Book Review: Blinky’s Law, by Martin Talks
Blinky’s law is a terrestrial science fiction comedy, written by a futurologist influenced by or building on the foundations of predictive cultural humour that have entertained us before. This has a shovel-full of original imagination to it but then familiar things pop in to tease us, like an Asimov-type idea or a quip that could have come from Eddie Murphy. The robot characters are well differentiated by adopted speech affectations, which create a sense of family between them, e.g. the pseudo-cockney elevator personalities. There’s also a healthy sense of confusion about which side the various machine characters are on and eventually whether there need to be sides at all as it can all be solved by becoming indistinguishable.
As a ‘next step’ scenario, I couldn’t quite pin this down as near future or distant future. A futurologist would say human and machine life merging together is already here (elsewhere, the author cites his artificial hip, wearable technology and increasingly vital always-on smartphone connection) and I can see the case appearing that the criteria for life should be revised to include electronic intelligences. In Blinky’s Law, we see one position beyond where we are now, i.e. status equivalence between automatons and humans, who are then simply ‘people’ not even differentiated by gender-loaded pronouns. If you still use these in Blinky’s world, are you treated as some sort of old fashioned pariah? Clearly society in the novel has moved beyond that phase too because no one does it.
There are important questions smuggled in this tale and any one of them might eventually apply to you. There’s the dependency concern that people plugged into virtual realities might find them so much more pleasant than their life in reality that they will never leave. This has come up before in the second or third Red Dwarf novel (and television adaptation) Better than Life, which addressed the problem differently — in a much more narcotic sense — and also in The Matrix, in the sense of ‘not knowing you are in a faux reality’ is a subterfuge that fails if life is too perfect, i.e. we need some things to work badly to convince our expectations of reality. In Blinky’s Law, the matter receives scrutiny from a new angle which subtly highlights the danger of computer games like Grand Theft Auto or Pokemon, where the game has no chapter breaks or stop points, so players want to hang on just a little longer (repeating ‘just a few more minutes’) to get their endorphins, collect their virtual points and thus they never leave.
Back to our reality in 2020, if you insist someone unplugs an epic computer game and comes out in the sunshine, they usually lose their temper at you — irrational reactions are a sign they have a problem. Have you ever taken a day off work to play a computer game? Has time passed faster? Have you missed meals or lived on snacks to stay plugged in? That’s a merging. Have night and day blurred or, ultimately, has your performance at work taken second place to the game and you’ve had a performance review? The thing about playing a game existence indefinitely is that someone still needs to pay the bills or you will be disconnected and come back to reality with a jerk, like yourself. Therefore, if no one asks you to pay the piper it should be a huge neon clue that you are serving someone else’s benefit, in turn meaning you are their victim.
In the book, people are plucked out of their working life and think they’ve made it to a level at which all their needs catered for. Instead of becoming society’s fatted drones, this is more of a discussion about being sidelined or brushed out of an active society into a position safely tucked away behind the curtain. Is this a metaphor for the universal basic income? The Devil’s Advocate might wonder ‘Could we get rid of the millions of unproductive poor like this? Plug them in permanently and the only costs to us are energy, food and lavatory paper?’ There will someday be a politician who isn’t averse to the idea. The unproductive poor will also not be averse to the idea. If the future starts now, will it be good for all of us? We think in terms of humanity dividing up into gainers and losers but what if the eventual cut is that humans are the losers and machines inherit the planet? Should, as is suggested, we obviate that risk by becoming the machines, making a biological pact of sorts?
I wondered how viable the Roboharmony business idea from this book would really be, an introduction agency for human/robot marriage. This is a different thing to the merging concept because each partner retains their individual identity and organic or machine status. Would it replace human to human relationships? On the positive side, there might never be an argument between a robot/human couple because the AI feedback loop would incrementally align to the human’s thinking and also never be jealous. On the negative side, you could enjoy having a machine as a companion but in the brain there’s a kind of silhouette of what is attractive in the opposite sex and a fridge simply doesn’t trigger the necessary hormones for a full relationship. You could simulate look and texture but the human would always know this is simulated and that’s not as attractive as the passion that comes with possession of a living person (not a disposable product).
I did wonder if an automaton partner that’s designed to look as close to the human form as possible would need some sort of insignia to remind humans it is a money making machine, something like the little red light on camcorders that is supposed to alert Johnny she’s filming.
Blinky’s Law is one great leap for mankind. For lifekind too, once we extend the chips and wires to our unwilling dogs, cats and goldfish. I’m not convinced it’s the right way to go as we need to entertain the wistful case for unplugging, but comparatively soon in our evolution we are going to have to have this debate about merging our bodies with an increasing proportion of bionic modules. My personal feeling is I can comprehend the need to allow a vibrating rabbit appliance into your life during lockdown but I’m not yet ready to give it the vote.
When all’s said and done, Blinky’s Law is a haywire comedy with lots of twists and turns in the entertaining, knockabout content. Good luck if you think you can predict which way the plot will go. If you want an explanation of what Blinky’s Law says, you’ll have to read the book. The story isn’t all about the central spinal theme, so forgive me for concentrating on that in the review and leaving out the chase scenes etc. Actually, it’s the author’s fault for making me more interested in the subject, where we are heading on this out of control apple cart of ours.
