Designed, programmed and controlled by “The Institute of Applied Cybernetics,” the self-perpetuating factory network now undermines human autonomy and ultimately threatens the planet’s survival. A vision of technological tyranny and ecological disaster, “AutoFac” criticizes the implications of mindless, cybernetic industrial production and its attendant social philosophy.
The forerunner of artificial intelligence and robotics, cybernetics formed in the crucible of World War II. Along with the race against German scientists to build an atomic bomb and the need to break the secret Nazi cipher machine codes, the urgency to improve Britain’s air defense was a major force behind the development of high-speed calculating machines, eventually leading to the supercomputer and cybernetics.
Incorporating radar and high-speed calculation that analyzed feedback data from the German bombers, mathematician Norbert Wiener developed a self-regulating, predictive missile guidance system that adjusted the weapon’s gun-sight to the speed, height and direction of the Nazi planes and thereby blasted them out of the sky. Based on his insights into machine learning via environmental feedback, Wiener invented cybernetics: the science of communication and control of people and machines.
Feedback, for Wiener, was an essential characteristic of life: all living things function and learn by practicing some form of feedback reaction in adapting to their environment; therefore, all forms of life could be understood mechanically, as a response to external information or communication. In The Human Use of Human Beings a popularized version of his classic 1948 work Cybernetics, Wiener wrote, “Communication and control belong to the essence of man’s inner life, even as they belong to his life in society.”
Shifting from bombsight design to social engineering, Wiener believed the nervous system and the operations of complex electronic computers are fundamentally alike in that they are devices whose behavior is based on the processing of information. In the cybernetic view, humans learned and behaved like machines; they could—for society’s and their own good—be controlled like machines. By manipulating and regulating information input; by programming, Wiener expected to govern and perfect the behavioral output of both machines and people. In fact, the word “cybernetics” is derived from the Greek word kubernetes, meaning “steersman” or “governor.”
Cybernetics heralded the promise of a techno-utopian world that would result from a second industrial revolution when the “computing machine” became the “center of the automatic factory” —a vision of programmed automation fulfilling people’s needs while science-based social controls engineered happy, good citizens. Pursuing this vision, behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner, in his 1948 book Walden Two, proudly depicted a cybernetic “utopia” that resulted from modifying behavior through controlled positive and negative reinforcement (feedback). Far from popularizing the idea, he inadvertently demonstrated cybernetics’ totalitarian implications.
“AutoFac” counters the cyber-utopian vision with a dystopian prophecy of automatic factories that become evil in their inflexible self-sufficiency, autonomous expansion, and pervasive control. “Why can’t we take over the machines?” screams a frustrated human, condemned to redundancy and humiliation. “My God, we’re not children! We can run our own lives.” Dick questions the legitimacy of a cybernetic philosophy that views humans mechanically, as passively dependent consumer-automatons incorporated into a technological apparatus devised to furnish physical needs, but indifferent to spiritual ones.
The automatic factories cannot creatively alter their own programming in response to the changing needs of the humans they were built to serve; rather, they scrupulously, logically, and literally persist in fulfilling their now-destructive production objectives. Forcing people to relinquish their freedom “for their own good,” these immutable robots illustrate the insoluble problem of designing a technology that accounts for the vast range of human variables and the impossibility of determining what is right or good for humanity in all circumstances. Ridiculing claims of cybernetic perfection, Dick envisions the dire political implications of a technological system so determined in its programmed agenda that an initially positive benefit turns into a human-threatening, techno-tyranny.
This ever-expanding cybernetic system also reflects the dehumanizing logic of late capitalism whose profitability depends upon the reckless overproduction of useless commodities, marketed to a public viewed as gullible and gluttonous. Dick implicitly criticizes an economic system based on the automatic expansion of production to continuously increase corporate profits, rather than a system designed to improve human utility, happiness and freedom.
“Autofac” also demonstrates that this unfettered epidemic of overproduction will ultimately prove fatal: the environmental destruction that results from this self-perpetuating cycle of production and waste threatens to devour the planet. The helpless humans of “AutoFac” realize that “the damn network expands and consumes more of our natural resources,” that the system itself “gets top priority” while “mere people come second,” and that eventually no resources will remain unless the humans control factory output. Attempts to contact someone who might change the network’s programming, however, end in frustrated failure. The factory’s representatives are themselves programmed machines, reflecting today’s robotic bureaucrats and computerized phone systems that shield corporate owners from public scrutiny and accountability.
After further efforts to directly shut down the factories, the humans confront the machines with logically impossible information meant to confuse and freeze them; but this has the unforeseen result of setting off internecine warfare. When the shipments of goods finally stop, it appears that the factories have destroyed each other. Yet when humans investigate one such damaged facility, they discover that on a deeper underground level the factory functions in a new way, manufacturing something mysterious. The inspection team finds the exit valve of a conveyer tube. Every few moments, a pellet bursts from the valve and shoots up into the sky. Upon examination, the horrified humans realize that the pellet is a tiny metallic element consisting of “Microscopic machinery, smaller than ants, smaller than pins, working energetically, purposefully—constructing something that looks like a tiny rectangle of steel.”
In a prescient conception of self-replicating nanotechnology, the automatic factory—exhibiting a living entity’s survival instinct—spews out metallic seeds that germinate into miniature replicas of the demolished factory that spurt out more seeds all over the earth and maybe throughout the universe. As one despairing character says: “The cyberneticists have it rigged . . . they’ve got us completely hamstrung. We’re completely helpless.” “AutoFac” dramatizes Philip Dick’s pessimistic vision of a technocratic ideology that values the system’s smooth, self-regulating operation as an end in itself: serving its own needs, expanding its control, replicating exponentially like a contagious disease, devouring the planet and even the universe—all to the detriment and possible extinction of humanity.13
29
“King of the Elves”
MICHELLE D. GALLAGHER
“King of the Elves” is a rare excursion into the realm of fantasy for Philip K. Dick. Nonetheless, Dickian themes abound, including a questioning of reality. Typically, in a Dick story where reality is questioned, we find central characters rejecting their reality as they gradually come to realize that what they thought was reality was really a fabrication (as in Ubik or A Maze of Death). But in “King of the Elves,” the main character grows to accept increasingly strange goings-on as just another part of his world.
One rainy evening, Shadrach Jones, a small town gas station owner, receives a visit from a group of tiny strangers who call themselves Elves. Jones is initially skeptical, telling his visitors “whatever you are, you shouldn’t be out on a night like this.” He is somewhat embarrassed when he finds himself even momentarily entertaining the idea that Elves could exist. Jones’s skeptical stance softens when the King of the Elves dies in his bedroom,
but not before naming his successor—Shadrach Jones himself.
The idea of being King of the Elves appeals to Shadrach and he brags to his best friend, Phineas Judd, of his newfound fortune. When a war council is called on Phineas’s property to deal with the Troll problem, Shadrach has some renewed concerns. “Were there really Trolls up there, rising up bold and confident in the darkness of the night, afraid of nothing, afraid of no one? And this business of being Elf King . . .”
So, before going to the war council in the backyard, he stops off at his friend’s house. Phineas advises Shadrach to go home and get some sleep, but his pleas fall on deaf ears. In the dim lighting, it becomes clear to Shadrach that his friend is in fact a Troll and he kills him, setting off a battle between the Trolls and the Elves which culminates in an Elven victory. Worse yet, Phineas turns out to have been the King of the Trolls, adding even more to Jones’s glory. There is a fleeting moment wherein Shadrach looks down at Phineas’s body and sees not the Troll King, but his friend. The moment soon passes, however, and Shadrach fully accepts his new role as King of the Elves.
Since the story is told from Shadrach’s point of view, we can’t tell whether he is hallucinating or whether he really has encountered Elves and become their King and savior. We, like Shadrach, are left to guess what was going on, to figure out for ourselves what’s real and what’s a fiction of Shadrach’s imagination. So, “King of the Elves” can be read either as a story about the ascent of a gas station owner to the Elven throne, or as a story about a man losing touch with reality and murdering his old friend. Either way, however, the story has something to say about what we mean when we say this or that is real. The story poses a challenge for certain ways of understanding empiricist takes on reality.
Bishop George Berkeley, an early modern empiricist, took a pretty practical line on what we mean when we call something real. In his Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, Berkeley says that we call something “real” if our expectations are met regarding how that thing will behave. For example, if I leave my wallet on the living room table, when I return to that room, that’s where the wallet will be. If I put bread in the toaster, in a few minutes I should have some toast.
Berkeley thought that we don’t call something “real” if it is subject to the whim of our imagination. If I imagine some goldfish floating in the air, I don’t think they are really there. On the other hand, I can’t make Mount Shasta any taller by imagining it to be taller, and that speaks in favor of its reality. Now, Berkeley doesn’t mean that new things can never happen. Of course they can. But when a new thing happens, it won’t be bread failing to turn to toast in a working toaster. It will be a new thing—a new invention, a new movie, a new dance—with new attributes and results, but not a new way for things to work, like constantly oscillating bread-toast, pain located outside of someone’s body, or spiders that do not terrify and disgust me. New things that I accept as “real” will be things I haven’t experienced before that nonetheless fit in with my past experiences.
This sort of picture would make some sense of how we figure out when we’re dreaming and why we say that the dream world isn’t real. In your dream, eventually something stands out as not fitting your expectations or shows itself to be subject to the whim of your imagination. For example, you may dream of your living room, but all of the furniture has been rearranged. The dream itself may be entirely consistent, your furniture could have been arranged like that, but it’s not consistent with expectations regarding how furniture behaves. Alas, furniture doesn’t rearrange itself.
In a dream, you may think of the White House and suddenly be transported to the Oval Office. You know you’re not there because you’d have to take a car, and would likely have remembered to put on some pants. Berkeley’s picture might also help us make some sense of why children have a hard time distinguishing between fantasy and reality. Children haven’t built up the expectations yet which would enable them to do so.
If Philip K Dick’s “King of the Elves” works as a story, however, Berkeley’s picture as I’ve described it above must be wrong. Here we have Shadrach Jones, who keeps seeing unusual things and having unusual experiences, things not in keeping with his expectations, things that don’t fit in with the rest of the world. Why then does Shadrach think the Elves and Trolls are real?
Shadrach’s changes of heart regarding the reality of the Elves and the Trolls come in response to his wants, desires, and fears. One of the first things we learn about Shadrach is that he thinks there is nothing to attract people to his hometown. He finds it drab, unexciting. He laments his lack of customers, the empty register. Until the Elves make him their King, he’s skeptical that they are really Elves. But the prospect of being King is very appealing. A life as King is a much grander life than he had been living thus far. War isn’t very appealing and his doubts re-emerge. Being needed, however, having a life that makes a difference, that is appealing and so he marches off to war. No one would want their friend to die, and for a moment Phineas’s death takes Shadrach back in to the world of the gas station. Nonetheless, life as King of the Elves is ultimately more appealing than life as a gas station owner in a rundown town. That’s why Shadrach makes the choice he does at the end of the story.
Very importantly, Shadrach Jones never says to himself anything like “Elves and Trolls—that makes so much sense of everything!” In saying that Elves are real, Shadrach can’t be saying that the reality of Elves fits with his past experiences and meets his expectations. Elves are precisely the thing you wouldn’t expect, and neither does Shadrach. Instead, his reality attributions are, at least in part, based on what he wishes were true.
At the end of the day, then, I don’t think it matters whether “King of the Elves” is about an Elven King or a mad gas station attendant. Whether it is unlikely truth or delusional falsehood, Shadrach decided, in the face of self-doubt and against all odds and evidence, that he really is the King of the Elves, because he wanted to. While that doesn’t tell me what reality is, it’s quite understandable. Who wouldn’t want to be King of the Elves?
30
“The Golden Man”
JEREMY PIERCE
Imagine being able to predict the future to anticipate any eventuality. No one could surprise you. You could prevent any attempt to harm you, knowing the consequences of any possible action. In several Philip K. Dick stories, people or machines are described as predicting the future.
In “The Golden Man,” it’s a mutated human being named Cris Johnson, living in a post-nuclear United States where many people have mutations that usually just leave them labeled as freaks. “Paycheck” has a machine doing the same thing, and “The Minority Report” has precogs. All are described as predicting the future, but in all three cases “the future” predicted can be prevented if the person seeing that future does something that changes the outcome.
A more precise way of describing these predictions is that they allow the viewer to see what would have happened had the prediction not occurred. Once the prediction occurs, the viewer can do something to lead to a different outcome. In “The Minority Report,” Precrime prevents the predicted killings. In “Paycheck,” Jennings anticipates how he’ll respond once his memories are erased and gives himself clues to stop the machine’s original predictions from happening. In “The Golden Man,” Cris Johnson can pursue the consequences of any course of action he might take, allowing him to opt for the path that he most prefers.
Cris has a covering of fine, golden hair. Most mutants in this post-nuclear world are seen as freaks, referred to as “deeves” (short for deviants). Most mutations are harmful or unattractive. Cris is beautiful and has an advanced ability that allows him to evade the DCA (a government agency hunting down and “euthing” those with mutations). He seems superhuman, not a mere freak. Several characters describe him as godlike, the next step in human evolution.
But then they discover that he’s also less than human. According to George Baine
s, “It doesn’t think at all. Virtually no frontal lobe. It’s not a human being—it doesn’t use symbols. It’s nothing but an animal.” Ed Wisdom responds, “An animal with a highly-developed faculty. Not a superior man. Not a man at all.” He chooses options, suggesting a human-like agency, but that choice is instinctual, like an animal, lacking reflective thought about its choices, with no consideration of moral reasoning. He acts on reflex informed by an amazing ability to predict his actions’ consequences.
Cris impregnates a character in the story and escapes to impregnate more. We’re left wondering how many offspring he’ll be able to create and how quickly his genes will be passed on to create more animal-like humans—who will, it seems, eventually replace humanity because of their greater fitness, despite their devolved level of inner life.
How should we think of this Golden Man? Some actuallyoccurring conditions have similar features. Autism, for example, often involves heightened and diminished cognitive abilities, sometimes severely diminished. Dick’s novel Martian Time-Slip treats autism-schizophrenia14 as distortions in timeperception. A psychiatrist in the story proposes that Manfred Steiner, an autistic child, perceives the passage of time at a different rate.
By the end of the novel Manfred turns out to have access to the future and the past in a way that we normally don’t. But even in actuality, it’s pretty clear that autism can lead to greater abilities in certain domains and cognitive difficulties with other skills. So the general features of Cris Johnson’s case are not purely fictional, even if the particular ways those features appear in Cris are pure science fiction. So we might then ask if the similarities are close enough to have ethical significance. Should our attitude toward autistic people be anything like our attitude toward Cris Johnson?
Philip K. Dick and Philosophy Page 33