While reading Robin Marantz Henig’s “Death by Robot,” I was reminded of a recent successful movie: Avengers: Age of Ultron. In the article, Henig discusses how we are currently striving to construct autonomous robots capable of making ethical decisions. This reminded me of a common trope used in science fiction films: the uprising of the robots.
Whenever humans construct artificially intelligent robots, the majority of the time, these robots begin to question why they are taking orders from their creators. As Henig mentions in the article, humans cannot process information as quickly as a computer can. Humans are also blinded by the emotions that robots cannot possess. In the robots’ minds, this makes the humans weaker. This is especially true for the character of Ultron in Avengers: Age of Ultron. In the video below, you can hear some of his best quotes, where he harps on humanity’s weaknesses.
Ultron was created as a peacekeeping force. However, similar to the ethical dilemmas presented in “Death by Robot,” Ultron is faced with his own dilemma: his creators cause some of the most damage, death, and destruction in the world. Thus, Ultron decides that the only way to create peace on the world would be to eradicate humanity entirely.
This story seems quite familiar to me—man creates machine, machine attempts to usurp man, man destroys machine. Whenever a robot seems capable of making ethical decisions, it realizes that humans are some of the least ethical creatures on the Earth, and that the Earth could do a lot better without us. Through media such as Avengers: Age of Ultron and I, Robot, humanity is taught to fear the day when robots and computers are able to make the same ethical decisions as humans. They can do so faster, and in some cases, better than humanity ever could. This begs the question though: do we really want robots to realize how much more capable they are?
Canavan, Gerry. “”We are the Walking Dead”: Race, Time, and Survival in Zombie Narrative.” Extrapolation, vol 51 no. 3, 2010, pp. 431-453.
“Halt & Catch Fire.” Supernatural, season 10, episode 13, The CW, 10 Feb. 2015.
Mezei, Sarolta. “Spectral Media Technology and the Vicious Brothers’ Grave Encounters.” HJEAS : Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies, vol 22 no. 1, pp. 167-180.
Pinedo, Isabel. “Recreational Terror: Postmodern Elements of the Contemporary Horror Film.” Journal of Film and Video, vol 48 no 1/2, 1996, pp. 17-31.
“Running.” Dead Set, season 1, episode 4, Zeppotron, 30 Oct. 2008.
In A Head Full of Ghosts, Paul Tremblay destabilizes the belief that there exists one version of reality, providing instead various conflicting accounts and retellings of one event to highlight the subjective and constructed nature of truth. When multiple “correct” versions of a situation exist, anything becomes possible; both logical and irrational explanations (mental illness versus a spirit possession) have equal authority. Horror is achieved through the realization that there are no limits, only different sides to the same story.
The concept of truth is less tangible and exact than we want to believe. Different versions blur together. Takemoto, Akio. Blurry People. 2015. Flickr. Web. 2 Feb. 2017.
The characters in A Head Full of Ghosts struggle to find the “true” story of Marjorie. Rachel makes it her mission to locate “An accurate account of what happened” (Tremblay 111) and Merry’s mother documents events in a red notebook (46). Merry grapples with this struggle for the “correct” version of events as well, questioning her memory each time it contradicts the accounts of those around her and the TV show’s interpretation. Merry undermines the validity of her memories by acknowledging that they ““…were mixed together with what other people told [her] about what had happened, and [she] included pop culture and media”” as influences (Tremblay 112). She often hesitates as she recounts her experience, offering excuses each time her memory differs from recorded happenings including “misremembering” (Tremblay 72) and the possibility that she blocked out the trauma or even confused reenactment with reality (73). Self-doubt, amplified by the 15 years that have passed since the incident, cause Merry to falter in her conviction.
Merry’s hesitation introduces a central dilemma: what happens when we can’t remember and when our memory fails us? In his article “The Storyteller: Reflections on the Works of Nikolai Leskov,” Walter Benjamin describes memory as a “…tradition which passes a happening on from generation to generation” (Benjamin 371). However, in A Head Full of Ghosts, the memory of what happened to Marjorie is passed via technology—the camera and the tape recorder. This shift from human memory to technological storage removes the human responsibility of “…reproducing the story” through memory (Benjamin 370). Technology serves as a vault of memories and traumas that will never be fully processed or interpreted outside of their factual value as information or cheep entertainment.
It is perhaps more accurate to say that technology preserves rather than remembers. Memories are rooted in emotion, tied to the feelings experienced in the moment. Because they are tied to emotion, memories are physical experiences that allow us to relive a situation in the past. Technology, however, can’t capture feeling, only fact. For example, when Merry uses her video camera to capture Marjorie’s invasion of her room one night, she is disappointed re-watching it, noting, “It didn’t look as scary as I remember it” (Tremblay 149). The video is unable to address Merry’s fear and anger, and as a result, it’s literal depiction no longer represents the truth. Without Merry’s emotional response, the recording fails to capture the integrity of the event.
This limitation in technology’s “memory” is reminiscent of Black Mirror. In her grief, Martha finds solace in the thought that Ash can be forever preserved, his memory left intact. The fear of forgetting him is removed as a burden. However, not unlike humans, technology has a selective memory and we soon realize that the synthesized version of Ash is missing the very qualities that made him who he was when living. Just like the cameras of the reality TV show The Possession in Tremblay’s book, Marjorie and Ash are remembered through their exterior, public construction of themselves. This concept of remembrance circles us back to the Benjamin reading, which introduces the term to signify what we remember and preserve of a person when they are dead or gone. Benjamin uses the example of the “Man…who died at thirty-five [who] will appear to remembrance at every point in his life as a man who died at the age of thirty-five. In other words, the statement that makes no sense for real life becomes indisputable for remembered life” (Benjamin 373). In the context of A Head Full of Ghosts, the confusion and hesitation of the real-life trauma experienced by the Barrett family is distorted into a single, condensed and indisputable account of the event by the single lens of technology. This one incident in Marjorie’s fourteen years on earth becomes her entire essence and identity in her absence.
Works Cited:
“Be Right Back.” Black Mirror, season 2, episode 1, Netflix.
Benjamin, Walter, and Hannah Arendt. “The Storyteller: Reflections on the Works of Nikolai Leslov.” Illuminations. Trans. Harry Zohn. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968. 83-109. Print.
Tremblay, Paul. A Head Full of Ghosts: A Novel. New York, NY: William Morrow, 2015. Print.
Episode 1, Season 2 of Black Mirror undertakes a close inspection of loss and intimacy in a technologically advanced future world. While the sudden death of Ash is shocking and heartbreaking for Martha, I found myself wondering whether this loss had in fact occurred on a smaller scale long before his physical disappearance. The episode opens on a scene characterized by disconnect; Ash is consumed by his phone and Martha recognizes his absence. She later refers to his phone as a “thief”, a place to which he “vanishes”. Her language paints the phone as a felt presence, a person or place rather than an object devoid of value or feeling. A following scene in the bedroom highlights Ash and Martha’s disconnect on a more physical level. Their underwhelming sexual encounter, which leaves much to be desired, ends with the two rolling over and falling asleep. Romance, love, and intimacy appear to be at a slight loss although not entirely absent. We are left with a fractured romantic landscape: a normalized disconnect peppered with moments of connection (including singing and laughing).
We are first introduced to Ash, Martha, and their technology as three acting forces that interact and interplay in a three-way relationship. This brings to light an important question: At what point does the interaction between administrator and application (such as Ash and his cell phone, Martha and her synthesized partner) threaten and consume human relationships? Can you be jealous of a phone the way one would another lover? Is it cheating if you are emotionally invested in your technological device? And finally, how do we understand monogamy in a world in which a person can design their own pleasure?
The concept of a technological romance is further explored in the relationship between Martha and the “synthesized” version of Ash. I was particularly struck by the use of this term “administrator” in reference to the relationship between Martha and this man-made being. This word adds an unprecedented power dynamic to their relationship, one in which Martha is master and commander. This control, while at first pleasing, ends in frustrating failure. Martha seeks human imperfection, not robotic precision. She wants messy love with all its bumps and burdens, sweetness and care. However, Martha is simply a customer who has purchased a product intended to fulfill her needs. Ash is a mere construction, reflecting back only what she puts into him. In this sense, his limitation is a cruel reminder of her own; she is, for all purposes, dating herself.
Because technological devices and tools are modeled primarily around the relationship between administrator/application, creator/product, user/device, I believe it’s impossible for technology to ever fully replace human relationships. More often than not, technological relationships inspire both obsession and self-loathing: Martha’s initial fascination with her virtual partner ends with her screaming in pure grief from the cliff’s edge, loathing the very thing that she has made. We see obsession when Ash distances himself from his painful childhood by snapping an ironic picture of an old photo with his phone, turning to the phone before he turns to Martha. For both, technology serves as a buffer from the harshness of the world around them, a virtual safe space that offers complete control and power, designed and programmed to please in all meanings of the term.
Black Mirror: Season 2 Episode 1. N.d. Tayla Humphris A2 Media Exam Blog. Web. 23 Jan. 2017.
The interplay between human and technological romantic relationships in this episode reminded me of the movie Her (2013) in which the main character, the lonely Theodore Twombly, engages in a romantic relationship with the voice of his operating system, Samantha. As the film progresses, the plot explores the possibilities and limitations of virtual spaces and the types of relationships they offer humans. Both Black Mirror and Her expose the challenges of “synthesized” or technological relationships and introduce the question: How do we clarify the borders between relationships in a technologically advanced universe intent on sharing everything?
