The Memory, the Pocket Book, and the Hard Core of the Consciousness

Abstract

While scholars across several disciplines contend that human evolution proceeds along an inexorable trajectory – furtherly accelerated by technological innovation and thus establishing analogies between biological and technological advancement – literature has long articulated a latent anxiety regarding the rise of mechanization. The works of Samuel Butler, E.M. Forster, H.G. Wells, A. Huxley and G. Orwell stand for paradigmatic expressions of such a cultural apprehension. During the twentieth century, intellectuals from diverse domains examined the role of media – conceived by Marshall McLuhan as an extension of human faculties – and electronic technology, as theorized by Günther Anders, in shaping and conditioning subjectivity. In the face of scenarios often represented in stark, dystopian tones, one final redoubt appears to preserve the irreducible specificity of the human domain vis-à-vis with not only machines, but also increasingly Artificial Intelligence: namely, consciousness. This consideration recalls a fundamental epistemological inquiry: can consciousness legitimately be regarded as synonymous with intelligence?