AN INTERVIEW WITH DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF - A SPIRITECH UK EXCLUSIVE - Douglas Rushkoff, author of CYBERIA: LIFE IN THE TRENCHES OF HYPERSPACE, MEDIA VIRUS: HIDDEN AGENDAS IN POPULAR CULTURE and THE GEN X READER, is one of the leading commentators on the nature and implications of cyberspace. SPIRITECH UK is pleased to present the following interview. ST: SPIRITECH UK DR: DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF ST: This morning I was reading coverage of the Sharon Lopatka murder, containing the following: "...what does the case tell us about the Internet? Is this grisly evidence of the evil effects of a new and unpoliced technology?" Is it?? Or are we, as SPIRITECH UK says, being shown that we must finally take responsibility for ourselves instead of scapegoating technology at every turn? DR: It's only grisly evidence of the evil effects of social programming, lack of community, defunct social services and the resulting mental illness. When children are lulled into cars and raped we don't blame the car, or the language used to entice him. Yet both are human developments which helped the crime occur. The question is not whether technology is evil, but whether we develop spiritually alongside them. It's not a Star Wars situation where the techno-people turn into a fascist Empire and the spiritual animal-lovers resort to faith and magic. It must be a marriage of technology -- our will to progress and evolove -- with spirituality -- our connectedness to what "is." ST: SPIRITECH UK advocates an acknowledgement of the fact that the underlying unity of our reality makes spiritual-technological interfacing an inevitability. In other words, what many consider impossible and even abhorrent is actually "pre-loaded". Please comment on this. The resistance to the idea of conscious, intelligent and even spiritually-aspected high techologies seems to SPIRITECH UK to be symptomatic of deep-lying fear due to our own slowness in spiralling up *en masse* to real self-knowledge. Do you agree? DR: I agree, except I wouldn't punish humanity for being too slow to spiral up en masse to self-knowledge. We're doing the best we can, and everything is proceeding according to schedule. As far a "pre-loaded," that's a tricky concept because it gets into pre-detiny. I do believe the DNA is preloaded to some extent. There are certain givens about evolution that we'll come to recognize -- whether we try to resist them or not. One of those certainties, as far as I'm concerned, is the formation of a group organism. Most people seem to think such a cohesive multi-humaned organism would be fascistic in nature, but I think it will be tremendously organic, natural -- even spiritual. Right now, though stunting and confusing us in many ways, technology is the easiest method for us to imitate the qualities of such a collective being. ST: The SPIRITECH UK perspective is that those willing and able to embrace the leading edge implications of what we are now creating are "working for the future in the future": In other words, let the dead bury the dead... Please comment. Huh? I'd have to disagree. There is no polarity between the dead and the future. We must all be connected to the past and moving into the future. Source and extension. Alpha Omega. You know? If you live in the future, you lose the whole Buddhist-moment thing. And if you live in the passive, you lose your will to evolve. The DNA must unfold, but you can still love your parents. ST: SPIRITECH UK recognises in on-line life the template for an emergent form of consciousness not yet qualified. How do you characterise the interaction between man and machine, and what personal experiences are you having/ have you had to support this? DR: I don't think there is an interaction between people and machines. Only between people and people. Machines are conduit, not stuff in themselves. So far, anyway. They are beautiful, and should be respected (read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance) but they are not our brethren. I see the whole formation of the Internet-fostered electronic global mind as a test-run for something entirely less hardwired down the line. Technology might play a part, but so might telepathy and host of other undiscovered abilities that our genomes hold in store for us. Personal experiences? I've been hurt a lot online recently. Critics of my books write mean things to me sometimes, and I get the sense they don't realize there is a human being with real feelings at the other end of the keyboard. They think they are responding to text, but they're attacking a human being. I have to learn to put up with that, though, especially when I see fit to inflict my thoughts through publishing, on the rest of the world. No one has anything worth saying that's more important than anyone else's thoughts. ST: A baseline factor in our creation of conscious & intelligent machines is that many mistakenly believe that, in artificial intelligence and allied fields, we are somehow creating something "like us" whereas SPIRITECH acknowledges the fact that we are really creating a parallel, distinct form of conscious life unprecedented in this cycle of our human history. Please comment. DR: "Spiritech" is starting to sound like a cult when you use the third person. I'm scared. : ) Yes and no. We are definitely creating something, but I see it as an extension of nature. It has gotten so complex that it has taken on the characteristics of a dynamical system -- the media is alive, so to speak. But it's not a SEPARATE form of life. Nothing is separate. Not even the baby that gets born. Our technology has definitely past a threshold of sorts. It's more than just wheels and radios. It is a new life "kingdom," like animals or plants. But it is one with life. It is groping for complexity and understanding, just like Gaia itself. ST: As you are based in the USA, what might we expect from the unreconstructed Luddites when the digital shit really starts to hit the fan...when our terminals start to wake up!? DR: What we'll get from them is a good dose of fear and paranoia. A healthy dose, actually. Without the Luddites, there'd be no balance. A body has bones and fluids. The bones hold the structure, but can't bend like the rest. Fundamentalists and Luddites change much more slowly over time than we weirdo techno-enthusiasts. If it weren't for them, things would change faster than we would be able to tolerate it. Imagine if Timothy Leary were the most conservative person you knew. Life would just be too scary. ST: How long might it be before the basic tenets you espouse and those of entities such as SPIRITECH UK become widely accepted? I've always thought that's what 2012 was. Not a big global shift, but the moment at which this kind of consciousness reached critical mass. It probably won't happen until closer to 2100, though. And even then, I don't think it's a matter of one side or the other 'winning' the consciousness wars -- but rather the two sides, one opposing change and the other embracing it, somehow become partners. ST: Finally, cyberspace is obviously being transformed by the legions gravitating to its ever-seductive charms...is there a Hundredth Monkey critical-mass trigger lurking somewhere in all this? IE A billion online = mass awakening online? This is speculative, of course, but the fact remains that eventually mass usage of the Web and e-mail, IRC et al will impact profoundly on the entire planet. DR: I don't think it will work like that. The Internet is the dry, white, Western way to experience global community. It's transformative, that's for sure, but I don't think everyone needs this experience. The real impact of all this communications tech on the planet should be that we figure out how to get food to the people who need it, and develop a system of government that doesn't depend on imperialism and nationalism, yet represents the interests of the individual and the collective. :-) SPIRITECH UK thanks Douglas Rushkoff for the opportunity to undertake and post this review.