THE BLOCKCHAIN

Today’s child will grow up in a System where it will engage more as a virtual form than in “person”; where a majority of faces seen are filtered by a computer; where many leading entertainers are synthetic; where popular culture is algorithmically generated; and where billions have digital personae so accurate that their in “person” behavior can be algorithmically predicted and directed.

The world’s most powerful enterprises are creating Alternate Realities and Virtual Realities in technology and information.

Governments and corporations are beginning to mandate digital personae for humankind. These are used for identification, tracking, and access to goods or services. The World Economic Forum is encouraging the adoption of “the blockchain” for these digital identities. These representations are undignified and reductionist; the limits and perverse incentives of such systems change human behavior for the worse. With misguided plans to integrate “the blockchain”, these shoddy representations of humankind threaten to become permanent.

Is Humankind, the Apex of Evolution, to be branded and tracked like cattle?

Is Man, made in the image of God, reducible to bits?

Is our eternal end to be judged for the works of our heart, soul, and mind; or to be left behind as a profile on a blockchain?

"HOW DO YOU PUT A HUMAN ON THE BLOCKCHAIN?"

What meaning is there in a digital representation?

Already, our digital representations outlast us. What does it mean when they will be stored forever?

If I perish, yet my digital twin lives eternally? The networks of The System are filled with hatred, rage, envy, and all manner of perversion.

To be there forever would be condemnation.

Mechanical reproduction of humans fails miserably. Digital reproduction has failed, too; so permanent reproduction is fated to lack any dignity.

Only art has the enduring capacity to represent the human. Technology has invaded and shredded every aspect of culture it has touched, dehumanizing it by cutting it down in the name of efficiency. As technology begins to integrate and represent the human itself, humanity’s own image and creative potential is in question.

Already we see the emergence of Artificially Intelligent “creative” works of comparable or superior fidelity to human ones, and Holographic Specters with the voices, faces, and lucidity of human figures. What when humanity is chopped up to fit, and compete, in the same environment?

Who is running the show?

What place is there for the human heart, the mind, the soul? How can something devoid of these be eternal?

“Being a theomorphic creature, man is himself a work of art. The human soul when purified and dressed in the garment of spiritual virtues is itself the highest kind of beauty in this world, reflecting directly the Divine Beauty.”
– Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Knowledge and the Sacred