The Creators
What separates humans from animals and ever more advanced machines? What make art.
Text by Bran Ferren
Cartoon by Gary Larson
Art, storytelling and humor are wonderful things. Early into the next millennium (say, 250 years), these will be among the only surviving vocations left from those we know today This “computer thing” will have blown over, reading and writing, will have turned out to be a fad and the occupations of lawyers, doctors, taxicab drivers and especially M.B.A.’s will have all been relegated to the dustbin of historical curiosities.
We will take the knowledge resulting from dozens of new revolutions ‑ genetic engineering, quantum computing, nanotechnology, computational biology ‑ and use that knowledge to extend and improve our lives. Our inventions will continue to take over tasks that most of us would prefer not to spend time on. This includes envisioning, building and repairing other more complex machines.
In time, we will successfully design new intelligent life forms. These may be electronic, biological or most likely a hybrid of both. The leap from Dolly and Deep Blue to actually I creating the next living thing is enormous, but it’s hardly any more surprising than what humankind has accomplished in the last thousand years. Eventually these new creations will replace us as the most intelligent species on earth.
Will this be a threat? Is it possible that these superior entities will revolt and threaten our very existence? Could be, but I think not. Our machines will grow to appreciate us not for our intellect but for our creativity.
You see, what’s so special about us is that we make art. In a future when intelligent machines and invented life forms will reason and do our donkey work, human artists will become the most valued and irreplaceable of professionals. They will remain unique in an automated world. Painters, sculptors, writers, actors, choreographers, architects, animators, cartoonists and even people who can decorate a decent Easter egg will achieve unprecedented fame and fortune.
As we move into the new millennium it is a certainty that technology will continue to change our lives and alter our children’s destiny. Most of humankind’s greatest discoveries have yet to happen. Each new question will demand thoughtful answers and, frequently, new rules of conduct for society, I’m counting on our art to keep us human and on our humor to keep us sane. When the first alien spacecraft lands in Washington, I want the little green people to walk first into the National Gallery of Art. I want our art to explain who and what we are before our leaders do.
Bran Ferren is the president ‑ for research and development, creative technology at Walt Disney Imagineering. Gary Larson is the creator of the syndicated cartoon “The Far Side”