The Politics of the Artificial, Chapter Seven

What I read

In this text, Margolin argues for a new metanarrative, one focused on a spirituality, that can help us make sense of and live in a world that is increasingly artificial.

First, Margolin describes a brief history of designed objects, and the way they were considered—primarily, as an industrial form that has a use and an aesthetic. This was historically viewed first as a space for the improvement of appearance, and then as a way of thinking about the relationship between form and function (form follows function as a slogan for the benefits of utility.) He introduces Herb Simon’s view in 1969 that, given the prevalence of a human-built world, there should be a new science of the artificial. This was to purposefully delineate things that were human made from things that were natural (the natural sciences); we can observe the natural, and we can change the artificial. This control is focused on the way things “ought” to be, implying that there is a preferred state and our work is to arrive at it.

Margolin then challenges the view that the natural world is as structured as Simon describes it. He briefly introduces the perspectives of Barthes, Foucault, and Baudrillard, which he returns to throughout the text. He introduces the main point of reference for his later argument: that these perspectives that questioned an objective natural world “challenged implicit assumptions of positivist thought that closed out many of the voices that now constitute our cultural community, they also strove to abolish any presence, whether we call it nature, God, or spirit, that might exist beyond the frame of a socially constructed discourse.”

Next, Margolin focuses heavily on futuristic literature and perspectives, starting with Gibson’s Neuromancer. The characters in this book have no natural reality as a point of reference, and the artificial is the main (or only) element of the world. “Values of identity are constituted primarily through the manipulation of technology.” He views this text as a fictional realization of Baudrillard’s idea of a simulacrum, which is a “sign for the real that substitutes for the real itself.” Baudrillard describes that it’s difficult to make meaning in “a world without a metanarrative, a term Jean-François Lyotard defines as any large idea or presence that exists as an uncontested phenomenon outside the realm of human social action.”

In the next section, Margolin introduces a variety of other perspectives, such as those focused on ecology and the environment, feminism, and spirituality. These are considered in isolation from one-another (again, without a meta-narrative), and Margolin indicates that he views this negatively. One view is that of biotechnologists who juxtapose the claimed benefits of engineered species with the problems these cause to natural resources. Another is that “the Earth is a living being with whom we must cooperate.” He argues that these both indicate an opportunity for a meta-narrative focused on spirituality (“a connection to the Divine.”), and he views this as a basis for “addressing the problems of meaning and reality that have arisen from an embrace of the artificial.”

Margolin then returns to the idea of a cyberspace and cyborgs, and the relationship these have to spirituality. He discusses how author Donna Haraway views a move from nature to artificial as a positive source for change, and then describes that virtual reality is argued by others—like Brenda Laurel and Jaron Lanier—to be the way we can break out of existing natural boundaries. He questions this, as “Virtual reality enthusiasts sometimes speak of VR as an alternative to the physical world, a place in which constraints can be overcome and new freedoms can be discovered. On one level, this is classic technorhetoric. New technology always promises more.”

Finally, Margolin makes his case for adopting spirituality as a metanarrative that can help make sense of the artificial: “To move toward a self that is more differentiated from rather than similar to artificial constructs, we need to understand the connection to the Divine as a force of evolution that is not in opposition to technology but at the same time offers some of the equivalent fulfillment we currently seek in the realm of the artificial.” To do this, we will have to take on difficult tasks, such as identifying if our artificial replacements for the natural are appropriate.

Margolin views the metanarrative of spirituality as a way for designers to resist rhetorical champions of technology as a savior; it will allow for designers and technologists to “conceive of a user as a person of depth and worth.” This is important because design is a service profession or activity, and should provide things that are worthwhile. A lens of spirituality will help us judge new technologies.

Margolin ends the article by returning to Simon’s view of a cleanly delineated separation between the natural and the artificial. He indicates that the artificial has grown more complex than Simon envisioned, and that the challenge on pushing back against the artificial is much more difficult. He ends with a call to action: that “as the artificial’s incursion into the natural domain of our lives advances, we may lose part of our humanity. In the face of such a prospect, there is no choice but to fight back.”

What I learned and what I think

I find the idea of a metanarrative, and our need for one to make sense of the world, very compelling, and I agree that, the more technology becomes intertwined with our experiences, or takes them over completely, a lack of metanarrative leaves us in a really uncomfortable place.

I’m there with AI and my writing, entirely. Metanarrative aside, I’m watching the boundaries between “the natural” (the way I think and write, which I don’t think of as Simon’s “natural, but is certainly different than the artificiality of a toaster), and “the artificial” (the way the AI learns me and spits me back into the world) completely erode. The only metanarrative I have to hang my hat on is my self-declared and self-identifies love/mostly-hate relationship with “advancements” in technology, and that leads me to just discount the whole thing as bad.

I’m historically wrong, at least through one lens: we’re at the nascent stages of AI, and so it’s doing the Stephen Johnson “banal visions of sending faxes from the beach,” but eventually it’s going to do things with real impact, in the same way science has evolved to help, for example, a breast-cancer patient go, in two months, from a diagnosis to a complete fix. Of course the whole thing is and will be taken over by corporate (also artificial…..) but that doesn’t diminish that it will inevitably have meaningful value.

But all of that’s an aside from the artificial/natural, and a metanarrative around it. I’ll try this on for a second; what if the metanarrative we have or need is spirituality, particularly around LLMs? As Margolin uses it, that means “The Divine”—what is the divine surround on AI? There’s certainly a sense of one-ness with it, when it’s working, in a similar way of a sublime outdoor experience (but in a totally different set of edges, mostly harsh), but any sense of immersion is lost when it’s wrong or takes time. The spirituality is there most when it’s doing what it’s been trained on the most: coding. Ask a question, get a response, the response is almost entirely right, and it’s instantaneous. There is a divinity of that in its assurance, both in how assured it is that it is right and how assured I feel talking to it. The spirituality is instantly lost when it takes any amount of time that doesn’t feel like contemplation (a brief websearch), or when it’s wrong, or when it’s “cute” (overly effusive.)

It will always be these things. (Will it?) We have exactly no historic examples of the artificial ever being edge-free, and exactly no historic examples of the artificial ever literally becoming the natural. (There’s something here for sure about J’s experience with artificial proteins: it may, for all practice purposes, have transcended artificial and natural in its embodiment, but it’s front and center with edges in its politics.)

I guess there’s also a should spirituality be the metanarrative, and to think about that, I probably need alternatives. One (not good one) would certainly be living publicly, or visibility, or being seen. One (not good one) would be speed. One (not good one) would be superficial contemplation. What about some that could actually be good? Even if the metanarrative is geographically limited, or even if selected personally, what is there? Nostalgia is probably one. It may have always been one.

I’ll work on this for a while.

A small aside; I don’t understand why cyberpunk culture shows up in pretty much any consideration of futuristic technology. Why would Margolin introduce Neuromancer, which is a work of fiction, into the argument? Bladerunner, Gibson—these are playbooks for the techbros, not commentary and consideration, and they weren’t intended to be intellectual; they are entertainment. Sure, we can include them in the conversation of the human-built experience because they are human-built examples, but they are just that: examples. It’s like basing a major part of the argument on a toaster.