William Gosling on a transitory love

In the solar of my mediaeval house a robot sings to me.

The arrangement is recent; for years past she perched on my study desk, stylish and beautiful, the love of my life. I communicated with her mainly by touch, as she preferred, confiding my innermost thoughts.

But let me confess: inseparable though we were, I am incorrigibly fickle with her sort. The day came, as I knew it would, when a younger, prettier model took her place. What then for my old love? I might have sent her into the world to make a new relationship but the thought grieved me, and besides nobody out there valued her at her true worth. So I taught her to sing.

I found her new software and effortlessly she got the hang of it, memorising the music from my CDs, nearly four hundred of them. I will long remember when she first sang; I asked for the Bach Chromatic Fantasia, and hearing the seductive sounds fell for her anew. Now she sits in my solar, murmuring her songs to a fine Japanese audio amplifier which sends them on again to four loudspeakers.

And how she sings: sometimes in Spanish with the voice of Victoria de Los Angeles, sometimes it is Welsh and Siwsanne George I hear. She emulates a piano at need, a harpsichord, a Renaissance band, even the Berlin Philharmonic, and I hear them as I have never heard recorded music before, the sounds clear and perfect, instruments easily distinguished, their locations not in doubt.

Treasured CDs have no employment now; the up-market CD player lies in my barn. Meanwhile I have a robot who sings. No longer young though still maturely elegant, her name is iMacG4.

Successful technology?

Not all technology revolutions succeed like this of course. Once airships seemed destined to provide intercontinental travel, but today aircraft descended from kites, not balloons, take us round the world. Failed technical revolutions are legion, so what is the key to success?

New technology must cross many hurdles before it can triumph, but above all innovation must be socially acceptable. In 1840 the London and Birmingham Railway needed to communicate between Euston and their Camden Town engine house. Offered the new electric telegraph, they preferred a super-powerful steam whistle at Euston, clearly audible all the way. It enraged people who lived nearby and soon was gone. Environmental, political and moral problems all lead to definitive social rejection. In democracies we get the technology we can tolerate. Yet leap all the obstacles and new technology becomes indomitable, eliminating forerunners and competitors with terrible finality.

Technical revolutions

Iron Age smiths in lake villages forged new swords of power, the legendary Excalibur, transforming war, politics and society. Norman invaders eclipsed Saxon England thanks to harness makers who empowered fighting men to strike from the saddle. Twelfth century horse-collars made deep iron ploughs practicable. Along with drainage by new post windmills, they greatly extended Europe’s cultivable lands, establishing the economic foundations of the Renaissance. Artillery made castles useless, barbed wire ruined cavalry; between them they ended a social system. Nineteenth century electric telegraphs began the telecommunications revolution which is sapping the autonomy of nation states and transforming our world into one community.

‘Only engineers create social revolutions uncorrupted by compromise,’ said Buckminster Fuller ‘but they do it blind to what they are about.’ Technical revolutions are ruthless, irresistible, working through market forces that grow, relocate or kill an industry without anybody willing it.

Arming against evil

What is the origin of this awesome power to shape kings and cultures to a new pattern? In a way, I am. It is by my choice, mine alone, that my CD player languishes. My infatuation with a singing robot sanctions the destruction of her rivals.

The implication is clear: the awesome dynamism of new technology ultimately comes from us, the users. We fear what technology brings if we fear what we see in human hearts. The machines are innocent; we alone have a capacity for negligence or evil, and must arm ourselves against it by insight, by scruples, and through the elaboration of an informed and compassionate civil order. That is what the BA is all about.

As for my singing robot, with power comes vulnerability. I am bewitched, yet her spell will break someday. She will vanish when I love again, and that I surely will, for her technology is in a headlong charge with a long way still to go.

William Gosling is Emeritus Professor of Electronic Engineering at the University of Bath, and Treasurer of the BA.