Pinocchio, 'I want to be a real boy!'

Fictional future worlds are illustrating provocative scenarios in which computer technology has become autonomous. Stanley Kubrick’s, 2001: A Space Odyssey, elegantly portrays human evolution from primitive ape to sophisticated space farer. The opening sequence narrates a story of discovery by centring on the moment that an ape recognises a bone as a tool for potential harm, or a weapon. Kubrick subtly infiltrates our mind’s eye with the thought that in the near future technology may supersede humans.

‘The HAL 9000 computer can reproduce…most of the activities of the human brain, and (is) incapable of error... as to whether or not he has real feelings is something I don’t think anyone can truthfully answer.’1

Fantasy computers are capable of feeling emotions, from happiness and love to pain and sorrow. As well, the Hal 9000 houses a crew and provides vital resources for human survival, including oxygen. In this way, the human is wholly dependent on the machine, and the synthetic has a moral responsibility to protect its human equivalent, but can artificial intelligence truly understand principles of ethics? This raises serious questions about the duty of autonomous technologies: is a computer a civil servant or a governing authority? Kubrick poignantly highlights the dilemmas humans face when a computer malfunctions and poses a danger. Outside of fiction and in reality, designers and architects are testing their ideas in virtual space.

‘The green design and functioning of larger, newer building types depend on the computer at all stages of development…studying external wind flows, overshadowing, and the admission of air and sun…and temperature fluctuations.’2

Sustainable architecture demands a level of thinking that our cognitive abilities can only imagine. The incredible number-crunching capacities of modern computers give practitioners the opportunity to visualise their conceptions in brilliant detail. Doing so grants engineers and architects the freedom to test prototypes without physical construction, and this is economically more viable. Yet, I am concerned. Visionaries in the way of Howard, Le Corbusier, and Fuller failed in their elemental duty to house society adequately. Their mistakes lay in their powerlessness to predict the future and to build for the present. Our generation should be learning from past failures, and synthetic inventions can only guide practitioners so far. Kubrick portrays a story of sorrow, for the computer, or artificial human, was terminated by his organic counterpart. I wonder if, in reality, society will follow the same fate?

1. Stanley Kubrick, 2001: A Space Odyssey (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1968).
2. William S. Saunders, Nature, Landscape, and Building for Sustainability (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008).