Infinite Lock-In, part 9

What could lock-in mean for human existence? Why can a digital representation never fully capture reality? And where does The Matrix fall short?

Infinite Lock-In

Existence itself.

Recall that in part 6, I wrote about the triumph of paradigms:

As a rule, technological progress does not favor a diversity of paradigms. It favors the fewest possible paradigms without a loss of essential functions. Given the chance, it converges on a single paradigm.

Postulating this, I focused on how progress minimizes paradigms, but I glossed over “a loss of essential functions.” Let’s examine that now.

We’ll begin by taking note of an exchange between Quibble and Meissa — the relic of a Zero who now lives in Quibble’s amber glass — at the outset of chapter 31, “Lesson”:

Crossing the field between the outer ring of the consensus and the northeast hill in the crepuscular dusk, I’d found Nish and her crew already at work. Now, as I climbed the hill, I mused on Graph’s planned factory.

Realities Without beg a response to our pressing needs. Water, food, shelter, warmth. Isn’t anything more merely indulgence?

Says a scrivener! Meissa broke in. What about spiritual fulfillment, a life of the mind? Can you live without books? Now you’ve heard Cord’s cello, can you live without music?

I had music as One. We sang.

Was that music? Really? “One does not sing alone”? “When the song begins, One is not silent”? “One follows where the voices lead”?

We had consensus!

And no individuality.

In a human being, what are the essential functions? Which functions do we think are necessary for human life? By that, I don’t mean merely life but a life we believe to be worth living. Can you name, list, and define the essential functions? All of them?

Breathing, blood circulation, metabolism, brain activity — these are necessities for any animal. But surely we don’t believe they’re enough by themselves to say our life is worth living? Given the option, we wouldn’t choose to be comatose or catatonic.

Sensory perception, awareness, consciousness. Very well, that’s an improvement on basic biological functioning. But what are we doing with it all?

Suppose you were buried alive, as Meissa was in Quibble, chapter 20, “Heretic.” You breathe. Your blood flows. You eat, drink, digest, defecate, urinate. You have brain activity, all right. You see total darkness. You feel the roughness of the stone on which you lie. You’re conscious and quite aware of your prison. You can think, and you have the rest of your life to think about it.

Given the option, would you choose that? Why not? What’s missing?

Experience? But you have experience! The darkness, the stone’s roughness — are they not experiences?

Ah, you want new experiences! Darkness and rough stone grow boring after a while, don’t they?

All right, let’s pipe some music into your underground cell — a bit of Bach, maybe. Let’s go a step further: now you have light and books to read. Every day, a new book magically appears, and after a while the old books disappear. You always loved to read. Now, yours is a life of the mind. All the experiences anyone ever had and wrote about are coming to you. You’re a mental traveler, living vicariously.

Still not satisfied, eh?

Somehow, living through other people’s lives seems rather less than living your own, and you feel the lack. The music and books are nice enough, as far as they go, but you’d love to feel the breeze and the sun on your face. You’d really love nothing more than to get out of here!

Freedom, then. Freedom to choose new experiences. Freedom to see something on the horizon and make for it. Even the freedom to suffer accidents and have regrets, the freedom to learn what you saw on the horizon wasn’t something you wanted.

In the above scenario, when did we cross a boundary from the functions essential to a worthwhile human life into those we might consider non-essential? Did you notice any boundary? Or are you only trying to identify one now, after the fact?