I foretell the coming of one planet-wide civilisation based on the practice of collective intelligence in Cyberspace. However, before coming to the crux of the matter, I would first like to justify my methodology, which is not that of scientific prediction but rather of poetic imagination. To contrast prediction and imagination in this manner is not to imply that imagination equates with falsehood and illusion. On the contrary, I believe that imagination, and especially collective imagination, produces reality. In choosing imagination over prediction, I mean to underline the fact that the future has not yet been written and that we are probably much more free than we think. We are responsible for the world which we create together through our thoughts, words and deeds. That is why I am convinced that it is much more constructive to use our own powers of perception and freedom of choice in a creative manner rather than denounce, judge and condemn the world as it is, that is to say, at the end of the day, others. Does this mean that we should abandon our critical faculties, our ability to differentiate? Of course not. Rather, every positive thought, word and deed subtly indicates the path which it has chosen not to take. The fact of indicating and then taking a certain path implies a ‘critique’ of those not taken. When we exercise our freedom, and our poetic freedom amongst other things, we necessarily evaluate the alternatives before making a choice. However, in doing this, creative imagination summons a world yet to come rather than reinforcing negative stereotypes, prolonging conflicts or entrenching differences.
It does not do this from nothing, nor does it simply follow its own whims. Proceeding relentlessly by direct observation and attempting to overcome all prejudices, I endeavour to identify, from amongst the thousands of embryonic forms which the current situation has created, those which, given the opportunity to develop fully, will be most propitious to increasing our freedom. As I conceive it, creative imagination cannot therefore be dissociated from a process of reading and interpreting — a sort of profound vision — for which reality and meaning are not a given, but are instead potential, only to be revealed by an act of free understanding. From amongst the infinite number of virtual paths possible, creative interpretation selects one. However, this freedom is not arbitrary — it must refrain from relying on pre-existing concepts and vested interests in its projection of meaning. It attempts to give a certain life back to the text, the image or the situation in its entirety, a life whose outpouring will overturn prejudices, predictions and beliefs. The material objectivity of the world, the reality ‘which everybody can clearly see’ (and which changes with each culture, period, theory, subjective point of view) is only ever a sclerosis of creative intelligence, an inability to capture the evolutionary and organic nature of the world. Thus I conceive of situations as landscapes of possibility which my perceptions, interpretations and deeds will develop in one direction or another. At any given moment, the world is made up of a mosaic of signs, each of which opens a door onto another mosaic, and so on infinitely. Which handle should we turn? Which link should we click on? In the Romance languages, ‘semence’ and ‘semantics’ share the same root, both connote the virtual, the potential of the future, be it in the domain of organic life or in that of meaning. In the immense landscape made up from grains of meaning, which seeds should we water?
The most interesting question is not therefore ‘is this interpretation true?’, but rather ‘what type of path does this interpretation open up?’ To which reality does it give rise? Will it harden our everyday experience, render it more solid, material and painful? Or will it give rise to an increase in freedom, a further refinement in the play of signs, an affirmation of life in the world and of the pleasure of existing?
If I choose to interpret the more ‘positive’ signs, those which carry freedom within, it is not because I wish to claim that ‘all is well’, nor that society is not unjust, nor that all suffering has vanished. It is rather to conjure up as vividly as possible, in my mind as well as in that of my reader, the paths which lead towards emancipation. For there can be no doubt regarding the best route to take: that of freedom.
Our responsibility
The Internet is a truly Surrealist mode of communication from which ‘nothing is excluded’, neither good nor evil, nor their many forms, nor the debate which would vainly attempt to separate them. The Internet represents the unmediated presence of humanity to itself since every possible culture, discipline and passion is therein woven together. The fact that everything is possible on the Internet reveals mankind’s true essence, the aspiration towards freedom.
Just like truth and falsehood, good and evil also belong to the world of language and grow in complexity with it. What is this chaos which dominates Cyberspace just as it does the contemporary world? Where can order be found? This is what we would like to know. We look high and low, join different clans, argue, lose the run of ourselves, fight… We denounce ‘evil’ on all sides, always ready to point the finger at others. We eagerly swarm over all sorts of ‘goods’. And, in doing this, we complicate everything, we accelerate the process of evolution, just like the wind and certain animals disperse plant seeds far and wide, contributing to the evolution of the vegetable ecology. The Internet will reveal the true hierarchy of good, because what is at stake is the essence of language: freedom. This hierarchy is complex: hyper-textual, interwoven, alive, mobile, teeming and spinning like a biosphere.
Many of us already take part in the on-line exchange of ideas, information and services. We engage in dialogue in virtual communities housed by mobile networks which are continually being reconfigured. Soon we will all have our own web site. In a few years, we will avail of avatars or digital angels — capable of conversing on their own — to send our memories, projects and dreams out into Cyberspace. Every individual, group, life-form and object will become its own self-medium, emitting data and interpreting itself in a mode of communication whose transparency and richness will stimulate through opposition.
Omnivision will replace television: no matter where we may find ourselves, we will be able to use Cyberspace to direct our gaze to any part of the world which we choose. And the intensity of that gaze, just like the insistency of our questions, will give rise to an infinite amount of new details. Driven by our desire to know, we will learn everything it is possible to learn, from the constellations to social situations, from scientific experiments to interactive fictions. To whoever can formulate a question, all will become visible from every point in space or time, every direction, every level. However, this ‘all’ or this ‘every’ do not predate our questions and techniques. Rather, they result from our questions, they are its never finished — unfinishable — task. Reality — including the reality of biological life — will become more and more alive, intelligent and interconnected; it will resemble interactive simulations more and more and will be increasingly designed in the digital matrixes which make up virtual worlds.
We will take part in on-line role-playing games whose aim will be to invent virtual worlds which resemble the real world as closely as possible (and vice versa). The winners will be those who conceive of the most ingenious new forms of cooperation. We will learn the ever-changing rules of creative collaboration and collective intelligence in a universe fed by heterogeneous sources of information. It will be impossible to tell whether the virtual communities which provide this apprenticeship are on-line universities, communications companies, games worlds or deterritorialised democratic agorae.
No reference, authority, dogma or certitude will remain unchallenged by the future which awaits us. We are now discovering that reality is a collective creation. We are all in the process of thinking within the same network. This has always been the case, but Cyberspace renders it so evident that it can no longer be ignored. Now is the time of responsibility.
Such power, freedom and responsibility can only oblige us to be audacious in creating new paths to the future. In one sense, nothing will ever change. As always, we will be born, suffer, love, weave beautiful and meaningful patterns together, and then we will grow old and die. However, in another sense, we are now in the position to invent a new human reality, just as at the end of the Neolithic period mankind evolved by inventing agriculture, the town, the state and writing. The present mutation is, however, much more rapid. In place of agriculture, biotechnologies now offer us the risky possibility of guiding the biosphere’s evolution in real time. The convergence of life — which is increasingly genetically modified and artificial — and technology — which is increasingly alive and intelligent — will leave us free to pursue more creative enterprises. Instead of towns, we are now constructing one planet-wide metropolis, connected by air, road and rail links. We are in the process of building one transcontinental, omnipresent capital which will comprehend high-finance, science, the media and entertainment industries: therein, everything circulates, people, signs, mobile communications machines, interconnected means of transport. Linked by bolts of information which flash between them like lightning, the skyscrapers of Hong Kong, New York and Sao Paulo sing the praises of the Almighty Dollar (higher praise than that given to their respective gods by Egyptian pyramids or European cathedrals). The unending conversation of Cyberspace carries on the process started by the semi-divine priest-kings of Antiquity when they first engraved laws on stone tablets. We discuss the changing meaning of laws in an intellectual climate where documents and facts are never further away than the next hypertext link. The pros and cons of every issue will be redistributed in numerous virtual forums, like so many synapses in one giant brain whose neurons flicker on and off, and we will vote for new laws electronically, each law so voted being regarded as provisional and bound to be superseded by ongoing developments in our collective apprenticeship.
However, as we all know, bombarded as we are with media information, our civilisation is teetering on the brink: war, misery, ecological disasters. If we were to take certain paths now we might irretrievably compromise our freedom, and even our survival. The very fact that we are now in a position to destroy everything should make us aware of our responsibilities and our freedom. However, if we do not succeed in convincing ourselves that we are free, collectively free, collectively intelligent, that we are linked by language in the one network of thought and decision making, if we do not manage to convince ourselves that we can consciously increase our collective freedom and intelligence, then we are in danger of being condemned to wander indefinitely… or of becoming suddenly and ignominiously extinct.
I am now going to risk formulating a proposal. We must move in the direction of a more powerful and deliberately assumed freedom and collective intelligence. This is a paradoxical aim since it evaporates once it reaches the horizon of the opening-up of meaning: a collective apprenticeship which has attained the meta level, and which is becoming ever more meta. Prolonging the process of biological evolution, cultural evolution continues the opening-up of the scope of meaning.
I would therefore claim that we are approaching the dawn of a new civilisation whose explicit aim will be to perfect collective human intelligence, that is to say, to indefinitely pursue the process of emancipation into whose path language has thrown us. If I have worked so hard at understanding the significance of Cyberspace, it is because it seems to me to be the most up-to-date tool available for improving our collective intelligence, the most recent path discovered for opening up our possibilities of collective choice.
There are three different dimensions along which our collective intelligence can grow. There is the dimension of power-sharing along the lines of Cyber-democracy. There is the dimension of productivity and prosperity along the lines of Information Capitalism. Then there is the dimension of spiritual and artistic grace in which the multiplicity of virtual worlds and games contributes to the comprehension of the sacred world.
The foundation of all other forms of collective intelligence, their base, and the structure which is the slowest to change and the hardest to move is that which relates to power. The intermediary layer, that of wealth, is more mobile, adventurous and speculative. Finally, there is the experience of life become the free-play of symbols, a game which has no other aim than the exercise of a freedom amazed by its own infinite nature. This state of grace is that of happiness as well as that of art and spirituality. The high tension and lightness associated with this state of grace carry in their wake the whirling dance of wealth and the heavy tread of power. Art is turned towards exploration, it conjures up the future and comes close to the exaltation of mysticism and prophecy.