In the early 1990s I delved into the new cyberpunk genre and drafted a novel (PsyBot) marrying the emerging concepts of virtual reality (hardware and software) and computer viruses. In this slipstream fable, the virus, a rogue mind-control program, infects a human programmer (Joe Norton) through a covert brain-machine interface. Developed first as a private vendetta, the program has been hacked by deep-state actors to advance a wider agenda of social control.
Some thirty years later, the popular craze of VR headsets never quite materialized; but the sciences of biotechnology have advanced far beyond the horizons of Norton’s streetside Philadelphia data services firm. By now we have injectable nanotechnology masquerading as a vaccine; Elon Musk’s implantable Neuralink project; and the WEF’s plans to integrate everyone on the planet into a 5G-enabled “smart grid” of global surveillance and management.
The allure of recreational use of virtual technology remains (despite the Zuckerberg faceplant in this arena), fueling the perennial rollout of science-fiction game, films, and TV series. The latest entry into this genre is The Peripheral, based on the 2014 novel by cyberpunk legend William Gibson. The moral of such stories, echoing the “cautious optimism” of transhumanists like Musk and Yuval Harari, is invariably double-edged. There’s always the “cool” factor that appeals to the teenager lusting for more kicks beyond the boring status quo; but then the hammer falls with inevitable side effects, violence and evil emerging in deeper layers of the simulation, and nefarious ulterior motives of the game designers. More troubling still is the leakage of the “alternative” universe into what had been normal waking life.
In that respect the dalliance into Frankenstein technology echoes the deeper dilemma of navigating the opaque world of the subconscious through psychedelics. Like VR, it promises liberation but in the process may allow entry of unwelcome demons into the initiate’s psychic terrain. Thus the recommended caution to explore such realms in a safe container of ritual space, wise guidance, or manageable dosage. It’s not that the previously unseen realm or its entities are “evil” and must be sealed from exposure to humans; rather, as Jungian psychology would indicate, they must be integrated within a holistic development of the individual soul.
In the case of sci-fi fictions such as The Peripheral, I recoil at first from the overt violence and manipulation the heroine must suffer in her trials of the new technology. It seems to reinforce a darker version of human nature than I find palatable, perhaps signaling an intent to brutalize viewers of the scenes vicariously. Is the consuming public, our attention fully captured, enrolled into the beta rollout of a meta-program able to shift our reality beyond our control? Certainly three years in the stranger-than-fiction realm of Covidia would argue as much.
Having only watched the pilot episode of The Peripheral so far, I can’t comment yet on the end game presented there. Unfortunately in the case of “The New Normal,” we are given daily spoiler alerts as to the desired outcome. Desired, that is, by the simulation designers, who despite their glitzy PR campaigns, remain shielded by game layers beyond our user access.
The question remains, can we level up our playing skills to penetrate their inner sanctum and disarm their control codes? Or will we flesh-and-blood humans always be locked out, peripheral to the main plotline? Perhaps that’s as it should be. Maybe, like PsyBot’s Joe Norton, we can find the courage to abandon the ship of fools; to log out and walk away, and watch the entire virtual enterprise dissolve in a cloud of pixels.
PsyBot (with new cover)
Chameleon (Canadian version)
