frogConcept: A Digital Escape
The future isn't all rosy. Increasing pollution, overpopulation, poverty, and climate change -- society's impact on the earth is reaching a breaking point. And while we may work to slow the onset of these catastrophes, reversing them is no longer an option. The question becomes, how do we live with the troubles we've already caused?
I don't think Frog Design intended this to be ironic, but its VR facemask is about as sterile and chilling as any proposed futurist technology I can recall seeing. It's like something a George Lucas storm-trooper might wear on a date.
I do, however, like the mask's inadvertent resemblance to the minimalist Gray alien face; it supports my tenuous thesis that the Grays are anemic caricatures of ourselves served up by the collective unconscious in order to caution us against the dangers of rampant dehumanization.
The Grays inhabit an imaginal realm of boundless technology, yet their agenda suggests their existence is defined by a near-insurmountable void, perhaps the result of recklessly toppling the ecology of their parent world. Despite its promise of an insulated, illusory dystopia, the frogConcept mask stirs similar fears.
7 comments:
Let's just hope it's not run by Microsoft BioSuit 2008.
I'm sure the concept is meant to invoke a certain mix of both wonderment and fear. It invokes a kind of emotionless, Darwinian atmosphere with the prospect that humans would have to evolve beyond their mere biological capacity via technology in order to cope with a ruined environment that could kill. Thus, locked in our suits, how would our capacity to express emotions change? Would we be able to look at someone in the eyes ever again? Would we become soulless, walking shapes?
Like it or not, the human race is rapidly evolving into something, semi-controlled by our technology.
Whether the change is biological or technical, that remains to be seen.
More than likely a combination of both.
If given the choice of inhabiting the real world of 'Soylent Green' or one of Greg Egan's 'polis' via VR, I don't think my will is strong enough for me to exist in the former.
I want one.
NOW.
Then I want to remod it to reflect the gaslight era.
"...it supports my tenuous thesis that the Grays are anemic caricatures of ourselves served up by the collective unconscious in order to caution us against the dangers of rampant dehumanization.
"The Grays inhabit an imaginal realm of boundless technology, yet their agenda suggests their existence is defined by a near-insurmountable void, perhaps the result of recklessly toppling the ecology of their parent world."
Well, which is it, damn it? It can't be both, can it? Seriously...
We all inhabit an "Imaginal realm". The grays are symtom of recognizing it.
Well, maybe. In a way. But, most of the time we're "reality bound."
What I was questioning was the seeming contradiction between either the grays being "anemic caricatures of ourselves served up by the collective unconscious" which suggests humanity has invented them or, the second implication, that they are "real", if they have an "agenda," of any kind. That raises a logical conflict, imho.
I would suggest there are other options, including that they are convenient projections, possibly due to some form of non-human intelligence using such forms of "humanoid imagery" to serve some other indirect purpose than may be apparent, or that a close encounter, with either rare forms of highly energetic natural phenomena or synthesized "displays," either man-made or non-human in nature can also trigger archetypal imagery and mythic interpretation and related effects on memory and the mind's interpretative capacity.
I have trouble with the "both/and" hypothesis, i.e., that somehow our consciousness can either create or can give rise to attracting or "draw in" an actual form of non-human intelligence with such an archetypal form as "the grays." That's a tad too mystical for me.
I'm with you. I don't think the "data" comes from us, but I do think the "presentation layer" comes from us. Our brains can't process what it really is, so we call up stuff from the Jungian image cache. Perhaps we are even projecting our own paradigms of personhood, agency and intelligence onto them.