STORIES IN IMAGES AND WORDS
SÃO PAULO, 2003
EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK "ECCENTRIS"
PUBLISHED IN 2012 BY LES ÉDITIONS LUMIÈRE
W
e are living in a unique transitional time in history, at the crossroads of technology, culture and nature. As old paradigms continue to crumble around us, computers and nootropics are merging mind and cosmos, dissolving
limitations, and setting the stage for a whole new way to experience reality. We already find ourselves immersed in this brave new world, slaves to the machine, shackled by our own appetite for information and mis-information. Each waking nanosecond, aware or unaware, we swim in a sea of data and bits, scrambling, sequencing, racing toward a new digitally enhanced reality. One can only wonder...
Is this humanity's true destiny, or a colossal mindfuck?
As modern humans, we live inside concrete buildings, eat packaged foods, and are wired to an omnipresent digital reality. We play within this sandbox, for the most part detached from nature, and to a certain extent, each other. Our mission is no longer merely one of survival, but survival with the utmost pleasure and control. Technology has moved out of the labs and into our homes, into our bodies and minds. We're all experimenting with new synthetic lifestyles. We may even be the last of our species to be fully human as biotech and AI have already begun to redefine the very essence of who we are.
Ultimately, a symbiosis of algorithms, code and fuzzy logic, and the total mathematicization of space-time and the human body will yield simulated perfection, constructed gods. What is real will be reshaped to be what is experienced. And that which is experienced as most beautiful, most sensory sublime, will be given our everlasting worship and adulation. Whatever augmented reality we will be plugged into, it will be a logical extension of the socially constructed one we live in today.
SÃO PAULO, 2002
manipulated from bandwidth and qubits, promises to be even more potent, and hopefully less judgmental. While the old gods were based on belief, these new ones will be rooted in experience. They will reside in a different cloud, co-existing amongst us, not merely on a neurological level but also on the physical one. It will be a hyper-realistic world of holograms and simulations interacting seamlessly with atoms and electrons in real time. Perhaps the artists and rock-stars of today will be the sensory architects and computer cognoscenti of tomorrow who design these brand new immersive worlds ruled by our future digital gods.
Sooner or later, science and science fiction will intersect, abstracting the logical form of human life from its material manifestation. According to futurists, the exponential advances in computing technology have already set the wheels of change in motion. Today, culture, sociology and philosophy all converge on the Internet. The Internet is society's mirror, and reflects the global state of mind better than any other medium. As photography, audio and video merge with the Internet into a single cohesive unit, what we are actually witnessing is the emergence of a brand new medium that will eventually reshape the way we experience the world. Whether our humanity prevails in the algorithm remains to be seen.▪️
T
hroughout history, we've constructed gods to abate our fears, to fill the void in our understanding of the universe. These man-made deities have been the source of myths, rituals, theologies, and also of cruelty and strife. This new breed gods,
