Robert Reese / Mythereal

Staying Behind by Ken Lui is a haunting prophetic tale set in the aftermath from an apocalypse that no one predicted.  One answer frequently given about what separates man from machine is the concept of free will.  But what if that choice is to remove oneself from being a biological human, transferring, hopefully, your sentience into a machine?  Conversely, what about being transferred against your will?

Staying Behind sits at the crossroads of these questions and poses many more.  Liu goes to great length to chronicle the decline of civilization and the technology that binds it together.  Parallels are drawn repeatedly against the real world and the virtual world.

The most immediate question that came to mind was who was taking care of the machines and networks where billions of residents reside?  In spite of the details revealed in the tale, Liu makes no mention of the creators setting up a permanent, reliable maintenance system to keep the machines running.

If it assumed that one was indeed put in place, what is to prevent those machines from evolving toward their own sentience? What if the new, dominant life forms then forget, or choose, to stop serving an ancient machine?

It isn't a stretch to see this story as a potential precursor to Harlan Ellison's I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream.  Would the machines have an ethical right to no longer be subservient?  Who'd be around to make that judgement, and under what authority?

Asimov's famous Three Laws of Robotics would not apply, either.  After all, if the machines could logically believe that a space station's generator is their god, then it is easy to imagine the sentient machines can come to the logical conclusion that the "Digital Adam" harboring the consciousness of the former inhabitants of the planet is neither human nor contains humans.

Which brings up the next question: what is human? Liu addresses this concept no less than four times in Staying Behind.

The narrator ponders the following: "For every Uploaded man, there was a lifeless body left behind, the brain a bloody pulpy mess after the destructive scanning procedure. But what really happened to him, his essence, his — for lack of a better word — soul?  Was he now an artificial intelligence? Or was he still somehow human, with silicon and graphene performing the functions of neurons? Was it merely a hardware upgrade for consciousness? Or has he become a mere algorithm, a clockwork imitation of free will?"

[Narrator's father]: "If you're doing things the exact same way as your ancestors, then your way of life is dead, and you've become a fossil..."

[Narrator's mother]: "You have no sense of what's really important in life, what's worth holding onto. There's more to being human than progress."

The narrator speaks of his mother, he say she taught him that, "...our mortality makes us human."

And lastly the narrator tells his wife, as to why he can't stop trying to protect his daughter from Digital Adam, he says, "I can't give up," I tell Carol. "I'm human."

Each question, and each statement seems to ask and answer the question succinctly.  The difference between a sentient biological human and a sentient machine will only be the questions an organic human can ask that a machine cannot.  In other words, the exact same logic, the exact same questions and answers can be asked by any sentience, not just organic human.

[Warning: Spoilers!]

Stone Lives by Paul Di Filippo is a mimetic short story filled with metaphor about evolution as humanity and as a person. A Cinderella-esque story of a man rising from the absolute rock-bottom of human society to leading one of its most powerful entities. But was it sheer luck or fate?

Synopsis

Starting out life in the worst possible living conditions, without a family and blinded by a ruthless gang, Stone one day finds himself ripped from his uneducated life on the streets of the Bungle, given citizenship, and offered an unbelievably fortuitous job of analyzing the world and reporting to the hardened Alice Citrine, the CEO of a powerful corporate fiefdom that made its fortunes from "carbon chips:microbiological assemblies, blood-borne programmed repair units."  Citrine wants to know if the world she's helped create following the Trade Wars is good or bad.

Accompanying Stone is JuneTannhauser ("love singer"), Alice's personal assistant and Stone's eventual lover who recruites Stone from the streets and guides him as receives his new artificial eyes which, while appearing as faceted, dull-black inhuman orbs, allows him to record what he sees, play it back at any time, and upload it to a computer.  June helps Stone learn about history and the world before taking Stone on a whirlwind tour of the world so he can properly report to Citrine.

In other words, Stone becomes a journalist and a philosopher. He is a camera seeing the world through various lenses.

Stone eventually spends three weeks with Alice and Alice's bizarre pet, reporting on what he's learned and, in turn, learns from Alice. One day,

when asked about her pet, Alice replies, “She is your ancestor and mine, Mr. Stone. Before the hominids, she was the representative of mankind on earth. When I pet her, I contemplate how little we have advanced.”

Stone reacts by stalking off, repelled by the thought and its revelation. Later that night, "Stone lies alone in bed, replaying snapshots of his terminal screen, of pre-FEZ history that has eluded him. History that has eluded him."

That night, the building is attacked by corporate raiders and assassins. The attack knocks out all electronics in the building, including Stone's eyes. Stone momentarily panics, then his street survival instincts, the only pride he had in the Bungle, kick back in just in time to kill an assassin looking for Stone. Stone is taken to the medical facilities in the building, and learns that Alice was killed instantly, and June committed suicide when she was captured by the corporate raiders. The head of security plays for Stone a recording made by Alice where Stone learns that he's Alice's genetically-engineered clone and was artificially orphaned in the Bungle for 'education'. He is Alice's successor to the corporate throne. Stone is, internally, a Citrine!

Analysis

Steeped in symbolism, this story is ripe for deep analysis.  However, there are some major themes to consider: stove + citrine connections, the sun or light, overcoming overwhelming factors, the span of humanity, from rock to gem, hardiness, seeing the world through filtered lenses, tabula rasa, and clone/cyborg/AI.

A citrine is a quartz crystal used as a semi-precious gem.  It is found inside stones called geodes.  When these stones are broken open, the beauty of the interior is exposed.  Some mystics believe crystals transform, or filter, energy into specific frequencies which cause certain effects.  Citrine is believed to be is a powerful cleanser and regenerator, and energizes every level of life.  Di Filippo is a Buddhist, and likely chose citrine for its metaphysical properties, as citrine "activates the thinking process and enhances mental clarity, as well as the visionary function through which inner images appear."  Indeed, there are more properties of citrine listed which correspond to the story!

June, Stone's lover and Citrine's personal assistant, is also the name of the month in which the summer equinox occurs - the longest day of sunlight. Incidentally, the citrine is also associated with the sun and sunlight due to its color.  June's last name is Tannhauser, which roughly translated means "love singer".  When Stone sleeps with June, he discovers she can consciously glow softly through artificial implants; she is literally the light of his life.

The life-hardened Stone overcomes overwhelming odds - he survives nearly drowning in the streets after a gang leaves him unconscious for dead in a gutter, loses his sight in one of the most dangerous places yet survives, overcomes overwhelming information while learning history and other information, endures an overwhelming week-long trip around the world, overcomes an overwhelming assassin, and at the end is task with overcoming the overwhelming task of rebuilding the tower, the company, and eventually the world to finish Alice's work.

The fall of humanity, the rise of faceless, nameless, and emotionally-void corporations is countered by the rise from the ashes of civization and society to the leadership of a corporation by Stone.  Balance is restored, which isn't surprising since the crystal citrine is considered to have balancing properties.

Stone is a tabula rasa.  He's intentionally left in a desolate place with no mentors, parents, or education opportunities. When he arrives at Citrine Technologies, he knows nothing of history, cannot read nor right, and only had his eyesight restored.  His eyes act as blank slates, continuously recording an image, and blanking themselves for the next image, over and over.  The art Stone makes are mashups of images he's seen; the canvas, of course, starts as a blank canvas.

With his artificial eyes, Stone is a cyborg, and as it turns out, a clone like Alice, who, in turn is the product of the artificial machines replicating her cells and thus a cyborg, too.  Alice is also a real-life, present day Artificial Intelligence, or AI; however, this story seems to precede many Alice AIs. June's glowing ability is the result of implants, making her a cyborg, as does having the regeneration chips in her as Alice does.  Through Alice's manipulations, humanities history has been artificially influenced, making humanity something of a cyborg itself.

Summary

Stone Lives is a fascinating read outside of its mimetisis, and something worth rereading for analysis.  It is both post-apocalyptic and foward-looking, with deep commentary on social, political, and technological planes.

Deus Ex Machina

At first, it seemed an easy question to answer: what is the difference between a human and a machine? It is easy, if the question is interpreted as, “What is the biological difference between a human and a machine?” The answer to the latter question, however, isn't as obvious as it seems. Mortality isn't an answer, nor aging, since bodies and machines have parts that age and wear out, eventually failing. Removing energy – electricity for machines, food for humans – will terminate the machine or human; the only difference is how quickly it happens.

In "The Most Human Human", Brian Christian ponders what separates humans from machines. Many of the answers tending to come up don't stand up to scrutiny. Perhaps it is looked at from the wrong direction; what if the question was about the difference between humans and animals. After all, man the animal uses tools, but so do many species of animal. People are social, just like many animals. Humans, according to Christian, “have sex for fun”. But dolphins have sex for fun, too, as few other highly-intelligent animals (Christian 148). What does separate humans from machines and animals? It is the asking of this question, and understanding its implications. For a while, at least.

Maybe the whole question need to be turned on its head. What can machines do that humans and higher level animals cannot? The answer comes from John Von Neumann's concept of the self-replicating machine, which is the concept driving the RepRap Project, the purpose of which is to create a self-replicating 3D printer. Many microorganisms reproduce by essentially cloning themselves.  Von Neumann's self-replicating machine would make clones of itself as well, just as cellular creatures do. 

People are able to reproduce, just like nearly all animals are. But people and higher level animals are unable to duplicate themselves. This actually gives at least one answer to the question of the difference between humans and machines: the inability to construct our offspring. Just like true artificial intelligence, human cloning is still a far future reality. When humans are finally able to clone themselves, will they lose part of what it means to be human?

SOURCES:

My final project, tentatively titled "Searching for Answers in the Past for the Future", will incorporate all five criteria of digital humanities: Knowledge Construction, Multi-dimensional, Participational, Decentered, and Curation.  Further, it will involve both digital and physical elements, literally incorporating time, space, and thought.  The theme will be a McLuhan-influenced historical perspective of media.  I want to extend the participative user with media, then extend those media with other media. Although I hsve briefly touched on QR Codes and smartphones/tablets, I have not used YouTube (Video), audio, Google Maps, Google Street View, GPS/GPSr, or Geocaching and its related media.  Photography will factor heavily, as will creative uses of HTML and CSS; I possibly will include a 360° "virtual tour" if time and resources permit. My class presentation will also feature live media that cannot be replicated via digitization; it will be able to be synthesized, but not duplicated.

At a minimum, I will expect participants to have access to an internet-connected computer with a recent browser with common plugins and security settings, and a Google account.  Participants preferably will have access to a vehicle, a smartphone or tablet with internet access, and a GPS receiver in order to have a more meaningful experience. Specifically, I want to create thematic physical and digital caches, linked to each other through several media.  As tempting as it is, I will not create a central web page linking to every element.  In order for the participant to discover each cache, he or she will need to explore and follow digital and physical paths.

One of the problems with Marshall McLuhan's concept of The Medium is the Message is the tendency for people to confuse the media with the content.  The reason is simple, and McLuhan himself gave answer, "...the “content” of any medium is always another medium."  This means that the confusion isn't of content versus medium, but the context of the medium.

LAYERS

Think of media as an onion, where each layer is a medium.  If someone is confusing the content with the medium, according to McLuhan it simply means that person is referring to an inner layer.  The trick, then, is to figure out how to ensure each participant is on the same layer. 

A basis for reference is needed, then, to ensure that everyone starts on the right track.  It may seem unintuitive, but the brain is the starting point (Clark 351). Next are the senses, in particular sight and hearing.  The eyes are the layer responsible for visual media, and the ears constitute the layer for audial media.

Which leads to an interesting question about McLuhan's "lightbulb" commentary.  If the lightbulb is the medium, what is its message?  According to McLuhan, everything that is illuminated by that lightbulb is the content.  What is the lightbulb's message to someone who's blind? Or a radio to a deaf person?

MEDIUM AS MESSAGE

The message of a medium is the impact that medium has on society.  The message the lightbulb brings to a blind person is the ability for sighted people to create assistive technologies and perform surgery despite the time of day, to name a few.

A blind person may not be able to see a movie, but he or she should be able to listen to it, and hopefully enjoy it.  How?  The movie is a medium containing several media, two of which are visual and audial.  In this way, both a blind person and a deaf person can enjoy the same movie in completely different ways.

Going back to the onion analogy, how would a deaf person and a blind person relate their respective experiences to each other? Advances in accessibility technology can help with the technical requirements, but the question is how could each internalize the experience that is related by the other?  In order to do so, they must meet at a layer that is common to their experience.

For a blind person, Braille is a necessary medium.  For the deaf person, captions, or subtitles, are a necessary medium.  As such, they are extensions of the person (Clark 353).  If the movie is captioned, it makes it rather easy for the blind person and deaf person to discuss the dialog of the movie.

Yet those extensions also have a filtering effect.  There is almost no intonation with captions.  Same for Braille, where emphasis is difficult to achieve.  Each helps its respective user, but also inevitably adds another invisible medium to the mix.

Mediums and messages cannot be discussed, and cannot exist, without content.  In order to understand which medium is which message, a point of reference is necessary, as is the need to understand that content itself is media.

The backbone of today's internet are links leading to and from different objects, or “texts”. Everybody knows the classic underlined, blue “links” and know that, if a link is clicked it will result in more information appearing about whatever was underlined and blue. However, “hypertext” is far more than simple links; it is a method by which information is accessed, extended, and enhanced.

What is “hypertext”?

Hypertext is a word coined by Ted Nelson in his description of his Xanadu Hypertext System around 1960. He described his vision of hypertext as “visibly cross-connected by two-way links and transclusions [showing origins]” and Tim Berners-Lee, the father of modern-day World Wide Web described his vision for hypertext this way thirty years later: “HyperText is a way to link and access information of various kinds as a web of nodes in which the user can browse at will.”

[Shown above: Ted Nelson's diagram of hypertext]

Both Nelson's Xanadu system and Berner-Lee's WorldWideWeb system were inspired by Vannevar Bush's article As We May Think written in 1945. Berner-Lee's version was further influenced by Doug Engelbart's NLS.

In short, hypertext extends a given work – textual, visual, and so on – by connecting to various other related texts. If you wanted to, say find out more about puppetry while reading Pinocchio, you simply click the word “puppet” or the photo of Pinocchio and you'll find more information relating to puppets and/or Pinocchio. You can go from a video to a music score in the video to a page of lyrics to an online store where he or she can purchase the music from the video, which makes it easier for you to make a response video which, in turn, is linked to the original video.

Why is “hypertext” important?

Hypertext enables the user to quickly research a given subject, find sources, and pass along the information. It also permits multiple copies of a work to exist, as well as multiple pieces existing in multiple locations. Since several different media can all use hypertext for different purposes, hypertext permits a multidimensional experience for the user, pointing even to physical locations through GPS coordinates!  The gps coordinates for Middle Georgia State College are http://tools.wmflabs.org/geohack/geohack.php?pagename=Middle_Georgia_State_College&params=32.80716_N_-83.732226_E_region:US-GA_type:edu

Hypertext allows people to share their works with others, and allows others to collaborate with the creator or creators of those works. Without this ability, texts would simply stand alone or, at best, lumped into a collection. One might rightfully argue that the web is one large collection. The differences are scope and accessibility. Mozart's music may be available freely as sheet music, but the playing may not be accessible, even if it is in the public domain, if the collection in which it exists is unavailable to the user. Hypertext makes it possible to share all the works, even the audible works, of Mozart.

Digital Humanities cannot exist without the paths linking people to each other and to the repositories of works scattered across the globe.  Of the many that influenced and outright invented the technologies, these three provide an example of how Digital Humanities were brought to life in the earliest of computing history.

TURING

Alan Turing proved that the mechanics behind computing can solve, and do, nearly anything that can done computationally, literally step-by-incremental-step, as he exemplified in the making of a digital game (Rheingold, 31-35).

BUSH

Vannevar Bush described the Memex, which we now see daily now as tablets, envisioned the internet with its links as trails and arrows, and powered by artificial intelligence.

LICKLIDER

Joseph Licklider promoted and developed the internet as a method of connecting humans and their works electronically. Whether he knew it or not, he instituted the groundwork for making the Memex a reality when he created the ARPANET.  More than that, he envisioned the literal fusion of man and computer.

A “community of practice” (to borrow Etienne Wenger’s phrase) whereby the learning, construction, and sharing of humanities knowledge is undertaken with the application of digital technologies in a reflexive, theoretically informed, and collaborative manner.

—Kathryn E. Piquette, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany

  What ISN’T Digital Humanities?

  Humanities Computing. This deals with the technology that makes DH possible, such as HTML, databases, and so on. These are used in the websites and online services to facilitate Digital Humanities, but themselves are not Humanities. Just don’t tell that to anyone who’s worked to create these pathways to DH (Hayles, 43).

This shift from HC to DH didn’t happen over night. Sometime after Windows XP debuted, it started mattering less about what enabled people to collaborate and more about the collaboration itself. It’s what we’re doing with the black boxes that make up Digital Humanities, not what’s IN the black boxes; it’s not how, but what. In short, the technology used by Digital Humanities is neither the focus nor the means of Digital Humanities.

What ARE Digital Humanities?

  Presner and company had it right in their Manifesto 2.0, which says “mix :: match :: mash :: manifest”. People take every opportunity to find something online, change it, and share it with others. There are few limits on self-expression on the decentralized Internet. Ultimately, DH are the collaborative self-expressions people make using digital media.

Presner points out that the first wave of the digital revolution was the analytical and technological wave, the second wave is “qualitative… experiential”. They are the shared works of the people.

What is the difference of Traditional versus Digital in Humanities?