The Right Handed Writer

[Hiuknowme]

On the topic of Synergy.

Synergy is the interaction of multiple elements in a system to produce an effect different from or greater than the sum of their individual effects. The term synergy comes from the Greek word synergia συνέργια from synergos, συνεργός, meaning "working together".*

Synergy, as I am using it, is the joined cumulative collection of human knowledge, originally through language and more recently, the internet.

The largest step humanity has taken in its development is written language. Language allowed for information to be passed more efficiently and thoroughly down each generation. Every generation could learn what their great- great grandfather learned before them, eventually growing a link through his/her peers through the presence of common knowledge. Shared knowledge within a community encouraged and stimulated new, abstract ways of thought, and in turn, technological innovation.

Closer to today, the invention of the internet has been the next largest step in humanity's development tract. Not only can we share knowledge in our community, but we can share it all the way across the globe, in a click and a brief moment to download.

My point? Both of these advances achieved the same goal: Uniting humanity through joined information. There is a whisper, floating around in the great space of the internet, of synergy. Say, for science's sake, we upload every human being into a super computer, forever linking each and every person by the thoughts in our head. Imagine moving through society knowing exactly what the person next to you it thinking, never having to voice your opinion or look anything up, because someone, somewhere, knows it, and can feel you searching for that little tidbit of knowledge.

At first glance, it seems almost unreal. Easy to imagine as a whole, yet difficult to picture individually. So, I've broken it down.

First, it would complete advance our ability to think, and our advances in technology would be astronomical. All it takes for a new invention is for an imaginist to reach a scientist- for an abstract idea to meet a logical, step by step specialist. Every problem- Instantly solved, with only an outward reaching thought. Secrets wouldn't exist, because hiding them would be impossible. Crime rates would drop, because after all, how do you murder someone while feeling their intense fear, while, at the same time, a police officer is receiving those thoughts and is on his way to the scene. Voting would be redundant. If we take it a step further, and simply leave our material bodies in exchange for the incorporeal world of the internet, we could live infinitely, without a body to age, or the drawbacks of requiring sustenance. Essentially, we could cut ties from the earth entirely. But where do we draw the line between can, and should? The moral arguments are very tangible, and besides the point of the possible detrimental long-term qualities.

Some of the more extreme disadvantages of synergy include what makes natural selection work so well. If we chose to enter this world of inter-connected minds, and brought each and every child into the world, that next generation would not rely on his/her own thought, but simply use the thoughts of others, because every thought in the universe would enter your mind. We would become viewers and readers, not thinking for ourselves, but simply accepting the thought of another. One generation of that, and we simply become one vague mass of potential, but no original thought, because after all, every thought comes from an individual, and every individual would depend on another, so on and so forth. Natural selection dictates that we use what we need to survive, and cut off the unnecessary pieces to make room for more tools. If we don't require individual thought, and rely on the thoughts of another, than it is hypothetically possible that humanity would eventually lose the ability to think individually. It should also be noted that every thought originates with an individual human. We would accidentally eliminate the need to think, and as such, eliminate our individual intelligence, and begin a detrimental cycle that results in humanity losing the ability to think critically at all. Not only would this be counterproductive the original purpose of synergy, but it would reverse the progress humanity as a whole has made since 1500 BCE. Even if we chose to cut ties with our corporeal bodies and simply exist in the Database, thereby no longer reproducing, but rather, existing infinitely, our own minds would become lax without the constant requirement to think critically.

Analytical and critical thinking skills aren’t the only forms of thought we would eliminate. Creative thought, which goes hand in hand with analytical thinking, would become unnecessary, and would eventually fade away in a similar manner. After all, creative thought originates from the individual and an individual’s personal perspectives and ideas. One stray thought that is totally unique may be eliminated or left unexplored in the presence of the overwhelming amount of information one would receive from the outside world. This is, perhaps, my strongest objection to synergy. The loss of creative thought, especially to writers and artisans like me, would catastrophic.

To recapitulate, synergy may have some life-saving, money- saving benefits at first glance, but could result in long- term drawbacks that not only ruin progress for the current generation, but would make human progress as a species made for the last several thousand obsolete. Perhaps with some specific tweaks and modifications, synergy may be mankind's next big step of evolution, but as it is now, it would cause more problems than it solves.

*The Strategy Reader, Edited by Susan Segal-Horn, The Open University, 2004 Great Britain, ISBN 1-4051-2687-6