Machines that Cut Out the World: Film, Computers, and the Externalization of Intelligence, 1900-2025

Machines that Cut Out the World: Film, Computers, and the Externalization of Intelligence, 1900-2025

In Bergson's philosophy, the human intellect is not merely a function of thought, but "knowledge in motion," deeply connected to the control of movement. Of particular note is his consideration of the process by which the intellect "goes out of the body. Through the invention of tools and machines, humans have extended not only physical movement but also cognition, memory, and thought to the outside. This is a defining characteristic of intelligence that is not found in any other animal.

Film is one of the classic examples. Film is a series of still images that are switched at regular intervals, which to the human eye appear as "motion. This mechanism is consistent with the human brain's "ability to grasp motion by homogeneously dividing time. In other words, film is a device that mimics human perceptual mechanisms and was the first technology to "reproduce time and motion on the outside. The modern computer is another device that attempts to reproduce the workings of the intellect by means of a clock and memory. These are evidence that the "externalization of the intellect," as Bergson called it, extends to vision, movement, and memory.

Through these technologies, humans have reconstructed their own internal sense of time and grasp of space in material form, and obtained mechanisms for preserving and reproducing them. In other words, human "knowledge" has been cut out, edited, and put out in a form that can be shared with others by machines. This is not mere information processing, but the act of transforming fragments of consciousness into material order.

However, Bergson also points out the danger of humans losing their intuition and physicality as this externalization of the intellect progresses. By nature, intellect and intuition should circulate internally, and a runaway intellect will rigidify our relationship with the world. If films and computers are mirrors of the intellect, we should reexamine our own internal "sense of time" and "primordiality of movement" through them.