New York Diary

Spinning Heads

Yuri Kageyama at the AP reports on a remote control that controls people by messing with our sense of balance, among other things. (Thanks to Toynbee for pointing me in that direction.) This is:

1. Scary,
2. Scientifically impressive, and
3. Completely awesome,

in that order.

Tanogashi (long defunct blog, I know, but interesting anyhow) notes that "this country loves its stimulents" and paints a picture of the day in which we ride the subway with our espressos in our hands, our ipods blaring in our ears, and our currents passing through our brains just to keep life interesting. I suspect he's not far off with this, though as for that I'm not entirely convinced it's a bad thing if we want to run on caffeine and heavy metal instead of Sun Chips and quiet solitude. Indeed, even dependence is not a de facto bad thing; I'm dependent on food for my happiness (and, in this case, my life), but that's fine with me, and, indeed, great food provides me with ample opportunity for genuine pleasure.

That said, I do feel a theoretical attraction to the idea that I should be as unaddicted as possible. I don't like the notion that my well-being or happiness is linked to the outside world (even if this is inescapably the way of things), because it means that depriving me of things may also deprive me of some of my practical joys. As a result, it seems best to limit my dependencies as much as possible.

But nobody is yet claiming that this remote-control thing is addictive (physically, or even psychologically... yet). It certainly does open up the door to scary body-control applications (and it's worth pointing out the distinction between controlling somebody's body and controlling somebody's mind--their thoughts, hopes, feelings, and desires, among other intangibles). But the thing that most disturbs me is actually the same thing that disturbs me about most drug use (legal and illegal), excessive alcohol consumption, and even, ocassionally, eating (not that I don't eat, but there is a philosophical hesitation as follows): I don't like the idea of changing one's physical or chemical state via artificial means. (Here, let "artifice" indicate "man-made," though there is room here for fruitful debate.) Just as I'm skeptical of taking a drug that enhances dopamine production, I'm hesitant to try any device that will mess with the fluids of my inner ears. You want to get high? Climb a mountain. Want to get dizzy? Run around in circles. The human body is meant to deal with stimuli of those sorts; it evolved over a long period of time precisely in order to be able to do that sort of thing.

Of course, I recognize an irrationality in all of this. After all, if my body can handle dizziness after I spin around for a while, it can probably handle the very similar dizziness that I experience if somebody shoots electrical currents through my head--and it can do so in exactly the same way, one might argue. In short, our bodies were made for this, too.

That may be right. Either way, though, we'd better get ready for some crazy video games...

posted by Skay @ 4:34 PM