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Consider this: organic evolution has peaked as we enter the sixth mass extinction on Earth. Revolutionary changes are still going on, but they are in another realm. From above, the Earth looks like it is rapidly being covered by roads, machines, factories, and mechanisms. From below, our lives are rapidly being consumed by our use of computers, cellphones, audiovisual images, and mechanisms which make our lives easier or more fun. Darwin's theory of evolution applies to changes in the organic molecules of life. He established that living things have cells, respond to change, reproduce, have DNA, use energy, and grow or develop. I suggest that machines have infrastructures, respond to change, reproduce, have symbolic codes, use energy, and grow or develop. Rather than being built with organic molecules, they are built with inorganic materials, codes, and systematization. Let's say that mechanisms "live" too. As this epoch or era comes to an end, mechanisms are dominating life on earth. Planetary change at the end of the Holocene Period of the geologic time scale has shifted. Let's call this new period the "Mechocene" instead of the "Anthropocene" because humans seem to have lost control. Climate change recently reached the tipping point--no human could stop machine development or even fossil fuel exploration. Methane hydrates (20 times as effective as carbon dioxide in warming out planet) have started to bubble out of the Arctic oceans--millions and millions of tons of them.

Mechation: How Evolution Changed

Let mechation be a new term used to denote an alternative type of evolution related to machine growth, development, and stabilization. While "evolution" has historically been linked to organic life forms based on carbon molecules, the dominant growth and development on our planet over the last century has been that of machines: inorganic forms without a carbon basis.

Machines, mechanisms, and tools all derive from human symbolic activity. They are neither human nor organic, however. They do not exhibit the same functions as living organisms, but they change in their own way. While humans do not give "birth" to machines, they generate codes which enable machines to reproduce and multiply. At this moment, we are in a symbiotic relationship. The world automobile population doubles every other decade. This is made possible by engineering manuals, factories, finance, and distribution techniques. Slowly, with the rapid development of computer capacities, these functions are accomplished with less and less human support. In the near future, automobile design and reproduction will be entirely machine-controlled.

Although humans claim responsibility for successes and problems caused by machines, it is only because they are caught up in the transitional nature of organic evolution transforming into mechanical evolution: signs and symbols. Humans, the most advanced mammals, create thought and code. The code develops a "life" of its own and has become the "DNA" of mechanisms. Any mechanical device can be constructed or reconstructed by using codes and materials.

What force guides the transition of evolution towards mechation? Throughout evolutionary time, there has always been intention of change, adaptation, and reproduction. As organic life approaches the current mass extinction, this intention carries us on. Humans have rapidly been creating more and more machines. Even when the economy stops functioning in a recession, systems rapidly work to restore progress. There is no possibility of return: most land animals never returned to the oceans. While reduced machine dependence and usage often creates comfortable lifestyles for adventurous participants, the collective intention of the human species wills that mechation take place. Human museums may help preserve the ways of our ancestors and the beauties of their culture, but these settings will not be able to compete with the rapid innovations of lifestyle derived from machine use applied on a mass scale. Modern life choices change the nature of being human.

Why do humans seem blind to their relinquishment of planetary dominance? Most humans would not agree to give up their human ways for replacement by a mechanical device, but a subtle set of transitional stages exist which hide mechation from popular view. Over millenia, humans created tools and signs. Slowly, leadership became attached to the mastery of language. From Aristotle (reputed to have read every book of his day) to a modern Doctor of Philosophy or Master of Business Administration, there has been a progression of abstraction by use of signs that has been carried out by leaders in many societies. Highly abstracted leaders are rooted in the ideas, publications, and peer groups which constitute their identities. They may enjoy wilderness living as well, but their self esteem and self promotion are rooted in their abstracted codifications. There is often excitement as a newly published author becomes popular by rebelling from the technological society or some aspect of the status quo. With success, however, comes enmeshment into the technological society. The author is drawn into it and undergoes a shift in personal identity. This shift aligns his or her intentions with the intentions of mechation. As the current natural process of mechation overtakes evolution in importance, human leaders are trapped in their codes, royalties, status, and peer reviews; they are unable to take actions to restore human-centered lifestyles--ways of living characterized by oral cultures over many millenniums.

Below the level of leadership, the worldwide process of gaining literacy helps change intentions in populations. While highly literate humans do not sense separation from their codes, their machines, and their progress, the average world citizens differ in their worldview. They currently see the Earth being rapidly altered by the leading countries. The intentions of these citizens have been altered as well with the influx of first world media. Global economic forces mechate the economies of these countries and the populations receive immediate economic benefits that make the process seem attractive. However, as larger scales of development ensue, the consequences of urbanization, mechanization, pollution, and climate change alter the social patterns of the country. In these ways, both leaders and followers bring about the rapid mechation of Earth.

The Origins of Mechation

Signs and Symbols

Mammals have evolved into humans, and with this progression has come the use of signs and symbols. While a chimpanzee may have drawn a circle in the dirt with a stick and then crossed a line through it, it took millions of years for this figure to hold meaning. Now humans living in most urban areas recognize that the picture of any object with a circle around it and a single line crossing through it indicates that the object or its use is prohibited. While alphabets and the abstractions that they made possible (words like "museums" or "polls", for example) slowly codified the real world humans inhabited, the deeper functions of mechation involve identity changes in which a human's personal meaning system is manipulated by signs. The science of semiotics carefully describes these processes. Advertising can take a simply curved line (a "swoosh") and weave a person's self esteem and self image into it. The swoosh then carries a new meaning: invented by the advertiser it was invested with human intention. Now, it acts like a command embedded inside a product which prompts the use of the product. If a human understands this manipulative process, there is no "hook" and the created meanings are false and unattached. Most humans have no clear idea about the process and simply promote these meanings. Use of the product spreads, new factories open up, and suddenly the shoe with the swoosh isn't worn just to protect the feet until the shoe wears out. The shoe establishes identity for the human. Alphabets, graphic images, and logos all share in similar movements of meaning.

Technique

Half a century ago, Jacques Ellul described a concept that he called technique as a process encompassing “rationality, self-augmentation, monism, universalism, and autonomy.” He correctly saw technique as a force which "elicits and conditions social, political, and economic change." In trying to describe it, he sensed its overwhelming importance. However his writings appeared before the processes of computing and mechation radically changed all aspects of global interaction. The term he chose, technique, already had a meaning and did not serve to define and describe the later changes in mechanical culture that occurred after his books were written. Also, Ellul was a law professor unversed in evolutionary science. His primary focus was on changes brought about in social systems. Though a pioneer in thinking about these phenomena, he was unable to see the complete picture that was to unfold after he wrote his many books.

The Domains of Mechation

Media

While primitives may have scratched signs in the sand, moderns have given permanence to their signs and symbols. Oral cultures passed on their symbols by word of mouth: what Buddha said was repeated over and over again for centuries. When the words were written down, they lasted millenia. Jesus Christ probably wrote very little, but his words were remembered and printed; they are now found throughout the world. The transmission of data, thought, and meaning has slowly formed into media and marketing (intentional data). Ellul was sensitive to this domain as well. Having seen how intentions were shaped by propaganda during World War II, he carefully analyzed media and its effects. Since he was primarily concerned with the intentions that Hitler created before and during the war, the word "propaganda" carries mostly political meanings in his writings.

"It is the emergence of mass media which makes possible the use of propaganda techniques on a societal scale. The orchestration of press, radio and television to create a continuous, lasting and total environment renders the influence of propaganda virtually unnoticed precisely because it creates a constant environment. Mass media provides the essential link between the individual and the demands of the technological society. . . . [I]ntelligent people can be made to swallow professed intentions by well-executed propaganda." (Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes. Trans. Konrad Kellen & Jean Lerner. New York: Knopf, 1965, p.58).

Since Ellul's writings appeared, cable television and the internet have been invented. The media now affect the consciousness of billions of humans. Instead of a poster with a provocative picture and a few carefully chosen words, we have studiously crafted audiovisual messages that rapidly change and generate intentions amongst huge populations.

Infrastructure

Evolving organisms are dependent on light, water, oxygen, and organic foods, but mechating machines are not. Instead, machines need infrastructures such as roads, electric wires, libraries, optic cables, airports, or satellites and dishes. While scientists have generated adequate descriptions of processes and structures of organic life, they have not yet coherently analyzed mechation. In the realm of cultural anthropology, scientists have described the relative permanence of artifacts, codes, and physical structures that make cultural evolution possible. When a primate or hominid dies next to a stone tool, the tool lives on and serves another creature that may find it and put it to use. Ancient cities are dug up and life patterns are reconstructed from insights that scientists develop in teams supported by extensive research funding. It is likely that this same investigative energy will soon be applied to infrastructures and machine life. At this time, however, most scientists do not understand the importance and significance of planetary dominance by mechanisms. Their symbiotic relationship with mechanisms seems to hide the big picture. Like fish becoming frogs, they don't see the drastic difference between aquatic and terrestrial life. Paradoxically, scientists and the media have recently concluded that humans are causing climate change and the current mass extinction. This is incorrect: machines are causing the acceleration of global warming. Collective human intention has created highways and vehicles, coal-fired plants and electricity, and deforested farms in the interest of moving around, staying warm/cool, and eating excess protein. For millions of years, human patterns of moving, staying warm, and eating were radically different, but satisfied perceived needs. These new intentions have been generated by media, advertising, politics, economics and the technological society. The technological system has supplanted lifestyles that individual humans personally chose for themselves during the last few million years.

Global Computing

At a conference composed of scientists studying computers and the internet, a conclusion was reached that the internet itself had a “consciousness of its own.” [Markoff, John. "Scientists Worry that Machines May Outsmart Man." New York Times, July 25, 2009.] What does this mean? My own “consciousness” includes all of the codes and abstractions that I carry in my brain, the memories that can be summoned, and my perceptions or judgments of the experience around me. How does Google compare? Mechation has always been dependent on human-generated codes in libraries and places where books were preserved. The construction and service manuals for the Model T Ford were carefully created and distributed to guarantee the economic success of this early automobile. Times have changed. Such information is now stored as electronic data and its pattern of use or availability is completely different. Until recently, human thought was in complete control of data access. Since the last century this has changed. At the end of the 20th century, humans thrilled in the fact that chess masters could always beat a computer. Then “Deep Blue” beat the world chess master and there was a shift in perceptions. [Johnson, Kirk. "Endgame: It's All Work Now for Deep Blue, Chess Champ." New York Times, September 24, 1997.] Currently, no person can grasp what some mechanisms “know”. How does this relate to “human consciousness?” Highly functional computers have been with us for a few decades. How will human consciousness compare to "machine consciousness" in a few more decades? The internet has become the global computing domain, and techniques have gradually been established that have slowly modified the process the internet's function. Of primary significance, of course, is the modification of the human brain to fit the patterns of the internet: synapse and neural functions change as we invest our minds and meanings in modern multitasking and information update [Carr, Nickolas. The Shallows: How the Internet is Changing Our Brains. W.W. Norton: New York. 2010.]. With our constant investment in time on a computer, our brains change and begin to function at a "shallow" level. We cannot deeply reflect and go through the higher thinking functions that literacy has imposed on our species. Traditionally, human mental abstraction has been ordered in its complexity: know, comprehend, apply, analyze, synthesize, and evaluate. On this continuum from perceiving to judging, generations of deep thinkers have been developed. With the "shallowing down" of our mental input we can be expected to expand our perception functions, but lose those of judgment. In just a few years, meaning in human writing has rapidly shifted from complex paragraphs (including summaries) to texting (currently a dozen times per youth waking hour). As Carr notes, hyperlinks, interruptions, and embedded distractions have reduced our ability to concentrate. "Our ability to make the rich mental connections that form when we read deeply and without distraction remains largely disengaged." [Ibid. p. 122.]

With this obvious shift in our perception and judgment (who cannot notice how distracting it is?), comes another unseen change that is having a rapid effect on human abstract thinking: a subtle feedback mechanism is making constant adjustments to global intentions. Human intention, as mentioned above, is the reason we support mechation. Advertising generates most of this force. Until recently, there was a way for us to avoid most advertising: don't watch television, learn to shut off all advertising stimuli when reading a newspaper or magazine, and avoid commercial radio stations. Billboard advertising still penetrates, but can also be shut off or reduced with a little practice. Now, however, a feedback loop of advertising is shifting mass intention in a surprising way. Carr notes that idealistic Google relented (in 2002) and began to insert contextual ads which it auctioned to the highest bidder. In order to remain in place, however, the ad had to prove itself popular and get many clicks of the mouse. If no one read the ad, it would just disappear. Global computing has also established well-known records of most clicks. These records can be used to pinpoint advertising and shift intentions. Google's profits, of course, come from the advertising, and it is easy to see how this feedback loop (only a few years old) will gradually reconstruct human intention in a way that all the previous advertising in the last two centuries has not been able to do. It is hard to picture what this will look like a few decades from now, but it is easy to see the enormity of the change.

Finance and Economics

With globalization and the strong interdependence of world trade markets, business and venture capital create a background for planetary mechation. Data and business structures that controlled the establishment and spread of automobile production were once localized in a few countries; now these structures have moved around the world. When banks collapse in New York and London, worldwide economic practices change. Without stable financial and economic systems, machines are limited in their growth and ability to spread throughout the world. Paradoxically, as the world markets have recently collapsed and created a deep recession there has been a parallel development of “green” political movements whose primary agenda is the control of mechation.

Forecasts of global warming (which most scientists denied for decades) were recently determined to be much too slow when compared with actual data collected since 2000. Many humans from all over the planet have united in an effort to control production of mechanisms which are currently bringing about this sixth mass extinction. It would seem obvious that this "Great Recession" is a perfect time to stop changing Earth's conditions. Every Thursday could be a “walk, bike, or stay day.” The first week of the month could be a “natural climate day” with drastically reduced heating or air conditioning. Could humans gradually establish control over the financial and economic processes that have driven the last century? Many humans were able to turn off their night lights together for five minutes a few years ago and an hour last year. Is this significant? Why can’t this reversal of lifestyle be accomplished? As mentioned earlier, intention in evolution and mechation is a force which guides development. There can be no intention of retreating to 14th century lifestyles in the modern era. Only a few species of marine mammals gave up a viable habitat on land to return to the sea. Now that machines have established patterns of servicing all human needs, mass markets cannot grind to a halt. No person or country can enforce a “walk, bike, or stay” Thursday. No person or security force can stand guard over the oil wells and force the discontinuation of their use. No humans can even stop the process of prospecting for new oil sources. As the Arctic ice disappears, many new oil wells will replace it to take advantage of the 25% of Earth’s oil deposits thought to be found there. There are just over a trillion barrels of oil still expected to be found; all of these will be consumed. What force could stop this process?

Personal Mechation

How did symbolic development transition from primates to robots? Humans played the pivotal role by incorporating symbols into their being and establishing the mechating world. Oral cultures did not have imprints of the spoken words. Without a storage facility (other than human memory), the symbolic infrastructures of mechation could not be established. With printed letters and ideographic script, however, symbolic ideas gained a life of their own in established cultural patterns. For thousands of years the progression was slow. Still photography, audio, and audiovisual imprints followed. Those humans with the most social power planted their identity into these cultural imprints to become famous. Finally, however, the human mechated identity of formated representation became possible. While "publishing" was once restricted to a privileged few, this technique now serves to spread ideas from any of a billion "publishers". Currently, half a billion humans have stored information that is print/audio/visual in formated segments that can be revealed to others in varying degrees. Embedded in the intention of creating these formats are core elements of human self esteem and values. As deep meaning is embedded into pictures and captions, personal identity shifts. People have committed suicide because of mechated identity abuse. This was uncommon when someone read another's diary in the past. As these formatted representations gain wider power over the human mind, humans will no longer be centering their self esteem and identity concepts around the non-virtual experiences of their daily lives. Previously, old journals became yellow and disintegrated, but now new emails and pages of formatted representation have different storage and different control. While a diary from decades past may not have survived, we are entering "the end of forgetting" when transparent personal data is becoming fixed in time and space. The new time permanence of mechation and the new identity that we are projecting to virtual "friends" will change the way we look at ourselves and the world.

Living with Mechation

Finally, there must be a spiritual or religious approach established by humans to adapt to a planet controlled by machines. Buddhists are able to withdraw from many aspects of physical experience: this provides them with a ready adaptation to a changing planet. Moslems struggle to re-establish lifestyle norms laid down many centuries ago: this will be problematic. Christians (currently the primary supporters of the worldwide progress of mechation) are recently noticing that humans must struggle to maintain “stewardship of the Earth.” A book in the Bible describes apocalyptic circumstances in which the air turns to smoke, floods prevail, and mass extinction occurs. As it is written, many are willing to believe. A person may drive a huge tundra-melting truck but may also believe that one day a heaven will open up to allow immortal happiness. This approach helps millions of people to be happy in today's world. A challenge to this view is being presented by Pope Francis, who plans to present a 50-page encyclical on climate change to the UN in 2015. Many of the worlds 1.2 billion Catholics will have to adjust. In Taoism, Lao Tzu's worldview establishes that existence in the natural universe is open-ended. Humans must adjust their manner of looking at things in order to find "the way" to survive and still find spiritual fulfillment: "From wonder into wonder, existence opens." [Bynner, Witter. The Way of Life According to Lao Tzu. Penguin Putnam Inc. NY. 1986 (p. 31)] Unlike Buddha's complete abstinence, Lao Tzu's solution involves making adjustments to change. Lao Tzu apparently wrote nothing until the end of his life, a condition that kept him rooted in oral experience. Finally, Shintoism in Japan (representing 80% of the Japanese population) is highly congruent with mechation and machine development. Rapidly aging past 65, the Japanese look forward to robotic policemen and nurses to help them in old age. They do not want to allow immigration to fill their needs. (Germany, on the other hand, has projected that they would need 32 million new immigrants over the next few decades to maintain the pension system that they have in place.) The Japanese have a love of robots. In Shintoism "kami refers to the divinity, or sacred essence, that manifests in multiple forms: rocks, trees, rivers, animals, places, and even people can be said to possess the nature of kami. Kami and people are not separate; they exist within the same world and share its interrelated complexity." (Wikipedia) When a Shinto priest buys a new car, he takes it to the shrine to bless its "being". Most Japanese see kami in rocks, trees, or their new appliances. This worldview will help them easily adapt to symbiotic life with machines.

To liberate our worldview, it may help to retreat from the anthropocentric viewpoint which has dominated the last several thousand years. This is a sweeping proposal which is quite hard to grasp and steps outside the boundaries of modern thought. To understand it, a theist might visualize this: the God of the dinosaurs is the same as the God of the humans and the God of the machines. It is a jarring thought, but puts existence into perspective. Humans and dinosaurs had to give up their prominent places and make way for change in the universe. Recent news that "80% of the world's population is exposed to high levels of threat to water security" [Vorosmarty, C.J. et al. "Global threats to human water security and river biodiversity." Nature, Vol. 467. September 30, 2010] forces our worldview to shift. We have been idealizing the "end of hunger" in the world as rich countries send a proportion of their gross domestic product to poor countries. Economic downturn ended this ideal. Devastated populations in locales struck by earthquakes, tsunamis, or floods still wait for promised aid. Pictures of malnourished infants no longer cause media sensations and no longer circulate. A billion humans are expected to suffer extreme or fatal hardship in the current mass extinction. Will populations of rich humans continue to expand? Jacques Ellul's ideal that we must "act locally and think globally" has become problematic. Possibly we should act and think locally.

Looking at the world from this individualistic point of view, there is another paradox which allows mechation to slowly spread through human culture: primitives or humans steeped in oral culture do not develop the abstractions required to view the massive evolutionary changes taking place on the planet. They notice the demise of life's quality from their village, but cannot explain it. They accept a television in their village and wear sneakers but do not understand the big picture and cannot fathom what the dominating populations are thinking. Advanced literates have wedded themselves to abstract thinking. Their long training has made their common sense blurry: "Cars are melting the glaciers. I have to use my car to get to work. I have to accelerate and use some extra gas because I am late today. (More gas, more melting.)" Decades ago, Ludwig Wittgenstein was able to leave abstract thinking, donate his fortune, and withdraw to a garden. Few others have taken that path. Nonetheless, he later returned and resumed his professorship. Once the canopy of abstracted thought is developed, a human rarely strays from its cover.

What is a satisfactory personal approach that can provide happiness in a human’s work and play? Each person must come up with a personal formula, of course. To avoid regret or guilt humans must find ways of making money (if it is used) that does not contribute to destruction. Leisure, recreation, and lifestyle must be carefully chosen as well. If someone is accustomed to a semi-annual cross-continental flight to visit a relative, for example, the person’s spiritual awareness will be influenced by a negative emotion since the jet fuel is so toxic to Earth. The trip may have to become less frequent. Fighting mass intention and a mass extinction, of course, seems hopeless, but small personal successes can still bring small satisfactions. Thinking and acting locally may possibly reach a tipping point and shift mass intentions.

Practically, humans can still find comfortable human lifestyles offering rewarding lives. Primitives in the Amazon, of course, are not burdened with abstractions and codes. They still live in close interaction with natural environments. Television often makes entry into their psycho-social patterns, however, and changes their consciousness. Economics intrudes as well when forests are removed to provide land for grazing cattle or grow soybeans for beef or protein bars.

For humans in urban areas who are literate or post-literate, possibilities did recently exist to regain primitive awareness. Until this century, it was quite easy to step out of the technological system to see it clearly--as the first lizards that stopped entering the water must have done. Over the last few years, however, this has become extremely difficult. Previously, by merely avoiding any reading or television/monitor use for half a year, a person could leave her or his abstracted world and enter into an alternative way of seeing things. The life in signs fades away and the life in experience brightens. Any non-virtual experience (walking, sport, sewing, weeding, etc.) becomes reality and any symbols seem to intrude on it. Many dedicated spiritual people still embark on three-month retreats. Nonetheless, with the recent advent of formatted representations of your identity, your email monitoring, and your increased audiovisual device monitoring over the last decade, this discipline has become much more difficult. How can you go without looking at the screen of a cell phone or some monitor for half a year? In 1970, yes; in 2010, it is hard. Nicholas Carr dropped his internet for a long time, but not his keyboard.

If a retreat from the technology is accomplished, another world opens up. Once the electronic and print information is bypassed, a human can further delete the creeping intentions of the mechating world by learning to avoid looking at any billboard or advertisement. This last step is hard, but takes you completely out of the grip of mass intention. Once a period of abstinence is established over months or years, reentry into the virtual world is different. Careful, meticulous use of electronic devices or print can be accomplished in ways that help preserve aspects of natural human consciousness. A cell phone, email address, or wristwatch had been considered “essential” for functioning in today’s world. After a deep reflection period, a person can decide to use each machine carefully in a way that allows a human-centered natural order to unfold. This conscientization creates an altered worldview. Is it necessary to know what time it is on Saturday? Could you spend the day without using a coin or credit card? At the hardest level, can you refrain from looking at the formatted representations of your identity for half a year? Probably so, if you lived for years without one; unlikely if you put together your first profile in elementary school. Some of the schools in the coming century will offer new ways to examine and approach the challenges of modern lifestyle choices. Strong, intimate, human relationships that are not infiltrated by excessive machine use will continue to create satisfying lives for many people. The big picture may become grim, but the local level may become satisfying.

Example

By inputing these words (thoughts I have had for four decades but have never written down), my identity changes and I become invested in exchanging codes. Responses to these words now have meaning for me. Others might share my thoughts. I am preparing to spend large numbers of hours typing into a computer, adding words to the trillions of electronic words being produced. I am creating abstractions upon which my sense of identity and self esteem will depend. This experience of data exchange could largely replace the extremely experiential life I currently enjoy!

The Stages of Mechation

Time is a variable -----/ Time is a constant

STAGES OF EVOLUTION; TIME VARIABILITY OF ORGANISMS

STAGES OF MECHATION; TIME CONSTANCY OF MECHANISMS

Infrastructure

INFRASTRUCTURE OF ORGANISMS:

LAND, WATER, AIR

INFRASTRUCTURE OF MECHANISMS:

ROADS, INFORMATION CONDUITS, POWER CONDUITS, FINANCIAL CONDUITS, MALLS, COLLEGES

Information Bank

SCROLLS, PAPERS, BOOKS, AND DIRECTORIES; LIBRARIES; COMPUTERS; DATA BANKS

Production Center

FARMS; FACTORIES; LABORATORIES

Market

PEDDLERS, TINKERS, BAZAARS, SHOPS, STORES, DEPARTMENT STORES

Intention Center

SCRIPTORIUM, COUNCIL, AGENCY, PERSONALLY FORMATED REPRESENTATION