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From the Focus section of The Sunday Boston Globe, October18, 1992
Faking It
By Ken Sanes
From bogus burgers to ersatz Elvises,
simulation is all around us -
and that brings
confusion and sometimes manipulation
Over the past two decades, human ingenuity has made it possible to create
all kinds of fakes and simulations that are so realistic it is getting hard
to distinguish many of them from what they imitate. The process is already
so far advanced that, today, a substantial part of our surroundings are made
up of objects and images and people that appear to be something other than
what they are. There are sugar substitutes and Elvis look alikes; Sy
Sperling hairpieces and replicas of great art; soy burgers and false teeth;
female impersonators and artificially colored food; lip-sync artists who
pretend to be vocalists and television commercials that are disguised to
look like talk shows.
In addition to all the things that now simulate the appearance of other
things, there are even a few products of human ingenuity that are intended
to simulate the appearance of nothing at all, such as contact lenses and
Stealth bombers. These stealth-like objects are hidden in their environment,
creating the illusion they aren't there.
The sheer number of simulations that now exist and their realism is
inevitably changing not only our surroundings, but our psychology and
behavior. One of the most important changes can be found in the fact that we
now routinely experience simulation confusion, in which we mistake realism
for reality and think some of these fakes and simulations really are what
they imitate. We experience simulation confusion when we receive an
advertisement in the mail that is disguised as an official notice, and, at
first, fall for it and assume it is an official notice. And we experience
simulation confusion by accident, rather than by other people's design, when
we make a telephone call and speak to a voice on the other end of the line,
only to realize a moment later that we are talking to a recording on an
answering machine that reproduces the qualities of a live voice.
There is no question how so many simulations came to fill our
surroundings. They are made possible by technology as well as by human
ingenuity, and they are being brought into existence to fill a multitude of
needs and desires. In many instances, simulation has become the great
substitute: Almost anything we can't get, or can’t get conveniently, from
the world as it is, we now seek from fakes and imitations, whether replacing
missing talent or missing hair, and the more realistic technology can make
the fakes and imitations, the more they satisfy our desires.
Simulations provide the military with new and more effective forms of
camouflage. Simulations make it possible for children to collect their own
imitation children, in the form of lifelike dolls that imitate an increasing
number of human behaviors. And simulations provide all kinds of
opportunities for consumers to enjoy the taste of sugar without the
calories, to enhance attractiveness through cosmetics, to own replicas of
works of art and to experience the fictional characters and situations
provided by the imitation realities of television and film. In the kind of
economic and personal calculations that go on today, the simulation is often
more appealing than the original. For example, homeowners who would like the
benefits of a watchdog without the bother now have the option of buying
Radar Watchdog, a home-security device that plays barking sounds whenever
someone approaches the house. In place of a dog, they get bark masquerading
as bite.
As a result of these ingredients - technology, human ingenuity and our
own needs and desires - we have created a society in which much of the
culture and politics, as well as the economy, is geared toward mass
producing, and consuming, simulations. It is a society in which many
simulations are intended to be mistaken for the real thing. But it is also a
society in which simulations that were never meant to be misleading often
end up being mistaken for what they resemble, by accident, thus making
simulation confusion, like pollution and traffic jams, another unintended,
and toxic, byproduct of technology.
Fortunately, as simulations extend
their reach, we are developing new survival skills that help us to unmask
illusions. Perhaps the most important of these is the growing body of laws
requiring that simulations be labeled or clearly marked to avoid confusion.
Imitation and toy guns, for example, were becoming so realistic that they
caused a number of problems, including some of their owners being shot by
police officers who mistook the imitations for real firearms. In response.
there is now a federal law which many officers say still doesn't go far
enough - requiring that imitation and toy guns have orange plugs in. the
barrels or other visible markings to warn others that they are simulations.
We are also adapting to simulations in other ways. Techniques have been
developed to unmask fake photographs, and most of us are learning from
experience how to spot telltale flaws in otherwise convincing illusions. One
might say that humanity is involved in a game of catch-up: Every year
simulations are becoming more convincing, and every year we are getting
better at not being fooled.
Our attempts to avoid confusion are also generating a new problem: We
increasingly suspect the real and the authentic of being fake. We are thus
witnessing one of the many ironies of the age of simulation: Fakes are being
mistaken for the real thing and the real thing is in danger of being
mistaken for a fake.
But all the issues that surround simulation take on their true
significance only when one realizes that advances in transportation and
communications make it possible to send simulations around the world. As a
result, we are developing a global civilization in which it is now possible
to confuse people en masse.
Perhaps the most disturbing example of the use of simulations to confuse
millions of people can be found in contemporary political campaigns. As the
news media have long recognized, the consultants who manage contemporary
campaigns use all the illusions of theater, television and advertising to
influence voters. They stage campaign events for the benefit of television
news, allowing candidates to play carefully scripted roles, surrounded by
props and sets. And they use all the image manipulation and editing
techniques of television, to create campaign commercials that portray the
candidates and the nation in ways that bear little relation to reality.
One of the more brilliant metaphors for the way simulations are being
used to manipulate the public was devised by Stanislaw Lem, a Polish science
fiction writer, in his novel The Futurological Congress. Lem portrays a
future civilization in which humanity sees an illusory world not through a
television screen but directly through its own manipulated experiences. A
pharmacological dictatorship is secretly spraying drugs into the air that
cause everyone to hallucinate a world of luxury, personal health and modern
convenience when, in fact, society, the environment and people's actual
physical integrity are in a state of collapse.
In effect, Lem portrays the greatest act of simulation fraud in history,
in which humanity has been trapped in a kind of psychological stage set in
order to cover up the end of the world. Unable to perceive their true
situation, people are helpless to change events. At the end of the novel,
the main character, who believes he is marooned in this world of collective
madness, comes to his senses and the reader discovers that this future
society is, itself, nothing more than the character’s hallucination. (Of
course, by the end, the reader has no way to be sure that the character’s
discovery that he has been hallucinating isn’t itself a hallucination.) Thus
Lem allows the reader to learn firsthand what it is like to be deceived by
appearances.
Lem’s novel points to one of the central principles of contemporary life:
The ability to manipulate simulations is a form of power and the inability
to see through simulations is a form of powerlessness. Those who manipulate
appearances, today, exercise power over those who are taken in by
appearances.
Fortunately, it is also possible for millions of people to be in on the
unmasking of simulations, which is what happens every time television news
programs expose the way candidates stage events. The same technology and
human ingenuity that are causing simulation confusion are also providing us
with ways not to be fooled - for those willing to search for the truth
behind appearances.
- - - - - -
There's more on simulation at:
The
Age of Simulation
© 1996-2011 Ken Sanes
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