The central argument of Jaron Lanier’s intelligent and argumentative book, You Are Not a Gadget, is that technology wants us to become more like technology itself — and this is a bad thing. Jaron believes that as technology advances humans tend to make themselves more machine-like and less human. For instance, he claims that we tend to alter our behavior in a non-desirable way in order to use poorly designed computers, today’s internet, and many hi-tech gadgets. We start to think like a machine in order to use a machine. More worrisome, we may become dumber in order to use dumb machines. Maybe we speak slower, or use simpler language. Or maybe we restrict our emotions and freedoms so that a computer can read us. Perhaps we accept that we should produce things for free because the internet “wants” things to be free. Jaron sees this as a long slippery slope as we make ourselves into gadget-beings. But he warns, “you are not a gadget.”

I think there are cases and examples of this dumbing down, but in general I think Jaron is wrong that this is the main event of our relationship with technology, or a long term trend in humanity or the technium. However there is one place, a curious place, that Jaron’s analysis is absolutely correct: increasingly, as an artist, you are a gadget.

Everywhere we look in pop culture today, some of the coolest expressions are created by humans imitating machines. Exhibit A would be the surging popularity of popping, tutting, and dub step dancing. You’ve seen these dancers on YouTube: the best of them look exactly like robots dancing, with the mechanical stutter of today’s crude robots trying to move like humans. Except the imitators robotically dance better than any robot could — so far.

The are so many styles of robotic dancing, and the genre is moving so fast, that each variety has its own practitioners, lingo, and culture. From Wikipedia here is a partial taxonomy of some of the sub-varieties of dance moves and styles.

Animation
A style and a technique where you imitate film characters being animated by stop motion. The technique consists of moving rigidly and jerky by tensing muscles and using techniques similar to strobing and the robot to make it appear as if the dancer has been animated frame by frame. This style was heavily inspired by the dynamation films created by Ray Harryhausen, such as The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad (1958).

Animatronics
A style that imitates animatronic robots. Related to the robot style, but adds a hit or bounce at the end of each movement.

Boogaloo
Boogaloo or boog style is a loose and fluid dance style trying to give the impression of a body lacking bones, partly inspired by animated movies and cartoons. It utilizes circular rolls of various body parts, such as the hips, knees and head…

Dime stopping
A technique of moving at a steady pace and then abruptly coming to a halt, as if attempting to stop on a dime. This is often combined with a pop at the beginning and/or end of the movement.

Fast forward
The concept of moving faster than normal, like being part of a video being played in fast forward.

Flexing
In flexing the dancer uses flexible arm stretches which usually include the temporary dislocation of the shoulder. Movements are also added to make the stretches look more exaggerated. This style of movement is also commonly known as “Bone-breaking”.

Floating, gliding and sliding
A set of footwork-oriented techniques that attempt to create the illusion that the dancer’s body is floating smoothly across the floor, or that the legs are walking while the dancer travels in unexpected directions. Encompasses moves such as the backslide, which was made famous by Michael Jackson who called it the moonwalk.

Puppet
A style imitating a puppet or marionette tied to strings. Normally performed alone or with a partner acting as the puppet master pulling the strings.

Robot/botting
A style imitating a robot or mannequin.

Scarecrow
A style imitating the scarecrow character of The Wizard of Oz. Claimed to be pioneered by Boogaloo Sam in 1977. Focuses on out-stretched arms and rigid poses contrasted with loose hands and legs.

Slow motion
Moving very slowly with exaggerated movements to make it appear as if the dancer is viewed in slow motion.

Strobing
A style of popping that gives the impression that the dancer is moving within a strobe light. To produce this effect, a dancer will take any ordinary movement (such as waving hello to someone) in conjunction with quick, short stop-and-go movements to make a strobing motion.

Toyman
Based on action figures such as G.I. Joe and Major Matt Mason, developed by an old member of the Electric Boogaloos called Toyman Skeet.[5] Goes between straight arms and right angles to simulate limited joint movement.

Tutting
Inspired by the art of Ancient Egypt (the name derived from the Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun), tutting exploits the body’s ability to create geometric positions (such as boxes) and movements, predominantly with the use of right angles. It generally focuses on the arms and hands, and includes sub-styles such as finger tutting.

Vibrating
Tensing muscles very hard, causing them to shake or flutter.

There are so many examples on YouTube that its hard to pick just one as a start. For a lovely example of the beauty of a human dancing with machine exactness and style, see this fabulous video of “finger tutting” — that is, using one’s hands to “tut” (like King Tut) geometric shapes. As you’ll see at the end, this is commercial for Samsung — another indication of how far this attitude has penetrated the culture.

But also don’t forget the older versions of machine precision dance found in North Koreas stadium spectacles, where humans become mechanical pixels illuminating giant moving images, or even the eerie robotic precision of an army of Chinese dancers in the Beijing Olympic ceremonies.

We find the same imitation of machines in the faddish prevalence of extreme auto-tuning in pop music. Rather than trying to make the human voice more perfectly human, auto-tune technology is used to make the voice uncannily mutant. It catches that same strange loop of a human imitating a machine imitating a human. It is not a mechanical voice. It is a mechanical voice that tries to be human. I predict that the next step in the coming years will be humans singing — unaided by auto-tune — like an an auto-tuned voice. They will sing like robots.

We see similar behavior in movies. What are the heroes of Iron Man and Avatar but humans trying to behave like robots and technological avatars? The more robotic they are, the better the hero.

Since technology isn’t new, why this infatuation with imitating machines now? I think there are several reasons.

First, it’s a blank artistic frontier. Other than a few tip-toes into the territory over the years (the tin man in Wizard of Oz, Frankenstein, etc), the continent of acting out a machine’s life is wide open.

Secondly, we have a much better idea of what we think a machine’s life is. We’ve all heard robotic voices in our phones and GPS units, so it is easier to imitate one now. There are enough robotic arms and prototype humanoid robots that we can fake one and everyone knows what we are faking. As robots continue to improve their imitation of us, the differences will become more subtle, and the art of imitation, the art of tutting and botting, will become more subtle. But here at the beginning, the otherness of robots is blatant, distinctive, and near enough to copy.

Lastly, but not least, we are slowly changing our attitudes about robots. For as long as robots have existed (let’s say 50 years) we humans have viewed them as inferiors, sub-human, and to be pitied because for all their powers they lacked our spiritual essence of consciousness. They were less than human in almost any way we could measure. But slowly, robots are becoming better than humans in small, narrow fields. Each time a robot does something better than us, the very notion of “robotness” is elevated. Botness is incrementally something that is valued, something that we envy. When computerized machines in our cars can brake our car better, faster, and more dependably than we can, then being a robot is not as much of an insult as it used to be. As robots balance a bicycle/motorcycle better than we can, we envy them. When they remember more than we can, we will envy them.

Today’s dancing robots let us imitate them by their clear signs of vibration and inferiority. But someday we may not be able to imitate their fluid dancing at all — we’ll only be able to envy them. We may not be able to imitate their hyper-real human-like voices at all. We may wind up in a long century of full-time envy of robots. Kids may announce to inquiring parents that what they want to be when they grow up is a robot.

Jaron Lanier is worried that we lower ourselves as we imitate our machines and gadgets, but what happens if our machines and gadgets raise our ambitions and inspire our better angles? What if we ourselves want to be as great as our mechanical creations? What happens when we switch from pitying robots to envying them?

UPDATE: Now years later, a Youtube video of guys dressed as robots dancing like robots. They are pretty good robots.