A LETTER TO A ROBOT IN THE FUTURE

The Dehumanisation of Humans, the Humanisation of Machines.

Some time ago, I had an idea to write something for Arturo, my nephew: a short story entitled “A Letter to a Robot in the Future”. My mind began to race and hundreds of topics and questions started to emerge, amongst them the following:

To what extent is the human being conditioned to be human, and under what variables is a person considered human?

If the human experience includes trial and error in the learning process, why is perfect optimisation always expected in the workplace?

Are we living in times where money is glorified because we depend upon it 100% for its function?

If the human experience rests upon cognitive, physical, social, biological, chemical, historical, and political processes and narratives, how is it possible to teach a robot to interpret all these variables — variables that depend upon the moment and geographical and temporal position of the person interpreting them?

Is it not somewhat contradictory that all the aforementioned variables — and the infinite number we have yet to define about the human experience — create complex formulae within a system where work always demands a simplistic interpretation of reward?

I have often believed there is nothing more unnatural than the human being himself, and when my thinking becomes somewhat “conspiracy-minded”, I sometimes think that the human being, through time and through physical, metaphysical, biological, and above all imaginative processes, has created himself.

We entered the information age in the twenties — a century now immersed in a reality where our understanding of it is influenced by computational reasoning, access to the internet, the interpretation of computing, the advances of quantum physics and their real-world applications, and all the while, the systematic persuasion of what “is best” or “is good”. Vice at the centre of the whirlpool — vices normalised both personally and socially.

Welcome not to the age of information, but to the age of hyperreality: an era in which screens abound, authenticity is lacking, the exterior is incentivised, intention is ignored, and what comes from higher dimensions is reduced to a three-dimensional rational thought. The lack of imagination, courage, and authenticity has turned nations into cities hypnotised by foreign ideas — not for the purpose of inspiring and interpreting them, nor for creating something of their own, but for replicating them: replicas devoid of depth, devoid of value, based solely on their utility.

Corporate objectives glorify numbers, mechanising the human experience and forcing those with lesser cognitive capacity to remain within the same mould.

I do not share this personal analysis with the intention that people should think as I do, but rather that they dare to question. I am fascinated by the question mark “?”; visually, they resemble hooks or a sickle. Questions allow us to expand our reality, with the consequence that this expansion depends upon a fracturing of what we conceive to be real at that moment. So long as market systems continue to cycle in nostalgia — because it is easier to control and profit from its consequences — we shall live in an infinite loop fluctuating between the eighties and the two-thousands. Those who dare to take the next step will be able to enter the next stage: one where “good” in its purest form stands above reward and pleasure.

Let us always remember the 4 rules of the game:

• Good

• Indulgent

• Reactive

• Clear

Rules that not only help us advance towards optimal and better realities, but which are older even than traditional Christian philosophy.

With affection and many questions.

Moisés López aka Moiloh

Artist, Painter, BA in Marketing.