Machines in Our Likeness
Hello again, brothers and sisters. It's time to be human. πββοΈ
It's a common enough theme in science fiction to be almost a trope by now. In the far future, mankind invents for themselves machines with such human-like capabilities that we all but replace ourselves. But like all tropes, before the clichΓ© it was an insightful concept, and one of the best depictions of the concept that I'm aware of came from the mind of Frank Herbert. Writing from the vantage point of late 20th century America, his Dune universe is set 20,000 years into the future, at a time when humans have already created advanced automata and then destroyed them upon realized the danger they posed. As a result, such creations are now banned by the commandment "Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a man's mind."
It is this stark dictum that provides the energy for our letter today. I want to think together about machines, about what they are for, and how they can become pitfalls when followed as guides. Although we often try, we cannot escape from the responsibility of human consciousness, from the demand to weigh the world wisely and make good decisions. How are we going to handle this unique calling?
From the vantage point of the 1960s and 70s, computer technology was an oncoming wave of moral and metaphysical questions for those authors with enough foresight to recognize the future as it popped up all around them. Not just Frank Herbert, but also Robert Heinlein in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and Philip K. Dick in Do Androids Dream of Electric SheepΒ grapple with questions arising from human access to superhuman cogitating power. In fact, the question also concerned authors of the 1950s like Ray Bradbury in Fahrenheit 451 , and can even be found near the turn of the century in the overlooked short story "The Machine Stops" by E.M. Forster (more on that one later). So far I've simply sketched out that science fiction is often predisposed with questions about technology. That is such an elementary observation as to be basically useless. You want to go a little deeper? Alright then: why are we so concerned about technology at all?
It's a fair enough question. Humans spend perhaps inordinate time in the modern world obsessing over future threats from inanimate constructions of silicon and rare earth metals. What's the harm? It makes for fun movies but of course nobody actually thinks Siri is alive or Skynet is just around the corner, right? We are, after all, an eminently rational society. Which of course is why it is so surprising to see us anthropomorphize our technological creations at every turn. We're concerned about technology because we have all together habituated ourselves to Technology as a living, growing organism, advancing and adapting and growing stronger. We have assigned it motives and goals, (constant growth, further encroachment into our personal lives, destruction of old ways of life), and watching it seemingly advance towards these ends daily feels eerie and inexorable.
The most sinister thing about this vision isn't the technology at all, but ourselves. Endowing our tools with life is an insidious way to transfer the brutality of the modern world to their newly-imagined shoulders and off of our own. Pay close attention to humans who assign life and will to technology so that they can assign the blame for their deed to it as well. "Globalizing forces" are easier to stomach when seeking scapegoats for shattered industrial towns than "greedy and incompetent men." And we do this very thing ourselves. Who hasn't sighed and railed against "this stupid phone" for stealing hours and distracting from loved ones because after all, saying out loud "I wanted to escape" seems so heartless. Your phone didn't make you do anything. It isn't magic or evil. Your base nature took hold of whatever opportunity it could to continue slowly corrupting you. The problems we face from technological advance are problems of base, flawed humans creating ever more powerful, and yet also deeply flawed, tools. It's time for humanity to start correctly assigning the blame again.
I'm not (quite) hubristic enough to declare commandments, so I'll just relate my personal resolution: I will not ascribe the miracle of my consciousness to a machine. Resist the zeitgeist that assembles magical robotic sin-eaters from a combination of bugs in the code and the uncanny valley. Accept your fate: humanity. Your problems are most likely caused by your own wrongdoing, and by your refusal to accept that fact. And the problems we face that can be traced to technological causes should be traced back one step further to the insanely arrogant engineers and marketers who love to dress their naked greed in a cloak called Progress. Why should we allow this lie to continue? Be honest about your impulses, your temptations and your failures. If you donβt face them, you canβt hope to defeat them. This isn't a one-step process, and we are all learning and growing slowly. But I can't watch myself retreating from this calling anymore. God help me, I won't allow a tool to be my master when it was intended to be my servant.
Despite how it may appear in these letters, I'm no machine smasher. The way forward is more demanding of us than the solution-free anger of revolution. We have to be true humans. We have to accept the choice given to us from the moment of our birth to either embrace our intrinsic capacity for evil or set out on the quest to find our salvation. Every decision contains a tiny facet of this greater one. If you accept the easy lie that your will to love and create and enjoy is hopeless against the technological drive to consume, then you become a little more like the machines you claim to fear. Perhaps, like the humans in Forster's bleak novella The Machine Stops, we cocoon ourselves in tiny cells because we fear the world outside, fear directly experiencing the power of life's joys and sorrows. It might take a little destruction to break down those walls, but imagine the beauty we will see when we step back into the light and face our life in the sun again.
WGMI π
Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them. ~ Frank Herbert, Dune
He cuts down cedars, or he chooses a cypress tree or an oak and lets it grow strong among the trees of the forest. He plants a cedar and the rain nourishes it. Then it becomes fuel for a man. He takes a part of it and warms himself; he kindles a fire and bakes bread. Also he makes a god and worships it; he makes it an idol and falls down before it. Half of it he burns in the fire. Over the half he eats meat; he roasts it and is satisfied. Also he warms himself and says, "Aha, I am warm, I have seen the fire!" And the rest of it he makes into a god, his idol, and falls down to it and worships it. He prays to it and says, "Deliver me, for you are my god!" ~ Isaiah 44:14-17