I have accidentally come across a way to see cybernetic gears. They aren’t just small, but also in a time and space that is adjacent to our physical world. At first I just thought it was distortion introduced by the AI models I had trained, but once I began to zoom in, I realized I can actually see the point where our behavior touches the technology using the exhaust generated. Maybe friction, or energy would be a better word. Either way, after zooming in across several algorithmically enhanced images, I am now able to see the intersection I have been looking for as part of my research.
A cybernetic gear (cGear) is the “micro-plastic” or “nano-tech” that is generated as a virtual exhaust from our relationship with our mobile phones. These cGears are present when our phones are just in our hands or pockets, but increase as we swipe, click, or just move with our phones, and activate them with our faces and passcodes. While cGears possess a base set of technical and human properties, not all cybernetic gears are the same, having different effects on different people, and a variety of outcomes depending on the environment. While it is easy to focus on our phones as the source of positive or negative contact, it really is the residual effect that has become the problem area of all of this.
It turns out this space can only be seen through an artificial intelligence (AI) lens. The cybernetic layer that concerned Norbert Wiener, Margaret Mead, and others back in the 1950s, is finally visible for us all to study. We have taken a range of photos of average people on their cell phones in public, and have begun a more controlled study into understanding our cybernetic relationship with the Internet powered world we live in. It appears that this layer adjacent to our physical world isn’t new and something that began growing with television, but we’ve learned that there are two new ingredients that have shifted our relationship and ultimate dependency on cyberspace.
The same cybernetic gears have existed since the middle of the 20th century, and have only recently gained momentum and ubiquity. We have focused on five separate types of gears we’ve noticed that seem to reflect happiness, anger, and reciprocity, but it is the expansion of location and gaming which seems to be the big shift since the introduction of the Internet. cGears manifested themselves from television programming, feeding off of the joy, excitement, fear, anger, and other emotions that came with watching television during the evening in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. However with the sustained television watching of the 1980s, 1990s, and then the introduction of the web, cGears stopped dissipating and became a permanent fixture in our increasingly digital and programmed existence.
From what we can tell at this point, cGears were a regular part of our television watching experience through the end of the 20th century. They were like fruit flies gathering around these meaningful television moments. They were produced while being entertained, and tuning in for collective events like the moon landing, but they would dissipate shortly after, only to emerge briefly in the evenings. Occasionally cGears would linger when there was a shared experience, and everyone talked about the same episode or television event at work the next day—showing the potential of cGears to sustain their presence. It would take repetition and gamification, as well as the mobility of the digital experience to give cGears what they need to thrive, survive, and even some would say begin collectively controlling our individual and collective experience.
Reciprocity
Of course digital technology has a purpose. This research doesn’t deny that. The evidence supports that a reciprocal relationship exists between us and our web technology. One of the more prominent and ubiquitous cGear that we’ve studied reflects the reciprocity that exists through the web augmenting us throughout our day via our mobile devices. We’ve seen green exhaust around the cGear associated with research subjects who are finding their engagements with their mobile devices to be helpful, useful, and bring more benefit than not.
It is easy to focus on the negative aspects of our Internet connected world, but we have actually gathered plenty of evidence to demonstrate that many of us are better off with our mobile devices in our lives. cGears aren’t inherently negative by default just because they are the exhaust from interactions with digital machines, and our ability to message with each other, find the information we need, and automate some aspects of our lives has forever changed who we are as humans in many profound ways.
Happiness
It used to be easier to find joy online, but it is still there in many circles. The Internet pipes a lot of joy into our lives on a daily basis. As with reciprocity the evidence is clear, many people find joy online watching movies, and connecting with people they know and do not know. While joyful and happy cGears have a similar glow to gamification and even anger, we have been able to clearly identify the exhaust from these positive activities.
The line between joy and what makes you happy online quickly gets obfuscated by other emotions and exhaustion from pursuits that used to make us happy, but do not anymore, as well as mistaking hurtful or painful actions as something that makes us happy. Excitement and frenzy over ideas, images, and beliefs are difficult to isolate in a boolean environment where everything is on or off, but we are getting better at separating out the nuance between joy and anger with a variety of AI filters applied to help us see what truly makes us happy online.
Anger
Anger, hate, and resentment is abundant on the web. Men see to it that online is as toxic or more so than our physical world. Fear and anger, and other similar emotions quickly found their place as a fuel for cGears. We have found that the cGears that represent more angry emotions have more fuel to keep spinning and linger on more than almost any other type of cGear, minus the sustainment of cGears that follow us around each day.
Anger powered cGears don’t just linger on longer, They have the highest velocity and appear to inflict the greatest visible damage on our physical self as a result. Every anger charged cGear possesses razor like edges which make quick work of your energy and well-being, leaving you perpetually hurt, injured, and looking for your next bit of pain. While not new, the anger cGear is coal for the massive furnace that powers the web today, exceeding the energy spent to actually power the web today.
Gaming
The gamification of cGear has been evolving since the early days of computers. Games provided to be the ideal medium for keeping us engaged, and as arcades, console, and the wholesale gamification of personal and business applications spread from the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and into this century. Gaming has become the number partner of anger when it comes to producing toxic exhaust in the form of cGears driving our relationship with technology as well as the world around.
Gamification often lives in the same space as happiness and joy, but can also easily shift into anger mode and back again. But, it is also the repetitive nature of gaming cGears that trains, programs, and shifts our relationship with technology to be much less balanced than other uses. Gamification programs us using cGears like a prong or electric collar trains a dog—keeping the pain low-level, but all about keeping us doing exactly the motions desired in any situation.
Location
In our research, when we saw the number of cGears explode was not when the Internet came onto the scene. The number dramatically increased once we got online, but the numbers went through the roof when the Internet was put in our pocket and hands with our mobile devices. This is when cGears became a sustaining affair, and literally dictating where we move in the physical world, controlling our hands, arms, legs, and attention.
It was just that our mobile phones went everywhere with us now. They were the first thing we did when we woke up in the morning and the last thing we did when we fell asleep each night. This is where things have gone off the rails, producing sustained cGears that never disappear, hanging around us like smog over Los Angeles in 1970. cGear was here to stay, and was something that would be floating around us 24/7, and often swarming our hands, arms, and heads as we try to make it through our digital world.
A Digital Aura
We have come to see the space in which cGears operate as a sort of digital aura. Stand facing a friend or family member. Close your eyes with your arms out to your side. Now slowly, moving an inch a minute moving both hands toward them until you eventually over several minutes make contact. Somewhere in there you will feel the air change. It will get thicker and be more active. For some people this will be inches or more away from the person, and with others it will be right before you touch them. This is your aura, and cGears operate in this space, but one dimension closer to the online world we connect to each day.
cGears tattoo your daily digital experiences into the surface of your aura. This experience produces an increasingly inescapable exhaust that doesn’t just hang over you, it perpetually keeps you grinding forward, despite what your conscious self desires. It isn’t physical addiction, it is more of a digital conveyor belt keeping you doing what is expected of you. Producing content. Generating motion. Purchases. Consuming as required. cGears enable a form of perpetual capitalist induced bloodletting that is so micro and so persistent that you barely even notice how you are being etched into the shape du jour for the digital masses. cGears shapes and mold who you are on a daily basis so incrementally you barely remember who you were—-regularly putting your former self into a memory hole.
Now that we have the technology, we’ll go back over historical photos and videos and continue to measure the cGear volume in different decades. We can look at an image through our series of AI lenses, and even though we have to zoom in dramatically to see the cGears, we are confident that our AI model will help us count and aggregate the different types of cGears present. One team will focus on assessing the damage over time, with another focused on potential antidotes or what kills off the cGears. Obviously, the more time you spend without a mobile device and online, the fewer cGears you will have, but this doesn’t seem to eliminate them all together. So far, we’ve noticed listening to music (live), and engaging with other types of arts seems to reduce the count, but research is only just beginning.
