The Two Faces of Janus

Where is High-Technology Leading Human Society?

A KEYNOTE LECTURE
Presented at the Intersymp’97
The 9th International Conference
on Systems Research, Informatics, and Cybernetics

August 18-23, 1997

Baden-Baden, Germany.

by

Winfried K. Rudloff
Governors State University, USA
 The Two Faces of Janus
Where is High-Technology Leading Human Society?

A KEYNOTE LECTURE
Presented at the Intersymp’97

by

Winfried K. Rudloff
Governors State University

PREFACE
At the dusk of the twentieth Century, it is appropriate to reflect on the extraordinary one hundred
years just past and contemplate the future. Over the many decades of our lives, we have seen it all: the ugly
and the beautiful; the two faces of Janus. These faces are human; “zwei Seelen wohnen, ach, in meiner
Brust”, as Goethe said eons ago; “two souls are wrestling in my chest”.
There was the industrial revolution that led us into terrible wars during this century with instru-
ments of mass destruction; that is the ugly. But there were also the Wright Brothers and their magnificent
flying machines that has brought people and peoples closer together; that is the beautiful. The dualism in
nature is exemplified in the Einstein equation where energy and mass are just two seemingly different
forms of the same phenomenon and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle the fuzzy connection between
them.
In the middle of the knowledge revolution, we observe the ascendance of Homo Technicus, a
new humanoid species that has his (or her?) roots in Homo Sapiens, the often not so ”wise” ancestor of
present-day humanity. A close cousin is Homo Scientificus who started it all. Like the Einsteins and New-
tons, Homo Scientificus has not lost the infantile curiosity of what the world is all about. He probes
into the unknown abstracting crazy ideas into mathematical formulas that are eventually translated by Ho-
mo Technicus into machines of enlightenment and machines of destruction.
Today, we experience the proliferation of computers literally over night. They are our toys, they
are our tools. They are the extension of our brains as the steam engine was the extension of our brawns.
Unfortunately, there are also Homo Politicus and Homo Bureaucraticus, the black sheep in the
family of humankind who want to manipulate us with their self-serving goals. To them computers are
means for control, control over our money and control over our bodies and souls.
In this lecture we will make the connections, the connections that are often lost in the turmoil
of our technological society. We will talk about intelligence and our brains which has been declared the
last frontier. We will attempt to link our intelligence, the natural, with that of our machines, the artificial,
and in the process of comparison, we will try to understand both. We will pose again crazy questions such
as, is intelligence, perhaps, virtual reality? And: how can we use our computers and multimedia, the tools
of high technology, to advance the knowledge of our existence?
There is a new creation in our midst that has erupted into a powerful tool of science, tech-
nology, and commerce. We call it the Internet which means connection; connection to our friends, con-
nection to the world. Its chaotic evolution is reminiscent of the infant brain where a chaotic beginning
develops into structure, the structure of thought, of memory, and of creative ideas.
Finally, we should make the connection between our cortex, the outermost shell of the brain
where our logical thinking takes place and the limbic system, the seat of our emotions, in order to bring
into balance the cold neutrality of high technology and science, and our human spirituality as it is reflected
in the arts and our social relationships. Thus, we will have arrived at the ultimate question which returns
us to the two faces of Janus: what will be the impact of high technology on human societies, will it de-
stroy them or will it lead to wisdom, prosperity, and peace on earth where universal knowledge as the final
goal is literally at our fingertips?
 Janus: The Ancient God of the Romans
Janus, the two-faced god (or is it gods born as Siamese Twins?) of the ancient Romans looked
with an old face into the past and with his young face into the future.

According to J. M. Hunt on the Internet, Janus is the “Ancient Roman God of beginnings and ac-
tivities related to beginnings. January is named for him as it is the
beginning of the year. Janus is listed first in prayers. His name is in-
voked when sowing grain as this is the beginning of the crops. His
blessing is asked at the beginning of the day, month, and year.
He is also the god of entrances, of going in and coming out.
Which means he is the god of
doorways, bridges, ferries, har-
bors, and boundaries.
In early statues of Janus,
he has four faces (Fig. 1). In later
depictions two faces looking in
opposite directions (Fig. 2). His
main temple at the Forum in Rome Figure 2. Two-Faced Janus
has two doors, one facing the raising sun, the other the setting sun. In-
side the statue of Janus has one face looking out each door. The doors
to this temple are closed only at times of peace. During Rome's first 700
years the doors were closed three times. Opening the doors may be
symbolic of the way drawbridges were opened in time of war to protect
Figure 1. Four-Faced Janus the early city of Rome.
Janus was in general a rather passive god. However, it is said
that when the Sabines captured Rome they were kept out of the Forum by fountains of boiling water that
gushed from the temple's statue of Janus.”

Over the years, the meaning of the two faces of Janus have changed drastically. Indeed, the Inter-
net lists under the keyword “Janus” among others, Mutual funds,
religious sects, ancient gods, coin col-
lections, a moon of Planet Saturn (Fig
3), an internet site of the University of
Alabama on brain tumor research, and,
my pet peeve, a two-place sailplane,
the Schempp-Hirth, “Motor-Janus”
(Fig. 4). The latter is two-faced: With
the engine exposed, it can take off
under its own power; when the engine Figure 4. Janus Motor Glider
Figure 3. Saturn Moon Janus is retracted, it becomes a high-performance sailplane.

In the following Chapters, we will discuss the two-faced Janus as a bridge between the past and
the future, as a view at good and evil that may arise in our human behavior. We will look with one face to
the East where new powers are emerging, and with the other to the West where cultures seem to be on the
decline. We will try to understand intelligence that has two faces; the physical one we call brain, and the
esoteric, our mind. We will attempt to make connections; the connection between our cortex where logic is
born, and the limbic system, the seat of our emotions. We will draw connections between science and tech-
nology – mostly cortex-guided - on one hand, and the arts – mostly born from the limbic brain - on the
other, and try to reconcile them as part of our holistic human experience.
 The Faustian Dilemma
Goethe’s “Faust” is a classical example of the human dilemma. “Zwei Seelen wohnen, ach, in
meiner Brust”, or; “two souls are wrestling in my chest”. The good as well as the bad is all part of our
human condition. It is with us to turn to the devil or to accept the heavens. This is reflected in all our crea-
tions, in all our artifacts.
During this century, we observed the ascendance of Homo Technicus, a new humanoid species
that has his (or her?) roots in Homo Sapiens, the often not so ”wise” ancestor of present-day humanity. A
close cousin is Homo Scientificus who started it all. Like the Einsteins and Newtons, Homo Scientificus
has not lost the infantile curiosity of what the world is all about. He probes into the unknown abstract-
ing crazy ideas into mathematical formulas that are eventually translated by Homo Technicus into ma-
chines of enlightenment and machines of destruction.
There was the industrial revolution that led us into terrible wars during this century with instru-
ments of mass destruction; that is the devil in us. But there were also the Wright Brothers and their magni-
ficent flying machines that has brought people and peoples closer together; that is the true human spirit
which literally elevated us towards the heavens. We created the atom bomb with all its destructive power
that killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people in one strike, yet the same energy was harnessed to
heat our homes and run our machines. Our chemical plants are producing medicine to help us fight diseases
but they also mixed poisons that murdered millions during the holocaust.
Unfortunately, there are always Homo Politicus and Homo Bureaucraticus, the black sheep in the
family of humankind who want to manipulate us with their self-serving goals. To them machines, in gener-
al, and computers, in particular, are means for control, control over our money and control over our bodies
and souls.
It seems that homo politicus whose legalistic mind institutes more and more rules to have more
and more of the species homo bureaucraticus place more and more obstacles in the path of human happi-
ness: There are about 85% lawyers in the US legislature who concoct laws that manipulate 240 or so mil-
lion people and keep their buddies in the legal profession (5% of the total population) busy on both side of
the bench and on the bench. If the young face of Janus looks into the future it has a terrible vision: Half the
population will be employed to watch over the other half in prison because of our screwed-up legal system.
The politicians in their quest for power lie to the people, exploit them for their own unholy goals, and send
them into wars.
In the midst of the knowledge revolution, we experience the worldwide proliferation of computers
literally over night. They are our toys, they are our tools. They are the extensions of our brains as the steam
engine was the extension of our muscles. But they are also our nemesis.
They solve many problems of living in a complex society: Spreadsheets tackle the chores of eve-
ryday math; word processing has delivered us from the drudgery of handwriting and in the process, we
have become more creative in our expressions. They have made life easier for the writer, the architect, the
designer, and have opened up new vistas for the artist. Synthesizers can create music on the fly that sounds
galactic and out-of-this-world. For the pleasure seekers, computers are a source of recreation.
Unfortunately, they are also used as tools of human control and bureaucratic terror. We can no
longer enjoy the anonymity of our private lives. Somewhere, somehow, our foibles and weaknesses have
become public domain as it is reflected in the flood of advertising that reaches our homes. The secret or-
ganizations of the powerful snoop into every aspects of our existence and collect what they call “Intelli-
gence” (another Orwellian distortion!). They are the faceless descendents of Fouche, the shady French mi-
nister who survived kings, revolutionaries, and Napoleon, and collected information about his friends and
his enemies that helped him survive the good times and the bad. Stefan Zweig, the immigrant writer from
Vienna, composed one of the most fascinating novels about Fouche.
 Relativity and Dualism in Nature
The dualism in nature is exemplified in the Einstein equation:

E = mc2
where energy and mass are just two seemingly different forms of the same phenomenon and the
Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle the fuzzy connection between them:

ΔxΔpx ≥ h/4π or ΔEΔt ≥ h/4π

The Uncertainty Principle stipulates that it is impossible to precisely fix the position, x, of a small
particle and, at the same instant in time the momentum, p. If experimentally we determine correctly the
momentum, there remains a fuzziness in precisely fixing its position. The fuzziness is related to Planck’s
constant by the above equation. This led Pascal Jordan who wrote a book on quantum biology, to the bold
statement in one of his lecture at the University of Hamburg, “how do we know if electrons don’t have free
will or even sexual feelings?”
There is dualism in classical physics. We observe negative and positive charges and deduce that
there must be electrons and positrons, anions and cations, and it is speculated that there are negative and
positive worlds, which, upon collision, destroy each other. One hypothesis even stipulates that the 1908
Siberian disaster may have been such an event.
We observe dualism in biology; there is the male and the female principle. Yet even with humans,
there is often uncertainty: The ancient Greeks talked about hermaphrodites and modern psychology thrives
on homosexuality. Certainly plants can be bisexual.
Here again are the two Janus Faces, the two souls with uncertainty between them; uncertainty of
what is positive and what is negative; what is good or what is evil. We talk about political correctness and
mean that only ours is the absolute truth forgetting that all is relative. Under Hitler, the Nazi ideology was
the only, the absolute truth. In modern times, there are the fanatic fundamentalists of many religious persu-
asions who claim possession of God’s truth, the only and the absolute. They even kill in the name of their
“absolute” truth. Indeed, in recent years, a keyword has crept into our everyday language that is so per-
vious that it is used almost in every sentence, “absolutely”. Anytime someone wants to make a strong
statement, he or she is “absolutely” correct. No latitude is given for the uncertain, the relative, the “I know
that I don’t know”.
But then, it is, perhaps, all in our minds?

The Cerebral Connection: The Brain and the Mind

At this point, we will make the connections, the connections that are often lost in the turmoil
of our technological society. We can talk about intelligence and our brains, which have been, declared the
last frontier (R. M. Restak, 1982). We will attempt to link our intelligence, the natural, with that of our
machines, the artificial, and in the process of comparison, we will try to understand both. We pose again
crazy questions such as, is intelligence, perhaps, virtual reality? And: how can we use our computers and
multimedia, the tools of high technology, to advance the knowledge of our existence?
The brain is the most complex of computers. As such, it is not just a biological calculating ma-
chine, but a sophisticated processor of information. We have tried for many years to emulate our brain with
digital computers. To some degree, we have succeeded and even exceeded: Computers can do intellectual
tasks such as calculations much faster than our brain will ever do. This is the consequence of different ar-
chitecture between the brain and the computer: The brain is slow in its neural action since the processing is
mostly biochemical while computers are fast with electronic signal transfer at almost the speed of light. On
the other hand, the brain has still the advantage that parallel processing is a predominant mechanism where
functions are taking place simultaneous. The generally single-processor computer is fast but lacks the si-
multaneous cooperation of many processors. To be sure, there are parallel-processing machines around
which are extremely fast, but expensive too, and they lack appropriate software to be able – as of this time
- to emulate completely human intelligence.
 There arises the question of the brain versus the mind, another form of duality. We observe that
the brain is a physical entity made up of trillions of nerve cells with their axons interconnecting to others,
thus controlling the mind and the body. The mind seems to emanate from the brain akin to energy being
released from matter. The mind is, perhaps, the software that runs the brain. The artificial neural networks
that we can create with our computers can only vaguely emulate the cooperate effect of neurons in the
brain.

The Internet: Proliferation of Banality or Promotion of Wisdom?

There is a new creation in our midst, which has erupted into a powerful tool of science,
technology, and commerce. We call it the Internet which means connection; connection to our friends,
connection to the world. Its chaotic evolution is reminiscent of the infant brain where a chaotic begin-
ning develops into structure, the structure of thought, of memory, and of creative ideas.
The physical structure of the Internet consists of thousands of computers interconnected through a
vast worldwide communication network. An ever-increasing flood of software runs it. The computers are
the nodes of the network as neural nets are the processing centers in the brain. They communicate through
millions of wires reminiscent of the axons of the nerve cells that are bundled in the corpus callossum where
signals are transferred between the senses and the brain; between the command centers of the brain and our
body with its myriad of complex functions keeping the body alive.
On the Internet, there is wireless communication as well which is comparable to symbolic com-
munication through our senses to the outside world.
Here again are the two faces of Janus: The Internet is proliferating the ugly and the beautiful; the
(b)anal and the sophisticated. In the name of commerce, we advertise the useful, the exciting, and the stu-
pid. We promote our ideologies however outlandish or outworldish they are: The crazy cults and the di-
verse cultures of the globe are equally exposed for our consumption, and our senses are titillated by elec-
tronic pornography and sensationalism.
But then, there is also an ever-increasing amount of knowledge and wisdom that is literally at our
fingertips. The Electronic University without Borders is rapidly becoming reality (W. Rudloff, 1994,
1995). In virtual reality, we can marvel at the treasures of the Earth, the Michelangelos, the Rubens, and
the Picassos. We can learn about the architecture of the ancient Egyptians and Aztecs, their cultures and
their lifestyles. We can listen to concerts of Beethoven or Ella Fitzgerald and can hear the news directly
from overseas via our digital connections.
Virtual commerce is rapidly taking place through the digital connection. Eventually, it will dis-
pose of the middleman and his vast profit margins, when we can contact directly the manufacturers.
We experience the ascendance of global cooperation in fields of science, technology, and educa-
tion that, hopefully, will eventually dispose of the absolutists and the dictators with their evil designs on
humanity.
Again, we can perceive of the negative side where gadgets are built that may block the free flow
of information; information that could promote democracy and freedom of speech throughout human socie-
ties.

Epilogue: Deus ex Machina or the Devil in Disguise?

Finally, we should make the connection between our cortex, the outermost shell of the brain
where our logical thinking takes place and the limbic system, the seat of our emotions, in order to bring
into balance the cold neutrality of high technology and science, and our human spirituality as it is reflected
in the arts and our social relationships. Thus, we will have arrived at the ultimate question which returns
us to the two faces of Janus: what will be the impact of high technology on human societies, will it de-
stroy them or will it lead to wisdom, prosperity, and peace on earth where universal knowledge as the final
goal is literally at our fingertips?
Deus ex machina: In ancient Greek and Roman theaters, the gods were emerging from the stage
machine to intervene in the action. By extension, deus ex machina is anyone (or anything?) that unexpec-
tedly changes the course of events. Such definition seems to suggest that we could influence our destiny.
Like Janus, we could search the past to get answers for our future.
 Obviously, this century has sprung many benevolent but also unholy gods from the machines.
Machines have influenced mankind’s destination and have directed human intellectual evolution for good
and for bad. Atomic power has elevated us to the heights of semi-gods. In fusion, we can create the energy
of the suns and the stars where hydrogen is molten together to form helium (from helios, the sungod) and
release the energy that has sustained life on Earth for eons. In computers, we can emulate, at least in part,
the intellectual functions of our brains. Genetic engineering has succeeded in cloning life. We, thus, have
arrived at our final outlook: Where is high technology leading us from here? What are the problems, what
are the solutions?
There are the problems of over-population; of desertification of the globe; pollution of our envi-
ronment; the clashes of cultures and ideologies, and more and more and more. We can rationalize high-tech
solutions with creative logic emanating from our cortex. But there is the Reptilian Complex in our brain
that dictates our instinctive behavior, the behavior of aggression and defense.
We are again confronted with the Faustian dilemma. In the poetic ballad, “Der Zauberlehrling”,
the sorcerer’s apprentice cries out in despair: “Die ich rief, die Geister, werd’ ich nimmer los”, “the ghosts
that I invoked, I can’t get rid of them”.
In the final analysis, we have to reconcile technology with our human spirituality, our humanita-
rian ethics, and our social responsibility. Airplanes have brought already people into closer physical con-
tact. The Internet has spanned the communication gap between the Globes’ diverse cultures. With an open
mind, we can learn from their ideas and their beliefs.
The scientists should pave the way to a more meaningful existence for all; the engineer could de-
sign the machines that could make life more bearable, but it is the artist, the writer, and the philosopher
who can bring harmony into our existence. After all, where would we be without the dreamers; the artists,
the writers, the philosophers, the scientist, the Disneys, Assimovs, the Gershwins, the Einsteins?

References

Restak, R. M., "The Brain: The Last Frontier", Warner Books, publ. by arrangement with Doubleday &
Co., Inc., New York, 1979

Rudloff, W., “Electronic University without Borders: A Pilot Program in Interactive Global Educa-
tion”. multimedia-supported keynote lecture presented at the International Conference on Interdis-
ciplinary Research and SynergSymp ‘95, in Carlsbad-Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic, 1995.

Rudloff, W., "Education without Borders: Assessing New Technologies for Their Potential in Interactive
Global Education", presented during a workshop/seminar on "Global Education in an Integrated Mul-
timedia Environment: Philosophy, Technology, Application, and Implications" at the International
Conference on Interdisciplinary Research and 2nd Orwellian Symposium, in Carlsbad-Karlovy Vary,
Czech Republic, August 1994

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This project is sponsored by a generous travel grant from GSU. We also appreciate the support
that we always receive from Dr. Edwin Cehelnik, Chairman of the Science Division.
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