The artifact

de Germán Sierra

In the clever [dis]guise of fiction, what The Artifact in fact foists upon its readers (hoisting us up in so doing so that ultimately we can look down on the whole situation from a higher perspective—albeit only to crash like a bluebird into the window through which we bear witness) is a veritable Germáneutic: an intriguing interpretation and lucid elucidation of what it is (and is not) to be human in the era of big data, of computation beyond the bounds of human intellection, and—spiralling-off from the latter—of intelligent machines (indeed ‘A.I.’) that can learn and discern far more than the human, perceiving—and who knows: conceiving?—in the vast void qua bind-spot of our own biological being.