Deepak Chopra wants to use Windows Vista to heal Collective Soul.
Software megalodon Microsoft has harnessed the positive energy of Deepak Chopra in its most recent marketing campaign. In tat for Apple's tits, a riposte to the wildly annoying Mac vs. PC ad campaign that Cupertino, CA based Apple Computer has inflicted on the long-suffering public, this new volley of fake rivalry turns the Mac campaign on its ear with the intention of demonstrating that everyday people in all walks of life have adapted their behavior to be compatible with doing whatever it is they do on a computer running Microsoft Windows. Instead of demonstrating that Windows computers are not crappy and bogged down with a lot of conflicting software out of the box, this sounded more to me like the plot to a science fiction movie entitled World of Cyborgs! starring James Spader. What really tickled my irony reflex was when I saw feel-good guru Deepak Chopra holding forth on the wonders of computing.
“We're all a PC, inseparably one,” the beatific Chopra says, going on to tell us that, “In many ways, I've tried to figure out, ‘what is the Internet, what are computers doing?'”
In many ways, I have to say this sounds remarkably like conversations I've had with my mom as she tries to reset the password on her email account (sorry, Mom, it's true).
What Deepak Chopra thinks computers are doing is “cloning our collective soul.” “If you want to know what human consciousness is in this stage of evolution,” he says, “then take your computer and visit the Internet.” Ignoring the fact that the idea that computers are cloning anything calls up terrifying forebodings of an age when Skynet will rain terminators down on us to grind human civilization like so much meal (as though we're not doing a good enough job at it ourselves already), let's take that Great Space Coaster ride to the land where “you can find everything that the human mind can conceive, imagine as of this moment.”
I like sensational new varieties of pr0n, amateur political reportage, neo-radical Christian rants, mindless exhibitionism, and free shipping on Zappos.com just as much as the next guy, but to believe that the Internet contains everything that the human mind can imagine at any moment is fucking scary. The notion makes my blood run cold with hopelessness.
Chopra plugs away for Microsoft by asserting that the Internet is allowing for the development of a collective intelligence where the sum of a group of people gathered online's intelligence is greater than its parts. I somehow don't think Deepak Chopra listens to Devo.
Therefore, I can only imagine that when he says that using computers on the Internet will bring about a global healing of the rift in our collective soul, he is talking about 90s alternative rock sensations Collective Soul. I didn't know they were sick, but I am kind of amped about seeing them cloned, intact, and playing on two stages simultaneously when they make next year's state fair circuit.
