I saw a really spooky scifi/horror movie recently in which everybody in the world starts to change in a deeply disturbing way. I guess you could say it’s a sort of variation on Ionesco’s Rhinoceros.
The characters spend much the time in a complete panic. Fear, recrimination, despair, paranoia — all of these negative emotions come bubbling up to the surface like a volcano.
But then at the end, after the change is complete, everyone feels fine again. and nobody notices anything amiss. After all, everybody is now normal.
I thought of this movie when I listened yesterday to Philippe Quéau speak about virtual reality at the FMX conference. He argued, from an anthropological perspective, that for us to understand the meaning of a mode of communication such as VR, we need to understand how it changes us.
Part of his point was that “being normal” is the thing that is most invisible to us. Yet it is not in any way fixed.
Each new technological advancement changes the definition of what it means to be normal. Yet after the change is complete, most people lose the ability to notice that anything has changed. They simply feel normal.
Standing outside of the assumption of normalcy to look at how a technology changes us does not make you a luddite. Yet the moment you start doing that, a lot of people wrongly assume that you are anti-technology.
The ability to take such a critical view — to not make the mistake of thinking that what feels normal is an indication of absolute truth — is essential. Without it, we may find ourselves very unhappy with the future that we are helping to create.