The Center for the Study of Digital Life (CSDL) was founded in 2015 to pursue the unique challenges and opportunies of life under DIGITAL conditions. We have capitalized DIGITAL throughout to indicate that this is an environment (not just a technology) which is radically different from any previous one that has been experienced by humanity (see the Environments heading). Recognition of the patterns that have already changed in our lives has become a crucial task for those who wish to understand, take responsibility and act positively in this new environment (see Patterns heading).
Humans are largely driven by our "subconscious" psychology, which unfortunately is a topic largely abandoned by modern "cognitive" approaches. In many ways, we are now flying blind into the mountains in a snowstorm without functioning instruments. The biases and intuitions that underpin our emotions and rationality have already been reshaped. This fundamental reshaping is done by the communications technologies we habitually use to navigate our social environment. Advising those trying to navigate under these new DIGITAL conditions has become a priority.
When those technologies change – as they have massively in the past 20+ years – so do our "values." The shift to DIGITAL is perhaps the most sweeping and rapid change humans have ever experienced, considering that most earlier transitions took centuries. As a result, we are now undergoing a massive change in our sensibilities, with enormous economic, political, religious and personal implications. We are living through a version of Neitzsche's "revaluation of values." And his "Antichrist" isn't going to help us.
We believe that DIGITAL *retrieves* aspects of a "medieval" SCRIBAL sensibility – radically different from what happened under PRINT conditions (which opposed SCRIBAL) or in the following ELECTRIC environment (which opposed PRINT). In fact, humanity is now in uncharted waters – threatened with a maelstrom that attempts to pull us downward. Whether humanity survives this threat has now become a vital issue. The impulse to turn us into machines began with the effects of the Printing Press and ELECTRIC has been relentlessly submerging humanity into "nature" for most of our lives. The Center is committed to discovering whether a new SCRIBAL sensibility can reverse these trends. We are discarding Ong's "Secondary Orality" in favor of a "Secondary Literacy." The Word has never been so important for human survival.
The impulse to turn us into machines began with the effects of the Printing Press, and ELECTRIC has been relentlessly submerging humanity into "nature" for most of our lives. The Center is committed to discovering whether a new SCRIBAL sensibility can reverse these trends.
The previous ELECTRIC environment generated a bias towards "globalism," as reflected in the institutional structures of the United Nations, WTO &c – ultimately based on the geostationary satellites with which we communicate. Futher examples falling under the 1950s heading of "Family of Man" have led to global wars and widespread economc dislocations. Those institutional structures are no longer driving world affairs and globalism has already collapsed, as events in Afghanistan &c illustrate. Under DIGITAL conditions, new structures have developed which we call Three Spheres: East, West and Digital. These spheres all have global reach and correspond roughly to those whose literacy is organized around three different forms of writing: Logographic, Alphabetic and Code.
The combination of a new set of values and a new global organizing principle appears to many as a surrender to sweeping chaos. Current elites have been violently cut adrift. Some even hope that "Complexity Theory" will help us to plan a new course. "World Order" has become a Humpty Dumpty that has fallen off the wall, with all the king's horses and all the king's men unable to put it back together again. The generation now in its 20s is the first to have been shaped by these new technologies and their drive to sort all this out has become a quest little understood by their parents.
Each of the Spheres has a different set of values it is retrieving, since a unified ELECTRIC global trajectory is no longer in place. The East Sphere is seeking a recovery of "The Way" – as reflected in the upsurge of interest in Daoist principles &c. The West Sphere is struggling to return to a public embrace of "The Virtues" – as reflected in the wide-spread employment of "virtue-signaling" and what some call the "New Puritans." The Digital Sphere is hunting for "The Spark" of divinity which they hope can be transfered to cyborgs/robots resulting in immortality – popularly summarized as the "Singularity" and the pursuit of a "Transhuman" rationalization. All three of these new value-sets now must be understood to avoid the dangers of a "three-body problem."
The Center is organizing seminars/workshops to understand these developments. We have built an impressive team and will provide extensive resources for those attempting to grasp and then act meaningfully in the face of this transition. Humanity is not only resilient but, if you will, blessed with a psyche that can adapt to these new conditions without our extinction. New sciences will need to be invented. Religion will play a surprisingly important role. And, yes, the "doors of perception" will need to be opened. Welcome to the future – which is already here today.