The Terror and Appeal of the Machine
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Contents
- Introduction
- The Self vs. The Other
- The Computer as Other
- The Robot as Other
- The TV as Other
- The Other becomes a Part of the Self
- Conclusion
- References
Introduction
There is a thin line between pleasure and pain, so too with fear and attraction. Sherry Turkle (1984) noted that "what disturbs is closely tied to what fascinates and what fascinates is deeply rooted in what disturbs" (p. 33). A continuous thread running through the literature and films we have explored this semester is humankind’s relation to "the machine." The machine is symbolic of "the Other" which helps define "the Self."
Through time, the Other has been something to embrace and something to fear. The Other helps make the boundaries between Self and not-Self more clear, but the Other can also threaten the existence of the Self. The Other can be as innocuous as one’s mate and as frightening as Satan. In science fiction, the Other is often some representation of technology. Patricia Warrick (1980), in her book The Cybernetic Imagination, noticed trends in science fiction relating to the love/hate relationship humankind has with its own creations:
The literature about automation from the early antecedents to the present reveals an interesting pattern of oscillation. From the Greeks through the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance, man’s imagination created optimistic visions of the fruits of technological innovation. Then the opposite view began to appear…. Early American SF, splitting away from mainstream fiction in the twentieth century, was optimistic. But since about 1950, it has become negative…." (pp. 55-56)
Brian Stableford (1987), in his book The Sociology of Science Fiction, found a slightly different trend: "The science fiction of the Fifties clearly gave voice to public anxiety about technological ‘progress’ and its products, but the dominant opinion within the genre … held that this anxiety was unjustified, and that the fear was misdirected. The real danger … was not the machines themselves, but our moral and intellectual inability to deal with them" (p. 110). Either way it is seen, technology plays a role in the dilemmas of humankind — it embodies the evil, it mirrors the evil or it makes the evil possible.
When humankind creates something, it is often compared to playing God. The act of creation is seen as God-like. The implications of this comparison are both appealing and terrifying. If people can play God, then they can also have power like a god. However, there is always the fear that God will frown upon such actions and the fool who plays God will pay dearly for such audacity. There is a Native American tribe which purposely puts imperfections into their art so as not to anger the gods. "Technology can now create almost anything man can imagine; and man is horrified and fearful when the products of his imagination become actual" (sic, Warrick, 1980, p. 56).
In early science fiction there is a clear distinction between Self and Other, human and machine. The Other was a machine, a computer or a robot. It was distinct and separate. There was no melding, no physical symbiosis, no interfacing between the human Self and the mechanical Other. But as time progressed, and science fiction changed along with the growing capabilities of technology, this separation became narrower and narrower, until in some more recent science fiction stories it is hard to tell where human stops and machine begins. There are now stories where "a man-machine symbiosis in which the distinction between organic and inorganic is no longer possible" (Warrick, 1980, p. 206).
This essay will explore the progression, through science fiction, of the narrowing distinction between Self and Other. What is the difference between Self and Other? Is there a difference? Does there need to be a difference?
The Self vs. The Other
Science fiction explores "the striking ways in which technology is transforming our perceptions of our relationship to time, memory, self-identity, and "reality" (McCaffery, 1991, p. 7). It often challenges the concepts of what is Self, what is Other and are they really that distinct and separate. Many science fiction stories ask the questions: "What happens to man’s image of himself when machines begin to acquire some … [human] characteristics? If machine intelligence can perform the functions of human intelligence, is man then nothing more than a machine?" (sic, Warrick, 1980, pp. 62-63).
Stableford (1987) discusses the common characteristics that readers of science fiction have. One of these characteristics is vulnerability. Vulnerability is often felt when one feels a lack of control in one’s life. Young people are most likely to experience a sense of vulnerability. They do not have control of their lives. They must follow what their parents say and what their teachers say. Stableford explains why science fiction appeals to young readers: "There is a certain satisfaction for the vulnerable and the insecure in being able to believe that vulnerability and insecurity are conditions of the universe, and that the world itself may be threatened as it threatens them [the readers]" (p. 75).
Stableford’s (1987) research of science fiction literature and the people who read it gave him "a very strong impression of the isolation and alienation of many recruits to habitual science fiction reading" (p. 91). He even went so far as to say that "the extreme science fiction enthusiast tends to obtain his sense of identity form his notion of how he relates to a concept of the universe at large … instead of from his notion of how he relates to other human beings" (sic, p. 94). In science fiction, the Other is no longer a person, but a universe, an alien or a machine.
Many, if not most, of the early science fiction stories ended positively. However, as society becomes more complex and technology invades our everyday lives, science fiction has become less optimistic. Many stories no longer have such rosy endings. Stories either end darkly or have a dark flavor. For example, Blade Runner, by Philip K. Dick, ends with a feeling of sadness or despair. Deckard can no longer perform his job, his goat — which hasn’t even been completely paid for — has been pushed off the side of his building, and he now has a pet ersatz frog to feed fake flies to — instead of the real one he thought he had caught.
Stableford (1987) claims that "science fiction works because it allows us to perceive and explore new possibilities … for human existence" (p. 91). Sometimes the possibilities are positive and appealing, sometimes they are negative and frightening.
The Computer as Other
In the movie War Games, a computer with a mind of it own almost destroys the world. In the movie The Terminator, a computer created by Cyberdine Systems sends a robot back in time to kill the mother of its nemesis — John Conner. In the short story "The Evitable Conflict" by Isaac Asimov, computers run the world.
Computers are compelling machines. They are "stupid" in that they only do what you tell them to do. But they are "smart" because they are thinking machines. Turkle (1984), in her book The Second Self, explores the relationship people have with computers. She suggests that they are mirrors, that they reflect what is already inside the user. This has implications for the Self/Other dichotomy. In one respect, the computer is Other. It is separate, distinct. It is not connected, physically, to the user. But if it is a mirror, then it is at the same time an integral part of the user, psychologically.
"The simplest force that makes the computer seem more than a machine among other machines is its behavior…. It is hard to capture the computer by seeing it in terms of familiar objects or processes that existed before it was invented. The computer is not ‘like’ anything else in any simple sense" (Turkle, 1984, p. 272). Of all the machines we have created, the computer is the most like us. It has been used in analogy to describe how the human mind works. Computers are made of logic. "And thinking about the core of a machine as the exercise of logic leads people … to thinking of the computer as mind" (Turkle, 1984, p. 274).
This is a scary and yet compelling idea. In computers, we have a technological object that is both Self and Other at the same time. As a mirror, it can reflect things about ourselves that we may not be able to see. The cliche goes one’s favorite topic is usually oneself. With a computer one can learn a great deal about oneself. But at the same time it is terrifying. Can learning about oneself be addictive? The computer is just a machine. Are we just biological machines? or do we have free will? People tend to have strong opinions on these topics:
"The vehemence of response expresses our stake in maintaining the line between the natural and the artificial, between the human and the mechanical. Discussion about computers becomes charged with feelings about what is special about people: their creativity, their sensuality, their pain and pleasure. But paradoxically, when faced with a machine that shows any degree of ‘intelligence,’ many of these same people seem pulled toward treating the machine as though it were a person." (Turkle, 1984, p. 271)
The Robot as Other
It is relatively easy to see the computer as Other. Computers don’t look like people, they don’t walk around and they don’t have faces. But what happens when a computer brain is placed in a humanoid shell? Are robots harder to see as the Other? Many authors have explored the Self/Other dichotomy with robots, both mechanical and humanoid in appearance.
In his robot stories and novels, Isaac Asimov explored the robot other. Because his robots were ruled by the three laws of robotics, they were benevolent. For example, in "Robbie," the robot is the perfect companion and nanny. Asimov’s robots free humankind from doing the drudgery work.
But not all tales of robots are so optimistic. There is the fear that robots will replace us, leaving us with no reason to exist. It is the fear, as Baudrillard (1991) suggested, of "the hegemony of the robot, of the machine, and the dead work over living labor" (p. 180). In movies like Westworld, Futureworld, The Day the Earth Stood Still, and The Terminator, robots are a menace to humankind. The robot is shown to be a relentless, virtually unstoppable foe bent on the hero or heroine’s destruction.
The terror becomes even stronger when the robot is humaniform — is indistinguishable from a person. How can you fight an enemy when you can’t recognize it? How can you recognize the Other when it looks just like the Self?
Asimov also explored this idea in both "Evidence" and "The Bicentennial Man." According to Warrick (1980), the implication of "The Bicentennial Man"
is that a line between the animate and the inanimate, the organic and the inorganic, cannot be drawn. If the fundamental materials of the universe are matter, energy, and information patterns (or intelligence), then man is not unique. He exists on a continuum with all intelligence; he is no more than the most highly evolved form on earth. (p. 73)
But what is so frightening about a robot in the form a human? For one, if a humanoid robot is physically superior to a human, will it try to eradicate humankind? "Can an intelligence without a living body, without sexuality, ever really understand human beings?" (Turkle, 1984, pp. 19-20). Will what makes humans special and unique as a life form be treasured or reviled by robots? The answers to these questions, when negative, can raise the hairs on the back of anyone’s neck.
McCaffery (1991) phrased this fear in this way:
our primal urge to replicate our consciousness and physical beings … is not leading us closer to the dream of immortality, but is creating merely a pathetic parody, a metaexistence or simulacra of our essences that is supplanting us, literally taking over our physical space and our roles with admirable proficiency and without the drawbacks of human error and waste, without the human emotions of love, anger, ambition, and jealousy that jeopardize the efficiency and predictability of the capitalistic exchange — without, in short, the messy, unruly passions which also make the brief movement from conception to death so exhilarating and so frightening. And so human." (p. 16)
Phillip K. Dick, in this novel Blade Runner or Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, made the question "When does a machine cease to be a machine and start to be alive?" all the more vexing to answer. His robots, or replicants, were so much like people that the only way to tell them physically apart was to have a bone marrow analysis done.
His answer was similar to that of Asimov’s, however a bit more pessimistic. The difference, as illustrated in the novel, is a moot point. As Warrick (1980) put it, "The activities of the hand transform the patterns of the intellect. Those who are obsessed with building sophisticated homeostatic machines become human machines" (p.218). Through their experiences as blade runners, both Deckard and Resch have become more machine like.
In Ridley Scott’s version of Blade Runner, Scott took Dick’s vision and made it more poignant. The replicants, with their implanted memories, were even more like humans. This is part of what makes them so frightening. "The replicants, created to satisfy man’s every desire — for entertainment, companionship, relief from labour, sexual outlet — threaten to render their creators superfluous and take their place" (sic, Telotte, 1990, pp. 154-155).
However, at the same time that the movie Blade Runner shows us our fears of the Other, it offers us a hope — in the form of Rachael. Rachael, although a replicant, "mirrors something significantly human… a loneliness and longing for others wherewith that loneliness might be overcome" (Telotte, 1990, pp. 156). Rachael "awakens Deckard’s slumbering desires and effectively serves as a mirror in which he might see his humanity." In other words, the Other, in becoming more like the Self, helps define the Self more sharply.
Even when robots look so much like humans as to make the distinction almost impossible, they can still be perceived as a distinct and separate Other. There is no physical connection between the Self and the Robot/Other. But what happens when physical distinction starts to dissolve?
The TV as Other
Television has proved to be a very compelling piece of technology for science fiction writers. Many, if not most, homes have at least one television. Many children today are raised with the television as a babysitter. The television has been accused to brainwashing a nation, and has also been touted as a boon to society. With the widespread use of the television, Kroker & Cook (1991) said, "class society has now disappeared into mass society, and … mass society has dissolved into the TV blip" (p. 238).
Unlike most technological devices in our homes the television is both interactive and passive. One can just sit in front of the television like a "couch potato" and "veg out," watching TV show after TV show and never pay attention to what was being watched. Or, one can actively participate with the actions on the screen, be it answer the question on the game show before the answer is given, or learn about the natural history of sharks on a nature show. The TV, also, can put the audience in "the psychological position of the voyeur (a society of the disembodied eye)" (Kroker & Cook, 1991, p. 233).
Kroker & Cook (1991) argue that "the real product of television is the audience" (p. 238). The TV interacts directly wit the mind, bypassing the body. David Cronenberg, in his film Videodrome, gives this idea a terrifying twist. He poses the question, "What happens when machine and human become an integrated entity?" Wren, the main character in the movie, becomes "programmed" by a video signal. He becomes "the video word made flesh."
Bukatman (1990) said that in Videodrome, the TV becomes the carrier of a "virus" which infects the mind. "The injection of information leads to control, mutation, and passive replication: the host cell ‘believes’ that it is following its own biologically determined imperative; it mistakes the new genetic material for its own, the image/virus is posited as invasive and irresistible; a parasite with only self-replication as its function" (pp. 200-201). Through a process of hallucination, Wren becomes a pawn that the controllers of the videodrome signal can manipulate. Videodrome is the catalyst for "the transformation of the self into Other" (Bukatman, 1990, p. 201).
The horror of Videodrome is found in the realization that "body and image [can] become one: a dissolution of real and representation … but also of the boundaries between internal and external, as the interiorized hallucination becomes the public spectacle of the ‘Videodrome’ programme" (sic, Bukatman, 1990, pp. 207).
But somehow, there is a hope that videodrome is escapable. Just don’t watch it. It is physically separate from the Self, and therefore escapable. But what if the Other has been physically implanted into one’s own brain?
The Other becomes a Part of the Self
As computers and medical technology advance, the idea of brain implants has come to the forefront. If we can replace the human heart with a plastic and metal pump, why can’t we insert high-tech computer chips into our brains? The movie Total Recall: showed what such technology could be capable of. People could go on vacations without ever leaving their homes — with the aid of false memory implants. But again, there is a fear mingled with the desire. What happens if "we all became mere software, easily deletable from the hard drives of multinationalism’s vast mainframe" (McCaffery, 1991, p. 12)?
In Tom Maddox’s short story, "Snake Eyes," a man, George, fitted with computer implants in his brain is confronted with the Other which is really just a suppressed part of the Self. George does not recognize — nor does he want to recognize — that what he calls "the snake" is actually a part of him. This part of his brain "compels" him to do strange, and often violent, things that he finds repugnant. However, he is confronted with the fact that these actions are a part of himself: "There is no snake. You want to believe in something reptilian that sits inside you, cold and distant, taking strange pleasures. However … the implant is an organic part of you. You can no longer evade the responsibility for these things. They are you" (p. 27).
Stories like "Snake Eyes" and Total Recall tell a tale of "that which was alien is now within" (Gergen, 1991, p. 255). But why the sudden rise in stories where the Other has been integrated with the Self? One answer to this question could be the influence of today’s society. As postmodernism becomes a way of life, it is becoming more difficult to tell the difference between what we have traditionally considered the Other. Kenneth Gergen (1991) put it this way:
"With the spread of postmodern consciousness, we see the demise of personal definition, reason, authority, commitment, trust, the sense of authenticity, security, belief in leadership, depth of feeling, and faith in progress. In their stead, an open slate emerges on which persons may inscribe, erase, and rewrite their identities as the ever-shifting, ever-expanding, and incoherent network of relationships invites or permits." (p. 228)
We live in a society where national boundaries are becoming less real and more just convention. The economy is less dependent on an individual government and becoming more world-wide. The world is becoming a smaller and smaller place. And, "as consciousness of interdependence expands, so withers the distinction between Self and other, mine and yours" (Gergen, 1991, p. 255). Literature tends to reflect what is going on society.
Conclusion
Why the attraction of machines/computers/ robots? Why the fear? For one, people tend to "search for a link between who we are and what we have made, between who we are and what we might create, between who we are and what, through our intimacy with our own creations, we might become" (Turkle, 1984, p. 12). Machines, computers and robots are the fruit of our labor. They are our surrogate children and they are mirrors of our souls, reflecting our desires, needs and quirks.
Also, "we are drawn to what frightens us, we play with what disturbs us, in part to try to reassert our control over it" (Turkle, 1984, p. 34). Asimov (1990), in his essay, "The Machine and the Robot," stated that "the great fear is not that machinery will harm us — but that it will supplant us. It is not that it will render us ineffective — but that it will make us obsolete" (p. 440).
Exploring scenarios which have not happened are an exercise in preparation. "Without knowledge gained in the past we could not interpret the experience of the moment. This applies to artifical experience as much as it does to experience of the real world" (sic, Stableford, 1987, p. 69). Stories about the possibilities of our expanding technological capabilities can serve both as a warning of what to watch out for and practice for what may just happen. "Images of an almost total physical and psychic dependence on technology not only express the interpenetration of ‘culture’ and daily life; they also serve to remind us that we ignore these new technologies at our peril" (Fitting, 1991, p. 309).
One of humankind’s strongest drives is to understand itself. Computers and robots are excellent tools to acquire this understanding. This is what makes them so appealing and potentially addictive. However:
People are afraid to think of themselves as machines, that they are controlled, predictable, determined, just as they are afraid to think of themselves as ‘driven’ by sexual or aggressive impulses…. Thinking about the self as a machine includes the feeling of being ‘run’ from the outside, out of control because in the control of something beyond the self. (Turkle, 1984, pg. 299)
It is this aspect that makes technology so frightening. It is the fear that the Other is not only something we don’t like, but it is also no different than the Self.
"Exploring the parts of ourselves that we do not feel in control of is a way to begin to own them, a way to feel more whole" (Turkle, 1984, pg. 299). This is what drives us to explore our desires and our fears in literature and film. This is why there are so many tales of computers and robots gone out of control. It is our way of facing our fears and expressing our hopes for the best. It is our way of embracing the Other in order to affirm the Self.
References
Asimov, I. (1990). Robot visions. Byron Preiss Visual Publications, Inc.: New York, NY.
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Bukatman, S. (1990). "Who programs you? The science fiction of the spectacle." In: Kuhn, A., Editor, Alien zone: Cultural theory and contemporary science fiction cinema, pp. 196- 213. Verso: London.
Dick, P. K. (1968). Blade runner (Do androids dream of electric sheep?) Ballantine Books: New York, NY.
Fitting, P. (1991). "The lessons of cyberpunk." In: Penley, C. & Ross, A., Editors, Technoculture, pp. 295-315. University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis, Minn.
Gergen, K. (1991). The saturated self: Basic Books: USA.
Kroker, A. & Cook, D. (1991). "Television and the Triumph of Culture" (from The Postmodern Scene) In: McCaffery, L., Editor, Storming the reality studio: A casebook of cyberpunk and postmodern fiction, pp. 229-238. Duke University Press: Durham, NC.
Maddox, T. (1986). "Snake Eyes." In: Sterling, B., Editor, Mirrorshades: The cyberpunk anthology, pp. 12- 33. Ace Books: New York, NY.
McCaffery, L. (1991). "Introduction: The Desert of the Real." In: McCaffery, L., Editor, Storming the reality Studio: A casebook of cyberpunk and postmodern fiction, pp. 1-16. Duke University Press: Durham.
Stableford, B. (1987). The sociology of science fiction: Borgo Press: San Bernardino, CA.
Telotte, J.P. (1990). "The Doubles of Fantasy and the Space of Desire." In: Kuhn, A., Editor, Alien zone: Cultural theory and contemporary science fiction cinema, pp. 152- 159. Verso: London.
Turkle, S. (1984). The second self. Simon & Schuster, Inc.: New York, NY.
Warrick,P. (1980). The cybernetic imagination. The MIT Press: Cambridge, Mass.
