Introduction

There’s a popular saying that people living in a golden age don’t often know it.  In the following blog entries I hope to examine and explore what it means to be human in the digital age through my own scholarly and artistic perception.  I am inspired by three somewhat contradictory books, but will bring in other communication scholarship to better augment my understanding of the concepts in relation to our class.  The first is Ray Kurzweil’s 2005 book The Singularity is Near.   

The overarching idea behind the book is that, according to Kurzweil, virtually all indicators related to technological development show an exponential growth over time; we are quickly approaching the “bend” in this trend where the power, and subsequently the intelligence, of computers will surpass all of humanity.   

One of many graphs that appears in Kurzweil's book showing the exponential growth of computing power.

What goes up must come down, right?

What exactly this singularity will entail (or even when it will occur) is obviously unknowable at this time, but Kurzweil does his best to attempt to answer these questions.  In his view, the singularity represents “a profound and disruptive transformation in human capability,” and will occur in 2045 (136).  Kurzweil does present a large body of pretty strong evidence, but his claim that “we will transcend biology, but not our humanity” rings hollow when examining his book on the whole (136).  To read Kurzweil meticulously dissect the computational power of the human brain into bytes is interesting, but when he does the exact same thing to a rock (yes, a rock) ten pages later, it would be hard to argue that he’s anything but dismissive towards any notion of innate human intelligence.  Indeed, time and time again Kurzweil manages to compare the computational power of some of our most basic human parts, such as our genome, to wholly nonhuman entities, like the Microsoft Word program.  I understand the path Kurzweil takes to make these comparisons, but that does not make it any less insulting to see the whole of human diversity compared to the word processor I typed this article on.  Perhaps my willingness to remain skeptical in the face of a mountain of technical evidence is just the last bit of my humanity throwing its arms in the arm and shouting “HELL NO!”  Whatever the case, Kurzweil’s vision of the future provides many intriguing, if not alarming, ideas about defines humanity in each of us.

The second body of thinking I draw from, and that originally inspired me to delve deeper into some of these issues, is Jaron Lanier’s You are not a Gadget.  By contemplating how machines and technology use us, Lanier makes a compelling case that the current climate of internet and technology strip us of our humanity and creativity.  Despite being a well-established pioneer of virtual reality and computer programming, Lanier is very dismissive of futurists like Kurzweil who subscribe to a belief in the singularity.  Indeed, Lanier compares the singularity to Christian Evangelical ideas about Rapture and claims they have one particular thing in common: that “they can never be verified by the living” (26).

 

The final source of my inspiration is Brian Christian’s 2011 book The Most Human Human.  The book follows Christian’s journey as he attempts to win the coveted “Most Human Human” award at the annual Loebner Competition, a challenge pitting computer against human in the famed Turing Test.  As Christian prepares for the show down, he explores many ideas about what exactly it means to be human, particularly through our communication.  His explorations into humanity are less scientific and more people-based than Kurzweil’s.  Christian, much like  Lanier, examines how we are sacrificing bits and pieces of our humanity to act in more computational ways.  For instance, he discusses how picking up women has become based on a type of information commodity rather than an actual emotional and physical attraction; men (not all, including myself) have taken to essentially “pre-programming” the most successful pick-up lines/stories/acts and simply following the script from there (123-4).  Beyond the “creepster” aspect of it, there’s a real loss of humanity in these kinds of interactions.  Christian clearly points to computers as the source of this transformation, and there’s an element of the reclamation of our humanity in the face of technology throughout his book.  If Kurzweil is the prosecution for technology in the philosophical courtroom of our class, then Christian is clearly the defense for humankind.

            With that conceptual blend fresh in your mind, I believe it is important to realize that the images I’ve worked to create alongside the relevant scholarship are purely my own imagining and extension of the readings.  In fact, many of the concepts I’m working with, at least according to Kurzweil, are either unknowable or unable to be represented.  For instance, the computers that Kurzweil claims will be melding with our biological bodies will be microscopic, perhaps no larger than a single blood cell.  My thinking is that perhaps by attempting to understand these concepts in our own terms in our own time, we can better understand the implications for the future.