by David Beer There was a prevailing idea, George Orwell wrote in a 1946 essay on the Common Toad, ‘that this is the age of machines and that to dislike the machine, or even to want to limit its domination, is backward-looking, reactionary and slightly ridiculous. ’ It was only a couple of years before his surveillance society classic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. The aside in Orwell's short essay captured a sense of pressure to keep-up with the technological changes of the time, a pressure to not fall behind and to not look outdated.
The aside in Orwell's short essay captured a sense of pressure to keep-up with the technological changes of the time, a pressure to not fall behind and to not look outdated. We are feeling such pressures magnified again by the vast coverage and seemingly dramatic expansion of artificial intelligence. To not use AI, to dislike AI, to seek to limit AI, might, in Orwell’s terms, be seen to be slightly ridiculous.
To not use AI, to dislike AI, to seek to limit AI, might, in Orwell’s terms, be seen to be slightly ridiculous.