model will dissolve social rules and heirarchies, diminish the workforce, destroy privacy, centralized power, and possibly even federal systems of government.

Introduction | Tetrad:Concept | Tetrads:Past | Tetrads:Present | Tetrads:Future | Bibliography #ffcc99
copyright ©1996 by Anthony Hempell.