“’The accident happened right after
I was born, so it doesn’t bother me much. Plus, I have MUGEN Net now. When I’m
online, I’m able to live just the way the normal people do. I can go window
shopping, see movies, read books. I really love being able to read words that
aren’t in Braille.’” (84)
Yamamoto,
The Stories of Ibis, “A Romance in
Virtual Space”
“’Yeah,’ I nodded. ‘They probably
couldn’t bear the solitude. So they created fantasies to escape reality.’
‘But
those stories aren’t any less valuable than the truth. At least the heroine
recognized that.’” (60)
Yamamoto,
The Stories of Ibis, Intermission 2
Selecting a quote from this work that genuinely reflected
the author’s thesis was a bit difficult because the first half of the book is
essentially a collection of short stories with a parallel narrative woven
between them to tie them together. The first quote comes from the second story
in the book, in which a young girl who spends much of her time in a virtual reality
world is later revealed to be blind. This girl is able to experience things in
this world that she could never experience in the real world because of her
disability. I feel that this quote accurately describes in microcosm the point
the author is making. The technology in “A Romance in Virtual Space” is
referred to often as problematic. Addiction is mentioned, and the interface
devices even feature a recommended daily use limit to assuage fears of
radiation poisoning. For the girl, however, none of these fears matter because
this device is also the only way that she could ever experience the sensation
of sight. The goals of this quote and this story are to highlight the amazing
potential a technology like virtual reality has to better the human experience
in spite of all of the unfounded fears around it. When looking at the book as a
whole, we see each story has a revelation much like the one from which this
quote is derived, and each tells a story that downplays the modern fear of
technology by presenting a scenario where the technology in question has a
positive impact on the lives of those interfacing with it. In this regard, the
position of the author is exposed and the closest thing to a thesis can be
excavated from the text, as it were; specifically, that technology is not to be
feared.
The second quote is important as well, because it makes
clear the means by which Yamamoto is conveying his message. The narrator raises
the same point this quote makes very often in the early intermissions following
the stories and as such draws attention to why the author is using the
narrative devices he is using. The author uses powerful, positive fictional
stories to act as counter-points to the aspects of modern or theoretical
technology that people fear. Yamamoto is trying to make the reader question,
“Are the technologies that so many fear really that frightening?” After all,
most of the fears of the public are founded upon fiction in the first place.
Yamamoto does this by pantomiming this dialogue by pitting the
skeptical narrator against the knowledgeable Ibis. In this instance, the
narrator takes the place of the reader (this is even alluded to a few times,
when Ibis explains that when reading a story the reader essentially role-plays
the main character, or narrator) and the author takes the place of Ibis,
explaining a world where these technologies can be used positively. The debate
between the two of them is essentially the author responding to the skeptical,
fearful public as well as the obvious problem his approach of using fictional
works presents, namely “It’s all fiction, why does it matter?”
These debates are punctuated by stories that Yamamoto
intricately weaves together of progressively more abstract science fiction told
in such a way that a problematic technology is introduced then solved by a story,
which then also introduces another problematic technology to be solved in
another story. In doing so, he is making a case that these technologies aren’t
as bad as people fear. The first story deals with society’s dubious stance on
virtual Internet communities and explains how the bonds formed in these
communities are just as real as those formed in “real life.” This also serves
as a great frame for the author’s technique, ending with the quote, “An escape
from reality? Laugh if you want. To be certain, no such vessel named the Celestial existed in real life. But the
bond, faith, and friendship of the crew were undeniably real.” The other
stories deal similarly with virtual reality, virtual communities, and
artificial intelligence.
While the author’s stance on the fear of these technologies
is fairly clear, it can also be reasoned that this piece is a reaction to other
fictional works and popular tropes across a variety of media. The concept of
internet/virtual world addiction is a fairly hot topic in the news right now,
with many news stations decrying the freedom, privacy, and escape both the
Internet and virtual worlds grant as potentially dangerous. Many people also
believe that the technologies Yamamoto writes about could easily be used to
control the population and create dystopian futures as with Brave New World, and Noir. Then we have the giant cloud of
fear surrounding AI. Countless movies, books, videogames, and TV shows have
been made with networked AIs as the ultimate antagonist. To name a few, Terminator, Star Trek, and System Shock
come to mind. (The intro to System Shock
2 serves as an interesting example of a female AI less enlightened than
Ibis - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXPn6wcsUmk
) There are plenty of fictional works that capitalize on this fear to create an
interesting narrative. Yamamoto seems to almost be moving in direct opposition
to these works, however, glorifying sentient machines and VR while demonizing
the people who dismiss the technologies as silly or dangerous. The detective in
the first story, for instance, reminded me exactly of the naysayers of
yesteryear who looked at children and adults reading comic books and playing
video games as ridiculous, unable to see the point. The “color timer” on the VR
interface in the second story mirrored the apprehension in the news surrounding
cell phone radiation. The fear that a child could be addicted to Internet
communication or a virtual world thusly stunting their social interaction also
comes up in the third story, “Mirror Girl.” All of the tales Ibis tells have
some level of commentary on recent events.
This is essentially the “limit” of the text. Yamamoto
generates a compelling counter to the fear-driven technological fiction and
theory of other authors, but never directly says that the more positive world
and stories he has crafted represents the way it will or must be. The result is
a planting of a seed of doubt – doubt that the creation of AI or virtual
reality really will be the end of human civilization. It is up to the reader to
then form his own opinion on what must be done, given the possibilities of such
technology. As such, the question that Yamamoto raises about the validity of
this technophobia still stands. This novel does a very good job of being a counterbalance
to the more prevalent fictions where technology can result in the destruction
of humanity or freedom, and while it often presents technology in a positive
light, it also does so with reservation. The AI in “Mirror Girl” is an
enlightened, radiant being because it was essentially raised with humanity’s
best intentions in mind. In this story, Yamamoto likens AI to a child. This
makes a few logical leaps, but the allegory is fairly powerful. After all,
children can turn into terrors, and eventually into vile people, but to what
extent is that the fault of the parent? How would a new intelligence be
anything but innocent until it is taught otherwise? In this regard, Yamamoto
seems to subscribe to the school of thought that humanity is ultimately behind
whether or not our technologies will destroy us, not the technologies
themselves.
While this doesn’t answer the question of whether fear of
powerful technologies like AI is well founded, it does strike at the heart of
the issue, and allows us to look at it from a different angle. Are these
technologies to be feared, or is mankind’s irresponsibility that is
frightening? Do we trust each other enough to believe that an AI would take on
the selfless qualities of its creators? Do we love life and each other enough
to prevent our society from being consumed by a virtual world? There will be a
time when some of the fiction in this book becomes reality. When that time
comes, will we be ready? I'd like to think that we will be, that humanity is mature enough as a species to leave behind its questionable history. Although the book raises another possibility as we see in "A World Where Justice Is Just" - perhaps we are just as dangerous as we seem to think, but maybe the machines and AIs that we create will end up saving us from ourselves... hopefully before there is nothing left to save.
Finally, this book immediately made me think about a
humorous, but equally curious video I stumbled upon a while ago. The video is
part of a series entitled, “Kids React” and in this particular case, the video
shows children reacting to a huge Japanese concert in which the star performer
is actually a computer-generated image with a computer-generated voice (KIDS
REACT to Hatsune Miku http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egcfC7PCneQ
). The concert itself had a massive showing (as can be seen in the video) but
the children seem taken aback by the fact that the “artist” isn’t real, going
so far as to say, “It isn’t music because it isn’t made by a person.” It’s a
very striking dichotomy of a culture that embraces new and interesting
technology like this and one that is inherently skeptical of it. Also, one of
the first comments made by the children is, of course, “Robots are going to
take over.” Upon reflection, if this is where AI and VR are headed, I wonder if
we have anything to worry about at all.
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