What follows is the text of a presentation I gave recently at Athica, the Institute for Contemporary Art here in Athens, GA. The presentation fronted a small symposium convened to discuss the current exhibit "Embedded: Living With Technology," and I will discuss both the exhibit and the discussion in a future post. My talk was entitled, as the title of the post indicates, "Had Prometheus Been an Algorithm." Enjoy.
The term algorithm is an interesting one. Invented by a mathematician who worked in the royal court of Baghdad in the 8th and 9th centuries, the algorithm is a set of well defined instructions designed for accomplishing a task that, given a stable initial state, will result in a corresponding and recognizable end-state. In other words, plug in the variables, follow the formula, and presto-magicko, you'll get an answer. Computers work on algorithms, as does the human brain (albeit much more complex ones that those of the computer). But algorithms aren't just black box technologies. We see algorithms everyday in the recipes we use in cooking, or the DIY manuals we buy from Lowe's.
Algorithms exist in response to a need. By assembling variables and arranging them in a series of sequential steps, algorithms can provide answers to questions and promise the ability to process complex events by breaking them down into constituent steps. Usually, we know how and why algorithms are employed, but not always. Sometimes we discover the algorithms at work in the world around us very late in the game, and only after we realize the nature of the algorithm at work do we understand the reason for its existence.
Today, I want to propose thinking through a sort of literary algorithm, one that like those in nature, might tell us the reasons for its existence if only we can trace its function. Today I want to explore the idea that Prometheus, the famous Titan of Greek legend, might in fact have been a mythological algorithm, and that he may in fact continue to serve in that function, two and a half millennia after the mythology that birthed him has lost its authoritative status in the Western world. In the next few minutes, I want to explore four different incarnations of the Prometheus myth, and hopefully by looking at each, to identify the algorithm at work under the name of Prometheus, and what Prometheus as an algorithm can teach us about art and technology. To set the stage, let me anticipate my conclusion: that humans are the result of the technological feedback loop, not its primogenitors.
So let me present four scenes, the first of which can be found in Plato's dialogue “Protagoras.” In the dialogue that bares his name, Protagoras, one of the most famous thinkers of the 5th century, tells the story of humanity's origin, and it goes a little something like this:
Once upon a time, or so Greek mythology goes, there were gods, but no mortal creatures. But the Gods grew bored, and so they set out to shape fire and earth into flesh and to populate the world with all manner of beasts and man. Finished with the bare bones of their creation, the Gods charged the two remaining Titans, Prometheus and Epimetheus, to give to each creature equipment for living. Prometheus, whose name means forethought, and Epimetheus, whose name means afterthought, were brothers, and Epimetheus begged his wiser brother for the privilege of proportioning the goods. Prometheus obliged, but sadly, the scatterbrained Epimetheus went about giving away all the good stuff to the animals. He gave them fur to guard them against the elements, he gave them claws to aid in their hunting and their defense, and he gave them enhanced senses to help them seek shelter and security, and to assist in the gathering and hunting of food. He gave some of them flight and some of them speed and some of them camouflage. Being Epimetheus, and not being the most strategic thinker, he saved humans for last, thinking he would make them really special. Alas, that was not to be, for when he got to humans he realized that he had run out of attributes, leaving humans naked and defenseless.
And so he called in his big brother for help, who arrived on the scene confused and disappointed. With nothing left to give out, Prometheus did something extraordinary: he sneaked into the temples of Athena and Hephaestus and stole for humans “wisdom in the arts” and the knowledge of fire. Now everyone remembers that Prometheus stole fire, and everyone who lives north of the Mason-Dixon line is particularly pleased about that. But in popular memory, little is said about the other half of the pair, wisdom in the arts, without which fire would simply and only be a way to burn and warm things. For fire to be something greater, for it to be used in instances beyond the most obvious, wisdom in the arts is needed.
Now wisdom in the arts is a curious expression. It translates the Greek <i>entekhnon sophian</i>, where sophian, from sophia, signifies wisdom, and entekhnon, indicates the area related to tekhne, the Greek word for art. But tekhne is a fascinating and particularly robust term in Greek, and there is no term in English that can capture its complexity. Tekhne refers to art, technique, and technology. For the Greeks, all three things went hand in hand, separated mostly by context and differing only because of political and philosophical squabbles. The point is, and it is a point that is of particular interest for us today, surrounded by these exhibits that manifest the inherent artistry of modern technology, that art and technology not only went hand in hand, they were the same thing.
The story doesn't end there of course. Prometheus steals these gifts and gives them to humans moments before humans and all the other creations of the Gods are sent out into the world. Using their now innate wisdom, humans eventually create speech and words, and they invent clothing and dwellings and sandals and beds and foods and domestication of animals. Through their innate tekhne and the knowledge of fire, humans are able to overcome their lack of innate armors and defenses, and to provide food and shelter without the ability to fly to the top of trees or to run faster than their prey. In short, wisdom in the arts enables humans to overcome and master any of the gifts that Epimetheus gave to their animal cousins.
And of course, as many of you know, eventually Prometheus tricks Zeus into giving even more gifts, gifts like politics and war and the goods of the animal, and eventually Zeus sends in Pandora to doom humanity to suffering and torment. And Prometheus does indeed suffer for the gifts he stole for us, eventually being tied to a rock and having his liver eaten out by a giant eagle every morning, only to have it regrow at night.
For now though, when we listen to the story of Prometheus, handing to humans wisdom in tekhne, we need to understand that for the Greeks, humanity and technology went hand in hand. To be human was to have knowledge of tekhne; in other words, humans were always and already technological creatures. This conception of humanity didn't last for long, however, and even a century before the Greek civilization gave way to the Romans, newer generations of Greeks began to think of themselves as masters of technology. They began to think of technology, and of art, as something external to humanity, something that they had control over, rather than something that was internal, that made humans what they are, or that even had control over them.
We arrive on our second scene. By the time of the Romans, the myth of Prometheus has been recast, this time by Ovid in his Metamorphosis. In Book One, Ovid writes:
A creature of a more exalted kind
Was wanting yet, and then was Man design'd:
Conscious of thought, of more capacious breast,
For empire form'd, and fit to rule the rest:
Whether with particles of heav'nly fire
The God of Nature did his soul inspire,
Or Earth, but new divided from the sky,
And, pliant, still retain'd th' aetherial energy:
Which wise Prometheus temper'd into paste,
And, mixt with living streams, the godlike image cast.
There is something fundamentally important about this retelling of human origins. In Ovid's account, Prometheus' role may have increased in significance, but his screen time is vastly reduced. Whereas in the Greek narrative Prometheus makes humanity what it is through the gifts of tekhne and fire, here Prometheus simply serves as the creator of humanity. This conflation shouldn't be surprising since, as I mentioned earlier, for 5th century Greeks there would be no humanity without technology. But the Romans, obsessed with empire and glory, have come to see the creation myth as evidence of divine mastery, of their right to control and rule over nature and each other. To tell the full story of Prometheus, to provide the details of Epimetheus and of the two Titans' struggles with Zeus, to make explicit the importance of tekhne, would distract from the larger and more important theme of domination. That Prometheus is credited at all is flattering, but that he is credited without any mention of the wisdom of the arts, tells us much about the mentality of the nascent Roman republic.
From Aristotle to Ovid, from the Enlightenment to the present moment, we continue to labor under the impression that technology is more of an instrument than a complicated feedback loop that makes us who we are. We see the world through the lens of our own technological mastery, we see the world in our image, rather than ourselves through the image of technology. “Man,” said German philosopher Martin Heidegger, “exalts himself and postures as lord of the earth. In this way the illusion comes to prevail that everything man encounters exists only insofar as it is his construct. This illusion gives rise in turn to one final delusion: it seems as though man everywhere and always encounters only himself.” Having mastered the atom, mined and refined coal, and having covered the land in pavement and wires, this illusion of mastery seems a difficult one to break.
But occasionally, a story arrives that disrupts the illusion. Enter scene three, this time appearing much later on the stage. The year is 1818 and Mary Shelly has published her definitive expose of the culture of technological domination, a book whose full title reads Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus.
The story is so well known that I need not rehearse it at length. Dr. Frankenstein, a man of science who hopes to benefit mankind and to save them from decay and death, makes of dead limbs and electronics an artificial man. His finds his creation repulsive and rejects it, and is eventually punished, like Prometheus, for his hubris. The creature is labeled a monster, and in a classic self-fulfilling prophecy, lives up to its label by murdering its creator. Ashamed of its actions, the creature leaves for the frozen north, either to perish or, in later versions, to find its bride. In this classic work, we have scientific man, the exemplar of technological mastery, create life only to reject it because of its difference, because of its failure to live up to the ideal model. The creature is labeled a monster, and in a classic self-fulfilling prophecy, lives up to its label by murdering its creator.
The story has its antecedents, one of which can be traced all the way back to Ovid's day, though you need to look beyond Roman mythology. By the first century, the Romans had already encountered and subjugated the Jews, who had also written of mystical clay, though they did so under the name of the Golem. In Psalm 139, for example, the word Golem is used to describe an unformed or incomplete substance, one that is to be made perfect by the Lord. Eventually the term is expanded as an outgrowth of the Kabbalah, a Jewish mysticism that plants its earliest roots around the same time period as Ovid's writing. By the time the sixth century had come to pass, with the teachings and mythologies of Kabbalah more entrenched, the Golem is refashioned along lines that run parallel to Ovid's Prometheus; the clay takes the form of a humanoid creature, animated by the word of God. And as the tale of the Golem grows, the Golem's import expands, carrying with it both the promise of salvation and destruction, its awesome power animated without the omniscience and – lest we forget the Promethean overtones – forethought of God. Eventually the Golem's creators lose control over their creation, and destruction ensues.
Shelley updates the story of the Golem, but her subtitle doesn't relate the story to the Jewish mysticism that undoubtedly influenced it. Instead, she relates the story of Dr. Frankenstein and his creation to that of Prometheus, the giver of the wisdom of the arts, of tekhne, the entekhnon sophian.
Scene four is more recent, and more of a personal favorite. In the fifth season of the incredibly popular cult show The X-Files, an episode aired with the title "The Postmodern Prometheus," a clear allusion to the oft-forgotten subtitle of Shelley's famous work. In the episode, the creature in question is the product of genetic engineering rather than electronic animation. The episode follows the Frankenstein narrative, albeit with some fairly substantial modifications, not the least of which is how explicitly it discusses the work to which its title alludes. Having discerned the role that genetic engineering has played in the creation of a creature known as the Great Mutato, Mulder eloquently observes:
When Victor Frankenstein asks himself 'Whence did the principle of life proceed?' and then as a gratifying summit to his toils creates a hideous phantasm of a man he prefigures the Postmodern Prometheus. The genetic engineer whose power to reanimate matter -- genes into life -- us -- is only as limited as his imagination is.
Scully, in her skeptical fashion, responds:
Mulder, I’m alarmed that you would reduce this man to a literary stereotype, a mad scientist.
But this literary stereotyping is exactly the point, because the turn towards Prometheus gives us the opportunity once more to compare. Unlike Shelley's novel, the X-Files episode places a premium on showing how the creature has to be considered just as human, and just as lovable as anyone else. It does this through three mechanisms, first the love of a good woman, in this case two mothers and Cher, who gets constant nods for her role in the movie Mask, second the leveling principle that all difference is good when seen on the Jerry Springer show, and third, by revealing that most of the major secondary characters are themselves mildly sub-human, though of course none of them are as sub-human as the cold, uncaring scientist who creates the Great Mutato in the first place.
Part of the reason why this shift occurs, between the creature of 1818 and the creature of 1997, is that science and technology have so altered our view of human subjectivity that we have been forced to return to the more original version of Prometheus. Once one conceptualizes human beings as products of complex genetic codes, it becomes increasingly difficult to see human beings as distinct from the more complex technologies to which they might compare themselves. Genes being what they are, full of variation and abnormalities, it is harder and harder to believe that human beings are not themselves the end states of particular genetic algorithms, and that it is through the gift of this technology, this self-replicating tekhne, that anything like a human being can exist in the first place. So after 2500 years, from early Greek myth to the explosion of new technologies and media, we might say that the myth of Prometheus has come full circle.
We have, then, four Promethean scenes: first Protagoras, then Ovid, then Shelly, then the X-Files. I began by speaking about algorithms, and I hoped to show that the name Prometheus might be the name of just one of those algorithms. So here is my proposal: a review of the four scenes in question show that the name Prometheus surfaces each time that we need to be reminded that human beings are technological creatures, that we are who we are not by nature but through the machinations of tekhne. Rather than think of ourselves as masters of technology, or users of technology that simply graft the technology on to us like a prosthetic, we must look at the name Prometheus to remind us that our technological prostheses are originary, which is to say, that there would be no us without an original technological extension. We are, as the exhibit here reminds us, already literally embodied by technology – through the tekhne of art, of speech, or clothing, of television, and so on and so forth. There is no natural version of humanity, but there are earlier technological incarnations. Since Prometheus' gifts and the day of our emergence in to the world, humanity has witnessed one generation of cyborgs after another, even as generation after generation seems to fight its reliance on technology, or to transcend it, or condemn it, or fetishize it, or whatever. But Prometheus is our guide, and technological life is our end-state, even as the variable technologies and social arrangements change over time. This exhibit is evidence of just this fact.