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/ends-of-sleep.md | 9 + books/sociedade/ends-of-sleep.mdwn | 9 - books/sociedade/ilha.md | 16 + books/sociedade/ilha.mdwn | 16 - books/sociedade/jogos-homens.md | 173 +++++++ books/sociedade/jogos-homens.mdwn | 173 ------- books/sociedade/post-scarcity.md | 111 ++++ books/sociedade/post-scarcity.mdwn | 111 ---- books/sociedade/preguica.md | 165 ++++++ books/sociedade/preguica.mdwn | 165 ------ books/sociedade/segundo-sexo.md | 27 + books/sociedade/segundo-sexo.mdwn | 27 - books/sociedade/sociedade-contra-o-estado.md | 22 + books/sociedade/sociedade-contra-o-estado.mdwn | 22 - books/sociedade/spaceship.md | 26 + books/sociedade/spaceship.mdwn | 26 - books/sociedade/tolice.md | 138 +++++ books/sociedade/tolice.mdwn | 138 ----- books/sociedade/who-owns-the-future.md | 673 +++++++++++++++++++++++++ books/sociedade/who-owns-the-future.mdwn | 673 ------------------------- books/sociedade/youre-not-a-gadget.md | 402 +++++++++++++++ books/sociedade/youre-not-a-gadget.mdwn | 402 --------------- 22 files changed, 1762 insertions(+), 1762 deletions(-) create mode 100644 books/sociedade/ends-of-sleep.md delete mode 100644 books/sociedade/ends-of-sleep.mdwn create mode 100644 books/sociedade/ilha.md delete mode 100644 books/sociedade/ilha.mdwn create mode 100644 books/sociedade/jogos-homens.md delete mode 100644 books/sociedade/jogos-homens.mdwn create mode 100644 books/sociedade/post-scarcity.md delete mode 100644 books/sociedade/post-scarcity.mdwn create mode 100644 books/sociedade/preguica.md delete mode 100644 books/sociedade/preguica.mdwn create mode 100644 books/sociedade/segundo-sexo.md delete mode 100644 books/sociedade/segundo-sexo.mdwn create mode 100644 books/sociedade/sociedade-contra-o-estado.md delete mode 100644 books/sociedade/sociedade-contra-o-estado.mdwn create mode 100644 books/sociedade/spaceship.md delete mode 100644 books/sociedade/spaceship.mdwn create mode 100644 books/sociedade/tolice.md delete mode 100644 books/sociedade/tolice.mdwn create mode 100644 books/sociedade/who-owns-the-future.md delete mode 100644 books/sociedade/who-owns-the-future.mdwn create mode 100644 books/sociedade/youre-not-a-gadget.md delete mode 100644 books/sociedade/youre-not-a-gadget.mdwn (limited to 'books/sociedade') diff --git a/books/sociedade/ends-of-sleep.md b/books/sociedade/ends-of-sleep.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1e2152f --- /dev/null +++ b/books/sociedade/ends-of-sleep.md @@ -0,0 +1,9 @@ +[[!meta title="24/7 - Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep"]] + +* Author: Jonathan Crary +* Publisher: Verso +* Year: 2013 + +## Concepts + +* Serialization, from Jean-Paul Sartre’s Critique of Dialectical Reason. diff --git a/books/sociedade/ends-of-sleep.mdwn b/books/sociedade/ends-of-sleep.mdwn deleted file mode 100644 index 1e2152f..0000000 --- a/books/sociedade/ends-of-sleep.mdwn +++ /dev/null @@ -1,9 +0,0 @@ -[[!meta title="24/7 - Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep"]] - -* Author: Jonathan Crary -* Publisher: Verso -* Year: 2013 - -## Concepts - -* Serialization, from Jean-Paul Sartre’s Critique of Dialectical Reason. diff --git a/books/sociedade/ilha.md b/books/sociedade/ilha.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ecf2186 --- /dev/null +++ b/books/sociedade/ilha.md @@ -0,0 +1,16 @@ +[[!meta title="A Ilha"]] + +A Ilha, de Fernando Morais, 30a edição. + +## Depoimento de Julio Martinez Paes + + Santiago de Cuba tinha coisas curiosas. Frank País, por exemplo, + estava sendo procurado, não podia andar pelas ruas. Mas podia falar + pelo telefone sem medo de censura, porque todas as telefonistas da + cidade eram militantes do Movimento 26 de Julho. Não só podíamos + falar à vontade como até tínhamos acesso a conversações oficiais. + Quando uma telefonista recebia uma ligação oficial, dava um jeito + de colocar um de nós na extensão, para que soubéssemos com antecedência + de muitos planos da ditadura. + +-- pág. 209 diff --git a/books/sociedade/ilha.mdwn b/books/sociedade/ilha.mdwn deleted file mode 100644 index ecf2186..0000000 --- a/books/sociedade/ilha.mdwn +++ /dev/null @@ -1,16 +0,0 @@ -[[!meta title="A Ilha"]] - -A Ilha, de Fernando Morais, 30a edição. - -## Depoimento de Julio Martinez Paes - - Santiago de Cuba tinha coisas curiosas. Frank País, por exemplo, - estava sendo procurado, não podia andar pelas ruas. Mas podia falar - pelo telefone sem medo de censura, porque todas as telefonistas da - cidade eram militantes do Movimento 26 de Julho. Não só podíamos - falar à vontade como até tínhamos acesso a conversações oficiais. - Quando uma telefonista recebia uma ligação oficial, dava um jeito - de colocar um de nós na extensão, para que soubéssemos com antecedência - de muitos planos da ditadura. - --- pág. 209 diff --git a/books/sociedade/jogos-homens.md b/books/sociedade/jogos-homens.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6166e6a --- /dev/null +++ b/books/sociedade/jogos-homens.md @@ -0,0 +1,173 @@ +[[!meta title="Os Jogos e os Homens"]] + +A máscara e a vertigem + +## Referências + +* [O universo lúdico proposto por Caillois](http://www.efdeportes.com/efd127/o-universo-ludico-proposto-por-caillois.htm). +* [Man, Play and Games - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man,_Play_and_Games). + +## Meta + +* Author: [Roger Caillois](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Caillois). +* Editora: Cotovia +* Ano: 1990 +* ISBN: 972-9013-28-4 +* Tradução: José Garcez Palha + +Original: + +* Editora: Gallimard +* Ano: 1958 + +## Índice + +* Regras versus sem regras (jogos de imitação por exemplo), 28. + +* Regras das regras: jogos como atividades: 1. livres; 2; delimitadas; 3. + incertas; 4. improdutivas; 5.regulamentadas; 6. fictícias (págs 29-30). + +* Jogos e animais: 35, 40; alea aparece apenas no humano (38). + +## Básico + + Esta noção de totalidade fechada, completa e imutável de início, concebida para + funcionar sem outra intervenção externa que não seja a energia que lhe dá o + movimento, constitui decerto uma preciosa inovação um mundo essencialmente em + mudança, cujos dados são praticamente infinitos e, por outro lado, se + transforma sem cessar. + + -- 10 + + O termo <> combina, então, em si as ideias de limites, liberdade e + invenção. Num registro próximo, exprime uma notável combinação onde se lêem + conjuntamente os conceitos de sorte e de destreza, dos recursos recebidos do + azar ou da sorte e da mais ou menos arguta inteligência que as põe em prática e + que trata de tirar delas o máximo proveito. Expressões como _ter bom jogo_ + correspondem ao primeito dos sentidos, outras como _jogar pelo seguro_ ou + mostrar o jogo ou, inversamente, _dissimulr o jogo_, referem-se + inextricavelmente a ambos: vantagens à partida e um delinear astuto duma + sapiente estratégia. + + O conceito de risco vem imediatamente complicar os dados já de si confusos: + a avaliação dos recursos disponíveis e o cálculo das eventualidades previstas + fazem-se de súbito acompanhar duma outra especulação, uma espécie de aposta + que supõe uma comparação entre o risco aceite e o resultado previsto. Daí + decorrem expressões como pôr em jogo, jogar forte, jogas as sobras, jogar a + sua carreira, jogar a sua vida, ou ainda a constatação de que sai mais cara + a mecha do que o sebo, ou seja, que o maior dos gahos que se possa esperar + do jogo será sempre inferor ao preço da luz que o ilumina. + + O _jogo_, aparece novamente como uma noção particularmente complexa que associa + um estado de facto, uma cartada favorável ou deplorável, onde o acaso e + soberano e onde o jogador recebe, por fortuna ou por desgraça, sem nada poder + fazer, a uma aptidão para tirar o melhor partido dos seus desiguais recursos. + Estes, delapidados pela negligência, só serão frutificados por um cálculo + sagaz, por uma escolha entre a prudência e a audácia que assim colabora com uma + segunda coordenada, isto é, em que medida o jogador se dispõe a apostar mais do + que lhe escapa do que naquilo que controla. + + Todo o jogo é um sistema de regras que definem o que é e o que não é do jogo, + ou seja, o permitido e o proibido. Estas convenções são simultaneamente + arbitrárias, imperativas e inapeláveis. + + -- 11 + + Finalmente a palavra _jogo_, apela para uma ideia de amplitude, de facilidade + de movimentos, uma liberdade útil mas não excessiva, quando se fala de _jogo_ + de uma engrenagem ou quando se diz que um navio _joga_ a sua âncora. Esta + amplitude torna possível uma indispensável mobilidade. É o jogo que subsiste + entre os diversos elementos que permite o funcionamento de um mecanismo. Por + outro lado, esse jogo não deve ser exagerado pos a máquina enlouqueceria. Desta + feita, este espaço cuidadosamente contado impede o bloqueio e o desajusta. + _Jogo_ significa, portanto, a liberdade que deve permanecer no seio do próprio + rigor, para que este último adquira ou conserve a sua eficácia. Além do mais, + todo o mecanismo pode ser considerado como uma espécie de jogo numa outra + acepção do termo, que o dicionário precisa da seguinte forma: <> Uma máquina, de facto, é um + __puzzle__ de peças concebidas para se adaptarem umas às outras e para + funcionar em harmonia. Mas, no interior deste jogo, todo ele exactidão, + intervém, dando-lhe vida, um jogo de outro tipo. O primeiro é combinação + exacta, relojoaria perfeita, o segundo é elasticidade e margem de movimentos. + + -- 12 + + São estas as variadas e ricas acepções que mostram em que medida, não o jogo em + si, mas as disposições psicológicas que ele traduz e fomenta, podem + efecivamente constituir importantes factores civilizacionais. Globalmente, + estes diferentes sentidos implicam noções de totalidade, regra e liberdade. Um + deles associa a existência de limites à faculdade de inventar dentro desses + limites. Um outro inicia-se entre os recursos herdados da sorte e a arte de + alcançar a vitória, socorrendo-se apenas dos recursos íntimos, inalienáveis, + que dependem exclusivamente do zelo e da obstinação individual. Um terceiro + opõe o cálculo e o risco. Um outro ainda convida a conceber leis imperiosas e + simultaneamente sem outra sanção para além da sua própria destruição, ou + preconiza a conveiência e manter alguma lacuna ou disponibilidade no seio da + mais rigorosa das economias. + + Há casos em que os limites se esfumam, em que a regra se dissolve e há outros + em que, pelo contrario, a librdade e a invenção estão prestes a desaparecer. + Mas o jogo significa que os dois pólos subsistem e que há uma relação que se + mantém entre um e outro. Propõe e difunde estruturas abstractas, imagens de + locais fechados e reservados, onde podem ser levadas a cabo concorrências + ideais. Essas estruturas, essas concorrências são, igualmente, modelos para as + instituições e para os comportamentos individuais. Não são segura e + directamente aplicáveis a um real sempre problemático, equívoco, emaranhado e + variado onde os interesses e as paixões não se deixam facilmente dominar mas + onde a violência e a traição são moeda corrente. Contudo, os modelos sugeridos + pelos jogos constituem também antecipações do universo regrado que deverá + substituir a anarquia natural. + + -- 12-13 + +## Azar e a matemática + + Os jogos de competição conduzem ao desporto, os jogos de imitação e de ilusão + prefiguram as religiões do espectáculo. Os jogos de azar e de cominação + estiveram na origem de vários desenvolvimentos das matemáticas, do cálculo de + probabilidades à topologia. + + -- 15 + +## Das regras + + As emaranhadas e confusas leis da vida diária são substituídas, nesse espaço + definido e durante esse tempo determinado, por regras precisas, arbitrárias, + irrecusáveis, que têm de se aceitar como tais e que presidem ao correcto + desenrolar da partida. Se o trapaceiro as viola, pelo menos finge + respeitá-las. Não as discute: abusa da lealdade dos outros jogadores. Sob este + ponto de vista, temos de estar de acordo com os autores que sublinharam que a + desonestidade do trapaceiro não destrói o jogo. O que o destrói é o pessimista + que denuncia o carácter absurdo das leis, a sua natureza meramente + convencional, e que se recusa a jogar porque o jogo não tem sentido. Os seus + argumentos são irrefutáveis. O jogo não tem outro sentido senão enquanto jogo. + É precisamente por isso que as suas regras são imperiosas e absolutas, + transcendendo toda e qualquer discussão. Não há nenhuma razão para que elas + sejam desta e não doutra forma. Quem não as admitir de acordo com esta + perspectiva tem necessariamente de as considerar uma manifesta extravagância. + + -- 27 + +## Desfecho + + A dúvida acerca do resultado deve permanecer até o fim. Quando, numa partida de + cartas, o resultado já não oferece dúvida, não se joga mais, os jogaores põem + suas cartas na mesa. Na lotaria e na rolea, aposta-se num número que pode sair + ou não. Numa prova desportiva, as forças dos campeões devem ser equilibradas + para que cada um possa defender a sua oportunidade até ao fim. Por definição, + os jogos de habilidade envolvem, para o jogador, o risco de falhar a jogada, + uma ameaça de derrota, sem que o jogo deixaria de divertir, como acontece a + quem, por excesso de treino ou de habilidade, ganha sem esforço e + infalivelmente. + + Um desfecho conhecido __a priori__, sem possibilidade de erro ou de + surpresa, conduzindo claramente a um resultado inelutável, é incompatível com a + natureza do jogo. É necessária uma renovação constante e imprevisível da + situação, como a que se produz ao atacar e ao ripostar, no caso da esgrima ou + do futebol, a cada mudança de bola, no ténis ou ainda no zadrez de cada vez que + um dos adversários altera uma peça. O jogo consiste na necessidade de enconrar, + de inventar imediatamente uma resposta _que é livre dentro dos limites das + regras_. Essa liberdade de acção do jogador, essa margem concedida à acção, é + essencial ao jogo e explica, em parte, o prazer que ele suscita. + + -- 27-28 diff --git a/books/sociedade/jogos-homens.mdwn b/books/sociedade/jogos-homens.mdwn deleted file mode 100644 index 6166e6a..0000000 --- a/books/sociedade/jogos-homens.mdwn +++ /dev/null @@ -1,173 +0,0 @@ -[[!meta title="Os Jogos e os Homens"]] - -A máscara e a vertigem - -## Referências - -* [O universo lúdico proposto por Caillois](http://www.efdeportes.com/efd127/o-universo-ludico-proposto-por-caillois.htm). -* [Man, Play and Games - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man,_Play_and_Games). - -## Meta - -* Author: [Roger Caillois](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Caillois). -* Editora: Cotovia -* Ano: 1990 -* ISBN: 972-9013-28-4 -* Tradução: José Garcez Palha - -Original: - -* Editora: Gallimard -* Ano: 1958 - -## Índice - -* Regras versus sem regras (jogos de imitação por exemplo), 28. - -* Regras das regras: jogos como atividades: 1. livres; 2; delimitadas; 3. - incertas; 4. improdutivas; 5.regulamentadas; 6. fictícias (págs 29-30). - -* Jogos e animais: 35, 40; alea aparece apenas no humano (38). - -## Básico - - Esta noção de totalidade fechada, completa e imutável de início, concebida para - funcionar sem outra intervenção externa que não seja a energia que lhe dá o - movimento, constitui decerto uma preciosa inovação um mundo essencialmente em - mudança, cujos dados são praticamente infinitos e, por outro lado, se - transforma sem cessar. - - -- 10 - - O termo <> combina, então, em si as ideias de limites, liberdade e - invenção. Num registro próximo, exprime uma notável combinação onde se lêem - conjuntamente os conceitos de sorte e de destreza, dos recursos recebidos do - azar ou da sorte e da mais ou menos arguta inteligência que as põe em prática e - que trata de tirar delas o máximo proveito. Expressões como _ter bom jogo_ - correspondem ao primeito dos sentidos, outras como _jogar pelo seguro_ ou - mostrar o jogo ou, inversamente, _dissimulr o jogo_, referem-se - inextricavelmente a ambos: vantagens à partida e um delinear astuto duma - sapiente estratégia. - - O conceito de risco vem imediatamente complicar os dados já de si confusos: - a avaliação dos recursos disponíveis e o cálculo das eventualidades previstas - fazem-se de súbito acompanhar duma outra especulação, uma espécie de aposta - que supõe uma comparação entre o risco aceite e o resultado previsto. Daí - decorrem expressões como pôr em jogo, jogar forte, jogas as sobras, jogar a - sua carreira, jogar a sua vida, ou ainda a constatação de que sai mais cara - a mecha do que o sebo, ou seja, que o maior dos gahos que se possa esperar - do jogo será sempre inferor ao preço da luz que o ilumina. - - O _jogo_, aparece novamente como uma noção particularmente complexa que associa - um estado de facto, uma cartada favorável ou deplorável, onde o acaso e - soberano e onde o jogador recebe, por fortuna ou por desgraça, sem nada poder - fazer, a uma aptidão para tirar o melhor partido dos seus desiguais recursos. - Estes, delapidados pela negligência, só serão frutificados por um cálculo - sagaz, por uma escolha entre a prudência e a audácia que assim colabora com uma - segunda coordenada, isto é, em que medida o jogador se dispõe a apostar mais do - que lhe escapa do que naquilo que controla. - - Todo o jogo é um sistema de regras que definem o que é e o que não é do jogo, - ou seja, o permitido e o proibido. Estas convenções são simultaneamente - arbitrárias, imperativas e inapeláveis. - - -- 11 - - Finalmente a palavra _jogo_, apela para uma ideia de amplitude, de facilidade - de movimentos, uma liberdade útil mas não excessiva, quando se fala de _jogo_ - de uma engrenagem ou quando se diz que um navio _joga_ a sua âncora. Esta - amplitude torna possível uma indispensável mobilidade. É o jogo que subsiste - entre os diversos elementos que permite o funcionamento de um mecanismo. Por - outro lado, esse jogo não deve ser exagerado pos a máquina enlouqueceria. Desta - feita, este espaço cuidadosamente contado impede o bloqueio e o desajusta. - _Jogo_ significa, portanto, a liberdade que deve permanecer no seio do próprio - rigor, para que este último adquira ou conserve a sua eficácia. Além do mais, - todo o mecanismo pode ser considerado como uma espécie de jogo numa outra - acepção do termo, que o dicionário precisa da seguinte forma: <> Uma máquina, de facto, é um - __puzzle__ de peças concebidas para se adaptarem umas às outras e para - funcionar em harmonia. Mas, no interior deste jogo, todo ele exactidão, - intervém, dando-lhe vida, um jogo de outro tipo. O primeiro é combinação - exacta, relojoaria perfeita, o segundo é elasticidade e margem de movimentos. - - -- 12 - - São estas as variadas e ricas acepções que mostram em que medida, não o jogo em - si, mas as disposições psicológicas que ele traduz e fomenta, podem - efecivamente constituir importantes factores civilizacionais. Globalmente, - estes diferentes sentidos implicam noções de totalidade, regra e liberdade. Um - deles associa a existência de limites à faculdade de inventar dentro desses - limites. Um outro inicia-se entre os recursos herdados da sorte e a arte de - alcançar a vitória, socorrendo-se apenas dos recursos íntimos, inalienáveis, - que dependem exclusivamente do zelo e da obstinação individual. Um terceiro - opõe o cálculo e o risco. Um outro ainda convida a conceber leis imperiosas e - simultaneamente sem outra sanção para além da sua própria destruição, ou - preconiza a conveiência e manter alguma lacuna ou disponibilidade no seio da - mais rigorosa das economias. - - Há casos em que os limites se esfumam, em que a regra se dissolve e há outros - em que, pelo contrario, a librdade e a invenção estão prestes a desaparecer. - Mas o jogo significa que os dois pólos subsistem e que há uma relação que se - mantém entre um e outro. Propõe e difunde estruturas abstractas, imagens de - locais fechados e reservados, onde podem ser levadas a cabo concorrências - ideais. Essas estruturas, essas concorrências são, igualmente, modelos para as - instituições e para os comportamentos individuais. Não são segura e - directamente aplicáveis a um real sempre problemático, equívoco, emaranhado e - variado onde os interesses e as paixões não se deixam facilmente dominar mas - onde a violência e a traição são moeda corrente. Contudo, os modelos sugeridos - pelos jogos constituem também antecipações do universo regrado que deverá - substituir a anarquia natural. - - -- 12-13 - -## Azar e a matemática - - Os jogos de competição conduzem ao desporto, os jogos de imitação e de ilusão - prefiguram as religiões do espectáculo. Os jogos de azar e de cominação - estiveram na origem de vários desenvolvimentos das matemáticas, do cálculo de - probabilidades à topologia. - - -- 15 - -## Das regras - - As emaranhadas e confusas leis da vida diária são substituídas, nesse espaço - definido e durante esse tempo determinado, por regras precisas, arbitrárias, - irrecusáveis, que têm de se aceitar como tais e que presidem ao correcto - desenrolar da partida. Se o trapaceiro as viola, pelo menos finge - respeitá-las. Não as discute: abusa da lealdade dos outros jogadores. Sob este - ponto de vista, temos de estar de acordo com os autores que sublinharam que a - desonestidade do trapaceiro não destrói o jogo. O que o destrói é o pessimista - que denuncia o carácter absurdo das leis, a sua natureza meramente - convencional, e que se recusa a jogar porque o jogo não tem sentido. Os seus - argumentos são irrefutáveis. O jogo não tem outro sentido senão enquanto jogo. - É precisamente por isso que as suas regras são imperiosas e absolutas, - transcendendo toda e qualquer discussão. Não há nenhuma razão para que elas - sejam desta e não doutra forma. Quem não as admitir de acordo com esta - perspectiva tem necessariamente de as considerar uma manifesta extravagância. - - -- 27 - -## Desfecho - - A dúvida acerca do resultado deve permanecer até o fim. Quando, numa partida de - cartas, o resultado já não oferece dúvida, não se joga mais, os jogaores põem - suas cartas na mesa. Na lotaria e na rolea, aposta-se num número que pode sair - ou não. Numa prova desportiva, as forças dos campeões devem ser equilibradas - para que cada um possa defender a sua oportunidade até ao fim. Por definição, - os jogos de habilidade envolvem, para o jogador, o risco de falhar a jogada, - uma ameaça de derrota, sem que o jogo deixaria de divertir, como acontece a - quem, por excesso de treino ou de habilidade, ganha sem esforço e - infalivelmente. - - Um desfecho conhecido __a priori__, sem possibilidade de erro ou de - surpresa, conduzindo claramente a um resultado inelutável, é incompatível com a - natureza do jogo. É necessária uma renovação constante e imprevisível da - situação, como a que se produz ao atacar e ao ripostar, no caso da esgrima ou - do futebol, a cada mudança de bola, no ténis ou ainda no zadrez de cada vez que - um dos adversários altera uma peça. O jogo consiste na necessidade de enconrar, - de inventar imediatamente uma resposta _que é livre dentro dos limites das - regras_. Essa liberdade de acção do jogador, essa margem concedida à acção, é - essencial ao jogo e explica, em parte, o prazer que ele suscita. - - -- 27-28 diff --git a/books/sociedade/post-scarcity.md b/books/sociedade/post-scarcity.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4b1a1b0 --- /dev/null +++ b/books/sociedade/post-scarcity.md @@ -0,0 +1,111 @@ +[[!meta title="Post-Scarcity Anarchism"]] + +* Murray Bookchin. +* Working Classic Series. +* AK Press - 2004. + +## Towards a Liberatory Technology + + The year 1848 stands out as a turning point in the history of modern revolutions. + This was the year when Marxism made its debut as a distinct ideology in the pages + of de Communist Manifesto, and when the proletariat, represented by the Parisian + workers, made its debut as a distinct political force on the barricades of June. + It could also be said that 1948, a year close to the halfway mark of the nineteenth + century, represents the culmination of the traditional steam-powered technology + initiated by the Newcomen engine a century and a half earlier. + + -- 43 + + I have reviewed these technological developments because both their promise and + their limitations excercised a profound influence on nineteenth century revolutionary + thought. The innovations in textile and iron-making technology provided a new sense + of promise, indeed a new stimulus, to socialist and utopian thought. It seemed to the + revolutionary theorist that for the first time in history he could anchor his dream + of a liberatory society in the visible prospect of material abundance and increased + leisure for the mass of humanity. Socialism, the theorists argued, could be based + on self-interest rather than on man's dubious nobility of mind and spirit. Technological + innovation had transmuted the socialist ideal from a vague humanitarian hope into a + practical program. + + The newly acquired practicality compelled many socialist theorists, particularly Marx + and Engels, to grapple with the technological limitations of their time. They were faced + with a strategic issue: in all previous revolutions, technology had not yet developed to + a level where men could be freed from material want, toil and the struggle over the + necessities of life. However glowing and lofty were the revolutionary ideals of the past, + the vas majority of the people, burdened by material want, had to leave the stage + of history after the revolution, return to work, and deliver the management of society + to a new leisured class of exploiters. Indeed, any attempt to equalize the wealth of + society at a low level of technological development would not have eliminated want, but + would have merely made it into a general feature of society as a whole, thereby recreating + all the conditions for a new struggle over the material things of life, for new forms of + property, and eventually for a new system of class domination. + + [...] + + Virtually all the utopias, theories and revolutionary programs of the early nineteenth + century were faced with problems of necessity -- of how to allocate labor and material + goods at a relatively low level of technological development. + + [...] + + The fact that men would have to devote a substantial portion of their time to toil, + for which they would get scant returns, formed a major premise of all socialist ideology + -- authoritarian and liberarian, utopian and scientific, Marxist and anarchist. + Implicit in the Marxist notion of a planned economy was the fact, incontestably clear + in the Marx's day, that socialism would still be burdened by relatively scarce resources. + Men would have to plan -- in effect -- to restrict -- the distribution of goods and would + have to rationalize -- in effect, to intensify -- the use of labor. + + -- 44-45 + + The problem of dealing with want and work -- and age-old problem perpetuated by the early + Industrial Revolution -- produced the great divergence in revolutionary ideas between + socialism and anarchism. Freedom would still be circunscribed by necessity in the event + of a revolution. How was this world of necessity to be "administered"? How could the + allocation of goods and duties be decided? Marx left this decision to a state power, + a transitional "proletarian" state power, to be sure, but nevertheless a coercive body, + established above society. According to Marx, the state "wither away" as technology + developed and enlarged the domain of freedom, granting humanity material plenty and the + leisure to control its affairs directly. This strange calculus, in which necessity + and freedom were mediated by the state, differed very little politically from the common + run of bourgeois democratic radical opinion in the last century. The anarchist hope for + the abolition of the state, on the other hand, rested largely on a belief in the viability + of man's social instincts. Bakunin, for example, thought custom would compel any individuals + with antisocial proclivities to abide by collectivist values and nedds without obliging + society to use coercion. Kropotkin, who exercised more influence among anachists in this + area of speculation, invoked man's propensity for mutual aid -- essentially a social instinct + -- as the guarantor of solidarity in an anarchist community (a concept which he derived from + his study of animal and social evolution). + + The fact remains, however, that in both cases -- the Marxist and anarchist -- the answer + to the problem of want and work was shot through with ambiguity. [...] but given the + limited technological development of the last century, [...] both schools depended on + an act of faith to cope with the problem of want and work. Anarchists could argue against + the Marxists that any transitional state, however revolutionary its rethoric and democratic + its structure, would be self-perpetuating; it would tend to become an end in itself and + to preserve the very material and social conditions it had been created to remove. For + such a state to "wither away" (that is, to promote its own dissolution) would require + its leaders and bureaucracy to be people of superhuman moral qualities. The Marxists, + in turn, could invoke history to show that custom and mutualistic propensities were never + effective barriers to the pressures of material need, or to the onslaught of property, + or to the development of exploitation and class domination. Accordingly, they dismissed + anarchism as an ethical doctrine which revived the mystique of the natural man and his + inborn social virtues. + + -- 46-47 + + That the socialist notions of the last generation now seem to be anachronisms is not + due to any superior insights that prevail today. The last three decades, particularly + the years of the late 1950's, mark a turning point in the techological development, + a technological revolution that negates all the values, political schemes and social + perspectives held by mankind throughout all previous recorded history. [...] As we shall + see, a new technology has developed that could largely replace the realm of necessity + by the realm of freedom. + + -- 48 + + Almost every account of applied automation today must be regarded as + provisional: as soon as one describes a partially automated industry, + technological advances make the description obsolete. + + -- 56 diff --git a/books/sociedade/post-scarcity.mdwn b/books/sociedade/post-scarcity.mdwn deleted file mode 100644 index 4b1a1b0..0000000 --- a/books/sociedade/post-scarcity.mdwn +++ /dev/null @@ -1,111 +0,0 @@ -[[!meta title="Post-Scarcity Anarchism"]] - -* Murray Bookchin. -* Working Classic Series. -* AK Press - 2004. - -## Towards a Liberatory Technology - - The year 1848 stands out as a turning point in the history of modern revolutions. - This was the year when Marxism made its debut as a distinct ideology in the pages - of de Communist Manifesto, and when the proletariat, represented by the Parisian - workers, made its debut as a distinct political force on the barricades of June. - It could also be said that 1948, a year close to the halfway mark of the nineteenth - century, represents the culmination of the traditional steam-powered technology - initiated by the Newcomen engine a century and a half earlier. - - -- 43 - - I have reviewed these technological developments because both their promise and - their limitations excercised a profound influence on nineteenth century revolutionary - thought. The innovations in textile and iron-making technology provided a new sense - of promise, indeed a new stimulus, to socialist and utopian thought. It seemed to the - revolutionary theorist that for the first time in history he could anchor his dream - of a liberatory society in the visible prospect of material abundance and increased - leisure for the mass of humanity. Socialism, the theorists argued, could be based - on self-interest rather than on man's dubious nobility of mind and spirit. Technological - innovation had transmuted the socialist ideal from a vague humanitarian hope into a - practical program. - - The newly acquired practicality compelled many socialist theorists, particularly Marx - and Engels, to grapple with the technological limitations of their time. They were faced - with a strategic issue: in all previous revolutions, technology had not yet developed to - a level where men could be freed from material want, toil and the struggle over the - necessities of life. However glowing and lofty were the revolutionary ideals of the past, - the vas majority of the people, burdened by material want, had to leave the stage - of history after the revolution, return to work, and deliver the management of society - to a new leisured class of exploiters. Indeed, any attempt to equalize the wealth of - society at a low level of technological development would not have eliminated want, but - would have merely made it into a general feature of society as a whole, thereby recreating - all the conditions for a new struggle over the material things of life, for new forms of - property, and eventually for a new system of class domination. - - [...] - - Virtually all the utopias, theories and revolutionary programs of the early nineteenth - century were faced with problems of necessity -- of how to allocate labor and material - goods at a relatively low level of technological development. - - [...] - - The fact that men would have to devote a substantial portion of their time to toil, - for which they would get scant returns, formed a major premise of all socialist ideology - -- authoritarian and liberarian, utopian and scientific, Marxist and anarchist. - Implicit in the Marxist notion of a planned economy was the fact, incontestably clear - in the Marx's day, that socialism would still be burdened by relatively scarce resources. - Men would have to plan -- in effect -- to restrict -- the distribution of goods and would - have to rationalize -- in effect, to intensify -- the use of labor. - - -- 44-45 - - The problem of dealing with want and work -- and age-old problem perpetuated by the early - Industrial Revolution -- produced the great divergence in revolutionary ideas between - socialism and anarchism. Freedom would still be circunscribed by necessity in the event - of a revolution. How was this world of necessity to be "administered"? How could the - allocation of goods and duties be decided? Marx left this decision to a state power, - a transitional "proletarian" state power, to be sure, but nevertheless a coercive body, - established above society. According to Marx, the state "wither away" as technology - developed and enlarged the domain of freedom, granting humanity material plenty and the - leisure to control its affairs directly. This strange calculus, in which necessity - and freedom were mediated by the state, differed very little politically from the common - run of bourgeois democratic radical opinion in the last century. The anarchist hope for - the abolition of the state, on the other hand, rested largely on a belief in the viability - of man's social instincts. Bakunin, for example, thought custom would compel any individuals - with antisocial proclivities to abide by collectivist values and nedds without obliging - society to use coercion. Kropotkin, who exercised more influence among anachists in this - area of speculation, invoked man's propensity for mutual aid -- essentially a social instinct - -- as the guarantor of solidarity in an anarchist community (a concept which he derived from - his study of animal and social evolution). - - The fact remains, however, that in both cases -- the Marxist and anarchist -- the answer - to the problem of want and work was shot through with ambiguity. [...] but given the - limited technological development of the last century, [...] both schools depended on - an act of faith to cope with the problem of want and work. Anarchists could argue against - the Marxists that any transitional state, however revolutionary its rethoric and democratic - its structure, would be self-perpetuating; it would tend to become an end in itself and - to preserve the very material and social conditions it had been created to remove. For - such a state to "wither away" (that is, to promote its own dissolution) would require - its leaders and bureaucracy to be people of superhuman moral qualities. The Marxists, - in turn, could invoke history to show that custom and mutualistic propensities were never - effective barriers to the pressures of material need, or to the onslaught of property, - or to the development of exploitation and class domination. Accordingly, they dismissed - anarchism as an ethical doctrine which revived the mystique of the natural man and his - inborn social virtues. - - -- 46-47 - - That the socialist notions of the last generation now seem to be anachronisms is not - due to any superior insights that prevail today. The last three decades, particularly - the years of the late 1950's, mark a turning point in the techological development, - a technological revolution that negates all the values, political schemes and social - perspectives held by mankind throughout all previous recorded history. [...] As we shall - see, a new technology has developed that could largely replace the realm of necessity - by the realm of freedom. - - -- 48 - - Almost every account of applied automation today must be regarded as - provisional: as soon as one describes a partially automated industry, - technological advances make the description obsolete. - - -- 56 diff --git a/books/sociedade/preguica.md b/books/sociedade/preguica.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4726746 --- /dev/null +++ b/books/sociedade/preguica.md @@ -0,0 +1,165 @@ +[[!meta title="O direito à preguiça"]] + +* Autor: Paul Lafarge +* Ano: 1880 +* Info: [O Direito à Preguiça – Wikipédia, a enciclopédia livre](https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/O_Direito_%C3%A0_Pregui%C3%A7a) + +## Temas + +* Redução da jornada de trabalho. +* Automatização da produção. +* Ambiguidade interessante que inverte e brinca com a ideologia do trabalho, + onde um proletariado com fixação pelo sofrimento e viciado por atividades + extenuantes que força a burguesia supercomsumir a empregar-lhe na indústria. + +## Trechos + + Uma boa operária só faz com o fuso cinco malhas por minuto, alguns teares + circulares para tricotar fazem trinta mil no mesmo tempo. Cada minuto à + máquina equivale, portanto, a cem horas de trabalho da operaria; ou então + cada minuto de trabalho da máquina dá à operária dez dias de repouso. + Aquilo que se passa com a indústria de malhas é mais ou menos verdade + para todas as indústrias renovadas pela mecânica moderna. Mas que vemos + nós? A medida que a máquina se aperfeiçoa e despacha o trabalho do + homem com uma rapidez e uma precisão incessantemente crescentes, o + operário, em vez de prolongar o seu repouso proporcionalmente, redobra de + ardor, como se quisesse rivalizar com a máquina. Ó concorrência absurda e + mortal! + + -- 12-13 + + Uma vez acocorada na preguiça absoluta e desmoralizada pelo prazer + forçado, a burguesia, apesar das dificuldades que teve nisso, adaptou-se ao + seu novo estilo de vida. Encarou com horror qualquer alteração. A visão das + miseráveis condições de existência aceites com resignação pela classe + operária e a da degradação orgânica gerada pela paixão depravada pelo + trabalho aumentava ainda mais a sua repulsa por qualquer imposição de + trabalho e por qualquer restrição de prazeres. + + Foi precisamente então que, sem ter em conta a desmoralização que a + burguesia tinha imposto a si própria como um dever social, os proletários + resolveram infligir o trabalho aos capitalistas. Ingénuos, tomaram a sério as + teorias dos economistas e dos moralistas sobre o trabalho e maltrataram os + rins para infligir a sua prática aos capitalistas. O proletariado arvorou a + divisa: Quem não trabalha, não come; Lyon, em 1831, levantou-se pelo + chumbo ou pelo trabalho, os federados de 1871 declararam o seu + levantamento a revolução do trabalho. + + A estes ímpetos de furor bárbaro, destrutivo de todo o prazer e de toda a + preguiça burguesas, os capitalistas só podiam responder com uma + repressão feroz, mas sabiam que, se tinham conseguido reprimir estas + explosões revolucionárias, não tinham afogado no sangue dos seus + gigantescos massacres a absurda idéia do proletariado de querer infligir o + trabalho às classes ociosas e fartas, e foi para desviar essa infelicidade que + se rodearam de pretorianos, de polícias, de magistrados, de carcereiros + mantidos numa improdutividade laboriosa. Já não se podem ter ilusões + sobre o caráter dos exércitos modernos, são mantidos em permanência + apenas para reprimir "o inimigo interno"; e assim que os fortes de Paris e de + Lyon não foram construídos para defender a cidade contra o estrangeiro, + mas para o esmagar no caso de revolta. E se fosse preciso um exemplo sem + réplica, citemos o exército da Bélgica, desse país de Cocagne do + capitalismo; à sua neutralidade é garantida pelas potências européias e, no + + entanto, o seu exército é um dos mais fortes em proporção da população. Os + gloriosos campos de batalha do bravo exército belga são as planícies do + Borinage e de Charleroi, é no sangue dos mineiros e dos operários + desarmados que os oficiais belgas ensangüentam as suas espadas e + ganham os seus galões. As nações européias não tem exércitos nacionais, + mas sim exércitos mercenários, que protegem os capitalistas contra o furor + popular que os queria condenar a dez horas de mina ou de fábrica de fiação. + Portanto, ao apertar o cinto, a classe operária desenvolveu para além do + normal o ventre da burguesia condenada ao superconsumo. + + Para ser aliviada no seu penoso trabalho, a burguesia retirou da classe + operária uma massa de homens muito superior à que continuava dedicada à + produção útil e condenou-a, por seu turno, à improdutividade e ao + superconsumo. Mas este rebanho de bocas inúteis, apesar da sua + voracidade insaciável, não basta para consumir todas as mercadorias que os + operários, embrutecidos pelo dogma do trabalho, produzem como maníacos, + sem os quererem consumir e sem sequer pensarem se se encontrarão + pessoas para os consumir. + + Em presença desta dupla loucura dos trabalhadores, de se matarem de + supertrabalho e de vegetarem na abstinência, o grande problema da + produção capitalista já não é encontrar produtores e multiplicar as suas + forças, mas descobrir consumidores, excitar os seus apetites e criar-lhes + necessidades fictícias. Uma vez que os operários europeus, que tremem de + frio e de fome, recusam usar os tecidos que eles próprios tecem, beber os + vinhos que eles próprios colhem, os pobres fabricantes, como espertalhões, + devem correr aos antípodas para procurar quem os usará e quem os beberá: + são centenas de milhões e de biliões que a Europa exporta todos os anos + para os quatro cantos do mundo, para populações que não têm nada que + fazer com esses produtos. + + [...] + + Mas tudo é insuficiente: o burguês que se farta, a classe doméstica que + ultrapassa a classe produtiva, as nações estrangeiras e bárbaras que se + enchem de mercadorias européias; nada, nada pode conseguir dar vazão às + montanhas de produtos que se amontoam maiores e mais altas do que as + pirâmides do Egito: a produtividade dos operários europeus desafia todo o + consumo, todo o desperdício. Os fabricantes, doidos, já não sabem que + fazer, já não conseguem encontrar matéria-prima para satisfazer a paixão + desordenada, depravada, que os seus operários têm pelo trabalho. Nos + nossos distritos onde há lã, desfiam-se trapos manchados e meio podres, + fazem-se com eles panos chamados de renascimento, que duram o mesmo + que as promessas eleitorais; + + [...] + + Todos os nossos produtos são adulterados para facilitar o seu escoamento e + abreviar a sua existência. A nossa época será chamada a idade da falsificação, + tal como as primeiras épocas da humanidade receberam os nomes de idade da + pedra, idade de bronze, pelo caráter da sua produção. + + -- 15-17 + + Eis a grande experiência inglesa, eis a experiência de alguns capitalistas + inteligentes, ela demonstra irrefutavelmente que, para reforçar a + produtividade humana, tem de se reduzir as horas de trabalho e multiplicar + os dias de pagamento e os feriados, e o povo francês não está convencido. + Mas se uma miserável redução de duas horas aumentou em dez anos a + produção inglesa em cerca de um terço (7), que ritmo vertiginoso imprimiria + à produção francesa uma redução geral de três horas no dia de trabalho? Os + operários não conseguem compreender que, cansando-se excessivamente, + esgotam as suas forças antes da idade de se tornarem incapazes para + qualquer trabalho; que absorvidos, embrutecidos por um único vício, já não + são homens, mas sim restos de homens; que matam neles todas as belas + faculdades para só deixarem de pé, e luxuriante, a loucura furiosa do + trabalho. + + -- 18 + + O idiotas! é porque trabalhais demais que a ferramenta industrial se desenvolve + lentamente. + + -- 19 + + O protestantismo, que era a religião cristã adaptada às novas + necessidades industriais e comerciais da burguesia, preocupou-se menos + com o descanso popular; destronou no céu os santos para abolir na terra as + suas festas. A reforma religiosa e o livre pensamento filosófico não eram + senão pretextos que permitiram à burguesia jesuíta e voraz escamotear os + dias de festa do popular. + + -- 19 (nota de rodapé) + + "O preconceito da escravatura dominava o espírito de Pitágoras e de + Aristóteles", escreveu-se desdenhosamente; e no entanto Aristóteles previa + que "se cada utensílio pudesse executar sem intimação, ou então por si só, a + sua função própria, tal como as obras-primas de Dédalo se moviam por si + mesmas ou tal como os tripés de Vulcano que se punham espontaneamente + ao seu trabalho sagrado; se, por exemplo, as lançadeiras dos tecelões + tecessem por si próprias, o chefe de oficina já não teria necessidade de + ajudantes, nem o senhor de escravos". + + O sonho de Aristóteles é a nossa realidade. As nossas máquinas a vapor, + com membros de aço, infatigáveis, de maravilhosa e inesgotável + fecundidade, realizam por si próprias docilmente o seu trabalho sagrado; e, + no entanto, o gênio dos grandes filósofos do capitalismo continua a ser + dominado pelo preconceito do salariado, a pior das escravaturas. Ainda não + compreendem que a máquina é o redentor da humanidade, o Deus que + resgatará o homem das sórdidas artes e do trabalho assalariado, o Deus que + lhe dará tempos livres e a liberdade. + + -- 26 diff --git a/books/sociedade/preguica.mdwn b/books/sociedade/preguica.mdwn deleted file mode 100644 index 4726746..0000000 --- a/books/sociedade/preguica.mdwn +++ /dev/null @@ -1,165 +0,0 @@ -[[!meta title="O direito à preguiça"]] - -* Autor: Paul Lafarge -* Ano: 1880 -* Info: [O Direito à Preguiça – Wikipédia, a enciclopédia livre](https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/O_Direito_%C3%A0_Pregui%C3%A7a) - -## Temas - -* Redução da jornada de trabalho. -* Automatização da produção. -* Ambiguidade interessante que inverte e brinca com a ideologia do trabalho, - onde um proletariado com fixação pelo sofrimento e viciado por atividades - extenuantes que força a burguesia supercomsumir a empregar-lhe na indústria. - -## Trechos - - Uma boa operária só faz com o fuso cinco malhas por minuto, alguns teares - circulares para tricotar fazem trinta mil no mesmo tempo. Cada minuto à - máquina equivale, portanto, a cem horas de trabalho da operaria; ou então - cada minuto de trabalho da máquina dá à operária dez dias de repouso. - Aquilo que se passa com a indústria de malhas é mais ou menos verdade - para todas as indústrias renovadas pela mecânica moderna. Mas que vemos - nós? A medida que a máquina se aperfeiçoa e despacha o trabalho do - homem com uma rapidez e uma precisão incessantemente crescentes, o - operário, em vez de prolongar o seu repouso proporcionalmente, redobra de - ardor, como se quisesse rivalizar com a máquina. Ó concorrência absurda e - mortal! - - -- 12-13 - - Uma vez acocorada na preguiça absoluta e desmoralizada pelo prazer - forçado, a burguesia, apesar das dificuldades que teve nisso, adaptou-se ao - seu novo estilo de vida. Encarou com horror qualquer alteração. A visão das - miseráveis condições de existência aceites com resignação pela classe - operária e a da degradação orgânica gerada pela paixão depravada pelo - trabalho aumentava ainda mais a sua repulsa por qualquer imposição de - trabalho e por qualquer restrição de prazeres. - - Foi precisamente então que, sem ter em conta a desmoralização que a - burguesia tinha imposto a si própria como um dever social, os proletários - resolveram infligir o trabalho aos capitalistas. Ingénuos, tomaram a sério as - teorias dos economistas e dos moralistas sobre o trabalho e maltrataram os - rins para infligir a sua prática aos capitalistas. O proletariado arvorou a - divisa: Quem não trabalha, não come; Lyon, em 1831, levantou-se pelo - chumbo ou pelo trabalho, os federados de 1871 declararam o seu - levantamento a revolução do trabalho. - - A estes ímpetos de furor bárbaro, destrutivo de todo o prazer e de toda a - preguiça burguesas, os capitalistas só podiam responder com uma - repressão feroz, mas sabiam que, se tinham conseguido reprimir estas - explosões revolucionárias, não tinham afogado no sangue dos seus - gigantescos massacres a absurda idéia do proletariado de querer infligir o - trabalho às classes ociosas e fartas, e foi para desviar essa infelicidade que - se rodearam de pretorianos, de polícias, de magistrados, de carcereiros - mantidos numa improdutividade laboriosa. Já não se podem ter ilusões - sobre o caráter dos exércitos modernos, são mantidos em permanência - apenas para reprimir "o inimigo interno"; e assim que os fortes de Paris e de - Lyon não foram construídos para defender a cidade contra o estrangeiro, - mas para o esmagar no caso de revolta. E se fosse preciso um exemplo sem - réplica, citemos o exército da Bélgica, desse país de Cocagne do - capitalismo; à sua neutralidade é garantida pelas potências européias e, no - - entanto, o seu exército é um dos mais fortes em proporção da população. Os - gloriosos campos de batalha do bravo exército belga são as planícies do - Borinage e de Charleroi, é no sangue dos mineiros e dos operários - desarmados que os oficiais belgas ensangüentam as suas espadas e - ganham os seus galões. As nações européias não tem exércitos nacionais, - mas sim exércitos mercenários, que protegem os capitalistas contra o furor - popular que os queria condenar a dez horas de mina ou de fábrica de fiação. - Portanto, ao apertar o cinto, a classe operária desenvolveu para além do - normal o ventre da burguesia condenada ao superconsumo. - - Para ser aliviada no seu penoso trabalho, a burguesia retirou da classe - operária uma massa de homens muito superior à que continuava dedicada à - produção útil e condenou-a, por seu turno, à improdutividade e ao - superconsumo. Mas este rebanho de bocas inúteis, apesar da sua - voracidade insaciável, não basta para consumir todas as mercadorias que os - operários, embrutecidos pelo dogma do trabalho, produzem como maníacos, - sem os quererem consumir e sem sequer pensarem se se encontrarão - pessoas para os consumir. - - Em presença desta dupla loucura dos trabalhadores, de se matarem de - supertrabalho e de vegetarem na abstinência, o grande problema da - produção capitalista já não é encontrar produtores e multiplicar as suas - forças, mas descobrir consumidores, excitar os seus apetites e criar-lhes - necessidades fictícias. Uma vez que os operários europeus, que tremem de - frio e de fome, recusam usar os tecidos que eles próprios tecem, beber os - vinhos que eles próprios colhem, os pobres fabricantes, como espertalhões, - devem correr aos antípodas para procurar quem os usará e quem os beberá: - são centenas de milhões e de biliões que a Europa exporta todos os anos - para os quatro cantos do mundo, para populações que não têm nada que - fazer com esses produtos. - - [...] - - Mas tudo é insuficiente: o burguês que se farta, a classe doméstica que - ultrapassa a classe produtiva, as nações estrangeiras e bárbaras que se - enchem de mercadorias européias; nada, nada pode conseguir dar vazão às - montanhas de produtos que se amontoam maiores e mais altas do que as - pirâmides do Egito: a produtividade dos operários europeus desafia todo o - consumo, todo o desperdício. Os fabricantes, doidos, já não sabem que - fazer, já não conseguem encontrar matéria-prima para satisfazer a paixão - desordenada, depravada, que os seus operários têm pelo trabalho. Nos - nossos distritos onde há lã, desfiam-se trapos manchados e meio podres, - fazem-se com eles panos chamados de renascimento, que duram o mesmo - que as promessas eleitorais; - - [...] - - Todos os nossos produtos são adulterados para facilitar o seu escoamento e - abreviar a sua existência. A nossa época será chamada a idade da falsificação, - tal como as primeiras épocas da humanidade receberam os nomes de idade da - pedra, idade de bronze, pelo caráter da sua produção. - - -- 15-17 - - Eis a grande experiência inglesa, eis a experiência de alguns capitalistas - inteligentes, ela demonstra irrefutavelmente que, para reforçar a - produtividade humana, tem de se reduzir as horas de trabalho e multiplicar - os dias de pagamento e os feriados, e o povo francês não está convencido. - Mas se uma miserável redução de duas horas aumentou em dez anos a - produção inglesa em cerca de um terço (7), que ritmo vertiginoso imprimiria - à produção francesa uma redução geral de três horas no dia de trabalho? Os - operários não conseguem compreender que, cansando-se excessivamente, - esgotam as suas forças antes da idade de se tornarem incapazes para - qualquer trabalho; que absorvidos, embrutecidos por um único vício, já não - são homens, mas sim restos de homens; que matam neles todas as belas - faculdades para só deixarem de pé, e luxuriante, a loucura furiosa do - trabalho. - - -- 18 - - O idiotas! é porque trabalhais demais que a ferramenta industrial se desenvolve - lentamente. - - -- 19 - - O protestantismo, que era a religião cristã adaptada às novas - necessidades industriais e comerciais da burguesia, preocupou-se menos - com o descanso popular; destronou no céu os santos para abolir na terra as - suas festas. A reforma religiosa e o livre pensamento filosófico não eram - senão pretextos que permitiram à burguesia jesuíta e voraz escamotear os - dias de festa do popular. - - -- 19 (nota de rodapé) - - "O preconceito da escravatura dominava o espírito de Pitágoras e de - Aristóteles", escreveu-se desdenhosamente; e no entanto Aristóteles previa - que "se cada utensílio pudesse executar sem intimação, ou então por si só, a - sua função própria, tal como as obras-primas de Dédalo se moviam por si - mesmas ou tal como os tripés de Vulcano que se punham espontaneamente - ao seu trabalho sagrado; se, por exemplo, as lançadeiras dos tecelões - tecessem por si próprias, o chefe de oficina já não teria necessidade de - ajudantes, nem o senhor de escravos". - - O sonho de Aristóteles é a nossa realidade. As nossas máquinas a vapor, - com membros de aço, infatigáveis, de maravilhosa e inesgotável - fecundidade, realizam por si próprias docilmente o seu trabalho sagrado; e, - no entanto, o gênio dos grandes filósofos do capitalismo continua a ser - dominado pelo preconceito do salariado, a pior das escravaturas. Ainda não - compreendem que a máquina é o redentor da humanidade, o Deus que - resgatará o homem das sórdidas artes e do trabalho assalariado, o Deus que - lhe dará tempos livres e a liberdade. - - -- 26 diff --git a/books/sociedade/segundo-sexo.md b/books/sociedade/segundo-sexo.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..27cb049 --- /dev/null +++ b/books/sociedade/segundo-sexo.md @@ -0,0 +1,27 @@ +[[!meta title="O Segundo Sexo"]] + +* Autora: Simone de Beauvoir +* Info: [Le Deuxième Sexe – Wikipédia, a enciclopédia livre](https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Deuxi%C3%A8me_Sexe). + +## Trechos + + Se as dificuldades são mais evidentes na mulher independente é porque + ela não escolheu a resignação e sim a luta. Todos os problemas vivos + encontram na morte uma solução silenciosa. + + -- 456 + + É absurdo pretender que a orgia, o vício, o êxtase, a paixão se tornariam + impossíveis se o homem e a mulher fossem concretamente semelhantes. + + -- 499 + + Atentemos para o fato de que nossa imaginação despovoa sempre o futuro; + êste não passa de uma abstração para nós; cada um de nós nele deplora surdamente + a ausência do que foi; mas a humanidade de amanhã irá vivê-lo em sua carne + e em sua liberdade, ele será seu presente e ela por sua vez o preferirá; + entre os sexos surgirão novas relações carnais e afetivas de que não temos + idéia; já apareceram entre homens e mulheres amizades, rivalidades, cumplicidades, + camaradagens, castas ou sexuais, que os séculos passados não teriam sabido inventar. + + -- ? diff --git a/books/sociedade/segundo-sexo.mdwn b/books/sociedade/segundo-sexo.mdwn deleted file mode 100644 index 27cb049..0000000 --- a/books/sociedade/segundo-sexo.mdwn +++ /dev/null @@ -1,27 +0,0 @@ -[[!meta title="O Segundo Sexo"]] - -* Autora: Simone de Beauvoir -* Info: [Le Deuxième Sexe – Wikipédia, a enciclopédia livre](https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Deuxi%C3%A8me_Sexe). - -## Trechos - - Se as dificuldades são mais evidentes na mulher independente é porque - ela não escolheu a resignação e sim a luta. Todos os problemas vivos - encontram na morte uma solução silenciosa. - - -- 456 - - É absurdo pretender que a orgia, o vício, o êxtase, a paixão se tornariam - impossíveis se o homem e a mulher fossem concretamente semelhantes. - - -- 499 - - Atentemos para o fato de que nossa imaginação despovoa sempre o futuro; - êste não passa de uma abstração para nós; cada um de nós nele deplora surdamente - a ausência do que foi; mas a humanidade de amanhã irá vivê-lo em sua carne - e em sua liberdade, ele será seu presente e ela por sua vez o preferirá; - entre os sexos surgirão novas relações carnais e afetivas de que não temos - idéia; já apareceram entre homens e mulheres amizades, rivalidades, cumplicidades, - camaradagens, castas ou sexuais, que os séculos passados não teriam sabido inventar. - - -- ? diff --git a/books/sociedade/sociedade-contra-o-estado.md b/books/sociedade/sociedade-contra-o-estado.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..04ce2fe --- /dev/null +++ b/books/sociedade/sociedade-contra-o-estado.md @@ -0,0 +1,22 @@ +[[!meta title="A sociedade contra o Estado"]] + +* Autor: Pierre Clastres + +## Trechos + + Se entendermos por técnica o conjunto dos processos de que se munem os homens, + não para assegurarem o domínio absoluto da natureza (isso só vale para o nosso + mundo e seu insano projeto cartesiano cujas consequências ecológicas mal + começamos a media), mas para garantir um domínio do meio natural _adaptado e + relativo às suas necessidades_, então não mais podemos falar em inferioridade + técnica das sociedades primitivas: elas demonstram uma capacidade de satisfazer + suas necessidades pelo menos igual àquela de que se orgulha a sociedade + industrial e técnica. + + [...] + + Não existe portanto hierarquia no campo da técnica, nem tecnologia superior + ou inferior; só se pode medir um equipamento tecnológico pela sua capacidade + de satisfazer, num determinado meio, as necessidades da sociedade. + + -- 203 diff --git a/books/sociedade/sociedade-contra-o-estado.mdwn b/books/sociedade/sociedade-contra-o-estado.mdwn deleted file mode 100644 index 04ce2fe..0000000 --- a/books/sociedade/sociedade-contra-o-estado.mdwn +++ /dev/null @@ -1,22 +0,0 @@ -[[!meta title="A sociedade contra o Estado"]] - -* Autor: Pierre Clastres - -## Trechos - - Se entendermos por técnica o conjunto dos processos de que se munem os homens, - não para assegurarem o domínio absoluto da natureza (isso só vale para o nosso - mundo e seu insano projeto cartesiano cujas consequências ecológicas mal - começamos a media), mas para garantir um domínio do meio natural _adaptado e - relativo às suas necessidades_, então não mais podemos falar em inferioridade - técnica das sociedades primitivas: elas demonstram uma capacidade de satisfazer - suas necessidades pelo menos igual àquela de que se orgulha a sociedade - industrial e técnica. - - [...] - - Não existe portanto hierarquia no campo da técnica, nem tecnologia superior - ou inferior; só se pode medir um equipamento tecnológico pela sua capacidade - de satisfazer, num determinado meio, as necessidades da sociedade. - - -- 203 diff --git a/books/sociedade/spaceship.md b/books/sociedade/spaceship.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..86ec30d --- /dev/null +++ b/books/sociedade/spaceship.md @@ -0,0 +1,26 @@ +[[!meta title="Manual da Espaçonave Terra"]] + +[Manual De Instruções Para Espaçonave Terra](https://archive.org/details/86522184RBuckminsterFullerManualDeInstrucoesParaANaveEspacialTerraViaOptima1998). + + Contudo, e de súbito, e sem que na sociedade ninguém se apercebesse, surgiu o + anti-corpo evolucionário contra a extinção na forma do computador e da sua + automatização globalmente orientada, que tornou o homem obsoleto como + especialista da produção e controle físicos -- mesmo em cima da hora. + + Como superespecialista, o computador pode perseverar dia e noite, separando o + preto do branco a velocidades sobrehumanas. O computador pode também operar em + graus de frio ou calor nos quais o homem pereceria. Como especialista, o homem + vai ser completamente afastado pelo computador. O homem vai ser obrigado a + reestabelecer, usar e disfrutar sua "globalidade" inata. O que se nos depara é + lidar com a totalidades da Nave Espacial Terra e do universo. A evolução parece + estar apostada em fazer o homem cumprir um destino muito mais elevado que ser + apenas uma simples máquina muscular e reflexa -- um autómato escravo -- a + automatização afasta os autómatos. + + -- 24 e 25 + + Todas as nossas camas de hotel em todo o mundo encontram-se desocupadas dois + terços do tempo. As nossas salas de estar encontram-se vazias sete oitavos do + tempo. + + --- 80 diff --git a/books/sociedade/spaceship.mdwn b/books/sociedade/spaceship.mdwn deleted file mode 100644 index 86ec30d..0000000 --- a/books/sociedade/spaceship.mdwn +++ /dev/null @@ -1,26 +0,0 @@ -[[!meta title="Manual da Espaçonave Terra"]] - -[Manual De Instruções Para Espaçonave Terra](https://archive.org/details/86522184RBuckminsterFullerManualDeInstrucoesParaANaveEspacialTerraViaOptima1998). - - Contudo, e de súbito, e sem que na sociedade ninguém se apercebesse, surgiu o - anti-corpo evolucionário contra a extinção na forma do computador e da sua - automatização globalmente orientada, que tornou o homem obsoleto como - especialista da produção e controle físicos -- mesmo em cima da hora. - - Como superespecialista, o computador pode perseverar dia e noite, separando o - preto do branco a velocidades sobrehumanas. O computador pode também operar em - graus de frio ou calor nos quais o homem pereceria. Como especialista, o homem - vai ser completamente afastado pelo computador. O homem vai ser obrigado a - reestabelecer, usar e disfrutar sua "globalidade" inata. O que se nos depara é - lidar com a totalidades da Nave Espacial Terra e do universo. A evolução parece - estar apostada em fazer o homem cumprir um destino muito mais elevado que ser - apenas uma simples máquina muscular e reflexa -- um autómato escravo -- a - automatização afasta os autómatos. - - -- 24 e 25 - - Todas as nossas camas de hotel em todo o mundo encontram-se desocupadas dois - terços do tempo. As nossas salas de estar encontram-se vazias sete oitavos do - tempo. - - --- 80 diff --git a/books/sociedade/tolice.md b/books/sociedade/tolice.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..59292d4 --- /dev/null +++ b/books/sociedade/tolice.md @@ -0,0 +1,138 @@ +[[!meta title="A Tolice da Inteligência Brasileira"]] + +* Autor: Jesse Souza + +Violência simbólica +------------------- + + Ora, como diria o insuspeito Max Weber, os ricos e felizes, em todas as + épocas e em todos os lugares, não querem apenas ser ricos e felizes. Querem + saber que têm "direito" à riqueza e felicidade. Isso significa que o privilégio + -- mesmo o flagrantemente injusto, como o que se transmite por herança -- + necessita ser "legitimado", ou seja, aceito mesmo por aqueles que foram + excluídos de todos os privilégios. + + [...] + + É por conta disso que os privilegiados são os donos dos jornais, das + editoras, das universidades, das TVs e do que se decide nos tribunais e nos + partidos políticos. Apenas dominando todas essas estruturas é que se pode + monopolizar os recursos naturais que deveriam ser de todos, e explorar o + trabalho da imensa maioria de não-privilegiados soba a forma de taxa de lucro, + juro, renda da terra ou aluguel. + + A soma dessas rendas de capital no Brasil é monopolizada em grande parte + pelo 1% mais rico da população. É o trabalho dos 99% restantes que se transfere + em grande medida para o bolso do 1% mais rico. + + [...] + + A tese central deste livro é que tamanha "violência simbólica" só é + possível pelo sequestro da "inteligência brasileira" para o serviço não da + imensa maioria da população, mas do 1% mais rico. [...] Esse serviço que a + imensa maioria dos intelectuais brasileiros sempre prestou e ainda presta é o + que possibilita a justificação, por exemplo, de que os problemas brasileiros + não vêm da grotesca concentração da riqueza social em pouquíssimas mãos, mas + sim da "corrupção apenas do Estado". + + E isso leva a uma falsa oposição entre Estado demonizado e mercado -- + concentrado e superfaturado como é o mercado brasileiro --, como o reino da + virtude e da eficiência. E em um contexto no qual não existe fortuna de + brasileiro que não tenha sido construída à sombra de financiamentos e + privilégios estatais nem corrupção estatal sistemática sem conivência e + estímulo do mercado. E também em um cenário em que as classes sociais que mais + apoiam essa bandeira como se fosse sua -- os extratos conservadores da classe + média tradicional e setores ascendentes da nova classe trabalhadora -- são + precisamente as classes que mais sofrem com os bens e serviços superfaturados e + de qualidade duvidosa que o 1% mais rico vende a elas. + + -- 9 a 11 + +Crítica das ideias +------------------ + + Este livro é uma história das ideias dominantes do Brasil moderno + e de sua institucionalização. + + [...] + + Retira-se dos indivíduos a possibilidade de compreender a totalidade da + sociedade e de suas reais contradições e conflitos, os quais são substituídos + por falsas questões. A fragmentação do conhecimento serve aos interesses dos + que estão ganhando na sociedade, já que evidencia sua mudança possível. A ação + da mudança, a capacidade moral e política de escolher caminhos alternativos + pela vontade de intervir no mundo, pressupõe "conhecimento do mundo" para não + ser "escolha cega". É isso que faz com que todo o conhecimento fragmentário e + superficial seja necessariamente conservador. Ele ajuda a manter e justificar o + que já existe. + + -- 12 e 13 + +Interpretações que explicam o mundo +----------------------------------- + + Os seres humanos são animais que se interpretam. Isso significa que não existe + "comportamento automático", este é sempre influenciado por uma "forma + específica de interpretar e compreender a vida". Essas interpretações que guiam + nossas escolhas na vida foram obras de profetas religiosos no passado. Nos + últimos duzentos anos essas interpretações, que explicam o mundo e nos dizem + como devemos agir nele, foram obras de intelectuais seculares. O mais + importante desses intelectuais no Ocidente moderno foi -- juntamente com Karl + Marx -- o sociólogo alemão Max Weber. Afinal, foi da pena de Weber que se + originou a forma predominante como todo o Ocidente moderno se autointerpreta e + se legitima. As ideias dominantes que circulam na imprensa, nas salas de aula, + nas discussões parlamentares, nas conversas de botequim -- em todo lugar -- são + sempre formas mais simplificadas de ideias produzidas por grandes pensadores. + + Daí a importância de se recuperar o sentido original dessas ideias que são tão + relevantes para nossas vidas ainda que, normalmente, não nos demos conta disso. + + [...] + + Não existe ordem social moderna sem uma legitimação pretensamente científica + desta mesma ordem. + + Talvez o uso de Max Weber e sua obra seja um dos exemplos mais significativos + do caráter bifronte da ciência: tanto como mecanismo de esclarecimento do mundo + quanto como mecanismo de encobrimento das relações de poder que permitem a + reprodução de privilégios injustos de toda a espécie. + + [...] + + Para a versão liberal e afirmativa, Weber fornece, por um lado, sua análise + da "revolução simbólica" do protestantismo ascético; para ele, a efetiva + revolução moderna, na medida em que transformou a "consciência" dos indivíduos + e, a partir daí, a realidade externa, é a figura do protestante ascético, + que com vontade férrea e armas da disciplina e do autocontrole cria o fundamento + histórico para a noção do "sujeito moderno". + + [...] + + Mas Weber, e nisso reside sua influência e atualidade extraordinária, + também compreendia, no entanto, o lado sombrio do racionalismo ocidental. + Se o pioneiro protestante ainda possuía perspectivaas éticas na sua conduta, + seu "filho" e, muito especialmente, seu "neto", habitantes do mundo secularizado, + são percebidos por Weber de modo bastante diferente. Para descrevê-los, Weber + utiliza dois "tipos ideais" [...], o "especialista sem espírito", que tudo + conhece sobre seu pequeno mundo de atividade e nada sabe (nem quer saber) + acerca de contextos mais amplos que determinam seu pequeno mundo, e, por + outro, o "homem do prazer sem coração", que tende a amesquinhar seu mundo + sentimental e emotivo à busca de prazeres momentâneos e imediatos. + + -- 17 a 19 + +Patrimonialismo brasileiro +-------------------------- + + Toda a ambiguidade de Max Weber em relação ao capitalismo -- produtor de seres + amesquinhados precisamente nas dimensões cognitiva e moral -- e à própria + sociedade americana -- [...] foi cuidadosa e intencionalmente posta de lado. + + -- 27 + + No começo, o aspecto mais importante era simplesmente legitimar científica + e politicamente -- com farto financiamento das agências estatais norte-americanas + nos Estados Unidos e fora dele -- a superioridade norte-americana em relação + a todas as outras sociedades. + + -- 27 diff --git a/books/sociedade/tolice.mdwn b/books/sociedade/tolice.mdwn deleted file mode 100644 index 59292d4..0000000 --- a/books/sociedade/tolice.mdwn +++ /dev/null @@ -1,138 +0,0 @@ -[[!meta title="A Tolice da Inteligência Brasileira"]] - -* Autor: Jesse Souza - -Violência simbólica -------------------- - - Ora, como diria o insuspeito Max Weber, os ricos e felizes, em todas as - épocas e em todos os lugares, não querem apenas ser ricos e felizes. Querem - saber que têm "direito" à riqueza e felicidade. Isso significa que o privilégio - -- mesmo o flagrantemente injusto, como o que se transmite por herança -- - necessita ser "legitimado", ou seja, aceito mesmo por aqueles que foram - excluídos de todos os privilégios. - - [...] - - É por conta disso que os privilegiados são os donos dos jornais, das - editoras, das universidades, das TVs e do que se decide nos tribunais e nos - partidos políticos. Apenas dominando todas essas estruturas é que se pode - monopolizar os recursos naturais que deveriam ser de todos, e explorar o - trabalho da imensa maioria de não-privilegiados soba a forma de taxa de lucro, - juro, renda da terra ou aluguel. - - A soma dessas rendas de capital no Brasil é monopolizada em grande parte - pelo 1% mais rico da população. É o trabalho dos 99% restantes que se transfere - em grande medida para o bolso do 1% mais rico. - - [...] - - A tese central deste livro é que tamanha "violência simbólica" só é - possível pelo sequestro da "inteligência brasileira" para o serviço não da - imensa maioria da população, mas do 1% mais rico. [...] Esse serviço que a - imensa maioria dos intelectuais brasileiros sempre prestou e ainda presta é o - que possibilita a justificação, por exemplo, de que os problemas brasileiros - não vêm da grotesca concentração da riqueza social em pouquíssimas mãos, mas - sim da "corrupção apenas do Estado". - - E isso leva a uma falsa oposição entre Estado demonizado e mercado -- - concentrado e superfaturado como é o mercado brasileiro --, como o reino da - virtude e da eficiência. E em um contexto no qual não existe fortuna de - brasileiro que não tenha sido construída à sombra de financiamentos e - privilégios estatais nem corrupção estatal sistemática sem conivência e - estímulo do mercado. E também em um cenário em que as classes sociais que mais - apoiam essa bandeira como se fosse sua -- os extratos conservadores da classe - média tradicional e setores ascendentes da nova classe trabalhadora -- são - precisamente as classes que mais sofrem com os bens e serviços superfaturados e - de qualidade duvidosa que o 1% mais rico vende a elas. - - -- 9 a 11 - -Crítica das ideias ------------------- - - Este livro é uma história das ideias dominantes do Brasil moderno - e de sua institucionalização. - - [...] - - Retira-se dos indivíduos a possibilidade de compreender a totalidade da - sociedade e de suas reais contradições e conflitos, os quais são substituídos - por falsas questões. A fragmentação do conhecimento serve aos interesses dos - que estão ganhando na sociedade, já que evidencia sua mudança possível. A ação - da mudança, a capacidade moral e política de escolher caminhos alternativos - pela vontade de intervir no mundo, pressupõe "conhecimento do mundo" para não - ser "escolha cega". É isso que faz com que todo o conhecimento fragmentário e - superficial seja necessariamente conservador. Ele ajuda a manter e justificar o - que já existe. - - -- 12 e 13 - -Interpretações que explicam o mundo ------------------------------------ - - Os seres humanos são animais que se interpretam. Isso significa que não existe - "comportamento automático", este é sempre influenciado por uma "forma - específica de interpretar e compreender a vida". Essas interpretações que guiam - nossas escolhas na vida foram obras de profetas religiosos no passado. Nos - últimos duzentos anos essas interpretações, que explicam o mundo e nos dizem - como devemos agir nele, foram obras de intelectuais seculares. O mais - importante desses intelectuais no Ocidente moderno foi -- juntamente com Karl - Marx -- o sociólogo alemão Max Weber. Afinal, foi da pena de Weber que se - originou a forma predominante como todo o Ocidente moderno se autointerpreta e - se legitima. As ideias dominantes que circulam na imprensa, nas salas de aula, - nas discussões parlamentares, nas conversas de botequim -- em todo lugar -- são - sempre formas mais simplificadas de ideias produzidas por grandes pensadores. - - Daí a importância de se recuperar o sentido original dessas ideias que são tão - relevantes para nossas vidas ainda que, normalmente, não nos demos conta disso. - - [...] - - Não existe ordem social moderna sem uma legitimação pretensamente científica - desta mesma ordem. - - Talvez o uso de Max Weber e sua obra seja um dos exemplos mais significativos - do caráter bifronte da ciência: tanto como mecanismo de esclarecimento do mundo - quanto como mecanismo de encobrimento das relações de poder que permitem a - reprodução de privilégios injustos de toda a espécie. - - [...] - - Para a versão liberal e afirmativa, Weber fornece, por um lado, sua análise - da "revolução simbólica" do protestantismo ascético; para ele, a efetiva - revolução moderna, na medida em que transformou a "consciência" dos indivíduos - e, a partir daí, a realidade externa, é a figura do protestante ascético, - que com vontade férrea e armas da disciplina e do autocontrole cria o fundamento - histórico para a noção do "sujeito moderno". - - [...] - - Mas Weber, e nisso reside sua influência e atualidade extraordinária, - também compreendia, no entanto, o lado sombrio do racionalismo ocidental. - Se o pioneiro protestante ainda possuía perspectivaas éticas na sua conduta, - seu "filho" e, muito especialmente, seu "neto", habitantes do mundo secularizado, - são percebidos por Weber de modo bastante diferente. Para descrevê-los, Weber - utiliza dois "tipos ideais" [...], o "especialista sem espírito", que tudo - conhece sobre seu pequeno mundo de atividade e nada sabe (nem quer saber) - acerca de contextos mais amplos que determinam seu pequeno mundo, e, por - outro, o "homem do prazer sem coração", que tende a amesquinhar seu mundo - sentimental e emotivo à busca de prazeres momentâneos e imediatos. - - -- 17 a 19 - -Patrimonialismo brasileiro --------------------------- - - Toda a ambiguidade de Max Weber em relação ao capitalismo -- produtor de seres - amesquinhados precisamente nas dimensões cognitiva e moral -- e à própria - sociedade americana -- [...] foi cuidadosa e intencionalmente posta de lado. - - -- 27 - - No começo, o aspecto mais importante era simplesmente legitimar científica - e politicamente -- com farto financiamento das agências estatais norte-americanas - nos Estados Unidos e fora dele -- a superioridade norte-americana em relação - a todas as outras sociedades. - - -- 27 diff --git a/books/sociedade/who-owns-the-future.md b/books/sociedade/who-owns-the-future.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e53d275 --- /dev/null +++ b/books/sociedade/who-owns-the-future.md @@ -0,0 +1,673 @@ +[[!meta title="Who owns the future?"]] + +* Author: Jaron Lanier +* Year: 2013 +* Publisher: Simon & Schuster + +## Index + +* Star system versus the bell curve as network designs. +* Siren Servers: narcissism, hyperamplified risk aversion, and extreme information asymmetry. +* Siren Servers and Maxwell’s Demon. +* Disruptive innovation as the tedious scheme to shrink markets. +* Science isn't automatic. +* Nine dismal humors of futurism, and a hopeful one. +* Marx as one of the first technology writers (when discussing Luddites). +* Human obsolescence is avoidable. +* Keynes Considered as a Big Data Pioneer. +* Amazon's Mechanical Turk. +* Humanistic information economics. +* What is experience? If personal experience were missing from the universe, how would things be different? +* Gurus and New Age at the Sillicon Valley: Gurdjieff, Steve Jobs. + +## Prelude + + Instagram isn’t worth a billion dollars just because those thirteen employees + are extraordinary. Instead, its value comes from the millions of users who + contribute to the network without being paid for it. Networks need a great + number of people to participate in them to generate significant value. But when + they have them, only a small number of people get paid. That has the net effect + of centralizing wealth and limiting overall economic growth. + + [...] + + By “digital networking” I mean not only the Internet and the Web, but also + other networks operated by outfits like financial institutions and intelligence + agencies. In all these cases, we see the phenomenon of power and money becoming + concentrated around the people who operate the most central computers in a + network, undervaluing everyone else. That is the pattern we have come to + expect, but it is not the only way things can go. + +## The Price of Heaven + + Utopians presume the advent of abundance not because it will be affordable, but + because it will be free, provided we accept surveillance. + + Starting back in the early 1980s, an initially tiny stratum of gifted + technologists conceived new interpretations of concepts like privacy, liberty, + and power. I was an early participant in the process and helped to formulate + many of the ideas I am criticizing in this book. What was once a tiny + subculture has blossomed into the dominant interpretation of computation and + software-mediated society. + + One strain of what might be called “hacker culture” held that liberty means + absolute privacy through the use of cryptography. I remember the thrill of + using military-grade stealth just to argue about who should pay for a pizza at + MIT in 1983 or so. + + On the other hand, some of my friends from that era, who consumed that pizza, + eventually became very rich building giant cross-referenced dossiers on masses + of people, which were put to use by financiers, advertisers, insurers, or other + concerns nurturing fantasies of operating the world by remote control. + + It is typical of human nature to ignore hypocrisy. The greater a hypocrisy, the + more invisible it typically becomes, but we technical folk are inclined to seek + an airtight whole of ideas. Here is one such synthesis—of cryptography for + techies and massive spying on others—which I continue to hear fairly often: + Privacy for ordinary people can be forfeited in the near term because it will + become moot anyway. + + Surveillance by the technical few on the less technical many can be tolerated + for now because of hopes for an endgame in which everything will become + transparent to everyone. Network entrepreneurs and cyber-activists alike seem + to imagine that today’s elite network servers in positions of information + supremacy will eventually become eternally benign, or just dissolve. + + Bizarrely, the endgame utopias of even the most ardent high-tech libertarians + always seem to take socialist turns. The joys of life will be too cheap to + meter, we imagine. So abundance will go ambient. + + This is what diverse cyber-enlightened business concerns and political groups + all share in common, from Facebook to WikiLeaks. Eventually, they imagine, + there will be no more secrets, no more barriers to access; all the world will + be opened up as if the planet were transformed into a crystal ball. In the + meantime, those true believers encrypt their servers even as they seek to + gather the rest of the world’s information and find the best way to leverage + it. + + It is all too easy to forget that “free” inevitably means that someone else + will be deciding how you live. + +## Just Blurt the Idea Out + + So we begin with the simple question of how to design digital networks to + deliver more help than harm in aligning human intention to meet great + challenges. A starting point for an answer can be summarized: “Digital + information is really just people in disguise.” + +### Aristotle frets + + Aristotle directly addressed the role of people in a hypothetical high-tech + world: If every instrument could accomplish its own work, obeying or + anticipating the will of others, like the statues of Daedalus, or the tripods + of Hephaestus, which, says the poet, of their own accord entered the assembly + of the Gods; if, in like manner, the shuttle would weave and the plectrum touch + the lyre without a hand to guide them, chief workmen would not want servants, + nor masters slaves.1 + + At this ancient date, a number of possibilities were at least slightly visible + to Aristotle’s imagination. One was that the human condition was in part a + function of what machines could not do. Another was that it was possible to + imagine, at least hypothetically, that machines could do more. The synthesis + was also conceived: Better machines could free and elevate people, even slaves. + + If we could show Aristotle the technology of our times, I wonder what he would + make of the problem of unemployment. Would he take Marx’s position that better + machines create an obligation (to be carried out by political bodies) to + provide care and dignity to people who no longer need to work? Or would + Aristotle say, “Kick the unneeded ones out of town. The polis is only for the + people who own the machines, or do what machines still cannot do.” Would he + stand by idly as Athens was eventually depopulated? + + I’d like to think the best of Aristotle, and assume he would realize that both + choices are bogus; machine autonomy is nothing but theater. Information needn’t + be thought of as a freestanding thing, but rather as a human product. It is + entirely legitimate to understand that people are still needed and valuable + even when the loom can run without human muscle power. It is still running on + human thought. + + [...] + + Note: How prescient that Aristotle chose musical instruments and looms as his + examples for machines that might one day operate automatically! These two types + of machines did indeed turn out to be central to the prehistory of computation. + The Jacquard programmable loom helped inspire calculating engines, while music + theory and notation helped further the concept of abstract computation, as when + Mozart wrote algorithmic, nondeterministic music incorporating dice throws. + Both developments occurred around the turn of the 19th century. + + [...] + + Aristotle seems to want to escape the burden of accommodating lesser people. + His quote about self-operating lutes and looms could be interpreted as a + daydream that better technology will free us to some degree from having to deal + with one another. + + It’s not as if everyone wanted to be closer to all of humanity when cities + first formed. Athens was a necessity first, and a luxury second. No one wants + to accommodate the diversity of strangers. People deal with each other + politically because the material advantages are compelling. We find relative + safety and sustenance in numbers. Agriculture and armies happened to work + better as those enterprises got bigger, and cities built walls. + + But in Aristotle’s words you get a taste of what a nuisance it can be to + accommodate others. Something was lost with the advent of the polis, and we + still dream of getting it back. + + [...] + + The reward for a Roman general, upon retiring after years of combat, was a plot + of land he could farm for himself. To be left alone, to be able to live off the + land with the illusion of no polis to bug you, that was the dream. The American + West offered that dream again, and still loathes giving it up. Justice Louis + Brandeis famously defined privacy as the “right to be left alone.” + + In every case, however, abundance without politics was an illusion that could + only be sustained in temporary bubbles, supported by armies. The ghosts of the + losers haunt every acre of easy abundance. The greatest beneficiaries of + civilization use all their power to create a temporary illusion of freedom from + politics. The rich live behind gates, not just to protect themselves, but to + pretend to not need anyone else, if only for a moment. In Aristotle’s quote, we + find the earliest glimmer of the hope that technological advancement could + replace territorial conquest as a way of implementing an insulating bubble + around a person. + + [...] + + People naturally seek the benefits of society, meaning the accommodation of + strangers, while avoiding direct vulnerabilities to specific others as much as + possible. This is a clichéd criticism of the online culture of the moment. + People have thousands of “friends” and yet stare at a little screen when in the + proximity of other people. As it was in Athens, so it is online. + +## Money + + Money might have begun as a mnemonic counter for assets you couldn’t keep under + direct observation, like wandering sheep. A stone per sheep, so the shepherd + would be confident all had been reunited after a day at pasture. In other + words, artifacts took on information storage duties. + + [...] + + Ancient money was information storage that represented events in the past. To + the ears of many a financier, at this early stage “money” had not been born + yet, only accounting. That kind of money can be called “past-oriented money.” + +## Noise and luck + + Consider the problem of noise, or what is known as luck in human affairs. + + [...] + + And yet the rewards of winning and losing are vastly different. While some + critics might have aesthetic or ethical objections to winner-take-all outcomes, + a mathematical problem with them is that noise is amplified. Therefore, if a + societal system depends too much on winner-take-all contests, then the acuity + of that system will suffer. It will become less reality-based. + + When a bell curve distribution is appreciated as a bell curve instead of as a + winner-take-all distribution, then noise, luck, and conceptual ambiguity aren’t + amplified. It makes statistical sense to talk about average intelligence or + high intelligence, but not to identify the single most intelligent person. + +## Letting Bell Curves Be Bell Curves + + In a star system, the top players are rewarded tremendously, while almost + everyone else—facing in our era an ever-larger, more global body of competitive + peers—is driven toward poverty (because of competition or perhaps automation). + +## Absolutism + + Being an absolutist is a certain way to become a failed technologist. + + Markets are an information technology. A technology is useless if it can’t be + tweaked. If market technology can’t be fully automatic and needs some + “buttons,” then there’s no use in trying to pretend otherwise. You don’t stay + attached to poorly performing quests for perfection. You fix bugs. + +## The Taste of Politics + + Despite my favorable regard for organized labor, for the purposes of this book + I have to focus somewhat on certain failings. The problems of interest to me + are not really with the labor movement, but with the nature of levees. What + might be called “upper-class levees,” like exclusive investment funds, have + been known to blur into Ponzi schemes or other criminal enterprises, and the + same pattern exists for levees at all levels. + + Levees are more human than algorithmic, and that is not an entirely good thing. + Whether for the rich or the middle class, levees are inevitably a little + conspiratorial, and conspiracy naturally attracts corruption. Criminals easily + exploited certain classic middle-class levees; the mob famously infiltrated + unions and repurposed music royalties as a money-laundering scheme. + + Levees are a rejection of unbridled algorithm and an insertion of human will + into the flow of capital. Inevitably, human oversight brings with it all the + flaws of humans. And yet despite their rough and troubled nature, antenimbosian + levees worked well enough to preserve middle classes despite the floods, + storms, twisters, and droughts of a world contoured by finance. Without our + system of levees, rising like a glimmering bell-curved mountain of rice + paddies, capitalism would probably have decayed into Marx’s “attractor + nightmare” in which markets decay into plutocracy. + +## A First Pass at a Definition + + A Siren Server, as I will refer to such a thing, is an elite computer, + or coordinated collection of computers, on a network. It is + characterized by narcissism, hyperamplified risk aversion, and extreme + information asymmetry. It is the winner of an all-or-nothing contest, + and it inflicts smaller all-or-nothing contests on those who interact + with it. + + Siren Servers gather data from the network, often without having to pay + for it. The data is analyzed using the most powerful available + computers, run by the very best available technical people. The results + of the analysis are kept secret, but are used to manipulate the rest of + the world to advantage. + + That plan will always eventually backfire, because the rest of the world + cannot indefinitely absorb the increased risk, cost, and waste dispersed + by a Siren Server. Homer sternly warned sailors to not succumb to the + call of the sirens, and yet was entirely complacent about Hephaestus’s + golden female robots. But Sirens might be even more dangerous in + inorganic form, because it is then that we are really most looking at + ourselves in disguise. It is not the siren who harms the sailor, but the + sailor’s inability to think straight. So it is with us and our machines. + + Siren Servers are fated by their nature to sow illusions. They are + cousins to another seductive literary creature, star of the famous + thought experiment known as Maxwell’s Demon, after the great 19th + century physicist James Clerk Maxwell. The demon is an imaginary + creature that, if it could only exist, would be able to implement a + perpetual motion machine and perform other supernatural tricks. + + Maxwell’s Demon might be stationed at a tiny door separating two + chambers filled with water or air. It would only allow hot molecules to + pass one way, and cold molecules to pass in the opposite direction. + After a while, one side would be hot and the other cold, and you could + let them mix again, rushing together so quickly that the stream could + run a generator. In that way, the tiny act of discriminating between hot + and cold would produce infinite energy, because you could repeat the + process forever. + + The reason Maxwell’s Demon cannot exist is that it does take resources + to perform an act of discrimination. We imagine computation is free, but + it never is. The very act of choosing which particle is cold or hot + itself becomes an energy drain and a source of waste heat. The principle + is also known as “no free lunch.” + + We do our best to implement Maxwell’s Demon whenever we manipulate + reality with our technologies, but we can never do so perfectly; we + certainly can’t get ahead of the game, which is known as entropy. All + the air conditioners in a city emit heat that makes the city hotter + overall. While you can implement what seems to be a Maxwell’s Demon if + you don’t look too far or too closely, in the big picture you always + lose more than you gain. + + Every bit in a computer is a wannabe Maxwell’s Demon, separating the + state of “one” from the state of “zero” for a while, at a cost. A + computer on a network can also act like a wannabe demon if it tries to + sort data from networked people into one or the other side of some + imaginary door, while pretending there is no cost or risk involved. For + instance, a Siren Server might allow only those who would be cheap to + insure through a doorway (to become insured) in order to make a + supernaturally ideal, low-risk insurance company. Such a scheme would + let high-risk people pass one way, and low-risk ones pass the other way, + in order to implement a phony perpetual motion machine out of a human + society. However, the uninsured would not cease to exist; rather, they + would instead add to the cost of the whole system, which includes the + people who run the Siren Server. A short-term illusion of risk reduction + would actually lead to increased risk in the longer term. + +## Candy + + The primary business of digital networking has come to be the creation of + ultrasecret mega-dossiers about what others are doing, and using this + information to concentrate money and power. It doesn’t matter whether the + concentration is called a social network, an insurance company, a derivatives + fund, a search engine, or an online store. It’s all fundamentally the same. + Whatever the intent might have been, the result is a wielding of digital + technology against the future of the middle class. + + [...] + + We loved the crazy cheap easy mortgages, motivated by crazed overleveraging. We + love the free music, enabled by crazed copying. We love cheap online prices, + offered by what would have once seemed like national intelligence agencies. + These newer spy services do not struggle on behalf of our security, but instead + figure out just how little payment everyone in the chain can be made to accept. + We are not benefiting from the benevolence of some artificial intelligence + superbeing. We are exploiting each other off the books while those + concentrating our information remain on the books. We love our treats but will + eventually discover we are depleting our own value. + + That’s how we can have economic troubles despite there being so much wealth in + the system, and during a period of increasing efficiencies. Great fortunes are + being made on shrinking the economy instead of growing it. It’s not a result of + some evil scheme, but a side effect of an idiotic elevation of the fantasy that + technology is getting smart and standing on its own, without people. + +## From Autocollate to Autocollude + + It seems as though online services are bringing bargains to everyone, and yet + wealth disparity is increasing while social mobility is decreasing. If everyone + were getting better options, wouldn’t everyone be doing better as well? + +## From the Customer’s Point of View + + Wal-Mart confronted the ordinary shopper with two interesting pieces of news. + One was that stuff they wanted to buy got cheaper, which of course was great. + This news was delivered first, and caused cheering. + + But there was another piece of news that emerged more gradually. It has often + been claimed that Wal-Mart plays a role in the reduction of employment + prospects for the very people who tend to be its customers.1 Wal-Mart has + certainly made the world more efficient in a certain sense. It moved + manufacturing to any spot in the world that could accomplish it at the very + lowest cost; it rewarded vendors willing to cut corners to the maximum degree. + + [...] + + All Siren Servers deliver dual messages similar to the pair pioneered by + Wal-Mart. On the one hand, “Good news! Treats await! Information systems have + made the world more efficient for you.” + + On the other hand, a little later: “It turns out you, your needs, and your + expectations are not maximally efficient from the lofty point of view of our + server. Therefore, we are reshaping the world so that in the long term, your + prospects are being reduced.” + + The initial benefits don’t remotely balance the long-term degradations. + Initially you made some money day trading or getting an insanely easy loan, or + saved some money couch-surfing or by using coupons from an Internet site, but + then came the pink slip, the eviction notice, and the halving of your savings + when the market drooped. Or you loved getting music for free, but then realized + that you couldn’t pursue a music career yourself because there were hardly any + middle-class, secure jobs left in what was once the music industry. Maybe you + loved the supercheap prices at your favorite store, but then noticed that the + factory you might have worked for closed up for good. + +## Financial Siren Servers + + The schemes were remarkably similar to Silicon Valley designs. A few of them + took as input everything they possibly could scrape from the Internet as well + as other, proprietary networks. As in Google’s data centers, stupendous + correlative algorithms would crunch on the whole ’net’s data overnight, looking + for correlations. Maybe a sudden increase in comments about mosquito bites + would cause an automatic, instant investment in a company that sold lotions. + Actually, that’s an artificially sensible example. The real examples made no + sense to humans. But money was made, and fairly reliably. + + Note: It should be pointed out that if only one Siren Server is milking a + particular fluctuation in this way, a reasonable argument could be made that a + service is being performed, in that the fluctuation reveals inefficiency, and + the Siren is canceling it out. However, when many Sirens milk the same + fluctuation, they lock into a feedback system with each other and inadvertently + conspire to milk the rest of the world to no purpose. + + [...] + + What is absolutely essential to a financial Siren Server, however, is a + superior information position. If everyone else knew what you were doing, they + could securitize you. If anyone could buy stock in a mathematical “sure thing” + scheme, then the benefits of it would be copied like a shared music file, and + spread out until it was nullified. So, in today’s world your mortgage can be + securitized in someone else’s secretive bunker, but you can’t know about the + bunker and securitize it. If it weren’t for that differential, the new kind of + sure thing wouldn’t exist. + +## If Life Gives You EULAs, Make Lemonade + + The information economy that we are currently building doesn’t really embrace + capitalism, but rather a new form of feudalism. + +## Your Lack of Privacy Is Someone Else’s Wealth + + Occasionally the rich embrace a new token and drive up its value. The fine art + market is a great example. Expensive art is essentially a private form of + currency traded among the very rich. The better an artist is at making art that + can function this way, the more valuable the art will become. Andy Warhol is + often associated with this trick, though Pablo Picasso and others were + certainly playing the same game earlier. The art has to be stylistically + distinct and available in suitable small runs. It becomes a private form of + money, as instantly recognizable as a hundred-dollar bill. + + A related trend of our times is that troves of dossiers on the private lives + and inner beings of ordinary people, collected over digital networks, are + packaged into a new private form of elite money. The actual data in these + troves need not be valid. In fact, it might be better that it is not valid, for + actual knowledge brings liabilities. + +## The Nature of Our Confusion + + Our core illusion is that we imagine big data as a substance, like a natural + resource waiting to be mined. We use terms like data-mining routinely to + reinforce that illusion. Indeed some data is like that. Scientific big data, + like data about galaxy formation, weather, or flu outbreaks, can be gathered + and mined, just like gold, provided you put in the hard work. + + But big data about people is different. It doesn’t sit there; it plays against + you. It isn’t like a view through a microscope, but more like a view of a + chessboard. + +## The Most Elite Naïveté + + As technology advances, Siren Servers will be ever more the objects of the + struggle for wealth and power, because they are the only links in the chain + that will not be commoditized. If present trends continue, you’ll always be + able to seek information supremacy, just as old-fashioned barons could struggle + for supremacy over land or natural resources. A new energy cycle will someday + make oil much less central to geopolitics, but the information system that + manages that new kind of energy could easily become an impregnable castle. The + illusory golden vase becomes more and more valuable. + +### Mapping out where the conversation can go + + An endgame for civilization has been foreseen since Aristotle. As technology + reaches heights of efficiency, civilization will have to find a way to resolve + a peculiar puzzle: What should the role of “extra” humans be if not everyone is + still strictly needed? Do the extra people—the ones whose roles have + withered—starve? Or get easy lives? Who decides? How? + + The same core questions, stated in a multitude of ways, have elicited only a + small number of answers, because only a few are possible. + + What will people be when technology becomes much more advanced? With each + passing year our abilities to act on our ideas are increased by technological + progress. Ideas matter more and more. The ancient conversations about where + human purpose is headed continue today, with rising implications. + + Suppose that machines eventually gain sufficient functionality that one will be + able to say that a lot of people have become extraneous. This might take place + in nursing, pharmaceuticals, transportation, manufacturing, or in any other + imaginable field of employment. + + The right question to then ask isn’t really about what should be done with the + people who used to perform the tasks now colonized by machines. By the time one + gets to that question, a conceptual mistake has already been made. + + Instead, it has to be pointed out that outside of the spell of bad philosophy + human obsolescence wouldn’t in fact happen. The data that drives “automation” + has to ultimately come from people, in the form of “big data.” Automation can + always be understood as elaborate puppetry. + + The most crucial quality of our response to very high-functioning machines, + artificial intelligences and the like, is how we conceive of the things that + the machines can’t do, and whether those tasks are considered real jobs for + people or not. We used to imagine that elite engineers would be automation’s + only puppeteers. It turns out instead that big data coming from vast numbers of + people is needed to make machines appear to be “automated.” Do the puppeteers + still get paid once the whole audience has joined their ranks? + +## The Technology of Ambient Cheating + + Siren Servers do what comes naturally due to the very idea of computation. + Computation is the demarcation of a little part of the universe, called a + computer, which is engineered to be very well understood and controllable, so + that it closely approximates a deterministic, non-entropic process. But in + order for a computer to run, the surrounding parts of the universe must take on + the waste heat, the randomness. You can create a local shield against entropy, + but your neighbors will always pay for it. + + Note: A rare experimental machine called a “reversible” computer never forgets, + so that any computation can be run backward as well as forward. Such devices + run cool! This is an example of how thermodynamics and computation interact. + Reversible computers don’t radiate as much heat; forgetting radiates + randomness, which is the same thing as heating up the neighborhood. + +## The Insanity of the Local/Global Flip + + A Siren Server can become so successful—sometimes in the blink of an eye—that + it optimizes its environment—changes it—instead of changing in order to adapt + to the environment. A successful Siren Server no longer acts only as a player + within a larger system. Instead it becomes a central planner. This makes it + stupid, like a central planner in a communist regime. + +## The Conservation of Free Will + + A story must have actors, not automatons. Different people become more or less + like automatons in our Sirenic era. + + Sirenic entrepreneurs intuitively cast free will—so long as it is their own—as + an ever more magical, elite, and “meta” quality of personhood. The entrepreneur + hopes to “dent the universe”* or achieve some other heroic, Nietzschean + validation. Ordinary people, however, who will be attached to the nodes of the + network created by the hero, will become more effectively mechanical. + + [...] + + We’re setting up barriers between cases where we choose to give over some + judgment to cloud software, as if we were predictable machines, and those where + we elevate our judgments to pious, absolute standards. + + Making choices of where to place the barrier between ego and algorithm is + unavoidable in the age of cloud software. Drawing the line between what we + forfeit to calculation and what we reserve for the heroics of free will is the + story of our time. + +## Rewarding and Punishing Network Effects + + To understand how Siren Servers work, it’s useful to divide network effects + into those that are “rewarding” and those that are “punishing.” Siren Servers + gain dominance through rewarding network effects, but keep dominance through + punishing network effects. + +## The Closing Act + + Competition becomes mostly about who can out-meta who, and only secondarily + about specialization. + + [...] + + Individual Siren Servers can die and yet the Siren Server pattern perseveres, + and it is that pattern that is the real problem. The systematic decoupling of + risk from reward in the rising information economy is the problem, not any + particular server. + +## The limits of emergence as an explanation + + But the problem with freestanding concentrations of power is that you never + know who will inherit them. If social networking has the power to synchronize + great crowds to dethrone a pharaoh, why might it not also coordinate lynchings + or pogroms? + + [...] + + The core ideal of the Internet is that one trusts people, and that given an + opportunity, people will find their way to be reasonably decent. I happily + restate my loyalty to that ideal. It’s all we have. + + But the demonstrated capability of Facebook to effortlessly engage in mass + social engineering proves that the Internet as it exists today is not a + purists’ emergent system, as is so often claimed, but largely a top-down, + directed one. + + [...] + + We pretend that an emergent meta-human being is appearing in the computing + clouds—an artificial intelligence—but actually it is humans, the operators of + Siren Servers, pulling the levers. + + [...] + + The nuts and bolts of artificial-intelligence research can often be more + usefully interpreted without the concept of AI at all. For example, in 2011, + IBM scientists unveiled a “question answering” machine that is designed to play + the TV quiz show Jeopardy. Suppose IBM had dispensed with the theatrics, and + declared it had done Google one better and come up with a new phrase-based + search engine. This framing of exactly the same technology would have gained + IBM’s team as much (deserved) recognition as the claim of an artificial + intelligence, but it would also have educated the public about how such a + technology might actually be used most effectively. + + AI technologies typically operate on a variation of the process described + earlier that accomplishes translations between languages. While innovation in + algorithms is vital, it is just as vital to feed algorithms with “big data” + gathered from ordinary people. The supposedly artificially intelligent result + can be understood as a mash-up of what real people did before. People have + answered a lot of questions before, and a multitude of these answers are + gathered up by the algorithms and regurgitated by the program. This in no way + denigrates it or proposes it isn’t useful. It is not, however, supernatural. + The real people from whom the initial answers were gathered deserve to be paid + for each new answer given by the machine. + + [...] + + What all this comes down to is that the very idea of artificial intelligence + gives us the cover to avoid accountability by pretending that machines can take + on more and more human responsibility. This holds for things that we don’t even + think of as artificial intelligence, like the recommendations made by Netflix + and Pandora. Seeing movies and listening to music suggested to us by algorithms + is relatively harmless, I suppose. But I hope that once in a while the users of + those services resist the recommendations; our exposure to art shouldn’t be + hemmed in by an algorithm that we merely want to believe predicts our tastes + accurately. These algorithms do not represent emotion or meaning, only + statistics and correlations. + + What makes this doubly confounding is that while Silicon Valley might sell + artificial intelligence to consumers, our industry certainly wouldn’t apply the + same automated techniques to some of its own work. Choosing design features in + a new smartphone, say, is considered too consequential a game. Engineers don’t + seem quite ready to believe in their smart algorithms enough to put them up + against Apple’s late chief executive, Steve Jobs, or some other person with a + real design sensibility. + + But the rest of us, lulled by the concept of ever-more intelligent AIs, are + expected to trust algorithms to assess our aesthetic choices, the progress of a + student, the credit risk of a homeowner or an institution. In doing so, we only + end up misreading the capability of our machines and distorting our own + capabilities as human beings. We must instead take responsibility for every + task undertaken by a machine and double-check every conclusion offered by an + algorithm, just as we always look both ways when crossing an intersection, even + though the signal has been given to walk. + + When we think of computers as inert, passive tools instead of people, we are + rewarded with a clearer, less ideological view of what is going on—with the + machines and with ourselves. So, why, aside from the theatrical appeal to + consumers and reporters, must engineering results so often be presented in + Frankensteinian light? + + The answer is simply that computer scientists are human, and are as terrified + by the human condition as anyone else. We, the technical elite, seek some way + of thinking that gives us an answer to death, for instance. This helps explain + the allure of a place like the Singularity University. The influential Silicon + Valley institution preaches a story that goes like this: One day in the + not-so-distant future, the Internet will suddenly coalesce into a + superintelligent AI, infinitely smarter than any of us individually and all of + us combined; it will become alive in the blink of an eye, and take over the + world before humans even realize what’s happening. + + Some think the newly sentient Internet would then choose to kill us; others + think it would be generous and digitize us the way Google is digitizing old + books, so that we can live forever as algorithms inside the global brain. Yes, + this sounds like many different science fiction movies. Yes, it sounds nutty + when stated so bluntly. But these are ideas with tremendous currency in Silicon + Valley; these are guiding principles, not just amusements, for many of the most + influential technologists. + + It should go without saying that we can’t count on the appearance of a + soul-detecting sensor that will verify that a person’s consciousness has been + virtualized and immortalized. There is certainly no such sensor with us today + to confirm metaphysical ideas about people. All thoughts about consciousness, + souls, and the like are bound up equally in faith, which suggests something + remarkable: What we are seeing is a new religion, expressed through an + engineering culture. diff --git a/books/sociedade/who-owns-the-future.mdwn b/books/sociedade/who-owns-the-future.mdwn deleted file mode 100644 index e53d275..0000000 --- a/books/sociedade/who-owns-the-future.mdwn +++ /dev/null @@ -1,673 +0,0 @@ -[[!meta title="Who owns the future?"]] - -* Author: Jaron Lanier -* Year: 2013 -* Publisher: Simon & Schuster - -## Index - -* Star system versus the bell curve as network designs. -* Siren Servers: narcissism, hyperamplified risk aversion, and extreme information asymmetry. -* Siren Servers and Maxwell’s Demon. -* Disruptive innovation as the tedious scheme to shrink markets. -* Science isn't automatic. -* Nine dismal humors of futurism, and a hopeful one. -* Marx as one of the first technology writers (when discussing Luddites). -* Human obsolescence is avoidable. -* Keynes Considered as a Big Data Pioneer. -* Amazon's Mechanical Turk. -* Humanistic information economics. -* What is experience? If personal experience were missing from the universe, how would things be different? -* Gurus and New Age at the Sillicon Valley: Gurdjieff, Steve Jobs. - -## Prelude - - Instagram isn’t worth a billion dollars just because those thirteen employees - are extraordinary. Instead, its value comes from the millions of users who - contribute to the network without being paid for it. Networks need a great - number of people to participate in them to generate significant value. But when - they have them, only a small number of people get paid. That has the net effect - of centralizing wealth and limiting overall economic growth. - - [...] - - By “digital networking” I mean not only the Internet and the Web, but also - other networks operated by outfits like financial institutions and intelligence - agencies. In all these cases, we see the phenomenon of power and money becoming - concentrated around the people who operate the most central computers in a - network, undervaluing everyone else. That is the pattern we have come to - expect, but it is not the only way things can go. - -## The Price of Heaven - - Utopians presume the advent of abundance not because it will be affordable, but - because it will be free, provided we accept surveillance. - - Starting back in the early 1980s, an initially tiny stratum of gifted - technologists conceived new interpretations of concepts like privacy, liberty, - and power. I was an early participant in the process and helped to formulate - many of the ideas I am criticizing in this book. What was once a tiny - subculture has blossomed into the dominant interpretation of computation and - software-mediated society. - - One strain of what might be called “hacker culture” held that liberty means - absolute privacy through the use of cryptography. I remember the thrill of - using military-grade stealth just to argue about who should pay for a pizza at - MIT in 1983 or so. - - On the other hand, some of my friends from that era, who consumed that pizza, - eventually became very rich building giant cross-referenced dossiers on masses - of people, which were put to use by financiers, advertisers, insurers, or other - concerns nurturing fantasies of operating the world by remote control. - - It is typical of human nature to ignore hypocrisy. The greater a hypocrisy, the - more invisible it typically becomes, but we technical folk are inclined to seek - an airtight whole of ideas. Here is one such synthesis—of cryptography for - techies and massive spying on others—which I continue to hear fairly often: - Privacy for ordinary people can be forfeited in the near term because it will - become moot anyway. - - Surveillance by the technical few on the less technical many can be tolerated - for now because of hopes for an endgame in which everything will become - transparent to everyone. Network entrepreneurs and cyber-activists alike seem - to imagine that today’s elite network servers in positions of information - supremacy will eventually become eternally benign, or just dissolve. - - Bizarrely, the endgame utopias of even the most ardent high-tech libertarians - always seem to take socialist turns. The joys of life will be too cheap to - meter, we imagine. So abundance will go ambient. - - This is what diverse cyber-enlightened business concerns and political groups - all share in common, from Facebook to WikiLeaks. Eventually, they imagine, - there will be no more secrets, no more barriers to access; all the world will - be opened up as if the planet were transformed into a crystal ball. In the - meantime, those true believers encrypt their servers even as they seek to - gather the rest of the world’s information and find the best way to leverage - it. - - It is all too easy to forget that “free” inevitably means that someone else - will be deciding how you live. - -## Just Blurt the Idea Out - - So we begin with the simple question of how to design digital networks to - deliver more help than harm in aligning human intention to meet great - challenges. A starting point for an answer can be summarized: “Digital - information is really just people in disguise.” - -### Aristotle frets - - Aristotle directly addressed the role of people in a hypothetical high-tech - world: If every instrument could accomplish its own work, obeying or - anticipating the will of others, like the statues of Daedalus, or the tripods - of Hephaestus, which, says the poet, of their own accord entered the assembly - of the Gods; if, in like manner, the shuttle would weave and the plectrum touch - the lyre without a hand to guide them, chief workmen would not want servants, - nor masters slaves.1 - - At this ancient date, a number of possibilities were at least slightly visible - to Aristotle’s imagination. One was that the human condition was in part a - function of what machines could not do. Another was that it was possible to - imagine, at least hypothetically, that machines could do more. The synthesis - was also conceived: Better machines could free and elevate people, even slaves. - - If we could show Aristotle the technology of our times, I wonder what he would - make of the problem of unemployment. Would he take Marx’s position that better - machines create an obligation (to be carried out by political bodies) to - provide care and dignity to people who no longer need to work? Or would - Aristotle say, “Kick the unneeded ones out of town. The polis is only for the - people who own the machines, or do what machines still cannot do.” Would he - stand by idly as Athens was eventually depopulated? - - I’d like to think the best of Aristotle, and assume he would realize that both - choices are bogus; machine autonomy is nothing but theater. Information needn’t - be thought of as a freestanding thing, but rather as a human product. It is - entirely legitimate to understand that people are still needed and valuable - even when the loom can run without human muscle power. It is still running on - human thought. - - [...] - - Note: How prescient that Aristotle chose musical instruments and looms as his - examples for machines that might one day operate automatically! These two types - of machines did indeed turn out to be central to the prehistory of computation. - The Jacquard programmable loom helped inspire calculating engines, while music - theory and notation helped further the concept of abstract computation, as when - Mozart wrote algorithmic, nondeterministic music incorporating dice throws. - Both developments occurred around the turn of the 19th century. - - [...] - - Aristotle seems to want to escape the burden of accommodating lesser people. - His quote about self-operating lutes and looms could be interpreted as a - daydream that better technology will free us to some degree from having to deal - with one another. - - It’s not as if everyone wanted to be closer to all of humanity when cities - first formed. Athens was a necessity first, and a luxury second. No one wants - to accommodate the diversity of strangers. People deal with each other - politically because the material advantages are compelling. We find relative - safety and sustenance in numbers. Agriculture and armies happened to work - better as those enterprises got bigger, and cities built walls. - - But in Aristotle’s words you get a taste of what a nuisance it can be to - accommodate others. Something was lost with the advent of the polis, and we - still dream of getting it back. - - [...] - - The reward for a Roman general, upon retiring after years of combat, was a plot - of land he could farm for himself. To be left alone, to be able to live off the - land with the illusion of no polis to bug you, that was the dream. The American - West offered that dream again, and still loathes giving it up. Justice Louis - Brandeis famously defined privacy as the “right to be left alone.” - - In every case, however, abundance without politics was an illusion that could - only be sustained in temporary bubbles, supported by armies. The ghosts of the - losers haunt every acre of easy abundance. The greatest beneficiaries of - civilization use all their power to create a temporary illusion of freedom from - politics. The rich live behind gates, not just to protect themselves, but to - pretend to not need anyone else, if only for a moment. In Aristotle’s quote, we - find the earliest glimmer of the hope that technological advancement could - replace territorial conquest as a way of implementing an insulating bubble - around a person. - - [...] - - People naturally seek the benefits of society, meaning the accommodation of - strangers, while avoiding direct vulnerabilities to specific others as much as - possible. This is a clichéd criticism of the online culture of the moment. - People have thousands of “friends” and yet stare at a little screen when in the - proximity of other people. As it was in Athens, so it is online. - -## Money - - Money might have begun as a mnemonic counter for assets you couldn’t keep under - direct observation, like wandering sheep. A stone per sheep, so the shepherd - would be confident all had been reunited after a day at pasture. In other - words, artifacts took on information storage duties. - - [...] - - Ancient money was information storage that represented events in the past. To - the ears of many a financier, at this early stage “money” had not been born - yet, only accounting. That kind of money can be called “past-oriented money.” - -## Noise and luck - - Consider the problem of noise, or what is known as luck in human affairs. - - [...] - - And yet the rewards of winning and losing are vastly different. While some - critics might have aesthetic or ethical objections to winner-take-all outcomes, - a mathematical problem with them is that noise is amplified. Therefore, if a - societal system depends too much on winner-take-all contests, then the acuity - of that system will suffer. It will become less reality-based. - - When a bell curve distribution is appreciated as a bell curve instead of as a - winner-take-all distribution, then noise, luck, and conceptual ambiguity aren’t - amplified. It makes statistical sense to talk about average intelligence or - high intelligence, but not to identify the single most intelligent person. - -## Letting Bell Curves Be Bell Curves - - In a star system, the top players are rewarded tremendously, while almost - everyone else—facing in our era an ever-larger, more global body of competitive - peers—is driven toward poverty (because of competition or perhaps automation). - -## Absolutism - - Being an absolutist is a certain way to become a failed technologist. - - Markets are an information technology. A technology is useless if it can’t be - tweaked. If market technology can’t be fully automatic and needs some - “buttons,” then there’s no use in trying to pretend otherwise. You don’t stay - attached to poorly performing quests for perfection. You fix bugs. - -## The Taste of Politics - - Despite my favorable regard for organized labor, for the purposes of this book - I have to focus somewhat on certain failings. The problems of interest to me - are not really with the labor movement, but with the nature of levees. What - might be called “upper-class levees,” like exclusive investment funds, have - been known to blur into Ponzi schemes or other criminal enterprises, and the - same pattern exists for levees at all levels. - - Levees are more human than algorithmic, and that is not an entirely good thing. - Whether for the rich or the middle class, levees are inevitably a little - conspiratorial, and conspiracy naturally attracts corruption. Criminals easily - exploited certain classic middle-class levees; the mob famously infiltrated - unions and repurposed music royalties as a money-laundering scheme. - - Levees are a rejection of unbridled algorithm and an insertion of human will - into the flow of capital. Inevitably, human oversight brings with it all the - flaws of humans. And yet despite their rough and troubled nature, antenimbosian - levees worked well enough to preserve middle classes despite the floods, - storms, twisters, and droughts of a world contoured by finance. Without our - system of levees, rising like a glimmering bell-curved mountain of rice - paddies, capitalism would probably have decayed into Marx’s “attractor - nightmare” in which markets decay into plutocracy. - -## A First Pass at a Definition - - A Siren Server, as I will refer to such a thing, is an elite computer, - or coordinated collection of computers, on a network. It is - characterized by narcissism, hyperamplified risk aversion, and extreme - information asymmetry. It is the winner of an all-or-nothing contest, - and it inflicts smaller all-or-nothing contests on those who interact - with it. - - Siren Servers gather data from the network, often without having to pay - for it. The data is analyzed using the most powerful available - computers, run by the very best available technical people. The results - of the analysis are kept secret, but are used to manipulate the rest of - the world to advantage. - - That plan will always eventually backfire, because the rest of the world - cannot indefinitely absorb the increased risk, cost, and waste dispersed - by a Siren Server. Homer sternly warned sailors to not succumb to the - call of the sirens, and yet was entirely complacent about Hephaestus’s - golden female robots. But Sirens might be even more dangerous in - inorganic form, because it is then that we are really most looking at - ourselves in disguise. It is not the siren who harms the sailor, but the - sailor’s inability to think straight. So it is with us and our machines. - - Siren Servers are fated by their nature to sow illusions. They are - cousins to another seductive literary creature, star of the famous - thought experiment known as Maxwell’s Demon, after the great 19th - century physicist James Clerk Maxwell. The demon is an imaginary - creature that, if it could only exist, would be able to implement a - perpetual motion machine and perform other supernatural tricks. - - Maxwell’s Demon might be stationed at a tiny door separating two - chambers filled with water or air. It would only allow hot molecules to - pass one way, and cold molecules to pass in the opposite direction. - After a while, one side would be hot and the other cold, and you could - let them mix again, rushing together so quickly that the stream could - run a generator. In that way, the tiny act of discriminating between hot - and cold would produce infinite energy, because you could repeat the - process forever. - - The reason Maxwell’s Demon cannot exist is that it does take resources - to perform an act of discrimination. We imagine computation is free, but - it never is. The very act of choosing which particle is cold or hot - itself becomes an energy drain and a source of waste heat. The principle - is also known as “no free lunch.” - - We do our best to implement Maxwell’s Demon whenever we manipulate - reality with our technologies, but we can never do so perfectly; we - certainly can’t get ahead of the game, which is known as entropy. All - the air conditioners in a city emit heat that makes the city hotter - overall. While you can implement what seems to be a Maxwell’s Demon if - you don’t look too far or too closely, in the big picture you always - lose more than you gain. - - Every bit in a computer is a wannabe Maxwell’s Demon, separating the - state of “one” from the state of “zero” for a while, at a cost. A - computer on a network can also act like a wannabe demon if it tries to - sort data from networked people into one or the other side of some - imaginary door, while pretending there is no cost or risk involved. For - instance, a Siren Server might allow only those who would be cheap to - insure through a doorway (to become insured) in order to make a - supernaturally ideal, low-risk insurance company. Such a scheme would - let high-risk people pass one way, and low-risk ones pass the other way, - in order to implement a phony perpetual motion machine out of a human - society. However, the uninsured would not cease to exist; rather, they - would instead add to the cost of the whole system, which includes the - people who run the Siren Server. A short-term illusion of risk reduction - would actually lead to increased risk in the longer term. - -## Candy - - The primary business of digital networking has come to be the creation of - ultrasecret mega-dossiers about what others are doing, and using this - information to concentrate money and power. It doesn’t matter whether the - concentration is called a social network, an insurance company, a derivatives - fund, a search engine, or an online store. It’s all fundamentally the same. - Whatever the intent might have been, the result is a wielding of digital - technology against the future of the middle class. - - [...] - - We loved the crazy cheap easy mortgages, motivated by crazed overleveraging. We - love the free music, enabled by crazed copying. We love cheap online prices, - offered by what would have once seemed like national intelligence agencies. - These newer spy services do not struggle on behalf of our security, but instead - figure out just how little payment everyone in the chain can be made to accept. - We are not benefiting from the benevolence of some artificial intelligence - superbeing. We are exploiting each other off the books while those - concentrating our information remain on the books. We love our treats but will - eventually discover we are depleting our own value. - - That’s how we can have economic troubles despite there being so much wealth in - the system, and during a period of increasing efficiencies. Great fortunes are - being made on shrinking the economy instead of growing it. It’s not a result of - some evil scheme, but a side effect of an idiotic elevation of the fantasy that - technology is getting smart and standing on its own, without people. - -## From Autocollate to Autocollude - - It seems as though online services are bringing bargains to everyone, and yet - wealth disparity is increasing while social mobility is decreasing. If everyone - were getting better options, wouldn’t everyone be doing better as well? - -## From the Customer’s Point of View - - Wal-Mart confronted the ordinary shopper with two interesting pieces of news. - One was that stuff they wanted to buy got cheaper, which of course was great. - This news was delivered first, and caused cheering. - - But there was another piece of news that emerged more gradually. It has often - been claimed that Wal-Mart plays a role in the reduction of employment - prospects for the very people who tend to be its customers.1 Wal-Mart has - certainly made the world more efficient in a certain sense. It moved - manufacturing to any spot in the world that could accomplish it at the very - lowest cost; it rewarded vendors willing to cut corners to the maximum degree. - - [...] - - All Siren Servers deliver dual messages similar to the pair pioneered by - Wal-Mart. On the one hand, “Good news! Treats await! Information systems have - made the world more efficient for you.” - - On the other hand, a little later: “It turns out you, your needs, and your - expectations are not maximally efficient from the lofty point of view of our - server. Therefore, we are reshaping the world so that in the long term, your - prospects are being reduced.” - - The initial benefits don’t remotely balance the long-term degradations. - Initially you made some money day trading or getting an insanely easy loan, or - saved some money couch-surfing or by using coupons from an Internet site, but - then came the pink slip, the eviction notice, and the halving of your savings - when the market drooped. Or you loved getting music for free, but then realized - that you couldn’t pursue a music career yourself because there were hardly any - middle-class, secure jobs left in what was once the music industry. Maybe you - loved the supercheap prices at your favorite store, but then noticed that the - factory you might have worked for closed up for good. - -## Financial Siren Servers - - The schemes were remarkably similar to Silicon Valley designs. A few of them - took as input everything they possibly could scrape from the Internet as well - as other, proprietary networks. As in Google’s data centers, stupendous - correlative algorithms would crunch on the whole ’net’s data overnight, looking - for correlations. Maybe a sudden increase in comments about mosquito bites - would cause an automatic, instant investment in a company that sold lotions. - Actually, that’s an artificially sensible example. The real examples made no - sense to humans. But money was made, and fairly reliably. - - Note: It should be pointed out that if only one Siren Server is milking a - particular fluctuation in this way, a reasonable argument could be made that a - service is being performed, in that the fluctuation reveals inefficiency, and - the Siren is canceling it out. However, when many Sirens milk the same - fluctuation, they lock into a feedback system with each other and inadvertently - conspire to milk the rest of the world to no purpose. - - [...] - - What is absolutely essential to a financial Siren Server, however, is a - superior information position. If everyone else knew what you were doing, they - could securitize you. If anyone could buy stock in a mathematical “sure thing” - scheme, then the benefits of it would be copied like a shared music file, and - spread out until it was nullified. So, in today’s world your mortgage can be - securitized in someone else’s secretive bunker, but you can’t know about the - bunker and securitize it. If it weren’t for that differential, the new kind of - sure thing wouldn’t exist. - -## If Life Gives You EULAs, Make Lemonade - - The information economy that we are currently building doesn’t really embrace - capitalism, but rather a new form of feudalism. - -## Your Lack of Privacy Is Someone Else’s Wealth - - Occasionally the rich embrace a new token and drive up its value. The fine art - market is a great example. Expensive art is essentially a private form of - currency traded among the very rich. The better an artist is at making art that - can function this way, the more valuable the art will become. Andy Warhol is - often associated with this trick, though Pablo Picasso and others were - certainly playing the same game earlier. The art has to be stylistically - distinct and available in suitable small runs. It becomes a private form of - money, as instantly recognizable as a hundred-dollar bill. - - A related trend of our times is that troves of dossiers on the private lives - and inner beings of ordinary people, collected over digital networks, are - packaged into a new private form of elite money. The actual data in these - troves need not be valid. In fact, it might be better that it is not valid, for - actual knowledge brings liabilities. - -## The Nature of Our Confusion - - Our core illusion is that we imagine big data as a substance, like a natural - resource waiting to be mined. We use terms like data-mining routinely to - reinforce that illusion. Indeed some data is like that. Scientific big data, - like data about galaxy formation, weather, or flu outbreaks, can be gathered - and mined, just like gold, provided you put in the hard work. - - But big data about people is different. It doesn’t sit there; it plays against - you. It isn’t like a view through a microscope, but more like a view of a - chessboard. - -## The Most Elite Naïveté - - As technology advances, Siren Servers will be ever more the objects of the - struggle for wealth and power, because they are the only links in the chain - that will not be commoditized. If present trends continue, you’ll always be - able to seek information supremacy, just as old-fashioned barons could struggle - for supremacy over land or natural resources. A new energy cycle will someday - make oil much less central to geopolitics, but the information system that - manages that new kind of energy could easily become an impregnable castle. The - illusory golden vase becomes more and more valuable. - -### Mapping out where the conversation can go - - An endgame for civilization has been foreseen since Aristotle. As technology - reaches heights of efficiency, civilization will have to find a way to resolve - a peculiar puzzle: What should the role of “extra” humans be if not everyone is - still strictly needed? Do the extra people—the ones whose roles have - withered—starve? Or get easy lives? Who decides? How? - - The same core questions, stated in a multitude of ways, have elicited only a - small number of answers, because only a few are possible. - - What will people be when technology becomes much more advanced? With each - passing year our abilities to act on our ideas are increased by technological - progress. Ideas matter more and more. The ancient conversations about where - human purpose is headed continue today, with rising implications. - - Suppose that machines eventually gain sufficient functionality that one will be - able to say that a lot of people have become extraneous. This might take place - in nursing, pharmaceuticals, transportation, manufacturing, or in any other - imaginable field of employment. - - The right question to then ask isn’t really about what should be done with the - people who used to perform the tasks now colonized by machines. By the time one - gets to that question, a conceptual mistake has already been made. - - Instead, it has to be pointed out that outside of the spell of bad philosophy - human obsolescence wouldn’t in fact happen. The data that drives “automation” - has to ultimately come from people, in the form of “big data.” Automation can - always be understood as elaborate puppetry. - - The most crucial quality of our response to very high-functioning machines, - artificial intelligences and the like, is how we conceive of the things that - the machines can’t do, and whether those tasks are considered real jobs for - people or not. We used to imagine that elite engineers would be automation’s - only puppeteers. It turns out instead that big data coming from vast numbers of - people is needed to make machines appear to be “automated.” Do the puppeteers - still get paid once the whole audience has joined their ranks? - -## The Technology of Ambient Cheating - - Siren Servers do what comes naturally due to the very idea of computation. - Computation is the demarcation of a little part of the universe, called a - computer, which is engineered to be very well understood and controllable, so - that it closely approximates a deterministic, non-entropic process. But in - order for a computer to run, the surrounding parts of the universe must take on - the waste heat, the randomness. You can create a local shield against entropy, - but your neighbors will always pay for it. - - Note: A rare experimental machine called a “reversible” computer never forgets, - so that any computation can be run backward as well as forward. Such devices - run cool! This is an example of how thermodynamics and computation interact. - Reversible computers don’t radiate as much heat; forgetting radiates - randomness, which is the same thing as heating up the neighborhood. - -## The Insanity of the Local/Global Flip - - A Siren Server can become so successful—sometimes in the blink of an eye—that - it optimizes its environment—changes it—instead of changing in order to adapt - to the environment. A successful Siren Server no longer acts only as a player - within a larger system. Instead it becomes a central planner. This makes it - stupid, like a central planner in a communist regime. - -## The Conservation of Free Will - - A story must have actors, not automatons. Different people become more or less - like automatons in our Sirenic era. - - Sirenic entrepreneurs intuitively cast free will—so long as it is their own—as - an ever more magical, elite, and “meta” quality of personhood. The entrepreneur - hopes to “dent the universe”* or achieve some other heroic, Nietzschean - validation. Ordinary people, however, who will be attached to the nodes of the - network created by the hero, will become more effectively mechanical. - - [...] - - We’re setting up barriers between cases where we choose to give over some - judgment to cloud software, as if we were predictable machines, and those where - we elevate our judgments to pious, absolute standards. - - Making choices of where to place the barrier between ego and algorithm is - unavoidable in the age of cloud software. Drawing the line between what we - forfeit to calculation and what we reserve for the heroics of free will is the - story of our time. - -## Rewarding and Punishing Network Effects - - To understand how Siren Servers work, it’s useful to divide network effects - into those that are “rewarding” and those that are “punishing.” Siren Servers - gain dominance through rewarding network effects, but keep dominance through - punishing network effects. - -## The Closing Act - - Competition becomes mostly about who can out-meta who, and only secondarily - about specialization. - - [...] - - Individual Siren Servers can die and yet the Siren Server pattern perseveres, - and it is that pattern that is the real problem. The systematic decoupling of - risk from reward in the rising information economy is the problem, not any - particular server. - -## The limits of emergence as an explanation - - But the problem with freestanding concentrations of power is that you never - know who will inherit them. If social networking has the power to synchronize - great crowds to dethrone a pharaoh, why might it not also coordinate lynchings - or pogroms? - - [...] - - The core ideal of the Internet is that one trusts people, and that given an - opportunity, people will find their way to be reasonably decent. I happily - restate my loyalty to that ideal. It’s all we have. - - But the demonstrated capability of Facebook to effortlessly engage in mass - social engineering proves that the Internet as it exists today is not a - purists’ emergent system, as is so often claimed, but largely a top-down, - directed one. - - [...] - - We pretend that an emergent meta-human being is appearing in the computing - clouds—an artificial intelligence—but actually it is humans, the operators of - Siren Servers, pulling the levers. - - [...] - - The nuts and bolts of artificial-intelligence research can often be more - usefully interpreted without the concept of AI at all. For example, in 2011, - IBM scientists unveiled a “question answering” machine that is designed to play - the TV quiz show Jeopardy. Suppose IBM had dispensed with the theatrics, and - declared it had done Google one better and come up with a new phrase-based - search engine. This framing of exactly the same technology would have gained - IBM’s team as much (deserved) recognition as the claim of an artificial - intelligence, but it would also have educated the public about how such a - technology might actually be used most effectively. - - AI technologies typically operate on a variation of the process described - earlier that accomplishes translations between languages. While innovation in - algorithms is vital, it is just as vital to feed algorithms with “big data” - gathered from ordinary people. The supposedly artificially intelligent result - can be understood as a mash-up of what real people did before. People have - answered a lot of questions before, and a multitude of these answers are - gathered up by the algorithms and regurgitated by the program. This in no way - denigrates it or proposes it isn’t useful. It is not, however, supernatural. - The real people from whom the initial answers were gathered deserve to be paid - for each new answer given by the machine. - - [...] - - What all this comes down to is that the very idea of artificial intelligence - gives us the cover to avoid accountability by pretending that machines can take - on more and more human responsibility. This holds for things that we don’t even - think of as artificial intelligence, like the recommendations made by Netflix - and Pandora. Seeing movies and listening to music suggested to us by algorithms - is relatively harmless, I suppose. But I hope that once in a while the users of - those services resist the recommendations; our exposure to art shouldn’t be - hemmed in by an algorithm that we merely want to believe predicts our tastes - accurately. These algorithms do not represent emotion or meaning, only - statistics and correlations. - - What makes this doubly confounding is that while Silicon Valley might sell - artificial intelligence to consumers, our industry certainly wouldn’t apply the - same automated techniques to some of its own work. Choosing design features in - a new smartphone, say, is considered too consequential a game. Engineers don’t - seem quite ready to believe in their smart algorithms enough to put them up - against Apple’s late chief executive, Steve Jobs, or some other person with a - real design sensibility. - - But the rest of us, lulled by the concept of ever-more intelligent AIs, are - expected to trust algorithms to assess our aesthetic choices, the progress of a - student, the credit risk of a homeowner or an institution. In doing so, we only - end up misreading the capability of our machines and distorting our own - capabilities as human beings. We must instead take responsibility for every - task undertaken by a machine and double-check every conclusion offered by an - algorithm, just as we always look both ways when crossing an intersection, even - though the signal has been given to walk. - - When we think of computers as inert, passive tools instead of people, we are - rewarded with a clearer, less ideological view of what is going on—with the - machines and with ourselves. So, why, aside from the theatrical appeal to - consumers and reporters, must engineering results so often be presented in - Frankensteinian light? - - The answer is simply that computer scientists are human, and are as terrified - by the human condition as anyone else. We, the technical elite, seek some way - of thinking that gives us an answer to death, for instance. This helps explain - the allure of a place like the Singularity University. The influential Silicon - Valley institution preaches a story that goes like this: One day in the - not-so-distant future, the Internet will suddenly coalesce into a - superintelligent AI, infinitely smarter than any of us individually and all of - us combined; it will become alive in the blink of an eye, and take over the - world before humans even realize what’s happening. - - Some think the newly sentient Internet would then choose to kill us; others - think it would be generous and digitize us the way Google is digitizing old - books, so that we can live forever as algorithms inside the global brain. Yes, - this sounds like many different science fiction movies. Yes, it sounds nutty - when stated so bluntly. But these are ideas with tremendous currency in Silicon - Valley; these are guiding principles, not just amusements, for many of the most - influential technologists. - - It should go without saying that we can’t count on the appearance of a - soul-detecting sensor that will verify that a person’s consciousness has been - virtualized and immortalized. There is certainly no such sensor with us today - to confirm metaphysical ideas about people. All thoughts about consciousness, - souls, and the like are bound up equally in faith, which suggests something - remarkable: What we are seeing is a new religion, expressed through an - engineering culture. 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. diff --git a/books/sociedade/youre-not-a-gadget.mdwn b/books/sociedade/youre-not-a-gadget.mdwn deleted file mode 100644 index eac4d9b..0000000 --- a/books/sociedade/youre-not-a-gadget.mdwn +++ /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