Kelly: No. This is is a real problem. We are not going to have consensus for a while. It is not entirely ruled out, but short-term trends don't show any sings of having an emerging consensus. That it is part of the agenda for the first part of the next century - people will be working on the deep issues to find consensus.
One of the central struggles is that will try to come to a consensus about our identity. Identity of individuals, "Who am I?" But even a greater, larger, unspoken questioning of the identity of humans. "What are humans for?" "Why are we here?" "Where are the boundaries of man?" Every time the computer does something that we thought we were good at, we actually wind up asking ourselves "Why are we here?" "What is our purpose?" Never before will that question have such prominence.
For instance, on the Internet and in things like MUDs, you can play with multiple identities, you can have multiple personalities, you can be several different people at once. Identities of countries are also put into question: If something happens on the Net in France, does it happen in France or somewhere outside of France? All these issues are identity issues, about the essence of things and what constitutes the essence of things.
Computers are interesting only because they generate little universes that will allow us to ask the fundamental and ancient philosophical questions of all time. Instead of trying to answer them with a bunch of philosophers with tweed coats sitting in booklined, leather-bound rooms, we are asking and actually trying things out by creating little worlds.
Virtual reality is an example. Try to make reality. The first question to ask when trying to make virtual reality is: "What is reality?" How would we know it if we found reality?" "What distinguishes reality from a dream?" Or, another example, the artificial life scientists have come with a long list of "What is life" so that if they made it, they would know, and the list keeps getting longer and longer. Artificial intelligence is the best known problem: "What is intelligence?" Democracy is another example. People want to create democracy in cyberspace. Some seem to think that a flat space is what makes a better democracy. Immediately, we question, "What is democracy?" Obviously it is more than electronic voting, there have to be other ingredients - what are they? These ingredients are tested and if it doesn't work, you rewire it and try again. So in five and 10 years there has been more progress in answering that question, than 200 to 500 years of people philosophizing about it. This is the great exhilaration and the great excitement about the digital realm. We have a chance to be God and recreate our universe and by putting our cells and memes into it and asking questions about our own universe.
NPQ: It's the most powerful extension, so far, of ourselves.
Kelly: Yes. But unlike Marshall McLuhan, who wanted to extend the senses, we are extending the universe.