Wednesday, April 16, 2008

There is an alternative to cybernetic totalism

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Jaron Lanier coined the phrase cybernetic totalism in an article entitled One Half Of A Manifesto to describe what he perceived as society's idolisation of technology to the point where our relationship with the technology itself becomes the only measure of our humanity - the idea that "...evolutionary psychology, artificial intelligence, Moore's Law fetishizing, and the rest of the package, will catch on in a big way, as big as Freud or Marx did in their times. Or bigger, since these ideas might end up essentially built into the software that runs our society and our lives. If that happens, the ideology of cybernetic totalist intellectuals will be amplified from novelty into a force that could cause suffering for millions of people."

Heady stuff indeed. But lets take a step back.

What he's really saying is that there are those among us (computer scientists in the mold of Turing) who believe that computers will ultimately become sentient, begin to write software for themsleves, build more machines like themselves and ultimately take over at the expense of poeple - in very much the same way as presented in the movie, The Matrix. These same poeple, as I understand the gist of the thing, don't however see this as an apocapyptic outcome; rather, they embrace it as the only eschatalogical path worth considering.

Lanier makes an interesting and very eloquent atack on this line of thought, and it really is worth reading.

The trouble is that Lanier himself seems to be mired in the same AI paradigm as his colleages, albeit from a contrary point of view.


But let me get to the point. While I agree with Lanier's thinking in response to the his cybernetic totalism, I offer another point of view on the thing.

Maybe the Internet, cybernetics and all the other stuff is merely practice for the next life.

Maybe the so called "age of aquarius" is a natural foil to technology and technological advancement. For just as we as a society are becoming more accepting of the huge potential of the technology we have created, there is also a greater acceptance of the more ethereal side of ourselves - our ability to tap into the unseen energy of the universe.

The difference of course is that you can actually touch a computer and cause measurable and repeatable things to happen, whereas when it comes to the more airy fairy phenomena we simply cannot. But does that make it any less important?

I think not.

Furthermore this merely serves as yet more fodder for the age old argument as to what constitues science; the had sciences, or their soft bretheren (sometimes known as the social sciences for lack of a better term).

Therefore, like Lanier, I feel that there is nothing to fear, but for different reasons. And I look forward to the time when we are all joined in the reat melting pot of consciousness in the sky.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I can't help thinking that Philip K Dick would approve of this posting.
On the other hand, I shall not worry about machines taking over until one can make something as complex and efficient as a single thread of spider web.

Anonymous said...

I can't help thinking that Philip K Dick would approve of this posting.
On the other hand, I shall not worry about machines taking over until one can make something as complex and efficient as a single thread of spider web.

Old Bok said...

Or not, as the case may be.

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Anonymous said...

Where is the body in your vision of consciousness in the sky