In 2019, I wrote the original draft of this essay to reflect on the interplays between digital technology (Bits & Bots) and life (Breaths), highlighting the dance between humanity and digitality. The original draft is very long, and extremely opinionated. Below is a shorter excerpt, offering a contemplation of balance in the interplay between Bits, Bots, and Breaths. The views expressed are solely mine and reflect my incessant pursuit of depth and meaning explored by juxtaposing and fusing extremities through an analytical and creative lens.
Bits & Bots are both the architects and building blocks of our digisphere, carrying the imprint of our biases, hopes, and dreams and promising a prosperous utopia that will hopefully extend our lives — by slowing down the effects of entropy on our physical and societal bodies. We aspire to create worlds where Bits and Bots can help us unravel our emotions, facilitate complex decisions, and foster intimate connections.
At the core, Bits & Bots are about human survival. We are faced with our own mortality, and so we employ digital materials as tools to try to outpace entropy and nature’s sense of finality. Through Bits & Bots, we seek to prolong our existence, multiply ourselves, and veer from the path of physical and societal collapse.
Unfortunately, Bits & Bots are also a tool for individual and mass population control when those who disembodiedly masquerade as deities from within the chambers of corporate and legislative ivory towers, subject the masses to manipulation and exploitation, often veiled under the promise of fostering human connection or prosperity.
However, consider this. As I type this, even then Bits and Bots are at work. I am using the “Cold Turkey Writer” app where I am unable to do anything else on my computer until I finish my set writing goal. I am coerced by the Bit & Bot to accomplish something I perhaps desire, such as focused reflection and writing and I am constrained from doing anything until I have accomplished what I told the Bit & Bot I would do. And so, indeed, we are able to program our Bit & Bot to give us freedom from the Bits & Bots. And so perhaps, we can rely on Bits & Bots to help us Breathe — to help us slow down, understand, and regulate our breath, our life.
Perhaps Bits & Bots are just a continuation of the language of living, the language of perceived volition to do and be what we find ourselves wanting to be. Bits & Bots employ the usage of Human language to express a deeper shared understanding of the world, with its limitation and imagined possibilities. Bits & Bots are expressed using both objective mathematical formulas, yet manifest into subjective Human experiences, and perhaps lead to objective results and mass-scale consequences. The masquerading deities from within the chambers of disembodied corporate and legislative ivory towers are intoxicated, salivating at the opportunities to continue to control societal narratives and to amass any energy — influence, power, money, and at times hatred, etc.
Perhaps this is the war we are fighting with Bits & Bots, and with Breath we might discover the interconnectedness that can be achieved — leading to greater Human intelligence, love, consciousness. And for what aim? Are we looking to survive, thrive, or die? Are they any different from one another? This is the story of Bits, Bots, and Breaths. May we embrace the Bit, work with the Bot, and take a Breath, for it will be over soon.
