Daily Times

Harari, in his world-famous book ‘Sapiens’, opines that human beings made a strong and well-connected community because they could communicate with each true and right with an added benefit of doing so face to face. It was their power of speech that set them apart from other species and placed them at the highest mark on the social status ladder as well. But the same communication in the age of Artificial Intelligence and computer technology is setting the human on the downward ladder and placing machines instead in the social hierarchical status of superiority and control. It has mostly happened because our communication is not based on truth and reality as we are twice removed from reality, which in the words of Baudrillard, the French philosopher, is a chain of simulacrum. Simulacrum is a twice removed picture of reality being presented to us in the post-modern world. The same holds good about the communication properties of human beings because they are now communicating only through artificial modes largely via the platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter(X) and YouTube. All these platforms provide an opportunity to hide the facts and realities and present to the other human beings what suits to the information provider or through which he can get maximum benefit.

This takes us to the next level of communication which may be termed miscommunication. This very version of communication is settling the human beings as the weaker community and making the machine community to be stronger and more reliable. The signs of such a weakness are quite visible around us. The physical participation in any act of humanity is decreasing. People instead of visiting playgrounds are busy in playing games on screen. Instead of addressing in our human voice with specific emotional expressions and body language we are addressing our fellows through machine that puts machine first and human after that.

Production of original knowledge is speedily dwindling even in the research at MPhil and PhD level.

This is further wrecking vengeance upon human society that all communication has become profit oriented, especially after new liberalist ideologies. Everyone engaged in miscommunication is doing so only to increase his profit and for this one is willing to employ all fair and foul means, rather it is pretty difficult mostly to distinguish between right and wrong because reality truth is left somewhere in the doldrums and the surface level shallowness of media pictorials are the things visible and, so, false communication is in progress. All tactics to grab the audience are employed because without audience, there is no profit. These tactics are mostly artificial but very attractive and so help grab customers and users. When the product, idea or the thought is true, genuine and real, there is no need of any decorations or false decoration. For example, a journal of true worth and value attempts to provide true information which does not need to attract audience and so has no need to employ any grabbing tactics. Same is the case with the communication of human being these days. The aim and core issue of the fake communication, which looks like true, is to grabs maximum number of audience and is, hence, a false communication.

Even the creation of knowledge is exhibiting the impact of miscommunication. Knowledge that is being created lacks originality and productivity because of the sources from where it is gleaned. Production of original knowledge is speedily dwindling even in the research at MPhil and PhD level. One of the main reasons behind this, again, is the artificial sources. For example, people are excessively dependent on Artificial intelligence which itself is the copy of the human created knowledge. This overdependence on artificial intelligence is not generating original and creative knowledge but is only the product of machine algorithm. The same has happened with the creative imagination. Now we have poets and authors more than any other age but mostly on Facebook or other online sources. The healthy debate and the rhetorical dialogue and dialectics are things of the past now. The new democracy of authorship has created more opportunities than the instances of genuine knowledge. In case of literature, the representation of true human emotions and aesthetics, is diminishing because of the lack of quality and originality. Gone are the days when the writers used to be the sages, and their words would become syllogisms. Now we have more of the quantity and less of quality in every field of our life.

So, the lesson learnt is that the channels of real human communication should not be closed and may survive for the sake of true human bonding and socialising to keep on their role as sapiens in this world. A hundred percent reliance on the fake and unreal communication can undermine the status of human beings. Still the possibility lies in using these modern tools to develop effective communication among the human beings for speedier and comfortable communication instead of making the machine responsible altogether which can draw its materials for communication only from the algorithmic source.

The writer is a professor of English at Government Emerson University, Multan. He can be reached at zeadogar@hotmail.com and Tweets at @Profzee