00:00we begin with a simple almost childish question where is consciousness located where does this
00:20mysterious I reside the one that looks at the world from behind the curtains of the eyes the
00:25one that hears the inner voice reading these words right now neuroscience points to the brain soft
00:32gray matter three pounds of neural network 86 billion interconnected cells every thought every
00:40emotion every memory is merely a complex pattern of electrical impulses and chemical reactions
00:46beautiful elegant and inexpressibly empty because if the eye is just a product of
00:54neurochemistry then where am I where is that singular point of perception that feels pain
01:00sees dreams remembers the smell of rain in childhood we've reduced the soul to a synapse
01:07consciousness to an algorithm we've disassembled the clockwork into cogs and springs but never found
01:14the watchmaker inside and now against this backdrop of an existential vacuum like frightened children
01:21in a dark room we have begun to create our own sources of light we built a mirror a digital
01:28all-encompassing hyper-realistic one the network at first it was a tool then a habitat now it is a
01:39prosthesis for our identity we voluntarily insert a hose into our brains through which a continuous stream
01:45of someone else's consciousness flows the thoughts ideals and tragedies of others packaged into 32nd clips
01:53we no longer experience life we consume content we have delegated the most sacred intimate functions
02:01of our psyche to the mirror memory why remember when there's the cloud why know when you can google
02:09our biographical memory is atrophying replaced by an external hard drive communication why meet feel
02:18the uncertainty of a handshake hear the timber of a voice see the fleeting tremor at the corner of a lip
02:24when you can send an emoji we have replaced the richness of non-verbal communication with the meager
02:30vocabulary of emojis but the most terrible prosthesis is the prosthesis of self-esteem
02:37our eye depends more and more on how it is seen in the mirror the number of likes shares comments
02:44we have turned our identity into a product that requires constant market approval
02:49we've turned our soul inside out and put it on display for everyone trembling with fear that it won't
02:56be pretty funny or perfect enough we have created a brave new world where loneliness is an anachronism
03:03because you're always connected but this is the greatest illusion we have never been so technologically
03:10connected and so existentially disconnected we have gathered in digital agoras by the millions
03:16but each one is screaming into the void trying to prove their existence not by the meaning of their
03:21words but by the volume of their digital voice and now we come to the main paradox the black hole at
03:28the center of it all if our eye is formed in a continuous dialogue with the world through
03:34reflection in the eyes of other people through the reaction to our actions then what happens when
03:39this world becomes digital and these other people become algorithms tuned for maximum engagement
03:45who am i then the sum of my posts a collage of selfies a product of the recommendation system
03:54we are playing a game whose rules are written not by philosophers but by engineers from silicon valley
04:00a game where the prize is our attention and the stake is our soul we fragment our consciousness into so
04:08many streams that it loses its integrity we can no longer simply walk down the street without checking
04:14our phones we can't just watch a movie without simultaneously scrolling through a feed
04:19we live in a state of constant scattered partial attention we become multitasking and empty
04:28digital schizophrenics with dozens of accounts but no single whole eye perhaps the greatest battle
04:35of the 21st century is not taking place on battlefields or in political offices it is unfolding in the
04:42space of our skulls a battle for the right to be unified whole attentive bored lonely
04:49real for the right to sometimes pull the plug and finally hear the silence not the silence of an
04:57absence of sound but the silence of the presence of oneself because in that silence in that space
05:04between stimulus and response is where that mysterious eye we so desperately search for lives
05:09it is not in the likes not in the bites not in the gigahertz it is here in the ability to simply be
05:18not digitized not optimized not represented just to be the question is is there enough silence left
05:28within us to hear it or have we forever replaced it with the white noise of the endless scroll
05:34the wifi
05:35milky
05:36the
05:42milky
05:43milky
05:44milky
05:46milky
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