Chapter Summary: Machines, Animals, And Aliens

Peters in Chapter six, “Machines, Animals, and Aliens,” talks about 20th century and new technology that has influence in communication. Movies, television, phones and internet. He follows the idea of analyzing how these new mediums effect the communication and gave a new form and understanding to that. Peters claims that “the chief challenge to communication in the twentieth century is contact with beings that lack mortal form” (pg 227). He talks about Rene Descartes and his idea of communication, “communication a distinctly human capacity that distinguishes us from animals and machines” (pg 231). Then Peters talks about Alan Turing, his computing machine and intelligence test, and asks question of “how can you tell a human from a fake?”(pg

232) And explains that “Turing’s machine communicates intelligently without a living body, while animals obviously have living bodies but offer no decisive proof of a will to communicate with us” (pg 233). Further, Peters explains more about Alan Turing’s article “computing Machines and intelligence” and communication between machine and humans.

He believes that “Turing’s assault on consciousness as a guarantee of communication is admirable, but his veiling of love, attraction, eros, and mortality is troubling. He believes in the possibility of a duplicate without a difference, on reason he is not interested in making a replica of the human epidermis. What is missing in the Turing test is the desire for the other that Hegel thought raised us out of animality into the homeland of consciousness” (pg 237) later he brings examples from Walter Benjamin, Jorge Lois Borges then he goes to another part of this chapter Communication with Aliens. Peters explains about search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). He talks about astronomical gaps in the possibly communication with aliens, big distance, differences that we even can’t imagine and not understanding or not noticing their messages. Peters claims that “extraterrestrial communication, more than any other situation, clearly shows that communication at a distance always comes out of the past. Any message received from a distant planet comes from a point already lost to time” (pg

248).
In last part of his book, Peters refers to communication as a trouble we are stuck with. He talks about the gaps of which communication is made, distortion of dialogue and denying of effect of physical presence in accuracy of communication (pg 264). Later he talks about the privilege of the receiver, explaining that the other should be the center of whatever communication might mean (pg 265), then he explains about the dark side of the communication, claiming that communication is a risky adventure without guarantee (pg 267). He also claims that in his book he have argued that we misspend our hope in seeking some kind of spiritual fullness or satisfaction in communication (pg 268) he later talks about the Irreducibility of touch and time, explaining that condition of infinite remoteness between people. Saying touch and time, the two nonreproducible things we can share, are our only guarantee of sincerity (pg 271). Even though Peters explained a lot about the difficulty and problems of communication but he also claims that “most of the time we understand each other quite well; we just do not agre” (pg 269).