David Loson Analysis

Factors of Potential: The Importance of Individuality and Unity In todays society, there is a huge emphasis on individuality. People preach about ‘being yourself’. Ironically the same people are buying the same phones as other people, shopping at the same places, and talking about the same subjects. The goal is to be popular. It seems there is a uniform way of becoming popular. Yet this uniform path to popularity produces a mass community of subjects similar to one another. In a communistic society where everyone is similar, do people stand out? Who is popular? Who is an Individual? David Robson illustrates in his article “The People ‘Possessed’ by Computers” an emptiness and estrangement in society of robots where there is uniformity. Lynne Tillman demonstrates in her prose A PICTURE OF TIME and THIS IS NOT IT, limitation and a lack of potential. Both David Robson and Lynne Tillman, emphasize the importance of individuality and unity in a society. Similarly, in his book Open Sky, Paul Virilio demonstrates a lack of potential through the rapid pace of society.

Diversity creates an opportunity for potential and playfulness. In contrast, a uniform society lacks potential and creativity. Through the experiments of artificial intelligence by Milgram and Corti, David Robson demonstrates the issues of a society with many robots. He writes “As artificial intelligence starts to get close to pass for human, its not just uncanny, its awkward”. Robson is concerned that through communicating with robots, creativity and potential will slowly diminish, resulting in awkward conversations with one