And Deliver Us From Tech Evil

Remember evil? What ever happened to that? It went out of fashion a while back. The last public figure who truly riffed on it was US president George Bush Jr. He railed against "evildoers" at every opportunity, and he saw them everywhere. Before him president Reagan delivered frequent exhortations against evil. Now we have "Bad Actors" instead, which is unironically exactly what Reagan was.

Now, I am planning a Techno-horror B movie film festival. In the running are John Carpenter's 1988 They Live, Donald Cammell's 1977 Demon Seed, David Cronenberg's 1983 Videodrome, and Michael Anderson's 1976 Logan's Run and a few others. Join me by watching at home these truly dreadful yet important and powerful films. I think these exemplify a mode of thought that we have lost, or which has been put aside, which expresses the horror of technology.

Notice the dates on these films. Evil was everywhere in the 1970s and 80s, from creepy kids in The Omen and Rosemary's Baby to possessed cars like Stephen King's Christine. Directors and audiences felt no demur in facing technological terror head-on.

That all evaporated at the start of this century, with writers and directors choosing to deal with subjects like "AI" and teachofascist social control in a rarefied, ambiguous, even ambivalent way.

At the very milquetoast, sweet little English church I attend, I do not think I have heard the word "evil" spoken outside the Lord's Prayer, and even then only half-heartedly mumbled lest the speaker invoke it.

Some might say that's progress. Isn't calling other people or things evil is "a bit much" in our lovely post-modernist, post-truth, post-care society? Surely all evildoers and terrorists are someone else's heroes, right? 'Evil' seems an unusually strong and polarising word that neutralises or "Godwins" a conversation like the use of "Nazi". If "evil" is named today it is after a humorous fashion, such as EvilCorp in Sam Esmail's Mr Robot. Bond-villain tech oligarchs even play up to their own caricature of evil so as to diffuse and disarm their real character with a wink and smile.

We have ingested but not digested the wisdom of Solzhenitsyn, saying:

" So let the reader who expects this book to be a political expose slam its covers shut right now. If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart? " – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

On the Cyber Show we look carefully at technology from a humane and scientific point of view. We consider the psychological and political forces in play with as much nuance as we can, including perennial tensions around defence and preparedness versus belligerence, medical advances versus social costs and false hope, and the pressures on citizens, developers and politicians to navigate the complexities of technology, freedom, opportunity, security and dignity.

We have guests who are simultaneously sincerely trying to do good and make the world a safer, more free place, yet are up to their necks in evil of various sorts. Sometimes this is very painful to encounter.

The danger is that we make or amplify excuses that are at root simply moral failings. And they are evident everywhere. Lots of things going on in technology are just plain evil, and they're being perpetrated by absolutely evil people who know exactly what they're doing. What is puzzling is the widespread unwillingness or inability to call this out using the right words. Pope Leo XIV's Magnifica Humanitas authoritatively and unambiguously uses the word "evil" in 15 locations.

Another danger is of allowing evil to be folded into a purely psychological and political treatment of dark-triad propensity and economic realism. Individualising or systematising it is cowardly retreat by society from facing a greater truth.

Naming something is half-way to defeating it. Remember that the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing people he doesn't exist.