From b6c0ffcaf707ee1968a7f29021d20357692a84d0 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Silvio Rhatto Date: Tue, 7 Aug 2018 10:05:58 -0300 Subject: Reorganization --- books/sociedade/youre-not-a-gadget.md | 402 ---------------------------------- 1 file changed, 402 deletions(-) delete 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 deleted file mode 100644 index eac4d9b..0000000 --- a/books/sociedade/youre-not-a-gadget.md +++ /dev/null @@ -1,402 +0,0 @@ -[[!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