Imaginary Futures: From Thinking Machines to the Global Village
336
Imaginary Futures: From Thinking Machines to the Global Village
336eBook
Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
Related collections and offers
Overview
At the height of the Cold War, the Americans invented the only working model of communism in human history: the Internet. Yet, for all of its libertarian potential, the goal of this hi-tech project was geopolitical dominance: the ownership of time was control over the destiny of humanity. The potentially subversive theory of cybernetics was transformed into the military-friendly project of 'artificial intelligence'. Capitalist growth became the fastest route to the 'information society'. The rest of the world was expected to follow America's path into the networked future.
Today, we're still being told that the Internet is creating the information society - and that America today is everywhere else tomorrow. Thankfully, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the DIY ethic of the Internet shows that people can resist these authoritarian prophecies by shaping information technologies in their own interest. Ultimately, if we don't want the future to be what it used to be, we must invent our own, improved and truly revolutionary future.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781783716470 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Pluto Press |
| Publication date: | 04/20/2007 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 336 |
| File size: | 3 MB |
About the Author
Richard Barbrook is a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities at the University of Westminster. He is the author of Media Freedom (Pluto, 1995) and Imaginary Futures (Pluto, 2007).
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
THE FUTURE IS WHAT IT USED TO BE
It was Monday 25 April 2005 in New York and I was in search of frozen time. From Manhattan, I had taken the 7 train eastwards out to Flushing Meadows in Queens. Arriving at the station, I headed straight towards the park. Almost immediately, I found what I was looking for: relics of the 1964 New York World's Fair. At the entrance of the park, I was welcomed by a series of mosaics in the tarmac celebrating the organisers and themes of the exposition. Along one of its paths, I spotted the 'The Rocket Thrower': a statue of a mythological space traveller. Meeting a friendly Japanese tourist, we had fun taking pictures of each other standing in front of the 'Unisphere': the massive 45-metres-high metal globe which dominates the park. I chatted with a 50-something couple from the neighbourhood about their teenage visits to the World's Fair. The cloudy skies of the morning had disappeared and Flushing Meadows was now basking in the sunshine. Skateboarders performed tricks under the Unisphere, families wandered along the paths and couples relaxed on the grass. The next day I would be taking the long flight back home to London. But, in that afternoon at Flushing Meadows, the tasks of tomorrow seemed far away. I had succeeded in discovering frozen time. Everything else could wait while I savoured the moment.
The photograph on the cover of this book provided the inspiration for my trip to Flushing Meadows. Early on in my research into the origins of the Net, I'd come across a fascinating reference to the 1964 New York World's Fair. I was sure that I'd been there as a child. When I spoke to my mother that weekend on the phone, she confirmed my suspicion. A few days later, looking through the photo albums that I'd inherited from my father Alec, I couldn't believe my luck when I found the picture he had taken in June 1964 of the Barbrook family at the New York World's Fair. On the right stands the 7-year-old Richard, wearing what I instantly recognised as my favourite polo shirt. In the centre, my 30-year-old mother Pat looks as glamorous as Jackie Kennedy in her sleeveless top, pencil skirt and sling-backs. Sitting in the pushchair, my 3-year-old sister Helen is suffering from the 30°C heat. Carefully posed in front of the Unisphere, the Barbrook family is captured admiring the wonderful spectacle of the World's Fair.
When I think back to this visit, my only clear memory of the exposition is seeing the giant rockets in its Space Park. However, I'm not surprised that I can recall very little about our visit to the New York World's Fair. So many other exciting things happened to me during this formative period of my childhood. Between 1964 and 1965, I lived for a year in a foreign country with very different customs and beliefs from those back home. At my junior school, the class began the day by reciting a loyalty oath to the US flag instead of mumbling their way through a few prayers. During our history lessons on the 1776 American Revolution, this English boy was taught that England was the villain not the hero. While I was living in the USA, I also experienced the extremes of its continental climate and the pleasures of its popular culture. Best of all, I had my first crush, when I held hands with Donna in the school playground. Compared to these seminal events in my life, the details of our family visit to the New York World's Fair were easily forgotten. When I look at the cover of this book, I don't just see an image of my physical presence in a specific place at a particular time. What intrigues me is how this snapshot evokes what it felt like to be a small child living in a strange country. 'Family photographs are supposed to show not so much that we were once there, as how we once were ...'
While writing this book, I realised that this happy period of my childhood in America had a more sinister side which – as a 7-year-old boy – I wasn't aware of at the time. When the Barbrook family went to the New York World's Fair in June 1964, my father was in transit to Boston to begin a twelve-month residency at the political science department of MIT on an exchange scheme funded by the US intelligence services. As a student union official in the early 1950s, he'd been involved in a pro-American faction of the British Labour Party. By the mid 1960s, my father had become an academic specialising in the politics of his ideological homeland: the USA. While doing the research for this book, I recognised from my childhood some of the dubious characters – like Walt Rostow – and dodgy organisations – such as the Congress of Cultural Freedom – who play leading roles in the following chapters. My father knew them and he supported their cause. Finding a photograph of the Barbrook family at the New York World's Fair no longer seems like a fortunate coincidence. Given my father's geopolitical loyalties, it was almost inevitable.
When I took the decision to begin work on this book, the last thing on my mind was exploring my own childhood. On the contrary, my starting point was a theoretical conundrum: the uncritical advocacy of old visions of the future. Back in 1995, when we were writing 'The Californian Ideology', Andy Cameron and I had taken delight in pointing out that the dotcom boosters of Wired magazine were championing the early-1980s neo-liberal model of the Net. A few years later, I'd made a similar connection in 'The Hi-Tech Gift Economy' between the dreams of the open source software movement in the late 1990s and those of the 1960s community media activists. What fascinated me then as now was that both Right and Left were advocating futures of the Net from the past. For decades, the shape of things to come has remained the same. The hi-tech utopia is always just around the corner, but we never get there. As I began work on this book, I set myself the task of explaining one of the strangest phenomena of the early twenty-first century: the future is what it used to be.
When I found the photograph of the Barbrook family in front of the Unisphere, I knew that I had discovered the image which could provide a focus for my investigation. I decided that the starting point for this book would be exploring a strange paradox: the model of the future offered to me as an adult in late-2000s London is the same future promised to me as a child at the 1964 New York World's Fair. What is even weirder is that – according to the prophecies made more than four decades ago – I should already be living in this wonderful future. Within the developed world, this longevity has created familiarity with the predictions of the computer visionaries. From infancy, we have been told that these machines will one day be able to reason – and even feel emotions – just like humans. Some of the most popular characters in science fiction stories are artificial intelligences. Audiences have grown up with images of loyal robot buddies like Data in Star Trek TNG and of pitiless mechanical monsters like the android in The Terminator. These sci-fi fantasies are encouraged by confident predictions from prominent computer scientists. In 2006, Honda's website boasted that the current model of its Asimo robot was the precursor of sentient machines which will be able to perform complex tasks such as caring for the elderly or fighting fires. Some computer scientists even believe that the invention of artificial intelligence is a spiritual quest. In California, Ray Kurzweil and Vernor Vinge have been patiently waiting since the 1980s for the Singularity: the Incarnation of the Robot Redeemer. Whether inspired by money or mysticism, all these advocates of artificial intelligence share the conviction that they know the future of computing – and their task is to get there as fast as possible.
Biological intelligence is fixed, because it is an old, mature paradigm, but the new paradigm of non-biological computation and intelligence is growing exponentially. The crossover will be in the 2020s and after that, at least from a hardware perspective, non-biological computation will dominate ...
Like artificial intelligence, the concept of the information society is also an old acquaintance. For decades, politicians, pundits and experts have been telling the citizens of the developed world that the arrival of this digital utopia is imminent. These premonitions have been confirmed by media coverage of the increasing sophistication and rapid proliferation of iconic technologies: personal computers, satellite television, cable systems, mobile phones, games consoles and, above all, the Net. During the late-1990s dotcom boom, the Californian acolytes of the information society became intoxicated with millennial fervour. Kevin Kelly claimed that the Net had created a 'new paradigm' which had abolished the boom-and-bust economic cycle. Manuel Castells published a multi-volume celebration of the transition from the miseries of industrial nationalism to the marvels of post-industrial globalism.
When the share bubble imploded in 2001, this tale of sunny optimism lost its core audience. Shattering the dreams of the Californian ideology, boom had been followed by bust. The business cycle still regulated the economy. With jihadi terrorism and imperial adventures dominating the headlines, new media seemed so last century. However, this fall from favour was only temporary. As more people went on-line and connection speeds increased, confidence slowly returned to the new-media sector. By the mid 2000s, dotcom shares were once again trading at premium prices on the stock exchange. As if the bubble had never burst, the United Nations hosted a conference on 16–18 November 2005 in Tunis promoting the hi-tech future: the World Summit on the Information Society. The Net had regained its status as the epitome of modernity. As the European Commissioner for the Information Society and Media explained in the run-up to the conference:
For many years, experts have been talking about digital convergence of communication networks, media content and devices. ... Today [1 June 2005], we see digital convergence actually happening. Voice over IP, Web TV, on-line music, movies on mobile telephones – all this is now reality.
In the prophecies of artificial intelligence and the information society, ideology is used to warp time. The importance of a new technology lies not in what it can do in the here and now, but in what more advanced models might be able to do one day. The present is understood as the future in embryo – and the future illuminates the potential of the present. Every step forward in computing technology is further progress towards the final goal of artificial intelligence. The prophecy of the information society comes closer to fulfilment with the launch of each new piece of software and hardware. The present already contains the future and this future explains the present. What is now is what will be one day. Contemporary reality is the beta version of a science fiction dream: the imaginary future.
When I made my trip to Flushing Meadows, I was searching for evidence of 40-year-old visions of this computer utopia. The Unisphere, the Rocket Thrower and other survivors of the World's Fair aren't just historical curiosities. The frozen time of the 1960s past is almost indistinguishable from our imaginary futures in the 2000s. Thinking about what has happened over the last four decades, this proposition seems counter-intuitive. Between my two visits to Flushing Meadows, the international political and economic system has gone through a process of radical restructuring. The Cold War ended. The Russian empire collapsed. American hegemony has declined. Europe became a single trading zone. East Asia has rapidly industrialised. Electoral democracy became the dominant form of politics. Economic globalisation has imposed strict limits upon national autonomy. Some of the most pressing problems facing the world today weren't even heard of 40 years ago: climate change, the Aids epidemic, Islamist terrorism and debt relief for the impoverished South. Yet, throughout this period of turmoil and transformation, our conception of the computerised future is the one thing which has remained fixed. As in the mid 1960s, the invention of artificial intelligence and the advent of the information society are still only a couple of decades away. The present is continually changing, but the imaginary future is always the same.
Living in pre-modern societies, both Aristotle and Muhammad Ibn Khaldûn observed similar historical cycles. The slow pace of social evolution limited the impact of political upheavals. When the system changed, the present was forced to repeat the past. According to the gurus of postmodernism, this phenomenon of circular time returned in the late twentieth century. Ever since the Enlightenment, the 'grand narrative' of history had imposed the logic of progress upon humanity. But, now that the process of industrialisation had been completed, these philosophers believed that modernity had lost its driving force. Linear time had become obsolete. For the more pessimistic postmodernists, this rebirth of cyclical time proved that there could be no better future. Historical evolution had ended. Cultural innovation was impossible. Political progress had stopped. The future is nothing more than the 'eternal return' of the present.
When the concept of postmodernism was first proposed in the mid 1970s, its founding fathers argued that the spread of information technologies was responsible for the emergence of this new social paradigm. Jean-François Lyotard claimed that the fusion of media, computing and telecommunications was sweeping away the ideological and economic structures of the industrial age. Jean Baudrillard denounced the new form of domination imposed by the hypnotic power of audio-visual imagery over the public imagination. Ironically, although both philosophers were critical of techno-optimism, their analysis required an uncritical belief in the hi-tech prophecies of the New York World's Fair. The 1960s future of modernism explained the 1970s present of postmodernism. Because they didn't question the validity of the previous decade's predictions, their revival of cyclical time was founded upon their certainty about the direction of linear progress. The perpetual present was justified by the immutable future.
Contrary to its self-image as the new theory of the information age, postmodernism was itself an ideological symptom of the hegemony of hi-tech prophecies. Most tellingly, its concept of cyclical time was derived from the continual repetition of the same model of the sci-fi utopia. In contrast, the premise of this book is asking why the imaginary futures of the past have survived into the present. Despite their cultural prominence, the semiotic ghosts of sentient machines and post-industrial economies are vulnerable to theoretical exorcism. Far from being free-floating signifiers, these predictions are deeply rooted in time and space. As this book will show, it is no accident that their intellectual origins can be traced back to Cold War America. By data-mining the history of these two imaginary futures, the social underpinning of these techno-ideologies can be revealed. Not surprisingly, contemporary boosters of artificial intelligence and the information society rarely acknowledge the antiquity of their predictions. They want to move forwards rather than look backwards. Time is fluid, never frozen.
In contrast, this book insists that the imaginary futures of artificial intelligence and the information society have a long history. It's over 40 years since the dreams of thinking machines and postindustrial cornucopia gripped the American public's imagination at the New York World's Fair. Examining these earlier attempts to propagate these prophecies is a requisite for understanding their contemporary iterations. Frozen time illuminates fluid time. Rather than being a diversion, looking backwards is the precondition for moving forwards. While researching this book, revisiting that June 1964 day as a child in Flushing Meadows was an essential step in constructing – as an adult – my analysis of the prophecies of the imaginary future. With this motivation in mind, let's go back to the second decade of the Cold War, when the most powerful and wealthiest nation on the planet put on a show in New York to celebrate the wonders of new technologies ...
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Imaginary Futures"
by .
Copyright © 2007 Richard Barbrook.
Excerpted by permission of Pluto Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
1. The Future Is What It Used To Be2. The American Century
3. Cold War Computing
4. The Human Machine
5. Cybernetic Supremacy
6. The Global Village
7. The Cold War Left
8. The Chosen Few
9. Free Workers In The Affluent Society
10. The Prophets Of Post-Industrialism
11. The American Road to Cybernetic Communism
12. The Leader Of The Free World
13. The Great Game
14. The American Invasion Of Vietnam
15. Those Who Forget The Future Are Condemned To Repeat It
References
Index