User:Dave Young/tp/1-2/notes
Notes for Essay
~Potemkin Technologies~
Cold War -> war of spectacle: which ideology promised the better 'imaginary future' [Barbrook]
-> Paranoid Knowledge: 'I want it because it is the object of another's desire'
-> Battlegrounds were the Space Race, Arms Race, the computer, power resources, cultural trenches such as Hollywood cinema and abstract expressionism,
also control of the mass media etc.
High Anxieties -> Arms race, fuelled by cybernetic theory, led to nuclear paranoia
-> Computer seen as a sinister machine: the fantasy of the computer gaining sentience and autonomy
-> Atmosphere prevalent in science fiction cinema in the 1960s
-> Computers portrayed aethetically as an ambient technology: arrays of blinking lights, patterns, tape spools
-> Cinematic interfaces were facades designed to communicate complexity to the naive subject - the audience
-> Machines often 'humanised'
-> Computer acts as a mechanism of objective control - emotional capabilities often in question
-> Despite humanisation, many films deal with the incompatibility of humans and machines
Cybernetics as ideology -> Developed by Norbert Wiener (Cybernetics: 1948) and extended by Von Neumann, although he later discredited Von Neumann's application of the science
-> It became a mechanism of manipulation and military control, allowing for the invention of new military offensive/defensive technologies
-> Wiener writes the book 'The Human Use of Human Beings' (1950 / revised 1954)
-> Parallel to the development of Game Theory, Systems Theory etc: predicting how the masses respond to various stimuli
Connections between research strands
Connections between my previous annotations, and the discussion surrounding authenticity, manipulation and performance of images.
In relation to my own research this trimester, I have been looking at how the aesthetics of the computer in cold war era cinema is a visual performance of an imagined future. In many instances, the machines take the form of an ambient array of blinking lights, whirring tape spools, abstract graphic visualisations on monitors, and labelled with tech-jargon. The machines are only occasionally act as an actual interface: largely they remain in the background, quietly communicating the complexity of present and future technologies.
This performativity takes two strands, both directly related to the predominant source of computer innovation during the Cold War - that is, the United States military. The first strand imagines the computer as a benevolent assistant, capable of reducing workloads and liberating humans from repetitive and monotonous worktasks. Aware of the nuclear anxiety-fuelled fear that the computer was a calculator of missile trajectories, companies such as IBM began to sponsor films and animation studios to ameliorate the reputation of their technological research and create a popular facade for their business image. The image of the computer with the 'big red button' was played down, replaced by a convivial atmosphere that accented their subordinate role in the human/machine relationship. <See Eames animations, Desk Set, New York World Fair 1964: ref Richard Barbrook - Imaginary Futures>
The second strand is the anti-machine, dystopian universes apparent in such films as 2001: A Space Odyssey, Blade Runner, and Alien, which presents arguably a more accurate portrayal of the machine as military device. In these films, the computer is an authoritarian tool capable of dehumanising, regulating, and controlling. It exists even without an operator - the only touch of human subjectivity is implanted into the source code of the devices, the intelligence of the computer resonating with a sinister sentience. The future that these machines perform is one of cool objective restraint and calculated sociopathy.
To relate both these imaginings to Jos De Mul's Work of Art in the Age of Digital Recombination, he states: "Gradually, we become aware of the inapproachability of the workings of a technology that we have invented. And we might even start to reflect on the non-human and maybe even inhuman character of the new medium." This reflection is already a major thematic component in the aforementioned films - although the kind of futures performed by the technologies in these films does not portray them as dehumanised, but rather a simulacrum of humanness. In the second version, the simulacrum becomes corrupted, and the inhumanness of the technology is exposed in a horrific manner.
Setun
SETUN: AN ENQUIRY INTO THE SOVIET TERNARY COMPUTER
Francis Hunger -> Setun's Reverberations
> Organisational structures of Soviet scientific institutions were 'fundementally alien to American scientists.' [62]
> Shock of Sputnik -> American public overwhelmed that the Russian's launched the first satellite
> "The USSR entered into a permanent systemic competition with the capitalist countries in order to demonstrate the supremacy of its own social model, resulting in a pronounced concentration of strength in the area of R&D." [66]
> JFK's "Man on the Moon" speech
> American R&D programme very disconnected until Pearl Harbour attack
> Russian/American scientist exchanges to illustrate technologies in computer technologies
> Discovery of SETUN's existence 'triggered, or at least encouraged, the related research endeavors in the west.' [68]
>> Check the convergences/divergences between capitalist/soviet cybernetics
Imaginary Futures
~ 3:Exhibiting New Technology ~
"America was where science fiction was becoming science fact." [19]
"For the majority of visitors, the most convincing reason for believing in the imaginary futures of space tourism, unmetered energy, and artificial intelligence was the immense wealth and power of the USA." [19]
Owning the present -> owning the future 1960s = the peak of US hegemony over the planet Technological invention as currency of propaganda
"In contrast with earlier economic systems, capitalism was organised around production for sale rather than for immediate use." [28]
"The credibility of these claims depended upon the audience’s assumption that the moment of consumption had no connection with that of production. When they were put on public display, machines like Babbage’s prototype computers appeared to ‘think’ only because the engineers who had built them were somewhere else." [30] So in actuality, to witness sci-fi cinema's ambient technologies designed to communicate complexity and futuristic intelligence, we are in fact experiencing a disconnection between production and consumption. The artifice is disguised behind the complexity of the interface See Simon Schaffer -> Babbage's Dancer p65
~ 4:Engineering Illusions ~
Expositions were organised as a way to prove ownership over a projected future.
General Motors: Futurama
Portrayal of Robots went from Frankenstein-esque monsters to loyal servants in science-fiction (1930s-40s) Ref: Asimov's fiction of cyborgs, man-machines.
"The propagandists of both sides justified the enormous waste of resources on the arms race by promoting the peaceful applications of the leading Cold War technologies. By the time that the 1964 New York World’s Fair opened, the weaponry of genocide had been successfully repackaged into people-friendly products."[38] The exhibition value of the technologies on display at the 1964 World Fair had to be masked: computers, nuclear power, and space rockets had all been invented and developed for military purposes, specifically designed to assist in destructive acts.
__THE HUMAN MACHINE____________________________________________________________
- MILITARY FUNDING#
"When the survival of the nation was at stake, technological excellence wasn't constrained by financial limitations." [40]
IBM corporate strategy -> military orders Use of IBM mainframes to simulate MAD in 1950s Cold War tech-paranoia lead to American military desire to keep updating their machines
- CENSUS#
Computer=interface to render statistical data -> sped up census processing time -> "The dispassionate rationality of the 'government machine' was symbolised by the smooth working of the machinery of government" [41]
- ENCRYPTION AS WARFRONT#
"After the German invasion of Britain was abandoned, encryption became the main front in the information war." [43] Bletchley Park - Alan Turing - Tommy Flowers => Colossus
~Colossus as decryption interface~
Turing believe AI could be created by end 20th C. "Turing claimed that the labour of the programmers disappeared when the computer was running the programs which they had written." [45] Imitation Game -> 'The Turing Test'
~Cold War Computing~
Cold War Computing
Like the innovations in computer technology discussed in the previous chapter, Norbert Wiener's development of cybernetics was also driven by military purposes. Barbook describes how Wiener invented an anti-aircraft gun mechanism that could correct the aim of its operator through a system of feedback, by understanding the operator as a mechanical extension of the gun itself. Wiener was one of many scientists working on military projects – to quote Barbook: “In the early 1940s, almost every American scientist had believed that developing weapons to defeat Nazi Germany benefited humanity.” [48] While cybernetics was quickly adopted as an important tool in a broad array of scientific disciplines after the Macy Conferences in 1946, Barbrook describes how Wiener became increasingly vocal in his opposition to the Cold War.
While Wiener adopted a socialist understanding of cybernetics, the mathematician John von Neumann developed a right-wing alternative. Barbrook writes about how Turing's theories of artificial intelligence greatly influenced von Neumann: “Just like Turing, this prophet also believed that continual improvements in hardware must eventually culminate in the emergence of artificial intelligence.” [51] Barbook is heavily critical of the involvement of scientists such as von Neumann in the development of military technologies, writing that “scientific curiosity had led them into complicity with high-tech barbarism.” [52] He continues: “Technological fetishismhad absolved computer scientists of any responsibility for the consequences of their own actions.” [53]
The sinister and dangerous implications of the computer were not overtly visible to the American public during the Cold War, hidden under the guise of artificial intelligence research, cybernetic theory development, or pure technological novelty. To cite Barbook's example of IBM's pavillion at the 1964 World Fair in New York: “The only hint of the corporation's massive involvement in fighting the Cold War was the presence of the computer which could translate Russian into English.” [53] Barbook argues that the paranoid drive of technological innovation was masked by a science-fiction illusion – an 'imaginary future' that would put astronauts on the moon and create flying automobiles.
Colossus: The Forbin Project Annotation
Colossus [1970]
The film explores themes of control and authority with relation to computer technologies and artificial intelligence during the Cold War. The film follows the American development of a secret project to construct a cybernetic machine capable of controlling all the nuclear missile silos around the country as a defense against a Russian attack. The machine, codenamed Colossus, was designed by the protagonist Dr Forbin as a cybernetic entity with heuristic reprogramming and data processing technologies to such a level that it could predict an offensive manoeuvre before it happens.
To Dr Forbin's surprise, the machine rapidly manages to grow in power and starts to make decisions by itself. The computer quickly realises that the Russian's have secretly constructed an equivalent machine named Guardian, and demands to have a data link set up between them. After creating a base language of arithmetic and calculus, which due to the massive processing power of the machines quickly ascends to mathematics previously unknown to mankind, they begin communicating in binary code so quickly that the humans cannot figure out what is being transmitted. Paranoid that Colossus is leaking military information to the Russian machine, they disrupt the connection. Colossus demands a reconnection and threatens 'action' if this command is not met. The US President, against Forbin's wishes, demands the link remain disconnected between the two computers, and in retaliation the Colossus and Guardian each launch a nuclear warhead at strategic points in the opposing nations. Both machines also refuse to shoot down each others missiles unless the link is re-established. They are left with no choice but to reconnect the machines, at which point the missile aimed at an American base is shot down, but the missile fired by Colossus at a Russian oil refinery hits its target and escalates tensions between the two nations.
Colossus is now out of human control and is behaving of its own accord. Forbin travels to Rome to meet the scientist who built Guardian, who is suddenly shot by Russian agents before Forbin has a chance to discuss what action should be taken. Forbin is quickly brought back to the United States, where he learns that Colossus and Guardian are cooperating in their bid to gain absolute control over humanity in order to stop the onset of another world war. Having no choice but to follow the orders of the machine, Forbin is held prisoner by a complex surveillance system in the military base where Colossus was built, which monitors every move and sound he makes. The machine outlines a timetable which Forbin must follow precisely, one of his first tasks being to construct a speech synthesis unit designed by Colossus so the machine can speak to the humans. The computer also demands the construction of a new machine, which would be located on the island of Crete. It prints out the designs for Forbin, and demands the cretian population be moved immediately so the new machine can be built.
Forbin then manages to trick the machine into thinking he has a mistress - another doctor who helped in the design of Colossus, enabling him to have some time without its cameras and microphones monitoring him. They are able to communicate between each other, and discuss how to proceed with regaining control over the machine. They come up with a plan to overflow the computer with information, and to replace an integral component in each of the missile silos that disables the detonators of the nuclear warheads so the computer is no longer a threat.
Colossus states that it is realigning all the nuclear warheads so they are aimed at the major cities of countries it does not yet control, and will be launched if its orders are not followed. It announces that the plan to overload its processing abilities failed, and has the men who ordered the action executed. At the end of the film, Colossus announces that it was aware of the plot to render the missiles redundant, and launches a missile from one of the silos in retaliation. The film ends on a hopeless note: Dr Forbin defiantly saying that he will not build the new machine, while Colossus replying that he has no choice, that the computers are in complete control.
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