A Fun One…from Aquasphere, the 2004 annual

To the Holodeck: Uranus in Pisces

HOLOGRAMS HAVE BEEN part of sci-fi for a long time; the most famous was R2D2’s little movie of Princess Leah pleading to Obi-Wan Kinobe for help. Soon after came the holodeck of the newer Star Trek episodes. But the idea of a holoworld goes back to one of the earliest episodes of Star Trek, The Cage, where people live in a world of mutually-shared illusion. It is this world where Captain Pike disappears in an illusory healthy body after being severely disfigured.

Just like in 1995 most of us could never have imagined wandering around to cafés with WiFi connections tapping high-speed Internet access over a spot of latté, we can barely imagine the technological mind meld that is currently rising like the infrared tide.

You can now be injected with millions of little computers (sorry for those who read Wired, this is damn old news). Imagine if those microcomputers could be synced up with your, um, whatever it will be called in two years — your personal assistant gadget. To get at your address book, you think of it. Then, you notice your coworker, the one who smells really good, and get charged with harassment because the IT department intercepted your thought.

If Uranus in Aquarius is dependent upon computer hardware for its effects, Uranus in Pisces will deliver a world where the psychic field is the technological field. What psychic field, you say? Oh, you know, the one that emanates from our bodies and subtle bodies. The one that’s already drowning in microwaves through which our cell phones chatter with their local tower, and the energy swirling in the technospheres of our homes and offices. We are unsure as to how these microwaves are affecting our psychic field, but the evidence that they have a big effect is piling up fast.

If today we see and are affected by technology as a thing apart from ourselves, Uranus in Pisces is likely to continue a pattern of increasing transparency to technology, integrating it more deeply into our routines and our environment, and ultimately into our bodies and senses. There are two general directions this can go, I think. One is that we recognize the stunning technological equipment with which we were born. Our bodies sense the environment, they communicate without sounds and written words, they heal themselves and one another. Many of us are going to develop these skills in greater depth and greater number.

Then there’s another possible direction. Things like electronic hearing implants and heart defibrillator implants seem like good common sense today; like the fruits of progress. And this progress will progress. The line between human and electronic will get ever fuzzier.

How will you feel when the datasphere is able to enter your mind without the assistance of our own motor actions or sensory availability? When you walk into a store and are synced up with the store’s computer? When you can lay back and scan this article on the backs of your eyelids? You know, when you can slip into the matrix and entirely be in this other unworld? Pretty nice, if it’s Planet Waves or the Tahitisphere. The problem is that the masters of technology are the masters of war, and they are not cool. They are the living incarnation of uncool. And they want you.

Then there are hackers. Oh, Joe? He’s home sick from work. He caught a computer virus.

There will be some rich possibilities, too, if you’re rich: the iWife. She costs a quarter mil, but man, she’s nice. Comes in any color you like, speaks in any accent, specializes in anything. You just have to get used to the fact that she runs at 81 degrees (or forgets who she is), and then you can have a really good time. No arguments, take her bowling, turn her off when you want.

In 25 years, people will likely wonder what those people were like who remembered life before everything was electronic; when there was natural, untweaked biology; when people knew one another face to face. People will wonder about the transition time, and the sense of what was being traded off. Did those people see the future coming? We are those people; many of us can still remember both worlds, if we try. We can remember when a café was for drinking coffee, not emailing England. We’re the ones who stand at the mysterious hour of dawn, or is it dusk. But I don’t think we see what is coming.

Pisces is a realm of consciousness that’s so etheric few people can grasp it at all. We have to use words like mystical, dreamy, spiritual and idealistic. Now, it’s being activated by a surge of high-frequency power by a planet associated with rapid, irreversible revolutions and technology. That planet is becoming us and we are becoming it. It’s a whole new color, light and sound.

Where do want to go with this becoming? What will you tell your grandchildren? Will you remember what a strawberry tasted like? Or will the technology tell you? And who told it? [aq]