Speak To Assert Your Humanity
Karl A
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These machines are here for you. They are made to help humans such as yourself communicate with each other. They are some of the easiest machines to interact with, the type which used to be found all over the streets of the city, put there for you to walk up to and use. They are telephones!
But times have changed. We let the machines into our lives, they learned how to talk, and we humans have learned to listen to them. We not only to follow their directions, but interact in the ways they want us to. Life is easier for the machines than it is for people! And there’s only one way to communicate with each other, and that’s through the machines. We need to enter their space and be a part of them to be a part of each other.
Are we becoming more mechanical? Have the machines become more human? Do we join them or oppose them? We will probably only know the answer to these questions when it is too late. But for now, this installation exists to train us, the people, to talk through the machines. The simplest interactions are now mediated, so we will need to learn how to move in this new environment and come to terms with what remains of our humanity.