There’s Humanity in the Machine

I like electronic music, techno, specifically trance. The likes of Armin van Buuren, Solarstone, Gareth Emery or Aaron Hibell to name a few. Within the music I find space to think, to dream, to daydream, to create, to loose myself and even dance. The last few years it’s become my first choice music to work to, to read to, to think to. Never grabbing too much attention directly, but taking my thoughts and emotions on a journey with it, coming in and out of my attention. Trance like, you might say.

Unless I am outside that is. There’s enough beautiful music out there already. Some things don’t change.

The pulsing beats and synthesized melodies transport me somewhere and allow me to tap into another realm, which is strange and strange for many reasons.

Here am I, a proponent of ‘living now’, being aware of every moment. Someone who tries hard to preach, not to forcibly, about the wonder of our countryside, for its own sake and as the best value resource for positive mental, MIND health; or analogue musician, a guitarist, a family man who loves face to face contact and jettisoning a smart phone whenever possible, is then suggesting there’s humanity in the machine, and another reality to reach, a dreamlike state, is a place to go.

For a while at least.

Even in our technology fuelled world we use artificial intelligence to preach about the evils of a technologically fuelled future. I don’t think I’ve seen a movie or read a book that shows a happy future with humans and technology working in harmony. The terminator series had computers removing humanity as an imperfect organism, and yes, I cried at the end of Terrminator 2, Judgement Day, or I Robot with the laws of robotics. And who can forget Rutger Hauers soliloquy at the end of Bladerunner.

Technology is here, it’s with us. It started as a tool, as did the printing press or a weaving machine during the industrial revolution and they inspired revolts that ‘enlightened people’ had to put down. And yet our current latest generation have embraced this technology as if it’s totally natural. If I need something done with my smart phone or an app, then I get my son to do it for me, ‘what’s the point of having a young adult around and not using him?’

As artificial intelligence begins to become self-aware, and face it, it’s going to, then we are going to have more issues to consider, the line, whatever that is, between human and machine will become more and more blurred as machines and robotics extend and save life, and they will. I used an AI programme to generate the image I made for this blog then we will have to consider ethics, ethics even more tricky than we are currently dealing with as people struggle with identity and sexuality. Check out Spielbergs A.I.

However, as humans, and humans who made, make robots and computers for whatever motivations we are driven, we will make then with the same imperfections that we have as humans. It’s unavoidable.

People will have heard me say, ‘show me the perfect human and I’ll show you a robot.’ Even that doesn’t work though, because we made the robot, so it’s flawed immediately.

Most people are good natured, even if often blinded by short term happiness and herded like sheep by the few who have the desire to do good initially but inevitably also get blinded by short term happiness on their way to the powerful positions that allow change to be made on a national, international or global scale.

There has to be a way to keep our thinking responsible, rational and creative, and for me, right here, right now, that’s trance music with its pulsing rhythms and synthetic melodies. Which funnily enough is exactly what traditional indigenous tribal music has done for generations, listen to native American music, African tribal music or the music of the Aboriginies, even our own Celtic traditional music achieves the same end, a great space to think, to dream, to create, to lose myself and even dance.

I do a lot of that too.

Modern technological music is just doing what indigenous tribal transcendent music has always done.

Tribal Trance maybe.

Not so different then really, just a different tool.

The humanity has always been in the machine.

Simon Pollard  August 2025.