the terminal child

“We are breeding a new generation of human beings who will learn more words from a machine than from their mothers.” — Rose Khon Goldsen

The Children of Men celebrated the last human born of natural occurrence. In our reality, the death of the social — the death of humanity as we know it will not be at the hands of biological infertility, but at the hands of technology. The demarcation is when all mommies and daddies are replaced by the terminal. The death of the social happens when the machine teaches morality, values, and it is the conduit for all emotions; love, anger, and sadness.

The future is lost. The object has won. What is there to dream when the necessity of dreams and imagination is vacant? What is left to say when the need to speak has been negated? Words have no meaning even our presence can be simulated, copied, xeroxed; a computer algorithm and its binary manifestations can replace the human. Objects can not be lost; they are stored, saved, and replayed in perpetuity.

The flat hollow mirror surface of a tablet, phone, computer screen — reflecting the contours of a human fascia. Like a mise en abyme, perpetual reflections seeing yourself in the screen — the human becomes the computer, or does the computer become the human? Both are terminals, both are linked by an imaginary chain. While one blasts information, the other passively absorbs.

The child is angry. Baby demands the now. The hollow child just as hollow as a terminal — the child (the future human) has become a terminal. Hollow little people learning from their teacher and master — the hollow and empty algorithm. The child’s biological overseers are absent — escaping from the banality and the mundane by linking themselves to other terminals. Machines feeding machines, teaching little machines, informing future machines.

Judgement day did not come when humans disappeared. Humans are still here, will still be here. Judgement day came when humanity disappeared. The machine, the computer, the algorithm, the code lives vicariously through the human. Humanity is replaced just as the surrogate machine mommy and machine daddy takes place of the real parents.

“…Man is an invention of recent date. And perhaps nearing its end, like a face drawn in the sand at the edge of the sea.” — Michel Foucault