People have noticed and mentioned there is a similarity in ancient structures to modern technology. A formatted structure and layout, similar to our computer components of today, circuit boards notably. And even outside of cities, we are all on grids for our services. It’s only the more rural areas that might be considered ‘off grid’ as the terms goes.

Cities generally are also on massive grids and seem to pull energy towards them and generates huge amounts itself, being alluring and a draw for some, and completely repellent to others. Feeding from it as it feeds from us. By now I think we presume cities are necessary, and probably just formed ‘naturally’ as a consequence of industry and growth. But I do not think so anymore, more leaning towards a forced enterprise as with everything else. Where people were manoeuvred into those cities through various acts and laws after being kept in the countryside being manual labour for the Lord of the Manor, having a set contract, movement and pay restricted to make sure you stay in place. Kind of like the film The Truman Show, where Christoff is talking about him “he can leave at any time”, but every barrier will be in your way to that, and they will psychologically cripple you if you happen to start to see through the illusion of ‘freedom’.

And as we know, cathedrals and cities aren’t new, so this isn’t a new idea at all, and what made me think of it again was from a film, as usual, which isn’t a new one either. The only new component to the thought, is the regular talk and articles around data centres. A condensed version of a city, or not so condensed when you see how much area they cover. Taking away prime farmland, homes, wild areas, forests and so on. Nothing seems to be spared or sacred when it comes to their placing. And maybe that’s how it was before, when the first suspected components were installed, Cathedrals and Abbeys. Both usually having quite a footprint and foundations. And cities we have today, are vast and often keeps growing as the population does, expanding and innovating, modernising as I guess we call it. But before they were there, they weren’t. And were probably farmland, and houses, and forests as well as relics of the previous times and technologies of their day. Not to say it is right, but to point out this isn’t a new issue or problem we face as a collective.

But I guess the two films that sort of simultaneously tie this idea together for me are Hackers, and Ghostbusters. For Hackers, it is the scene once they have ‘hacked the Gibson’, and are cruising around looking for the garbage file, flying through a simulated ‘data city’ of skyscrapers, looking at the grid from ground view rather than from above as we do with the comparisons. This one just being from below, and you see a Tron like version of a ‘city’. Full of data. And for Ghostbusters, the first one back in the day, where it turned out the whole building was designed specifically to open portals, with the materials being of importance as well as the overall architecture. But scale that whole idea up and merge the two, that the entire planning and layout of the whole city is important, as well as what it is made of it seems. And what it holds, is data, us. Previous cities that might have gone off plan or formed on their own, having potentially suffered one of those ‘great fires’ we hear much about in the past, thereby clearing the way for a new one keeping in line with the others.

And perhaps those buildings and cities have been harvesting us already for centuries, our data, emotions, energy, time and money. And what do get told we are getting in return? The future. Where countryside and rural hold us back, only sweeping technologies and surveillance can save us now apparently. From what, I don’t actually know, because it appears to be the technology and surveillance that is the most looming threat being touted. And just as a data and computers once filled an entire room, and now is a tiny chip, maybe data centres are an evolution like that. Unfortunately meaning we have already been ‘harvested’ for quite an age, all the while busy working to harvest for ourselves and others. Kind of like as mentioned in It’s A Bug’s Life Being An Ant, or the idea in Terraforming, likening the situation to the film Oblivion, where the TET is allowed to freely drain all the fresh water because the ‘survivors’ have been told it’s being taken to a new home. The illusion to keep the project going in a fictional fight for resources, but that’s just the movies, isn’t it? On a screen with a well-crafted script and actors playing their part, nothing like real life at all we are told, but we also appear to receive our information about our ‘real’ illusion from a screen only now, with a not so well-crafted script, and ‘actors’ also playing their role. Where the pieces just get reshuffled now and again, and a new attention grabber is wheeled out to enthral and engage the masses online. But just as many people ask and speculate, one can’t help but ask the questions, what do ‘they’ actually want from us? And where does this all go…

(c) MKW Publishing