Essay 2: Animals vs Machines

For the sake of argument I will define a machine as something created by human beings to serve a purpose or meet a desired end more efficiently than can be done by the human itself. Machines are the spawn of the love affair humans have been engaging in with technology more or less since the beginning of their existence. It is true that technology has made the human experience easier, faster, more efficient, and longer. In fact the human being has become so advanced in its exploration of the bounds of technology that it has become able to use it to make the machines held so dear more “lifelike”. What is this human desire to create machines that resemble life? Hollywood portrays a future of household robots that will be just another member of the family (ie “The Jestons” and Bicentennial Man). In Life Extreme, Mary Shelley is quoted: “My companion must be of the same defects. This being you must create…” (62). Humans desire companionship. We then use the technology we love so much to create that companionship. We work to breathe life into machines so that we can make the offspring of our love affair with technology as human-like as possible.

Furthering this idea of companionship, Life Extreme also highlights the amity humans seek from animals as well. Cats are the ultimate home accessory (94) and dogs offer the loyal and trusting companionship man grounds himself in (22) and even defines himself by: “ I am I because my little dog knows me” (21). However, humans cannot just enjoy animals as they happen in nature. For humans to really enjoy animals, to utilize them as best as possible, we have to domesticate them. Avital Ronell even points out that we apply this idea of forced change on those we live with, humans and animal alike: “It has to do with that violence of adaptation, of ‘training’ which is not limited to animals…I do to the other what one does in the cattery with the sphinx. I try to create people who can live with me” (55). So humans do not only desire companionship alone, but they want said companionship to be domesticated as much as possible to fit the confines of their ideal home and life.

It is undeniable that humans are the superior life forms on Earth. As the superior beings, humans have a tendency to exert their ascendency on all other life forms and the world itself. One might call this a raw case of survival of the fittest; as animals themselves, humans are merely working to keep ahead of the competitive curb, lest we are outsourced by another species. However, trends in human history reveal a different motivation. Literarily, Ronell argues that humans work to compartmentalize the world around them. This is why language has developed: to define and regulate that which is seen and experienced: “Language is returned to recognizable domains, its habitual comfort zones, without raising questions about the violence and lacerations done to it” (12).

Coupling this idea of desired control and recognition in the natural world with the idea of creating companionship with, by, from, and through animals and technology, humans create the ultimate contradiction in that out of our desire to categorize and assimilate, we create that which defies both. Humans use their superiority and the little power that comes with it to assimilate the world to serve them. Altering animals and creating machines to fit our liking, we combine technology and nature until we have unnatural animals (79) and animalistic technology. The result being a hybrid between the two we cannot categorize: “Both language and being are struck by the mutations before us…Language itself balks and recedes, regressing into old habits and obsolesced paradigms. In a way we are dealing with the drama of the referent where the positing power of language seems momentarily disabled…” (12).

Relative to animals, humans are only one more step in evolution. Humans, if not already, are very close to grossly overstepping the bounds of their role in nature. By our own wants and desires we are bringing the natural world and our lover technology into a head on collision and we will not be the only ones to feel the repercussions. Thanks to the human being animals and machines are becoming more and more synonymous in their use and application. It is when we bring the two to an indistinguishable level that we will know how far we have gone: “There is no rewind button on the betamax of life. An important event takes place only once” (78).