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 [[!meta title="Four Futures: Life After Capitalism"]]
 
+* Author: Peter Frase
+* Year: 2016
+* Publisher: Verso / Jacobin
+
 ## Trechos
 
     Fictional futures are, in my view, preferable to those works of
diff --git a/books/sociedade/youre-not-a-gadget.mdwn b/books/sociedade/youre-not-a-gadget.mdwn
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 [[!meta title="You're not a Gadget"]]
 
+## Concepts
+
+* Technological lock-ins.
+* Cybernetic totalists versus humanistic technologies.
+* Circle of empaty.
+* Computationalism.
+* Value of personhood contrasted to "the hive".
+* Neoteny and it's contradictory qualities in culture.
+* Cephalopods + Childhood = Humans + Virtual Reality.
+* There's an underlying discussion between individual versus collective. Does creativity is just individual? He seems to view the polarization as a obligation to choose sides.
+
 ## Information Doesn’t Deserve to Be Free
 
     “Information wants to be free.” So goes the saying. Stewart Brand, the founder
@@ -153,3 +164,237 @@
     reverse-engineered or mucked with in any accessible way. Or it might even
     involve the prospect, dreaded by some, of dualism, a reality for consciousness
     as apart from mechanism.
+
+## Wikified Biology
+
+    Dyson equates the beginnings of life on Earth with the Eden of Linux. Back when
+    life first took hold, genes flowed around freely; genetic sequences skipped
+    from organism to organism in much the way they may soon be able to on the
+    internet. In his article, Freeman derides the first organism that hoarded its
+    genes behind a protective membrane as “evil,” just like the nemesis of the
+    open-software movement, Bill Gates.
+
+    Once organisms became encapsulated, they isolated themselves into distinct
+    species, trading genes only with others of their kind. Freeman suggests that
+    the coming era of synthetic biology will be a return to Eden.
+
+    I suppose amateurs, robots, and an aggregation of amateurs and robots might
+    someday hack genes in the global garage and tweet DNA sequences around the
+    globe at light speed. Or there might be a slightly more sober process that
+    takes place between institutions like high schools and start-up companies.
+
+    However it happens, species boundaries will become defunct, and genes will fly
+    about, resulting in an orgy of creativity. Untraceable multitudes of new
+    biological organisms will appear as frequently as new videos do on YouTube
+    today.
+
+    One common response to suggestions that this might happen is fear. After all,
+    it might take only one doomsday virus produced in one garage to bring the
+    entire human story to a close. I will not focus directly on that concern, but,
+    instead, on whether the proposed style of openness would even bring about the
+    creation of innovative creatures.
+
+    The alternative to wide-open development is not necessarily evil. My guess is
+    that a poorly encapsulated communal gloop of organisms lost out to closely
+    guarded species on the primordial Earth for the same reason that the Linux
+    community didn’t come up with the iPhone: encapsulation serves a purpose.
+
+    [...]
+
+    Wikipedia has already been elevated into what might be a permanent niche. It
+    might become stuck as a fixture, like MIDI or the Google ad exchange services.
+    That makes it important to be aware of what you might be missing. Even in a
+    case in which there is an objective truth that is already known, such as a
+    mathematical proof, Wikipedia distracts the potential for learning how to bring
+    it into the conversation in new ways. Individual voice—the opposite of
+    wikiness—might not matter to mathematical truth, but it is the core of
+    mathematical communication.
+
+## The Culture of Computationalism
+
+    For lack of a better word, I call it computationalism. This term is usually
+    used more narrowly to describe a philosophy of mind, but I’ll extend it to
+    include something like a culture. A first pass at a summary of the underlying
+    philosophy is that the world can be understood as a computational process, with
+    people as subprocesses.
+
+    [...]
+
+    In a scientific role, I don’t recoil from the idea that the brain is a kind of
+    computer, but there is more than one way to use computation as a source of
+    models for human beings. I’ll discuss three common flavors of computationalism
+    and then describe a fourth flavor, the one that I prefer. Each flavor can be
+    distinguished by a different idea about what would be needed to make software
+    as we generally know it become more like a person.
+
+    One flavor is based on the idea that a sufficiently voluminous computation will
+    take on the qualities we associate with people—such as, perhaps, consciousness.
+    One might claim Moore’s law is inexorably leading to superbrains, superbeings,
+    and, perhaps, ultimately, some kind of global or even cosmic consciousness. If
+    this language sounds extreme, be aware that this is the sort of rhetoric you
+    can find in the world of Singularity enthusiasts and extropians.
+
+    [...]
+
+    A second flavor of computationalism holds that a computer program with specific
+    design features—usually related to self-representation and circular
+    references—is similar to a person. Some of the figures associated with this
+    approach are Daniel Dennett and Douglas Hofstadter, though each has his own
+    ideas about what the special features should be.
+
+    Hofstadter suggests that software that includes a “strange loop” bears a
+    resemblance to consciousness. In a strange loop, things are nested within
+    things in such a way that an inner thing is the same as an outer thing.
+
+    [...]
+
+    A third flavor of computationalism is found in web 2.0 circles. In this case,
+    any information structure that can be perceived by some real human to also be a
+    person is a person. This idea is essentially a revival of the Turing test. If
+    you can perceive the hive mind to be recommending music to you, for instance,
+    then the hive is effectively a person.
+
+    [...]
+
+    The approach to thinking about people computationally that I prefer, on those
+    occasions when such thinking seems appropriate to me, is what I’ll call
+    “realism.” The idea is that humans, considered as information systems, weren’t
+    designed yesterday, and are not the abstract playthings of some higher being,
+    such as a web 2.0 programmer in the sky or a cosmic Spore player. Instead, I
+    believe humans are the result of billions of years of implicit, evolutionary
+    study in the school of hard knocks. The cybernetic structure of a person has
+    been refined by a very large, very long, and very deep encounter with physical
+    reality.
+
+### From Images to Odors
+
+    For twenty years or so I gave a lecture introducing the fundamentals of virtual
+    reality. I’d review the basics of vision and hearing as well as of touch and
+    taste. At the end, the questions would begin, and one of the first ones was
+    usually about smell: Will we have smells in virtual reality machines anytime
+    soon?
+
+    Maybe, but probably just a few. Odors are fundamentally different from images
+    or sounds. The latter can be broken down into primary components that are
+    relatively straightforward for computers—and the brain—to process. The visible
+    colors are merely words for different wavelengths of light. Every sound wave is
+    actually composed of numerous sine waves, each of which can be easily described
+    mathematically.
+
+    [...]
+
+    Odors are completely different, as is the brain’s method of sensing them. Deep
+    in the nasal passage, shrouded by a mucous membrane, sits a patch of tissue—the
+    olfactory epithelium—studded with neurons that detect chemicals. Each of these
+    neurons has cup-shaped proteins called olfactory receptors. When a particular
+    molecule happens to fall into a matching receptor, a neural signal is triggered
+    that is transmitted to the brain as an odor. A molecule too large to fit into
+    one of the receptors has no odor. The number of distinct odors is limited only
+    by the number of olfactory receptors capable of interacting with them. Linda
+    Buck of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and Richard Axel of Columbia
+    University, winners of the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, have
+    found that the human nose contains about one thousand different types of
+    olfactory neurons, each type able to detect a particular set of chemicals.
+
+    This adds up to a profound difference in the underlying structure of the
+    senses—a difference that gives rise to compelling questions about the way we
+    think, and perhaps even about the origins of language. There is no way to
+    interpolate between two smell molecules. True, odors can be mixed together to
+    form millions of scents. But the world’s smells can’t be broken down into just
+    a few numbers on a gradient; there is no “smell pixel.” Think of it this way:
+    colors and sounds can be measured with rulers, but odors must be looked up in a
+    dictionary.
+
+    [...]
+
+    To solve the problem of olfaction—that is, to make the complex world of smells
+    quickly identifiable—brains had to have evolved a specific type of neural
+    circuitry, Jim believes. That circuitry, he hypothesizes, formed the basis for
+    the cerebral cortex—the largest part of our brain, and perhaps the most
+    critical in shaping the way we think. For this reason, Jim has proposed that
+    the way we think is fundamentally based in the olfactory.
+
+    [...]
+
+    He often refers to the olfactory parts of the brain as the “Old Factory,” as
+    they are remarkably similar across species, which suggests that the structure
+    has ancient origins.
+
+## Editing Is Sexy; Creativity Is Natural
+
+    These experiments in linguistic variety could also inspire a better
+    understanding of how language came about in the first place. One of Charles
+    Darwin’s most compelling evolutionary speculations was that music might have
+    preceded language. He was intrigued by the fact that many species use song for
+    sexual display and wondered if human vocalizations might have started out that
+    way too. It might follow, then, that vocalizations could have become varied and
+    complex only later, perhaps when song came to represent actions beyond mating
+    and such basics of survival.
+
+    [...]
+
+    Terry offered an unconventional solution to the mystery of Bengalese finch
+    musicality. What if there are certain traits, including song style, that
+    naturally tend to become less constrained from generation to generation but are
+    normally held in check by selection pressures? If the pressures go away,
+    variation should increase rapidly. Terry suggested that the finches developed a
+    wider song variety not because it provided an advantage but merely because in
+    captivity it became possible.
+
+    In the wild, songs probably had to be rigid in order for mates to find each
+    other. Birds born with a genetic predilection for musical innovation most
+    likely would have had trouble mating. Once finches experienced the luxury of
+    assured mating (provided they were visually attractive), their song variety
+    exploded.
+
+    Brian Ritchie and Simon Kirby of the University of Edinburgh worked with Terry
+    to simulate bird evolution in a computer model, and the idea worked well, at
+    least in a virtual world. Here is yet another example of how science becomes
+    more like storytelling as engineering becomes able to represent some of the
+    machinery of formerly subjective human activities.
+
+## Metaphors
+
+    One reason the metaphor of the sun fascinates me is that it bears on a conflict
+    that has been at the heart of information science since its inception: Can
+    meaning be described compactly and precisely, or is it something that can
+    emerge only in approximate form based on statistical associations between large
+    numbers of components?
+
+    Mathematical expressions are compact and precise, and most early computer
+    scientists assumed that at least part of language ought to display those
+    qualities too.
+
+## Future Humors
+
+    Unfortunately, we don’t have access at this time to a single philosophy that
+    makes sense for all purposes, and we might never find one. Treating people as
+    nothing other than parts of nature is an uninspired basis for designing
+    technologies that embody human aspirations. The inverse error is just as
+    misguided: it’s a mistake to treat nature as a person. That is the error that
+    yields confusions like intelligent design.
+
+    [...]
+
+    Those who enter into the theater of computationalism are given all the mental
+    solace that is usually associated with traditional religions. These include
+    consolations for metaphysical yearnings, in the form of the race to climb to
+    ever more “meta” or higher-level states of digital representation, and even a
+    colorful eschatology, in the form of the Singularity. And, indeed, through the
+    Singularity a hope of an afterlife is available to the most fervent believers.
+
+## My Brush with Bachelardian Neoteny in the Most Interesting Room in the World
+
+    But actually, because of homuncular flexibility, any part of reality might just
+    as well be a part of your body if you happen to hook up the software elements
+    so that your brain can control it easily. Maybe if you wiggle your toes, the
+    clouds in the sky will wiggle too. Then the clouds would start to feel like
+    part of your body. All the items of experience become more fungible than in the
+    physical world. And this leads to the revelatory experience.
+
+## Final Words
+
+    For me, the prospect of an entirely different notion of communication is more
+    thrilling than a construction like the Singularity. Any gadget, even a big one
+    like the Singularity, gets boring after a while. But a deepening of meaning is
+    the most intense potential kind of adventure available to us.