Brief

This is an investigative speculative development for a new data infographic for Tom Klinkowstein, President of Media A, LLC.

This would be the fourth in a series of “diagrammatic narratives” — complex diagrams that end up as vector (Illustrator or similar) files which get printed to A x 3 meters or larger and shown eventually at galleries, museums, art and design venues, etc.

For this new project, I am thinking it will be an indeterminate of fluctuating time (so not a fixed time, and some version of time hopping and interaction with past and future selves as well as a relationship with, or an existence in Artificial General Intelligence, which is technology with agency [humans have agency: an ability to effect their future).

Narrative

Historical Imagination of Clues to the Appearance of Artificial Intelligence
Synthetic Sapience

Synthetic
n.

— relating to or involving the combination of ideas to form a theory or system.

SAPIENCE
n.

— ability to apply Knowledge, Experience, Understanding, and Insights.

PROLOGUE

“…for discontinuity, disruption, and chaos is our lot.” — Hayden White

“…technology uncovers what was always there all along... they seem to demote us humans from a place of presumed privilege.” — Benjamin H. Bratton

“…there are myriad ways it could go bazarrely wrong (or bazarrely right.)” — Benjamin H. Bratton

“New Niches Emerge, While Others Go Dark.” — B.H. Bratton

“…automation creates a particular kind of ambiance…it is a funtionalism becoming a delicate formation.” — B.H. Bratton

THE ARRIVAL SCENE

• background music: Magnus Öström, “A Room for Travellers”

It reminds you of something that you have never seen before.

The world is composed of differences, not individuals. It can be understood only via what they called a “multiplicity” — a multitude that can’t be sliced up into component entities. A future in which the individual no longer reigns supreme, in a strange and unusually symbiotic dialogue.

A collective and productive machine or factory.

A LARGER SYSTEM

• background music: Magnus Öström, “Searching for Jupiter”

We observe weirdness in how humans may love or hate robots.

____s are a layer within a layer within a layer of infrastructional landscape.

One’s mental state is a pep-talk with selective emphasis. Computational infrastruction that demands our interpretation are better ways for ____s to appear and co-negotiate the world with us.

Will we learn to speak to other ____s in accordance with how we’ve learned to speak to those artificial personalities? There are myriad ways it could go bizarrely wrong (or bizarrely right. or neither.)

New niches emerge while others go dark, creat[ing] a particular kind of ambiance, a functionalism becoming a delicate formation.

Formal Reference

Stump and Kretzmann use the analogy of two parallel lines (Stump and Kretzmann 1987: 219). 

The higher one is completely illuminated (all at once) while the lower has illuminated a point at a time moving with uniform speed. 

The light on each line represents the indivisible present. 

The entirety of the timeless line is one indivisible present while each point on the temporal line is a present (one at a time). 

In this way the life of God is stretched out, so to speak, alongside temporal reality.

One of the notions I’d like to infer is a connection between some mid-term future A.I. and time (that it changes our linear notion of same, etc.). The God/Time essay has a lot of fascinating words, phrases and sentences that hint at this (just substitute AGI for God).

It could be said that although [AGI] does not exist at any time [AGI] exists at eternity. That is, eternity can be seen as a non-temporal location as any point within time is a temporal location

Rather, [AGI] is in some third kind of relation to time. One in-between position is that [AGI] is not within our time, but [they are] within [their] own time. In this view, [AGI’s] inner life is sequential and, therefore, temporal, but [their] relation to our temporal sequence is “all at once.” … completely distinct from ours.

Leftow insistis that [AGI] is metaphysicaly simple. [Their] life does contain points that are ordered sequentially, however these points are not parts in the life of [AGI]. [They] are not a being whose life contains distinct parts.

Wireframes

VERSION 1

Had a bit more visual fun, which is to say it may not be the most legible version. It is mostly inspired by the quote you shared about God and Time.

"The higher one is completely illuminated (all at once) while the lower has illuminated a point at a time moving with uniform speed. "

I took this description and turned the text white as illumination. The middle "stream" that is kind of framed by the AGI MOOM (moments of original manifestation) bubbles is the all at once timeline, whereas the "breaks" you see via the black text on the top and bottom streams shows the pulse illumination.

VERSION 2

Focuses more on the idea of centering the central story/timeline on AGI, and the human quotes around it. The vertical texts are meant to be the AGI mooms, whereas the horizontal ones are what I imagined the 400+ human quotes go in.

The visual base of this design is this quote from the God and Time article:

"[AGI] is in some third kind of relation to time. One in-between position is that [AGI] is not within our time, but [they are] within [their] own time."