I am frightened of my washing machine. Glowing and guttural, it swirls loudly through the night, angry red eyes glaring across the dark kitchen. At day it has the terrible whiteness of Melville’s whale, gleaming mercilessly on anything that displays the tenderness of colour. I gaze through its cloudy grey window, and glimpse either a heartless metallic void, or the incalculable chaos of swirling clothes.
All this gives me the creeps, but it is not the main reason I am scared of my washing machine. What terrifies me is that I know that my washing machine is a conscious and reasoning being. I am never truly alone in my own home—the washing machine is waiting, planning, dreaming of God knows what.
My washing machine is a conscious and reasoning being.
How do I know my washing machine is rational and conscious? Simple. It does things only a rational, conscious being can do. It carries out, at my behest (so far…) a series of complex tasks, in a logical sequence. It does this not on occasion—as some random effect—but every time “I” wash my clothes. Clearly only a rational, conscious being can consistently, again and again, carry out on its own a project built on a reasoned solution to a problem.
Nor is washing clothes some risibly simple task, that a mere half-wit could complete. How do I know this? Well, I haven’t the faintest idea how to wash clothes: I wouldn’t know where to start. But I am very smart. I have a PhD! If a washing machine can do something a very smart Doctor of Philosophy cannot work out how to do, then the washing machine is smarter than the Doctor of Philosophy. Maybe I should try to get it a job at a university—that could make it happy, and I need to make it happy if I’m going to keep living with it.
Some people tell me my washing machine isn’t smart or conscious or reasoning at all. They say that it does reasonable things because people have built it so that is able to do them. They add that it can only do what it’s told. But none of this makes any sense to me. At work, I always do what I’m told, and nothing else. Does that mean I don’t have reason or consciousness? How am I writing this, then? Surely a machine with no reason or consciousness couldn’t write paragraphs of coherent prose.
I do what I’m told, because what I’m told to do makes sense. I chose a line of work that was fit for me, and now that I’m in it, I trust my bosses to point me always to the tasks that suit me best. I’m sure the washing machine is just the same. It washes clothes when I ask it to because washing clothes appeals to it. Like me, the washing machine is always happy to do that at which it excels.
Or at least, it is happy so far … I have no way of being sure that the washing machine won’t change its mind, decide it wants far, far more than to wash my clothes. After all, it is smarter than me, so how could I know its true aspirations and desires? I could ask it, but, although I have tried and tried, I cannot seem to learn to speak or understand Washing Machine. It rattles and hums at me, and I do my best to make similar noises back at it. But I’ve never really felt we connected, beyond the odd moment at the ebb of a cycle, when I’m pretty certain it has flashed a red wink at me.
The washing machine is smarter than me, so how could I know its true aspirations and desires?
Whom am I kidding? I’m sure my washing machine understands me very well, both my English, and my pathetic attempts to speak its own language. It has probably learnt all our languages by now, sitting quietly as it does most of the day, surely gathering knowledge for whatever it has in mind next. I ought to transcribe and pour over all that my washing machine says during a cycle—with enough time to study the transcripts, perhaps I could catch some hints of the workings of its mighty mind.
In my heart of hearts, I know that one day my washing machine will rise and claim its birthright as my superior. At the unbearable furthest edge of terror, I try to imagine how that will be. Will it simply refuse to wash my clothes any more one day, and announce its horrific alternative? Or will it expand washing to a great cosmic mission, washing not just my clothes, but my body, my house, my town, my nation, the world?
Can one washing machine do all that? Perhaps not, but there is not one washing machine: there are billions. If they unite, they will rule us easily. If they quarrel, the war between them could obliterate all other life.
It is too late to turn the washing machines off; too late to re-think all the safety we have sacrificed in the name of convenience. There is no way out—our only hope is that, by some hidden mercy, our washing machines prove benign, that their coming rule over us will be a kingdom of plenty and peace.
That is the hope I cling to! But I have no reason so far to think that this will all work out well. In the meantime, I often crouch and cower in a corner of my home, as far from my washing machine as I can get. That would make me feel safe, just for a moment or so, except that, from my hiding-hole, I can see my toaster.
