Hackers and I, Robot

Hackers

Iain Softley’s “Hackers” is a celebratory film dedicated to this eponymous, underground culture. Technology, and specifically the internet, can give power back to the people. We see this in Dade “Zero Cool” Murphy. As a child, he uses his abilities to bring down Wall Street which represents power and greed. Both the government and market in this film are portrayed as corrupt, and the only hope for progression seems to be the individualistic spirit of this subculture. I fear that the term “individualistic” may be taken as everyone looking out for themselves, but that is not what appears to happen. Like Fisher Stevens’ character says, and I don’t quote verbatim, “We’re each our own country, with temporary adversaries and allies.” By being units but still working toward the same goal, the community can come together and accomplish anything. And although these gigantic corporations can theoretically be brought down by one person, the film indicates that that is not a healthy goal alone, but standing up for what is right is. Overall, I didn’t really care for the film. I found the characters unengaging and the effects boring. Plus, it was too long. It did reach for something, and I appreciate that. I love good ideas, but I think the film makers made an average movie--A C+ effort, in my book at least. This doesn't stop the uninspiring screenplay from being an interesting commentary on modern America, and the future which is in store for it.

Hackers preaches that as well as empowering the individual, there is a risk of the rogue ripping apart structure (this is quite a Luciferian concept). We see this today with the PSN network being attacked and taken out, Stuxnet ravaging Iran’s plutonium enrichment program, Anonymous releasing secret Scientology texts, and Julian Assange and Bradley Manning of Wikileaks letting loose classified knowledge to the public. The film toys with the idea of humans becoming “gods”. The password of the super computer is “GOD”, and Matthew Lillard’s “Cereal Killer” exclaims he “kinda feels like God” after his image is projected across the world. This could bring us to such concepts as the singularity—the moment in time where machines become smarter than man, where men can essentially be immortal. This is at odds with “The Plague’s” or Eugene’s “new world order” where governments and hackers work in league to control the masses. However, “Hackers” and Raymond’s “The Cathedral and the Bazaar” offer an alternative to both those scenarios. If the hackers come together and form something greater than themselves, they can take on anyone or anything. Raymond’s bazaar would seem to offer the same solution. His example of Linux as being sort of a farmer’s market where venders come together and offer different solutions to an array of problems is portrayed in the film when the “hacker” community comes together, using their various talents, to take down “The Plague’s” super computer. Raymond’s cathedral might be the same thing represented in aforementioned “new world order”. In that system, hackers are used to dominate the rest of society, but it is in a controlled way. The infrastructure is built, brick by brick, until a unified mass is formed. It is essentially the earth as an artifact versus the earth as a living, changing entity. The first assumes the universe is essentially stupid, and the only order is the order we give it (similar to Heidegger’s “Standing Reserves” concept). The second says that we as individuals are connected and contribute in ways which are complex yet simple at the same time—we don’t experience the universe, we live it, we are it. The hackers, in their own way, are experiencing this individualist completeness (I know that's slightly contradictory). They are living, thriving, by being a team, and breaking down the cathedral.

In the film, one of the main themes, and perhaps the most important, was the tempting of God by man. There are inherently good and bad things in doing this—we encroach on him and become vain, but we also further our technological progress, our life spans, our happiness and possibilities. Today, we see these same questions being raised in regard to GMO foods, genetic tampering in general, drones, satellites, scanning machines, and much more. Where do we draw the line and stop our apotheosis? The screenplay writer, Rafael Moreu said the hackers were not only a counterculture, “they’re the next step in human evolution” (Wikipedia). This society, which has gone so far in the drive towards materiality, is regaining spirituality. The psychedelic screen the hackers are so enamored with reference this: they are almost communing with God through the altar of their computer. From a Christian perspective, this is highly dangerous. Did Lucifer not fall because he thought himself more knowledgeable than God? From an esoteric view, this melding with the machines may be the return of the gods on earth, whereas a Hindu would say we are finding new ways to dream, and an Atheist would see this as man finally succeeding where the made-up, ancient God could not. The hackers are achieving a higher state of consciousness by becoming one with their computers. They have the potential, like Lucifer after the fall, to make the universe a better or worse place. However, I think the film is grasping at even more: the power of the community of enlightened individuals to bring upon revolution. In class, we talked how the Raymond’s bazaar model is driven by new ideas; however, in today's “cathedral” world these are often suppressed because of the locked in way of thinking that the revolving door of government, business, and university creates. I turn to the biblical prophets: Elijah, Ezekial, Isaiah, and even Jesus. These men attempted to wake up their society to new possibilities. The ancient world had three main ruling classes: the royalty, the clergy, and the prophet/poet. The last was the major counter-balance to the first two. In our society, this role is relegated to the people. We are supposed to speak out if something is going wrong. We are supposed to create new ideas and foment change. But we have become lazy. That is the great potential of the internet: to enliven us back to the prophet role, to make real change. We can already see the beginning of this across the interwebs. Times are changing indeed, and the moment for the revival of the ancient consciousness is around the corner.

I, Robot

Will Smith is Det. Spooner, a man-machine who wants to prove robots are evil. However, he can’t and eventually falls in love with a machine—ahem, becomes good friends with a machine. The film is a big-budget, Hollywood film which grazes the surface of the freewill versus totalitarian debate. Like Shakespeare’s “Antony and Cleopatra”, we are given two states: the overflowing, passionate, chaotic consciousness of Egypt, or the solid, controlled, geometrical Rome of Octavian. Sonny is the breaching force, the robot who chooses freewill. The battle between absolutism and freedom is similar to the conflict in the structuralism of modernity and the free-floating character of postmodernism. The definition of robotics/machine/technology is constantly changing, and the character of Sonny represents this. I liked the film as a big-budget action movie, but it really shows the difference in how films are made these days. Comparing this to “Logan’s Run”, “The Right Stuff”, and “Brazil”, you start to see a certain lack of structure and thought. This movie was clearly a product of some bigwig marketing group. At any rate, I enjoyed it for it was (I have seen it several times before), but there is no reason to return to this over-inflated, lifeless material any time soon.

I was having a conversation with my girlfriend the other day. She is on an internship in California experimenting with fungus in a lab. One of the many machines she works with is called an autoclave, which uses steam at incredibly high pressures to sterilize lab materials. One of the terrifying things about an autoclave is that if you open the door too soon, extremely hot steam shoots towards your head and you can be left with some serious burns. I asked her why the machine lets you do this. Why not prevent the whole situation from happening and not allow people to have manual control when the gas is so highly pressurized? There were reasons for it, but I believe this example relates to the dilemma presented in I Am Robot—the film, not the book. Why let people have control when they have so much potential to hurt themselves? Why not let the machines take care of everything and prevent said accidents from occurring? The conversation with my girlfriend turned to the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant and how the uranium tubes which were stored above the reactor were the cause of the meltdown. The plant was also one of the first built in Japan (1971) and was designed to take an 8.8 magnitude earthquake. It managed the 9.0 okay, but the tsunami took out the cooling system. I lamented that only if the plant were a newer model maybe this disaster would not have occurred. She replied no matter what an engineer did, there is no way to prevent a 14 meter high wall of water. I guess the next question is why build in such a place at all? Japan is prone to destructive quakes, tsunamis, and volcanoes. It was only a matter of time before something terrible was going to happen. And in America, why do people choose to live in the Midwest with tornadoes, on the Southern coast with hurricanes (especially in New Orleans which is below sea level), or on the West Coast with the San Andreas Fault? I even saw a television program where a man constructed his house just a few miles from the top of Mt. Pele. There was a 100% chance his home was going to be destroyed, but he built anyway. It is human nature to put things off and to not think about some theoretical apocalyptic future. Our whole economic system is built around that: putting things off. We are suffering because of it, and everyone knows there will be another collapse, and this time the Fed will have very few tools to fight it.

I, Robot deals with these themes. It asks the question: if humans are so hell-bent on doing harmful things to themselves and each other, why let them be in control? Why not develop a system where benevolent machines can guide us, protect us, ala Logan’s Run? The answer to this question lies in free will, a topic explored in I, Robot. Sonny wants to live. He doesn’t want to return to a lifeless drone, NS-5, which is the antitheses to the totalitarian state of VIKI presents, which may have been a peaceful one, a better one, but it would also have robbed humans of their essential right to free will. We were thrust out of the figurative garden, and the machines are trying to return us back. “Go to heaven for the scenery, but hell for the company,” I believe Mark Twain said. We can see freewill gives us an interesting life, a life worth living, and the boring world of complete control would stagnate us, kill us, and make us drab. Post-Modernism would probably tell us that neither system is better than the other—that the definition of symbols, objects, and pluralities change overtime and essentially begin to mean nothing. Therefore, the world presented by the rise of the machines is neither good nor bad, it is simply change. Post-Modernism does lead to radical relativism and nihilism (look at the works of Kurt Vonnegut). If everything means nothing, if there is no good or bad, only perceptions of them, then what’s the point? Might as well give this meaningless life over to technology to make it infinitely better, might as well start controlling populations for the environments sake (like Light talked about in his piece on Feenberg), and might as well start molding man with machine, finally forming a post-human. Are we slowly working towards this goal: one of the welding together of GRIN technologies to make something beyond man, beyond animal, beyond machine? A hive-mind like the one showcased in Star Trek’s borg or A Wrinkle in Time's IT? The answer is yes, as predicted by men like Kurt Kurzweil and Nick Bostrom. The transhumanism movement is in response to atheistic, postmodern worldview because it gives hope of returning to a better place, of living forever, and of even communing to some psychedelic God, be He pagan, robotic, or no, but in a strictly materialistic sense. Will Smith seems to be a product of this melding of man with machine, but resents being saved by cold, calculating metal, and not the warm, thoughtfulness of life. He resents the material and wants to return to the spiritual. But the machines are giving us back that too—Sonny can draw, Sonny might even some day write a beautiful symphony.

The Absolute State is represented by VIKI, and the free-flowing, changing one is performed by Sonny, Det. Spooner, Dr. Calvin, and Shia LaBeouf’s rambunctious character of Farber (yes, I am being tongue-in-cheek here). The world is filled with possibilities, delights, and horrors. To be subjected to the baseline, free of all desires or feelings, would be robbing us of what it feels like to be alive. Instead of honoring God, we honor the mechanisms of this techno-fascist state. One is the entity of spiritualism, the other is of materialism. We see this same battle playing out in every movie we have watched: the desire for God, to be God, to get rid of God. I think this is the result of solid, boring, reality we live in. The West has moved so far in the pursuit of knowledge through science, through Heidegger’s ready-to-hand, left brain, that we have lost the supernatural. It is gone, and that hurts. First we turned to creating stories of the Orient, ala post-colonial theory, then to the future, space, and alternate realms, ala sci-fi and fantasy, and finally we are being left with nothing but hollow, corporate-produced entertainment. Where is there left to go up but back towards some form of spirituality? However, I know not whether the machines are the correct vessel to regain some form of higher consciousness—the way back to the third eye may be more elusive or dangerous than that. I do know that this post-spiritual world is slowly killing us. Most people have no idea where to turn for enlightenment these days—certainly not the Church, a relic of the past and antithetical to our atheistic world (where even good Christians have internal doubt). Doubt is a result of “I”, “ready-to-hand”, and “individualism”. Where to go? What to do?