The song “Don’t Don’t Get Freaked Out” by Negativland warns about confusing humanity with the tools that humanity has created to make life easier. The accompanying video demonstrates their thesis by visually touring through the many decades in which computers and other technological advances have become a part of everyday life.
We shape our tools, then our tools shape us, and then the work to discern the difference between ourselves and our tools becomes the real job. Happily traipsing through decades worth of the technology we’ve all decided to call AI, here’s more than a few double negatives to enjoy as we dance on the thin line between immortality and its opposite.
The song is from the band’s 2020 album The World Will Decide.
Although entirely finished before disinfecting your groceries became a perfectly normal thing to do, The World Will Decide depicts a world where the technologies we use to live our lives have become difficult to tell apart from those things we recognize as being alive. Or, as one of the many sampled voices on this work will assure you: we can really feel like we’re here.
via Ryan Lackey