Darnell Martin
Little Brother

MAN VERSUS MACHINE. I am certainly not a computer genius. Sure, I basically spend my entire day at the computer. I consider myself a decent user and within the limits of my needs, particularly work-related ones, I handle basic applications and management software programming and setting. Nothing that could even remotely make me a 'technician'. A sector technician.

I base my reasoning, however, on what are nevertheless inevitable empirical observations that consist of observing the functioning of things, and knowledge acquisitions as a mere observer of the world around us. More than a valid way to proceed, I believe it to be the only reliable one. If the 'source' is or has to be me, and in this specific case.

Let's assume that a computer can today or in the near future contain billions of pieces of information. More. Much more. Billions of billions of information. An incredibly high number that could ideally be considered infinite. And let's add that as it's a state-of-the-art machine, it keeps updating itself and acquiring uninterrupted information flows. Well, in this case, we could in a certain sense certainly consider that the number of information it possesses must somehow be infinite or close to infinity, as it becomes anyway over time and if time has no end and the machine is immortal, then...

Put in these terms, the comparison between man and machine is inevitably uneven. We humans have in our individuality a limitation that this machine would evidently not be subjected to, that is, our mortality. The number of information and notions it possesses or has already possessed at the very moment the 'comparison' is born is much greater than that of a single individual. Maybe you could be an intellectual and a great reader, but, just to say, you could never have the same number of texts stored in your memory as a computer and/or you wouldn't know how to grasp, even with the right specifications, a particular moment of a single work.

Any machine, and I use the term machine because I could refer to a computer or, since we would be talking about sci-fi, a robot, if programmed in a certain way, might manage to make connections between the information it has and, if we will, it could at this point also process real thoughts and actions. These are things that are already happening, after all, I am not talking about any remote hypothesis possibly in the future. Clearly, by perfecting the mechanism, we could eventually also create machines that could be considered 'perfect' from this point of view. Their mechanical reasoning, based on an infinite data acquisition that could contain all human knowledge in every possible field, if guided according to 'rules', maybe also derived from the information it possesses, could appear in some way unassailable. Perfect.

ARE ROBOTS BAD? I do not want to enter into the so-called sphere of feelings and whether a machine can somehow feel emotions and if these are real or artificial emotions. The robot is definitely a machine, and if artificial means it is a 'contrivance', that is, something constructed by humans, it is evident that its emotions, assuming a machine can have emotions, are necessarily artificial. But does this perhaps mean that they would have an inferior value to those felt by humans? Besides, can we ourselves define each of our emotions as authentic? In a certain sense, yes. I mean, if we feel something, it must certainly be true. But at the same time, even our own emotions can be induced by a whole series of conditionings, and even if they were not inserted in our brain by a programmer, they have been imbued in our head since the origin of human life. Think, for example, of ancestral fears that would have no reason to exist. Like the fear of snakes. We live in urban complexes where there's not a blade of grass and where practically everything happens, what sense does it make to fear an animal like the snake? But even the same fear for weather events like rain somehow constitutes something induced since the dawn of times. These are just examples and clearly, one could go on indefinitely if every single case regarding each individual were to be considered in itself.

But this question is not very relevant, not at this moment; the point indeed is: if a judgment were to be issued, a judgment of any kind, could one consider that of a machine as a superior judgment to that of a man? Clearly, we are not talking about any specific individual, but a 'man' who as such, in his limits and possibilities, represents the entire human race. Maybe to answer this question, we should also ask ourselves about the context, but especially about what the criteria are for issuing any kind of judgment.

And at this point, it is evident that man, as an individual, issues his judgments and 'sentences' relatively to his body of knowledge and personal experiences, and this perhaps could be done by a machine too, in a much more complex way by summing all the infinite knowledge and experiences archived within his cybernetic memory, but is this alone enough to say that a judgment or a sentence is right? Does man possess something more than a machine can't have? And this is where an element comes in that a machine of this kind, as we described, cannot have, that is, individuality.

Individuality is not an irrelevant factor but, on the contrary, crucial in the expression of a judgment of any kind, even in the case represented by this episode of Masters of Science Fiction where it has to be issued precisely regarding the guilt of a man on trial at a 'court' made of a robot linked to a computer containing practically an archive of infinite information. Not only, but I also believe that individuality can and must be a decisive factor, and not only regarding who has to issue the 'judgment' but also for whoever is subject to it.

LITTLE BROTHER. In this new episode of Masters of Science Fiction, titled 'Little Brother' and directed by American filmmaker Darnell Martin (from the Bronx, New York City) and based on a story by writer Walter Mosley, the main theme is precisely that of justice and argued in a story where this, the issuance of judgment, has been delegated to machines.

Before discussing the plot of the film, Walter Mosley deserves a few words, the author of the homonymous story from which this short-movie was adapted. Born in Los Angeles, California, in 1952, Walter Ellis Mosley, this is his full name, is mainly known for being a hardboiled genre author. His most successful character is Easy Rawlins, a black private investigator residing in Los Angeles and a World War II veteran, for which Mosley was clearly inspired by Raymond Chandler's unforgettable Philip Marlowe. From one of the books dedicated to this character, a film was also adapted, with Denzel Washington as Rawlins, titled 'Devil in a Blue Dress' (1995) directed by Carl Franklin. Nonetheless, Mosley has over the years worked in different genres, including erotic stories and non-fiction, and obviously science fiction.

'Little Brother' begins in the underground of a large, unidentified city in an area called 'Common Ground'. Those who live underground, the residents of 'Common Ground', cannot have free access to the open-air and only within a limited space and for a limited time of fifteen minutes every six months. The penalty for any escape or attempt to escape from 'Common Ground' is death.

The protagonist is young Frendon Ibrahim Blythe (played by a talented actor like Clifton Collins Jr.), who, after all, has no fear of dying, preferring death to this surrogate of life that is existence in 'Common Ground'. Thus, during his fifteen minutes of freedom, he decides to escape and ventures into the city, which appears completely devastated as in landscapes typical of post-apocalyptic settings, searching for a certain Augustus, a man who should teach him to be free. But circumstances will be against him, and Blythe will soon find himself detained and put on trial, accused not only of escaping from 'Common Ground' (which in itself would be enough for the death penalty) but also of having committed three murders, a crime he hasn't actually committed.

Most of the film concerns the unfolding of this trial in a pantomime that brings to mind the great orators of the classical age, where Blythe and the robot charged with issuing the judgment and ensuring what is considered justice in a world where this is (apparently) upheld only by machines will face each other. Blythe will immediately refuse to be defended by what should be his defender, which would be another robot and as such connected to the same computerized archives as the one who has to judge him, inevitably leading it to use the same evaluation and judgment parameters. Ultimately, Blythe will also manage to demonstrate his innocence, putting the system in crisis and causing what appears to be a unique precedent since this system was introduced.

But you know how things go. A few days ago, commenting on what I wrote about 'Robot & Frank', a friend wrote—I'm quoting his words quite faithfully—that, 'Robots are not bad; they do what humans tell them to do.' And this is certainly how machines and robots work today, for instance, those used in cutting-edge factories that made us talk about neo-Luddism, a topic that, however, takes a backseat in this specific case. What I'm saying is, would it be the same if they were to perform other non-strictly productive functions, concerning instead, as in this case, the issuance of a judicial sentence?

NOBODY CAN JUDGE ME. By the way, but issuing judgments in general, according to you, is it a right or wrong thing to do? Who was it that sang, 'Nobody can judge me, not even you'? Caterina Caselli, right? Yes, it must have been her. Well, in general, it is considered that issuing judgments is a wrong thing to do. In the end, it's true, I mean, simply think when we judge and say something about a person, I mean, what can we really know in the end about the lives of others? We can't know a damn thing. Our knowledge of each individual or fact is clearly individual and ours and, as such, limited. Nevertheless, we all still issue judgments and I cannot consider this to be wrong; on the contrary, it is a typical automatism of the human mind and perhaps of the entire animal world.

We need to acquire information. Sure, this is then acquired, filtered, and archived differently depending on the individual, but I tell you that in the end, it's not even wrong to 'judge'; rather, I consider it somehow obligatory to have one's own opinion on all the things that happen and, why not, also on all the people we meet. Somehow this, thinking about it, is perhaps also a great act of consideration towards others. What consideration would we have for someone who says, 'I have nothing to say about him/her.' Or how many times do we hear phrases like, 'I don't care about him/her' and/or 'I don't care what he/she thinks.' I don't want to make comparing oneself to others an obsession, but at the same time, it's clearly unhealthy to think that someone might not have any opinion on anything or anyone or simply not care. What kind of way of living one's life (individual and in society) would this be? It would somehow mean not living at all. Avoiding.

The theme of 'justice' I think is one of the most recurring within our society, perhaps since the dawn of time. It is understandably mutable, and perhaps no concept is as mutable from person to person where everyone uses their evaluation parameters, and sometimes acts more according to what might be defined as 'personal interest' than according to what should be the principles of common living.

Naturally, this is simultaneously a variable principle depending on where one is, every country has its own judicial system, for example, and everyone can consider, according to their body of knowledge and experiences and according to their morality, whether and how much a judicial system is considered acceptable or not. This is a principle that is variable over time, and over time we have seen 'justice' be considered and exercised in different ways.

Yes, because 'justice' actually somehow also means power. Judicial power, besides constituting in a formulary way the referral to the complex of judiciary authorities (or the judiciary) and including judges and public prosecutors according to the principle of separation of powers, is or at least still appears firmly in the public imagination not only as something concerning the administration and the regular functioning of a state and a nation, of a supranational community, within a society. There are other almost magical contents and somehow obscure ones that someone wants to see in the concept of 'justice' and in the exercise of judicial power.

The topic, it's evident, regarding the functioning of judicial power in our country, is still current today, especially for political reasons where these intertwine with contents also of a moral type, and this obviously can also happen for those that are reasons of convenience and utility. No, I wouldn't say that the theme is less current today than during what was the Berlusconi era. What I wonder, nonetheless, is in any case how it is possible to think that something like the exercise of judicial power wants to be attributed with political power, and when I say this, I don't mean that judicial power has political power; I just mean that it's expected to have political power, and this both when it's attacked pretextually and when it's believed that it should resolve and untie knots that instead, as such, cannot be addressed only through the exercise of politics as it is meant: that is, taking decisions individually and/or then collectively. The rest is wanting to expect something to happen thanks to the intervention of a deus ex machina, and a society that functions in this way clearly has some big gaps, a significant social void that must be filled, whether the judges are humans or machines.

Quotes.

1. 'With the increasing capabilities of machines, there will come a time when we consider their judgment superior to our own.' (Stephen Hawking)

2. 'Remember. You have a mind. And as long as you can think, they won't beat you.' (Mary)

3. 'Freedom in the modern world is merely a matter of paperwork.' (Augustus)

4. 'Listen to me, person Blythe. You are nothing, less than nothing, less than a scrap of a man. The target of their ridicule. But even the smallest man is a danger to them.' (Augustus)

'But you are dead, Augustus, they killed you.' (Frendon Ibrahim Blythe)

'Dead is not said, my mother repeated.' (Augustus)

'I will die too. They will kill me in the chair with the eye.' (Frendon Ibrahim Blythe)

'You can beat them. All you have to do is shrug and they will be the ones who fall. The truth never dies, dear Blythe, it just goes underground. And it pushes through like worms, food, and soil.'

'They bury it, but it never dies.' (Augustus)

5. 'Justice is not only the sphere of the mind but also the sphere of the heart.' (Stephen Hawking)