Technological inevitability.
Originally published at: https://readyaiminquire.com/post/677969372806004736/technological-inevitability
One of the great platitudes which are very popular today, when we are confronted with acts of violence [is …]: “If there is no God, then everything is permitted”. [… T]his statement is simply wrong.
Even a brief look at our predicament today clearly tells us this. It is precisely if there is a God that everything is permitted to those […] who perceive themselves as instruments […] of the Divine Will.
If you posit or perceive or legitimise yourself as a direct instrument of Divine Will, […] petty moral considerations disappear. How can you even think in such narrow terms when you are a direct instrument of God?
The Illuminati. Globe-trotting action. Robot arms! Honestly, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, the video game, has everything you’d want from a cyberpunk videogame. From robust role-playing elements that really flesh out the world, to a compelling (if totally absurd) narrative. And did I mention the robot arms?? It’s no wonder that it’s considered a classic in the genre and certainly an excellent piece of cyberpunk media. It has been recommended by many of the folks I work with and research alongside here in Sweden as a solid sci-fi title — a game that strongly plays into the fantasy of advanced human augmentation technologies, and robot arms! — while also being cited as a source of inspiration. This, simultaneously, makes perfect sense, and makes no sense at all. Based on how it is discussed, it presents a positive view of the future: as something cool and remarkable, something worth striving for. Thematically, however, it turns out the game is far, far, far more critical than this. Corporate espionage and global conspiracies set into motion with the end goal to control the world population; the New World Order. Rising racism and social tensions between the augmented and the ‘natural’ humans. Lies within lies. It’s a cyberpunk game, after all. Cyberpunk! A genre that, by definition, requires everything to be awful. How can such criticisms, whether structural critiques, or critiques of tech-use, go over the head of so many people? Indeed, I recently had a friend say that as much as he loved Deus Ex, its main downside being that it is “kinda anti-transhumanist” in its messaging.
As trope-ridden as Deus Ex is — a near-requirement for cyberpunk works, it seems — it carefully navigates tough topics to truly highlight issues, dangers, problems, and pitfalls with the potential technologies of the future. And it is key to highlight here that the game, like much cyberpunk, isn’t so much against technologies or a more technological future, but rather attempts — to varying degrees of success — to offer a structural critique of technology and society. In this sense, it is not anti-transhumanist as it is anti-large-corporations-using-technology-as-a-means-of-consolidating-power-and-resources-for-their-own-gain-ism, though this, of course, is far less snappy. As is shown in the epitaph “high tech, low life”, cyberpunk’s central thesis is that technology is an extension of society and present social systems, relations, and schema. If such systems remain unjust, riddled with inequities, and corrupt, no matter how fantastic(al) any technological developments may be, they will invariably end up making the world worse. The hammer that can help build a house can just as easily bash your head open. Portraying this tension is something good cyberpunk ought to do well — being the central thesis and all — and Deus Ex cannot be faulted on this front. Perhaps, if anything, at times it is a bit too heavy-handed in “““implying””” the aforementioned thematic elements. “Why did you save the innocent hostages, Jensen?? Saving my corporate secrets is far more important than their peon-lives!” your totally-not-corrupt-or-evil-CEO-boss booms across your cyber-cochlear implants. Subtle? As subtle as a boomer meme.
Even then, it’s not all too skewed either. The technologies are impressive, and important developments in many ways. They save lives; they change otherwise difficult lives. ROBOT ARMS! Granted, the negative aspects of these technologies, hands down (no pun intended), receive far more screen time, but even then, the evils that are shown are not shown because of the technologies themselves, but rather the emergence of such fantastical technologies have led to an increased articulation of the inequities and injustices already present in our neoliberal societies that we know and… erhm, ‘love’. The genre is often said to be one that criticises the present from the perspective of the future, and while it cannot be accused, by and large, of not criticising enough, perhaps its greatest weakness remains a general failure to present meaningful alternatives, let alone coherent ones.
Imperfect but clear, that’s how I would summarise my experience with Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and indeed much Cyberpunk media. With this in mind, how could this meaningfully act as an inspiration among the typically entrepreneurial, oft-libertarian-leaning techno-enthusiasts I work with? Sure, sure, seeing past the technology as evils unleashed upon society is to be expected. After all, technology is a mere tool. And the tools in question heighten the problems already present. However, this fails to account for the fact that the majority of these individuals believe that enterprise and market economics is perhaps not the only way to usher in a technologically enlightened future, but the best way of doing so. If cyberpunk media, like Deus Ex, posits, albeit implicitly, that capitalism generally and neoliberalism more specifically is the root to dystopian future they present, how can the same neoliberal logics be repurposed to result in the opposite effect?
Some of it can be put down to misreading the works in question, accidentally or wilfully; or even hubris, that human trait much sci-fi likes to invoke, “When I do things, it will be different. I will do it right!” one may declare; “it had to be me; someone else might have gotten it wrong”, to mix science fiction works. Even then, I suspect these answers are far too simplistic. In essence, the folks I work with aren’t so stupid, naïve, or filled with hubris, and it would be a disservice to assume such a surface level reading is, at the core of things, correct. Instead, I propose we shift the perspective on things. Consider this: what if the technological development in question isn’t the goal, what if it’s inevitable?
Among scholars working with temporality, the past, present, and future are often considered multiplicitous. That is to say: that it is not so much accurate to speak of the past, or the present, but rather of pasts, presents, and futures. Each present moment is experienced differently, from different vantage points, and with different perspectives and understandings of the past; the collected information from which is extrapolated into different futures. Equally, the future may hold some new information — a new historical discovery, an archaeological find, or philosophical insight — that sheds new light on the past, further shifting the understanding of the present and its extrapolation into the future. Even for each individual, the past-present-future dynamic is not set in stone. Both on a broad societal scale and on the individual level, temporality remains one of multiplicities.
What, then, happens when we throw in notions of the inevitable into this already fluid mix? It creates perceived anchor-points in history. In essence, progress, as it were, is understood more as a Civilisation V technology tree rather than the many potential paths to tread. All societies begin with the wheel, and then move on to animal husbandry, or bows, or sailing, and inevitably ends with ICBMs, space colonies, and robot arms (!). This is not how things function in practice. Technology and innovation are far from a linear tree where progress is so nicely demarcated, and the direction runs merely from left (less complex, more ‘primitive’ technologies) to the right (highly complex, highly technical). More accurately, innovation, development, and progress are the results of environmental, geographical, social, cultural, and a whole slew of other factors: live in the mountains without any really accessible roads? Then the wheel will be far less useful to you. No animals around to husband? Guess you’re stuck tilling the fields yourself. On the other hand, an ideology of technological inevitability means that all roads lead to Rome; there are many paths to tread but them ROBOT ARMS(!) will be. What follows is an argumentum ad fati; an appeal to destiny; that all paths are laid out, and there is nothing anyone can do about anything — let’s just sit back and enjoy the ride.
This appeal to destiny invariably takes on a transcendental, even divine, character: of an ever-moving, entirely unstoppable, otherworldly force, pushing us forward towards progress, whatever that may be. Like Walter Benjamin’s gale-winds carrying the Angel of Destiny towards the unseen future, the inevitability of technological progress won’t stop for anyone or anything, and it sure as hell won’t stop for any silly moral considerations. No matter the outcome in practice, these technologies will be, so there’s no point in worrying about it. This, like religious or spiritual prophecy, is an ideological stance, coated in terms of rationality: statistically speaking it is bound to happen; given enough time, anything and everything must happen. Who are you to question the Divine Plan?
This, here, betrays the first clearly visible ideological marker of any such technological prophet: timescale. Timescale is a funny thing, like that. It can be used to justify near everything and anything. It gets at the question of what responsibilities we who exist have towards those who not yet. Depending on the timescale chosen, near anything can be justified: if we do not do an evil now, another even bigger evil will happen in the far future! This approach, longtermism, has been brilliantly deconstructed by Phil Torres so I won’t dwell too much on it. Taken together with the inevitability of progress, the evils in the present or near future are merely inevitable evils that we cannot do much about anyway, which, besides, will justify themselves in the future once destiny is fulfilled. To paraphrase the opening quote, if you view yourself as being caught up in an inevitable change, “petty” moral considerations do not only disappear, but they become veritably absurd to consider. What will happen is inevitable either way. What is there to do about it?
“Some of you will die, but that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make” as the meme goes: sucks to be you if you end up on the receiving end of the future cyberpunk hellscape. You can rest easy in the knowledge that in the future future, people will have it grand, though. It’s a relaxing thought. Ironically, these proponents of such technologies today, those inspired by the warnings yet ignoring the genuine risks they present and ethical questions they raise are also involved in the development of these technologies, a pretty solid way to achieve the status allowing you to reap the benefits of this future; to be soaring high above the clouds, rather than squatting in the dank neon-soaked streets many thousand floors below. The irony here, of course, is that this serves to reproduce the material conditions that lead to this aforementioned hellscape. Here, perhaps even more ironically, the major shortcoming with cyberpunk media rears its head once again: the critique is good and fair, but it never presented an alternative. The present state of things is what we get until we reach our inevitable transcendence, the much hoped for Singularity: and the faster we proverbially move towards it, the less time people will even have to suffer. Material improvements in the present are moot when future transcendence is inevitable. Just suck it up and trust the CEO when he says that it is better for the world if you save his company secrets at the cost of the hostages’ lives.
It’s not like he has anything to gain from the situation…
