High-Fidelity: More information; same knowledge.
Fidelity (fidé, Latin: faith) refers to an object's semblance to the truth or conformity to a previously determined standard. Humanity generated approximately 40 exabytes of unique information last year. All of the printed material in the world adds up to .2 exabytes. Have we discovered that many more of the universe's secrets? Has medicine improved? Has the human condition improved?
Unfortunately, none of those are the case. Humanity generates information on a daily basis, but most of it isn't digitized, so this new surplus of data comes from once undiscovered aspects of individual daily life. This information is generated without great effort, though more time than ever is spent in struggling with recording devices. Our society has turned into a science fiction trope. This expanding digital universe, and the transfer of information to it, threaten to do two things to humanity:
- Create a persistent virtual reality.
- Marginalize the importance of knowledge.
How cool would it be to have a chair, a chair that isn't there, for all of your friends to come sit on? You might have to wait five years before you get one, but they're coming. Some guy in San Francisco named Chad Diner invented a projection screen made out of compressed air, to create a two-dimensional hologram. A three-dimensional object simply has a higher informational content: literally, volume instead of area. A shadow might be tough.
The real gravity of the situation isn't so comical. At this point, corporations are spending more money on name dropping than has existed during the 10,000 years before 1900. The Outback Bowl, the AT&T Wireless Half-time Show, and the introduction of Ford commercial/music video concoctions into American Idol all signal a sea-change in advertising tactics. (Oh, how nice of them.) Advertisers understand the value of language in shaping perception. Consider the following for content of knowledge and information:
Sony Busch Merck Publix Somnia Womb Pod. Feel Born Anew Each Day. A man, a woman and a girl lie down in their own Somnia Womb Pod in the same room. The pod creates a patented Busch Hi-Ox atmosphere with small amounts of Nitrous Oxide and THC to create a deep, relaxing sleep, and then begins remove their clothes. Overnight, the Merck Long-Life Function scans the whole body and prescribes medications to be taken with breakfast. All the while, a specially designed Sony Reality System, the Ovum Penetron, recreates all of the sights and sounds of a real womb and shuts out all sounds from the outside world. As daybreak nears, the pod completes its Publix Clean 'n' Fed routine, which cleanses the body, inside and out, and provides enough vitamins for the day and enough protein, carbohydrates and amphetamines for breakfast. Clothing, an inspirational quote, the weather information, and a cold blast of normal air are rendered before the Somnia Womb Pod leaves it's delightful and productive users upright and ready for business.
The small amounts of knowledge above exist only to maintain a slight coherence. We don't care how our products work, as long as they work, right? We are comfortable with being ignorant, trusting consumers. Why does any modern human need to learn long division if they will always have a calculator handy? (Besides the fact that the cutting edge math problems must be done by hand.) Methods, such as long division, are compressed human knowledge, which produce endless amounts of quantitative information. The calculator, a high-fidelity information producing tool, creates the illusion that individuals, especially normal individuals, can do without knowledge, just as they have been for thousands of years. Are corporations enabling the uneducated to differentiate and integrate all by themselves, or are they simply perpetuating a system of values that predates them? What are those values, where did they come from, and where are they stored?
In terms of religion, fidelity implies compliance with a "God-given" text and acceptance of it as truth. As an oath, fidelity involves a promise to serve a higher authority. Though humanity has begun to empirically understand reality and question authority, fidelity's role in as an agent of control has only become more diverse: fidelity to one's friends and family, fidelity to oneself. Though we live in a world where information no longer originates exclusively from ancient fictional works, the value of entertainment has persisted. Corporations seek to entrain the minds of the masses on greater than one day per week, because we have more idle time.
Major Premise: Corporations merge, converge, cannibalize and generally become multi-dimensionally-integrated conglomerates, in a manner similar to single-celled organisms which consumed each other to evolve into multi-cellular organisms.
Minor Premise: Capitalism will survive forever.
Conclusion: Technology will consume mass media, which will consume groceries, which will consume agriculture and ad infinitium, thus eventually integrating all of the vital and productive functions of the societal corpus into one corporation.
Alternate Minor Premise: Capitalism will fail next Tuesday.
Alternate Conclusion: The corporation as we know it will cease to exist and its functions will be entirely taken over by Governmental control (or else cease to exist), thus all means of production will be consolidated under a unified body.
Does that mean that everyone's checks will come from the same place? Does it mean that doctors will be paid the same amount as (that is, be recognized to have the same social value as) produce pickers? Will there no longer be a need for attorneys if the value of all lives are equalized, and thus the materials required to perpetuate life acquire trivial values in comparison, and so any wrong done unto another is just as accidental and trivial because all medical injuries are easily and freely treated and all financial injuries are moot? Doesn't that sound a little bit like Communism? Why shouldn't the airwaves, internet and telephony belong to the people as they do in other countries?
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