Today’s quote is via the German newspaper, Spiegel Online, and concerns the recent alarming reports of the destruction of German (and American) bee populations. In it, they refer to Albert Einstein as saying:

If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man.

It seems that the exact cause of the decline of bee populations in Germany and America may have a large number of causes. In Germany, it has been attributed to an alien invader from Asia called the varroa mite, the use of pesticides on wild flowers, and monoculture. More worryingly, it is also suspected that it may be as a result of genetically modified crops. In America, similar reasons have been given to account for their loss, also citing a “vampire” mite that destroys bee hives.

The phenomenon of entire hives being destroyed is called “colony collapse disorder“, and it appears to have spread to regions in Italy, Spain, Greece, Portugal, Poland, and also Britain. An astonishing 24 states in America have reported a 50 to 90 percent loss in bee colonies.

Most interestingly of all is a recent German study that claims that radiation from mobile phones is the cause because it “interferes with bees’ navigation systems” and prevents them from finding their way back to their hives.

All the reasons do seem to have one thing in common, however: us. Not really a newsflash, but still, it’s sad.

Here’s an interesting hypothesis that I came across recently, reading through an article in the latest edition of the IEEE Spectrum about digitally animated faces. It’s called the “Uncanny Valley” effect, formulated by Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori, and it basically says that, as a robot becomes more human-like in appearance, the more humans are likely to empathise with it. However, this effect reaches a point where empathy is reversed, and humans are likely to be repulsed instead. This, too, is then reversed and replaced with positive empathy once more as the appearance of the robot becomes even closer to that of a human being.

I’d be extremely interested if this hypothesis could work in reverse. For example, could individuals who believe in cyborgization i.e. integrating themselves with machines actually decrease the amount of empathy fellow humans feel for them?

Ever wonder how a robot might look like dancing? Have a look at Keepon, “a small creature-like robot developed to perform emotional and attentional interaction with children”. Insanely addictive little critter! [Via New Scientist]

The International Herald Tribune have a wonderful article up on why we laugh. Through a study conducted by neuroscientists Robert Provine and Jaak Panksepp, they produced some rather interesting evidence to suggest that we laugh not because something is funny, but because “It is a way to make friends and also make clear who belongs where in the status hierarchy.”

“Primal laughter evolved as a signaling device to highlight readiness for friendly interaction,” Panksepp says. “Sophisticated social animals such as mammals need an emotionally positive mechanism to help create social brains and to weave organisms effectively into the social fabric.”

This expands on previous research from Panskepp that showed animals laugh, too. There is also a fascinating paper available from the 1996 issue of American Scientist written by Provine, which gives further detail of his previous research into the subject.

I’m still curious why I laugh at a funny film or TV show when there’s no-one around. Surely that’s not a social function?

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.�?�

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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”.

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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.

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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.

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