I am going to break the cast I have set in this article. I want to address some larger issues other than the Mac and the Mac Web. But if you use a computer at all, if you have ever surfed the net, what I have to say applies to you. For there is danger in what you are doing right now.

There have always been optimists and pessimists in history. In times of technological change they both rise up to pronounce their expectations about the future. There just seems to be something about human nature which motivates this. Change gets us thinking and we begin to extrapolate. "Things will be better," one says. "Things will be worse," says the other. "Nothing will ever changes," says someone else. Optimistic and pessimistic future visions are bandied about. It has been this way since the Egyptians, Babylonians and the Greeks.

Think of the difference between the visions presented, say, in Star Trek and Blade Runner. Both assume that technology is the motive force behind the visions. Star Trek tells us nations have collapsed for the "Federation." On the other hand, Blade Runner, the classic future noir film, presents a vision in which what counts as a person has been lost.

We ought to be careful here. We must distinguish between "science" and "technology." I will use these terms as terms of art. Science, at least on one view (there are many views of what science is), is a particular view about the nature of the cosmos. It is in fact a philosophy. We call it "mechanism": The cosmos is, if not a machine in actuality, then very machine-like. Since machines run according to strict laws, the scientist's task is to discover these laws. We call them "laws of nature." "Technology," roughly for our purposes, is the application of these laws and philosophy to the human situation. Thus, computer science has been applied to create the Mac you are sitting in front of and the web you are floating on right now. Both are technology. The two are always entangled. It is no surprise then that the rise of science in the West in fifth century Greece also marks the birth of medicine, the application of that scientific world view to the human situation.

A recent article on the Mac Web has caught our attention. In "The Internet Millennium" Del Miller addresses the application of science to the human situation. He says he is an optimist about the future. His argument is as follows. At this point in history several conditions have come together which have not come together heretofore, namely, global democracy, the death of the state, and computer technology (the web). Miller assumes that democracy brings out the best in humanity, and that states are by nature repressive (assumptions worth considering in themselves). With the best expressed as much as it can be, we will for the first time use technology, a very powerful technology, the way it should it be--to improve the human situation. He says, "There is no reason that these new technologies must be turned to the business of dealing death, for the underlying engine of that process [imperialism and the state] no longer exists." In other words, borders and national identities, he says, will collapse and true human goodness will flourish. The Star Trek vision is alive and well. Blade Runner got it wrong in other words. But it is not my intention to disagree with him on details.

Now it would be logically questionable to attribute what happens to the parts (individuals), to the whole (communities, nations); after all, just because a brick house is made of bricks it does not follow that it is a brick too! Del steers away from this. Nonetheless, he uses a telescope, and I will use a microscope, to look at technology's impact on our possible future. There are many assumptions he makes which could be discussed; and there appears to be a Eurocentric bent to the piece. But one assumption stands out to us as philosophers which has interesting implications: He assumes that there is such thing as human nature in the first place. For Del makes the assumption that he is optimistic about something (or, that the thing he is optimistic about exists at all), and this seems to be human nature's capacity for the good, once its chains have been cut. Yet, there are many views of human nature, and one says there is no such thing. I put the point as I do for the following reason: Technology impacts individuals first and groups only secondarily, if at all. That is what I wish to explore here. In other words, I wish to examine technology's impact from the bottom up not the top down.

I have spent many hours on the web. That's where I have been, as if it is a place to be at all. It certainly seems real enough sometimes. I have absorbed its language and metaphors. I see the world in much different ways because of my exposure to it. I no longer see towns made up simply of buildings and locations; I no longer see communities constituted by proximate and contiguous beings. Existence itself is more loosely connected to space-time. Existence has become spread out and thin. Space-time itself has become a lesser foe in my attempts to control the world. To put in terms of my craft: The world has become more "Platonic." I think more in terms of universals and to a lesser degree particulars.

What was viewed as real is no longer viewed as the really real. On a common sense level real things are things which occupy a space-time point in the causal framework. But with the web I can, as it were, be in two places at once if I wish. I am at my class pages, my Mac pages, pages I write for, all at the same time, even when I am not "there" at all, and never have been. (I am assuming some degree of identity between me and my web creations, which I will address in a later article.) Thus, not only has existence itself become spread out and thin, so have I. The I, the ego, is no longer bounded by brute physicality and mathematical points on a spatial-temporal continuum. This ego, through the computer, has become metaphysically elastic.

Sherry Turkle, in her book "Life on the Screen," says the internet can "serve as a place for the construction and reconstruction of identity." Turkle's example is a "MUD": A multi-user domain. They are places on the net where people engage in role playing. The Twilight MUD is an example. They are basically relational databases with multi-user interfaces. They are also "places," virtual communities, in which one constructs a digital self and interacts with other digital selves. The interaction has repercussions and effects, as if cause and effect are real in the virtual community. One can create a multitude of personalities in a MUD. Intense users describe personal fragmentation. They speak in terms of "my life as . . ." and name their virtual counterpart or counterparts. Too intense an activity on a MUD, argues Turkle, causes a confusion about who we are ande a fragmentation of our identity. Virtual selves get confused with real selves.

But we need not look to MUDs for such personality splits. I, for example, have many user names, aliases if you will. With enough thought and effort I can create a complete picture of who I am in your mind. I control all the information you have about me. I have in effect created a digital reflection of my "real" self. To you it is me. That is who you relate to, for you have never touched me.

I can also, with the click of a mouse, cause things to happen far away from my present location; I can produce cause-effect relations which circle the globe. My Mac, my computer, is a remote control device wherein I click and it happens anywhere on Earth. It's "spooky action at a distance" perhaps. While my ego has become elastic, the world has become Silly Putty ready for my manipulation. I can manipulate it with greater ease than before. Or, at least it seems so. For I am most of the time manipulating a virtual world.

If in fact we can, to a degree, equate the ego with its creations, including web creations, such as user names, MUDs, and web pages, then I have been at a lot places without traveling. I have been many places without leaving my chair. All this happens without changing the physical place I am at. It's the paradox of the internet. I can in a sense be everywhere, which is just as good as saying I am nowhere, for something that is everywhere is not localized and being localized is being some place. My ego reaches it's vanishing point. There is then, at that point, no human in "human nature."

Del, in his article, surmises that the internet will collapse national boundaries. I have my doubts about this; I see no historical, inductive evidence as Del seems to, for future optimism. History shows human nature shunning the good, the true and the beautiful too often. But that's not my point. The possible future is not just the collapse of political borders, as Del suggests, if that occurs at all. The possible future, the danger to our humanity, is the collapse of ego borders not national borders.The vanishing of personal identity not national identity is our possible future. The threat is a thinning out and fuzziness of what it means to be, and to be human in the first place. If while I am, I am no where in virtue of the possibility of being everywhere, there is no ego which is anywhere. This is not a deconstruction of the person, for the fear is that there was no person to be deconstructed in the first place.

Yet, I am a realist in the fullest sense of the word. I think the good, the true and the beautiful would exist even if no minds existed at all. The previous paragraphs thus point to the possibility of confusing the issue of personhood rather than changing it. If we have a human nature, it will be what it will be regardless of our best efforts. Perhaps it is our nature to create human nature. I cannot say. But when concepts of that nature become confused as they can in the web experience, then humanity's ground is lost. At this point, it does not matter whether nations exist or not (or whether they have ever existed). It is still a confusion, and if it happens it can lead to the evaporation of the person in the whole. It's a possible future where we lose ourselves, misplace ourselves and forget ourselves. Looking to the possible future I see a Blade Runner vision rather than a Star Trek vision. But then again, it is up to us.

David Schultz