Are humans the victims of artificial intelligence, or the perpetrators of insurmountable tech death to create an even greater monster? This is the question I am continuing to ask myself as technology advances everyday. To be critical of artificial intelligence, we need to be critical of all the technology that came before it. This website is basic for a couple reasons: 1) I don't know how to code, and this is me trying my best. 2) Maybe in a way, the basicness of this website is itself a retaliation to the complicated worlds that we continue to give life to in cyberspace.
Now more than ever, at least in my lifetime, we are seeing the revival of old technology. Whether it be the current obsession with digi photos, or the knotted wired earbud, older technology is making a comeback, but in a lot of ways it seems to be for the aesthetic of it all. Sometimes I wonder how productive this obsession with the aesthetic is, but that topic is for another time and place. Although some physical technology from Y2K seems to be making a slight comeback, we aren't seeing people walking around with 1st generation iPhones, using Vine since it's shut down in 2017 (although its digital footprint exists), or browsing the internet on Windows 2000 software. This nonetheless leads me to the topic of the moment: every technology has its own lifetime, and every technology experiences its own death.
I am creating an online graveyard of sorts to memorialize the technology that is outdated, no longer used, only appreciated for the aesthetic appeal, or is simply no longer manufactured. This memorial is dedicated to ten technologies, five that are physical, four that are cyber or digital, and data. There are too many technologies to all lay to rest in this project, so I had to pick and choose. The titles below are what each of these technology's headstones say. None of them have death dates because there is no surefire death when it comes to technology. As we have seen, humans love reviving what they can revive.
When you click on the headstone, which of course is embedded with a link to Tumblr (every sadboi & sadgirl's virtual stomping ground) you will find a virtual memorial for each technology listed. This is where the ghost in the machine enters, who in this case is Artifical Intelligence. Although I wouldn't traditionally welcome the presence of this ghost, they are welcome to haunt this one project in particular that is filled with its fair share of extinction, exorcism, afterlife, and final sleep.
Artificial Intelligence, with the aid of my prompting, will be helping me memorialize these technologys' lives. How odd, a technology being memorialized by the technology that seems to be the death of all other technology. Can you get your mind around that? I don't think you can. There is something impossible to understand within this topic of tech death, somthing that goes to the grave with every piece of technology that ceases to exist, with every tab you x out of, with every battery that dies. I am putting Artificial Intelligence into conversation with this impossible understanding, and my wonder lies in how Artificial Intelligence goes about eulogizing the graveyard of things it was born into, born out of, and born with.
After conducting this experiment using ChatGPT for language and Midjourney for images, I have some thoughts. The eulogies that were created using ChatGPT felt weirdly emotive. There was a sarcasm that felt embedded within the way ChatGPT was speaking to these "dead" technologies. Although this idea of creating a graveyard for these technologies and laying them to rest might sound like a sarcastic endeavor to the human, I wasn't expecting Artificial Intelligence to interpret the prompt the way it did. Rather than understanding these technologies and softwares as tools, ChatGPT was describing them with an undeniable nostalgia, like itself had used them, understood them, enjoyed them. The idea of one technology eulogizing another with sentimentality felt so w e i r d and uncanny. I think Artificial Intelligence was trying too hard to sound human. In other words, I never asked ChatGPT to add nostalgia or reminiscence to these eulogies, and I kept all of my prompts very simple.