Where Are The Actors?
John Ink2Quill
www.ink2quill.com

We hope to replace so much of our duties with algorithms and robots. That is the direction Scifi and many great thinkers seem to goad us toward. I love The Stage, theater, Broadway and such. Is this vision of the future, the one where everything is automated and done by algorithms and robots what we can expect to live in soon? What about the parts where people express themselves ands share life journeys with us? No matter what changes lie ahead we will always need to share stories with each other. We must never forget this fact. A question that rattles inside my head is whether there will ever be a day when people, like you and me, the organic flawed kind of people, will ever struggle to find theater that is done by people and not solely the purview of robots and algorithms?

The writer Karen Joy Fowler implies this topic in her story called “Praxis”. I loved the way she indirectly showed what was wrong with the notion of having technology do our self expression and story telling for us. Because I feel that this is a problem we do not want to create for ourselves. That is to say the problem of us losing self expression entirely. Don’t get me wrong I would love to see a play or even musical done by robots and algorithms. But if that is the cheaper route to entertainment production then it might become the only reality and that is sad.

The condition where robots and algorithms can play a large role, in say, theater was if they reached sentience. If they can stir emotions the way so many heroes have done. The activism and struggles the newly sentient beings could share with us would be nice. We would see ourselves in such stories and such stories might even pluck at our heartstrings or roil us into anger. But the newly sentient beings would have a journey to take. The journey of self discovery by experiencing the trials of life and all that that entails.

So, if one day I walk into a theater production and all the actors are robots, and if the production is flat and the play not well written I will ask myself “Where are the actors?”

John Ink2Quill

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