Today’s quote comes from German chemist Ernst Otto Fischer, winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 1973:
As machines become more and more efficient and perfect, so it will become clear that imperfection is the greatness of man.
I’m a great believer in this myself, and think a world of uniform efficiency and perfection is one of dull, straight, black and white lines.
The New York Times has a great article about two competing trends, namely using drugs to augment intelligence and creativity, or using “mind expanding” technology to do it instead. (Forget, for a moment, the weed-puffing dope smokers would tell you there’s a natural creative enhancer already). One argument it gives against using drugs is that the “creativity shortcut” of using a pill may create a “delusional state” where “weak ideas are mistaken for strong ones”.
Supporters of using technology argue that computer networks are great enablers of human creativity because they can “share ideas with people they??ve never met”. Quoting Lawrence Lessig, he points out that the Internet helps create “ideas that are more robust and create a wider range of perspectives.?
Today’s word is “Biopower” (also sometimes referred to as bio-techno-power), first used by French philosopher Michel Foucault to describe how a state controls its citizens, not through negative means (such as the threat of death or physical coercion), but through more positive means such as by promoting a better life, namely by emphasising the protection of life. As the word implies with “bio”, it has a specific biological aspect to it.
According to Foucault, biopower is how capitalist and democratic societies controlled their citizens, and it was “an indispensible element” for the “development of capitalism” because it helped adjust “the phenomena of population to economic processes”.
Today’s quote comes from creative non-fiction author Lee Gutkind whose new book, Almost Human: Making Robots Think, explores “robotics subculture and the challenging quest for robot autonomy”. It was recently reviewed by M. G. Lord at the LA Times, and it contained this wonderful quote from the book about why scientists such as those Gutkin profiles chase their dream of creating autonomous robots:
“The fact that you, a human being, have achieved the magic milestone of re-creating, if only for an instant, a real living creature that thinks and acts on its own, something almost human, is really quite remarkable. And the frustration and failure that precedes it makes the magic of the moment of triumph all the more astonishing and satisfying and worthwhile.”
Douglas Hofstadter speaks in the latest edition of Wired about his new book, I Am A Strange Loop. As he explains, he’s trying to figure out “What Am I?”
One good prototype [of a strange loop] is the Escher drawing of two hands sketching each other. A more abstract one is the sentence I am lying. Such loops are, I think anyone would agree, strange. They seem paradoxical and even strike some people as dangerous. I argue that such a strange loop, paradoxical or not, is at the core of each human being. It is an abstract pattern that gives each of us an ??I,? or, if you don??t mind the term, a soul.
The “noosphere” (sometimes referred to as the neurosphere) can be described as “the sphere of human thought”. First used by geochemist Vladimir Verdansky, he believed that there were three stages in the development of the earth: the geosphere (inanimate matter), which was then transformed by the biosphere, (animate matter), which in turn would be transformed by the noosphere that arose from human cognition.
It’s interesting to note that Verdansky’s ideas helped contribute to a natural philosophy from the 19th and 20th Centuries called Russian Cosmism, which attempted to use empirical research combining elements of philosophy and religion to explore the origin and evolution of mankind and the universe, as well as to try and predict its future. Many of the ideas from this school helped contribute to transhumanism and is often seen as its natural precursor.
Today’s quote comes from Bernard Meunier, Nestlé’s country manager, quoted in Business Week (2006) on why they’ve “pumped $500 million into Russia to date”:
“As soon as people step out of poverty, they become potential Nestlé customers.”
I suppose that’s really good news for Russia’s 53 billionaires, but probably bad news for the 20% that live below the poverty line, and the 30% whose wages are below the required minimum to live. It seems that the poorest segments of the population, like pensioners, the unemployed and government employees like teachers are not likely to be Nestlé customers.
(There is of course the exception to the rule, and that’s probably when they want to give free breast milk substitutes that helps contribute to the problem of 1.5 million children dying every year from inadequate breast feeding).
The term artilect is a combination of the words “artificial intellect”, and is used to describe highly intelligent machines that differ from today’s concepts of artificial intelligence by being far more intelligent than humans, almost god-like. In case you think this is taken from a book of science fiction, it’s not. The term was coined by Professor Dr. Hugo de Garis, who specialises in a field of artificial intelligence, and expanded upon in his book The Artilect War (a .pdf version can be found here).
According to de Garis, the most important question that we shall face in the coming years is “Who or what should be dominant species on the planet?” The “debate” over this question shall be so controversial that it will actually result in an all-out war sometime during the 21st Century.
Today’s quote comes from physicist Fritjof Capra. I am just reading through his (so far) superb book, “The Hidden Connections“, which aims to describe “the unified systems that integrate the biological, cognitive and social dimensions of life”.
At any rate, the quote comes from page 9, where Capra is talking about the nature of life, in particular the process of “autopoiesis” (self-making or auto self-creation) where “living networks continually create, or recreate, themselves by transforming of replacing their components”. Here, he demonstrates that “viruses are not alive, because they lack their own metabolism”, but he then goes on to add:
Similarly, a robot that assembles other robots out of parts that are built by some other machines cannot be considered living. In recent years, it has often been suggested that computers and other automata may constitute future life forms. However, unless they were able to synthesize their components from “food molecules” in their environment, they could not be considered to be alive according to our definition of life.
I found this particularly interesting because he approaches the idea of a “living” robot from a biological point of view rather than simply using consciousness or self-awareness as the criterion for a future life form.
Capra has his own webpage, and there is a really fascinating interview with him at intuition.org. Some of his other books include: The Tao of Physics, The Web of Life, The Turning Point, and Uncommon Wisdom.
A griefer is considered to be someone who plays an online game with the sole purpose of causing grief to the other players, normally through harassment; this is normally referred to as “griefing”. Originally used in baseball as a derogatory term by away teams talking about the home side, it began being used to refer to gamers by around the year 2000.
Recently, the term has been used (such as in the More4 News video clip available from this page) to describe protesters in the online world of Second Life, such as the SLLA (Second Life Liberation Army).
Subscribe