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18 Oct 09

“NET EFFECT: It’s not too late for humanity to survive the digital” by Douglas Rushkoff - ARTHUR MAGAZINE – WE FOUND THE OTHERS

  • The Axial Age invention of the 22-letter alphabet did not lead to a society of literate Israelite readers, but a society of hearers, who would gather in the town square to listen to the Torah scroll read to them by a rabbi. Yes, it was better than being ignorant slaves, but it was a result far short of the medium’s real potential. Likewise, the invention of the printing press in the Renaissance led not to a society of writers, but one of readers; the presses were reserved for those with access.
  • Computers and networks finally offer us the ability to write. And we do write with them. But the underlying capability of the computer era is actually programming—which almost none of us really knows how to do. We simply use the programs that have been made for us, and enter our blog text in the appropriate box on the screen.
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10 Aug 09

TECHNOREALISM

In this heady age of rapid technological change, we all struggle to maintain our bearings. The developments that unfold each day in communications and computing can be thrilling and disorienting. One understandable reaction is to wonder: Are these changes good or bad? Should we welcome or fear them?

www.technorealism.org - Preview

technology philosophy culture

22 Jul 09

Deuzeblog: Interview with Zygmunt Bauman (Part II)

  • Can the internet be an answer? Paul Virilio says that currently the ‘information bomb’ is potentially a threat to humanity much more disastrous than even the nuclear bomb… It’s waiting to explode. It’s already ‘exploding’: the dream of ‘complete knowledge’ turning unrealistic, we are doomed to ‘surf’ having no time to dig into anything in depth.
  • Internet seems to be as well a good tool for bringing together like-minded people and separating them from other-minding people – but what about making words into flesh?
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Deuzeblog: Interview with Zygmunt Bauman (Part I)

  • Theorizing of internet as the new and improved form of politics, of world- wide-web surfing as a new and more effective form of political engagement, and of the accelerated connection to the internet and rising speed of surfing as advances in democracy, look suspiciously as so many glosses on the ever more common life practices of the knowledge-class, and above all on their keen concern with an honorable discharge from the ‘politics of the real’. All the more resounding for that reason is Jodi Dean’s blunt verdict that the present day communication technologies are profoundly depoliticizing, that communication functions fetishistically today, that the technological fetish is ‘political’. It lets us think that all we need is to universalize a particular technology and then we will have a democratic or reconciled social order.

    Reality stands in stark opposition to its sanguine and cheerful portrait painted by the ‘communication fetishists’. The powerful flow of information is not a confluent of the river of democracy, but an insatiable intake intercepting its contents and channeling them away into magnificently huge, yet stale and stagnant artificial lakes. The more powerful that flow is, the greater the threat of the river bed drying up."
16 Jul 09

The Technium: The Choice of Cities

  • That's how it works. Over time slums gain permanency. Ad hoc shelters are upgraded, infrastructure extended, and makeshift services become official. What was once the home of poor hustlers becomes, over the span of generations, the home of rich hustlers. Propagating slums is what cities do, and living in slums is how cities grow. The majority of neighborhoods in almost every modern city are merely successful former slums. The squatter cities of today will become the blue-blood neighborhoods of tomorrow.
  • The city as a whole is a wonderful technological invention which concentrates the flow of energy and minds into computer chip-like density. In a relatively small footprint, a city not only provides living quarters and occupations in a minimum of space, but a city also generates a maximum of ideas and inventions.
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27 May 09

Spiritual Machines - KurtzweilAI

A collection of essays on the subject of whether machines can be conscious, by leading thinkers

www.kurzweilai.net/...frame.html - Preview

mind consciousness AI philosophy technology

12 Nov 08

Kevin Kelly -- The Pro-Actionary Principle

The Pro-Actionary Principle

www.kk.org/...the_pro-actiona.php - Preview

technology

  • When a technology is first cautiously tested  soon after its birth only its primary effects are being examined. But in most cases it is the unintended second-order effects of technologies that are usually the root of most problems. Second order effects often require a certain density, a semi-ubiquity, to reveal themselves. The main concern of the first automobiles was for the occupants -- that the gas engines didn’t blow up, or that the brakes don’t fail. But the real threat of autos was to society en masse -- the accumulated exposure to their minute pollutants and ability to kill others at high speeds, not to mention the disruptions of suburbs, and long commutes – all second order effects.
  • Second order effects – the ones that usually overtake society – are rarely captured by forecasts, lab experiments, or white papers. Science fiction guru Arthur C. Clarke made the observation that in the age of horses many ordinary people eagerly imagined a horseless carriage. The automobile was an obvious anticipation since it was an extension of the first order dynamics of a carriage –  a vehicle that goes forward by itself. An automobile would do everything a horse-pulled carriage did but without the horse. But Clarke went on to notice how difficult it was to imagine the second-order consequences of a horseless carriage, such as drive-in movies theaters, paralyzing traffic jams and road rage.
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Max More - THE PROACTIONARY PRINCIPLE

People’s freedom to innovate technologically is highly valuable, even critical, to humanity. This implies a range of responsibilities for those considering whether and how to develop, deploy, or restrict new technologies. Assess risks and opportunities using an objective, open, and comprehensive, yet simple decision process based on science rather than collective emotional reactions. Account for the costs of restrictions and lost opportunities as fully as direct effects. Favor measures that are proportionate to the probability and magnitude of impacts, and that have the highest payoff relative to their costs. Give a high priority to people’s freedom to learn, innovate, and advance.

www.maxmore.com/proactionary.htm - Preview

technology

10 Nov 08

Becoming More Than Human: Technology and the Post-Human Condition -- Introduction

  • Cyberspace and the Internet, in
    particular, have been hailed as signalling the emergence of new conceptions of
    identity. There is widespread agreement that the Internet has produced new
    social settings and re-structured communication patterns and perceptions of
    space. Some have even paralleled its influence on social behavior to
    architectural changes and the effects of migration and urbanization (Meyerowitz
    1985). At the same time, there is an increasing concern by others that such
    non-physical spaces encourage escapism, addictive behavior and emotional isolation.
    MIT media theorist Sherry Turkle represents this view when she says that “for
    those who are lonely yet afraid of intimacy, information technology has made it
    possible to have the illusion of companionship without the demands of
    friendship” (Turkle, 2004, n.p.).
09 Nov 08

How To Build The Global Mind | Twine

  • In my own view, consciousness is probably fundamental to the substrate of the universe, like space, time and energy. We really don't know what space, time and energy really are. We cannot actually measure them directly either. All our measurements of space, time and energy are indirect -- we measure other things that imply that space, time and energy exist. Space, time and energy are inferred by effects we observe on material things that we can measure. I think the same may be true of consciousness. So the question is, what are the measureable effects of consciousness? Well one candidate seems to be the Double Slit experiment, which shows that the act of observation causes the quantum wave function to collapse. Are there other effects we can cite as evidence of consciousness?
  • I have recently been wondering how connected consciousness is to the substrate of the universe we are in. If consciousness is a property of the substrate, then it may be impossible to synthesize. For example, we never synthesize space, time or energy -- no matter what we do, we are simply using the space, time and energy of the substrate that is this universe.
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