( Empty ) Technology

Some time ago, when life was simple, I tried to work out what “Empty Technology” is, or what it means. Here’s a snippet of what rhetoric survives:

We are looking to establish a new relationship with technology, with progress, with ourselves. 
We have had enough of technology to restrict and control. Enough of turning the world virtual 
purely for notions of efficiency. Enough of bad interfaces and half-thought-out systems.

We are looking to make technology usable, ambient, helpful, invisible. 
Technology that invites function, rather than dictates it.

I’m not sure if that’s any more specific, though. Is this a good enough starting/turning point?

Our thoughts can cross the globe in a matter of seconds, and yet we are afraid of speaking to the person next to us. We can perform complicated calculations in superhuman time, and yet we are trapped in the schemes of hours and seconds like rats in a cage.

Is this really the sci-fi promise driving technological development into every tomorrow? Convenience, at the sake of awareness, of flexibility, of the individual? Can we say that we truly enjoy technology, or are improved by it, any more than we feel bound and controlled by it?

The context that modern technology has been born in – one of profit, global jostling, and elite control – has given technology a sour taste.

As a result, we talk of saving a world that we have never touched with our own hands. We lust for empathy with people we see only in two dimensions at most. We believe that our very real problems can be solved with /les mots a la mode/ and some well-placed clicks. We attempt to squeeze more into less, never realising that less is actually more.

Empty Technology aims to re-establish technology as being useful to a person, not for the sake of novelty or amusement, but as a way to re-connect with our fundamental, individual aspirations. Through Emptiness, we hope to clear away the debris of distraction. Through Simplicity, we hope to establish clarity and understanding, both of our environment, and of our relationship with it.

The idea of Empty Technology borrows directly from Eastern ideas of emptiness allowing use. Liu I-Ming describes this notion with lucidity:

When a bell is struck it rings, when a drum is beaten it resounds. This is because they are solid outside and empty within. It is because they have nothing inside that they are able to ring and resound.

True emptiness is like the inner openness of a bell or a drum; … If people can keep this true emptiness as their essence, … ever serene yet ever responsive, ever responsive yet ever serene, … then when the dirt is gone the mirror is clear, when the clouds disperse the moon appears…”

“Awakening to the Tao”, Liu I-Ming (p. 35, tr. T Cleary, 1988; Shambhala press)

Empty Technology has many strands, but seeks to unite these to create technology that has true value. Technology that we can truly resound in; that amplifies our natural talent, as humans, to Know.