From Literature to Biterature: Lem, Turing, Darwin and Explorations
in Computer Literature, Philosophy of Mind and Cultural Evolution
by Peter Swirski
McGill-Queen’s University Press, Montreal,
Quebec & Kingston, Ontario, 2013
252 pp. Trade, $29.95
ISBN: 9780773542952.
Reviewed by Enzo Ferrara
Istituto Nazionale di Ricerca Metrologica (INRIM) and Istituto di Ricerche
Interdisciplinari sulla Sostenibilità (IRIS)
Torino, Italy
e.ferrara@inrim.it
When an earthquake hit California on Monday, March 17th 2014,
the Los Angeles Times broke
the news in three minutes informing web readers that
a 2.7 quake had just happened near Westwood. The article, covering the details
of the strike, was ordinary but for its final line: “this post – one
could read – was created by an algorithm". The text was effectively put
together with the inputs of the U.S. earthquake notification service via
software created by the journalist and programmer Ken Schwencke. That
algorithm, Quake-bot, is not the only
existing bot reporter. Quite a few machines now can sieve data
to provide
timely information on corporate earnings, for example, or on sports
statistics and financial markets. They take factual data, as those spread on
the web by survey systems, and fix them into templates prewritten for the
newspaper's management system, even sending reminders for the editors. This new
kind of writing can be seen as the dawn of what the Polish writer and
philosopher of science Stanislaw Lem anticipated ante litteram in a fictitious essay entitled History of bitic literature (Imaginary
magnitude, 1973), forging the neologism biterature to include any writings
of non-human origin and designating bitic authors as computhors.
The number of stories algorithms could potentially write about is growing along
with the number of sensors and alerts that is available, but the path to
biterature is not straightforward. The advent of new technologies always opens questions
about changes in human attitudes and their consequences relating technological changes
with philosophical and social approaches. These are the fields of Peter Swirski,
professor of American literature and culture at the University of Missouri–St.
Louis, who has devoted his career to analysing how scientific advancements
affect literature, art and popular culture – he is, in fact, a renowned reviewer
of Stanislaw Lem. This last book confirms his skill in handling transdisciplinary
studies, blending in the proposed route from literature to biterature issues of
science, mind philosophy and society.
This is not a book of futurology or literary theory. According to the
author it should rather resemble an old-fashioned book of discovery or a modern
adventure story of the mind trying to replicate for the computer what Darwin did
for the human. The text does not adhere to any editorial codes; it consists of
chapters and paragraphs cumulatively organized around the idea that, since
artificial intelligence is evolving, computers will eventually be able at least
to create works of literature of their own.
Underlying
the archaic power of narrative for deep-seated consciousness and with the aim
to exploit the chance of artificial tale too, Swirski observes that the
access to writing created by machines adds literature opportunities,
but it also spurs cultural and social concerns that call into question
traditional ways of thinking. The scrutiny of biterature perspective – he warns – turns
out being more a pressing necessity than an academic divertissement.
We have bot reporters and software that adjust their digital physiology
in virtual environment as computer Operative Systems, but in both cases machines
are only able to manipulate human data and generate automated information or advertisements
as done by Amazon, YouTube, or Facebook. To describe the state of the art,
Swirski praises Charles Darwin, Alan Turing, and Stanislaw Lem as
pioneer scholars of biological and artificial intelligences and offers further
examples of individuals who trusted artificial intelligence, as the
futurists Hans Moravec and Alvin Toffler, or the genius
of informatics Ray Kurzweil. What unifies their works is the
observation that in any case intelligence can be seen as an unceasing trial and
error test about the future continuously receiving sensorial feedbacks from the
present, while data mining the past experience through cognitive skills. A machine can react; based on data we input, software systems accumulate
information on what we like (books, music, voyages), that’s why they
generate with time more and more suggestions making rough and untimely
estimates of what we are actually interested to. But these are not creative
acts; the accumulation of data is not equivalent to thinking.
Differently from a machine, humans strive to interpret any fragment of information
– in fact they frequently interpret too much. That is why machines, not capable
to separate information according to significance, are excluded from creativity,
yet. However, the border is thin, and it is related also to our perception. There
are computers setting up artworks well attended and appreciated as well as
dozens of titles exist composed by unimaginative writers that repeat their
prose according to the formulas of conformism. We accept the latters as agents
of creation but not a computer similarly working – Swirski explains – because
we believe computers should think the way of humans. Exactly, one point is about
awareness and consciousness of artificial intelligence. The
only comparison we have is to biology, but it might be misleading. Self-analysis
for hardware and updating programs for software are already available; if integrated
self-organization would be attained by computer machines, it would be difficult
to deny the possibility of evolution and autonomous determination of bitic
entities.
With similar capabilities a redefinition is required for the concepts of development
and adaptation and a lot of questions arise about robotic futures (most were tackled
by Lem in SF stories). For example we should reflect on how pursue bitic education,
or on the dreadful possibilities of robotic warfare, or on the integrated meaning
that diversity, emotions, and desire will assume. Maybe love affairs will
resemble that of Samantha and Theodore, the Operating System personified by a
female voice and its/her human owner, respectively, central characters of Her, the Oscar winner movie conceived
by Spike Jonze after reading of Cleverbot – a PC algorithm used to talk with humans.
Swirski is confident that computers will soon be able to act as literary
writers; as well, independently on the mindfulness
of their acts, they will learn to grow autonomously their software and
hardware. The consequent scenarios would leave us behind as digital progression
overwhelms the pace of natural processes. “The future belongs to artificial
intelligence” – Swirski concludes – if algorithms ever go native, nothing will be
able to stop their evolution.
