You Can't Make Mistakes

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This piece appears in this month’s issues of Erudition. You can find it here: http://www.eruditiononline.co.uk/article.php?id=909

When I was invited to write a piece about the future of technology, I assumed that I was being asked to predict which gadgetry we would have next year, how medical science will progress, and the new and terrifying surveillance methods our governments will employ. So, here are those predictions:

You will have more and smaller (and sometimes bigger) gadgets. They will thrill and delight you. Then you will tire of them and throw them away and buy different gadgets. Apple® will love you. Your smartphone will begin—if it already hasn’t begun—to be a little creepy. It will, of its own (programmed) volition, gather data about your friends and contacts in such a way that every time you pull someone up in your contacts list, you will be presented with more information than the last time you looked them up.* Medical science will find increasingly bizarre ways to not cure cancer, but to look at cancer. Cattle and chickens will be replaced by grasshoppers and ants as sources of protein as the human population outgrows its ability to produce food supply. Your government will place tiny microchips in your toilet paper to monitor your bowel movements.

Now, with that boring, run-of-the-mill assessment out of the way, let us actually have a look at what the future of technology will be for us as people.

Firstly, you will not notice the proliferation of technology in the world around you. It will just be there. Everywhere. You will not see it. It is this type of technology which I will address presently. Secondly, due to proliferation, there will be two kinds of people in the world: those who know what they are looking at and how it works and those who do not. The latter group will comprise the majority of people.

This is, of course, already happening. Ask anyone with an iPhone to describe the manner in which it connects to other such devices and you will get a range of bizarre answers of varying levels of complexity and detail. An example: a friend explained to me his theory that the reason that he had to turn off his iPod on take-off and landing was because it was communicating with satellites. He believed that the device was communicating with satellites because it would magically change its time when he went from the United States to Egypt or Egypt to Thailand. He had overlooked the fact that the time had only changed once the device had been plugged into a laptop.

Explanations like this abound when your average end user picks up a device or opens a web browser and then tries to contemplate how and why these things work the way that they do. This is not really a problem most of the time. Users of technology do not need to understand how something works or in some cases even how to use it. Some things just work without ever requiring human intervention. When they stop working, however, this is a problem.

What do you do when your mobile phone, iPod, computer, router, or other devices stop working? You call someone and then they tell you to either take or send it somewhere to have it looked at by a technician. We are becoming increasingly reliant upon technicians and technology experts. There will come a time, very soon indeed, that there will be no user-serviceable devices in the market at all. Apple has done a good job of doing away with external artifacts that betray that your device can be opened up and looked inside. This is the way of the future.

Personal computing could already be considered esoteric, but this is only the beginning. As mentioned above, we are going to see—or, more importantly, not see—tiny computing devices embedded in all manner of objects and products. Everything will become “smart”. Users, on the other hand, will become less smart about how these things work. Those who do know and who can repair and change the manner in which the devices function will become tantamount to clergymen or magicians. They will be the keepers of the esoteric knowledge of the future.

Think of it like this: if you told someone in the fifteenth century that you could look into a device and see someone looking into a similar device on the other side of the world, they would either turn away in utter disbelief or they would call you a witch and burn you at the stake. Yet we do this all the time with Skype and other internet video phone and video chat appliances and applications. Magicians, astrologers, priests, and mystics in antiquity were revered—or reviled—for their knowledge of the unseen world and familiarity with the methods used in manipulating it.

Magic, science, and religion have never really been all that different, if even at all separable. Each comprise on one hand a set of theoretical models which are required for understanding and explaining the world. On the other hand, they each have a set of protocols for interacting with that which is not directly visible or tangible. The practitioners of each have deep knowledge about both the theory and protocol associated with their chosen discipline. This knowledge allows them to interact with the world in a manner very different from those around them.

Place technological advancements in computing in this context. There is already a clergy associated with computing. System administrators (sysadmins) require a huge amount of knowledge in order to do their jobs and to make systems and networks function properly. Dabblers often miss things and with disastrous consequences. End users neither need nor want to have the kind of knowledge that sysadmins have , but they know that they are different. Every office has a set of people who are considered “technological wizards.” These are often the same people who are employed to keep the servers and networks in good operating condition.

There are also those who will use their vast knowledge for evil. The recent Stuxnet infection of computers in Iranian nuclear power plants comes to mind. Black-hat hackers and virus engineers will hold dominion over the black magic of the future and we will have reason to fear them. The less end users know about the devices that they use, there will be a greater chance that those devices can be used against them. This may manifest in actual life-threatening situations—think “smart” cars, onboard navigation systems, autopilot—or they will be used to monitor their users surreptitiously—tracking the whereabouts of users using the GPS devices in their mobile phones, monitoring email and text messages, tapping calls.

This is not a warning, this is a prediction. The path has already been set. End users have neither the desire nor the the need at present to know how or why their devices function. This trend will continue to the point that they will barely even know how to use them. They will simply know that they are there. Those who possess the esoteric knowledge will be increasingly considered to be wizards and magicians to the point that they will come under scrutiny if not members of the orthodox clergy. This already happens to some extent. In governmental background checks, technological knowledge of those being investigated is of great concern to weed out any potential “hackers” who might be or have been involved in any illegal activities.

The average lay person will both marvel at and fear the knowledge of the sorcerer. The clergy will work to maintain their position of dominance as the keepers of the knowledge, though they will mostly be charlatans, possessing only partial or partially-falsified knowledge; the real knowledge being locked away in vaults somewhere; the keys held by few, if any.

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*This has already happened. My phone freaks me out all the time with things like this. It should learn to mind its own damned business

Please check out the new satire in the May edition of Intuition:

Disrael: A new solution to an old problem brings hope

Daemons: Tech-wars against evil in the intertoobs ramp up

Also, if anyone out there would like chance to write satire for Intuition, please contact me for further details.

Enjoy.

I took a bunch of my friend Peter Waters‘ mates mosque-walking around Fatimid Cairo the other day. We walked from the north gate to the south gate of the old city—Bāb al-Futūḥ to Bāb Zuwayla and then into the Qasaba. We then continued on from there and wound up near Sayyida Zeinab Mosque, but only the first part of our walk is documented here.

These are some snaps that I took with my new camera. I’m trying to get the hang of geotagging and recording walking maps with the pictures in, so this is still a little disjointed. I marked all of the spots on the map that appear in the photos. You can zoom to see the route better if you like and click on the little blue markers for the names of individual places.

Bab to Bab

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A Mosque on Every Corner.

While Nigel and Johnny were in from Taiwan, Megan and I decided to take them Mosque-walking from the Sayyida Zeinab Mosque to very near the Citadel in Islamic Cairo. We swiftly coined the term “Mosqueing” to refer to this activity. Check Webster’s in a few years, it will be there.

There are unfortunately no photos of Sayyida Zeinab in this collection. They wouldn’t let Megan in at all and the doorman was everything but friendly. I will try to go back soon and grab a few snaps of the outside at the very least.

The walk then proceeded down ‘Abd al-Magīd al-Libān St. and turned onto Ṣulayba St. near Ibn Tulūn Mosque. It was a fun afternoon and we got some decent snaps out of it. We ended up catching a cab—quite thirsty and exhausted—from in front of the Sultan Hassan Mosque to Falaki Square near Bab el-Louq. Those of you in the know know that this is also the location of everyone’s favorite dive/watering-hole Horreya. Cold Stella actually tastes good after a long hot walk through the dusty backstreets.

Enjoy the photos.

Liberation Theology for the 21st Century

I caught this article from the Christian Science monitor this morning on the trepidation of Arab states over reacting to the current situation in Iran. They cited the “voice of a disenfranchised [Iranian] people” as the mechanism for the current political and social unrest and that this is the biggest political crisis facing Iran since the 1979 revolution.*

I have been reading a great deal of late about the 1979 Iranian revolution and have begun to understand that the socially and economically disenfranchised in 1970s Iran were not actually active participants in the revolution, nor did they derive any particular benefit from it. Neither the poor nor the merchant class were particularly involved in the rise of the Khomeini movement. It was a revolution apparently driven by an increasingly religiously motivated middle-class and the urban intellectual class which drove the development of an opposition to the Shah. That there was little involvement on the part of the rural poor is quite surprising considering that the themes employed in the revolutionary rhetoric on the part of Khomeini and his supporters was seemingly socialism wrapped up in Islamic topoi or terminology.

In other words, the revolutionaries of 1970s Iran employed a specifically crafted rhetorical framework based on sort of liberation theology in order to galvanize certain parts of the population and pulled support from the most unlikely sectors of Iranian society, all the while setting the stage for continuing the disenfranchisement of the already disenfranchised. Many of the secular intellectual socialists and Marxists went up against the wall when Khomeini’s revolutionaries seized control, many succumbed to the pressure being exerted around them and conformed to the newly political and religiously-mapped social environment around them.

It would seem that all of the seeds of disenfranchisement sewn by the 1979 revolution are now coming to fruition. The intellectual class is no longer happy to be subjugated, the poor are fighting back, not in line with the religious elite who are waiving the liberation-theology around—still, and again—but against them. In 1979 it was that same—then very young—urban middle class who were becoming more religious who built the revolutionary movement. They made Kohmeini into a a figurehead, and he tacitly accepted the role allowing them to drive the revolution forward.

The funny—or maybe “horrifying” is a better word—thing about revolutions, and revolutionaries, is that they cease to function as a revolution the moment they are no longer the opposition. That is unless there is a political mechanism established at the same time for limiting the authority of the revolutionary leaders. This was never the case in Iran. Indeed the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini had to die before his position as the leader of the revolution—and therefore the Iranian government after the revolution—would be questioned. After his death he was replaced by another revolutionary leader who had become entrenched in the “new” political system in Iran in the 1980s.

Now that “revolution” is being called into question, mostly because it is no longer a revolution. Just as Castro’s revolution lost its meaning the moment that he took power in Cuba and Che Guevarra—the real revolutionary—went on his way, as is the preferred role of the true revolutionary. How to ensure then that the revolutionaries live up to the ideals of the revolution and not their own desires for power? How to keep the bitterness of their previous disenfranchisement from their policy and administration and marginalizing those that they once sought to free from disenfranchisement?

I am loathe to cite the American political system as a standard for post-revolutionary political development—and indeed it has its problems, not least of which is the unabashed power-squabbles of our present party-system—but it worked. When the first Americans called for the revolutionary leaders to retain their power, they stepped aside and had an election. The established a set of rules, the interpretation of which has changed over time, but which are still the rules, nonetheless. Those rules, for better or for worse, continue to keep the political system as fair as we can make it. There is still power-grabbing.

There is still lying, cheating, and stealing. Indeed, more than a few of us have been concerned that the administrative regime of President Bush and his cronies would have a deep effect on the way business was done after they left office. It seems, though, that this is not the case. We shall see, but it seems that we are moving back to normal after years of opacity and circumvention of the Constitution to protect the interests of the few at all possible costs.

Perhaps another revolution in Iran is what is called for. Perhaps not. Perhaps the present regime is learning something from the political strife that is now boiling throughout Iran. Likely not. If there is another revolution, it cannot continue as normal. It has to live up to the ideals which galvanize and excite it in the first place rather than simply serving the interests of those who do the exciting.

Khomeini’s liberation theology still applies in Iran, possibly now more than it did before. The present regime had better hope that the people never get their hands on copies of his book, Islamic Government as they would find themselves out the door in very short order. The principles which are outlined therein are a far sight more fair and reasonable than those under which the present regime operates.

For more information about the Iranian political system and the 1979 revolution, I suggest the following:

• Islam and Revolution: Writing and Declarations of Imam Khomeini by Hamid Algar.
• Khomenism: Essays on the Islamic Republic by Evrand Abrahamian.
• The Turban for the Crown: The Islamic Revolution in Iran by Said Amir Ajromand.
• Persepolis: the Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi. Or for the more visually inclined, the film version.

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* In solidarity with that voice, the background of this blog is now a picture of Naqsh-e Jahan Square in breathtaking Isfahan.

It still costs the same

I had the best haircut experience of my life today.

See, the air in Cairo is astoundingly dirty. I never feel clean: especially my face. It also doesn’t help that the water is so heavily chlorinated that it bleaches your skin (Eat that “Fair and Lovely“) by stripping off the top few layers of it. So, my skin is always dry and dirty feeling.

Not today, my friends, not today.

I went for a haircut at my usual place. After the usual stuff—wash hair, cut hair—my man Waleed asked me if I wanted something that I didn’t understand. Per my normal policy, I said yes to whatever it is that I didn’t understand in order that I may learn what it was. Sometimes this leads to misery and hours of backtracking.

Not today.

Today it led to a full facial after my haircut, the likes of which I have never seen in a regular, hole-in-the-wall barber shop in the States. I sometimes like to find an old-timey barber in the States and go for a shave. All foam, straight, razors and hot towels. This was a singular experience.

After the initial moisturizing and steaming of my face—a half an hour of this—there was the face, scalp, and neck massage, then a shave. This was followed by a mud mask, steamed towels, more hair tonic massaged into my scalp, a cup of tea, and one final moisturizing mask, cold towels and some aftershave.

It was tremendous. I feel like I have a new face. My skin has been feeling especially dodgy lately since I took a weekend on the North Coast recently and remembered what fresh air is really like. Coming back to Cairo after that was rough, especially for my face.

I had often wondered about this sort of thing. I sometimes see guys in the barber shop going through what appears to be a very extensive facial, and I always wondered if it was something that was deemed wholly necessary or was just considered an utter luxury. Waleed gave me some insight into this today as I asked him about all of this. He told me that first, unlike in America, where the air is very clean—he said it, not me— the air in Cairo is disgusting, and so you need to take special care of your skin or your face will fall off (that is a rough translation). Secondly, as he went on to tell me, there are Prophetic traditions—hadith—regarding the cleaning of ones face. He told me these of course, I followed mostly, but when I looked confused, he said “Basically, the Prophet—sallah Allah alayhi wa sallam—would want you to have a facial.” Brilliant.

That is how I like it. Everyday values for everyday folks. So, go out and have yourself a facial. You have it on very good authority that it is recommended.

No short supply

This is a great idea.

Is that “inshallah for real,” or “inshallah, it’s never going to happen?”

I recently stumbled upon this article about the possible induction of “inshallah” into the English as a side effect of the occupation of Iraq by the United States military. It seems that soldiers and evern high-level diplomats are now using this phrase—which is often misconstrued as a single word—as a part of their everyday speech.

What will come over us next?

I caught this article this week on Reuters. Apparently, it has become a bit of a problem in Jerusalem that while people are there visiting holy sites and relics, something comes over them, causing odd behavior, spontaneous preaching and the perceiving of visions of prophets and messiahs. This phenomenon has been termed “Jerusalem Syndrome.” However, this label is reserved for pilgrims who have no prior mental disorders. I will leave that completely alone.

The topic of religious experiences is an interesting one. William James argued that they were somehow simply a part of the human psychological structure. As humans, he said, we have mystical experiences as a normal part of our development. The degree to which this has an effect over an individual, of course, varies greatly from individual to individual.

I have always taken the stance, as a hardcore materialist, that these experiences are physio-neurological events which our brains cannot interpret rationally. Rather, when such an event occurs, we go outside the normal rational structure which we have developed since childhood and unconsciously search our minds for some explanation, which generally results in something which appears more like a dream rather than your average experience of external phenomena. Some part of the process confuses the interpreting mechanism in our brains and we interpret these events as though we are perceiving and processing sensory data from external sources.

Mamoon Yusaf, my friend and a London-based NLP coach, confirms that this perceptive shift is also possible to produce synthetically using tools of Neuro-Linguistic Programming. Since our perception of sensory data from external sources is actually processed by the same parts of our brain as our internal representations, human beings can actually alter their emotional and physiological state through simply meditating upon and reproducing visual, auditory, and kinesthetic cues in our minds. Conversely, when a human being alters his physiology—by, say, smiling—his internal representations will change considerably.

So, imagine this scenario: you go to Jerusalem. You carry a bunch of internal representations with you regarding feeling inspired by religious text, artifacts, sites. You walk into [insert place of religio-historical significance]. Your brain starts mulling over the fact that you are standing in the place where [insert important religio-historical event here] happened. You feel a sense of inspiration. Your body feels tingly or light, you head starts to swim a little bit. You begin to look around and imagine the places that [insert religio-historical figure here] stood, talked, laughed, spoke, performed a miracle, etc. These stories have a great deal of significance for you. You, standing in this place, seeing these things in your mind, contemplating the mysteries and significance of this event/place, have begun to confuse your perceptions of the world outside of your body with the vivid, emotionally charged pictures/sounds/feelings in your imagination. You are physically standing in a spot of religio-historical signifcance. You are emotionally seated in that place in your mind. At this point, for your brain and your body, your outer and inner perceptive mechanisms are the same, and you shift into that place/time.

This is the only explanation of “Jerusalem Syndrome” that makes any sense to me. We can argue about where the inspiration comes from or what has made these things significant to the point of causing a “mystical” experience, but that will tell us nothing. This would be an interesting topic to study with the help of neuro-psychologists and neuro-linguists. Perhaps I will conduct such a study in coming years. I believe that this model can be applied to my particular field of study—Sufism—though I feel like it would be pretty significant if we could find data that suggest a wider application of such a theory.

Fun times ahead for the scientific study of religious behavior! In the mean time, I hope that you all see Jesus, Buddha, one of the 99 names of Allah, or something spiritually significant to you on your toast, tomatoes, lambs, or fishsticks and have a good weekend.