Bigger Than Life

June 5, 2008 - (UPI) Chicago

"Technology is the shadow cast by the future. We see our future shape in the present darkness that surrounds us." So said Princeton sociologist Leer McFlem in a recent interview in Vale Grain magazine. "Every indication is that fundamentally, this fact has not changed. Our future is presently known. And all I see is big."

A former self-styled "sociological hedonist", McFlem denounces extrapolations as 'mere wishful thinking' and trends as 'whistling in the dark.' He prefers to describe the future condition as a derivation of present condition devoid of trend. Thereby, he asserts, he dwells in the future as he is now.

"This takes a real load off my mind," he says. "If somebody comes up to me and says, 'Hey, you're in big trouble now', I can say, 'Leave me alone, I am what I was, man.'"
As a son of a Baptist preacher, McFlem knows the distortions that verb tense can inflict upon one's consciousness. "Look at what St. Gregory said: 'There is therefore nothing created, nothing subject to another in the Trinity: nor is there anything that has been added as though it once existed, but had entered afterwards.' I mean, that is pure genius. It's reverb consciousness, like the sound Hendrix got with his guitar when it got too close to the amplifier. 'I am what I was, I am not what I will be, I am not yet I am.' Think of the possibilities! Think of the freedom!"
While McFlem is the rage on college lecture tours, he has been in and out of bankruptcy court and has trouble paying travel costs. He laughs. "I can't seem to get a handle on this addition thing. The ones and threes get all mixed up. I leave it to my accountant."
So McFlem spends his nights sleeping in the car, scribbling notes by flashlight, always adding something new to his lectures. His current tour is devoted to the exposition of the influence of technology on the human evolutionary process. "It is a catalyst for accelerated evolutionary advancement. We are the fastest evolving creatures in history. Our future shadow is very large and very dark. We will be very big. I mean, we are very big."
He pulls a pencil out of his hair. "You see, the fundamentals that spawn our increase are in place. The mounting technological advances - you see them every day - these stand as bulwarks beneath the concomitant advance of organized civil institutions. The shiny stone buildings with technocrats and think tanks and speech writers and orators and doctoral candidates. I see ideas and programs pouring out onto the steps, flooding the landscape below, swallowing up everything, people, homes, lives. And in the flooded fields sprouts technology, thousands of acres of it. Hybrids, clones, mutations, synthetics, the genetically modified. It just keeps coming!" He throws his head back and lets out a howl. "It's beautiful. It has a life of its own. It's beyond us now."
At a recent lecture, several in the audience pressed him about the carrying capacity of the global ecosystem. McFlem still bristles at the memory. "I am glad I am not then now. Intrinsic to technology and advancement are solutions. Technology will remain in advance of advancement and advancement will remain in advance of technology. The two are superior to each other."
His confidence is unwavering. "I base this on eons of successful evolutionary advancement. Look at the track record. Why would it fail now? I mean, if it did, everything we know would be wrong." He ferrets a small piece of lunch meat out of his beard. "Just look at how far we have come."
He turns on the dome light and looks at the meat. He turns it over then puts it into his mouth. The light shows his face, freckled with reddish eruptions. A vanilla air freshener hangs from the rear-view mirror. "I got this acne from sleeping near the tire factory."
He turns off the light. "People ask me to describe the relationship between technology and human advancement." He bows his head. "It's sort of like the Conquistadors and the Native Americans. Each had their own virus. Each gave their virus to the other. Each virus exploded in the defenseless population and swept unchecked across the continent, consuming lives and homes and communities along the way, growing ever larger, becoming pandemic. It's the same with technology and advancement. Each infects the other and it consumes the host, invading homes, sweeping across communities; a pandemic of technology and advancement, an accelerating technology-advancement spiral in which technology and advancement feed upon each other for as long as we can know. This has no end. There are no inherent upper physical limits to what we can become. The spiral pulls us along, marching us forward, ever forward, onward into oblivion."
McFlem looks out the window of his car into the cold, dark night. "I shudder when I think of it. Such excitement!" He rubs his hands together. "All is see is an unfathomable expanse. The ever-expanding shadow. An infinite void. Forward! To the cosmos!"
He turns the key to the ignition. The engine grinds. He looks at the instrument panel. "Great. Out of gas."