(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
When I face things I don't understand, I happen to sign up for a seminar. Technology, for example, and robots I want to understand more about. For every single day, I relate to technology, without knowing anything about it or thinking about it. And what about the future, as I grow old? Should I be cared for by a robot? Can my son, who might then live in China, talk to me through a robot and I give the robot a hug, and it's as if I'm hugging my son because I imagine the robot is him? And afterwards, the robot can be another, if I will. My daughter. Or a lover, maybe? Is that how it should be? Or already, in the form of trials?
For 24 years, the Norwegian Critics' Association has organized a seminar for critics, authors and other interested parties as part of the Norwegian Literature Festival at Lillehammer. This year was the title We are citizens, which in the dictionary is defined as "the machinist". I sat on the train from Oslo to Lillehammer and found myself a few hours later in Holbø's hall in Kulturhuset Banken, where I was already reminded in the first lecture that it is not so long since I would arrive by horse and carriage. And with that perspective in mind, in the shelter of the strong sun and May heat next to an electric fan, I was ready to approach the technological man through historical, literary, mathematical and metaphorical perspectives.
Metaphorical thinking
Already in 1863 Camilla Collett must have compared writing barriers with cable breakage. She had published Norway's first modern novel, The Daughters of the County (which also happens to be the name of our internet connection because we live in Camilla Collett's Road in Oslo). About the same time as Collett's novel, in 1854–1855, also came the railroad, the telegraph and the stamp, told Anders Skare Malvik, associate professor at NTNU, and released three theatrical pieces by Bjørnstären Bjørnson from after 1870, where technology intervenes in human opportunity for to operate in time and in space. The telegraph plays a role in tension building and dispute. Technology is discussed off-stage, and says something about the subject belonging to the elite and how much power there is in controlling the technology.
We are all coastal citizens, to varying degrees.
Author and professor Jan Grue approached the metaphors in his lecture on the prosthetic body, which gets artificial additions through dentures, be it Tyco Brahe's brass nose or a modern iron arm. He reminded us that we are all citizens, to varying degrees. The clock gives a sixth sense, and what would we do without the glasses? The bodies are shaped by our lives. Some bodies become metaphorical because they stand out, are marked by, for example, a prosthesis or injury, and say something beyond themselves. But the metaphors are not permanent, he pointed out. Once upon a time, the brain was a clock, then a computer with hole cards, now a distributed network. And tomorrow? We think metaphorically about what is difficult to understand, he said, referring to the philosopher Merleau-Ponty, because the body allows us to sense others.
In Holbølsalen the windows stood wide open, the blinds flailing against the frame. The noise from the electric fan eventually became a faint blanket and spread the smell of sweat from us seminar participants.
Plays
Author Cathrine Knudsen started her lecture by stepping into the robot's place: She var Sophia, mimicked her, played her, as if to try out "how does it feel to stand in front of you and be the robot Sophia" – who was recently on a Norwegian visit and met Erna Solberg. Although she was soon out of the role, she retained the open attitude for the rest of the lecture, which bore the title You are never alone. Through examples from her own writing and thoughts on the possible function of the robots as a substitute for the living, including in the health care system, she approached the topic with both curiosity and critical gaze. Thus, the ambivalent also emerged. Robots can relieve, but should we relieve ourselves from direct proximity?
Some robots are created so that one can choose who it should be and whose voice it should have. Like them, robot creator Hiroshi Ishiguro makes. Knudsen described the robot as a torso, a half-body of similarity to a nude mannequin, and I recognized it from her book By human hand (2017). The robot – or "doll," as it is called – is there when the child's mother is not there, as a substitute mother can talk through. The eyes are both eyes and camera. I especially noticed what Knudsen said about how strong the fictions we carry with us are, and what we bring to life, which the baby cloth Knudsen had as a child, and her reaction when her mother threw it. It was just a cloth. But it was also something else. The robot has its own name and is specific, but is mass produced. Can it be common to use such robots as relief? Much indicates that we are on our way, Knudsen said. The robots provide fast confirmation. They believe in us, that the one we introduce ourselves to is who we are, because the robot doesn't know any better. Through her lecture, I also gained insight into the fact that there is a class distinction between robots: the elite robots have human names, like Erica. While mid-range robots are service workers and have more anonymous names like Alpha and Telenoid. But who is the robot there for? The autistic and the demented, or the surrounding area? If a robot makes it more comfortable and meets our needs, do we miss out on the unpleasant?
Math and comics
A test audience must have listened to both Bach and an algorithmic version of Bach, after which they thought the last thing they heard was Bach. Can't a machine then be a critic? Among other things, mathematician and technology journalist at Morgenbladet, Sigve Indregard, showed us how a neural network (models of brain cells linked together in a network) can decompose van Gogh's style and paint something else in the same style. For language guidance can be reproduced. And the critic's patterns can be copied. But mood and other irregularities get in the way. One in the hall told me that a computer wrote a Seinfeld episode. It didn't go so well. Good comedy is difficult to recreate. Then maybe it will be comics that only robots and computers understand, Indregard said – and made us laugh. He was keen not to look at technology as an enemy and expressed greater concern that the development was driven by a small environment in Silicon Valley. I brought with him his idea of a stronger link between technology and humanism. And maybe, maybe there is, a publicity for a positive technology literature is needed so that we are not just filled with dystopias?
Should we relieve ourselves from direct proximity?
Even a few days after the train had taken me home from the seminar, I found myself googling for Ishiguro's robots. I was struck by a similar fascination as Knudsen showed, the humanity about them attracted me despite the fact that they also have something repulsive about them. I talked about them to my boyfriend, to my son, like talking about a new friend.
horizons
I also chose robots as the theme of the writing course I hold for seniors in senior homes. I noticed that their associations not only moved towards technology and dehumanized, but also pulled against trolls, twists and voices in the forest, much like the seminar organizers who devoted a whole author conversation to the link between technology and mystery. For perhaps the railway lines not only expanded our physical room of action, but also the horizon towards the supernatural, as was suggested at the seminar. Or, as science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clark, it said, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Both depend on our imagination.
I asked the elderly what they would think if a machine came in and set them up, instead of a human. That a robot gave them drugs, food, washed them, even talked to them, said hello and have a good day. One of the participants, born in 1931, tried to open up to the idea. The more she talked about the robot, the more curious she became about it. She imagined she asked it about what made it happy and sad, and I thought of Knudsen's baby cloth, and how the writing class participant gave life to a thought-provoking robot, looking for the human by it. If she had to choose between being alone or receiving a robot, she would have chosen the robot.
Facts:
Kyborg: "Kyborg, a person whose implanted technology has replaced or improved organic functions. Usually associated with fantasy characters in the science fiction literature, the term will broadly include people with pacemaker-supported cardiac function or with implanted hearing aids. The term originated in the 1960s as a term for a person who, "augmented" with technological components, could stay in space. "
Source: https://snl.no/kyborg
Norwegian sci-fi recommended by the Critics' Seminar panel:
Cathrine Knudsen: By human hand, 2017.
Jon Bing: The soft landscape, 2014.
Hans Christian Sandbeck: The atoms play, novel from 2250, 1945
