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.