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.”

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.

You can tell a lot from someone’s bookshelf. In fact, when I go to someone’s house for the first time (and if they don’t mind) I always make a point of looking to see what books they have. So it was with interest that I had a read through Jim Lobe’s recent piece on Bush’s reading list. Most of the books mentioned seem to conform to a general pattern of strengthening Bush’s world-view: right-wing and neo-conservative with a dose of Islamophobism thrown in for good measure. Of course, Lobe wouldn’t be able to name every book on Bush’s shelf, but it would be nice to know that he owns one or two that challenged his world-view instead of strengthening it, all things considered.

Alternet has an interesting interview with historian Greg Grandin discussing his new book, Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism, and “how ‘militant anti-Communists’ in the Reagan administration developed the model for the Bush doctrine.” (There is an excerpt from the book also available here on Alternet). As he explains, the book tries to “look at how U.S. corporate elites — the Guggenheims, the Rockefellers and so forth — first established themselves in Latin America with their overseas subsidiaries and how U.S. political elites viewed the region as the first place to project American power.” Another great quote from the interview:

The war on terror or its component parts — gaining public acceptance of torture, for example, or rendition or the war in Iraq — is as much a domestic affair as it is a foreign one. If you read the writings of neocon intellectuals like Christopher Caldwell or William Kristol, itâ??s all about steeling Americaâ??s domestic culture and making the population more resistant to pain, both ours and the pain we inflict on others. And it seems that itâ??s not just that they look at Americaâ??s political culture and see dissent or anti-militarism, but they really see a culture of weakness, and they expected that the war on terror would bring about a restoration of American strength.

I’ve ear-marked this book myself for future reading as it looks pretty interesting. I first stumbled across Greg Grandin while searching around for information of American involvement in South America during the Cold War. He’d given an interview to the University of Chicago about another book he wrote entitled The Last Colonial Massacre: Latin America in the Cold War, which argued that “the spread of Latin America’s guerrilla movements was driven by the frustration of efforts to consolidate post-World War II social democracies.” In particular, he points out that “The overthrow of Arbenz” in Guatemala “was an important milestone” in the transformation of Latin America from having “a degree of political liberalization” to US-backed repression of “domestic dissent”, whereby “The already cramped space for political negotiation became even more restricted.”

The overthrow of Arbenz convinced many Latin American reformers, democrats, and nationalists that the United States was less a model to be emulated than a danger to be feared. Che Guevara, for example, was in Guatemala working as a doctor and witnessed firsthand the effects of US intervention. He fled to Mexico, where he would meet Fidel Castro and go on to lead the Cuban Revolution. He taunted the United States repeatedly in his speeches by saying that “Cuba will not be Guatemala.” For its part, the United States promised to turn Guatemala into a “showcase for democracy” but instead created a laboratory of repression. Practices institutionalized thereâ??such as death squad killings conducted by professionalized intelligence agenciesâ??spread throughout Latin America in the coming decades.

He’s a fairly regular writer at The Nation, is a teacher of Latin American history (New York University), and also helped contribute to the UN report on human-rights violations in Guatemala during their civil war. You can read his articles for the Nation here.

On Tuesday, I attended a Q&A session hosted by Blackwell books at the School of Oriental and African Studies’ Brunei Gallery. The speaker for the evening was journalist, author, and documentary film-maker John Pilger (he has his own website at www.johnpilger.com and a blog at the Guardian’s Comment Is Free website). The topic for discussion was his new book Freedom Next Time, where historian and author Mark Curtis, when reviewing the book for the Guardian, said “the voiceless” are “given a voice”. Johann Hari of the Independent was less flattering but still complimentary, trying to “stand between … admiring [Pilger’s] great skills and exposés but weeping over his occassional follies”. “Freedom Next Time mostly showcases Pilger at his best,” he said, but “flaws can be spotted”, concluding that “when Pilger is good, he is great, but when Pilger is bad, he reeks.”

Not having read the book myself, I was interested to hear what Mr. Pilger had to say. I’ve read and seen some of his previous works (The New Rulers of The World being a particularly favourite of mine), and agreed with many of his observations from time to time, so I knew what to expect. I was also particularly interested in his thoughts on South Africa, where I come from, and his observations regarding Nelson Mandela. Twelve A5 pages of hand-scribbled notes later, here is a summary of his talk, and the Q&A session that followed, along with some of my own thoughts. I’ll split this into two parts, one for his outline, and the other for the Q&A session, to cut down on the overall length. [And, to clarify: all links used in the article are not meant to reflect sources that Pilger himself may or may not have used to substantiate his comments, I simply searched the Net to try find out more, and linked to relevant pieces.]

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Polish author Stanislaw Lem, who died recently, held all of American science fiction in the greatest of contempt, except for one person: Philip K. Dick. It’s easy to see why today. Although it took a very long time for Dick to achieve widespread fame and recognition for his work, he is now considered a giant among giants in science fiction writing: around fourteen of his works are presented in the Gollancz SF Masterworks Series, and several of his books have been turned into popular blockbusters, such as Minority Report (from the book of the same name), Bladerunner (based on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep) and Total Recall (from We Can Remember It For You Wholesale).

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