ERSUS
CO NTENTS adversus [ad’wer·sus] LATIN m; first/second declension 1. opposite, directly facing
In this special issue of Adbusters, we explore opposite arguments of three current topics. We believe that only representing one viewpoint is ignorant and myopic (so we’ll leave that to the corperations and politicians.) It is fundamental that we consider both sides of the coin in order to form an informed and balanced opinion, which we invite you to consider and emenate in your every day lives.
PHILOSOPHO - Resisting the Demon - Creating God in the Internet AESTHETICO - Can we design ourselves out of a terrifying future? - What happened to first things first? TECHNO - The Darwin Effect - Our Earth Has Endured Five Mass Extinctions, Here Comes the Sixth
2-5 7-8
9-10 11-14
16-19 21-22
RESITSTING THE
DEMON A History of AI in Eight Parts
W
e are currently living in the digital age. The news will tell you that technological progression is at an all time high, allowing humanity to truly exceed its potential in space travel, atomic discovery and medicinal research. Running parallel to that, the distribution of the worlds goods is at an all time low, the ever present dichotomy between the western and eastern world has become an immovable fact of life. The notion of community between and within societies a distant memory. At the heart of all this is artificial intelligence; the more we corrupt the world, the more we look to technology to dig us out (as if it hadn’t buried us in the first place). The promise that AI will bring some sort of utopian future is not a new idea, it has been around for centuries. Early on AI was, and still is in some respects, treated as an occult element that can allow us to transcend mortality and achieve divinity. The notion that we can become god-like through technology is both fascinating and terrifying, an allure that some find difficult to refuse. As we examine the origins of AI, the importance of resisting this demon becomes clear.
2
1
BRUNO
Our human minds are flawed because our bodies are fallen. In order to lift ourselves back up we need not to rely on divine salvation, but on the perfection of our minds.
If you really want to talk about the origins of AI, you need to fly back in time to the Campo de’ Fiori in Rome in 1600, there you’d find Giordano Bruno who was famed for his remarkable mental abilities. He was summoned to Pope Pius V to demonstrate his “memory theatre.” Using a series of concentric circular disks inscribed with coded symbols, Bruno claimed to have discovered a system for achieving perfect knowledge, the understanding of all things and thus the route to world peace. We are born, he explained, with a certain natural memory. We remember people’s names and certain snippets of information, but our human minds are flawed because our bodies are fallen. In order to overcome our failing flesh, in order to lift ourselves up from our fallen state of constant war and violent division, we needed not to rely on divine salvation but on the perfection of our minds. To do this, he argued, we need help. We need tools to augment our natural memories. We need to develop an “artificial” intelligence. Preaching the attainment of omniscience through occult means? Not even Copernicus had gone that far. They arrested the fucker, and torched him.
2
THE MEMEX
If you really want to talk about the origins of AI you also need to get into a mindset that worries about the destruction of the human race. Some 350 years after Bruno, an article appeared in a 1945 edition of Atlantic magazine written by the head of the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development and one of the key figures in the Manhattan Project WIth AI, people would be better informed, more that had scorched Hiroshima and Nagasaki and empathetic and far less hastened the end of World War 2. His name was likely to go to war as they Vannevar Bush and his essay — “As We May would have “an enlarged, Think” — set out his grave concerns that, unless intimate supplement to we profoundly change, our species was going to one’s memory.” blow itself to shit. That we argue, disagree, maim and kill was, Bush believed, down to ignorance. As he looked back on two horrific global wars, he proposed that the way to lasting peace was in the improving of our knowledge and understanding; he then outlined designs for a hypothetical mechanical device to make this happen. For want of a better word he called it a “Memex,” and described how all of a person’s letters, records, information and correspondence could be stored and recalled at great speed.
3
Sat at their Memex, people would be better informed, more empathetic and far less likely to go to war as they would have “an enlarged, intimate supplement to one’s memory.”
3
IL DIVINO
A century before Bruno was set alight, Michelangelo had been commissioned to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. So skilled was he that he’d become known as Il Divino — the divine one — yet his relationship to divinity was one that caused much murmuring in the vaulted corridors of the Vatican. As he had grown up, Michelangelo had been educated at the Medici’s Humanist Academy and was heavily influenced by thinkers such as Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. Mirandola’s 1486 Oration on the Dignity of Man has been hailed as the “manifesto of the Renaissance,” and is the pretext for his vast 900 Theses, which he considered the sum of all knowledge, the complete works that would need to be arranged in a memory theatre and learned off by heart as one began to lift oneself out of the shadows of ignorance and up the chain of being toward immortal Truth. In other words, the same occult teachings that informed Bruno had also formed the artist Michelangelo. Yet, rather than risk burning, he encoded his beliefs in his paintings. Like his contemporary Leonardo da Vinci, he was a keen anatomist, and research on the shadowy forms painted behind the figure of God in The Creation of Adam reveals that their outlines are perfect representations of the different parts that make up the human brain: the stem, the cerebrum, the pituitary gland and the paths of the optic nerves. Thus, on the ceiling of the most hallowed hall of the Catholic Church, Michelangelo has left an encrypted heretical message: the locus of divinity is the mind itself. This was the way we would achieve perfection. The bridging of the finger-wide gap between ourselves and omniscience is achieved in the augmentation of the intellect through the occult art of memory.
4
TRANSCENDENT MAN
Engelbart had not set out simply to build Bush’s Memex. Keeping abreast of all developments in computing, he had realised that the process of augmenting our intellectual capacity could be greatly accelerated if all of these discrete Memex
Michelangelo has left an encrypted heretical message: the locus of divinity is the mind itself.
The pinky-small space between humanity and divinity could be bridged … digitally: with the electronic memory theatre of a powerful computer we could augment the mind so radically that it begins to approach omniscience.
“People say ‘does God exist?’ and I say, not yet.”
machines could communicate with one another. By building a connected web through which knowledge and understanding could be shared, “artificial” memory could grow exponentially. On October 29th, 1969, ARPANET was finally ready to be tested, with Engelbart’s lab in Menlo Park and a machine at UCLA the first two nodes to be connected. At 10:30 pm they attempted to send the word LOGIN to Engelbart’s SDS 940 computer 300 miles up the coast. Unfortunately, after just two characters, the system crashed. Thus — like the beginning of an angelic pronouncement that something almighty was among us but that we should not be afraid — the first utterance over the protoInternet was LO. Others quickly built on Engelbart’s work and saw in this vast network of Memex machines the genuine possibility of fulfilling not just Bush’s vision, but Michelangelo’s and Bruno’s: the pinky-small space between humanity and divinity could be bridged … digitally. With the electronic memory theatre of a powerful computer we could augment the mind so radically that it could begin to approach omniscience. Way back in the 11th century, the Saxon theologian Hugh of Saint Victor had written that “the mechanical arts supply all the remedies for our weakness, a result of the Fall, and, like the other branches of knowledge, are ultimately subsumed under the religious task of restoring our true pre-Fall nature.” AI is hailed as a remedy for our weakness, and the man pursuing this religious task most fervently is Ray Kurzweil. Kurzweil decided that the true goal of his life would be to transition from a carnal existence into embodiment in electronic hardware, thus guaranteeing himself life after death. Taking over 200 supplements a day, he is working tirelessly on the use of the mechanical arts as the final remedy for our weakness, employing digital technology to transform us completely until we can escape the human condition. “It will be the universe waking up,” he says in a film, describing the self-replicating nanomachines he proposes will help him upload his mind to the web and become virtually omniscient, immortal and omnipresent. “People say ‘does God exist?’ and I say, not yet.”
5
SUMMONING THE DEMON
This “awakening of the universe,” The use of mechanical this creation of a god that does not yet arts could be the exist is not something that all welcome. Once a final remedy for our weakness, employing machine is created that is more intelligent than digital technology to us, more connected to more systems than we transform us completely can ever be, who is to say what it will decide to until we can escape the do? Might we not become mere fuel for its own human condition. hungry evolution? SpaceX owner and bleeding edge techno-genius Elon Musk was asked about AI. His carefully considered answer: “We should be very careful […] With Artificial Intelligence we are summoning the demon. You know all those stories where there’s the guy with the pentagram and the holy water and he’s like yeah, he’s sure he can control the demon … well it didn’t work out.” To those with any background in the arts, any reference to summoning demons inevitably conjures thoughts of the archetypal play with devils, Christopher Marlowe’s The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus. Marlowe’s protagonist, Faustus, is a brilliant academic — but he is bored. Tired of the everyday, having reached the limits of human “With Artificial knowledge, he longs to push further and is Intelligence we are taken by the promise of the occult. Delighted summoning the demon.” at his ability not only to summon a demon but make him change form, Faustus believes that he has everything under control, but he is already in deeper than he thinks. He demands that Mephistopheles obey his every command, but the demon refuses, saying, “I am a servant to great Lucifer, and may not follow thee without his leave.” Faustus still has the chance to pull back, but the temptation of omniscience is too much and he plunges onward — not toward greater knowledge, but eternal damnation.
6
THE MONSTER WITHIN
This theme of daring to assume equality with the divine can be seen in the Garden of Eden, where Lucifer slides approaches Eve, walking in the garden with an apple in her hand, tempting her to question what she thought she knew: “God knows,” he says to her, “that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God.” One AI evangelist writes that “we will all become angels and for eternity. Cyberspace will feel like Paradise, a space for collective
Through AI we really do risk creating a hell into which we will be unable to stop falling.
4
As much as technologies reveal, they also work to “enframe” us — to prevent us from seeing the world in any other way than the one they offer.
restoration of the habit of perfection.” The goal is exactly that of the church. Lucifer was cast down and Bruno was burned not because their end was at fault — unity with the divine is what everyone from the Pope to the Dalai Lama to Michelangelo to Kurzweil is after — but because the means of achieving it was considered sinful. Ascension to heaven is the sole work of Christ; those who try to make their own stairway to heaven should be flamed. In fact, religion and technology have always fed from the same fuel. Whether holy spirits or evil demons, what lurks within us is a lust to ascend, to know All Things, to escape our human limitations and failing bodies and become Most High. This desire is the monster within, but one great irony is that through AI we really do risk creating a hell into which we will be unable to stop falling.
7
THE QUESTION
In 1954, Heidegger published The Question Concerning Technology where he states that all technologies perform a work of revelation. Technologies reveal the world to us in new ways, and part of the promise that they use to attract us is the form of revelation they can bring. The hammer can make limited promises: it can create fine carpentry or smash your face in, but its reach is physically small. A gun can perform a version of “action at a distance” — promising life-changing effects (i.e. life-ending ones.) The problem with networked digital technologies is that the promises they make become religious in scale. The ads tell us that we can know anything, at any time, that we can instantly reach an audience of billions with the “We remain unfree and chained to technology, swipe of a finger, drop down into any street in whether we passionately any city, or spin our globe and land anywhere affirm or deny it.” on it. The promise is divine, and Lucifer is hissing contentedly. It is this revelatory power that is constantly venerated, constantly spouted by technology companies, but Heidegger is not yet done. As much as technologies reveal, they also work to “enframe” us — to prevent us from seeing the world in any other way than the one they offer. Wearing Google Glass reveals whole new layers of information about the world around us, but in this dazzling revelation it also works to conceal other ways of understanding the spaces and people around us. This is the fundamental mistake of everyone from Bruno to Kurzweil, of those who think that AI will be able to perfect our fallen nature
5
and deliver divine knowledge. We might have vast amounts of data revealed to us in evolving toward digital consciousness, but the smell of coming rain or the squeeze of a hand — all of this will become concealed.
8
REVOLUTION AS REORIENTATION: IN DEFENSE OF REAL INTELLIGENCE
What then are we to do? In the face of this great and ancient lust for the Eden of perfect knowledge, how are we meant to resist? First, we must reject the rejection of technology. We could smash our tablet computers, but we’d still be using toothbrushes. Heidegger is right: “we remain unfree and chained to technology, whether we passionately affirm or deny it.” Part of our manifesto needs to be the constant exposure of the bullshit promises that technology ads make, to help people see the ways in which their devices are concealing whole layers of the world from them. Most important, though, our task as we face the future is to deal with this religious drive within us, this desire to lift away from our bodies and become divine. This is the demon that sustains the worse excesses of both the technology of religion and the religion of technology. We need instead to come to terms with our finitude and embrace our existential imperfection. Our striving for the impossible risks destroying the good life that is possible. Just like the gleaming new phone in that commercial, you are one day going to die, to slow down, shut down and be lowered into the earth. The intelligence that promises otherwise is artificial. Real wisdom lies in the embrace of the short time we have together, and the calm rejection of desperate ways to extend it.
Real wisdom lies in the embrace of the short time we have together, and the calm rejection of desperate ways to extend it.
7
perfect candidates. </p>
such as Burning Man are
cultural manifestations
the Internet and participatory
motives, where of course
egotistic and narcissistic
than themselves, beyond
create something bigger
gathering to create and co-
sacred occurrence of humans
produced in the past. God is the
Abrahamism, New Age etc.
transcendent characters which
than the dysfunctional
now and into the future
far more credible to him
create further gods who are
created by man, man is free to
<p> Since all gods have been
to 21st century man.
credible and meaningful
a new religion which is
be exactly what we need:
on the other it may in fact
seem dangerous or even absurd,
with a religious context can
hand, viewing technology
created for it. While on one
a new spirituality must be
so vast, so unlike the past that
<p>The internet age is so new,
<body>
<quote> “The internet is 7 billion people connected together in real time, and if that isn’t the holy spirit then I don’t know what it is.” </quote>
%
<def> ‘Syntheism’ comes from the Greek syntheos, meaning humanity creates Godas opposed to God creates humanity </def>
the internet itself”. </p>
first physical manifestation of
utopia that is the world’s
experimental temporary
He describes it as “an
of the internet, says Bard.
that are central to the ethos
in voluntary self-government
hierarchical authority and belief
values of the opposition to
embodies the same anarchistic
Nevada’s Black Rock Desert,
week-long festival in
Burning Man, the annual
write about Syntheism.”
internet was causing I should
books about the problems the
rather than carry on writing
which I realised that
at Burning Man during
beautiful naked actress
the night lying next to a
had his “while spending
on the road to Damascus, Bard
<p> If Saint Paul had his vision
interactivity.” </p>
with. There is no way back from
phone to just answer the phone
you are never going to get a
a smartphone in your hand
“After all, once you’ve had
of the printing press.
Church after the invention
happened to the Catholic
culture, just like what
embrace this new interactivist
swept aside if they can’t
like the Guardian will be
powerful that institutions
“These forces are so
of a participatory culture.
interactivity and is a key part
with them. This is called
and do something together
involved with each other
where people really get
and the new ones
individualistic models
is a hybrid of old
“At the moment it
point”.
as “completely missing the
creating a culture of narcissism
those who see the internet as
created online. Bard dismisses
social nodes in the networks
rather, that our value is as
individuals. It teaches us,
sense of ourselves as
going to overturn our
internet is actually
he believes, that the
Syntheism is all about is,
understood and what
the Pirate movement have
<p> What WikiLeaks and
<subheading> Syntheism is a new religon, formed with the belief that religion is a human necessity. However we need to get out of the theism vs atheism deadlock and move on to create a new religion which is credible and meaningful to 21st century man. </subheading>
<heading> Creating God in the Internet </heading>
{} #
<quote> “These forces are so powerful that institutions like the Guardian will be swept aside if they can’t embrace this new interactivist culture.” </quote>
<p> Since 2000 Bard has written
religions. </p>
eventually.” </p>
8
the traditional monotheistic
creates humanity” basis of
as opposed to the “God
humanity creates God –
from Greek syntheos, meaning
21st century. “Syntheism” comes
support something like WikiLeaks
popular movement that could
story for WikiLeaks. It is the
is to create a bigger
what Syntheism does
my friend Julian Assange
created a religion relevant to the
God, then it’s about time we
way for a new elite and I am
one of its storytellers. For
on the idea that if man creates
Syntheism in 2012. It is based
Bard helped to found
Futurica Trilogy.
together form The
Jan Söderqvist that
Syntheism is preparing the
Kant for the new age. So
the fucking Immanuel
Someone has to do
to now is the storytelling.
“What we have been lacking up
with the media theorist
revolution in collaboration
internet age is going to have
Syntheism to keep people online.
three books about the internet
people consuming, so the
had individualism to keep
on the land and capitalism
just formulating it.” </p>
that Syntheism is already being practised and we are
Christianity to keep people
Empire. I firmly believe
across the Roman
being practised
;
</body>
atomic bombs.” </p>
unless they throw too many
we hope it is the young people,
We don’t know who will win but
his letters after Christianity was
start the revolution, not
Netocrats online who will
conflict and it is the
“It will be a physical
conflicts.
lead to physical
surveillance will
neutrality and mass
that controversy over net
lucidity. He claims to believe
says, drifting further from
be free and open,” he
netocracy will want it to
control the web – the new
corporations will want to
“The state and the big
old and new elites.
are going to be between the
conflicts of the 21st century
Bard says the major
then the Reformation,
the printing press and
followed the invention of
like the wars of religion that
dark side of Syntheism. Much
the workers in the factory.
<quote> “I firmly believe that Syntheism is already being practised and we are just formulating it.” </quote>
<p> But Bard warns about the
Saint Paul wrote
then formulated.
“Religion is first practised
in the US.
campaigning for net neutrality
to mass surveillance, and those
Zealand, campaigning for an end
world, the Internet Party in New
history, where feudalism had
<p> In Bard’s analysis of
is.” </p>
spirit then I don’t know what it
time, and if that isn’t the holy
connected together in real
internet is 7 billion people
together,” says Bard. “The
to 70 countries across the
fights for digital freedom,
Party movement that
groups such as the Pirate
WikiLeaks and other radical
same is true, he believes, of
online world,” says Bard. The
world as a reflection of the
the real world and the real
when the believers are
“Someone do the Immanuel the new </quote>
natives under 25 now see “the online world as
which has now spread
<quote> has to fucking Kant for age.”
= the UK, show that digital
including Burning Nest in
<p> Burning Man, and spin offs
is the manifestation of God
meaning that the Holy Ghost
‘I will always be with you’,
said to his disciples was
of the last things Jesus
“In Christianity, one
God in The Internet Age.
book, Syntheism - Creating
with the publication of his latest
a new way to spread the word
religious leader, Bard now has
Activist, musician and now
the “the internet is God”.
in which he claimed that
new religion called Syntheism
two years ago he founded a
<p> In comes Alexander Bard,