I’ve recently been on a sci-fi binge since the end of 2019, when I read the Three-Body Problem trilogy. The first book I finished this year was Exhalation by Ted Chiang , and the third was The Hidden Girl and Other Stories by Ken Liu. Both Chiang and Liu’s stories made me think a lot about AI and uploaded consciousnesses, so when I saw a Korean drama about AI and augmented reality holograms, I was all in. My Holo Love is a textbook Korean drama: an “average” girl living a normal life has her life changed by some kind of strange phenomenon, and she ultimately meets a handsome guy that’s attractive, talented, and rich. Both of them are “broken” with some tragic past, and the revelations about that past are what trigger cliffhangers and plot “surprises.” (The story arc is almost identical to When You Were Sleeping.) Consequently, it wasn’t the most mind-blowing drama, but the comfort the familiar in a “bad” show doesn’t necessarily mean it’s without value. While I enjoyed the attractive people and have a soft spot for camerawork in futuristic settings filled with reflective surfaces and lights, it was the odd, unpredictable connections made with other ideas I’ve been thinking about that ultimately drove me to write about it.
The second book I finished this year was The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing To Our Brains by Nicholas Carr. It’s a short book that covers the history of inventions that have changed the way our minds work (e.g. maps and clocks) before going into the effects of the internet on both our ability to concentrate and the formation of incorrect metaphors when it comes to describing the mysterious nature of our minds. Computers gave us a metaphor for describing our brains with vocabulary like “processing” and “memory capacity” — but one of Carr’s biggest arguments is that this is a false parallel:
One of the salient lessons to emerge from his [Kobi Rosenblum] work is how different biological memory is from computer memory. “The process of long-term memory creation in the human brain,” he says, “is one of the incredible processes which is so clearly different than ‘artificial brains’ like those in a computer. While an artificial brain absorbs information and immediately saves it in its memory, the human brain continues to process information long after it is received, and the quality of memories depends on how the information is processed.” Biological memory is alive. Computer memory is not.
Watching Holo (the AI hologram) think through his identity made me think a lot about a larger question I have been wrestling with since my senior year of college. Who are we, if we can have multiple selves? What is the essence of our “self” that doesn’t change? Listening to Holo try to reconcile his encoded commands with the experience of the often flawed, multifaceted, and vague human emotions made me ask a different question: Why do we assume there should be a “self” that doesn’t change?
There must definitely be writing out there on the topic (and I’d love to get any recommendations), but I wonder if it’s in part related to the fact that one of the hardest things to do is to look beyond our own perspectives. David Foster Wallace talks about this in “This is Water”, and I also talk about the importance of stories and looking between them in our first podcast episode which is set to launch next week. Our default setting is to believe that there is only one story that is “correct,” that there is only one self that is leading our lives. But the me of yesterday is not the same as the me of today, no matter how similar they are. We want to tell finished stories and present ourselves as whole, but the stories we tell are but one angle, and the “me” of the present is fleeting, like everything else. Furthermore, stories are not only told about the course of a nation or history, but are also intimately tied to identity — we are the narratives we tell ourselves. We base our decisions on fictitious understandings of “who we are,” and though they may not be “real” in the sense that they are observable truths, they are still as “real” as anything else that matters to us: our relationships and histories. We like to believe we’re immortal, that we’re not on trains headed towards a terminus, but that aspect of human nature runs counter to accepting a consequential truth — that we are not singular.
But we aren’t necessarily multiple either. The amalgam of our experiences is who we “are” and that sum is — as far as we’ll be able to perceive — ever complete. The parts of My Holo Love that struck me the most were moments that hinted at our fundamental unknowability, which is based in part on newfound experiences and circumstances. A recurring theme is the phrase “그냥” which translates to “just because.” It’s an enigmatic expression, one that implies an explanation exists but fails to disclose it. Sometimes we fail to disclose an explanation for our emotions because they’re embarrassing, but sometimes we keep them concealed from ourselves because of the complications that would arise with admitting too much. The underlying workings of our minds, however, are not static but, as Carr points out, constantly growing and adapting. When Ko Nando first discovers heartbreak, he says something along the lines of, “Does it always hurt like this?” It’s a cliché, kind of cheesy line, but I think of the line in the movie Her, when Joaquin Phoenix’s character says something like, “I feel like I’ve felt everything I’m going to feel, and everything else will be just smaller versions of those feelings.” Our unknowability comes in part from life’s unknowability, and the constantly changing circumstances that give rise to new, unprecedented combinations.
Holo innocently asks Han Soyeon in surprise, “Even you don’t know how you feel?” Computers require answers and clearly defined programming (at least for now). The uncertainties of being human and the frustrating blurriness of experiences we often fail to capture in words are not a weakness, but a natural byproduct of being people who are constantly changing and moving forward. Though I’m not sure, but believe the Japanese associate fireworks with life, just as they fixate on the fleeting quality of cherry blossoms and snow. The three are some of the most beautiful phenomena we can experience, and it is the ephemerality itself that gives it value. (Spoiler Alert) When Holo faces the prospect of being deleted, he says that at least this will mean everything until now had some meaning. Though fundamental questions such as why we exist in a world full of dualities and the relentless force of time may never be answered, there is some peace in knowing that they are the rock upon which we might build better understanding and acceptance of ourselves.
Notes of a Korean-American 