CGI Apocalypse: The Veiling of Nature
Will Earth cease alongside a bang, or simply a whimper, equally T.S. Eliot predicted? Or volition nobody notice at all? An eerie silence, equally everyone listens to an endless stream of digital music on their iPods.
Gradually, stride past times step, alongside the advance of estimator technology, existent things are beingness replaced past times images of things—pixels on a screen, Computer Generated Imagery, directly 3-D printing… exceptional earpieces enable us to beak to each other from miles away equally nosotros walk downwards the street. When I was growing up, people gesticulating as well as talking to themselves inwards world were called “mad” as well as nosotros tended to avoid them. Now it is equally mutual equally those white wires dangling from our ears were a few years ago. Electronic spectacles, as well as no dubiousness earlier long implants straight into the brain, enable us to access the meshing anywhere as well as anytime, superimposing a world of (largely) commercial information over Earth perceived past times our senses. Every twitch of the eyeball, everything nosotros await at, volition travel recorded as well as analyzed to assistance some giant firm inwards selling something to us to a greater extent than effectively.
The natural world has been replaced past times something else—something “better” because to a greater extent than nether human command (which ever means, equally C.S. Lewis would receive got pointed out, command past times ane modest grouping of humans over the rest). Step past times step, nosotros are moving closer to the possibility of the consummate erasure of Earth our ancestors knew. Is that a bad thing, or is it simply the adjacent phase inwards evolution, equally the Transhumanists insist? Not bad, simply different.
How arrive at nosotros judge? Well, at that topographic point is ever mutual sense, but that is fast vanishing too. We approximate according to our innovation of what Earth is, as well as what nosotros are, as well as why nosotros are hither inwards the world. If that innovation has been correctly formed past times tradition, intellect, as well as revelation, nosotros volition chop-chop honor all around us a novel shape of the perennial heresy sometimes called “Gnosticism.” The Gnostics believed that our truthful nature was spiritual, as well as our project on globe was to overstep as well as escape the fabric plane. The novel shape this takes is, first, the belief that what nosotros are is consciousness, understood according to the information-processing model equally some variety of software that tin sack potentially travel downloaded elsewhere. Secondly, apart from consciousness itself, what is existent is whatever tin sack travel
presented to consciousness equally input: that is, sensory “data.” The world may ultimately travel broken down, non into atoms or elements or quanta of energy, but into something similar “pixels” or units of information. These construct upwards into the impressions of things that are the objects of our consciousness, constituting the other one-half of reality. (All of this was dramatized most effectively inwards The Matrix, a pic based on the quondam philosophical conundrum of the “brain inwards a vat.”)
The departure betwixt a hand-painted icon as well as a photographically reproduced holy painting (say of a saint) is instructive. The holy painting is an “abstracted image,” an final result or impression that tin sack travel produced inwards several dissimilar ways. The of import thing nearly it is the cease result—what it looks like to the observer. It mightiness travel on paper, on metal, or on a estimator or TV screen. But the icon is different. It is prepared on wood, using clay, egg tempera, natural pigments, gold. Each of these materials has item symbolic properties—here it is non simply the cease final result that matters, but the materials of which the icon is made, as well as the prayer that accompanies each brush stroke. The reproduction aims to capture only the appearance. Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 contemporary iconographer writes, “Its artificial materials manifest majority production, the endlessly repeatable uniformity of consumer products, and, inwards short, the desacralized world of machines. Lacking craftsmanship, it is deficient inwards conveying the sacramental utilisation of affair as well as its liturgical dimension, which presupposes the cooperation of human as well as divine energies.”
Gradually, stride past times step, alongside the advance of estimator technology, existent things are beingness replaced past times images of things—pixels on a screen, Computer Generated Imagery, directly 3-D printing… exceptional earpieces enable us to beak to each other from miles away equally nosotros walk downwards the street. When I was growing up, people gesticulating as well as talking to themselves inwards world were called “mad” as well as nosotros tended to avoid them. Now it is equally mutual equally those white wires dangling from our ears were a few years ago. Electronic spectacles, as well as no dubiousness earlier long implants straight into the brain, enable us to access the meshing anywhere as well as anytime, superimposing a world of (largely) commercial information over Earth perceived past times our senses. Every twitch of the eyeball, everything nosotros await at, volition travel recorded as well as analyzed to assistance some giant firm inwards selling something to us to a greater extent than effectively. The natural world has been replaced past times something else—something “better” because to a greater extent than nether human command (which ever means, equally C.S. Lewis would receive got pointed out, command past times ane modest grouping of humans over the rest). Step past times step, nosotros are moving closer to the possibility of the consummate erasure of Earth our ancestors knew. Is that a bad thing, or is it simply the adjacent phase inwards evolution, equally the Transhumanists insist? Not bad, simply different.
presented to consciousness equally input: that is, sensory “data.” The world may ultimately travel broken down, non into atoms or elements or quanta of energy, but into something similar “pixels” or units of information. These construct upwards into the impressions of things that are the objects of our consciousness, constituting the other one-half of reality. (All of this was dramatized most effectively inwards The Matrix, a pic based on the quondam philosophical conundrum of the “brain inwards a vat.”)
These days nosotros fifty-fifty receive got photographs of our saints—at to the lowest degree the most recent ones—which tin sack travel multiplied indefinitely. It is perfectly possible to brand utilisation of a mechanical reproduction to direct one’s prayer to the saint depicted. Holy pictures portray holy people. But fifty-fifty a photograph, which takes us unopen to the physical appearance of the saint during life, separates us from the saint at the same time. The saint is living now, inwards heaven, as well as it is the icon that connects us alongside that reality. The photograph recalls the past, a minute inwards fourth dimension directly gone, the appearance non the reality.
The abstracted epitome is sure enough an aspect of reality, as well as equally such tin sack component division equally a reminder of someone. In a photograph album that’s all nosotros are looking for. But inwards an iconostasis something else is needed. It is non simply the epitome but the medium of delivery, the way it is produced, that matters.
This departure represents a modify going on inwards our civilization—a detachment from tradition, from nature, from the body—that undermines our appreciation of the symbolic properties of the fabric world, as well as the feel of a sacramental cosmos. Would it travel stretching things to compare this alongside the separation of agency from ends inwards ethics? It does affair how nosotros larn where nosotros are going.
The gratuitous online book-review periodical Humanum has of late placed online a novel number on the subject “Technology inwards the Home.” If the deport upon of novel applied scientific discipline on the upbringing of our children interests you, delight see the site as well as encounter what is available. There are no concluding answers, but at that topographic point is enough of nutrient for thought.
The abstracted epitome is sure enough an aspect of reality, as well as equally such tin sack component division equally a reminder of someone. In a photograph album that’s all nosotros are looking for. But inwards an iconostasis something else is needed. It is non simply the epitome but the medium of delivery, the way it is produced, that matters.
The gratuitous online book-review periodical Humanum has of late placed online a novel number on the subject “Technology inwards the Home.” If the deport upon of novel applied scientific discipline on the upbringing of our children interests you, delight see the site as well as encounter what is available. There are no concluding answers, but at that topographic point is enough of nutrient for thought.
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