Jaron Lanier on cybernetic totalism

Jaron Lanier writes in One-Half of a Manifesto that the dogma he objects to “is composed of a set of interlocking beliefs and doesn’t have a generally accepted overarching name as yet, though I sometimes call it “cybernetic totalism.” It has the potential to transform human experience more powerfully than any prior ideology, religion, or political system ever has, partly because it can be so pleasing to the mind, at least initially, but mostly because it gets a free ride on the overwhelmingly powerful technologies that happen to be created by people who are, to a large degree, true believers.” These are the interlocking beliefs of “cybernetic totalism“:

1. Cybernetic patterns of information provide the ultimate and best way to understand reality.
2. People are no more than cybernetic patterns.
3. Subjective experience either doesn’t exist, or is unimportant.
4. Darwinian like evolution is believed to be the singular, superior description of all creativity and culture.
5. Qualitative as well as quantitative aspects of information systems are expected to be inexorably accelerated by Moore’s law.
6. Biology and physics will merge with computer science. When that happens it will be either impossible or something very different to be a human. If that happens, the ideology of cybernetic totalists could cause suffering for millions of people.