AI
- The Shape Of Things To Come?
by Debra McCampbell, KidActors
"Science fiction is the most important literature in the history of the world,
because it's the history of ideas, the history of our civilization birthing itself.
...Science fiction is central to everything we've ever done, and people who make fun of
science fiction writers don't know what they're talking about." --- Ray Bradbury
The really interesting part of writing an article like this is I'll have to wait many
years to see if my theory proves to be correct. If you read a lot of science fiction, and
see a lot of films, it becomes fairly obvious that some writers (Asimov, Clark, Bradbury,
Roddenberry, etc), and some directors (Spielberg, Kubrick, Lucas, etc) have not only
predicted the future but in a very real way, they've helped to create it. But until and
unless it happens that someday, we all have an android or two in the family, we'll be left
to wonder, did Steven and Stanley do it again?
There are those who posit that the great science fiction books and movies always
predict what will eventually be. Look at the new science emerging right now: Eugenics,
cryonics, magnetic and electro-magnetic propulsion, Gen foods, et al. These ideas have
been part of the SF lexicon for more than a hundred years.
Jules Verne took us to the moon and to the center of the earth in the 1800's. For an
exhaustive online library of Verne's novels, short sorties and other writings (in French
and English), click here: http://jv.gilead.org.il/works.html.
Verne's contemporary --- and some say rival --- H.G. Wells showed us the shape of our
future that was so eerily accurate it remains one of the most remarkable pieces of SF
literature ever written. He also piqued our interest in the idea of traveling through
time. "The Man Who Invented Tomorrow", as he has often been called, forecast
super highways, overcrowded cities, computers, television and video players, tanks and
military aircraft. In 1911 he forecast a new weapon, an atomic weapon, the atomic bomb. As
interested in sociology as he was in the sciences, Wells saw new consciousness one day
emerging that would take control of the weapons of war and create a world state, a single
global superpower. He wrote of this in prophetic books and articles like The
New World Order and The Idea Of A League Of Nations.
These things are coming to fruition as we speak.
Arthur C. Clark gave us the communications satellite, among other world-changing
inventions and ideas. And with his Odyssey series, he has taken us
further into our dreamed-of future in space than anyone else. Many believe we owe much of
our accomplishment in the area of space exploration to the writings of this man. Examine
his "Laws":
Clarke's First Law:
"When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible he
is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very
probably wrong."
Clarke's Second Law:
"The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way
past them into the impossible."
Clarke's Third Law:
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
Ray Bradbury wrote a very involved story about colonizing Mars in 1950 -- The
Martian Chronicles. And, in 1953, he introduced us to a world so
dominated by a magic box from which all knowledge and entertainment comes that the written
word is finally made illegal. Fahrenheit 451 stands as
one of the most frighteningly prophetic books of it's time. For right now, today, we are
beginning to see these magic boxes --- combination computer/television units being
created. Every time I see a commercial for the Philips flat screen, wall TV, I remember
one almost exactly like it in the 1967 film. Before long, these monitors will be used for
both our television viewing and out computer usage. In fact, this story is so incredibly
relevant to our time that Mel Gibson has been trying to make another film based on it for
the last few years.
And then there's Isaac Asimov. (See our own Matt Allair's Summer 2001: An
Artificial Odyssey for more on Asimov, including his laws of robotics) This
unbelievably prolific visionary giant once wrote an article about the very subject of
discussion here --- how the imaginings of so many brilliant artists over the centuries
have brought humanity right to the Edge of science. To read that article, The
Truth Isn't Stranger Than Science Fiction -- Just Slower, click here: http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/03/23/lifetimes/asi-v-truth.html.
From the earliest days of silent film, directors have aspired to bring these
fantastical stories to the screen. One of the first science fiction movies ever filmed was
Vincent Whitman's 1914 classic, A Trip To The Moon. We've all seen bits
of this comedic short in which a rocket is shot toward a smiling moon, only to lodge in
it's eye! In 1936, William Cameron Menzies filmed Things To Come, based
on the work of H.G. Wells. It tells of a world devastated by war and rebuilt into a grand
technological dream, only to be once again destroyed by man's inhumanity to man.
Steven Spielberg is often credited with shaping our modern image of what aliens look
like. Before Close Encounters Of The Third Kind was released in 1977, we
envisioned all sorts of weird ETs. Now, almost exclusively, when we think of aliens, we
think of "the greys". In fact, debunkers often blame Steven for single-handedly
creating the modern abduction myth with this film. Never mind that the most famous case,
that of Betty and Barney Hill occurred more than a decade and a half earlier. And Travis
Walton encountered his abductors two years before CEO3K hit the screen.
If not for Star Trek, we wouldn't have a third of the wonderful
gadgets we all enjoy each day. Gene Roddenberry didn't invent the voice-activated
computer, but he sure made it cool. And don't those nifty Palm Pilots remind you of the
Tricorder? In our quest to live and work in space, science has turned it's focus toward
new propulsion systems that all seem to desperately ape Warp Drive. They say that in a
couple of years, we'll all give up our cell phones for a wearable communication device
much like those worn on the chests of Captain Picard, Data, Riker and the rest. It's a
brave new world indeed.
Robots With Soul?
A science fiction chestnut, for more than a century. The idea may be as old
as time. Dr. Richard L. Thompson has found passages in ancient Vedic texts that speak of
intelligent machines. But the writers of these texts had seemingly no reference for such
things. Is it only that we who are made in the image of our Creator desperately long to
become creators of life ourselves? The idea frightens some. What arrogance!
It is precisely this "arrogance" that spawns edge technology such as the idea
of the "Soul-Catcher" chip. The plan is to implant this bio-chip in volunteers
at birth and record their entire life experience. Early applications include
"replaying" the life (or selected events) for entertainment, ala Strange
Days. But the eventual goal is to be able to "download" a real human
consciousness into human clones, or intelligent androids. Robots with soul?
If the capacity of silicon to store data continues to be developed at it's present rate
of about 100 times more every year, scientists estimate that by 2025, it will be possible
to store an average human's life experience --- approximately 10 million megabytes of data
--- on a single microchip. Once this is possible, there's no stopping what will come next
--- intelligent, self-aware machines.
In his books, The Key and The Coming
Global Superstorm (co-written with Art Bell), Whitley Strieber writes of
a very near future in which violent climate change will devastate much of the planet and
create the need for intelligent machines, created for specific tasks:
"By duplicating the attachments between the elemental (physical) and energetic
(spiritual) bodies that occur in nature in a purpose-designed machine, a controllable
conscious machine can be devised. A living soul attached to a machine will be conscious,
but only able to express itself... according to the limitations of the machine's design.
In this way, you gain the advantages that consciousness confers on a machine without the
danger of its becoming excessively intelligent. A perfect slave can be created, a robot
that carries out its programmed instructions with empathy, purpose and precision. And the
soul can be kept in it indefinitely." (from The Key,
p.65)
So there it is, a possible mechanism by which an android like David Swinton could be
made. It appears as though it's only a matter of time before science fiction will once
again become science fact.
It wouldn't surprise me if, 20 years from now, people are heralding the names
Spielberg, Kubrick and Aldiss and this cinematic vision we so anxiously await called AI
as not only prophetic but profound.
|
