The barman wipes through the glass, his head bears the face of Michael Sheen, his upper body balances on a mechanical unicycle. In the 2016 film Passengers, Chris Pratt woke up as the only person on a spaceship that had been gliding through the infinite void of space for decades. The bartender isn’t human, but a robot with a face that talks like a human. As a viewer, you sometimes forget that the robot is a machine and console yourself with the confusion that human screenwriters wrote the words of the robot.
Fast forward to 1806: Heinrich von Kleist writes to Otto August Rühle von Lilienstern. The general is getting nowhere with meditation, and Kleist advises talking to others about the issue. The poet is concerned with “the gradual development of thoughts while speaking”: “And lo and behold, when I talk about it with my sister, who is sitting and working behind me, I experience what I haven’t brought out after brooding for hours Not as if she actually said it to me; (…) Nor as if she led me to the point with skilful questions, which is important, even if this last one is often the case.” The conversation with the sister, who was clueless about the subject, forces Kleist to organize his thoughts.
Back to the year 2023: I am talking to my colleague Jan Mahn about my AssetStorm programming project and how the software could save changes to texts in the database. He agrees with me, but can’t help with the programming because there are too many other projects piled up on his desk. I’m the only one with a good idea, but I would have liked help. But then an idea occurs to me: If nobody wants to help me, then I won’t let anyone help me!
