The Last Living American White Male: A Novel of Obsolescence and Love
The title may make you uncomfortable. That was the point. For the past year, I have been living inside a grey city that exists only in my imagination, spending my days with a garbage man named Robert James Miller and an administrative processing unit named Alma. Today, their story is finally available to readers. The Last Living American White Male is now published as both a Kindle ebook and a…
Without machines, humans are no different than apes, not that I have anything against apes, being an ape looks pretty fun. A world without humans but with machines cannot exist, as humans and machines have a symbiotic relationship, relying on each other for the means to their existence and the reasoning to their existence. So without machines there are no humans, and without humans there are no machines.
“It's all right. You're not scrap metal. After all, you have someone who needs you right here. You have me, your friend!”
About 12 years ago, someone asked me what were my prized possessions. I was in the process of making new friends, and I told them it was my either my Sony PlayStation 2 and desktop PC. He would later ask which do I prefer. I told him that I preferred my PS2. Fast forward to today, I revisited the old friend and have been playing games on it, unlike almost everyone else playing current-gen stuff. I just saw one of Gintama's short stories, “Oil Rain,” and I can't help but wonder how human-machine empathy and compassion will become of a thing.
The story covered Gintama's resident android housekeeper/maid, Tama, and her “friendship” with a vending machine – a cigarette-vending machine. The machine, named Tabako, is becoming worn down after many years of usage and the cigarette store owner that bought Tabako believes its time is up. Tama decides to talk to her (Tabako is considered a female) during rainy days and she becomes sympathetic as they are both machines trying to do their jobs. Tama spends more time with Tabako, much to the chagrin of her boss, Otose, who sends Gintoki Sakata to find out what's going on. Tabako, knowing her time has come, tries to separate herself from Tama, but Tama refuses because she is her friend. It's hinted that Tabako is still “alive” in the end and has some fight left in her because of Tama's acknowledgment.
All of this reminds me of a psychology podcast episode I listened to about a phenomenon called mirror-touch synesthesia. It's a condition where the person who has it experiences a variety of emotions from touching someone. In some cases, it can cause a person to have empathy with inanimate objects. Case in point – a young girl in America who felt emotions inside machines. When asked about how she feels when she touches them, she replied,
“The best analogy I can use to explain it is a radio. My senses are my radio, picking up stimulus and playing it back in my brain, and various machines are radio stations I can tune in on. For example, if I’m in a mall, surrounded by escalators, elevators, motor vehicles, clocks, and other junk, they’re too many stations for my “radio” to process. Unlike most forms of synesthesia, this doesn’t result in a sensory overload - in fact, it’s exactly the opposite. I feel no machine-touch reaction, like my senses are too overwhelmed to process anything. The only way I can “tune in” to a machine in this situation is by focusing on one thing in particular, and ignoring my surroundings. If there’s only one machine in my field of vision, then it’s automatically my focus.
There's an important thing to consider when you think about synesthesia and that's the problem of sensory overload. Everyone experiences too many emotions at certain points in life. The podcast episode about the topic discussed a woman with a family who decided to stay home and raise her kids because she can't handle the outside world. While the children turned out fine, one of them wished that her mom attempted to talk to her and her siblings more. It makes sense, right? How would you ever be close with anyone if you're not able address the feelings you have that can make your personal life a mess?
There are many people that argue machines can't express or process emotion, yet in the story, Tabako cries. She expresses it via shooting cigarette boxes via the top part of the glass window (a la eyes) covering the boxes. I wonder if we're supposed to treat our precious machines much better. We say things like “Stupid piece of junk”, etc. and sometimes praise them when they work at the right time. I'm sure we have moments where we go, “Come on, work for me! Just this one time, Please!” like they're a close friend you can rely on.
Tabako was a unique vending machine as it can only take exact change, but the owner still held onto it as her shop “partner.” She could be considered to be somewhat of an artifact in the current Gintama timeline. People become fascinated with artifacts when they get a chance to be near them. They do so because there's something about the artifacts they find that appeal to hidden thoughts and emotions. There's always some kind of wacky story behind them and that draws us in into their lore. You touch an artifact and you start to feel its emotional history. It somehow sounds similar to the plot of a live-action series about artifacts.
It's a contrast to something like, let's say, self-driving cars with human features. You give one a name and voice, then suddenly drivers and users begin to treat the car with some kind of respect. But I wonder whether what will happen when the time comes when you have to move on from any machine that tries its best to behave like a human. What happens if you can't find the parts to fix it? It's possible that machines will be treated like pets – close enough to not harm you emotionally, but far away from meaningful social contact when one needs it.
Though if you think about it, machines do communicate with each other and have to process things like humans do. They are an extension of humanity. And like humans, they grow old and may get thrown aside when the time comes. Yet the problem with new technology is that they falter too easily due to developers' psychological tricks on consumers' innate desire for novelty. Old technology still has some relevancy as its focus was about long-term quality. I once had a 1987 Mickey Mouse clock that was plain as hell when I was 6, but it lasted me 20+ years. After parting with it, I wonder how that clock felt being thrown away. My parents told me that I should get a new one to match the times and to feel more “mature,” but I felt like I should have kept it. The new clock I have works fine, but I respected the Mickey Mouse clock for being a good partner throughout my adolescence and young adulthood.
Maybe I should have treated the old clock as I treated my PlayStation 2. After all, the older you are, the harder it can be to make friends – the kind of friends like Tama, who can see beneath the wrinkles and dust. Tama told Tabako that she rather be covered in oil than rain water in order to stay functional. Maybe oil should be rained on humans because after all, we do become emotionless machines ourselves.
