Computer Poetry & Robot Sex
A computer generates poetry. Is it worth reading? What if actually it sounds quite good? No? Why not? Think about it. It’s lacking something. The sentiments in the lines cannot possibly represent the feelings inside another human being. The words may be so cleverly constructed that they give the impression of feeling – simply by using a poetry-program which is sophisticated enough to put the right adjectives and verbs and so on together in the right order to make sense when it is read, but to the computer it has no meaning, the poem it writes is just a clever calculation based on ones and zeros. It is lacking something, and if we read “your eyes plunge my existence to a reverential beauty” penned by a pc, it may sound ok, but it is nothing more than an illusion. No soul. And we can’t read it and be moved once we know a computer wrote it.
How about listening to computer generated music? It’s the same thing. The arts are the transference of feelings and ideas through whatever medium. It is the soul of the creator of the poetry or the music or the sculpture which we are enjoying. When we see a sculpture we are looking at the physical manifestation of what originated inside somebody else’s mind. They are letting us look inside their soul, and uniting their inner self with yours. Computer music cannot do this.
What about having sex with a machine? An accurate facsimile of a human, like the replicants in the film Blade Runner. The robot or replicant one is shagging may be programmed with 500 ways of love making and be able to carry them out with ecstatic perfection. But again there is something missing. Having sex with such a machine is nothing more than masturbation. There can be no deeper link between two such bodies as there is no soul in the machine.
Part of the point of being human is to connect with other humans, through the arts, such as with poetry, or in a deeply personal relationship, through mutual experiences like sex. Tantra is the essence of this type of spiritual connection.
How about if you were given a utopia through virtual reality? Say technology becomes so advanced that we can wire every single sense to a computer – sight, smell, touch, etc. Immersion in such a world would be total. The user could arrange to be drip fed the appropriate nutrients in the outside real world, and their other body functions could be taken care of, then the VR user could be left for the rest of their life in a darkened room being able to live out a perfect virtual life in any way they choose through their virtual reality machine. Same as in the Matrix films. Does it appeal? No. Because it isn’t real. Part of being human is to interact with our world, even if that means to interact with things which are not perfect – pain and suffering. If we don’t connect directly with our world we cease to be human. So it is when we immerse ourselves in activities such as drugs. We gain the short term illusion of happiness and pleasure, but it isn’t real. It is a soul-less existence and is a step down from the ultimate high of connecting with the universe and other human souls. Television too is an escape from reality. When we watch telly we cease to live; we become automated machines sucking in information from the screen while