Planning revisions to my Visual Culture course, I find myself struggling around certain social issues because I want to include more about the rise of technology and artificial intelligence. Currently I have a week on race, on gender, on imperialism, on globalization, issues that continue to wreck havoc on our human interactions and respect for each other. In that sense they are important ideas to teach to future artists and designers. On the other hand, technology is changing us. Yes, it is racist and sexist. It is biased to those with power and access. It reiterates all kinds of socio-cultural divisions. The rise of technology for me, however, puts in question our valuing of these superficial constructs (race, gender, class, national identity) to bring forth a more fundamental question for all humans: do we matter? Or, is there any meaning to my existence?
I have always been rather fond of the notion that our existence is simply an extension of a massive war between single cell division and sexual reproduction. Both are fighting for domination. I am simply an artefact of the effort on behalf of sexual reproduction. The language around this idea talks about generation and reproduction in ways that I think limit our thinking about it. What if it is really simply, as I said before, about taking over: domination.
This argument emphasizes that humans exist to reproduce. This is where I begin to think something else. For some time, humans have been interested in not only biological reproduction but an abstract one through ideas. As Harold Bloom suggested stressed poets, and as I simply feel standing in front of a classroom, the creation and recreation with modifications (hopefully improvements, whatever those might be) of ideas is a different kind of battle flag. Let us suppose therefore that humans are simply a fallible endpoint of sexual reproduction and the starting point of abstract extension. From mathematics to philosophy to art we are computers. Now, we've made better faster ones.
How would those computers spread? Networks. Can we co-exist? Looking around, sexual reproduction as manifest in humans seems intent on destroying single cell production. With all the efforts of ecologists, we don't value plant life. Bacteria, viruses, etc terrify us and we are intent on producing an ever cleaner world. Why? Cleanliness is not ideal for us, but it would be for technology.
All this is a long way from my visual culture class, but I think about these things because I wonder to what degree I need them to think not about the wars of the past, but of the challenges to come as artificial intelligence is not only an extension of how we live (computers, internet, step trackers and the rest) but determines how we live for us. It doesn't seem that far anymore. Read Trevor Paglen's Invisible Images or watch Amber Case TED talk Everyone is a Cyborg now. From either of those, follow the suggested links on each site and see where you wound up. To what degree did you get yourself there? To what degree, did a computer decide what you would find interesting for you?
As my students prepare for careers in the various art and design fields, I don't want them to be racists, sexists, or unaware of the mass privilege they experience from living the lives of plenty that they have even as they struggle with student loans, jobs, and supporting families. On the other hand, they should think about how technology informs the choices they make, what they desire, what they observe, how they think, and therefore what they will want to make, be asked to produce, and need to create. Those social factors influence computing, but I can't help wondering for how long. A future where being human is common ground doesn't seem that far away. As soon as the networks of data become more powerful than we are, more informed than we can be, that's the day that we are dominated, wherever we are, whatever we look like. Will teaching about 18th-20th century imperialism help then?
