INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
We are now onto the fifth short story of nine in Ted Chiang collection Exhalations
This one is a very short one at only a couple of pages, but despite its brief length, it explores some of the most fundamental issues facing
us as a society today: technology, children, love, and the meaning of connection as all these elements fuse together
It was not my favorite story so far, but it is certainly interesting, especially in light of the previous short story Lifecycle of Software
Objects (which in case you missed it, you can read more analysis here).
With the development of generalized AI, what the meaning of a
person?
Some further quick notes:
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Reading Dacey Patent Automatic Nanny
Chiang has constructed a creative framing
device here: we observe a peculiar machine — Dacey Patent Automatic Nanny — in historical retrospective within the context of an exhibit
entitled &Little Defective Adults — Attitudes Toward Children 1700 to 1950.& The entire story is essentially the museum placard next to
the mechanical artifact describing its background and how it was designed to raise an infant without the need for a human nanny.
Much like
in the last short story we read in the collection, the question of human connection mediated by technology is at the core of the story
Can we raise a child purely through a piece of technology? Chiang seems to take a definitive stand against such a notion, showing that the
child psychosocial development is hindered by its nearly exclusive interaction with a non-human being
The author even plays a bit of a legerdemain right from the beginning: the exhibit title of &Little Defective Adults& could be applied to
robots just as much as Victorian-era children.
But like the digients in the last story, we later learn that the child at the center of the
story actually has fine interaction skills, but with robots instead of humans
As the automatic nanny is removed from service after two years of raising Lionel child Edmund, the child experiences stunted development
His development is rekindled once he has access to robots and other electronics again
Per the story:
Within a few weeks, it was apparent that Edmund was not cognitively delayed in the manner previously believed; the staff had
merely lacked the appropriate means of communicating with him.
And so we are left with a continuation of the major questions from the last
story: should human-robot interactions be considered equal to human-to-human interactions? If a child is more comfortable interacting with
an electronic device instead of a human, is that just a sign that we privilege and value certain interactions over others?
It a question
that is expounded on much more comprehensively in Lifecycle of Software Objects, but remains just as interesting a question here in our
increasingly digital world
We are about to launch a multi-part series on virtual worlds tomorrow (stay tuned), but ultimately all of these questions boil down to a
fundamental one: what is real?
Outside of that theme (which veers into philosophy and isn''t deeply meditated on in the couple of pages of
story here), I think there are two other threads worth pulling on
The first has to do with the variability of human experience
This whole experiment begins when Lionel own father Reginald decides to replace a human nanny with a machine to provide a more consistent
environment for his child (&It will not expose your child to disreputable influences&)
Indeed, he doesn''t just want that consistency for his own child, but wants to clone the automatic nanny for all children.
Yet while
Reginald feels that human nannies are defective, it is really the automatic nannies themselves that are impoverished
They lack the spontaneity and complexity of human beings, preventing the children in their care from handling a wider variety of situations
and instead pushing them inward
Indeed, women (aka mothers) intuitively understand this dynamic: &The inventor [Reginald] framed his proposal as an invitation to partake in
a grand scientific undertaking and was baffled that none of the women he courted found this an appealing prospect.
And yet, human contact is
precisely what drives the continued pursuit of these robots in the first place
The nanny original inventor, Reginald, uses it on his own son Lionel, who wants to prove their utility to the world by using it on his son
So we see a multi-generational pursuit of this dream, but that pursuit is driven by the human passion to defend the work of one parents and
the legacy they leave behind
Human-to-human contact then becomes the key driver to prove human-to-robot contact is just as effective, debunking the very claim under
consideration in the process
It a beautiful bit of irony.
The other thread to untangle a bit is the scientific method and how far astray it can lead us
Reginald creation and marketing of the device is undermined by the fact that he never really performed any real experiments on his own child
to evaluate the quality of different nannies
He just makes assumptions, based on his Victorian values, and pursues them relentlessly before heading back to pure mathematics, a field
where he can be at ease with his models of the universe.
In the middle of this little pattern is a common lesson: sometimes the things that
are least measurable have the greatest influence on our lives
This story — like the exhibit it a depiction of — is a warning, about hubris and failing to listen and love.
The Truth of Fact, the
Truth of Feeling
Some questions to think about as you read the next short story, The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling:
What is truth?
What is honesty?
How do the two frames — an historical one about the Tiv and the &contemporary& one about the remem technology — work
together to interrogate what truth means?
How important is it to get the details right about a memory? Does a compelling narrative override
the need for accuracy?
Do different cultures have different approaches to storytelling, narration, and universal truth?
Does constantly
recording photos and videos change our perception of the world? Are they adequate representations of the truth?
How important is it to
forget? Memories are supposed to fade with time — is this fundamentally conducive to humanity or harmful?
Will we fact check each other
behavior more and more in the future? What consequences would such a future bring?
Reading Ted Chiang ‘The Merchant and the Alchemist
