Picture a dystopian future following a global nuclear holocaust in which the world’s inhabitants have fled to underground facilities where all the humans are sleeping in pods, living virtual lives in an A.I. generated unreality.
If this theme sounds vaguely familiar, it should. It was the film The Matrix that was the inspiration for the novel “All the Humans are Sleeping,” according to its author and our guest John C.A. Manley.
What does it mean to be ‘human’? At the heart of this question lies the theme, plot, and philosophy of John’s novel. Are we mere intellects, able to exist separately from our biological bodies? Or is being human both an intellectual and physical enterprise?
It’s not as if these questions have not plagued humanity throughout its existence; how one perceives the nature of humans lies at the core of everything that an individual believes to how he behaves.
But in an age of technical advancement that has already far surpassed what was regarded as impossible only a few decades ago, the very concept of humanity has been openly challenged. With artificial intelligence and robotic creations of every sort, both the intellectual and physical capabilities of human beings have become regarded as inferior to that of their own creations.
For many, this is an alarming development; in the mechanistic absence of an emotional dimension, morality, ethics and purpose, a dystopian horror may surface, as more and more humans seek to escape from a reality no longer of their own making, to a fantasy which offers an illusion of autonomy.
As John advises: “If you don’t push yourself, you’ll become obsolete.”
One is left wondering whether All the Humans are Sleeping is a warning against a dystopian future – or a wake up call to our dystopian present, in which only half of the humans are sleeping. As an alarm for those still asleep, it seems to us that its author has discovered yet another means to wake up all the humans in a way that’s Just Right.
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