Concrete Playground meets techno-philosopher Jason Silva

The future is coming and Jason Silva is excited. Very excited. Silva is an American filmaker and self-proclaimed "wonder junkie, ideas DJ, performance philosopher", and he's coming to an Opera House near you this weekend for the Festival of Dangerous Ideas. Concrete Playground spoke with him about his provocatively titled festival lecture 'We Are the Gods Now'.

We are the Gods is quite the title for a talk. What can we expect to hear from you at the Opera House?

In his book about the exponential growth curve of technology, Raymond Kurzweil says, "There are decades when nothing happens and there are weeks when decades happen." In 40 years we've seen computers contract in size from half a building to something 1000 times more powerful that fits in your pocket: the smartphone. If we continue along this exponential trajectory, we can expect computing power to enhance while the physical unit shrinks from pocket-size to the size of a blood cell.

Speaking of blood cells, the thing I'm really excited about is the way that biology [the field of study] is fast becoming information technology. If you think growth in computing power is impressive, the rate that we are sequencing genomes is outpacing Moore's Law. Freeman Dyson, the physicist, says we are going to compose genomes the way we compose verse. I know, I know, it sounds like we're tripping, but history tells us this is what we should expect! Artistry is going to spill off the canvas and into the biology lab, and I think we should be excited — and not fearful — of what we're going to create in there. What it means to be human is to transcend our limits, to rebel, to be "cosmic revolutionaries", in Aaron Harrington's words. So, yeah, that's the crux of what I'll be talking about.

Really, you think we're fearful of new technology? Apple has people frothing at the mouth about the launch of the iPhone 5 this week.

I think the success of the iPhone attests to our love of these tools — we are living in a techno-utopian society — and yet the alarmist media bang on about the demise of interpersonal connections because people are supposedly texting more than they're talking, so on and so forth. I like to remind people that around the advent of the telegraph there was a moral panic that it would hurt our brains, that it wasn't natural. In fact, even Socrates railed against writing! He claimed that the act of transcribing something would atrophy our brains.

But there is some truth to what Socrates said, at least in sentiment. I read Nicholas Carr's piece for the Atlantic Is Google Making Us Stupid?, wherein he discusses the netizen's diminishing capacity to "deep read", which he claims is a direct consequence of the way we engage with screen texts, constantly drifting and never really focusing.

I totally agree with the concept of bandwidth anxiety — I personally experience it! But you have to think of bandwidth anxiety as analogous to downloading an HD film via a 56k modem connection rather than a fibre-optic cable. In our case, the human biological brain is fixed, but our technology is infinitely upgradeable. We're like a drooling dog looking at a lineup of 50 dogs on heat and we can't possibly mate them all! We have so many options to connect with the world around us, but we have to be disciplined and disconnect. I mean, I turn off my cell phone when I go see a movie or when I read a book.

I think Carr's case is that the damage is done, that our brains are capable of rewiring to optimise our experience of digital culture. The damage isn't beyond repair; the brain is plastic, but I can say from personal experience that I now struggle to engage with longer novels where I used to devour them, and I think it's because I'm increasingly feasting on the easy-to-digest, pretty, shiny things — things like your short videos, the so-called "shots of philosophical espresso".

Fair enough. I started producing short videos because I felt there was a gap in the market for them. There's no end of intelligent, philosophical discourse in the blogosphere, but there's a real paucity of engaging, short-format video content on the web. I wanted to capture that feeling of two in the morning, in your college dorm with a beautiful girl, discussing the meaning of life — and amplify it to the scale of a cinematic experience.

Sure, these short-form bursts of inspiration trigger the release of dopamine and that's an addictive chemical so we have to self-monitor how much we take in. So when you talk about losing the capacity to "deep read" or appreciate silence, I think it's just a matter of growing pains, because we aren't yet equipped physiologically to handle the kind of content we're creating. Once we upgrade our own brains using biotechnology and genetic engineering, we'll be like a computer you can add RAM to — this issue of not being able to multitask will be a thing of the past! This is the Singularity!

I can see how these videos might inspire organisations to foster creative culture or even spark cross-industry collaboration, but how to you hope these videos will affect people's day-to-day lives?

Art and media are mediums for preparing us for the future. I'm trying to present intelligent content in a cool and sexy format — which, in turn, means the act of engaging with it is cool and sexy. I want there to be an alternative to the overwhelming share of media space given to the likes of Jersey Shore, something that has pop culture cred but doesn't insult the viewer's intelligence. At the end of the day, if you want someone to really care about your product, you need to make them feel something; you need to induce a feeling of wonder, of awe. Once you achieve this, you've set in motion a lust for learning. At a consumer level we have access to an incredible array of tools [high-speed internet, mobile devices, etc.] for engaging with the world of ideas, but most people don't know or don't care for what's out there. What's lacking is a viral outbreak of wonder.

The phenomenon of trolling is on the rise and just recently a local TV personality who came under a torrent of online abuse was admitted to a psych ward. And last weekend here in Sydney there was a protest that turned into a riot sparked by the indie film released on YouTube, The Innocence of Muslims. I just wonder how culpable social media is in this sequence of events, given that it's so easy to be offensive when speaking from a disembodied perspective.

Dude! The right to offend is a hallmark of a free society! I mean, I don't want to say that riot was an act of cultural or religious immaturity, but violence, no, violence is never justified because someone offended you.

Okay, but I'm quoting you from earlier this year when I say, "As we increasingly become sophisticated, cosmopolitan people, the religious impulse is less relevant."

Well, look, I sort of abide by the opinions of Ernest Becker, who wrote the book The Denial of Death. He says that the 'religious impulse' is one solution to the problem we face when we contemplate our own mortality. The second, alternative, way we deal with death is the 'romantic impulse', where we turn our lovers into our gods, and the third, and this one I think is the healthiest, is the 'creative impulse', which is to create great work. I think religion had a time and place and was effective at teaching people to be kind to each other as part of a moral system, but time and again we see it corrupted.

So you see yourself as your own god?

[laughs] Let's just say I think there will come a day when it will be possible with the aid of technology to transcend our biological limitations and manifest a Being that is extraordinarily smart, ultra-powerful, and immortal.

But if there comes a day when saying "you only live once" has no motivational power because we've engineered eternal existence, I wonder if we'll just be crippled by chronic procrastination?

Ha! You know, man, that's very possible. But if the universe is infinite, with creative possibilities, then so should we be. Sure, some people will just play Grand Theft Auto for all of eternity if that's what they want to do with their existence, but others will amass a phenomenal bank of knowledge and break new frontiers in science.

You know, I hate the way we ennoble death. It's a brute biological horror that kills everyone we care about, and yet we say things like 'death gives life meaning'. I say, you know what gives meaning to life? Life! Death was necessary for the evolutionary process, but now that we're switching from genes to memes, death has become obsolete. We don't need to keep dying in order to create new things.

But the creation of most new things only comes about because there's a viable commercial application for it, and if technology is replacing itself at an ever-increasing rate, perhaps the threat of rapid supersedence in the marketplace will slow the generation of new technologies?

Hmm. I guess I'd have to agree that, yeah, that's very possible. I mean, already we're seeing college graduates emerge into the workforce only to find that their skillset is already obsolete.

Interesting. Thanks so much for chatting with me today.

Absolutely, man! It's been a mind-meld!

Catch Jason Silva at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas on Sunday, September 30, at 3pm.