The Future?

Recently I have been re-reading Explorations of the Marvellous – a series of lectures given at the institute of Contemporary Arts in London in 1975. In this collection is a paper by Philip K. Dick, called “Man, Android, Machine”. Dick unfortunately was too unwell to deliver his talk at the time, but his lecture is still included in the printed anthology, a real treat as Dick’s writings (fictional and non-fictional) are always thought provoking and interesting. In this printed lecture, one sentence particularly caught my eye. He states:

“The greatest change growing across our world these days is probably the momentum of the living towards reification, and at the same time a reciprocal entry into animation by the mechanical.”

Obviously, this statement arises as a result of Dick’s personal paranoia about the nature of the (blurring) boundaries between what is human and what is machine, and his distrust of machines that appear life-like (or at least simulate a manifestation of human emotions or actions). 33 years on, I wonder if this statement – based on an extrapolative vision of the future of technology – is as true as it once seemed. I think that nowadays technology is not necessarily about simulating life; the increase in mobile technology means that it has become more an extension of the self. What is being formed through the progression of technology is more cyborg than android.

Dick’s statement that: “We hold no pure categories of the living versus the non living” (my emphasis) is truer than he possibly thought. Whereas he is referring to the reification of the human and the animation of the machine, his statement is accurate today in a different way - in that human and machine function in conjunction with one another. At its least invasive level, technology (through increasing mobility and miniaturisation) functions as accessory, and at its most intrusive level it is deemed necessity.

For example: who in generation Y is without a mobile phone? With a camera on it? And a variety of other functions. How many people deem this technology necessary (cries of ‘I couldn’t live without my phone’ can be heard everywhere). I myself carry round a phone that is a camera, mp3 player, personal organiser, internet browser, radio, calculator, converter, stop watch, alarm clock, document reader, games machine and least of all phone. This technology, like the mobile pc on which I’m writing this, is not animated as such, it is more an extension – or vehicle for expression – of my own animation. Nevertheless, I have to wonder; does this type of combination of human and technology result in reification?
I fear it may.

I have often been heard joking that Wells’s vision of the future of humanity, posited in The Man of the Year Million, is no longer (metaphorically) accurate. Wells foresaw that the species would evolve into large heads (to accommodate great brains holding vast intelligence) and large hands (the teachers and agents of the brain) while the rest of the body would become simpler and less prominent. I would argue, however, that it is more likely that evolution will result in smaller heads housing enormous staring eyes; and large hands will be replaced by giant, hypertrophied thumbs able to type text messages and manipulate games controllers with great skill. Based on our current technology, this seems to be a more accurate Wellsian vision of the future.

Dick recognised, and feared, that humans and machines could potentially become indistinguishable, especially if machines imitate human behaviour. His discussion depends on the human and the machine being seen as separate entities. However, what if human evolution were to allow us to become more comfortably ‘one’ with the machine? We wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between the two, because we would be the machines.

Perhaps Dick wasn’t as paranoid as he should have been?
Now that’s not something you get to say every day.

NB: All of this assumes, of course, a continuing growth of technology and a hypothetical Wellsian model of evolution. This may not actually be the case at all. Not because of the metaphorical nature of some of the concepts discussed here, but because there is no guarantee that there will be any such progression of technology or evolution in the way we currently conceive it. Reflecting the contemporary apocalypticism that permeates our 21st Century culture (with global warming, terrorist threats, declining resources etc) I propose the idea that maybe technological ‘advancement’ as we know it will inevitably have to come to an end. Perhaps, as the earth’s resources are used up, only an elite will have access to technology, the rest of us will devolve into primitivism. That is, of course, if the race is to survive at all. Dick himself said, the universe is kind to us,” it must like and accept us or we would not be here”. He quotes Abraham Maslow, who concludes, ‘otherwise nature would have executed us long ago’.
The question now is, has nature gone off us?

Either way, what we have here are two extremes. As usual the future most likely lies, not somewhere in between, but somewhere completely unexpected.