Strange Visitor: Subjectivity, Simulation, and the Future of the First Superhero (original) (raw)

Also available for review at https://tinyurl.com/StrangeVisitor. We recognize myths for what they indicate about the values and beliefs of the cultures who were the authors and audiences of those myths; many of the earliest communicators of myth were telling stories about subjects they counted as people (somewhat) like themselves. Yet, despite our modern sophistication, today’s consumers of narrative still often treat fictions as though they are real, thinking and feeling people. We are introduced to Superman, for instance, as a fiction, but circumstance often leads consumers to discursively treat that invented hero as a human subject. Now, though, we verge on a technological future in which just such sympathies might become functionally useful. In our modern science fiction like Star Trek: The Next Generation and Westworld, we have already begun to imagine how we will come to treat our narrative inventions of tomorrow. Strange Visitor: Subjectivity, Simulation, and the Future of the First Superhero begins to ask what our actual responsibilities will become when fictions can be rendered with volition. In its opening chapters, the text studies how we humanize a figure like Superman in our own perceptions, and how that treatment--along with his continuing narrative development--makes him a prime candidate for an experiment in complex, highly verisimilitudinous simulation. Superman is a central point of consideration here simply because there is so much of him to consider. He may be the most content-dense fiction ever created, but the innumerable opportunities consumers have had to get to know the character mean that he is also eminently familiar. Superman has maintained his presence in our media and discourses, across the decades, as consumer populations have continued to grow and our communications structures have commensurately evolved and expanded. Superman is the subject of this study not because he has become so popular, but because he has managed to stay that way at a particularly sharp inflection point in the history of human communications. But, the Man of Steel is often generalized as infallible and, therefore, rather dull. The first part of this work--an expansive psychological assessment--troubles such a presumption, though, by examining the complex mind that has accrued within decades of narrative, across media, and which must be carefully navigated in any exhaustive analysis. This first section also considers Superman’s relationship with his media consumers: from how we use him to form childhood bonds with one another, to how we respond to his continuing humanization. For, Superman is powerfully determined by how audiences actually treat any given instance of the figure as Superman. Today, we find that we can engage with particularly realistic media, encouraging us even more urgently to invest in the verisimilitude and humanity of the characters and places being presented, and doing so often makes a narrative more appealing. Accordingly, Superman’s relationship with his own media is particularly convenient to an examination of the intersection between fictional narrative, high technology, and identity negotiation. To understand Superman's potent humanization, the first half of this text presents an assessment of his identity from multiple essential perspectives, including those of his content creators and consumers, as well as the complex judgments of himself and his fictional society as they have been presented in his narratives. Diegetic evidence is considered in historical and psychological capacities in order to assess how Superman’s media has been constructed--practically from the beginning--to encourage consumers to invest themselves in the figure’s humanity and relatability. In its second part, Strange Visitor moves from relevant questions of identity into a more practical application of those insights to current and emerging technologies. We already enjoy vastly interactive ways of engaging with our fictions, and we can anticipate continuing advancements in the verisimilitude, interactability, and spontaneity of artificial intelligences. Accordingly, fewer and fewer holes in the experiential tapestry of narrative will have to be ignored as both storytelling techniques and rendering technologies continue to evolve. Soon, what we practically treat as a ‘human’ subject may have more to do with that figure’s specific engageability than with its biology or physical consistency. Given the view of the detailed project proposal that constitutes the second part of this work, spontaneous, humanlike, autonomous simulations culled from fictional worlds could very well become reality within the foreseeable future. Emerging from our science fiction dreams, several considerable, real-world technological initiatives would see us reconstruct the intellects of great thinkers, such as Gandhi, Curie, or Hawking. But, reconstructing and functionalizing the consciousness of a real person--living or dead--is an ethically dubious proposition from the start. Instead of an original personality, though--seemingly ‘complete’ at first, but limited in contextual understanding--what if researchers built a simulated subject from the material of a robustly developed fiction? If the first of our deep, humanlike engagements with such technology will be the most important, Superman seems a fitting choice, given how we have already embraced him on personal and cultural levels. But, as real technologies advance toward that imagined outcome, we must also ask how the practical, livable terms of fictionality would change. How would our own responsibilities evolve as we produced and engaged with such personalities? The prototypical solution I propose here--referred to as the Metropolis Simulation System--could be considered one of Andrew M. Butler’s necessary explorations into the role of the simulacrum (“Postmodernism and Science Fiction” 147). Whatever of these speculations does or does not bear out, it is my hope with this text to show the reader that we must pay substantial attention to our future relationships with our media and computing technologies. Such a situation need not be feared, though, if we approach with the optimistic combination of thoughtfulness and adventurousness that a character like Superman can inspire. Strange Visitor is intended for any who might have the interest and/or resources to help realize the rendering of a densely-developed fiction as an exemplary representative of humanlike, fully-engageable general artificial intelligence, including the developers of the many technologies referenced. Portions of the work might also be used as an introduction into the complexities of mediated identity construction, while the critical questions presented could be utilized in advanced media studies courses, or as portions of a forward-thinking philosophy curriculum. Other segments may benefit discussions on popular fictions generally, the ethics of narrative, or psychological and identiary dynamics.