From 23ac9f57b9b4c761cb8edc5bfa0c0de77ec89326 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Silvio Rhatto Date: Sat, 30 Sep 2017 14:06:22 -0300 Subject: Change extension to .md --- books/sociedade/youre-not-a-gadget.md | 402 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 402 insertions(+) create mode 100644 books/sociedade/youre-not-a-gadget.md (limited to 'books/sociedade/youre-not-a-gadget.md') diff --git a/books/sociedade/youre-not-a-gadget.md b/books/sociedade/youre-not-a-gadget.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..eac4d9b --- /dev/null +++ b/books/sociedade/youre-not-a-gadget.md @@ -0,0 +1,402 @@ +[[!meta title="You're not a Gadget"]] + +* Author: Jaron Lanier + +## 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 + of the Whole Earth Catalog, seems to have said it first. + + I say that information doesn’t deserve to be free. + + Cybernetic totalists love to think of the stuff as if it were alive and had its + own ideas and ambitions. But what if information is inanimate? What if it’s + even less than inanimate, a mere artifact of human thought? What if only humans + are real, and information is not? + + Of course, there is a technical use of the term “information” that refers to + something entirely real. This is the kind of information that’s related to + entropy. But that fundamental kind of information, which exists independently + of the culture of an observer, is not the same as the kind we can put in + computers, the kind that supposedly wants to be free. + + Information is alienated experience. + + You can think of culturally decodable information as a potential form of + experience, very much as you can think of a brick resting on a ledge as storing + potential energy. When the brick is prodded to fall, the energy is revealed. + That is only possible because it was lifted into place at some point in the + past. + + In the same way, stored information might cause experience to be revealed if it + is prodded in the right way. A file on a hard disk does indeed contain + information of the kind that objectively exists. The fact that the bits are + discernible instead of being scrambled into mush—the way heat scrambles + things—is what makes them bits. + + But if the bits can potentially mean something to someone, they can only do so + if they are experienced. When that happens, a commonality of culture is enacted + between the storer and the retriever of the bits. Experience is the only + process that can de-alienate information. + + Information of the kind that purportedly wants to be free is nothing but a + shadow of our own minds, and wants nothing on its own. It will not suffer if it + doesn’t get what it wants. + + But if you want to make the transition from the old religion, where you hope + God will give you an afterlife, to the new religion, where you hope to become + immortal by getting uploaded into a computer, then you have to believe + information is real and alive. So for you, it will be important to redesign + human institutions like art, the economy, and the law to reinforce the + perception that information is alive. You demand that the rest of us live in + your new conception of a state religion. You need us to deify information to + reinforce your faith. + +## The Apple Falls Again + + It’s a mistake with a remarkable origin. Alan Turing articulated it, just + before his suicide. + + Turing’s suicide is a touchy subject in computer science circles. There’s an + aversion to talking about it much, because we don’t want our founding father to + seem like a tabloid celebrity, and we don’t want his memory trivialized by the + sensational aspects of his death. + + The legacy of Turing the mathematician rises above any possible sensationalism. + His contributions were supremely elegant and foundational. He gifted us with + wild leaps of invention, including much of the mathematical underpinnings of + digital computation. The highest award in computer science, our Nobel Prize, is + named in his honor. + + Turing the cultural figure must be acknowledged, however. The first thing to + understand is that he was one of the great heroes of World War II. He was the + first “cracker,” a person who uses computers to defeat an enemy’s security + measures. He applied one of the first computers to break a Nazi secret code, + called Enigma, which Nazi mathematicians had believed was unbreakable. Enigma + was decoded by the Nazis in the field using a mechanical device about the size + of a cigar box. Turing reconceived it as a pattern of bits that could be + analyzed in a computer, and cracked it wide open. Who knows what world we would + be living in today if Turing had not succeeded? + + The second thing to know about Turing is that he was gay at a time when it was + illegal to be gay. British authorities, thinking they were doing the most + compassionate thing, coerced him into a quack medical treatment that was + supposed to correct his homosexuality. It consisted, bizarrely, of massive + infusions of female hormones. + + In order to understand how someone could have come up with that plan, you have + to remember that before computers came along, the steam engine was a preferred + metaphor for understanding human nature. All that sexual pressure was building + up and causing the machine to malfunction, so the opposite essence, the female + kind, ought to balance it out and reduce the pressure. This story should serve + as a cautionary tale. The common use of computers, as we understand them today, + as sources for models and metaphors of ourselves is probably about as reliable + as the use of the steam engine was back then. + + Turing developed breasts and other female characteristics and became terribly + depressed. He committed suicide by lacing an apple with cyanide in his lab and + eating it. Shortly before his death, he presented the world with a spiritual + idea, which must be evaluated separately from his technical achievements. This + is the famous Turing test. It is extremely rare for a genuinely new spiritual + idea to appear, and it is yet another example of Turing’s genius that he came + up with one. + + Turing presented his new offering in the form of a thought experiment, based on + a popular Victorian parlor game. A man and a woman hide, and a judge is asked + to determine which is which by relying only on the texts of notes passed back + and forth. + + Turing replaced the woman with a computer. Can the judge tell which is the man? + If not, is the computer conscious? Intelligent? Does it deserve equal rights? + + It’s impossible for us to know what role the torture Turing was enduring at the + time played in his formulation of the test. But it is undeniable that one of + the key figures in the defeat of fascism was destroyed, by our side, after the + war, because he was gay. No wonder his imagination pondered the rights of + strange creatures. + + When Turing died, software was still in such an early state that no one knew + what a mess it would inevitably become as it grew. Turing imagined a pristine, + crystalline form of existence in the digital realm, and I can imagine it might + have been a comfort to imagine a form of life apart from the torments of the + body and the politics of sexuality. It’s notable that it is the woman who is + replaced by the computer, and that Turing’s suicide echoes Eve’s fall. + + [...] + + But the Turing test cuts both ways. You can’t tell if a machine has gotten + smarter or if you’ve just lowered your own standards of intelligence to such a + degree that the machine seems smart. If you can have a conversation with a + simulated person presented by an AI program, can you tell how far you’ve let + your sense of personhood degrade in order to make the illusion work for you? + + People degrade themselves in order to make machines seem smart all the time. + Before the crash, bankers believed in supposedly intelligent algorithms that + could calculate credit risks before making bad loans. We ask teachers to teach + to standardized tests so a student will look good to an algorithm. We have + repeatedly demonstrated our species’ bottomless ability to lower our standards + to make information technology look good. Every instance of intelligence in a + machine is ambiguous. + + [...] + + Wikipedia, for instance, works on what I call the Oracle illusion, in which + knowledge of the human authorship of a text is suppressed in order to give the + text superhuman validity. Traditional holy books work in precisely the same way + and present many of the same problems. + + [...] + + Or it might turn out that a distinction will forever be based on principles we + cannot manipulate. This might involve types of computation that are unique to + the physical brain, maybe relying on forms of causation that depend on + remarkable and nonreplicable physical conditions. Or it might involve software + that could only be created by the long-term work of evolution, which cannot be + 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. -- cgit v1.2.3