As technology develops and becomes more and more advanced one question is evident. How will technology affect humanity? In an interview with Social Bling Rick Moss discusses how he has “two crazy ideas for saving humanity” and how he incorporated both of them into his novel, Ebocloud (Michele 2011). From the book, it appears that he is referring to how technology can save humanity. Moss speaks through Desalt to describe his two hypothesized ways. In reminiscing on a conversation with Arthur C. Clarke, Desalt explains how either a catastrophe will leave humanity to adapt physically to their new new circumstances (leaving technology obsolete) or that technology will “free us from ourselves [and our] physical bodies” (complete dependence on technology) (Moss 130). By the end of Ebocloud, humanity seems to be transitioning towards the latter extreme. According to Radu, his developments with the cloud will combine the micro (human) and macro (cloud) to create a meta structure, which will move “humans forward along their natural evolutionary pathway” (Moss 434). In the epilogue, Eli’s description of how “your [perception of] ‘me’ is blurred” during cloud connection suggests that humanity is on its way toward a meta-structure and one step closer to abandoning physical bodies (Moss 442). Despite the apparent positive advances of technology, there is still one critical downfall. Doug introduces the idea earlier in the novel when he expresses his concern about technology because he recognizes that “when we add something this big into our lives, we’re going to give up something equally big” (Moss 342). Although at the time it was unclear what “something” was going to be, upon the books conclusion the reader learns that traditional love is lost to a new form of ebolove. Advances in technology may have escalated humanity, but at a huge cost. With this in mind I leave the reader with a question: Is it worth it?
Moss, Rick. Ebocloud. 2nd ed. New Orleans: Aqueous, 2013. Print.
Moss, Rick. “EBOCLOUD: Dare to Imagine Life After Facebook | SocialBling: Social Workflow System Development.” Interview by Stephanie Michele. Web log post.SocialBling. N.p., 9 Mar. 2011. Web. 15 Nov. 2013. <http://www.socialbling.com/ebocloud-dare-to-imagine-life-after-facebook/>.