Veröffentlichungsreihe der Abteilung Organisation und Technikgenese des Forschungsschwerpunkts Technik - Arbeit - Umwelt

am Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung

FS H 92 - 109

Aviation, Androids, and Artificial Intelligence

The Intricate Paths of Literary Imagination and Technological Development

Ute Hoffmann

Berlin, October 1992

Social Science Research Center, Berlin Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung gGmbH (WZB)

Reichpietschufer 50, D-1000 Berlin 30 Tel. +49-30-254 91 0

Abstract

Over the past decade, the study of science and technology has led to the unavoidable conclusion that scientific theories and technological artifacts are shaped by their social and cultural setting. At the same time, literary studies have noted a blossoming of utopian and science-fiction scholarship. None­theless, the influence that imaginary visions of alternative worlds and fictional accounts of impossible machines have had on scientific and technological developments—and vice versa—is an issue that is still largely unexplored.

This paper is an attempt to map out the complex and shifting rela­tions between literary utopias, science fiction and emerging technology, as elucidated by the case of flying machines, androids, and artificial intelligence. The paper is meant as an argument for taking pleasure in crossing the bound­ary between the study of literature and the study of technology while at the same time conscientiously maintaining the two pursuits as separate intellec­tual activities.

Zusammenfassung

Das Verhältnis von Literatur und Technik ist ein Thema, mit dem sich bisher - und zunehmend im letzten Jahrzehnt - die Literaturwissenschaft, seltener die Technikforschung beschäftigt hat. Und konzentrierte sich das Interesse dabei vor allem auf die literarischen Reaktionen auf Technik, ist der Anteil der Literatur an der Entstehung von Technik noch kaum erforscht.

Dieses Papier untersucht für die frühneuzeitliche Geschichte des Fliegens und den Bereich der menschenähnlichen Maschinen (Androiden und Artificial Intelligence), ob und welche Verbindungen hier zwischen Technik- entwürfen in der utopischen und spekulativen Literatur (Science Fiction) und realen Technisierungsprozessen bestehen. Es zeigt sich, daß die literarische Einbildungskraft - bei aller Eigensinnigkeit - in ihrer Bedeutung für die Technikentwicklung nicht unterschätzt werden sollte, auch wenn die Rolle der Literatur unterschiedliche Formen annehmen kann und nicht einfach zu be­stimmen ist. Die Technikbedeutsamkeit von Literatur sollte in historisch­vergleichenden Studien weiter erforscht werden. Interessante Einzelthemen könnten dabei u.a. die Motivations-, Legitimations- und Inspirationsfunktion literarischer Technikentwürfe für die Produzenten von Technik darstellen.

Contents

Introduction

I The History of Flight in Early Modern Europe

The Birth of the Modem Utopia and the First Scientific Utopias The Art of Flying: Practical Approaches and Scholarly Discourse The Flight of WitchesLiterary Scenarios of FlightThe Relation between Literature and Technology

II Androids and Artificial Intelligence

From Androids to the Functionally Oriented MachineImages of Humanoid Creations and Intelligent Machines in the Literary ImaginationThe Relation between Fiction and Technology

Conclusion

References

Introduction

One of the popular theories of literature nowadays is that fiction is not about anything but itself. In this view, the study of literature is not expected to benefit from looking at the practical side of the themes and concepts in fiction. For their part, students of technology have largely accepted that technology is deeply affected by its social and cultural setting, but they have been somewhat reluctant to think of their subject in literary terms.

However, some effort has been made to explore the relation be­tween literature and technology (e.g., Mumford, 1977: 561-597; Segal, 1985; Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society, 1987; Segeberg, 1987; Grossklaus & Lämmert, 1989; Schütz, 1988; and Berghahn & Grimm, 1990). Drawing on such reflections and on works from a variety of backgrounds, the present article examines the cases of flying machines, androids, and artificial intelligence for the links that may exist between the literary imagination and technological development. In the first part, I concentrate on the three hundred years from 1500 to 1800 A.D. Tracing the idea of hum an flight through reflections, actual experi­ments, and utopian literature, I arrive at a few concluding remarks on the role of fiction in the history of aviation during early m odern period. In the second part, androids and artificial intelligence are discussed, including more recent developments in this area. Lastly, I touch upon a few issues that students of the relations between literature and technol­ogy might fruitfully attend to.

I The History o f Flight in Early Modern Europe

The Birth of the Modern Utopia and the First Scientific Utopias

Utopia is a creation of early modern Europe. The eponymous book written by Sir Thomas More was published in 1516, and by the end of the eighteenth century the tale of a fictional place outside the known world was an established genre (Hölscher, 1990). The advent of the

7

modern utopia not only coincided with but was linked to landmark discoveries and larger cultural developments that considerably widened the horizon of early m odern Europe and stimulated the utopian imagination.

First, the voyages of exploration and discovery, beginning with the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus in 1492, moved beyond the boundaries of the known world on earth (Schwonke, 1957). Second, a new kind of cosmology opened up the heavens when, in 1543, Nicolaus Copernicus's Revolution of the Heavenly Orbs dislodged the earth from the center of the universe, which henceforth was infinite (Kuhn, 1981). Third, the decline of apocalyptic prophecies signaled a new horizon of expectation. Eschatological expectations of the end of the world gave way to conceptions of an indeterminate and uncertain future (Koselleck, 1989). Thus, utopia was engendered by the literal discovery of a New World, the mental restructuring of the heavenly territories, and the secularization of time. Utopia (Greek for nowhere) was the tale of a New World that is nonexistent, although it is a world of new possibilities.

The ideal state stands out as the first focus of utopia. Thereafter, however, knowledge itself became a central utopian interest. In this regard, Francis Bacon's New Atlantis (published posthum ously in 1627) was undoubtedly a most important contribution among the classic early modem utopias. However, the first utopia to make science central to its vision was Tommaso Campanella's City of the Sun (Civitas Solis), first circulated in manuscript form in 1602 (Kumar, 1987:6). The City of the Sun is laid out in seven concentric circles, a pattern repeated as a series of walls within the city. It is on these walls that all hum an knowl­edge was visualized in words and paintings. Thus, the City of the Sun is the physical embodiment of all the arts and sciences, all that is needed for cultivation of the good life.

8

The Art of Flying: Practical Approaches and Scholarly Discourse

Like the members of the House of Salomon in Bacon's New Atlantis, Campanella's Solarians have mastered an art that was still a dream for the contemporaries of these two authors, the art of flying. The three hundred years from 1500 to 1800 were a decisive stage in the history of flight (Behringer & Ott-Koptschalijski, 1991:221-301; Hart, 1985).During that period almost everything was thought out in narrative fiction and in more or less systematic approaches to technology- designs of gliders, parachutes, helicopters, and three-stage space rockets. In 1783 it culminated in actual flight when the first hot-air balloon lifted off in southern France.

Medieval times were also marked by a European-wide discussion of aerial travel, although it revolved primarily around mythical craft made of clouds and nocturnal flights of ghosts. The spirit of techno­logical invention did not tackle the problem of flight until the beginning of m odern times. From 1486 to 1514 Leonardo da Vinci demonstrated a variety of theoretical possibilities for flight, ranging from gliding and parachuting to flying in a helicopter. Above all, Leonardo systematized extant observations relating to the flight of birds, which constituted the foundation for numerous sixteenth-century attempts at flying—not all of which ended happily. Daring experimenters equipped with wings they had fashioned out of eagle feathers or covered with leather leapt like bats from towers or tall buildings. They also experimented with fixed- wing constructions so as to glide through the air like a bird.

Bird-like flight left the problem of propulsion unsolved. A resourceful Transylvanian fortress commandant of the mid-sixteenth century drew designs of an invention in which the rocket familiar in medieval warfare was adapted as a source of power for hum an flight. The same man also made a proposal unique in the annals of that period: using a three-stage rocket to fire an entire building into the sky.

In the seventeenth century, attempts to fly continued unabated w ith pairs of movable or fixed wings. The project by the Italian inven­tor Tito Burratini captured attention throughout Europe (Behringer &

9

Ott-Koptschalijski, 1991:169-271). In 1659 he built several models of a flying machine that combined fixed wings with a mechanism to beat the wings. The maneuverable tailpiece of his "flying kites" was supposed to enable one to steer the craft.

A Flying Monk (Fresco)*

Burratini did not work only on a flying machine. He also wrote a tract on the "art of flying" that drew on Galileo's ideas about air resistance. Burratini's book belonged to a growing body of learned literature on flying that moved the discussion about the problem of flight into a new phase. Interest in air travel was spurred by growing skepticism about attempts to fly like birds and by insights about the physical character of air. The ars volandi divided into "aeronautics" and "aviation." The

In memory of Prior Kaspar Mohr (1575 -1625), who broke his leg when attempting to fly after the manner of birds. (Stöcklein, 1969:185)

x-

10

principle of aeronautics held that a body designed to produce an aero­dynamic reaction can be made "lighter than air" through the use of bodies providing lift, thereby enabling it to launch itself into the air as it were and travel on a cushion of air like a ship (Latin navis) travels on a sea of water. By contrast, aviation propagated flight like that of birds (Latin avis), which are "heavier than air" and can lift themselves from the ground only by combining thrust and wings.

Airship*

In 1670 an Italian Jesuit monk named Francesco Lana formulated a physical theory of aircraft based on the premise that a hollow body

Eberhard W. Happel. Groeßte Denkwuerdigkeiten der Welt, oder sogenannte Relationes Curiosae, 5 Bde. Leipzig, 1683 - 1691; reprint Berlin 1990. (Behringer/Ott-Koptschaiijski, 1991: 285)

11

containing no air is bound to develop a power of lift in the air. In 1709 printed "flyers" disseminated the news from Portugal of the first attempt to fly with an airship. Some people considered this ostensibly pioneering deed a swindle, but it indisputably inspired other such attempts in Italy, England, and France.

What paved the road for air travel, however, was the chemical analysis of air as an aggregate of gases, the determination of air's weight, the subsequent identification of the lighter gases in the atmosphere, and then the calculation of the lift provided by the light gases in relation to air (i.e., its lifting capacity). As early as 1662, the English physicist Robert Boyle had shown that air has weight and expands when warmed, but it was not until the second half of the eigh­teenth century that a systematic chemical study of gases was under­taken. The experiments performed influenced those by the Montgolfier brothers, Jacques Etienne and Joseph Michel. The ascent of their hot-air balloon in southern France in June 1783 was a sensation.

Just a few months later, the Montgolfiers already had competition. In August 1783, a hydrogen balloon rose over Paris. It flew twenty kilometers and landed in a small village. The peasants thought the unidentified flying object was a demon, which they proceeded to attack w ith pitchforks and flails.

The Flight of Witches

The belief that witches and fabulous creatures could really fly accompanied the entire early m odern history of flying. Just one year before the ascent of the first Montgolfier, Europe's last witch was burned not far from the site of the launch. The ability of witches to fly was of central importance in the accompanying lore, for it was the only plausible way that they could attend witches' dances, which often took place in remote places.

The idea of flying witches was controversial, however. Since the early sixteenth century, a growing number of voices had branded such

12

flights as mere dreams or imaginings. As the persecution of witches climaxed at the turn of the seventeenth century, so did the discussion about whether witches could or really did fly. The dispute touched on basic questions of the way in which people saw their world. Flying did not come to be viewed as a purely mechanical matter until people's image of the world was "demystified" in the early m odern period.

In 1637 the French philosopher Rene Descartes showed in his Dis­course on Method that every movement in the physical world came about only through the direct influence of forces. This view made "magic flight" seem abstruse and gave impetus to the idea that hum an beings could fly by natural means. If, as Descartes argued, the laws of nature are identical w ith those of mechanics, then one could "indeed construct a machine that can keep itself in the air like a bird. For birds are . . . themselves such machines" (cited in Behringer & Ott-Koptschalijski, 1991: 267).

Basically, the ever-wider acceptance of the mechanistic, Cartesian theory of nature decided the debate about whether witches could or did fly. But magic flights continued to play a role not only in popular superstition and witch trials. Many scholars also firmly believed in the possibility of occult flights. One of them was John Wilkins, one of the founders of the Royal Society in England. In his book entitled Mathematicall Magick, he listed four types of flight:

"1. By spirits or Angels"2. By the help of fowls"3. By wings fastened immediately to the body"4. By a flying chariot." (Cited in Behringer & Ott-Koptschalijski,

1991: 275)

Ten years earlier, in 1638, a novel about the moon appeared by the same man. It is interesting and telling that in this literary voyage to the moon, as in most early m odem imaginative literature on flight, there is no talk of occult flights.

13

Literary Scenarios of Flying

From the outset utopian literature concerned itself with flying by natural means (Heß, 1992). Tommaso Campanella and Francis Bacon, whom I have already mentioned in conjunction with the rise of the scientific utopia, both conceived of utopian island states in which the dream of flying was realized, and both located their islands on earth. Under the influence of Copemican thought, "cosmic voyages" became established as a subgenre of utopian literature (Schwonke, 1957:16-30). In the process, the literary imagination focused first on the nearest heavenly body, the moon (Nicolson, 1960).

One of the first stories about a journey to the moon was Johannes Kepler's Somnium (Mumford, 1977: 386-391). In 1638, around the same time as Kepler's work (written in 1610 and published posthumously), two literary accounts of flights to the moon appeared in England. John Wilkins, understood his Discovery of a New World in the Moon as a defense of Copernican theory. In his book he studied the question of the problems that a trip to the moon would pose: over-coming gravity, the vast distance, the cold, and the rarified air. Wilkins introduced the terms flying engine, flying chariot, and flying conveyance into the English language, words that have come up repeatedly ever since and that played a great role until 1909.

In the other literary account of a voyage to the moon, Francis Godwin's The Man in the Moone (1638), the author showed how the protagonist, Domingo Gonsales, flies to the moon aboard a flying device pulled by a team of great birds. When Gonsales returns to earth, his ability to fly makes him appear to be a sorcerer, an identity for which he is to be tried as a witch.

The books by Godwin and Wilkins were followed by a number of novels about the moon and the planets. Together with the "imaginary voyages," which are set on earth and are likewise linked with flights, the cosmic voyages constitute the most popular form of utopian writing until well into the eighteenth century. These literary treatments of the dream of flying not only continued to spread the idea of flying in

14

Europe, they also mirrored the early m odem period's entire range of practical and imagined possibilities for flight. In addition to vehicles draw n by birds, as with Godwin, for example, there were artificial wings, flying kites, airships, and rockets.

Flight by the Help of Fowls*

Francis Godwin. The Man in the Moone. London, 1638. (Nicolson, 1960:15)

15

3.

Cyrano de Bergerac, Savinien. The Comical History of the States and Empires of the Worlds of the Moon and Sun . . . newly Englished by A. Lowell. London, 1687. (Nicolson, 1960:143)

Cyrano de Bergerac, Les Oevres diverses, 1710. (Stöcklein, 1969:187)

16

About 1660 two novels by the French nobleman Cyrano de Bergerac combined m any of the earlier flights of fancy. In the first work, a novel about the moon, the protagonist flies to Canada by means of bottles filled with dew that is attracted by the sun like morning dew. There, he builds a new flying machine propelled by a rocket and flies to the moon. On the moon he encounters other persons who had m an­aged to get there in an iron wagon. In his second novel, one about the sun, de Bergerac depicts a flying machine driven by solar energy. It has a box with holes in the bottom and crystals on the top that function as burning glasses. W arming forms a vacuum in the box, and the air it sucks in causes the vehicle to lift off. One of the Montgolfier brothers is said to have stated that Cyrano de Bergerac's sun novel gave him the idea for the invention of the hot-air balloon.

The Relation between Literature and Technology

How can one characterize the relation between literature and tech­nology in the early modern history of flying. Indisputably, utopian literature disseminated the idea of flying by "natural means"—the thought of technological flight—and stabilized it despite the repeated failures of attempts to fly. In defending the idea of technological flight against the suspicion that flying had something to do with magic, literary utopias of flight helped overcome the uncertainty in distin­guishing it from the extrasensory dimension.

As far as solving the problem of flying goes, utopian literature about flight produced no ideas that the inventors and scholars of the time would shy away from. Conversely, the flying contraptions that these inventors and scholars actually tried out, designed as models, or scientifically derived were themselves highly fanciful, so the literary imagination did not have to stretch particularly far. It could orient itself to contemporary accounts of actual or purported attempts at flying and could use the scholarly discussion about flight as a source of inspiration.

17

It m ust remain an unanswered question whether flight utopias had any immediate influence on the spirit of technological invention or whether its effect came later, as was said to be the case with Cyrano de Bergerac's sun novel and its impact on the Montgolfier's balloon experi­ment. A direct influence of narrative literature in this sense can be neither proved nor disproved. The numerous intertextual links be­tween the imaginative and the scholarly literature on flight suggest that literary treatments of the dream of flying and the technological history of flight are interwoven in a way that is difficult to reduce to a causal relation, regardless of its direction.

For all the evident cross-connections between practical experi­mentation, utopian imagination, and "serious" literature on flight, there are unmistakable lines of independent development. For example, the advent of visions of space travel in utopian literature had more to do w ith the dawn of Copernican cosmology than w ith the struggle over the problem of flight at that time. And if utopian literature reflected the whole spectrum of "seriously" considered flying devices, it remained undecided, even disinterested, in the question of how the dream of flying was ultimately to be fulfilled. Even as the significance of aeronautics grew in the scholarly discussion of flight after the m id­seventeenth century and as balloon flight loomed on the horizon, liter­ary air travel continued unencumbered on the backs of birds.

II Androids and Artificial Intelligence

From Androids to the Functionally Oriented Machine

Like the dream of flying, the artificial production of a human-like creature is part of the European stock of myths. And just as with the art of flying, attempts were made to realize this dream in early m odern Europe. Two directions were taken, the creation of a test-tube human being without natural parents and the construction of an automaton.

18

Both thrusts are encompassed by the term android, first coined in the seventeenth century (Drux, 1988: x).

The birth of a hum an being in a test tube was a key matter for the alchemists right from the beginning. Experiments that have gone down in the annals of history were those of Paracelsus (about 1493-1541), who claimed in the early sixteenth century to have found the recipe for a homunculus (Latin for "little human"). Presumably, the homunculus never left the laboratory alive.

Credit for greater success with the production of hum an figures must go to mechanics. Indeed, automatons simulating hum an bodies and imitating hum an functions are masterpieces of the mechanical arts. The seventeenth century, and especially the eighteenth century, became the great era of automatons (Stöcklein, 1969: 79-83; Woesler de Panafieu, 1984). The most famous inventors of such walking, talking, writing, and music-playing androids were Jacques de Vaucasson, with his flute player (1783); Pierre Jaquet-Droz, w ith his writer (c. 1772); and his son, Henry-Louis, with a piano-playing woman (1760-1774). In 1790 Baron Wolfgang von Kempelen succeeded in building a "talking

Wolfgang von Kempelen's "Talking Machine"*

Reproduction by Charles Wheatstone in the 1830s (Aschoff, 1984: 240).

19

machine" after having studied various musical instruments in an effort to get to the bottom of the "mechanism of hum an speech" (Aschoff, 1984:236-239: Drux, 1988: 61-70).

Actually, Vaucasson and Jaquet-Droz considered their automatons only as preliminary steps, as means to address their actual concern, which was to produce artificial life. It was Wolfgang von Kempelen's "talking machine" that suggested which path the development of tech­nology was to go in the future. In shape, this machine did not resemble the human head at all, and it heralded the end of the idea of a holistic automaton. In 1854, the physicist Hermann von Helmholtz declared the end of the android, saying:

We are now no longer seeking to build machines that perform the thousand different services of a human being. On the contrary, we demand instead that a machine perform only one service, but that it do so in place of one thousand people. (Cited in Drux, 1988:190)

The builder of automatons became a builder of machines. The goal was no longer to construct elegant, human-like mechanisms or to create artificial beings but to build machines for specific functions, machines that served a defined purpose in circumscribed areas of application.

Although the first steam engine of the eighteenth century still resembled the human figure, power and heating machines were very soon emancipated from this model (Wiener, 1968: 66). Von Kempelen's experiments with his "talking machine" were followed up in the m id­nineteenth century by the theories and experiments that natural scientists conducted in studying how the organs of hum an hearing and speech functioned. They led, rather by chance, to the invention of the telephone (Rammert, 1989). Also around the mid-nineteenth century, Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace in England used an "analytical engine" in an attempt to automate an intellectual function. It is true that their program-controlled mechanical calculator was never completed, but it can justifiably be called a precursor of the modern computer.

As we all know, the electronic computers of the twentieth century can now do a great deal more than calculate, but even the effort

20

invested in research on artificial intelligence has thus far failed to produce a "thinking machine" in any holistic sense. As impressive as the achievements of the modern industrial robot can be, they are only very specific, although a few experts in cybernetics and robotics repeatedly assert that robots have the potential to demonstrate "cultural awareness." The literary imagination is still the only "place" where homunculi are born, where human-like creations awaken to life, and where machines develop awareness.

Images of Humanoid Creations and Intelligent Machines in the Literary Imagination

The best-known creation of an artificial hum an being in German litera­ture was solely the work of alchemists. In Faust II, by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1808), the homunculus is created when the course of nature leading from inorganic matter to the hum an being is repeated in a test tube at a fantastically accelerated pace. Mary Shelley's Franken­stein (1818) is no less famous. The doctor's creature is certainly no longer an alchemistic distillate but rather the result of a kind of biomontage. It was, namely, in a dissecting room and a slaughter house that Dr. Frankenstein found the matter to which imparted the spark of life with electricity.

The artistic automatons of the eighteenth century are echoed in romantic poetry, particularly that of E. T. A. Hoffmann and Jean Paul. In American literature, they are found primarily in Edgar Allan Poe (Maelzel's Chess Player [1836]), Herman Melville (Bell Tower [1855]), and Ambrose Bierce (Moxon's Master [1906]). Villiers de l'lsle-Adam turned the invention of photography and phonography into his own new­fangled artistic creation. In his novel, The Future Eve (1886), he has the "electrical engineer" Thomas Alva Edison make an artificial woman on the basis of imaginary recording, storage, and "photosculpture" technologies (Bartels, 1989: 307).

21

Mechanical constructions sometimes wind up taking on a life of their own in fiction, something that is not always foreseen by their creators. In Erewhon (1872), for example, Samuel Butler explored what might happen if steam engines were to develop minds and wills of their own. He even speculated that a superior civilization of machines could emerge. Later, the idea of the sudden animation of everyday machines was taken up by science-fiction writers. One of the earliest such stories is Fredric Brown's Etaoin Shrdlu (1942), in which a Linotype machine comes to life (Wolfe, 1979:152).

That eventual icon of science fiction, the "robot" (based on the Czech word for work), got its name from the Czech playwright Karel Capek, who coined it in his R. U.R. ("Rossum's Universal Robots") in 1921. Such are the twists in the evolution of language that what Capek called robots are what most science-fiction writers nowadays call androids. Robots are generally mechanical creations, whereas the science-fiction concept of the android-introduced in 1936 by Jack Williamson in The Cometeers (Pierce, 1987: 78)-refers to human-like constructions made from synthetic tissue resembling flesh.

"Electronic brains" and "smart" computers appeared in science fiction only after electronic computers had actually come about in the 1940s. The creation by Edward W. Smith may count as an exception. In his Skylar ofValeron (1934), Smith imagined a huge artificial brain assembled "of thousands of billions of cells" (Pierce, 1984: 86). One may or may not see an affinity between this fictional device and the neural- network approach in today's artificial intelligence research.

As used in science fiction, robots, androids, and computers are quite interchangeable. They embody complex levels of meaning and allow for the metaphorical treatment of a range of issues (Hienger, 1972: 130-150; Wolfe, 1979:151-183; Dunn & Erlich, 1982; Fleck, 1984:190- 201;). Artificial creations that are humanoid in form or function frequently tend to stand as symbols for scientific and technological knowledge in general. Another major symbolic role played by such constructions has been a projection of human nature. Artificial human­

22

like creations have been used as a means of exploring sexual or emotional undercurrents of technology as well as teleological questions about the nature of hum an and artificial consciousness.

The many levels of meaning embodied in the artificial body and mind are paralleled by an equal variety of ways in how they are "designed." The "technical" imagination of science-fiction writers is unlimited and generally far removed from the spheres of practical scientific and technological developments. Isaac Asimov, who is probably more identified with robots than any other science-fiction writer, prided himself on being the first and most persistent among his colleagues to depict robots in terms of mechanical engineering (see Drux, 1988: 377). The community of scientists and engineers that has formed over the last forty years through experimentation with robot design duly responded by adopting the term "robotics," which Asimov coined in his robot stories in the 1940s.

The Relation betweeen Fiction and Technology

What do androids and thinking machines teach about the relation between literature and technology? When the rather mundane technological developments are compared to the ideas and images surrounding artificial human-like constructs in the literature, there seems little in common. Some critics have therefore concluded that imagination has "failed" in cybernetic science fiction. They have demanded that writers should be more willing "to immerse themselves in scientific and technological knowledge" than they presently are (Warrick, 1980:235). Others do not consider the "idiosyncrasy" of science fiction a mistake at all but rather the constitutive element of this genre, which they hold is basically not interested in probable develop­ments. Science fiction's proclivity for "change for the sake of change" (Hienger, 1969:16) has nothing to do with a concept of history in real terms. From this perspective, everything that can be plausibly legitimated must be considered possible in science fiction. The only

23

territory into which science fiction does not usually cross is that of the supernatural.

The unfathomed potential of being offers a kaleidoscope of fictional possibilities for depicting the relation between hum an beings and their tools and for exploring the transformation of hum an beings and machines. One is the idea of intelligent machines replacing biological organisms in evolution, a notion that surfaced in fiction with Darwin's theory of evolution and apparently had little to do with the prolif­erating technological innovations of the nineteenth century (Parker, 1984:17-34).

What literature since that time has always portrayed as only one possibility among others is declared today by the prophets of robotics as the inevitable goal of hum an history: the literal dissolution of biological evolution by technical evolution. Lurking behind this assertion, however, is the dream of a technology liberated from all hum an intentions and aims. And this dream, in turn, is the dream of suspending the limitations to which technological action is subjected in a social environment.

The vision of a "postbiological" future, to which some specialists cling, and the repeatedly mentioned expectation of artificial intelligence researchers that machines will "really" become intelligent in the near future have nourished the conviction of many people that technological development has caught up with the mental games of science fiction. Has the line between science fiction and technological reality in the late twentieth century become an "optical illusion" (Haraway, 1991:149)? Many MIT readers are science fiction fans; can one conclude from this fact that science fiction and the development of technology "are prac­tically one intellectual activity" (Brand, 1987:225)?

I think not. Instead, I see such diagnoses as an expression that science fiction's promotion of "change for the sake of change" is having effect. Science fiction has taught us that no hard and fast line can be draw n between the possibilities and impossibilities of being and that the incredible can already come about tomorrow. Specialists in robotics

24

and researchers on artificial intelligence can therefore use motifs from science fiction to package their visions in metaphorical language. They can hope to profit in this way from the influence that science fiction exerts on the popular imagination. The literary technology of fantastic realism so characteristic of science fiction can be applied brilliantly for extraliterary purposes, but that does not mean that the technology of the real world has itself become fantastic.

Conclusion

In this paper flying machines, androids, and artificial intelligence have been taken as a foil to examine the relation between literary imagination and technological development. To conclude, I would like to point out, if only briefly, three issues that come out of these "case studies" and that would be worth further scholarly attention.

First, the relation between literature and technology cannot be reduced to a simple formula. The history of utopian literature, the history of cosmology and astronomy, and the history of aviation in early modem Europe have all been closely related, whereas the path of fiction has diverged widely from the technology that has bred androids and artificial intelligence. It will be necessary to map out the complex and shifting relations between fiction and technology from a compara­tive perspective on different fields of technological activity and from a historical perspective on particular periods. Discovering the significant patterns and integrating the findings into the larger fabric of historical interpretation remains a great challenge that should provoke collaborative efforts of students of literature and technology.

Second, in the broader process of technological development, there seem to be some stages in which fiction may play a more important part than in others. Especially when new research areas are opened up, the proponents of emerging specialities may draw upon culturally available resources to construct their motivational and legitimating programs. The ideas and images expressed in fiction are clearly such

25

resources. It is possible, though, that strong association between a particular genre, such as science fiction, and a prospective new technology immediately places the latter in disrepute among "respectable people." This was the case with space flight and rockets in the United States in the first half of the twentieth century (Neufeld, 1990: 751). The influence of fiction may vary with its broader context, but perhaps it plays a part in forming new fields of technological activity (Dierkes, Hoffmann & Marz, 1992:107-120; Hoffmann & Marz, 1992).

Lastly, historians of technology have recently noted that invention as a cognitive process is still not well understood. In response to this problem, a few scholars have used metaphors or mental models as concepts to describe the intellectual process by which inventors create new technological designs (see, for instance, Gorman & Carlson, 1990; Knorr-Cetina, 1991: 92-125, for the role of metaphors in scientific innovation; and Joerges, 1990, for metaphors of computers). In view of this approach, there may be something to the idea that the curious machines put forth in fiction can stir the engineering imagination and thus "get into" technology. Evidence of such productive intersection of the literary and the engineering imagination is thus far circumstantial at best. The very possibility of this intersection, however, warrants further consideration and research. Whoever wishes to pursue this issue, however, ought not forget the view of science-fiction author William Gibson, who warned that people who use his novels as blue­prints for building technical inventions seem not to have comprehended a certain level of irony (cited in Remann, 1991:16).

26

References

Aschoff, V. 1984. Geschichte der Nachrichtentechnik. Beiträge zur Geschichte der Nachrichtentechnik von ihren Anfängen bis zum Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts. Berlin etc.: Springer.

Bartels, K. 1989. "Über das Technisch-Erhabene," in Das Erhabene. Zwischen Grenzerfahrung und Größenwahn. Ch. Pries, ed. Weinheim: VCH. Acta Humanoria, 295-316.

Behringer, W. & C. Ott-Koptschalijski, 1991. Der Traum vom Fliegen. Zwischen Mythos und Technik. Frankfurt/M.: Fischer.

Berghahn, K. L. & R. Grimm, eds. 1990. Utopian Vision, Technological Innovation and Poetic Imagination. Heidelberg: Winter.

Brand, St. 1987. The Media Lab. Inventing the Future at MIT. New York: Viking.

[Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society] 1987. "Special Issue: Technology and Literature," Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society 7/4

Dierkes, M.; Hoffmann, U. & L. Marz, 1992. Leitbild und Technik. Zur Ent­stehung und Steuerung technischer Innovationen. Berlin: edition sigma.

Drux, R. ed. 1988. Menschen aus Menschenhand. Zur Geschichte der Androiden. Texte von Homer bis Asimov. Stuttgart: Metzler

Dunn, Th. P. & R. C. Erlich, eds. 1982. The Mechanical God. Machines in Science Fiction. Westport, Conn./London: Greenwood.

Fleck, J. 1984. "Artificial Intelligence and Industrial Robots: An Automatic End for Utopian Thought?," in Nineteen Eighty-Four: Science between Utopia and Dystopia. E. Mendelsohn & H. Nowotny, eds. Dordrecht etc.: D. Reidel, 189- 231.

Gorman, M. E. & W. B. Carlson, 1990. "Interpreting Invention as a Cognitive Process: The Case of Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, and the Telephone," Science, Technology, & Human Values, 15/2:131-164.

Großklaus, G. & E. Lämmert, eds. 1989. Literaturin einer industriellen Kultur. Stuttgart: J. G. Cotta'sche Buchhandlung.

Haraway, D. J. 1991. "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist- Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century," in Simians, Cyborgs, and Women. The Reinvention of Nature. D. J. Haraway, London: Free Association, 149-181.

Hart, C. 1985. The Prehistory of Flight. Berkely.

Heß, T. 1992. "Bevor Raumfahrt Alltag wurde - die vergangene Zukunft der Weltraumschiffahrt," in Streifzüge ins Übermorgen. Science Fiction und Zukunftsforschung. K. Burmeister & K. Steinmüller, eds. Weinheim: Beltz (forthcoming)

27

Hienger, J. 1972. Literarische Zukuftsphantastik. Eine Studie über Science Fiction. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

Hoffmann, U. & L. Marz, 1992. "Leitbildperspektiven. Technische Innova­tionen zwischen Vorstellung und Verwirklichung," in: Streifzüge ins Übermorgen. Science Fiction und Zukunftsforschung. K. Burmeister &K. Steinmüller, eds. Weinheim: Beltz (forthcoming).

Hölscher, L. 1990. "Utopie," in Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe. Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland. O. Brunner, W. Conze &R. Koselleck, eds. Stuttgart: Klett Cotta, 733-788.

Joerges, B. 1990. "Images of Technology in Sociology: Computers as Butterfly and Bats," Technology and Culture 31 /2: 203-227.

Koselleck, R. 1989. "Vergangene Zukunft der frühen Neuzeit," in Vergangene Zukunft. Zur Semantik geschichtlicher Zeiten. R. Koselleck, Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 17-37.

Knorr-Cetina, K. 1991. Die Fabrikation von Erkenntnis. Zur Anthropologie der Naturwissenschaft. Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp.

Kuhn, Th. 1981. Die kopemikanische Revolution. Braunschweig: Vieweg.

Kumar, K. 1987. Utopia and Anti-Uiopia in Modem Times. Oxford/New York: Basil Blackwell.

Mumford, L. 1977. Mythos der Maschine. Kultur, Technik und Macht. Frank­furt/M.: Fischer (The Myth of the Machine, Vol II: The Pentagon of Tower,1970)

Neufeld, M. J. 1990. "Weimar Culture and Futuristic Technology: The Rocketry and Spaceflight Fad in Germany, 1923-1933," Technology and Culture 31/4: 725-52.

Nicolson, M. H. 1960. Voyages to the Moon. New York: Macmillan, (first 1948)

Parker, H. N. 1984. Biological Themes in Modern Science Fiction. Ann Arbor, Mich.: UMI Research Press.

Pierce, J. J. 1987. Great Themes in Science Fiction. A Study in Imagination and Evolution. New York etc.: Greenwood.

Rammert, W. "Der Anteil der Kultur an der Genese einer Technik: Das Beispiel Telefon," in Telefon und Gesellschaft. Forschungsgruppe Telekommunika­tion, ed. Berlin: Volker Spiess, 87-95.

Remann, M. 1991. "Cyber, Cyber über alles?" in Cyberspace. Ausflüge in virtuelle Wirklichkeiten. M. Waffender, ed. Reinbek b. Hamburg: Rowohlt, 15-19.

Schwonke, M. 1957. Vom Staatsroman zur Science Fiction. Eine Untersuchung über Geschichte und Funktion der naturwissenschaftlich-technischen Utopie. Stuttgart: Enke.

28

Schütz, E. ed. 1988. Willkommen und Abschied der Maschinen. Literatur und Technik. Essen: Klartext.

Segal, H. 1985. Technological Utopianism in American Culture. Chicago/London: Chicago Univ. Press.

Segeberg, H. ed. 1987. Technik in der Literatur. Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp.

Stöcklein, A. 1969. Leitbilderder Technik. Biblische Tradition und technischer Fortschritt. München: Heinz Moos.

Warrick, P.S. 1980. The Cybernetic Imagination in Science Fiction. Cambridge, MA/ London: MIT Press.

Wiener, N. 1968. Kybernetik. Regelung und Nachrichtenübertragung in Lebewesen und Maschine. Reinbek b. Hamburg: Rowohlt. (Cybernetics or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, 1948/1961)

Woesler de Panafieu, Ch. 1984. "Automata: A Masculine Utopia," inNineteen Eighty-Four: Science between Utopia and Dystopia. E. Mendelsohn &H. Nowotny, eds. Dordrecht etc.: D. Reidel, 127-145.

Wolfe, G. 1979. The Known and the Unknown. The Iconography of Science Fiction. Kent: The Kent State Univ. Press.

29