“A Penny For The Old Guy…”

 Pope Leo:

Technology has the power to heal, connect, educate and protect our common home; but it can also divide, exclude and generate new forms of injustice. In the abstract, technology in and of itself is not a solution to humanity’s problems, just as it is not inherently evil. In practice, however, technology is never neutral, because it takes on the characteristics of those who devise, finance, regulate and use it. Therefore, the primary choice is not between a “yes” or “no” to technology, but rather between constructing Babel or rebuilding Jerusalem; between a power that claims to dominate the heavens and a people who work together in the presence of God to rebuild the walls of fraternal coexistence.

I read a lot of science fiction while frittering away my youth.  The ‘50’s and pre-New Wave ‘60’s stuff was all about technology (Space Race particularly) and the bold men (engineers) who created it. They were commonly Ayn Randian types (Heinlein especially), doing it without government support; or they were military contractors, and either way it was all good, and the technology was good. (Sharp eyes will note that Bezos and Musk are neither.) Either way, technology was a solution to humanity’s problems. Usually.

In New Wave the technology turned evil. Sometimes by design, as in J. G. Ballard’s “The Subliminal Man” (advertisers using technology to manipulate consumers). But mostly it was the new technology (computers and robots) becoming evil, not the people making it. “The Terminator” came along long after that meme was well established. And even then, in the sequel, the creator of SkyNet was innocent of what SkyNet became. (Or, if you prefer a more recent reference, Tony Stark making Ultron in the MCU.)

Which is a funny twist because the meme is the “Frankenstein monster”: a misbegotten creation that goes awry through no fault of the inventor. When in point of fact Mary Shelley’s story put all the blame on Victor Frankenstein, not his creature. Frankenstein rejected his creation, and it became human (civilized) on its own, then requested Frankenstein create it a mate, since it was alone in the world and rejected by humanity. The creature saw Frankenstein destroy the attempt (a misplaced moment of conscience), and exacted revenge on his creator’s family, and finally Frankenstein, for his creation. In the end the creature, deathless, escapes into the Arctic wilderness to avoid humanity forever. It was the creature who was originally innocent, the creator who corrupted him. But Shelley wrote before we accepted technology as an unalloyed good which we only later decided could become so much like us it would kill us because, hey, isn’t that what we would do?  I refer the interested reader to the work of Philip K. Dick and Harlan Ellison, in particular.

‘50’s and ‘60’s science fiction was also about technology being misused, especially in movies. Post nuclear war scenarios; or “Forbidden Planet,” where the technology reflects the inherent evil of the user. When HAL 9000 goes mad, it’s because he’s all too human. But these are design flaws, or failures to understand consequences. Arguably the only reason we never had a thermonuclear war is because our fiction foresaw the outcome science warned us about. In reality, at least that time, we didn’t fall to understand consequences. Global warming and the Iran war prove that’s the exception, not the rule.

But for all the concern about computers becoming too human in the worst way, or being totally inhuman and trying to destroy humans (Philip K. Dick imagined dangerous robots in disguise long before James Cameron found the perfect role for Arnold Schwarzenegger), it always centered around either mad scientists (usually in Superman stories), or the sheer inability of humans not to make something ultimately destructive (call it the A-bomb lesson). Nobody ever thought capitalism and free enterprise would be the source of danger. Well, not before cyberpunk; and even then the greater danger was in amusing ourselves to death (the subtext of the William Gibson stories I’m familiar with).

There’s no such outcome offered by AI data centers in present day reality. Tech bros who want to control the cash AI promises to generate are not sugar coating their vision of techno hell. They will be rich, and we will be peasants, and they tell us there’s not a damned thing we can do about it. And they aren’t entirely wrong. But government supplies water and regulates electricity, and determines land usage, and even allows AI centers to be built, so the Tech Bros do need us because, ultimately, the government is us. And what is AI promising, except to eliminate all our jobs, and to be as inevitable as SkyNet? Which itself was only inevitable because the series ran to six movies and a TV series, as well as video games and other revenue sources. It could just as well have been a happy ending with “Terminator 2: Judgment Day.” But the market, that great, green god, wouldn’t have it.

Science fiction really does need to spend more time looking at the destructive power of capitalism. The real danger lies not in our technology, nor how we abuse it, but in our greed and vanity. Weren’t those two of the Seven Deadlies?