Unfiltered Smoke

by Amy Anderson

The internet is often the starting point for my new ideas. When I come across novel ideas online, I try to apply them to my little world and see if they ring true. Nerdy, I know. So, here’s American educational rebel John Taylor Gatto talking about Marshall McLuhan’s views on machines:

“Marshall McLuhan once called on us to notice that all machines are merely extensions of the human nervous system, artifices which improve on natural apparatus, each a utopianization of some physical function”.

I would go further and say that machines are not just substitutions for the nervous system, but for the human body as well. So, a car is really a substitute set of very fast legs that go from point A to Bwithout leaving us fatigued. Gatto’s explanation continues:

“‘Equally important’, says McLuhan, ‘the use of machinery causes its natural flesh blood counterpart to atrophy’”.

We’ve certainly seen this in Canada over the last thirty years – cars make legs atrophy. People get fat because they no longer use their legs; instead they eat unhealthy food from drive-thru windows. So what?

Although McLuhan’s statement itself is interesting, what intrigues me most is the idea of “machine thinking” – that the human body is like a machine, that cities are organized like an immense clock, that we are all cogs in the wheel. This is a tremendously influential idea that has been with us in the West since the Industrial Revolution.

It is my feeling that this machine paradigm is becoming obsolete in our post-Industrial era, and that ‘machine thinking’ is eventually bound to give way to a more techno-naturalistic understanding of the world as a place of connectivity and relationships. Sounds like a lot of hocus-pocus but it actually has a big effect on how we perceive ourselves, and by extension how we organize our societies.

The contrast between the natural and mechanical worlds is clear – the natural world is cyclical, subtle, non-linear and full of processes. Think of a tree and the repetitive but always slightly different growth cycle it goes through in a year – dormancy during winter, leaves budding, foliage, shedding leaves, dormancy again. But two years are never identical, despite the repetitions in the process.

The machine is linear, self-evident, and product driven. A cardboard factory has specific inputs processed identically in each case, with products made uniformly and with the machine invented for precisely this purpose. It has one end and one end only, whereas a tree is part of a complex natural network (ie, an ecosystem).

In the past 250 years, we have interpreted the machine’s ability to surpass human weakness and nature’s unpredictability as a glorious triumph. It has given us mass transit, consumer goods, large-scale food production, and communication technology. From James Brown’s legendary drummer to the Olympian Michael Phelps, the statement “he’s a machine!” is usually meant as a compliment.

However, as we move further into the post-Industrial era, many people are starting to wonder if the complexity and sophistication of natural systems are in fact superior to the linear processes of the machines. Part of this is probably due to the detrimental results of too much mechanistic intervention.

Machines are largely responsible for such problems as pollution, climate change and deforestation. Although we might imagine the world as a machine with discrete and disconnected parts, clearly the results of our actions show us that everything is connected. Cars don’t just replace legs in taking us from point A to B, they actually change the atmospheric make-up of our planet.

Furthermore, no supercomputer has surpassed the abilities of the human brain. Sure, we can attach a lot of computers and do really big calculations really fast, but nobody has succeeded in creating a thinking machine that writes or understands poetry, births children or runs marathons. All of these acts can only be achieved by the organically functioning system that is our brain, with help from the body.

The natural world is inherently intelligent, unlike machines. Natural feedback loops have evolved to ensure that not too many lemmings live for too long, and that birds fly south for the winter before their climate becomes too inhospitable to survive. All of this takes place without intervention.

In addition to raising the material standard of living, the proliferation of machines has had a tremendous impact on human perception. Imagine living in a pre-industrial time when nearly everything was made by hand. The psychological implications of that should not be overlooked – humans were once directly involved with, and responsible for their interactions with the material world. They were connected to feasts, famines, diseases and lived within the psychological boundaries that came along with seeing themselves as part of the natural world.

With the invention of machines, humans began to dominate this world. Subsequently, nature became something to be subdued or managed and strangely, humans started to pressure other humans to behave like machines – ie. to stop feasting and go to work in large factories.

Most people still see things in mechanistic terms, describing everything from planetary orbits to parts of the human body as if it were all another cog in the wheel. But if there’s anything that climate science, quantum physics and attachment theory demonstrate, it’s that the world is in fact much more subtle and connected than a machine, which is built for only one pre-ordained purpose.

Now we have entered a phase where our ideas and knowledge are opening up new possibilities: the possibility of modelling human creations on the natural world. What does this mean? It means we are transitioning from a linear, segmented way of seeing the world (and behaving in that world) to a more complex, interactive and self-organizing set of systems.

The internet is a prime example of this new model: although it is high-tech and dependent on industrial processes to begin (ie. someone has to make computers and cell phones), the internet enables people to self-organize, connects information and people regardless of geography, allows the creation, implementation and monitoring of new ideas, all without levers or central planning. This is much more akin to the self-regulation of natural systems.

Permaculture is another relevant example. Whereas in agriculture the goal is to produce as much food as possible as cheaply and quickly as possible, in permaculture humans imitate natural systems: planting gradually over a series of years, working with the natural tendencies of the specific region, using natural solutions instead of chemical interventions. Here we have avoided the machine approach that leads to loss of topsoil and biodiversity while maintaining productivity needed for human survival.

My feeling is that to advance beyond our industrial problems and limitations, we will need to acknowledge that ‘machine thinking’ is no longer sufficient. Instead, we ought to be modelling ourselves on the idea of a living organism: made up of complex interdependent parts, intricately tied to our environment, the whole being more than the sum of its parts. I think that many of the top thinkers of our times have already arrived at this conclusion – if you’ve spent any time on ted.com lately you have probably seen some of this new mentality.

Obviously, human beings are not going to leave behind the knowledge gained from the Industrial Era. But I hope we will have the wisdom to acknowledge that we are part of the physical world, not its master. Using natural processes as a model is necessary if seven billion of us are going to continue to inhabit this planet. It’s interesting to see the pendulum swinging back towards the physical world – not exactly to pre-industrial times, but back to a mentality that focuses on context instead of pretending everything is separate.

It’s exciting to be alive during a time when new ideas are likely to transform the way we see the world and ourselves in it. As Mr. Einstein famously said, “ the problems that exist in the world today cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.” I think Einstein’s right about that, but of course, new situations invariably create new problems.

Still, one thing’s for certain, the sun is setting on the analogue age, and we are going to need new ideas to express the realities of a new era. Letting go of ‘machine thinking’ will help determine which people adapt and prosper, and who will remain burdened by a mode of thinking that no longer reflects the world in which we find ourselves.