2025-02-16
Androids be us
In Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick explored the idea that human beings might become androids, beings without empathy, by virtue of too much interaction with automation and artificial intelligence. "A metaphor for people who are physiologically human but psychologically behaving in a non-human way." In Blade Runner, Ridley Scott took the story in the opposite way, by wondering what happens when (artificial) androids develop empathy?
Both are beautiful works of art in their own right, but it seems to me that Dick's fear was much more realistic after all. Indeed, that is precisely the danger Norbert Wiener (whom Dick read) warned us about in his Human Use of Human Beings: "The real danger is that such machines, though helpless by themselves, may be used by a block of human beings to increase their control over the rest of the race or that political leaders may attempt to control their populations through political techniques as narrow and indifferent to human possibility as if they had, in fact, been conceived mechanically".
Both are beautiful works of art in their own right, but it seems to me that Dick's fear was much more realistic after all. Indeed, that is precisely the danger Norbert Wiener (whom Dick read) warned us about in his Human Use of Human Beings: "The real danger is that such machines, though helpless by themselves, may be used by a block of human beings to increase their control over the rest of the race or that political leaders may attempt to control their populations through political techniques as narrow and indifferent to human possibility as if they had, in fact, been conceived mechanically".
Labels: #AI, #Cybernetics, #Film, Androids
2018-12-12
Orwell, Nationalism and Film
I have always been (deeply and seriously) patriotic for several places and ways of living---Portugal, USA, Portuguese-speaking World, English-speaking World, even patriotic for Disco and Punk---but I have never been a nationalist for anything. Indeed, I have always been fiercely anti-nationalist in the ways so eloquently expressed by George Orwell (whom I only consider marginally second to Graham Greene and Fernando Pessoa):
The recent excellent (doubleplusgood) article by Kanishk Tharoor is a fantastic piece on nationalism in film from a similar viewpoint, but emphasizing the historical errors that the nationalist lens imposes when we look back at pre-nationalist human experience:
Ultimately, Orwell's 1984 was about the end of history, when historical facts are easily re-written to adapt to the present circumstances. Fake news are not a modern invention. Doubleplusungood. Which allows me to plug in also one of my favorite songs (and albums) from the Eurythmics' 1984 soundtrack.
"By ‘nationalism’ I mean first of all the habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects and that whole blocks of millions or tens of millions of people can be confidently labelled ‘good’ or ‘bad’(1). But secondly — and this is much more important — I mean the habit of identifying oneself with a single nation or other unit, placing it beyond good and evil and recognising no other duty than that of advancing its interests. Nationalism is not to be confused with patriotism. Both words are normally used in so vague a way that any definition is liable to be challenged, but one must draw a distinction between them, since two different and even opposing ideas are involved. By ‘patriotism’ I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally. Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power. The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and more prestige, not for himself but for the nation or other unit in which he has chosen to sink his own individuality."
The recent excellent (doubleplusgood) article by Kanishk Tharoor is a fantastic piece on nationalism in film from a similar viewpoint, but emphasizing the historical errors that the nationalist lens imposes when we look back at pre-nationalist human experience:
"It is a pity that so many historical films feel so obliged to place the imagined nation at their emotional core. That not only distorts understandings of the past, but it suggests that the past can only be relevant and interesting if it supports conventions of the present."
Ultimately, Orwell's 1984 was about the end of history, when historical facts are easily re-written to adapt to the present circumstances. Fake news are not a modern invention. Doubleplusungood. Which allows me to plug in also one of my favorite songs (and albums) from the Eurythmics' 1984 soundtrack.
Labels: #1984, #Eurythmics, #Film, #MontyPython, #Nationalism, #NationalismIsEvil, #Orwell, #Patriotism
