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Mirror Worlds - Preview

Gelernter proposes creating "mirror worlds" - digital representations of reality captured by sensors that people can virtually explore from home. He envisions a future where entire cities, companies, or other organizations are represented in high-level digital models that continuously update based on real-world changes. These mirror worlds could allow people to observe and understand large systems as a whole. However, others worry that without open access, powerful entities could use sensor data and mirror worlds to surveil and control citizens. Gelernter argues that mirror worlds could also empower ordinary people to monitor organizations if access is broadly shared.

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104 views2 pages

Mirror Worlds - Preview

Gelernter proposes creating "mirror worlds" - digital representations of reality captured by sensors that people can virtually explore from home. He envisions a future where entire cities, companies, or other organizations are represented in high-level digital models that continuously update based on real-world changes. These mirror worlds could allow people to observe and understand large systems as a whole. However, others worry that without open access, powerful entities could use sensor data and mirror worlds to surveil and control citizens. Gelernter argues that mirror worlds could also empower ordinary people to monitor organizations if access is broadly shared.

Uploaded by

vinayak bala
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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2 Mirror Worlds: The Universe in a Box?

A highly-reflective model of Earth’s visible and intangible as-


pects has been outlined by David Gelernter (1991) in his book
“Mirror Worlds”. As the title makes clear, the book’s central
metaphor is the computer as a mirror of the world. Gelernter
suggests that the progress of computing will inevitably produce
a single vast, distributed computer system containing a com-
plete mirror image of the whole of reality. Gelernter’s predic-
tions of the “downloadable” world, the digital mirror of our
reality, will permit individuals to investigate reality without
leaving home, simply by “traveling” in the digital mirror:

Capturing the structure and present status of an entire com-


pany, university, hospital, city or whatever in a single (obvi-
ously elliptical, high-level) sketch is a hard but solvable research
problem. The picture changes subtly as you watch, mirroring
changes in the world outside. But for most purposes, you don’t
merely sit and stare. You zoom in and poke around, like an
explorer in a miniature sub. (ibid.: 15)

However, Gelernter’s apotheosis of the emerging data-cen-


tered view of computing emanates from the realm of human
control over nature, i.e. to transform fractious nature into a
human one, to domesticate frightful elements, and to predict
and to make manageable the power of nature with the aid of
the binary code. Hence, a parallel and synthetic world emerges
out of human imagination, which pretends to be more human
than hostile in nature.
Gelernter is well aware of the privacy and data surveillance
concerns that computers have raised, and much of his thoughts

36
Mirror Worlds: The Universe in a Box?

are concerned with the nature of public space in the era of the
mirror world. One purpose of the Mirror World is to repair
social fragmentation by making it possible to grasp the world
as a totality through its computer representation. In search of
making available what in fact was always available in principle,
Gelernter refers to this form of understanding as “topsight”,
meaning a far-overhead vantage point, a bird’s eye view that
should reveal how the parts fit together.
If the real mirror world tech trend is towards increased data
inputs, which means the proliferation of global sensors, the
leading social trend may be efforts of the powerful to control
access to the most useful new information. Mirror worlds are
democratizing and pluralizing only to the extent that everyone
has access to and can annotate them. Gelernter, in response to
fears that computers are necessarily instruments of social con-
trol through surveillance, argues that the Mirror World will
make it possible for ordinary citizens to turn that same power
of surveillance back against the state:

Mirror World is some huge institution’s moving, true-to-life


mirror image trapped inside a computer—where you can see
and grasp it whole. The thick, dense, busy sub-world that en-
compasses you is also, now, an object in your hands. A brand
new equilibrium is born. (ibid.: 3)

If this access is restricted, citizens can easily become instru-


ments of state or corporate control. As long as this is seen as a
socially-undesirable outcome, much political effort will go into
finding ways to maintain and equalize access.
However, Gelernter’s vision goes hand-in-hand with much
of the overtly articulated motivation for pervasive computeri-

37

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