Anonymity

“We” who have names and personalities — and, not incidentally, bodies — are expressing strong views about ai. We speak or write of “it”,  a noun with no other name, as something anonymous — disembodied, terribly powerful and mysterious, and give it all kinds of attributes, from docile tool to supernatural antagonist.

Not too long after writing was invented, Plato imagined a conversation between someone who could not write, namely Socrates, and someone who could, Phaedrus. They were chatting about love, but the conversation came around to writing. One of Socrates’ most important objections to writing was that it didn’t respond to other people.  It was literally irresponsible. The writing didn’t answer objections, get tired or confused or change its mind. It didn’t die.

I’m not the first to see a parallel between the invention and spread or alphabetic writing and the invention and spread of programming, the writing of computer code.  And we, reading a post on LinkedIn, will know something about the power the literate have exerted over the illiterate — often without being aware of it — for centuries,

Who are “they,” the programmers?  We — writers — are told again and again that we MUST have brands… identities. Who wants to be anonymous?  Somebody does.