Metodo

International Studies in Phenomenology and Philosophy

Book | Chapter

188376

"Change for the machines"?

posthumanism as digital sentience

Sherryl Vint

pp. 120-129

Abstract

Representations of digital sentience in film and television are ambivalent about the prospects of sharing the world with such entities. Like popular discourses of transhumanism, they participate in fantasies of extended life and superhuman abilities, but simultaneously express fears of human obsolescence. Such texts illuminate questions raised by the Turing test regarding how one distinguishes "real" from 'simulated" intelligence, explore the criteria for being considered "alive" rather than a machinic thing, and examine the blurred boundary between human and machine that seems the inevitable consequence of digital sentience. Filmic representations of digital sentience can be organized into two categories — supercomputers and distributed network artificial intelligences (AIs)1 — with inevitable overlaps between these loose boundaries. This chapter focuses on representations of digital entities that are designed to have or evolve sentience, and traces the shifting cultural anxieties they articulate in tandem with a changing technocultural context.

Publication details

Published in:

Hauskeller Michael, Philbeck Thomas D., Carbonell Curtis D. (2015) The Palgrave handbook of posthumanism in film and television. Dordrecht, Springer.

Pages: 120-129

DOI: 10.1057/9781137430328_13

Full citation:

Vint Sherryl (2015) „"Change for the machines"?: posthumanism as digital sentience“, In: M. Hauskeller, T. D. Philbeck & C. D. Carbonell (eds.), The Palgrave handbook of posthumanism in film and television, Dordrecht, Springer, 120–129.