Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Goodbye, friends”.
Well, this is my last video for the verge, but we wanted to say goodbye to all of you here properly, but you know i didn’t want to make a video about emotions, because this is a channel about tech. Although i have made videos about emotions about tech anyway, this is the processor series where you try and answer big questions about the philosophy of tech, and we thought it would be fun to make one last video that was about the most asked question that i’ve ever Gotten, okay, actually, the second most asked question. The first most asked question is: what’s a computer and actually, i think i have a pretty good answer for that. We might kind of hint at it in today’s video we’ll get to the actual question in a second right. Now i just want to say that this is not a why i’m leaving the verge kind of video, because that’s our 10-year anniversary poster the verge is awesome and the verge is going to continue to be awesome.
Just without me, in the future, on this channel you’re going to be seeing a bunch of new faces and a bunch of faces that you already know and love you’re going to be seeing more videos with more regularity, so you know hit that subscribe button. It’S the last time i get to say that here at the verge, we think it’s really important to disclose information when it’s relevant. So here’s my disclosure, i’m gon na, go work for google on the platforms and ecosystems team, which means i’m gon na be working in the future software like android and chrome and chrome os. I am very excited for this job, but that’s not what this video is about. This video is about something else, and i am equally sad to be leaving the verge so we’re making kind of a. I don’t know one last ride video.
You know well, these tires need air. Maybe i should try and make a montage yeah. I know it’s a ridiculous bright orange hi-vis jacket, but you didn’t know i got hit by a car last year. So i definitely take this bike safety thing. Pretty seriously got cars on my left, sidewalk on my right, separated from traffic come on. This is great. This is how it should be everywhere. Look, we didn’t want to just ghost all of you on youtube and i wanted to make one last processor video about the big questions about tech. So, even if you’ve never heard about the thing that i’m about to ask just know that it’s about being online. About being a person online, so one last time, here’s a question: where does my online name backlon actually come from so yeah on pretty much every place online? Where i can make a user account? I use the name backlon, which you’re probably thinking, that’s not a name or a word.
It’S hardly even a thing. So why do i call myself backlon? Well, i don’t. I call myself dieter online, i have a username or a handle and that handle is backline. It’S the one that i always use. It refers to me, or maybe the online version of me or maybe a character that i play online. It is a little bit confusing and also again, it’s just a weird word right, backlon, it’s disconnected. It has no history, no etymology, it’s not connected to anything, it’s just a series of letters or sounds that are associated with what i did or bone say and do on the internet.
What is this word? Well uh. I kind of just told you. I don’t think it’s actually confusing in terms of what it actually means.
It’S my online handle by the way handle itself is a funny word right. It’S a thing to grab onto, and the word handle as in a username has a particular history. It comes from somewhere and so do most names right. They come from your parents, usually and there’s some kind of family history or meaningful association with your green au or whatever, but back lawn, it’s a historical. That is what’s weird about that word and why everybody asks me about it. There’S no story to it, but that is the story of it. I just made up a word. It turns out. You can do that people do it all of the time, and the reason that i use the name baclon is that it’s a reminder of the power of language to create both meaning and identity and a reminder of how i think that process is both mysterious and Kind of magical, but we should keep this grounded in tech when it comes to picking user names.
We all do it maybe not every day but all of the time, and you can just use your name or an email or variation on your name with a number or whatever something random like a pokemon or your favorite sports teams. Whatever usernames used to be a much bigger deal than maybe they are today, maybe it’s because so many of them been used and because in so many places you now need to pick a username. That’S connected to your real identity.
But when you’re, making a username to log into a bank or your uber account or whatever, whatever is fine, but when you’re picking a handle, something to represent you on social media, you are making the first of a thousand choices about how you’re going to present yourself Online or some anonymous character online in the world, if it’s not directly, you that choice causes a cascade of associations, for whoever sees that handle like my pal neli’s twitter handle is reckless, and even though nelai himself is not a particularly reckless person. Hey buddy, i’m gon na miss working with you. It does give you like an emotional sense of where nelai is coming from backlon, though it gives you very little. Maybe the sound of the word invokes some kind of emotion in you, but fundamentally it’s arbitrary and arbitrariness is a big important concept in semiotics, which is the philosophy of how meaning is created. And yes, that’s what we’re actually here to talk about right now. So arbitrariness, the idea is that the word computer doesn’t get its meaning from a direct connection to an actual computer, but instead from its context within the network of language, the signifier, the word computer is arbitrary, with respect to the signified an actual computer. Okay, sorry, this is one reason why i think the whole. What’S a computer joke with the ipad is so fun to play with the word and the thing are not literally connected, and that gives you a chance to argue about the meaning of both things. The signifier and the signified, oh, and actually as long as we’re doing a sides, it turns out this whole principle of arbitrariness. Thing is maybe not as universal as people used to think.
Vice recently did a really good story about how the sounds of words turns out to be really similar across different languages. So lots of languages use like an e sound to connote little things, because you know it’s cute anyway, back to user names and now the network of language. I liked the word backlon specifically because it was a new thing in the network of language.
It had no previous associations, which meant that its meaning comes from that uniqueness and also from my own actions and words online. So when it comes to building an identity online, having a blank slate was really appealing to me, but actually i’m sorry to say it does. Go just a little bit deeper than that, because i didn’t just make up a word. I made up a name which is the word you use to identify a person and the difference between a word and a name matters to me too. But to get there, we got ta take a little detour on a boat there’s.
This ancient greek thought experiment called the ship of theseus. There’S this guy named theseus and he’s got a boat and a piece of the boat breaks. So he replaces it.
Is it still? The same boat after he places it. What happens if a board rots and replaces the board? Does it change? What the boat is say over the course of the trip, literally every single board and ore and nail and mast and sail on that boat gets completely replaced. After the very last piece is swapped out, is it still the same boat? Another fun question is imagine somebody picked up all those pieces that theseus threw away and built a boat out of all those pieces. Would that boat then become the ship of theseus? If that rebuilt boat is the same boat, what made it a boat in the first place and actually what made it that specific boat, the ship of theseus, if it’s a different boat after it gets rebuilt? Where did the first boat go? Was there ever really a boat out there, or is everything just a random ass collection of atoms that we have a shared delusion about pretending that they cohere into an object that technically never really existed? But what, if it’s not even a shared delusion at all? What if all each of us are stuck on our own heads and unable to access the real world directly at all, much less each other’s thoughts? How do we communicate at all, and actually just like the ship of theseus? The atoms in your body are different from the atoms when you were born. Are you the same person now as you were, then? Are you the same person as you were two hours ago? That’S five hours ago now some people broken people like me think that bought experiments like this are super fun and some people think that they’re super annoying and you know what they are both of those things. But the point is that there’s not really a right or wrong answer: it’s not a riddle, but instead that any answer you give sort of ends up committing you to an entire philosophical system.
If you play out all the consequences feel free to review the entire history of philosophy, both eastern and western, from heraclitus on through to noam chomsky and beyond, to get some ideas on how to answer all of those questions right now. I think we should probably reel this back into being online and talking about usernames. Whatever the answer to all those boat questions, are, i think, what matters more is that we’re able to talk to each other about a boat and also to actually go sailing on a boat together? We’Re able to create meaning, understand each other and have an effect on the world and when the world that we’re affecting is online, that whole process of meaning and change becomes different.
It’S been accelerated. It’S more connected, it’s more dangerous, it’s more filled with misinformation and threats, but it’s also more exciting and more heartening and it can even be more joyful the speed with which we can now create meaning together and spread. It is amplified and it’s made more fluid, and i think that means that we have a higher responsibility to create and spread better meaning and better things. So, to put it all together here, i think the thought experiment of the ship of theseus and being online put those two things together, and it helps clarify a fundamental thing about the way that words and names have always worked to create, meaning because i believe, whatever Answers you have for what the boat is and how we come to make its meaning, don’t just apply to words and the things that words refer to, but also to names and the people that names refer to those same answers about the boat also apply to ourselves And our identities both online and off and look. I know that our power to define our own identity is limited. I’M not naive about that, but i do think that being online means that we have more capability to rapidly change who we are and what we mean to each other than ever before.
Why is my online name backlon? Because i think that the ways that we create both meaning and identity are mysterious and magical and that we have more power to create more than ever in the history of humanity. And i think we should be more intentional in how we use all of that power. To make better more meaningful things for each other, because this online world is what we choose to make it. Why backlon honestly, i made it up and we’re making the world up together, so let’s try and make it better. Well, everybody thanks for watching, thanks for letting me do one last sembiotics and tech philosophy thing to wrap it up and instead of talk about my feelings because nobody, nobody wants to hear that, and i don’t want to talk about it because it’s hard, i am going To miss all of you, i’m going to miss hearing from you, but you know i’m still around. I’M still on twitter. So please please come say hi i am back on. You might have guessed uh. I want to shout out everybody on the verge video team uh.
They put an incredible amount of work and even more care into all the videos that we make on youtube. Tik tok instagram, coming to netflix soon stay tuned. For that i hear that’s going to be really good, so i’m going to say a bunch of names. Some of them are going to be familiar to you. Some of them might not be, but all of them are super important to the work that the verge does. So, thank you to nori phil maria janette caitlin denise grayson will joel will poor andrew alex diconis alex parkin becca, corey owen and most of all to my very good friend viren who’s been out here in san francisco with me for many years, just doing incredible. Camera work stay tuned for more from that guy bye, everybody .