Fears in the Ether

Like Leslie, I’m genuinely scared.

Throughout this quarter I reflect and realize that through our many discussions we’ve been building to this point and here is where our paths begin to divide. I see that there are those among us, in this class and in our culture, that see the promise of a technological world and embrace it wholeheartedly and with devoted conviction much in the way we see with Haraway and as we’ve seen with others. This promise that they see is different for each of them but among them there is a common thread – they see this promise as a better future, a brighter future, a happier future.

I suppose this isn’t very hard to see and in a sense it isn’t very hard to believe. We have seen that technology, even cybernetics, has given us what might be considered miracles. It allows us, as humans, to tame even death with the invention of the cybernetic organ, or modern medicine, allowing us to carry on lives nearly thrice as long as they’ve ever been. We have this instinctual inclination to try and mold life and maintain it, cling to it and worship it because the alternative is terrifying to us.

For all our efforts in science and technology we can go so far as to map the very genetic code that creates life. We can alter it and shape it to our will but despite our best efforts the only certain thing in this life is that we must perish. Even science and technology cannot detour this course for long and it can provide no answers, no ‘truths’, to what becomes of us after we die. For this there is only the pursuit of faith, of spirit. I will not tether this to any singular religion or any one belief because it becomes painfully clear to me that there is no one right way to live and there is no one right way to find peace with oneself.

Haraway suggests cyborgs as a solution to many of the problems in our human condition. It attempts to tear away from the natural world by stripping us of all that which links us to it. She suggests the removal of gender, of sexuality and many other forms of customary human identification. She even goes so far as to allude to the prospect of a perpetual world, a perpetual life that transcends time and space. Ironic, isn’t it? The solution to human problems, as she would have us believe, is to cease being human altogether. No, I suppose that isn’t irony after all but it does clearly outline what I was mentioning before. This ‘solution’ isn’t so much a solution but an example of fear. Removing gender, removing sexuality and even removing the prospect of death isn’t solving these problems but avoiding them and it shows a great lack of understanding.

On the contrary, Weizenbaum tells a cautionary tale with a bit of irony of his own. I fear that many of us have missed the point of this article. Throughout this article Weizenbaum marvels at the success of ELIZA, not to pride himself on his creation but to beg the question of his responsibility in the creation of this technology that he clearly demonstrates could be misunderstood, misused and even detrimental to society on the whole. He suggests caution, reflection and pause. He suggests that there must be a line draw to what machines can do and what machines should be allowed to do. Weizenbaum clearly saw the ability of human beings to attach themselves to machines but could this be a sign of our times? Could it be that things have degraded to such a level that we long, desire and even ache for any emotional contact that we will extend it to a program that we know well in advance is devoid of any human reasoning and understanding? Or perhaps it is through machines that we feel safe because it is a mute witness without the capacity for judgment – and is this somehow different than confiding in a diary rather than a human being?

I have a biased insight into ELIZA. As I mentioned before I have worked with artificial intelligence and I have even written a version of ELIZA mimicking the same methods of Weizenbaum. I can attest that this is no substitution for a human therapist and while it might provide the illusion of cognative reasoning it is nothing more than that, an illusion. This illusion exists in so much of our modern media that we have fallen victim to it but this connection is cold, sterile and I’m certain that Baudrillard would say that this is a one-way communication.

Here is my fear, bold and unyielding. Have we become so accustomed to attaching ourselves to this machinery that we have lost all sense of what it must mean to make a genuine human connection with another person? We’ve become so trapped by this media that we find communication through a digital means, such as cell phone texting, a better alternative to traditional verbal communication with all its myriad of signals. What is the spoken word without the contact of the eyes and have we forgotten what it means to not only want but to be truly understood by another human being by a singular look alone?

Like Weizenbaum I must confess that I see no good to come from completely devoting ourselves to this technological existence and that a line must be drawn before we lose all memory of what it means to be human – before we become nothing more than machines ourselves.

I would rather live a mortal life with meaning and make my peace with death than live forever as a cold, sterile, genderless machine.