Heading for the Stars, with Love: Artificial Intelligences, Digital Media, Alternative Realities and the Meaning of Life
The colonisation of Mars is a fact. Sooner rather than later, first humans will land on Mars to terraform it into a habitable planet. Elon Musk’s relentless pursuit of leisure space travel, NASA’s repeated launching of search robots, alongside several private initiatives pursued by ambitious billionaires as well as the crowding of Earth’s outer atmosphere with industrial satellites make this perspective a very palpable reality-into-becoming. The coronavirus crisis as well as Russia’s latest invasion of Ukraine with their direct impacts on the world economy have, on the other hand, laid open humanity’s vulnerability, its interconnectedness and its intrinsic need for solidarity and compassion, as well as entire populations’ propensity for obedience and quiet isolation from everyone – even the most loved ones – when confronted with the specter of non-discriminatory death. With no place to run away from an overwhelmed Earth, the necessity to transcend suffering and alienation into new hopes of fresh worlds to live in “somewhere out there” rather than to immerse into individual inner worlds doubled down by digital media with their increasing dissolution of the social fabric has turned into an urgent wake-up call.
Millennia-old questions pop up again: What does being human mean in times of loss and suffering? What is the value of life in the face of inevitable, but unjust death – and how is the “value of life” to be quantified in light of ruthless violence and death disparity disclosed by the pandemic, the blatantly unequal distribution of vaccinations which mocks the delusional/hypocritical 17 SDGs set up by UN and the relentless pursuit of politico-economic expansion regardless of costs? What is the function of humanism and the essence of humanity in the advent of leaving our terrestrial home and extrapolating our experiences to other planets? How do we cope with “others”, being they robots or aliens? Why is fear stronger than love – and how can we learn to believe in the power of love so that we do not become – again and again – victims of irrational fear and its close cousin hatred? How do we differentiate between good and evil if we have killed the “grand narratives” of the past which solidified communities and offered individuals solace in times of grief and confusion?
By employing such terms as “neo-humanism” and “trans-humanity” in the initial sense of “trans” as “beyond”, this research project explores the various facets of “being human” in an era in which artificial intelligences are taking over mental-emotional concatenations, digital media invade the social structures and alternative realities seem to metamorphose more than ever before from spaces of longing into spaces of belonging. The five researchers of this hierarchy-free Think Tank model of project come from various areas of inquiries and dare to lead in the academia through their faith in the courage to ask uncomfortable questions and to pursue even more uncomfortable answers regardless of the agonizing truths these might – and should, and hopefully will – reveal. Their five parameters of the current research project dive into experiments of juxtaposing phenomenological approaches over cold data and extracting insights pertaining interdisciplinary flexibility. Taking Salvor Hardin's statement “Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent” (Isaac Asimov, Foundation, 1942/1951) as a work hypothesis, acceptance and celebration of differences are dissected as fundamental elements of what makes humans human, and subsequently re-formulated in their universal power of reconciliation. Throughout the public workshops, podcasts and individual exchanges to be held on two continents – Europe and Asia – and four countries – Hong Kong, Japan, Denmark, Romania – as well as online on an ongoing basis, the current research project aims at promoting strategies of constructive cooperation which eliminate resistance, animosity, the build-up of resentments by immersing into the “humanness” which connects us all – and which will allow us to connect with those yet unknown “others” whom we will have to encounter and accept in the future, nevertheless: robots, aliens, upgraded versions of ourselves.