The Human Machine

The Human Machine

Automated robots in a nursery home, jets flying in the atmosphere without a pilot, and even robot assembly lines creating robots.  This all seems like the next installment of Terminator, but in reality it is already here in our lives.  We have seen an increasing amount of technology come out in the past 50 years that has never been seen before.  We can now replace a dead limb with machines that help us regain our senses in lost regions of the body.  Before, if a loved one left the country on a business venture, we would have to wait for their return to see them.  Today, we have phones that allow us to have a video chat no matter where in the world people are.  Just a couple of years back people were still using brooms to sweep the floor of their house.  Now, we have Roomba’s, little automated machines that can do this work for us.  On the one hand, this has made cleaning up the house a lot easier, but has it also made us lazy?  Has life been replaced by these cold, steel-like machines that we value so much in our lives?  Or are we just in fear of them becoming self-aware just as in the film I, Robot?  Although technology has helped us create these machines that help prolong human life while also making life easier, these same advancements have led humanity to live in an overpopulated, lazy, and lifeless world.

The benefits that machines have brought to humanity are readily apparent.  From simple microwaves preparing a frozen dinner to giant purifiers cleaning the water supply,  machines have benefited us all in one way or another.  Artificial limbs could help replace a wounded soldier’s arm, giving him a second chance of holding his baby in his arms.  To further aid soldiers in combat, machines are being produced that will someday replace the soldier to greatly reduce casualties of war.  In the workplace, machines have made the workplace a safer place to be. They can reach places humans can’t or do extraordinary tasks that our bodies will not allow us to accomplish.  For example, they can crawl into a tiny hole to help look for survivors after a natural disaster.  Even automobile technology has lowered the chances of bumper-to-bumper accidents by allowing vehicles to park themselves.  These machines are becoming more lifelike as the years go by and are reaching peaks only imagined by science fiction writers.  Machines are being utilized in nursing homes to help take care of the elderly not just by caring for them, but also by providing the comfort of another individual, essentially removing humans from the picture.  In turn, leaving machines to run the world instead of us.

But, with all these innovations that have helped advance human life, we have also dumbed down society to a certain extent.  In the words of the great Albert Einstein, “It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.”   Great advances in technology does not necessarily mean we have evolved as a species, especially when these advancements are nothing more than a means to show off status.  For example, Apple comes out with a new product almost every six months and all that is added is a one-point megapixel camera upgrade from the previous model.  Most of these upgrades aren’t needed, yet we desire them. It’s in our nature to discover new things, but as we discover new ways to make life easier, we reduce our work ethic.

Having machines do most of the work for us has made most people lazy.  More and more technology is being created that makes us stay at home because there is no need to go outside. One can simply go online to purchase groceries and have it delivered to their homes.  Instead of traveling to a nearby hill or mountain for a hike, video game sensors allow people to simply turn on their television and do physical movements in place to simulate a hike or workout.  Some can argue that to an extent you are still reaching peak physical activity.  Yet, you won’t feel the same incline of a mountain or the changing steepness of a hill, as well as the reduced oxygen that helps expand your lung capacity.  In the film Wall-E (2008), “Operation Cleanup” is put in place since humans have practically destroyed the planet.  With the company BnL(Big & Large), the population has grown extremely fat and obsessed with shopping for the latest gear, all while living away from the planet. The robots in the film do all the work for society, even raise the babies.  In a similar way, machines today have already began taking our place as parents.  Handheld devices and even the latest toys, some replicating laptops and iPad’s, distract children for hours on end leaving parents with the freedom to kickback and relax.  Even teenagers get obsessed with devices such as video game consoles, mp3 player’s, and even more with their phones.  Games on these devices, as well as consoles, hook children into staying indoors, rather than being outside in the sunlight and exercise their young muscles. Ultimately, they become drones stuck in a virtual world.

While machines help prolong our lives, they have the potential to create a new problem, overpopulation.  In the trailer for the film Surrogates (2009), it is said “Become anyone you would like to be from the comfort of your home.”  A surrogate is a machine that can be either male or female and any user who could afford one could plug-in into a chair and pass all neurological thoughts onto the machine and live one’s life in this robot.  While in hindsight this seems like fun and games, people do not realize the implications this would cause.  The population would safely be indoors while their surrogate would live another life outside of the home.  This would double the population instantly.  In the short story “The Veldt” publisher William Morrow wrote, “They walked down the hall of their soundproofed, Happy-life Home, which had cost them thirty thousand dollars installed, this house which clothed and fed and rocked them to sleep and played and sang and was good to them”(7).  Eventually, this is the route that rich home owners will strive for to make life easier.  Leaving their homes to do all the work for them.  

New medical technologies may also help increase the world’s overall population.  Advanced medical technologies become more affordable as time passes and help cure diseases that just a few years ago would have been an epidemic.  On the one hand, saving lives is the right thing to do, but added lives only use up more resources, especially when they just consume and not produce.  This increase in the number of people could lead to issues in housing and food shortages.  The more people that are on this earth, the faster natural resources fade away.  We are already in a global fuel crisis and adding more people to the equation means a faster depletion of these resources.  Tensions will grow as people have an increasing need for supplies.  With an increased population, and machines running things day to day, people will be left unemployed,  stuck at home with nothing to do.  Machines would complete every task imaginable, getting a sense of life, instead of humans living their lives.

The central fear in many science fiction films is that machines will develop their own minds and emotions.  This is becoming more apparent as advances have helped give robots a human-like appearance.  In the film, I Robot (2004) it is said “A robot cannot harm a human being.”  For a machine to be able to harm a person, something must have triggered it because machines aren’t allowed to think for themselves.  But, we are giving machines a more human-like appearance with every new invention brought up.  We’re in a time where we can ask our phone a question and it responds to us instantly.  Robots in Japan are continuing to evolve by having faster and smoother movements as well as facial expressions that only us has humans can have.  Machines, like the Roomba, continue to do the work for us while we just sit at home.  This is what fuels the fear of machines eventually becoming human.  The film Terminator depicts machines in a stage where they have become “self-aware” and essentially take over the world in an effort to destroy the human race.  These fears brought on by films have been around for years and as new machines are being created, people are realizing that there might be some truth behind these fears.  If machine’s continue to be produced at this rate we could lose this world to them and soon see ourselves as if we were the primates of this world.

Machines are leading humans to a lazy existence in an overpopulated world filled with human-like machines.  People need to start living more and not let machines run their lives for them.  Sure it makes life easier, but at what cost? We need to keep this planet in our hands and not let machines run it.  Just as Elbert Hubbard once said, “One machine can do the work of 50 ordinary men.  No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.”  Be extraordinary.

Works Cited

Bradbury, Ray. “The Veldt.” The Illustrated Man. Eds. William Morrow. 1997. 7. Print.

I Robot. Dir. Alex Proyas. Perf. Will Smith, Bridget Moynahan, and Bruce Greenwood. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, 2004. Film.

Surrogates. Dir. Jonathan Mostow. Perf. Bruce Willis, Radha Mitchell, and Ving Rhames. Touchstone Pictures, 2009. Film.

Wall-E. Dir. Andrew Stanton. Perf. Ben Burtt, Elissa Knight, and Jeff Garlin. Pixar Animation Studios, 2008. Film.