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PERSONAL
COMPUTERS/PERSONAL
FREEDOMby Timothy Leary
Timothy Leary is the author ofFlashbacks and the
interactivepersonality program SKIPI.
Once upon a time, knowledge-information was stored inextremely
expensive mainfame systems called Illuminated Volumes, usually
Bibles, carefully guarded in thepalace of the Duke or Bishop and
accessible only to security-cleared, socially alienated hackers
called Monks.Then in 1456 Johann Gutenberg invented a most
important piece of hardware: the movable-type printing press.This
knowledge-information processing system could mass-produce
inexpensive, portable software readilyavailable for home use. The
Personal Book.
Until recently, computers were in much the same sociopolitical
situation as the pre-Gutenberg systems. Themainframe
knowledge-processors that ran society were the monopoly of
governments and large corporations.They were carefully guarded by
priestly technicians with security clearances. The average person,
suddenlythrust into electronic illiteracy and digital helplessness,
was understandably threatened.
The Mainframe MonopolyMy first contact with computers came in
1950, when I was director of a Kaiser Foundation
psychologicalresearch project that developed mathematical profiles
for the interpersonal assessment of personality. In line withthe
principles of humanistic psychology, the aim of this research was
to free persons from dependency upondoctors, professionals,
institutions and diagnostic-thematic interpretations. To this end,
we elicited clusters ofyes-no responses from subjects and fed back
knowledge in the form of profiles and indices to the
patientsthemselves.
Personal telecommunications: Timothy Leary
with a CocaCola bottle telephone
and an IBM PC.
Columbus Software-Deploywww.brainwaregroup.com
Software, Konfigurationen &Patches firmenweit verteilen
und
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nuts. A magnificent ritual accompanied the distribution of this
sparkling energizer. Place: the soda fountain.Mainframe technology:
a large, gleaming steel tank filled with syrup and connected to a
stainless-steel pipe fromwhich bubbled phosphorus water. A
white-coated priest pulled the handle, and the elixir was mixed
before thevery eyes of the dazzled consumer.
One day a mysterious gentleman called on the president of the
soft drink company and handed him a smallwhite envelope. "This
contains two words that will revolutionize your business and
multipy your profits," saidthe visitor. With trembling hands, the
executive extracted the paper from the envelope and read the two
words:BOTTLE IT.
Who could have foreseen the enormous cultural consequences of
the personal bottle? The basic issue: "hands-on" replaced the
priestly, white-coated attendant. The personal bottle replaced the
fountain shrine. Power to theindividual! It was no accident that
CocaCola instantly spread around the world as a symbol of
Americanegalitarianism. Everyone likes the "pause that refreshes."
The addiction, by the way, is not to the stimulant or thesugar, but
to the freedom of choice. The slogan "Coke Is It!" really refers to
the individual option provided by thehands-on technology.
Evolution/ RevolutionNothing less than a new symbiotic
partnership is developing between human brains and computers. In
evolvingto more physiological complexity, our bodies formed
symbioses with armies of digestive bacteria necessary forsurvival.
In similar fashion, our brains are forming neural-electronic
symbiotic link-ups with solid-state
computers. It is useful to distinguish here between addictions
and symbiotic partnerships. The body can becomepassively addicted
to certain molecules, e.g., of heroin, and the brain can become
passively addicted to electronicsignals, e.g., from television. The
human body, as we have noted, also requires symbiotic partnerships
withcertain unicellular organisms. At this point in human
evolution, more and more people are developing mutuallydependent,
interactive relationships with their microsystems. When this
happens, there comes a moment whenthe individual is "hooked" and
cannot imagine living without the continual interchange of
electronic signalsbetween the personal brain and the personal
computer. There are interesting political implications. In the
nearfuture, over twenty million Americans will have established
intense interactive partnerships with their computers.These
individuals will operate at a level of intelligence that is
qualitatively different from those who use staticforms of
knowledge-information processing. In America this difference is
already producing a generation gap,i.e., a species gap. After
Gutenberg, personal books created a new level of individual
thinking that revolutionizedsociety. An even more dramatic mutation
in individual intelligence will occur as the new species grows up
linked
symbiotically with personal information processing systems.
Childhood's End?It seems clear that we are facing one of those
genetic crossroads that have occurred so frequently in the history
ofprimates. The members of the human gene-pool who form symbiotic
links with solid-state computers will becharacterized by extremely
high individual intelligence and will settle in geographic niches
that encourageindividual access to knowledge-information processing
software.
New associations of individuals linked to computers will surely
emerge. Information nets will encourage aswift, free interchange
among individuals. Feedback peripherals will dramatically expand
the mode of exchangefrom keyboard punching to neuro-physiological
interaction. The key word is, of course, "interaction."
Theintoxicating power of interactive software is that it eliminates
dependence on the enormous bureaucracy of
knowledge professionals that flourished in the industrial age.
In the factory culture, guilds and unions andassociations of
knowledge-workers jealously monopolized the flow of information.
Educators, teachers,professors, consultants, psychotherapists,
librarians, managers, journalists, editors, writers, labor unions,
medicalgroups-all are now threatened.
It is not an exaggeration to speculate about the development of
very different postindustrial societies. Solid-state literacy will
be almost universal in America and the other Western democracies.
The rest of the world,especially the totalitarian countries, will
be kept electronically illiterate by their rulers. At least half
the UnitedNations' members now prohibit or limit personal
possession. And, as the implications of home computersbecome more
clearly understood, restrictive laws will become more apparent.
In his chilling song "Life During Wartime," David Byrne of the
Talking Heads wails about the day when "Wegot computers ... I know
that that ain't allowed." If we are to stay free, we must see to it
that the right to bearcomputers becomes as inalienable as the
constitutional guarantees of free speech and a free press.
