- Email: [email protected]
The fourth discontinuity: The co-evolution of humans and machines
Book reviews
Hammond’s careful analysis of quick response in retail and manufacturing) or for other goods and products (such as computers).2 On the initial key question of do we get the big picture, the answer is a resounding maybe.
Notes and references 1.
2.
See, for example, Thomas W Malone and John F Rockhart, ‘Computers networks and the corporation’, Scientific American, September 1991, pages 92-99. See, for example, S C Forge, ‘Business models of the computer industry for the next decade’, Futures, 25(q), November 1993, pages 923-948.
From Homo sapiens to Homo combofl’cus?
Mammo Muchie The Fourth Discontinuity: The Co-Evolution of Humans and Machines Bruce Mazlish New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 1993, 271 pages, f35.00
This is a book which is indeed a pleasure to read and review. The introduction is not only provocative but scary. It suggests that humans are on .the verge of decisively ‘breaking past the discontinuity between themselves and machines’ (page 6). It is not even the coevolution of humans with machines, but their transformation into machines, which appears to be the main thesis until we reach the last two chapters of the book. This notion, that humans may be transformed into machines as a matter of evolutionary inevitability, is shocking as indeed it brutally conflates and forces two unrelated phenomena into an organic continuity. Humans ‘are on an evolutionary continuum, with machines as a new, and possibly advanced, species’ (page 154). It is this ‘vision of machines as an evolutionary development after man’ (page 141) which has the consequence of degrading humans and privileging machines. It is expressed with the same sort of finality as the equation
Dr Mammo Muchie may be contacted at the Faculty of Technology, Middlesex University, Trent Park, Bramley Road, London N14 4XS, UK (Tel: + 44 81 362 5000; fax: + 44 81 441 4672; e-mail: [email protected]).
1112
by Francis Fukyauma’s End of History, with the demise of the USSR as the end-point of human history. Liberal democracy, he alleged, is this end-point and it cannot be built in one country, opening the ideological floodgate for a worldwide capitalist revolution. For me, the problem of human transformation/evolution/development into machines raises profound ontological and epistemological dilemmas. Unless one either redefines humans and machines, ascribing mechanical and human attributes to them respectively, an evolutionary continuum between them would appear impossible to establish. Such a redefinition is not a subjective-voluntarist act. It has to be submitted to rigorous methodological and ontological tests and, moreover, has to pass such tests. The hallmark of being human, as opposed to remaining a mere animal, is human creation of tools and machines. Language is also one other defining criterion. Machines are now driven by languages and programs, though still the latter are invented by humans. Being a creator of tools and machines is distinct from the notion of being transformed to them. It is undeniable that artificial intelligence (Al) research is enabling computers to acquire ever increasing intelligence; and in many ways specific human powers of calculation and speed of information processing have gone well beyond human capabilities and thrown up intractable ethical uncertainties. Nevertheless, a generalized substitution
Futures
1994 Volume
26 Number
10
Book reviews
of human abilities by robots and computers is still a fantasy. Japanese workers could continue to greet their robots with a ‘friendly good-morning’ and respond to them ‘not as machines but as close-to-human beings’ (page 198). This is still a far cry from replicating every aspect of human activity. In addition, it does not turn robots into humans or vice versa. It does not appear logical, but magical, to hold the uniqueness and special nature of human nature and, at to suggest its the same time, equally evolution or degradation(?) to the status of machines. It appears that the concoction of such a simplified thesis, that humans are continuous with machines and that moreover the latter are at the pinnacle of the evolutionary apogee/ladder, not only sounds morally repugnant but also puts into question the health of the mind which fabricates it. The author did courageously pose a question which by all accounts is unattractive to our unexamined and self-validated status as the creators of machines. ‘All humans are created equal and not only are they also equal to machines but they face the evolutionary fate to turn into machines which are superior to them’. This hypothesis comes as deeply offensive to the human sense of being and worth. How can the creator and created enjoy equal status? This is another ‘historic smashing of the ego’ (page 4)-the iourth discontinuity between humans and machines degenerating into its opposite. ‘The same conceptual schemes that help explain the workings of the brain also explain the workings of a “thinking machine”’ (page 4). Viva Al! And Down With Man! The author discussed the thinkers which reflected on man’s continuity/discontinuity with the cosmos, animals and the mind outraging ‘man’s self-love’. Copernicus destroyed our exalted assignment of the Earth as a centre of the universe, consigning it to a mere speck in an expansive cosmic vastness. Darwin established our discontinuity from God and established our evolutionary continuity with the animal kingdom. Human nature-“‘the mystery of mysteries” became a matter of science, not of revelation’ (page 108). Freud tried to prove that the ego is not in control of itself. It relies on the scanty information spontaneously and sporadically generated from the unconscious. He called ‘dreams the “royal
Futures 1994 Volume 26 Number
IO
road” to the unconscious leading to the underground caverns of the mind’ (page 114). Freud added the psychological dimension to the Darwinian insight, that human beings are physiological creatures, by suggesting human continuity with the unconscious. My initial reaction to the author’s hypothesis was to say that this would be music to the ears of the chattering classes and would make the author an interesting figure in their company at a dinner party. I wondered how the book will turn out: a mere amusement or one of those provocative fictions billed to arouse human anxieties by preying on their emotions under the guise of a respectable work of science. This doubt of mine was over after finishing the introduction. The book’s three parts contain a wealth of empirical detail, illustrative cases and rich analysis. Reading the whole book converted me to an admirer of the author. Here is a book in the tradition of those who wrote masterfully great works of intellectual synthesis. The book is indeed a veritable intellectual gold mine, drawing knowledge from history, the history of ideas, philosophy, psychology, sociology, political economy, science and technology studies, biology, cultural studies, science fiction, literature, novels, films and aesthetics. It is an intellectual history, written with an engaging erudition and accessible scholarly style. It has brought together and skilfully and intellectually interwoven: the 17th-century debate over ‘the animalmachine issue in its Cartesian and antiCartesian forms’; a fascinating chapter on automata prefiguring the modern robot by recognizing the rich sources from ancient China, Greece, India and the Arabs, and selectively culling specific automata constructed by fusing art and science spanning the period of the Western renaissance and enlightenment; an original chapter on the Industrial Revolution as marking a watershed in mechanical civilization and providing the material history for the scientific revolution; two chapters critically reviewing ‘prototypic figures’ such as Linnaeus and Darwin; Freud and Pavlov; Babbage, Huxley and Samuel Butler; thoughtful reflections on what the author calls the biogenetic revolution and the revolutions in
1113
Book reviews
computer and brain science and, finally, two chapters on the beginning of a conclusion and the ending of a conclusion. How did the author manage to bring together such a range of material in this book? As he admitted, his ‘approach has not been systematic nor truly ecumenical’ (page 199). He has not narrated the entire history or philosophy of the human quest and reflection to understand human nature. He has selected what he considered to be ‘the most revealing instances in the context of what is basically a Western-orientated discourse’ (page 200). Darwin and Freud appeared to provide a tacit criterion for selecting material from the other authors, providing coherence and cogency to the author’s account (eg Huxley, Pavlov, S Butler and so on). Where the selection appears to be onesided is in the scholars it excluded prima facie for treatment. The selection appears to include almost entirely thinkers and writers who are uncritical of the role of science and technology as purveyors of progress. Social thinkers, such as H Marcuse, J Habermas, j Ellul, T Rozak, the Frankfurt school who question in various ways the reductive and mechanistic civilization of the machinated world are not mentioned. Consequently, the author appears as a narrator of an optimistic discourse on science and technology. He has failed to enrich his account by balancing his argument with the critical philosophical tradition which the biogenetic and computer-Al revolutions have spawned. The insight from non-Western discourse on human-machine interaction would have added a completely different dimension to the linear and reductive evolutionism manifest in the book. Unfortunately, the author mainly managed to ‘note the preeminence of Chinese science and technology’, repeating a long passage cited by Needham in Science and Civilisation in China (pages 32-33). The existence of an array of automata, robots and machines as early as the 4th century BC in China suggests that there is an overriding continuity between modern and ancient civilizations. Unfortunately, a discussion on this line of historical continuity eludes the author. Chinese automata were examples showing evidence
1114
that human nature is different from machines. At least one chapter on nonWestern contributions to the subject would have added both a methodological and sobering dimension to the analysis. Finally the author, having shocked, frightened and provoked the reader, arrived at a conclusion which is non-threatening, by reaffirming the fourth discontinuity between machines and humans. The fourth ‘Descent of Man’ (Darwin) is not a reality, but still a notion. This is a great relief. He came down for coevolution or parallel evolution rather than the evolution of humans into machines. ‘Humans are unique in the totality of their humanity it is the conjunction, the interrelating causality of human attributes that makes for a human’ (page 214). It is the conjunction of all attributes which defines their specific and unique human nature. ‘It is not a matter of one or two, or even many, qualities-such as rationality or emotions-but of the unique, experiential, and evolving combination of these qualities that constitutes human nature’ (page 227). Machines may transform into what he calls homo comboticus, ‘which is something like a new species’, but such ‘combats will be combats and humans, humans’ (page 227). Thus the dual nature of machines and humans is upheld. ‘Homo comboticus will compete with and very likely replace (or convert) most of the human types that have existed before 1970; that is, pre-computer Man’ (page 229). Such a mechanical conjoining of humans with computers is possible, but the creation of humans from combats is out of the question. If humans still create the ‘combots’, they would be unwise/foolish to replace themselves with them. Despite this reassuring ending, I suspect the human quest/fascination to understand its own nature will continue. The biogenetic and computer revolutions have forced the issue on the agenda and added a sense of urgency to it. They are continuing to bring out ethical challenges to the notion of being human. More books like the Fourth Discontinuity will no doubt reappear as long as this question of questions (or issue of issues) remains an enigma and mystery.
Futures 1994 Volume 26 Number 10
Hammond’s careful analysis of quick response in retail and manufacturing) or for other goods and products (such as computers).2 On the initial key question of do we get the big picture, the answer is a resounding maybe.
Notes and references 1.
2.
See, for example, Thomas W Malone and John F Rockhart, ‘Computers networks and the corporation’, Scientific American, September 1991, pages 92-99. See, for example, S C Forge, ‘Business models of the computer industry for the next decade’, Futures, 25(q), November 1993, pages 923-948.
From Homo sapiens to Homo combofl’cus?
Mammo Muchie The Fourth Discontinuity: The Co-Evolution of Humans and Machines Bruce Mazlish New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 1993, 271 pages, f35.00
This is a book which is indeed a pleasure to read and review. The introduction is not only provocative but scary. It suggests that humans are on .the verge of decisively ‘breaking past the discontinuity between themselves and machines’ (page 6). It is not even the coevolution of humans with machines, but their transformation into machines, which appears to be the main thesis until we reach the last two chapters of the book. This notion, that humans may be transformed into machines as a matter of evolutionary inevitability, is shocking as indeed it brutally conflates and forces two unrelated phenomena into an organic continuity. Humans ‘are on an evolutionary continuum, with machines as a new, and possibly advanced, species’ (page 154). It is this ‘vision of machines as an evolutionary development after man’ (page 141) which has the consequence of degrading humans and privileging machines. It is expressed with the same sort of finality as the equation
Dr Mammo Muchie may be contacted at the Faculty of Technology, Middlesex University, Trent Park, Bramley Road, London N14 4XS, UK (Tel: + 44 81 362 5000; fax: + 44 81 441 4672; e-mail: [email protected]).
1112
by Francis Fukyauma’s End of History, with the demise of the USSR as the end-point of human history. Liberal democracy, he alleged, is this end-point and it cannot be built in one country, opening the ideological floodgate for a worldwide capitalist revolution. For me, the problem of human transformation/evolution/development into machines raises profound ontological and epistemological dilemmas. Unless one either redefines humans and machines, ascribing mechanical and human attributes to them respectively, an evolutionary continuum between them would appear impossible to establish. Such a redefinition is not a subjective-voluntarist act. It has to be submitted to rigorous methodological and ontological tests and, moreover, has to pass such tests. The hallmark of being human, as opposed to remaining a mere animal, is human creation of tools and machines. Language is also one other defining criterion. Machines are now driven by languages and programs, though still the latter are invented by humans. Being a creator of tools and machines is distinct from the notion of being transformed to them. It is undeniable that artificial intelligence (Al) research is enabling computers to acquire ever increasing intelligence; and in many ways specific human powers of calculation and speed of information processing have gone well beyond human capabilities and thrown up intractable ethical uncertainties. Nevertheless, a generalized substitution
Futures
1994 Volume
26 Number
10
Book reviews
of human abilities by robots and computers is still a fantasy. Japanese workers could continue to greet their robots with a ‘friendly good-morning’ and respond to them ‘not as machines but as close-to-human beings’ (page 198). This is still a far cry from replicating every aspect of human activity. In addition, it does not turn robots into humans or vice versa. It does not appear logical, but magical, to hold the uniqueness and special nature of human nature and, at to suggest its the same time, equally evolution or degradation(?) to the status of machines. It appears that the concoction of such a simplified thesis, that humans are continuous with machines and that moreover the latter are at the pinnacle of the evolutionary apogee/ladder, not only sounds morally repugnant but also puts into question the health of the mind which fabricates it. The author did courageously pose a question which by all accounts is unattractive to our unexamined and self-validated status as the creators of machines. ‘All humans are created equal and not only are they also equal to machines but they face the evolutionary fate to turn into machines which are superior to them’. This hypothesis comes as deeply offensive to the human sense of being and worth. How can the creator and created enjoy equal status? This is another ‘historic smashing of the ego’ (page 4)-the iourth discontinuity between humans and machines degenerating into its opposite. ‘The same conceptual schemes that help explain the workings of the brain also explain the workings of a “thinking machine”’ (page 4). Viva Al! And Down With Man! The author discussed the thinkers which reflected on man’s continuity/discontinuity with the cosmos, animals and the mind outraging ‘man’s self-love’. Copernicus destroyed our exalted assignment of the Earth as a centre of the universe, consigning it to a mere speck in an expansive cosmic vastness. Darwin established our discontinuity from God and established our evolutionary continuity with the animal kingdom. Human nature-“‘the mystery of mysteries” became a matter of science, not of revelation’ (page 108). Freud tried to prove that the ego is not in control of itself. It relies on the scanty information spontaneously and sporadically generated from the unconscious. He called ‘dreams the “royal
Futures 1994 Volume 26 Number
IO
road” to the unconscious leading to the underground caverns of the mind’ (page 114). Freud added the psychological dimension to the Darwinian insight, that human beings are physiological creatures, by suggesting human continuity with the unconscious. My initial reaction to the author’s hypothesis was to say that this would be music to the ears of the chattering classes and would make the author an interesting figure in their company at a dinner party. I wondered how the book will turn out: a mere amusement or one of those provocative fictions billed to arouse human anxieties by preying on their emotions under the guise of a respectable work of science. This doubt of mine was over after finishing the introduction. The book’s three parts contain a wealth of empirical detail, illustrative cases and rich analysis. Reading the whole book converted me to an admirer of the author. Here is a book in the tradition of those who wrote masterfully great works of intellectual synthesis. The book is indeed a veritable intellectual gold mine, drawing knowledge from history, the history of ideas, philosophy, psychology, sociology, political economy, science and technology studies, biology, cultural studies, science fiction, literature, novels, films and aesthetics. It is an intellectual history, written with an engaging erudition and accessible scholarly style. It has brought together and skilfully and intellectually interwoven: the 17th-century debate over ‘the animalmachine issue in its Cartesian and antiCartesian forms’; a fascinating chapter on automata prefiguring the modern robot by recognizing the rich sources from ancient China, Greece, India and the Arabs, and selectively culling specific automata constructed by fusing art and science spanning the period of the Western renaissance and enlightenment; an original chapter on the Industrial Revolution as marking a watershed in mechanical civilization and providing the material history for the scientific revolution; two chapters critically reviewing ‘prototypic figures’ such as Linnaeus and Darwin; Freud and Pavlov; Babbage, Huxley and Samuel Butler; thoughtful reflections on what the author calls the biogenetic revolution and the revolutions in
1113
Book reviews
computer and brain science and, finally, two chapters on the beginning of a conclusion and the ending of a conclusion. How did the author manage to bring together such a range of material in this book? As he admitted, his ‘approach has not been systematic nor truly ecumenical’ (page 199). He has not narrated the entire history or philosophy of the human quest and reflection to understand human nature. He has selected what he considered to be ‘the most revealing instances in the context of what is basically a Western-orientated discourse’ (page 200). Darwin and Freud appeared to provide a tacit criterion for selecting material from the other authors, providing coherence and cogency to the author’s account (eg Huxley, Pavlov, S Butler and so on). Where the selection appears to be onesided is in the scholars it excluded prima facie for treatment. The selection appears to include almost entirely thinkers and writers who are uncritical of the role of science and technology as purveyors of progress. Social thinkers, such as H Marcuse, J Habermas, j Ellul, T Rozak, the Frankfurt school who question in various ways the reductive and mechanistic civilization of the machinated world are not mentioned. Consequently, the author appears as a narrator of an optimistic discourse on science and technology. He has failed to enrich his account by balancing his argument with the critical philosophical tradition which the biogenetic and computer-Al revolutions have spawned. The insight from non-Western discourse on human-machine interaction would have added a completely different dimension to the linear and reductive evolutionism manifest in the book. Unfortunately, the author mainly managed to ‘note the preeminence of Chinese science and technology’, repeating a long passage cited by Needham in Science and Civilisation in China (pages 32-33). The existence of an array of automata, robots and machines as early as the 4th century BC in China suggests that there is an overriding continuity between modern and ancient civilizations. Unfortunately, a discussion on this line of historical continuity eludes the author. Chinese automata were examples showing evidence
1114
that human nature is different from machines. At least one chapter on nonWestern contributions to the subject would have added both a methodological and sobering dimension to the analysis. Finally the author, having shocked, frightened and provoked the reader, arrived at a conclusion which is non-threatening, by reaffirming the fourth discontinuity between machines and humans. The fourth ‘Descent of Man’ (Darwin) is not a reality, but still a notion. This is a great relief. He came down for coevolution or parallel evolution rather than the evolution of humans into machines. ‘Humans are unique in the totality of their humanity it is the conjunction, the interrelating causality of human attributes that makes for a human’ (page 214). It is the conjunction of all attributes which defines their specific and unique human nature. ‘It is not a matter of one or two, or even many, qualities-such as rationality or emotions-but of the unique, experiential, and evolving combination of these qualities that constitutes human nature’ (page 227). Machines may transform into what he calls homo comboticus, ‘which is something like a new species’, but such ‘combats will be combats and humans, humans’ (page 227). Thus the dual nature of machines and humans is upheld. ‘Homo comboticus will compete with and very likely replace (or convert) most of the human types that have existed before 1970; that is, pre-computer Man’ (page 229). Such a mechanical conjoining of humans with computers is possible, but the creation of humans from combats is out of the question. If humans still create the ‘combots’, they would be unwise/foolish to replace themselves with them. Despite this reassuring ending, I suspect the human quest/fascination to understand its own nature will continue. The biogenetic and computer revolutions have forced the issue on the agenda and added a sense of urgency to it. They are continuing to bring out ethical challenges to the notion of being human. More books like the Fourth Discontinuity will no doubt reappear as long as this question of questions (or issue of issues) remains an enigma and mystery.
Futures 1994 Volume 26 Number 10