{"id":3204,"date":"2017-09-02T16:00:38","date_gmt":"2017-09-02T11:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/?p=3204"},"modified":"2017-09-02T16:00:38","modified_gmt":"2017-09-02T11:00:38","slug":"anxieties-technology-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/2017\/09\/anxieties-technology-future\/","title":{"rendered":"Dead Medium Essay – Anxieties that Linger: Technology and its Future"},"content":{"rendered":"

Looking back at Frankenstein and looking ahead and beyond Westworld and newer myths that incorporate time and the meaning of evolution coupled with the certainty of death, Hassan Mustafa suggests a few links.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Before the end of the eighteenth century, man did not exist \u2026 an invention of recent date. And one perhaps nearing its end \u2013 Foucault<\/em><\/p>\n

One day you will perish, you will lie with the rest of your kind in the dirt, your dreams forgotten, your horrors effaced, your bones will turn to sand and upon that sand a new god will walk, one that will never die \u2013 Dolores, a cyborg, Westworld finale<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In these turbulent times, when we are being bombarded with often false information on daily basis, a critical reflection is necessary to bring calm to this uncertain age and that is what this article intends or at least aspires to do. To ponder on few specific notions prevalent in today\u2019s discourse in compassionate yet critical manner. We must never forget the advice of Anton Chekhov who considered compassion as an essential element in the art of writing, and here I\u2019m bound to invoke the trace, the ghost, the spirit of Derrida, who will guide us in our critical endeavour.<\/p>\n

The political and economic pundits of our age warn us every day that the age of end of man is upon us whether it\u2019s in the form of climate catastrophe or nuclear war or the rise of machines. Similar is the predicament we face through Hollywood movies and TV shows, the post-apocalyptic and dystopian world has become not merely a desired subject but a favourite one \u2013 mostly based on either comics or popular literature. With the dawn of this postmodern age, the question lingers in the sub-conscious and occasionally resurfaces; are we, in fact, obsessing over nothing? Are these post-apocalyptic nightmares merely illusions we have constructed because of the uncertainty that this age has brought?<\/p>\n

Due to the urgent nature of these questions, I have decided to open door on one of these problems, specifically AI (Artificial Intelligence), and reflect upon the obvious question: Will the rise of AI and machine learning be the end\/death of man?<\/p>\n

Among many possible scenarios that are perfectly viable, I would like to reflect on the problem through the prism of man\u2019s relationship with technology since modernity through its continuous association with the figure of death. In this regard, one can pose the question, by reflecting on the literature and philosophy of early and late modernity, what were their presuppositions for this association and what are ours? Finally, should we be looking at the future differently in the light of these reflections?<\/p>\n

******<\/p>\n

When examining the literature and philosophy of early and late modernity, the first figure that truly appears as a terrifying consequence of technological advancement and which over the years has become such a profound myth that everything is perceived from its point of view is the \u2018shrivelled complexion and straight black lips\u2019 of the creature in Mary Shelley\u2019s Frankenstein<\/em> \u2013 a word that is mistakenly associated with the creature rather than with its creator.<\/p>\n

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Also read: Papercuts Volume 18 Dead Medium<\/a>, guest-edited by spec-fic author Anil Menon<\/strong><\/h4>\n
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Frankenstein <\/em>is so dominant in modern mythology that it is employed at every instance where humans feel that we are altering nature \u2013 in debates against genetically modified food, stem cell research, cloning and chemical and nuclear research. Its most potent use these days is against AI and machine learning. Frankenstein<\/em> is the modern Prometheus. Mary Shelley expresses this notion through Victor\u2019s character, who asserts that,<\/p>\n

It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open.<\/em><\/p>\n

However, when one examines the text and context of Frankenstein<\/em>, a relatively different picture starts to emerge. The anxieties expressed by Mary Shelley are in many instances a product of her personal experiences and understanding of society, science and human nature during early modernity. Furthermore, as has been pointed out by Anne K. Mellor, in her article, Making a \u201cMonster\u201d: An Introduction to Frankenstein<\/em>, \u2018The events of the novel mirror the dates of Mary Shelley\u2019s own conception and birth.\u2019 Since Walton\u2019s letters in the story are dated between December 1796 \u2013 September 1797, they mirror the dates of Mary Shelley’s own conception and birth, who was born on August 30, 1797. Moreover, since her mother died on September 10, 1797, according to Mellor,<\/p>\n

Victor Frankenstein\u2019s death; the creature\u2019s promised suicide, and Wollstonecraft\u2019s death from the puerperal fever can be seen as the consequences of the same creation, the birth of Mary Godwin-the-author.<\/em><\/p>\n

Additionally, according to Shelley\u2019s introduction to the 1831 edition of the book, she came upon the idea after she overheard Byron and Percy Shelley (her husband) discussing experiments regarding \u2018the principles of life\u2019. As has been pointed out by Ellen Moers, Shelley had recently given birth to a girl who had died; she had a dream two weeks later, in which \u2018the baby came to life again\u2019, therefore, an argument can be made that the novel expresses those deep psychological anxieties relating to \u2018pregnancy and parenting\u2019 as well. It follows that the figure of Victor Frankenstein can been seen as a parent who failed, who abandoned his progeny.<\/p>\n

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Man is becoming obsolete, a being, that is moving toward extinction not in a phenomenological or existential sense but rather in terms of his inherent and primordial nature.<\/strong><\/h4>\n
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The modern Prometheus is also a figure of violence. The events in the novel construct a narrative of what happens when an offspring is neglected simultaneously establishing the power relation and violence inherent in the creator-creature relationship. The creature can be likened to human beings abandoned by their creator to suffer in this abysmal world; denied their wishes and they resort to violence to attain what they desire, yet they are never able to achieve anything lasting. Violence against the female gender emerges as well, as the narrative progresses with \u2018a recurring hint of incest\u2019 \u2013 a theme that Shelley inherited from Gothic writers like Emily Bronte and Ann Radcliffe.<\/p>\n

Anne K. Mellor has also suggested that Shelley\u2019s novel is a critique of the notion of the sublime and humane present in the works of her husband and other poets and philosophers of her time. The difference is evident upon reflection on Percy Shelley\u2019s edited version of the novel and Mary\u2019s own written version; Mary Shelley sees the progeny as a \u2018wretch\u2019 while he sees it as \u2018evil\u2019. Victor Frankenstein is viewed more favourably by Percy than Mary and in the end the creature is merely \u2018carried away \u2026 in the darkness & distance\u2019 in Mary\u2019s version while in Percy\u2019s version he is \u2018borne away \u2026 lost in the darkness of distance\u2019. In this manner the Otherness<\/em> of the creature, who is not a European and represents something unknown is established, and Victor is seen as imposing a specific meaning on the creature to make sense of his actions and nature.[1]<\/a> Mary Shelley is in a way anticipating post-modern thought by asserting through her characters that, \u2018linguistic definitions of other beings as \u201cmonsters\u201d create the very evil they imagine.\u2019[2]<\/a> Mary Shelley expresses this notion remarkably in the passage, where Victor asserts that,<\/p>\n

I beheld the wretch \u2013 the miserable monster who I had created. \u2026 I considered the being whom I had cast among mankind \u2026 nearly in the light of my own vampire, my own spirit let loose from the grave.<\/em><\/p>\n

This relation between man and the Other<\/em> also brings into light the end\/death of man in its entire force. Man is becoming obsolete, a being, that is moving toward extinction not in a phenomenological or existential sense but rather in terms of his inherent and primordial nature.<\/p>\n

The creative and often highly complex exploration of themes in Frankenstein<\/em>\u00a0don\u2019t entirely contradict the reductionist tendencies that have prevailed in certain circles but they do establish Shelley\u2019s ambivalent and, on occasions, amicable view of science. Moreover, the creature emerges as a far more complex character than generally perceived by most people; he is in a sense as much a product of what Foucault called \u2018discourse\u2019 as are other beings.<\/p>\n

******<\/p>\n

While the figure of Frankenstein<\/em> loomed over Europe at the advent of the Scientific Revolution, modernity and science were perceived in a significantly different context by the people of the subcontinent. A remarkable short story by Ahmad Nadeem Qasmi entitled \u2018Thal\u2019<\/em> narrates the story of how the steam engine first came to the remote Thal Desert and connected it to the rest of the region. The tensions and personality of the central protagonist Misri Khan give us a picture that is diverse and entirely different in its set of presuppositions against modernity.<\/p>\n

The central theme in Qasmi\u2019s story is entirely based on the exploitation of humans by different power structures. Qasmi diverges from Shelley on a number of occasions and places his emphasis not on the alteration of human nature or the technology but on how different power structures dictate and control human beings and their actions. In a sense, he is more close to Kafka and Orwell than he is to Shelley.<\/p>\n

\"Ahmed

Ahmed Nadeem Qasmi. Photo courtesy Radio Pakistan<\/p><\/div>\n

The most significant difference between Shelley\u2019s and Qasmi\u2019s works lies in the fact that the characters in Qasmi\u2019s story are viewing the modern world from an anti-colonial, tribal and religious point of view while the characters in Shelley\u2019s work are not tribal but immersed in modernity and are the colonizers rather than the colonized.<\/p>\n

From the very beginning, Misri Khan, born and bred in the Thal Desert, represents the typical mindset of his people. He comes from a long line of tribal forebears. The first time the steam engine comes to the desert, the British colonialist rulers of the Indian Subcontinent force villagers to build the railway line. Early on, modernity is seen by the villagers as a controlling device enforced on the masses and an identity emerges of the British as the Other<\/em> \u2013 therefore everything that they bring is foreign and unknown. In a sense, to the villager\u2019s the stream engine is a creature in itself, a creature that is infringing on their basic liberties and destroying their traditional way of life.<\/p>\n

In the course of the narrative, Misri Khan is told by multiple characters that this so-called progress is a sign of the end of times and that he should seek the mystical and metaphysical aid of a durbar. After Misri Khan gets married, he promises himself that he will never travel on this abhorrent creature. Later in the story, durbar is presented offering a taweez for an ever-increasing price to anyone who intends to travel on the train as it supposedly protects them from the demons that the creature possesses.<\/p>\n

Even though the central theme of Qasmi\u2019s story is exploitation, man\u2019s relation to technology and modernity is portrayed in a similar manner to certain interpretations of Shelley. Additionally, while the death of primordial nature isn\u2019t under discussion, the death of tradition because of technological advancement certainly is. Early in the story, this comes to light in a most forceful manner, when Misri Khan’s son insists that he wants to marry someone of his own choice to the anger and dismay of his father. Misri Khan blames modernity for this rebellion, this assumption on the part of his son that the traditional way of marrying is not only optional now but even culturally backward. Qasmi expresses this tension quite brilliantly, when he narrates that,<\/p>\n

A day before the end of holidays, while having dinner, Misri and Nasho told Metha that they have found a great partner for him. \u2018We are talking about the village headsman\u2019s brother\u2019s daughter, do you know Halima?\u2019 Their son remained silent till Misri and Nasho were done talking, then he got up and said, \u2018Marriage is a personal matter. I will marry someone of my own choice. You don\u2019t have to worry about my marriage anymore.\u2019 \u2026 It came to Misri\u2019s mind that world truly had changed for worse, since people have become so impertinent. Those who take a loan never return and those who return make you feel that they are doing you a favour. \u2026 Thal is developed now but people living in Thal are ruined, like he was ruined; now his own son was insisting that he doesn\u2019t need them anymore to get married.<\/em><\/p>\n

Furthermore, death of tradition is also evident from the fact that several people in the narrative leave the village and end up settling in the city, the traditional familial structure becomes optional and in a manner obsolete. The role of the durbar and its influence remains important but only for certain families. Many villagers no longer see the logic of continuing the tradition because of financial consideration. Several people end up embracing certain aspects of modernity while abandoning some of the traditions of their forefathers.<\/p>\n

******<\/p>\n

The anxieties expressed in novels by Mary Shelley \u2013 if interpreted from this angle \u2013 and others during that era were in a sense about the society to come. However, by the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries figures like Heidegger and Nietzsche had already proclaimed that the \u2018death of god\u2019 or \u2018death of metaphysics\u2019 had left society fundamentally in disarray. Yeats captures this mood in a notable verse of the poem entitled The Second Coming<\/em>, where he states that,<\/p>\n

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;<\/em><\/p>\n

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,<\/em><\/p>\n

By the mid-twentieth century those anxieties had reached an entirely new height; the level of destruction and dissolution of previous social structures brought upon by machines and mechanical thinking was more than enough to convince several intellectuals that technology was a serious threat or at least how technology was utilized was deeply concerning. In the midst of the chaos new forms of antagonism emerged between those who favoured this sort of advancement and those who opposed it. With Mary Shelley\u2019s work in the background, the question of the role of technology and its essence remained a mainstream philosophical problem during the entire twentieth century.<\/p>\n

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According to Adorno and Horkheimer, the Enlightenment project was eventually going to turn on itself, and the destruction in the first half of the twentieth century was a logical conclusion to the domination and oppression that enlightenment rationality represented.<\/strong><\/h4>\n
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Isaiah Berlin was a key figure in this debate. In one of his seminal works, ‘Roots of Romanticism’<\/em>, he declared that any return to romanticism or any philosophy that critiques science and technology from any irrational point of view like the religious or metaphysical would be suicidal. According to him, figures like Hamann, Blake, Shelley and others like them were \u2018charlatans and wanders\u2019 and that age had favoured \u2018all kinds of necromancers and chiromancers and hydromancers\u2019.<\/p>\n

Adorno and Horkheimer\u2019s formative work ‘Dialectic of Enlightenment’<\/em> stands in direct opposition to the claims made by Berlin. According to them, enlightenment rationality was reckless in providing answers and unwilling to even a cast a doubt regarding its own presuppositions. The essence of this knowledge \u2013 knowledge is perceived as power \u2013 is technology.\u00a0 Enlightenment rationality, according to them, only knows exploitation and subjugation.<\/p>\n

Adorno and Horkheimer\u2019s work was written in the shadow of Hitler and Stalin, in the world of Auschwitz and Hiroshima, a Kafkaesque world, bound on destroying itself. According to them, the Enlightenment project was eventually going to turn on itself, and the destruction in the first half of the twentieth century was a logical conclusion to the domination and oppression that enlightenment rationality represented.<\/p>\n

This radical thesis marked a major divergence in the European history of ideas, since it challenged the \u2018destructive creativity\u2019 of modernity and its obsession with objectifying the subject. The end of man was essentially the objectification of man, dealt like a commodity, deprived of its humane elements \u2013 compassion, mercy, love, expressed through the discourse on aesthetics and ethics or to put it in Rousseau\u2019s words \u2018I feel therefore I am\u2019. The optimism expressed by Enlightenment thinkers like Condorcet was shattered by death camps, death squads, Gulag, threat of nuclear annihilation and the sheer violence of everyday life. The Enlightenment project under those political and economic conditions was not a viable option any more.[3]<\/a><\/p>\n

The scepticism levelled against modernity in the works of Joyce, Proust, Mallarme, Benjamin, Adorno, Nietzsche, Kafka, Freud and few others, marks the beginning of that end\/death of the enlightenment man \u2013 epitomized in Alexander Pope\u2019s injunction that \u2018Proper study of mankind is man\u2019 \u2013 and a return to human subjectivity in all its complexity and multiplicity which paved a way for post-structuralist thought.<\/p>\n

******<\/p>\n

After a simple reflection on the philosophical and literary trends of the past, the thing that becomes immediately obvious is that the anxiety about technology expressed across the centuries is significantly different from the one expressed today. The figure of death in its relationship to technology was invoked for protection of some mythical\/primordial nature or certain traditions as is evident from Qasmi\u2019s work.<\/p>\n

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…The question in today\u2019s world is not merely how technology affects every aspect of our lives or whether it\u2019s truly the end of the subject but rather who controls technology?<\/strong><\/h4>\n
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Additionally, the question in today\u2019s world isn\u2019t about primordial nature or death of certain social and cultural practices anymore, as is represented by Shelley, Qasmi and Berlin\u2019s work, but as Foucault rightly pointed out about death of man or man becoming optional. In the past, a machine used to become obsolete whenever a new and more advance machine was invented. Furthermore, G.L. Kraus points out in her article \u2018The Great A.I. Awakening\u2019<\/em> that the rise of AI will not only take over jobs that consist of repetitive tasks but will also take over the jobs of economists, financial analysts, architects and several other major professionals. Eventually, basic diagnosis at hospital will be done by machines as well due to their accuracy and efficiency. In fact even human relationships \u2013 intimate or otherwise \u2013 will be dictated by machines as imaginatively constructed in the movie Her<\/em> or in the TV shows such as\u00a0Black Mirror<\/em>. Face to face conversation between humans and perhaps even any communication at all will become optional.<\/p>\n

An opposing view on the other hand is Derrida\u2019s contention that man\/subject has been moving away from its primordial nature since the beginning of civilization. Every social, political, or economic structure is a construction embedded in a certain historicity and is evidently a supplement or extension \u2013 an artificial extension. So the entire notion of the end of man might be the end of a certain kind of man \u2013 a certain conception of man \u2013 and that man\u2019s obsolescence will give way to the birth of a new kind of subject, who will carry in himself\/herself an end, a certain death \u2013 or as Dolores pointed out in Westworld<\/em>, this new creature might never die. Moreover, man is still represented in totality \u2013 anthropologism \u2013 hence even a partial attempt at destabilization is viewed as end of man \u2013 symbolizing death of human beings, if not always literally at least metaphorically.<\/p>\n

\"Jacques

Jacques Derrida. Photo courtesy The Philosophy dot com<\/p><\/div>\n

Derrida, in his essay ‘Ends of Man’,\u00a0<\/em>also asserted that ends of man lies essentially between two ends \u2013 one is employing language within the system and deconstructing the implicit notions and the other involves a radical shift in the ground. In this way, those who are critiquing human superiority over the animal to establish animal rights and ecological rights are essentially getting rid of the onto-theological (metaphysical) grounding of subject\/man that is exclusionary and tyrannical. While a shift toward grounding consciousness outside\/without man, essentially deals a blow to the same onto-theological grounding, however in a different manner \u2013 to put it in Nietzsche\u2019s terminology in a different style \u2013 <\/em>hence giving way to a more inclusive subjectivity.<\/p>\n

In a manner, Derrida\u2019s analysis comes closer to Proust\u2019s conception of man, who has asserted in his seminal work ‘In Search of Lost Time: Volume Five’\u00a0<\/em>that,<\/p>\n

I was not one man only but the steady advance hour after hour of an army in close formation, in which there appeared, according to the moment, impassioned men, indifferent men, jealous men. \u2026 In a composite mass, these elements may, one by one, without our noticing it, be replaced by others, which others again eliminate or reinforce, until in the end a change has been brought about which it would be impossible to conceive if we were a single person.<\/em><\/p>\n

Also, in the light of these technological advances, the question in today\u2019s world is not merely how technology affects every aspect of our lives or whether it\u2019s truly the end of the subject but rather who controls technology? What biases exist in the data that is being utilized by programmers? What new discourses will emerge in the future in the context of these developments? And who will be \u2013 to put it in Foucault\u2019s terms \u2013 The Other<\/em> in this power structure?<\/p>\n

Shelley, Qasmi and the philosophers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries will continue to be interpreted in new and previously unimagined ways. As Derrida puts it in his essay \u2018Signature, Event, Context\u2019,<\/em> \u2018disappearance in principle will not prevent from functioning and from yielding and yielding itself to, reading and re-writing\u2019 and these new readings<\/em> might enlighten us about newer facets of technology that we were previously unaware of. However, the question that will continue to haunt us and whose answer might elude our grasp at least for now, is whether, from the ashes of these dead technologies, what sort of new creature will arise? It remains to be seen whether this creature will herald the end of the subject <\/em>or will it become a subject<\/em> itself.<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Following the line of thinking employed by Anne K. Mellor, I\u2019m making a post-structuralist move to make a claim of Mary Shelley\u2019s postmodern proclivities.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Mellor, A. K. (2003). Making a “Monster”: An Introduction to Frankenstein. In E. Schor, The Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley <\/em>(p. 23). London: Cambridge University Press.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Harvey, D. (1992). The Condition of Postmodernity<\/em>. London: Blackwell Publishers.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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Hassan Mustafa is a reportage editor at Papercuts magazine.\u00a0He is pursuing a master\u2019s degree in International Political Theory from The University of Edinburgh and intends to do a PhD in Politics and International Relations.\u00a0He has previously published poems and fiction in The Bombay Review, Outrageous Fortune and blogs at Global Ethics Network.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Will artificial intelligence be the end of humans? Papercuts reportage editor Hassan Mustafa looks at our relationship with technology through the concept of death in modern literature and philosophy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":3208,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[91],"tags":[773,765,763,770,772,769,776,775,810,774,766],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3204"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3204"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3204\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3215,"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3204\/revisions\/3215"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}