Electronics & culture

Before the christian era, the knowledge of self was constituted through the awareness of the physical sensations (touch, smell, taste, see, hear). Knowledge was a collection of sensory impressions.

As the electronic age takes over, a great insecurity of losing this sensorial information / perception looms over many people. Will the electronic take over the senses completely? Can it only replicate our perceptions? does it operate only in the mental virtual space?

The transformation of existing objects and the creation of newer ones constantly bring about cultural changes in our interaction with the material world. After all, we exist for the material and the material exists for us.  Does the e-world lay more emphasis on the non-material. The electronic makes us realize the phenomena of how we have actually converted so much of the non-material world (ideas) into material. For example, books, maps, or all kinds of representations of the world! All representations will now change their physical manifest due to the change in technology. A book now, in its physicality is thus a silicon chip. For that matter, a lot of different forms of physical data is going back to a absolute form - the silicon servers!

In some way, because the electronics change the immediate physical space around us, we as humans change too, in the way we behave, engage, move, etc. Thus our bodies will change, because our work cultures will change...

But more than anything else, what intrigues me is the emphasis from the physical world to the non-physical...Didn't the jain philosophy say that the world is an illusion? maya? Are we confirming it? I wonder...