ESSAY: The Saddest House

NOTE: I originally published this on another blog in early 2007. I didn't realize it at the time, but I was having one of my earliest firsthand experiences with the mortgage crisis that has become part of the country's day-to-day lexicon since. I'm not saying there's anything particularly prescient about this post, in fact, it's really more a meditation on the nature of family, money and the suffering that's caused by the absence of either of those two things. It seems, every year, there's less and less to be thankful for, but I remain optimistic things will get better and mindful that things could be much worse.

It was maybe 10 days before Christmas. My second of three appointments was a medium sized cape code; a two family home in Staten Island.

Maybe I should backtrack one second. I'm a real estate appraiser: I go to people's homes, I inspect them, I compare them to other houses in the area and finally ascertain value through a series of systems that are so excruciatingly boring seppuku or some other violent self-flagellation would probably be preferable to me actually describing them.

I mention my job because it has me meeting strangers everyday. Many of the strangers I meet walk-up up to the door when I knock and stare at me, without greeting, as if they were thinking the well-coiffed-chubby-white-boy-fairy had unexpectedly paid their doorstep a visit and they simply did not know what to do with me.

Often, even after I'm greeted with nothing more than a vaguely enraged eyelid-half closed silence and some dogs barking in the distance I politely identify myself: "My name is Matthew, I'm the appraiser for your house." Often, I motion to the tidily written piece of paper on my clipboard which contains their name, address, phone number, appointment time and exact loan amount from the bank, they themselves hired, as proof that I have indeed not materialized out of thin air to steal their muumuu or 15" Maury Povich-viewing television.

I explain that I simply have to perform the service they authorized and leave... quickly... because for real, this place reeks of cigarettes and dirty dishes.

Very often I am greeted with only a hesitant "Yeah, whatever." They let me in, I finish and I leave.

I digress, though. This hypothetical only serves to contrast what happened to me about ten days before Christmas. I approached the house and took an outside picture, as I always do, but when I looked down at the view screen of my camera I noticed that a man had walked out of the house and into the shot. When I looked up he was waving politely and smiled. I introduced myself, he put down the to Dell computer boxes he was carrying into the large trash pile already on the curb and invited me inside.

I don't remember his name. I suppose I could look it up but it doesn't matter very much. He was mid-40's, slightly graying full head of hair, average build, in pretty good shape and he had that gruff, manual labor coloring to his hands and face. He didn't look beaten down or old for his age, though, he looked like my grandfather -- like a man who worked his whole life -- like a man who worked harder than me.

Inside, he offered me a bologna sandwich and I said no thank you. He motioned to the fridge anyway and started pulling out cold cuts. I politely told him that I had another appointment and that, while this was a unique and very appreciated gesture -- and it was -- I simply didn't have the time.

The inside of the house was clean, but seemed empty. There was a brown leather couch on the far wall facing the large flat screen tv. I remember noticing stockings hanging from the chimney with three boys and one girls name on them; as well as one that said mom and one that said dad.

The home market is not very good right now for people who already own houses, interest rates are higher and many people are paying off loans on houses that are not worth, or barely worth, the loan amounts on which they are paying their mortgages. People who refinance their homes right now do so for a reason and very often they tell me about it.

This man was no exception, he casually explained to me:

"Money got a little tight around here these past couple weeks."

He said to me "I mean, you know how it is, I haven't been able to work these past few weeks because I've been trying to take care of all this bank and lawyer stuff."

He said to me." I mean, money was tight before my wife took all my kids and took off."

He clarified: "Well, all except my oldest boy, he decided to stay here with me."

he said to me: "I haven't talked to her since. I'm not even really sure where to send my kids' presents."

He said all of this to me pleasantly with an almost smile. The type of smile you could only have when you're pouring your heart out to a complete stranger.

This man was easily one of the nicest I'd come across in my time appraising, or really in my life. He just had that air of accommodation and decency.

He was seated at the dining room table ashing a cigarette into a half-full tray with a half opened Milwaukee's Best can on the table in front of him and another empty one beside it. It was just before 11 am - my only insight into where his wife went.

I finished inspecting the downstairs and we went upstairs to the bedrooms: the purple one, bed half-unmade with at least 10 dolls sitting slouched over waiting for their mom to return. The next room over with the John Cena poster on the wall across from the picture of the Playboy logo, with a perfect dust spot under the television in the shape of an X-box and finally to the loft upstairs where his last remaining child was sleeping. His son. About my age.

In my eyes, Christmas transcends cynicism and the idea of "glory to God in the highest, peace on earth and goodwill towards all mankind" sounds so complete in its unbroken loveliness I have a hard time understanding why people would let concerns like commercialism or generalized counter-culture cynicism get in the way. I stand by my childish belief that Christmas is the most beautiful and enchanted time of year for anyone who lets themselves feel any foolhardy altruism.

But Christmas has a cruel way of bringing the harshness of real life into clearer focus.

Towards the tail-end of the appraisal, the man left my side and went downstairs to answer the phone. I didn't hear the particulars, but the tone of voice he had conveyed the desperation people have when they simply cannot do what they need to do to satisfy whatever person or company or agency is on the other end. He got off the phone when he saw me coming down the stairs, returned the smile he wore the entire appointment and asked one more time if I would be interested in a sandwich.

He paid me what looked like pretty close to his last $500 when I told him we couldn't accept personal checks. He did so pleasantly and with that same air of accommodation.

I finished my appointment, and I left. I wrote the report the next day. The house was worth more than enough to get the loan he needed.

I think about that day a lot. I always wonder what happened to him and his family. I think about his wife. I think about how in love with him she must have fallen when she was with that same kind, laid-back, accommodating and decent man I met.

I think about how scared and heart-broken she must have been the first time she saw whatever it is he must turn into when he's had more drinks.

I think about my parents.

My mom made a very bad decision marrying my dad -- and somehow it worked - it might have been the luckiest things she ever did. I think about what would've happened to my dad if he hadn't met my mom -- or if she refused to tolerate him as much as she did.

I have a tough time reconciling the suffering that is that family's life. I have a hard time reconciling why I deserve to be so much luckier. Who's to say that he isn't a generally well-intentioned man who loves his family but has more flaws than he knows what to do with -- like my dad?

How close was my dad to staring an empty stocking with my name on it, not knowing where I was?

In my time as an appraiser, I've seen broken down, ramshackle shells of home, I've seen a house less than a year old that looks like a warzone, babies crying in rooms with no one attending to them, and the most ungodly filth you can imagine.

I don't know why that story sticks with me.

My dad always says: "There but for the grace of God go I." Its probably the most incredibly trite thing you could hear someone say.

For my father, and I guess for me, it's also so completely true.

ESSAY: Sex and Technology Part 4: Sex and Machines in a World Beyond the Uncanny Valley

There is not a great deal of data regarding whether the uncanny valley reaction is based on social condition to fear robots or some inbred defense mechanism hard-wired into our brain. However, what little data there is seems to indicate the former:

These unsettling emotions [of the uncanny valley] are thought to have an evolutionary origin, but tests of this hypothesis have not been forthcoming. To bridge this gap, we presented monkeys with unrealistic and realistic synthetic monkey faces, as well as real monkey faces, and measured whether they preferred looking at one type versus the others (using looking time as a measure of preference). To our surprise, monkey visual behavior fell into the uncanny valley: They looked longer at real faces and unrealistic synthetic faces than at realistic synthetic faces” (Steckenfinger).

The World Beyond the Uncanny Valley

In the world of Do Androids Dream… concerns about the Uncanny Valley are obviously moot as it requires human beings with an extremely specialized skill-set to even be able to tell the difference between a human being and the ultra-realistic Nexus-6 replicants. That kind of technology simply doesn’t exist in a mass producible form today. It is, as of this moment impossible to create a face and body that have sufficiently human-like actions and reactions that it could fool most humans. “Natural human faces with abnormal visual features produce uncomfortable impressions” (Seyama).

Whether or not our attitudes towards sex with robots is based on an inherent emotional response brought on by something natural (like a built-in, uncanny valley that resides in all of us) there can be no doubt that the feelings of revulsion created by realistic robots that we are, ostensibly, supposed to feel amorously toward is the final frontier between human beings and satisfactory robotic sexual partners.

Robotocists like David Levy, however are supremely confident that crossing the divide of the valley is simply a matter of time. Levy believes that within a matter of years, robots will be able to provide for human beings a sexual experience that is satisfying, not only on a physical level, but on an emotional level as well. Moreso than the uncanny valley Levy sees the Turing test as the final frontier to creating a satisfying sexual partner

[A]s psychology and cognitive science began to consider what relationships might one day develop between man and machine, between human and robot. Suddenly it was important to think about what might happen when a robot communicates with a human on a personal level rather than merely for pragmatic reasons (Levy)

The word “partner” Levy mentions earlier is so very important when discussing these relationships because it implies a necessary reality if humans are to have robots as sexual partners, but also a tremendous ethical quandary. With obvious exception, human beings on balance prefer intimacy with someone whom the feel a connection, or with whom they feel they are on even footing. This is why, for example we have laws against statutory rape, as it is understood that a sexual relationship between a young girl and a full grown man is inherently unequal and manipulative.

Even if it’s not monogamous or a partnership in the traditional sense, many human beings tend to experience feelings of dissatisfaction and sometimes guilt when they have engaged in a sexual liaison that was not mutually satisfactory and enjoyable both physically and psychically. Such a connection with a machine may never be possible without the development of extremely advanced artificial intelligence or at the very least the development of a robot that can perfectly simulate a real sexual relationship.

[Levy] does not shy away from the details of how this could be done. ‘A robot who wants to engender feelings of love from its human,’ Levy speculates, ‘might try all sorts of different strategies in an attempt to achieve this goal, such as suggesting a visit to the ballet, cooking the human's favorite food or making flattering statements about the human's haircut, then measuring the effect of each strategy by conducting an fMRI scan of the human's brain.’ The robot would know it was on the right track when it saw brain activity in the appropriate areas, and continue the successful strategy (Trimarco)

Trimarco finds the scenario he describes above quite distasteful and one would have to assume he wouldn’t be in the minority. Thus, a logical conclusion would be that most human beings would not desire amorous relationships with a robot barring some seismic shift with regard to sexual expectations and social mores.

NOVEL: The Pecking Order on Hacienda Diana

From his perch under the intermittently shady canopy of the scalped plants the world slowed down a clip for Atanasio as he lost the noise of the plantation to his quiet work. The leaves needed moisture to merge with each other and maintain the shape of a ball so Atanasio would drag his collection of precious, sticky interior leaves behind him as he went from plant to plant where the rain waters from the previous night collected near the roots of the fat, enormous stalks.

The muddy water felt cool against the heavy, hazy October air. Occasionally, Atanasio would dive his hands straight through the water to the loose earth that lie beneath. The ball was built, layer by layer with a new, soaked leaf laid on the outside at which point he’d run his hand over the new surface with a soft and consistent method. Then, like a mother hen laying her wings over her threatened chick Atanasio would place the ball in his lap, wrap his arms over and hug it with his midsection for a few moments to make sure it didn’t peel.

For her part, Tita was a different woman when she was at work. Though not overly severe, she was always very demonstrative with her grandson: equally so when she was lavishing her grandson with love and castigating him with her words or a beating. At work, she worked. She shared the odd joke with the women on her line but was never the source of any new gossip on the line or sharing in a gripe about the bosses. She had been with Nolan foods long enough to know Mr. Evans could be anywhere.

Tita explained to Atanasio that Mr. Evans wasn’t a bad man. Tita had been working on the plantations many years and was known throughout Catarema to be a reliable employee he needed almost no management and never spoke of wages or unionizing. As such, Tita was never want for employment and had chosen the hacienda specifically because Mr. Evans allowed the workers to bring their children. No, Mr. Evans was not a bad man, at least not from Tita’s point of view but he was austere with the workers and rather ostentatious with his own lifestyle which many of the workers couldn’t stomach.

Often, when they sent down an American to run one of the plantations they couldn’t bear to witness the wild discrepancies of treatment between the upper management and labor. Oftentimes, the Americans would reach into their own pocket as inducements to their best workers. It served the dual purpose of assuaging their guilt and being a rather effective management strategy.

Not Mr. Evans. He was being groomed for the top position at Nolan Foods. He was putting in his years down south so one day he would have the credibility necessary to tell his stockholders that he had put in his years down south. Whereas many governors of the plantations would find ways to funnel extra funds to their workers, Mr. Evans prided himself on his ability to run an efficient operation that consistently avoided mass firings or any hint of uprising without one extra cent from American home office.

4 dollars a day, not a penny more. No one was ever fired for small infractions like lateness. No one ever made their full daily wage if they were late. No one was ever given a Christmas or Easter bonus but no one was ever asked to work on Christmas or Easter. Mr. Evans had a near preternatural ability to know when to press and when to be lenient with his workers. A truly great manager – no one hated him and everybody feared him.

Whenever Mr. Evans was about Atanasio always noticed his Tita stood up straighter as if someone had run an electrical current up through the bottom of her feet. Atanasio didn’t fear Mr. Evans the way the workers seemed to. He never, ever scolded the children – he left that to their caretakers.

Atanasio laid over his nearly formed and nearly finished wet ball, feeling for small imperfections on the surface and smoothing them over with more muddy water. As Atanasio leaned forward over his crossed legs, he laid his head on the ball like it was confiding in his a secret. Past a break in the plants he watched Miles cut down other plants and his friend Raphael gather up the leaves like two irregular satellites their constant motion highlighted the stillness of his place in the venture. He smiled as he thought about when it dried – there was nothing better than a new ball.

In the distance, though inaudible to him, Atanasio could tell Miles had heard something because he stopped in his tracks. Atanasio lifted his head up to look around but he couldn’t see – not without shifting around too much and ruining the ball. From the right side of the frame of his slightly immobilized eyes Mr. Evans appeared. He strolled up to miles pointed into the distance and struck up a conversation look an old friend.

Mr. Evans was always easy to spot. In theory he dressed the same as the other field workers, but his white sneakers were always a shade too white, his shorts always pressed and firm, and he his biggest identifier, his pastel colored polo shirts were always tucked in. The workers didn’t bother with such attempts at decorum if they wore it shirt at all. Sure, Mr. Evans helped carry the odd banana bunch here and there and just being in the fields would tinge anyone’s clothes but just like Jesus always dressed in bright white in the passion plays, Mr. Evans fundamentally stood apart in all manner from his workers.

No one ever talked to him more than Miles even the plantation underbosses. Miles wasn’t a manager in any official capacity (and he certainly wasn’t paid like one) but he did have a hand in maintaining the uneasy peace that had kept the Diana Hacienda so productive and free of acrimony over the years.

Years previous, when Mr. Evans predecessor ran the plantation, Miles caught word of a strike being headed up by a group of workers who had all recently found out their wives were pregnant. Having overheard a phone conversation Mr. Evans’ predecessor had had with the home office, Miles had gotten the impression that the managers had the authority to call in outside agents in the event the workers began to speak of unionizing. Hearing stories from the east of the force these agents were charged with using, Miles had been instrumental in convincing he group of new and repeat fathers to call off the strike. In the intervening years, Miles had become a de facto liaison between the managers and the workers and Mr. Evans, especially, had an unspoken reverence for Miles’ role on the plantation.

The men shared a bond, if not a disparate degree of payment for their similar capacities on the plantation. In the same way that Mr. Evans maintained order on the plantation through the force of his will, Miles avoided the usual brands of traitor through his genial affability and unstoppable work ethic.

ESSAY: Sex and Technology Part 3: Overcoming the Uncanny

Part 2 of this series of essays can be viewed here

Sexual Robots: Can we? What’s stopping us?

“The initial forays by robotocists into the world of fully interactive autonomous robots focused on entertainment with creations as simple as robot toys robots pets, and robots that play sports. Simple electronic cats and dogs have been shown to provide psychological enrichment for humans, being both pleasurable and relaxing to play with” (Levy 9). For the time being, at least, it seems that robotics is well concerned with finding a way to provide true, satisfying companionship to human beings.

This is not a purely or even primarily sexual pursuit. In fact, one of the main uses for intelligent robots going forward may be as company for demographics that typically find themselves suffering from loneliness like the elderly, developmentally disabled or those lacking in traditional social graces. Phillip K. Dick presciently gave this scenario a face by way of the character Isidore whose primary company are the various machines which occupy his apartment and Buster Friendly on television: “'But,' Isidore said, 'it's good to have neighbors. Heck, until you came along I didn't have any.' And that was no fun, god knew” (Androids 62).

Robots that are designed for companionship and company are considered by many robotics-developers to be imminent in the relatively near future: “To researchers like Turkle, the widespread deployment of social robots is as risky as it is inevitable. With some analysts estimating a $15 billion market for personal robots by 2015, the demand for expressive machines is expected to be voracious” (Sofge).

However, while company is one question the question of sexual relationships with robots and androids is quite another.

And robots that are able to provide some measure of a satisfying sexual experience are equally imminent according robotocists like David Levy and professional technological prognosticators like Ray Kurzweil. However, providing a “satisfying” sexual experience requires more than just creating a machine that can assume the necessary positions and make the movements required to gratify a human being. “A new generation of AI researcher was investigating more meaningful relationships between humans and what… [is] called 'artificial partners'" (Levy 11). To create a “partner” or a machine that a human being could possibly consider to be on equal sexual and psychological footing, (which despite the focus on the sexual depravity of men is generally a requirement for both genders) is a much more difficult task than simply developing the robotics technology. One has to overcome the Uncanny Valley on one of the basest, most fundamentally human level: the level of sexual desire. This is no easy task.

Photo Sharing - Video Sharing - Photo Printing

“The corresponding recess in the supposed function is called the uncanny valley. The core of this explanation… will be a form of empathy involving a kind of imaginative perception. However, as will be shown, imaginative perception fails in cases of very humanlike objects” (Misselhorn 1). The uncanny valley is derived from an expository psychological essay by Sigmund Freud referred to as simply “the Uncanny” Freud described the phenomenon as being: “undoubtedly related to what is frightening — to what arouses dread and horror; yet we may expect that a special core of feeling is present which justifies the use of a special conceptual term. One is curious to know what this common core is which allows us to distinguish as ‘uncanny’; certain things which lie within the field of what is frightening” (Freud I).

Freud’s “Uncanny” has in recent times become a seminal work cited often, though, usually not in the field of psycho-analysis (Batnaes 1). Robot engineer Masohiro Mori posited the idea that if a robot were sufficiently stylized, that is, had human features but wasn’t actually human, than we would focus on those features that were similar to us and find them empathetic or endearing. However, if a robot crosses a certain threshold of realism we start to look for ways not to think of it as human and any portion of the robot which fails to meet our expectations of what is naturally human causes us to feel revulsion or fright. “It is hypothesized that this uncanny feeling is because the realistic synthetic characters elicit the concept of "human," but fail to live up to it. That is, this failure generates feelings of unease due to character traits falling outside the expected spectrum of everyday social experience (Steckenfinger 1).

NOVEL: The Banana Leaf Ball

By the time Tita approached outer ridge that signaled the property line of the hacienda, Atanasio’s more ear-splitting wails had subsided. With his arms draped uselessly around her shoulders and his ostrich head buried deep within the sands of her shoulder, Atanasio’s shoulders shucked and danced to the irregular beat of his quiet remaining sobs.

The mordant charm of having to carry him was less lost on her than it had been on the boy. Tita raised the boy off her shoulder and dropped him hastily to his feet. She turned his shoulders towards her and lowered her body to his eye level.

“You’ll be a good boy, it’s time for work.”

Placing both of his hands inside her, Atanasio followed his Tita to the enormous, airplane hangar of an Aluminum building. The sun reflected a particular glare off the yellow and red Nolan Foods logo that hung enormous, even against the majestic backdrop of the mountains. The packing building had all of Orson Welles’ subtle proportion of design.

The track that ran across the middle interior of the hacienda was loaded with bananas from the overnight harvest and the pair stopped and waited for the dark green bunches to glide past like an endless train hanging from one of those harness gliders the gringos like to ride when they visit the Rainforest.

They slid through a quick opening and scuttled into the unnecessary 3 story mouth into the packing area. To one side was a harem of low faces in yellow smocks, placing stickers on the bunches, places and the bunches in the water tanks, sealing with a paintbrush the rinds of the bunches with an inorganic lime-green compound that came in bottles marked “chlorinated water.”

To the other side were a pair of slender-hipped, wiry middle aged men, hunched over to support the bunches of bananas like children with scoliosis; lurching forward with long awkward steps from the trucks to the main dispensation terminal in the middle of the room. “Room” being a generous term for an area that all the impersonal qualities of a 4 story warehouse with none of the pesky walls to keep out the elements.

Tita walked mournfully to her Mexican supervisor who calmly marked 6:02 on her timesheet. He furrowed his brow but never looked directly at her. With a single motion she rung her blotched, yellow smock around her neck, tied it in the back and set about to her day of cutting bunches of 5-7 bananas and packaging them for transport to Brazil, Cuba and America.

Atanasio sat knees to chest on the far side of the room away from the workers, waiting quietly. Within a half hour Atanasio could make out the silhouette of Raphael’s who jogged through the gate to the hacienda. At first Atanasio could not make out his friend and regretted the unsavory prospect of an entire day with no one his own age. As his mother made her way into the workroom, Raphael’s gleeful smiling peered over her shoulder as she came to an abrupt stop the left of Tita, Raphael’s feet appears behind his mother’s his knees bent to absorb the drop from his mother’s shoulder.

He giggled and gesticulated meaninglessly with his hands as his young mother swept his hair behind his ear, whispered inaudibly and kissed him. Raphael wind-milled his arm in the opposite direction of Atanasio and took off; Atanasio hopped onto his right foot and dutifully ran after him. At the edge of the room stood a huge barrel filled with circular blue and yellow foam separators. Each of the boys grabbed one as they passed and turned towards the crops.

Atanasio felt the wind in his large ears whip and increase in volume as the two ran out in the banana fields. The fields were a never-ending labyrinth of short, green palm trees with, ears hanging from the canopy. Every 5 yards an aluminum arch extended from the ground like a tunnel through the foot of a mountain. Raphael, slimmer and older than his companion remained always 6 steps ahead and called back to Atanasio.

“We have to hurry! They’re cutting them down now! We have to get the sticky leaves before the hit the ground.”

When harvesting bananas, the workers would pull the tops of the malleable plants down towards the earth. They would then cut at the root of the bunches and carry them to the truck or hang them on the pulley system to be slid back to the plantation. Another worker would then hack the remaining leaves off the top of the tree and leave them where they feel – like vela littering the floor of the fields.

The boys rushed to get those good, sticky leaves. The piece of the leaves that had been closest to the stalk. These leaves had a fantastically adhesive quality and if enough could be gathered, they could be molded together with the smooth outer leaves to make a weight, bouncy and very respectable soccer ball. The boys knew well that almost an entire days worth of leaves was necessary to make one and their last one had been destroyed as it was, by rain which insidious drips its way to the center of their makeshift soccer balls and like a virus, unravels them from the inside out.

They ran for what felt like miles to Atanasio, who could feel his wheezing heartbeat through his throat and out the side of his neck. Finally, he could make out the flatbed with the bunches resting on the road – a glint of light flashing near the short, obstructed horizon.

He could hear Raphael, who had already increased his sizable lead, call out to the workers.

“One minute sir! One minute! Don’t cut it down yet!”

Miles, the only worker at the plantation who ever would have considered any order from a little boy smirked and waited.

“I can’t wait forever, Raphael!” who shouted gamely. He pantomimed a cutting motion with his angled machete. “Oh! Oh!” she shouted, pretending he was about to take swipe. “Wait! Here I g…”

“Wait! No! One minute. Please!” Raphael sprinted under the plant and extended his arms in a “v” towards the heavens underneath the canopy of the leaves as if he expected to be washed in cleansing water. Miles chuckled softly and take one hard, impressive swipe at the top of the stalk and like slow falling early snow, the leaves dropped softly into Raphael’s waiting hands, who for his part immediately plopped to his bottom and began to break up the leaves in dutiful preparation for the task at hand. Atanasio finally stomped up to his friend and put his hands clasped on top of his head; breathing the wheeze out of his lungs.

“Catch yourself and follow Miles.” Raphael commanded gently. “And don’t forget, if you get dirt on the sticky part, we can’t use it.

ESSAY: A Brief Introduction to Sex, Technology and Science Part 2

You can view part 1 here

This realm that asks “What will become of the world” seems to belong to writers, the literary types, those who are able to conceive of expansive futures where nothing can possibly be certain. This is the realm of Phillip K. Dick

Of the thousands of thorny ethical and psychological questions that will crop up over the coming years and decades as we stand on the precipice of creating automata with truly remarkable abilities and realism perhaps the most complex is: what will our relationships be like to these machines? How will we relate to them? Will we love them? Will we fall in love with them?

Perhaps the toughest question of all is: will we want to invite them into our lives in an intimate capacity? Is there a sexual future for man and machine?

Leaving aside the (mostly) crude machines that already exist to gratify human beings now, most prognosticators of the future of technology believe that we are near the day when we will achieve a new type of sexual relationship with computers. For this essay, we will first explore the obstacles that stand in the way of our first question: “Can we?” For this portion we will examine questions of overcoming the Uncanny Valley, or that portion of automation wherein machines become too human and frighten us.

The second question we will seek to answer will come from some technological ethicists who pose the more agnostic: “Should we?” What are ethical ramifications of a sexual (and by extension for most, emotional) relationship with a machine that is designed to simulate emotions but doesn't actually experience them? When does simulation close the gap so completely with reality that the cannon between the two becomes moot?

Finally, that discussion will dovetail into a deep exploration of the psycho-sexual relationships present in Phillip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? also known as "Blade Runner." While predicting the future is impossible, Dick stands alone in his ability to flesh out a world where the sexual, economic and political meld together in a shockingly believable fashion. Dick’s predictions about the future in Do Androids Dream… presents a ideas which can be reverse-engineered as a metaphoric stand-in for the types of sexual revolution that was going on when the novel for first published and in Dick’s own life, coalescing in the culture wars ongoing today.

In other words, Do Androids Dream... shows a future that isn't necessarily different from the present in terms of its cultural make-up and prejudice, but it does show a future where the specific social mores and prejudice have simply shifted. In that regard, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep may be our best and only window into a world that answers the questions “What will the world look like if we do?”

Part 3 can be viewed here

ESSAY: A Brief Introduction to Sex, Technology and Science

If there’s a lesson to be learned from an examination of the technical writings within the scope of Strange Creations it would be that scientists, philosophers, technologists and those of the literary world do not remotely speak with one voice when it comes to expectations and/or worry regarding the future of technology. The scientific mind seems to necessitate a predisposition towards answering the question “Can we?” The question “Can we?” tends to be the first consideration before embarking down the road of creative, industrious and innovative thought but doesn't, however, always lead to the most ethical of outcomes.

Logically then, the next inquiry, and the one that scientists are less concerned with than philosophers and ethicists, is the question of “Should we?” The creatively minded (like scientists) are by their very nature supposed to be less apt to stop and question the ethical ramifications of their various endeavors as economics, Capitalism, the thirst for knowledge and their own curiosity all tend to propel the scientific mind ever-forward. Ethical questions, though raised occasionally, tend to take the backburner for minds that seek progress. And what does a scientific mind seek, if not progress? However, we will give voice to those that would seek to ask the "Should we?" question in the face of technology's ever-upward march.

The third question and the one that is most difficult, if not impossible, to answer is “What will the world look like if we do?”This is the realm the truly imaginative mind, where one must weigh one hundred thousand previously un-thought of variables and concoct a vision based on estimated guesses stacked upon one another. This realm that asks “What will become of the world” seems to belong to writers, the literary types, those who are able to conceive of expansive futures where nothing can possibly be certain.

Part 2 here

NOVEL: Journey of a Thousand Miles and all that...

His Tita always took strides that were long and rapid. Her legs bounded past him; two slender stilts swinging in a perfect fulcrum protruding from her stout torso. Atanasio would emulate her stride, walking stiff-legged, until he fell hopelessly behind and then bound forward until he was a step or two ahead; repeating until the end of their twice daily migration.

The puncture on the bottom of Atanasio’s heel seared and popped at the conclusion of each step: without pain when he let it be, without pain when he applied pressure, it stung for only that half second immediately after he lifted it from the ground. About once a minute his Tita, would arch her neck to glimpse her grandson’s theatrical winces before exhaling a sharp if not equally theatrical breath through her nose. Atanasio would always later remember these as the sound of a horse blowing air through his lips.

“Tita, will you please, please carry me for a while?” Atansio begged, tilting his head.

“I don’t know, Nano. Will I carry you?” Without breaking her unusually stern forward gaze.

Atanasio didn’t press. It was worth an occasionally shot. Sometimes she said yes. Usually she said no. They passed a break in plants that usually signified that they were maybe two-thirds of the way to the hacienda. Typically, Atanasio would use that sign as a method of reinvigoration and the last mile and half or so daydreaming about the big blue can that made the water so cold it hurt your teeth. The water was never colder than it came out of that can without turning to ice. Today, though, all he could think about was the thousands of steps on his foot it would take before he could get that water.

When he had fallen behind again, he pled his case a second time. “But Tita, it hurts so bad, I’m not gonna make it!”

“You’ve made it a hundred times before, today is the same.”

“Today is not the same! My foot doesn’t always hurt this bad!”

His Tita ignored him. The monolith of tiny palm trees continued for all eternity in front and behind them. The soft grass Atanasio had been walking in for the past mile began to dissipate with each step: first becoming browner and harder and then giving way altogether until the banana plants were right at the edge of the road, towering over either side of the path like leafy, green prison walls. Atanasio took 3 steps on the ground before stepping on what he thought was a dirt clod but turned out to be a hard rock dug into his heel.

“OWWW-OOOOO! Atanasio howled, turning “Ow” into a two syllable word the way all children do when they think they’re tugging at an adult’s heartstrings.

“Are you good?” his Tita said with a frustrated monotone.

“No!” Atanasio’s voice squeaked. “My foot is hurting! And I don’t want to walk anymore because my foot is hurting me!”

“Well, you have to.” She extended her hand passively.

Atanasio violently pivoted his hips away from her flinging his arm towards his opposite shoulder as if it was suddenly limp. “No!” he yelped with a rawer squeak. His eyes were glossing over with the first, overflowing tears that were yet to stream down his face.

His Tita paused for a short moment and turned until she was squarely facing her grandson. In the same instant her lips closed, puckered and eyebrows raised even as her head lowered. She then maintained her posture for several seconds. Atanasio absently began to move his right foot backwards but before another second had passed she was hunched over and upon him with three long steps.

She wound up her hands like a sidewinder and snatched up his entire upper arm in her hard, crackled hand.

“No… Nooo-oooohhh!!!” Atanasio screamed again turning a single syllable words into a two syllable manifesto of dissatisfaction. He threw the entire weight of his 6 year old body backwards towards the earth and let his appendages go limp. His Tita, however, easily supported the weight even as Atanasio arched his back and swung his body in every conceivable direction trying to break her grip.

His immediate plan had been to slide out of his Tita’s grasp so he could roll under her legs and run away; the irony of running away because of a hissy fit to avoid having to walk having been lost on him.

Atanasio struggled and grunted melodramatically like a captured spy tied to a chair in a movie. Slowly and steadily, he felt his Tita’s hand close tighter and tighter around his skinny, light brown bicep. She lifted him off the ground slightly until his feet skipped out from under him and his was almost parallel with the ground and with one casual motion flicked him to the ground like a cigarette butt.

Atanasio collected himself with as much alacrity as he could, turning onto his back and sat up on his elbows with small, awkward movements of his shoulder blades. His tiny chest expanded and contracted in huge breaths broken up by smaller staccato sobs. His grandmother moved her body over him and slowly lowered her face which was full of lines and red with rage.

The stalemate continued for what seemed like hours for Atanasio but for what only amounted to a few seconds in real time. His grandmother’s breaths were deep, continuous and angry through her mouth, until suddenly, she closed her mouth, some of the white returned to her face and a tiny, upturned, almost smirk came to the left side of her face.

Then as quickly as it appeared, it vanished and before Atanasio could speak she grabbed the back of his neck lifted her right hand near her cheek and commenced the beating.