In The Meaning of the 21st Century, James Martin says: “There is such a difference… between Bach and computerized Bach, or Renoir and computerized Renoir, that a music lover would not want to listen to computer-composed Bach, and an art-connoisseur would not want to live with computer-composed Renoirs… The most interesting humans will remain unique, imitable only in crude ways… An interesting challenge is to develop the best synergy between deep non-human like intelligence and human intelligence. How can the human-NHL combination be designed to achieve the most valuable results?”
Well, I feel that in a sense we are doing this on the tour. Björk mixes acoustic instruments with electronic ones, and she mixes living performers with computer systems. I once wrote here on the blog that after beginning this work I sometimes feel that I don’t quite know where my body ends and the MACHINES begin.
It’s the way of the future, I guess.
Of course, we, i.e. mankind, are already doing this with chemicals, to get more out of life. Martin puts it this way: “Today, when Hamlet ponders, “To be or not to be”, we might say, “Oh, come on! Give him Prozac.”
We will get a lot more of that in the coming decades, when trans-humanism really kicks in.
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