Imperfection is Perfection
For decades and even centuries, people lived with the ability to slide out of situations, sneak into others and negotiate the seemingly impossible into possible.
It is widely considered that one of the best periods of art was the Renaissance from the 1500s. Much like today’s culture it took inspiration from the past and shined a new light on it to create some of the most prolific works of art by some of the greatest artists in history. Oddly enough these paintings weren’t as artistic as they were scientific. But even then, using new techniques, they were still hand-drawn one-of-a-kind pieces.
Technology is the opposite. Computers run on programs. A series of binary orders that must be achieved no matter what. It looks at the statistics of every aspect in hand and makes a rational decision based on those findings. Reducing our existence into 1's and 0's.
Humans aren’t rational, we are gut thinkers by nature. When we assume science as correct at one moment, it could become wrong at the other. But we do these things, and for better or for worse, we cause imperfect solutions to result in imperfect consequences.
We are imprisoning ourselves as we create greater advancements in AI and other ML tech. We create less room for mistakes and, thus, less opportunity for various choices.
We don’t want to do it the best way, we want to do it our way.
You don’t have to wait for these AI machines to takeover the world to see this in action. Take the example of surveillance cameras. They record and store everything that takes place in their scope. And they are everywhere.
We can no longer evade their gaze. We have gone blind to their existence as they continue to record. My recent photobook, Surveillance Culture, documents CCTV cameras I’ve spotted walking down main streets in Toronto Canada.
As of December 16, Toronto Mayor, John Tory announced that autonomous speeding cameras would be deployed along major streets and around the city, ticketing drivers based on their kilometres over the limit.
In no way am I advocating for speeding, however, the use of highly precise motion detection software in the use to turn average drivers for supposedly not maintaining a safe driving speed is a great example. We have gone beyond enforcing control over driver behaviour on roads and into dominance over the slightest misstep.
With the use of technology to further strict policing instead of oversight we run the risk of this surveillance becoming worse than ever, with our vehicles could directly notify authorities of our speeds and our double parking's etc.
Will free will exist?
As a photographer, I have played with the two main methods of photo capturing and printing. Analogue and digital. With 35mm film the image is physically captured as exposed silver halides, whereas digital is a censor made up of pixels representing three colours RGB, building a file of 0’s and 1’s recorded by them.
With images captured on these two mediums, the image quality on film versus digital summarizes my point all too clearly. At what point do we value perfection. Film being an older technology captures images imperfectly there are so many variables that go into creating an exposure with light reflection, camera design and more. Digital sensors capture images so crisply that in every image we get is a perfect illustration of what is being captured.
In the future where we live in Smart Cities and Alexa, our personal maid, is running the smart home, our cars drive themselves and we take images through our contact lenses, life will cease to be. We will simply be in a process, no longer concerned with survival. Our lives will be dedicated to filling the void made from removing all hardships. We already live in an era of great prosperity, even though many people seem lonelier than ever. Imperfection is perfection mark my words.
👏=❤️
