Second Nature:
Diatom: Last night I was reading this crazy online magazine, called Columbus's Diary or Ponce de Leon's Journal or some such thing. Biggest bunch of self-indulgent writers you'll ever see. One of 'em was going on about how, and I quote, "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny." You ever hear such nonsense? Amoeba: Jeez. It's only one of the great insights of all history. Diatom: Oh yeah? Amoeba: Means that as an organism grows from fertilized egg to maturity it quickly passes through shapes that repeat evolutionary history. You know, like, in the second month a human embryo briefly has gills, then a little later, it briefly has a tail. Diatom [sips cappuccino, puffs Carlton 120]: Well, this guy, least I think it was a guy, you really can't tell with somebody named "Piongo Pisgah", can you, this so-called writer goes on. Get this. He says you can take the old ontogeny-phylogeny idea and by analogy move it up a notch to the evolution of consciousness. Amoeba: I think you're pulling my pseudopod. Diatom: No shit. You comfy? Ready for this? Old Piongo what's-his-name says, rule number two is: "Consciousness replicates physiology." Amoeba [giving Diatom a blank stare]: Oh, that is so eighteenth-century. Diatom: My thought exactly. Amoeba: Did he explain? Diatom: Does Christiane Ajanapour use hairspray? Yes he explained at, as my old mentor in the agora used to say, unconscionable length. Amoeba: How about putting it in a nutshell for me? Diatom: He starts easy, says, consider the camera. The camera is just an externalization of the eye, a box with a lens, and the film is like the retina. Or, a microphone is just a version of the ear. And so on. Amoeba: B-o-r-i-n-g. Diatom: Wait. It gets crazier, a whole lot crazier. His big punchline is that the Internet is just us "replicating" on as big a scale as we can--you ready?--all of fucking nature! "Second Nature," he calls it. Says that all this time, every morning when we wake up, it's like we log on to "nature," and then what we call living is just us surfing nature. And all we've done with the Internet is create a second "nature," except this one's just for humans. We don't share it with the rest of god's creatures, not to mention the whole fucking universe. Amoeba: So? I mean, what does that have to do with the size of the Pope's schlong? Diatom: Must you? It has a lot to do with a lot. He winds up by saying the Internet is just another example of us fleeing our "selfhood." He says history is us creating organization after organization, religions, governments, armies, universities, art academies, monasteries, so we can pretend we're better than the other ten-to-the-eightieth molecules in the universe. The Internet is just us making a second-nature kind of cosmic country club, with a highly selective membership policy: for humans only. It's us cutting ourselves off from what he calls "the great chain of being," making ourselves special, the "odd link out." Amoeba [yawning]: I know where this is going. Diatom [grinning]: I don't think so. Amoeba: Oh yes I do. This guy, Pisgah? I'll bet anything he winds up quoting E.M. Forster. Diatom: How the fuck you know that? Amoeba: Because all these Internet intellectual types, when they run out of anything to say, they say, "At our own risk we forget E.M. Forster's advice: 'Only connect.'" And I just know your buddy, Piongo, winds up by direly and sourly pointing out that the Internet only SEEMS to connect, when what it actually does is just connect us very superfically to each other while separating us bigtime from EVERYTHING else. Am I right, or what? Diatom: Jeez. You want another cuppa? Amoeba [jumps up, overturns the table, and stomps out of the non- franchise coffee shop]: NO, I don't want another cuppa. I can't BELIEVE these people! In the most CONNECTED age in the history of the world, when humanity is finally coming TOGETHER, these think-too-much eggheads are once again talking about fucking ALIENATION!!! END
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The following conversation was
overheard recently at a local non- franchise coffee shop. Digressions and other illogical
vagaries of thought may, if the reader wishes, may attributed to the fact that this
particular coffee shop allows smoking. We have applied names to the two participants based
solely on their appearance. We do not know these people, have never seen them before, and
will probably never see them again.