Robinson, E. & Robinson, S. (2005, Spring). Software Development Practices: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. The Journal of Advancing Technology, 2, 46-59. Do Computers Dream Robinson, E. (2004, November 11). The Game Manager. It’s Not Just Abusive. It’s Stupid. Retrieved from http://www.thegamemanager.com/archives/2004/11/ 11/6 Of Silicon Sheep?: Robinson, E. (2005, April 6). The Game Manager. Why Crunch Mode Doesn't Work: 6 Lessons. http://www.thegamemanager.com

Robinson, E. (n.d.). The Game Manager. http://www.thegame- Anxieties of the manager.com Spiritual Machine Biography Evan Robinson (TheGameManager.com) started making games professionally in 1980 and moved to computer games in 1983. Following many successful years as an inde- pendent developer, he served as a Technical Director at EA by Richard Behrens and the Director of Games Engineering at Rocket Science Games. He also worked as an Engineering Manager and Senior Software Engineer at Adobe Systems. A frequent presenter at early Game Developers Conferences, he writes and consults on game programming, project management and development management. Since the industrial age The Shadow of the Robot Sara Robinson entered the games business in 1986 as a Since the industrial age fired up its first writer for EA. She has contributed to over 100 games for machines to replace human labor, our LucasArts, Disney, Sega and dozens of other companies. A fired up its first machines former contributing editor and columnist for Computer collective imagination has been haunted Gaming World, she was among the early creators of the by the shadow of the robot, the artificial GDC. to replace human labor, intelligence (AI) that so disturbingly mimics The Robinsons live in Vancouver, B.C. Evan mat be reached our own consciousness, encased within a 34 via www.TheGameManager.com. our collective imagination metal exoskeleton. From the clunky tin 35 cans of early Amazing Stories-style sci-fi to the modern image of a sleek android that has been haunted by the is physically, mentally and intellectually indistinguishable from us—indeed often shadow of the robot. superior to us—these human-shaped thinking machines have always played deeply into our anxieties about what it means to be human. Yet, at the same time, they have suggested some great liberation for the human race, perhaps even some form of immortality. The dichotomy between a desired end—the need for technology to free humanity from toil— and the price we pay for attempting to achieve those ends—our growing depend- ency on the machinery, perhaps at the expense of our essential humanity—creates vast anxiety.

This anxiety has been an undercurrent in our literary culture for almost two centuries, since William Blake first poeticized against the “dark Satanic mills” that were turning England’s pastoral landscape into an enslaving industrial engine. The genre of science fiction, which evolved over the decades along with technology itself, has always reflected this anxiety by exploring Do Computers Dream of Silicon Sheep?: Anxieties of the Spiritual Machine

our dark thoughts and fearful dreams dominating the planet because these are of speech recognition technologies and relating to the tyranny of our own machines that can be turned off at our other AI initiatives. Kurzweil had recent- machines. At the same time, science fic- will. The irony of that moment is that the ly published a book, The Age of Spiritual tion has been a literary celebration of humans simply cannot shut off the life- Machines (1999), and after engaging the technological progress, as if that very bringing machines even if they wanted to. author in an animated discussion about progress brings us closer to some liberat- For one thing, no one alive even remem- the book’s darker implications, Bill Joy ing event that can only be achieved bers how they work. Second, what would was deeply disturbed. through the evolution of our machines. happen to their daily life if they did? In a Both the drive to progress via technology moment’s pause, Neo wrestles with the The Age of Spiritual Machines is a sweep- and the fear of that very same technology notion that the existential experience of ing vision of how computer technolo- as some dehumanizing force have been at being human may be based on how gy is expected to evolve over the next the heart of our science fiction literature dependent we are on the machinery that few decades, vividly showing how almost since its inception. we have built (Silver, 2003). Moore’s Law—the tendency of data density on a computer chip to double In the film Matrix Reloaded, Neo takes a What would happen to a nation like the every 18 months—predicts that at tour of the vast underground city of United States if we lost the computers some point in the near future, a single that delivered our electricity, if we lost the computer chip will be more powerful chips that ran the automobiles and the than a human brain. In the book, transportation systems, or the circuits Kurzweil speaks of self-replicating that produced the food and purified the nanobots, human minds downloaded waters? Even if after a period of readjustment like software into android bodies, and (no doubt one filled with unimaginable the fleshy human body itself slowly violence and suffering) we managed to being infiltrated (Kurzweil, 1999), like return to an industrial agrarian society, the Borg of Star Trek: The Next similar to the one we had a hundred years Generation, with machine implants ago, how many people would die in the fuzzing the lines between humans and 36 interim? And once such a replacement computers. spiritual machines. This is the point that 37 society was established, how would we made Bill Joy very upset and prompted feed, house and keep warm the vast pop- The machines we humans have built to him to write his article for Wired (Joy, ulation that we have today? extend our senses and increase our own 2000). Joy had spent his career taking intellect’s productivity, Kurzweil says, will pleasure in being part of a new paradigm; Is it true that the machines and computers soon be “waking up” to consciousness he’d watched computer science evolve have permeated so deep into our lives and will begin the construction of even from the geeky hacking culture that creat- that we are no longer independent of more advanced machinery. Robot facto- ed the first operating systems, program- them, that we are now committed to this ries will not only build better and more ming languages and cheaper, more power- exo-skeletal nervous system we call tech- powerful robots, but design them as well, ful computer chips into the big industry of nology? It is no surprise that our current anxi- not always with human interests in mind. today that drives the global economy and eties about our machines increasingly center By the year 2099, Kurzweil concludes, runs the machinery that supports our daily on the notion that we cannot live without there will be no clear distinction between lives. What woud happen to a them, but that perhaps, in a science fic- humans and computers. Intelligent tion kind of way, they will one day “wake machines will by then become “spiritual “But while I was aware of the moral dilem- nation like the United States if up” and decide that they indeed can live machines,” meaning that they will legally mas surrounding technology's conse- without us? be recognized as a species in their own quences in fields like weapons research,” we lost the computers that right and have legitimate consciousness Joy wrote in his article, “I did not expect Science Fiction and the Revolt of the equal to, if not surpassing, our own that I would confront such issues in my own delivered our electricity? Machines (Kurzweil, 1999). field, or at least not so soon” (Joy, 2000). In April of 2000, Bill Joy, the co-founder of Sun Microsystems, published an alarm- While this all seems like something out of Ray Kurzweil seemed calm and collected humans that had been built as a refuge ing article in Wired magazine entitled a Hollywood movie to be enjoyed with a about the dawn of the spiritual machines from the machines that have aggressively “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us” (Joy, bucket of popcorn, Kurzweil builds a very and the surrendering of much of what we conquered man. Gazing at the colossal 2000, p.238). He had just met Ray convincing argument that it is at least tech- consider to be our humanity, but Joy was engines that run the city, he instinctively Kurzweil, an accomplished inventor nologically possible, and that the comput- walking about in a panic saying, “Does wants to believe that these machines that whose musical synthesizer had changed er industry of the last 60 years was a mere anyone else here think this is dangerous are bringing him light and heat and food the face of popular music; Kurzweil was prelude in this vast shift in consciousness and dehumanizing?” In fact, he would are different from the killer machines- also (and remains) a pioneer in the field that will follow the emergence of these have to look no further than the literary Do Computers Dream of Silicon Sheep?: Anxieties of the Spiritual Machine

genre of science fiction—a genre that, for For this reason, early science fiction tion, as typified by Darth Vader, the man variance with historical, political and more than a century, has been openly showed both an enthusiasm and a dread who has lost his humanity to robotic body social conditions. The “evil empire” sci-fi exploring the anxieties relating to the of new technologies. The classical image parts. of Flash Gordon paralleled the rise of surrender of our humanity to our own of the mad alchemist who, to paraphrase Fascism in Europe; the adventures in the machines—in order to find people director Ed Wood, tampers in God’s H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds (1898) deserts of Mars or the jungles of Venus thoughtful enough to agree with him. domain (Wood, 1955) and pays the price depicted a Martian race that appears drew from the growing exploration into for his trespasses, portrayed to per- amorphous and blob-like, hardly a threat Such depictions often reflected fection in Mary Shelley’s to our military until they construct their Finally, almost inevitably, Frankenstein (2003), was trans- tripods and heat rays that blow away the largest fear of that age: the formed, by the early 1900s, into human civilization like it is a cluster of came the threat of AI, the the materialistic scientist, who was insects. Wells’ novel heralded the vio- revolt of the worker. so obsessed by his new invention lence of World War One, where tanks and computer that considers itself (be it an invisibility ray, a time airplanes appeared for the first time on Almost from its inception, science fiction machine or a way to harness nuclear the battlefields and showed the world superior to the human race. has been relegated to the ghetto of pulp power), that he could not see its physical how the horror of the Martian Invasion magazines and reduced by Hollywood into dangers or moral implications until it was was possible within our lifetime, and may the Congo and the Amazon where white action-adventure space operas, always strug- too late. Many sci-fi classics such as Isaac be brought about by our own machinery. Europeans came in contact with cultures gling to maintain its literary respectability Asimov’s I, Robot (1950) or Robert Depictions of robots in early science fic- living in Paleolithic conditions; and the and promote understanding of its social Heinlein’s The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress tion reflected fears of rapid industrializa- subduing of savage alien tribes by a import. The genre found its biggest audi- (1966) have dealt with the ethical dilem- tion, showing them as clanky humanoid Caucasian Earthling in many tales by ence in adolescent males and was quickly mas posed by the growing field of robot- hunks of metal filled with gears and wires. Edgar Rice Burroughs validated American laughed off as “Buck Rogers stuff”1: its mar- ics and the potential for AI. But none of Such depictions often reflected the Manifest Destiny3 and the destruction of keting niche was on the same bookshelves the technologies described in any of this largest fear of that age: the revolt of the Native American Indian culture. During as dime store detectives, gun-toting cow- literature had actually been invented yet. worker. Industrial capitalists were witness- the 1950s, the menace of the Pod People boys and masked super heroes. The sheer fact that we can imagine such ing the social power of communism and in The Body Snatchers (Finney, 1989) played machines taking over our lives is enough other revolutionary movements that upon fears of the communist infiltration 38 Yet, from the beginning, the genre attract- to fire the creative juices and makes for threatened to empower the workers who of our own society, or in preference to a 39 ed many highly intelligent and visionary great drama. The best science fiction writ- were enslaved in their factories, revealing non-political interpretation, the xenopho- writers who weren’t as interested in the ers were like canaries in the coalmine, that they were actual human beings with bic fear of the outsider invading our com- swashbuckling adventures of planet hop- small creatures whose early death sig- needs and feelings and, perhaps worse, munities. No longer was the menace a ping Errol Flynn-types (as in the popular naled to the workers that the air in the the resources to organize resistance. The force from another planet, or another stories of Edgar Rice Burroughs), but in mine shafts had turned rank and deadly deepest source of this drive towards revo- alien or robotic race; now the danger was the potential and possibilities inherent in and that it was time to evacuate or suffer lution was the manner in which capitalist inside of us, biding its time inside our own the rapid exponential growth of technolo- annihilation. industrialism dehumanized the worker, neighbors and spouses. Then the horrors gy and all the ethical, moral and philo- threatened to turn him into a cog in a of radiation—an invisible force more sinis- sophical quandaries that surround such Science fiction has always been a machine (a robot, if you will) and, with- ter than any communist country, growth. In the 1920s, when writers like Freudian journey through our collective out doubt, sci-fi literature dealt with the unleashed by the military and their Jack Williamson, Murray Leinster, anxieties, arrayed in the trappings of consequences of that dehumanization. nuclear hardware—gave rise to giant mon- Edmond Hamilton and E.E. “Doc” Smith2 entertainment. Contemporary political Early masterpieces like the play R.U.R. sters and mutations. were pioneering new directions in story- situations like the Red Scare and the Cold (Rossum's Universal Robots) (Capek, 2004) telling, the world about them was chang- War, as well as controversial technologies and the motion picture Metropolis Finally, almost inevitably, came the threat ing at a breakneck pace. A dynamic expan- like the atom bomb and the computer, (Pommer, 1927) did overtly carry the of AI, the computer that considers itself sion of technology made us optimistic that have all fed the story mills of the sci-fi robot-as-worker metaphor into the politi- superior to the human race. In the moun- the human race could be improved imagination. While many sci-fi writers cal arena and showed audiences the dan- tain-sized mainframe of the Colossus through technology; but at the same time appeared on the surface to be just “spin- gers of mechanizing life itself in the name from Dennis Feltham Jones’ 1967 novel we suffered tremendous anxiety over the ning a good yarn,” even the Star Wars-style of progress and profit. of the same name and HAL9000 of 2001: potential misuse of the very machines that space operas played upon our fears of evil A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968), we have were improving our lives. empires and our growing dehumaniza- Over the decades, the source of the vari- villains to rival (if not exceed) any of ous anxieties that gave formative shape to Flash Gordon’s antagonists. In both sto- 1 The character of Anthony “Buck” Rogers, a US Air Corps officer who awakens from a coma in the 25th Century, was one of the first heroes of the science fiction pulp. He first appeared in the August 1928 issue of Amazing Stories and was the cre- the sci-fi plots and dilemmas changed in ries, the computers built by man to mon- ation of Philip Francis Nolan. Many of the subsequent sci-fi heroes were modeled after Buck, including Flash Gordon and Luke Skywalker, but the character also stood as the stereotype of silly pulp melodrama. The iconography of sci-fi including 3 Edgar Rice Burroughs created several characters who were the epitome of the heroic individualist transferred to another ray guns and space ships became known as “Buck Roger’s stuff” and was not always used as a compliment. planet. John Carter of Mars, Carson Napier of Venus and David Innes of Pellucidar (the world at the Earth’s core) were all white Americans who conquer an alien race living in Paleolithic conditions, usually becoming either King, Emperor or 2 Many of these authors published prolifically in pulp magazines such as Amazing Stories, Astounding Science Fiction, Weird Tales Warlord, despite the fact that of their being a racial outsider. A fringe benefit to the job was usually a marriage to the most and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and their early works can be found in many good anthologies that draw from beautiful woman on the planet. One cannot help but see a reflection of the domination of the Native Americans by white these magazines. Some of the better science fiction pieces, such as “Triplanetary,” by E.E. “Doc” Smith and “The Legion of Europeans in the conquering of Mars by John Carter. Burroughs’ most famous creation, Tarzan of the Apes, was another Time” by Jack Williamson have become classics of the genre. example of this formula. Do Computers Dream of Silicon Sheep?: Anxieties of the Spiritual Machine

itor and control our national security and Videodrome (Heroux, 1983), all of which Rick Deckard, a bounty hunter disgrun- Here, again, is the essential existential life support systems suffer acute paranoia feature a main character who, after hav- tled with his life and career, is very much problem: what is it that makes us human? and lash back at humans like they were ing his sense of reality severely ruptured, a Phil Dickian Everyman, a wage laborer We can easily distinguish ourselves from unwanted factors in a new world order. struggles to determine what is real and hustling to get contracts so he can raise the lower life forms and even the apes, what is fabricated by some inhuman the money to buy a real animal to replace but what do we do when confronted with But still, the computer was exterior to our machine with its own agenda. the mechanical sheep that he covets on a species that can work and think and cre- selves, bland voices emerging from voice his rooftop garden. As the novel opens, ate just as well as we can, if not better? units, cold, calculating circuitry that could- In more than 30 novels, both sci-fi and Deckard’s liberal wife is chastising him Who is to say that we will still maintain n’t possibly feel or relate subjectively to the mainstream, and over 100 short stories, for being an assassin, which he denies, our status as the dominant species? When world. Our advantage over them was their Dick explored the possible disintegration since the androids he terminates are not the androids have outmoded us and inability to feel or think like humans. All of his own consciousness and his despera- human in the first place, and therefore proven to be superior, and everything we had to do to release ourselves from the tion in trying to define what is human. In his work is not murder. In short, he does that we coveted as being part of our tyranny of these machines was pull their Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, he not recognize the essen- plug and watch them go as lifeless as a tel- presents his clearest answer to the ques- tial selfhood of the Here, again, is the essential existential evision tuned to a dead channel. tion, “What does it mean to be human?” androids and rationaliz- (Dick, 1968). Written during a decade of es that the major differ- problem: what is it that makes us human? But what would happen, as in the case of feverish activity and coming on the heels ence between humans HAL9000 (Kubrick, 1968), if the comput- of many potboilers that Dick wrote to pay and androids is that the “andys” do not humanity is being done better by another the rent, it is a stunning have the ability to empathize with the suf- species, what remains that makes us What do we do when confronted with blend of commercial fering of other creatures. In fact, the only essentially human? science fiction, existen- way to legally prove that someone is an a species that can work and think and tial and Gnostic philoso- android, short of testing their bone mar- Philip K. Dick’s answer is Empathy. phy, and the explo- row, is to apply a complex psycho-physical create just as well as we can, if not better? ration of the author’s examination that tests their neuromuscu- In many of his novels, Dick professed a personal demons. lar reaction to tales of animal suffering. fondness for the soulful presence of ani- While there are many mals and was greatly discomfort- 40 er—that had access to our life support sys- Dick novels that are better written, this is ed by people who had no empa- 41 tems, to our food supply, to our heat and one of his most endearing and most thy for an animal’s suffering. This air—suddenly cared about its own exis- memorable. lack of empathy was one step tence and didn’t want to be turned off? removed from the same soulless- The dystopic world of Do Androids Dream of ness that drove the Nazis to dehu- Philip K. Dick and the Empathy Factor Electric Sheep? (Dick, 1968) is typical of manize their enemies and kill While the problem of how humans many Philip K. Dick novels throughout them by the millions with heart- respond to the growing dominance of the the 1960s, one in which a global war has less efficiency. To Dick, the differ- thinking machines is an old theme in sci- radiated the cities and killed off most ani- ence between humans and ence fiction dating back to its origins, the mal life—“First, strangely, the owls had androids must be the ability to ethical complexities and moral conun- died.” (Dick, p.12)—giving rise to a robot- feel empathy for the suffering of drums relating to it grew more sophisti- ics industry that manufactures artificial others. cated as the genre grew into its third and pets. A mad rush to colonize Mars has left fourth generation of writers. One of the the earth underpopulated, largely by In the novel, the humans who keystone novels of the modern period of genetically inferior people who are left to have stayed behind on Earth, sci-fi that dealt with this issue was Do wallow in the slowly building garbage and some because they could not Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968), by useless rubble that advances in the cow afford to emigrate, others Philip K. Dick, a prolific writer who not catcher of entropy. To fulfill the daily because they have been deemed only explored the social and political anx- needs of the Martian colonists, the robot- inferior by the government, are ieties relating to technology, but extend- ics industry has also produced the Nexus- struggling to maintain their ed those anxieties into consciousness 6, a brand of android that is almost indis- humanity. It is implied that those itself. Dick, who suffered many personal tinguishable from human beings, but who have emigrated to Mars have neuroses and phobias (among which was which can labor without complaint and given up their humanity, delegat- the frightening feeling that he didn’t give the colonists an unprecedented ing their labor and drudgery to exist), wrote many haunted novels which degree of leisure. The Nexus-6 are illegal the androids, and surrendered have had a long-term influence on the on Earth, and an elite corps of bounty the remote possibility of clean air genre. His dark footprints can be seen in hunters within the police department and healthy landscapes for artifi- films such as The Matrix (Silver, 1999), The have been trained to detect and terminate cial machine-driven ecosystems. Truman Show (Rudin, 1998) and any androids that have escaped to Earth. Back on Earth, the remaining Do Computers Dream of Silicon Sheep?: Anxieties of the Spiritual Machine

humans, fighting against the onslaught of that androids cannot have that experi- makes physical love to one of the Kurzweil reveals that the programs relied entropy and fearful of the superior race of ence since the empathy box of Wilbur androids in order to render himself inca- on being fed input from existing paint- outlawed androids, have adapted a quasi- Mercer has no effect on them. pable of killing her. ings, poetry and fiction that had been cre- religious practice called Mercerism to The use of the opera and the art museum ated under the more traditional inspira- keep in touch with their gradually dimin- Deckard is at first skeptical of his wife’s in the novel is very significant, because as tion of human desire and intuition. ishing humanity. use of the Mercer machine, and humans we like to think that we are the Without the artistic work of human Mercerism, seen by many to be a quack only species that can produce a Mozart or beings, the computer-generated art Mercerism is practiced by the followers of religion, is under assault by a gross and a Munch. But in The Age of Spiritual would not exist. Wilbur Mercer, who may or may not exist. obnoxious TV comedian named Buster Machines, Kurzweil (1999) describes AI He can only be “accessed” by an empathy Friendly (one in a series of ongoing Dick machines that will at some point become There is a pulsing light at the heart of box, a virtual reality generator that plugs characters who resemble the 1950s so sophisticated that they will paint pic- artistic creation that these computer out- anyone gripping its handles into a weird celebrity Jackie Gleason) who threatens tures, write poetry, solve ethical prob- puts seem to lack. The question is Golgotha-like landscape where a robed to expose Mercer as a fake, an actor in a whether or not, at some point in the and bearded figure, Wilbur Mercer, studio. The suspicion that Buster Friendly future when AI programs become more ascends a steep mountain slope. From is a pawn of the androids—who have an powerful than the human brain, that out of visual range, hostile “others” are acute self-interest in destroying pulsing light will suddenly erupt and hurtling rocks at Mercer, and the person Mercerism—is heightened by the discov- awaken the machines to their new con- plugged into the empathy box feels the ery that the androids have set up an elab- sciousness. Will computers then be capa- pain as if the rock has hit him personally. orate operation on Earth, going as far as ble of writing a poem simply out of the Mercer’s climb up the hill is experienced, to engage their own underground police sheer joy and love of the language, or to both visually and physically, by everyone force to capture the bounty hunters. The express some inner state of being, or be who is currently using the Mercer android’s will to survive has grown effec- capable of producing a complex harmo- machine, as well as those who are locked tively stronger and many of them are ny of aesthetics such as is exhibited in together in an empathic experience of exhibiting the human-like emotions of pieces like Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony? shared suffering. empathy for each other. Perhaps the spiritual outcries we hear in 42 While the Christian overtones here are In fact, as Rick Deckard goes about hunt- the Ninth will also be heard in a piece of 43 more than obvious, we can dismiss Dick’s ing down the androids so he can collect music composed by some android two use of Mercerism as primarily Christian. his bounty money and buy a real flesh hundred years from now and come from The meditation upon the wounds of and blood animal, he confronts the intel- a complexity of forces of consciousness Christ is a well-known meditational tech- ligence and the apparent inner aesthetic that were not possible when created by nique to stimulate empathic abilities and world of the androids. Nexus-6 are the the human mind alone. Perhaps the com- to awaken one’s consciousness to the sub- latest and greatest, more human than puters, besides being stronger, more jective suffering of others, but other reli- human, and not even the corporation intelligent and less fragile than us, will gions and psycho-spiritual practices, such who built them understands the inner also be more spiritual than us. Perhaps as Tibetan Buddhism, place an emphasis dynamics of their own subjective world. lems, evaluate law and compose music so the new emerging spiritual machines will Deckard confronts one of much better than us. In the light of this stand in relation to us as we do to animals Perhaps the new emerging spiritual the aliens while she is usurpation of our essential aesthetic and look upon us as artifacts of an earlier headlining an opera humanity, the existential dilemma of stage of evolution. machines will stand in relation to us as event, and he is seduced what it means to be human will become by the powerful music vastly more acute. The Egyptian Immortality Game we do to animals and look upon us as and the android’s very All this talk of inputs and generating human singing of We insist that, no matter how good a com- poems through analysis seems so dispirit- artifacts of an earlier stage of evolution. Mozart’s The Magic Flute. puter gets at composing music, it was ulti- ed, like one of those episodes of Star Trek: Later, in an art museum, mately Beethoven’s spiritual life that The Next Generation in which Data the on compassion for all sentient life forms he contemplates why so many androids made his symphonies great, something a Android struggles to understand the con- as well. Whether Mercer exists or not is are drawn to the works of Edvard Munch, computer can never achieve. So Kurzweil cept of finding something funny. irrelevant: what matters it that he is a The Scream in particular, which he goes to great pains to present us with However, by meditating upon the science nodal point for the shared experiences of assumes is a painting that reflects the examples of art created by computers— fiction conceit of a machine becoming the remaining human beings who do not inner feelings of an android. Predictably, not some imaginary spiritual computer, human, or a human becoming machine, want to surrender their humanity to the in a very painful turnabout, Deckard but computer programs that exist today. we are forced to confront the subjective machines. Their isolation and alienation starts feeling contempt and indifference He includes some paintings, poems and experience of being a human conscious- are counterbalanced by Mercerism, towards the other bounty hunters and even a short story. At first blush, it seems ness with a phenomenological interrela- which shattered their loneliness and acquires more respect for the machines incredible that a program can produce tionship with an organic body. makes them feel connected. It is assumed he is contracted to destroy. In fact, he works with such aesthetic impact, but Do Computers Dream of Silicon Sheep?: Anxieties of the Spiritual Machine

Kurzweil explores the possibility that we techno-fetishism, another primal human human beings, too, fear death and strug- Egyptian Book of the Dead: The Book of Going Forth by Day, The (2000). Faulkner, R. Trans. San Francisco: will gradually merge with our machines attempt to discover the keys to immortali- gle to overcome it. For one single Chronicle Books. and become some form of hybrid race, ty using the tools of the present day? moment, the dying android looks at Finney, J. (1989). Invasion of the Body Snatchers. New York: that our culture, our flesh, our minds will Deckard, his destroyer, and smiles. In that Touchstone Books. Originally published in 1955 as The gradually be replaced, one circuit at a As the Egyptians developed the technolo- smile is the plentitude of shared experi- Body Snatchers. time, by computer components, and that gy of mummification to attempt the ence. A silicon machine and a carbon Heinlein, R.A. (1966). The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. New the very concept of a computer itself will immortality of the soul, so, too, are we machine, both fearing their own death, York: Putnam. be redefined by incorporating our very building the computer chips and the both humbled at the threshold of that Heroux, C. (Producer) & Cronenberg, D. (Director). humanity and our very flesh into a new android bodies that will carry about our death. (1983). Videodrome [Motion picture]. species. According to Kurzweil, this is the consciousness? Perhaps the whole notion Canada/United States: Universal Pictures.

logical continuation of an evolutionary of computers awakening to consciousness So perhaps empathy is the key to our Jones, D.F. (1967). Colossus. New York: Putnam. process that goes back all the way to the is as devotedly mythological and religious understanding of what it means to be Big Bang, as if the creation of sub-atomic as any belief lifted from the Egyptian human, and perhaps, in the end, if our Joy, B. (2000). Why the Future Doesn't Need Us. Wired, Issue 8.04. p. 238. particles out of the primordial Chaos was Book of the Dead; and the belief that machines do indeed wake to their own the Universe’s first step towards the cre- such a thing is even possible—firmly root- consciousness, it will be our key to under- Kubrick, S. (Producer) & Kubrick, S. (Director). (1968). 2001: A Space Odyssey [Motion picture]. United ation of speech recognition software and ed in science and therefore more authen- standing them. Either way, we are faced States: Warner Brothers. really cool operating systems. It can be tic than other immortality myths—can with a very ponderous dilemma, one that left to the individual to decide just how very well be the religious faith and spiritu- has already generated vast anxiety as Kurtz, G. & Lucas, G. (Producer) & Lucas, G. (Director). (1977). Star Wars [Motion picture]. United States: far one wants to project the heated excite- al prejudice of our modern scientific reflected in our science fiction: the fact 20th Century Fox. ment over the rapid progress of comput- world fulfilling the same need to alleviate that we have already begun to merge with er technology to an existential principle the anxieties about death and to promise our machines. We simply cannot shut off Kurzweil, R. (1999). The Age of Spiritual Machines. New York: Viking. and evolutionary trend that ranks up immortality, where we are either floating our computers without bringing human there with sea creatures crawling onto like angels through some heavenly land- society to a violent end. It seems that by Mozart, W.A., Schikaneder, E. (1791). The Magic Flute (Die the land. scape or roaming the earth in an android turning off our machines, we effectively Zauberflote) [Opera]. Vienna, Austria. body, half human and half comput- turn off ourselves. Munch, E. (1893). The Scream [Painting]. Currently miss- Kurzweil explores the possibility er, with a consciousness that can be ing from the Munch Museum, Oslo, Norway. 44 removed like a floppy disk. It may As Ray Kurzweil points out, even 30 years Pommer, E. (Producer) & Lang, F. (Director). (1927). 45 that we will gradually merge with very well be possible that future ago that wasn’t the case. Metropolis [Motion picture]. Germany: Universum Film Aktiengesellschaft. generations will look back at our our machines and become some junked computers, abandoned Now it is. Raymond, A. (1934) Flash Gordon [Comic strip]. United mainframes and attempts to create States. form of hybrid race. AI-driven android bodies with the Rudin, S., Niccol, A., Feldman, E. S., Schroeder, A. (Producers) & Weir, P. (Director). (1998). The Truman same despair that we experience when we Show [Motion picture]. United States: Paramount Nevertheless, the strange thought that our see the rotting and shriveled corpses of Pictures. own technology may one day awaken to the Pharaohs who thought they were Shelley, M.W. (2003). Frankenstein: or the Modern consciousness and experience a subjective hitching a ride onto Ra’s Eternal Chariot. Prometheus. New York: Penguin Classics. Original reality replete with emotions and survival work published 1818.

instincts (not to mention intellectual and The greatness of Philip K. Dick’s novel is References Silver, J. (Producer), & Wachowski, A. & Wachowski, L. Amazing Stories [Periodical]. (1926-1980). United States: (Directors). (1999). The Matrix [Motion picture]. artistic ambitions) is one that has gained not just that it addressed the dangers of Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. resonance over the past few decades. If the our own AI machines, but that it goes United States: Warner Brothers. Asimov, I. (1950). I, Robot. New York: Gnome Press. emergence of spiritual machines is even a even further to explore the fears and anx- Silver, J. (Producer), & Wachowski, A. & Wachowski, L. (Directors). (2003). Matrix Reloaded [Motion pic- remote possibility, it will make for fascinat- ieties at the heart of our quest to over- Beethoven, L.V. (1824). Symphony No. 9 in D Minor, opus ture]. United States: Warner Brothers. ing reading as science fiction starts explor- come our mortality. It is not just the 125 [Symphonic composition]. Vienna, Austria. ing more deeply the nature of machine art Nexus-6 that are threatening our human- Berman, R. (Producer). (1987-1994). Star Trek: The Next Wells, H.G. (c. 1898). The War of the Worlds. New York and and culture, perhaps even machine psy- ity, but our own failure to feel as human Generation [Television series]. Los Angeles: London: Harper & Brothers. Paramount Pictures. chology. Will we live at peace with our sili- beings for the suffering of others and to Wood, E. D., Jr. (Producer & Director). (1955). Bride of the con children, or will we, like Dr. be able to gaze into the abyss of our own Blake, W. (2000). William Blake: The Complete Monster [Motion picture]. United States: Banner Frankenstein, fail to accept the God-like death. Blade Runner (Deeley), the 1982 Illuminated Books. New York: Thames & Hudson. Pictures. responsibilities that come with fathering a movie adapted from Do Androids Dream of Capek, K. (2004). R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) new species (Shelley, 2003)? Will we aban- Electric Sheep? (Dick, 1968), added a (Novack, C., Trans.). New York: Penguin Classics. Biography don our machines to slavery, fail to recog- touching finale to a violent and intense Deeley, M. (Producer), & Scott, R. (Director). (1982). Richard Behrens is a freelance writer and a contributing nize their ethical rights as living beings story: a moment in which the last remain- Bladerunner [Motion picture]. United States: Warner editor to The Modern Word, a website devoted to postmod- Brothers. ern literature. He is also a producer and director for and attempt to destroy them to prevent ing android spares Deckard his life after Garden Bay Films where he has just completed a documen- them from sharing our resources? Or is feeling empathy for him, a feeling pro- Dick, P.K. (1968). Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? tary about the Bethlehem Steel Works. He lives in New Kurzweil’s vision just a radical form of voked by the android’s recognition that New York: Del Rey. Jersey with a very large book collection.