In Charles Dickens’ Hard Times a man dies by falling into an open mine shaft in the dark. The mining company had more than a few of these, scattered, and no one questioned them as to why. Why they dug them, why they abandoned them, why they did nothing to warn people they were there. No one questioned them. The mining company was its own justification and now a local died walking across the field at night and stepping into the void…
Dickens rarely suggested anything could be done about corporate power. For him, it was the nature of the human heart that had to be challenged. He expected people to change, especially the rich and powerful, and that would likely be the only way justice or kindness might express itself in the world. Today, we know a bit more about how such things work. And yet, at times, we seem just as powerless as an Oliver Twist.
What he might make of our present world, where we have over time become acquainted with the forces of corporate systems which seem inexorable, regardless of anyones good intentions. (The one instance where he did seem to grasp, somewhat, the forces of systemic momentum was A Tale of Two Cities, and there he showed the terrible consequences of social rage. That ended up with people’s heads lopped off…)
Jill Lepore, who has become one of our keenest observers of how history brings us to our present, has laid out the golden path of system betrayal in relation to our dreams of the future in The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State. While its primary focus is on the current issue of A.I., the larger message she insists on sending is that nothing like this happens in isolation, and certainly not without a lot of history behind it.
The Artificial State is a construct built over time by the human desire to be apart from, separate and above Nature. Control of Nature is necessary for its ultimate exploitation and those driving the machine wish to see any connection to Nature severed. This parallels and is inextricable from the history of slavery, which requires the dehumanization of the enslaved. Slavery is abolished, which requires that they be replaced, and the replacement wends its way through animal exploitation and finally to machines. The Machine Age rises to provide a safe space for those who wish to be apart and above Nature.
But eventually the logic of the Machine supplants even those who think they are in control. Consider the conundrum of the present rush to build A.I. Those doing the building have been the ones raising the greatest alarms over it, and yet just refraining from building it seems beyond their power. The Machine has them. It’s like those of another age who bemoan the loss of natural habitat they themselves are destroying, unable to stop it. A.I. has the potential to destroy humanity (they say) so their answer is to hurry up and build it faster, seeming to hope somehow that the final stage of it will manifest the morality of which they themselves have but a tenuous grasp.
Bizarre.
But Lepore ties it to the science fiction they apparently loved growing up and which they clearly misread. All those dystopias that most of us read as warnings, do not do this, they took as playbooks.
If this sounds like a complicated argument, Lepore renders it cogent and spring water clear.
But as I say, her overall message is that nothing like this ever happens in isolation. It is, ultimately, an emergent property of the culture we inhabit.
Which is to say, that we are the hapless local walking across the glen in the dark about to fall into a shaft left behind by those intent on digging more of them without ever considering alternatives, or even covering over the ones no longer in use or simply putting up guardrails around them, because, why would they? It’s not their fault we live on the same ground they’re trying to remake in some attempt to beat the future.
In order to avoid the shafts, we need to know where we’re going. But to know where we’re going, we need to know where we’ve been. The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State is an excellent place to start.
Pitfalls and Misreading the Future
In Charles Dickens’ Hard Times a man dies by falling into an open mine shaft in the dark. The mining company had more than a few of these, scattered, and no one questioned them as to why. Why they dug them, why they abandoned them, why they did nothing to warn people they were there. No one questioned them. The mining company was its own justification and now a local died walking across the field at night and stepping into the void…
Dickens rarely suggested anything could be done about corporate power. For him, it was the nature of the human heart that had to be challenged. He expected people to change, especially the rich and powerful, and that would likely be the only way justice or kindness might express itself in the world. Today, we know a bit more about how such things work. And yet, at times, we seem just as powerless as an Oliver Twist.
What he might make of our present world, where we have over time become acquainted with the forces of corporate systems which seem inexorable, regardless of anyones good intentions. (The one instance where he did seem to grasp, somewhat, the forces of systemic momentum was A Tale of Two Cities, and there he showed the terrible consequences of social rage. That ended up with people’s heads lopped off…)
Jill Lepore, who has become one of our keenest observers of how history brings us to our present, has laid out the golden path of system betrayal in relation to our dreams of the future in The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State. While its primary focus is on the current issue of A.I., the larger message she insists on sending is that nothing like this happens in isolation, and certainly not without a lot of history behind it.
The Artificial State is a construct built over time by the human desire to be apart from, separate and above Nature. Control of Nature is necessary for its ultimate exploitation and those driving the machine wish to see any connection to Nature severed. This parallels and is inextricable from the history of slavery, which requires the dehumanization of the enslaved. Slavery is abolished, which requires that they be replaced, and the replacement wends its way through animal exploitation and finally to machines. The Machine Age rises to provide a safe space for those who wish to be apart and above Nature.
But eventually the logic of the Machine supplants even those who think they are in control. Consider the conundrum of the present rush to build A.I. Those doing the building have been the ones raising the greatest alarms over it, and yet just refraining from building it seems beyond their power. The Machine has them. It’s like those of another age who bemoan the loss of natural habitat they themselves are destroying, unable to stop it. A.I. has the potential to destroy humanity (they say) so their answer is to hurry up and build it faster, seeming to hope somehow that the final stage of it will manifest the morality of which they themselves have but a tenuous grasp.
Bizarre.
But Lepore ties it to the science fiction they apparently loved growing up and which they clearly misread. All those dystopias that most of us read as warnings, do not do this, they took as playbooks.
If this sounds like a complicated argument, Lepore renders it cogent and spring water clear.
But as I say, her overall message is that nothing like this ever happens in isolation. It is, ultimately, an emergent property of the culture we inhabit.
Which is to say, that we are the hapless local walking across the glen in the dark about to fall into a shaft left behind by those intent on digging more of them without ever considering alternatives, or even covering over the ones no longer in use or simply putting up guardrails around them, because, why would they? It’s not their fault we live on the same ground they’re trying to remake in some attempt to beat the future.
In order to avoid the shafts, we need to know where we’re going. But to know where we’re going, we need to know where we’ve been. The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State is an excellent place to start.
Share this:
Like this:
Related
Proximal Eye