“I like to think (it has to be!) of a cybernetic ecology where we are free of our labors and joined back to nature, returned to our mammal brothers and sisters, and all watched over by machines of loving grace.”

—  Richard Brautigan (1967)

Brautigan’s poem is resurgent. Futurist Paul Saffo’s address at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute’s 2007 Singularity Summit was “Machines of Loving Grace: Anticipating AI [Artificial Intelligence].” Adam Curtis used it in his BBC documentary series (2011) on digital technology’s impact, as did John Markoff in his excellent history, Machines of Loving Grace: The Quest For Common Ground Between Humans and Robots (2015), and likewise Thomas Rid in his Rise of The Machines: A Cybernetic History (2016). Muki Haklay, University College London professor of computer science & geography, quotes from the poem in Future and Smart Cities (2013), and Daniel H. Wilson (PhD in Robotics from Carnegie Mellon) uses it as an epigram in his bestselling novel Robopocalypse (2011).

I could cite other examples but you get the point. Our future includes a cybernetic path, whether we choose it or not (you can choose not walk this path, but the path exists now regardless). This path is evolving rapidly, with many forks and meanders, with definitions still undetermined (for now) and no formal gatekeepers (again, for now).

Not our far future, but a plausible near-future…

…which leads me to the start of the new school year, our annual fall rite. The children and adolescents in school today will live in an ever-more cybernetic world, with decisions ever more profound for how we define ourselves as human beings, how we shape our relationship with technology and with the planetary natural world. We stand on the verge of a potentially trans- or even post-human existence, coupled with our robots, our machine intelligences, and possibly DNA from other organic species.

The children and grand-children of today’s school-goers may well be themselves transformed in ways we have not yet fully contemplated or explored, let alone demarcated.

So, how can our schools today best prepare students for a future categorically different from anything our species has experienced before?

I have no pat answers but I believe a key part of our collective response is a return to play, making, music, poetry and the humanities writ large. More liberal arts the better to make inspirational tools and technology with purpose. More play to imagine challenges our current structures are simply not designed to identify. More making, so we fail with prototypes, and thus are ready with a viable solution when we need it in a live-time, real-world setting. More sharing of ideas and beliefs with our colleagues across the globe (if a cybernetic future replicates the inequities of the present world order, then we will have failed colossally).

I don’t pretend to know how the world will be if and when the Internet of Things is ubiquitous and humans merge with AI. The Matrix? The Borg? Brautigan’s Arcadian vision? Or something altogether different? No one knows — the future is funny that way — but already we discern certain contours and many smart people everywhere are pondering the questions. I do know that all minds need to participate in this discussion. I do know that today’s students and their teachers need to plunge in, use Next Generation Science Standards and the Common Core to help us all envision a future where our technology makes us better.

In short, I want robots who dance, AI that paints, and humans who know when using algorithms makes sense and when metaphor is more appropriate. Class is in session.

By Daniel A. Rabuzzi
Executive Director, Mouse

Opinions my own, not necessarily those of Mouse