While I do not contest this, the approach of using people to do the work was, as far as I know, developed in the Second World War… NASA simply borrowed the procedures already in place. “Computers”, in the same sense, were used on both sides of the Atlantic, during the efforts to break the German enigma code and other related information cyphers, but also in the US during the Manhattan Project to develop the atom bomb. In both cases, as was true at NASA later on, women were the primary resource for those activities.
Interestingly, too, the first device that could be called a computer in the more modern sense was the Jacquard Loom (1804), some of whose elements were reused in the design of Babbage’s difference engine (1820) or the later Analytical Engine (1837). The Jacquard Loom was itself based on earlier devices dating back as far as 1470. History ascribes the origins of these devices to men, although women while in earlier times dominated the weaving trades, were also still active weavers in medieval Europe, and it seems likely their influence was important. The Babbage designs were also influenced by Ada Lovelace, the daughter of the poet Byron, who became a celebrated mathematician in her own right.
“The printing press, the computer, and television are not
therefore simply machines which convey information. They are
metaphors through which we conceptualize reality in one way or
another. They will classify the world for us, sequence it, frame it,
enlarge it, reduce it, argue a case for what it is like. Through
these media metaphors, we do not see the world as it is. We see
it as our coding systems are. Such is the power of the form of
information.” Neil Postman
Walter Ong, wrote of the sensoriim as " the entire sensory apparatus of an operational complex." In the first Axial Age there were persons who were able to keep track of the interior and exterior sensoriums. Plato and Socrates, Aristotle with his four causes ( mentioned by me in the last Cafe) were adept at moving between an exterior verson of what we do on the interiors to make sense of complex world in motion with many others. Buddah and Jesus were good at it,too. Abhidavagupta and the Tibetans were able to develop interior landscapes through methods that I actually use. And these practices can register trans-rational apprehensions, that impact the exterior world. In other words, the interiors and exteriors co-refer. The Imaginal ( not the same as imagination) is the force that can turn you inside out and then back again in the twinkling of an eye. But which eye? The eye of the senses,?the eye of the mind? the eye of the spirit?
The ancients had some good maps for these territories that our current mania over codes and faster algorithyms completey obscures. I think David Abrams calls this process of integrateing percievers with sensoriums, synesthesia. An overlapping of senses occurs that trance practitioners and meditators as well as poets and story tellers, know well. Cognitive Psychology , modeling humans using computer metaphors, illuminates us very little as they pay attention mostly to material causes only.
The mathemitizing of mind has failed to capture our complexity. We can’t re-engineer humanity. We are learning this the hard way. Our immune systems are smarter than we are.
Yesterday, Norway has rejected all mandates and restrictions. If you get sick stay at home and take care of yourself before you rush to the hospital. An acceptance of Corona VIrus fatigue has swept that country up north and in Singapore as well. Both of these advanced socieites have lower rates of transmission than is happening in the US. No model fits all. The nation-state and medicine for profit has left us scrambling with few alternatives. . These two responses will probably amplify as the risks of more booster shots seems very risky and trying to defeat the virus medically has reached a cul de sac. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Personal responsibilty for health will place more upon the person than mandates, insurance companies, and the compiler of statistics. This has been a foolish and costly mistake. The same foolishness manifested in the medication of gay men during the AIDS epidemic. Rather than clean up the air and water we try to wipe out a virus. Herd immunity is not to be scoffed at. Those who have survived the illness have stronger immune systems than those who take a jab in the arm. Not all epidemics are alike. I am not an anti-vaxer but I am for bio-rythms and exercise and wise nuturition and breath work and cold baths. But not for everyone.
So, we learn to live with the Virus rather than against it. To defeat the microbial world is a lost cause. Let us pay attention to our prepossitions. We are more, much more than a computation. I hope we can develop these motifs further at the Cafe tomorrow. How in the midst of so much bad information can we focus attention on what is most important? How can we resonate with the structure of the Whole?
This morning I took part in a very interesting discussion about technology and language. It is part of a graduate seminar I and two of my colleagues have created dealing with the ethics of care in the health system and, indeed, society as a whole. One of the students presented a paper on “ethical design”, and another student a paper on the concept of institutional design in relation to health service environments. The issue of technology emerged, and it was pointed out that technology, rather than being a thing-by-itself, is really in a continuum with the idea of “techne”, itself a practice related to the acts of expression, hence of discourse. In a way, technology can be viewed as a way of saying things in certain ways. We were discussing the “case” of Joyce Echaquan, a native woman who died at a Quebec hospital a year ago after being admitted for a stomach ailment and mistreated by the nurses and doctors who were there to care for her. In essence, she died because she lacked the right language (and skin colour!) to be heard and treated with respect. Because care in the current system seems to depend more on how we present ourselves than on who we are. Technology, especially in the health system, but also elsewhere, is used to legitimize a certain kind of discourse or relation with people that focuses more on the technical aspects of the body than on our innate humanness.
Etymologically, “technology” has its roots in the Greek word techne, meaning “art” or “craft”, neither of which is generally associated with or attributed to Nature, as these notions imply, at least implicitly, that some kind of “knowing” is involved in their execution (which resonates, I think, with @Geoffreyjen_Edwards’ thoughts on technology as a way of expression). Isn’t there perhaps something of an agency issue also involved? What is more, the result of an art or craft is most often some artifact or artifice, which sends us linguistically close to “artificial”. And natural/artificial is a very useful distinction, is it not?
Picking up on the Alderman articles we read, that is, prepositionally speaking: what does “comes from” actually mean in this context? Is it in the sense that one thing leads to something else, that is that there is, if not a causal, a logical connection between them? Or in the sense of “I come from Western PA” simply because as a result of some great Cosmic Chance I happened to have been born there?
Similarly, what might “developing” mean? If it is “finding ways to make ways meaningful”, that is one thing, but if is meant teleologically, i.e., " finding ways to make ways means", then that’s another. To my mind, it makes a significant difference whether those “ends” are the reason for the solution being sought or whether those “ends” just happen to be the place in the process where you can stop because you found what you think is a solution.
And, I found the list intriguing: the first four items organic, the fifth not; the first four “natural”, if you will, the fifth “artificial” (to link back to my first question above). The first four can be understood as – and certainly have the feel of – an ever-increasing complexity, a kind of hierarchy … but the fifth? Whereas the first four can be understood in terms of differences in degree, the last item is different in kind. Should it be included in the hierarchy, or does it fall out categorically?
Otherwise, I think I pretty much understand where you want to go with this, at least as far and the “form” and “emptiness” are concerned. I stumbled over the AI, of course, just as I did with the power grids. I was reminded of Heidegger’s distinction between calculative and meditative thinking: the former is divisive and atomistic; the latter integrative and holistic. All AI is the former. Computers compute, calculate, crunch numbers, even if it appears they are doing something similar to what other sentient creatures are doing. At bottom, they are merely mimicking.
Which brings us to the Abram video that John posted. The theme of his presentation is “breath”, air, consciousness, mind, … spirit. You hint at this question, too: where’s the “spirit” in AI? And I’m not talking about the “rah-rah-sys-boom-bah” that surrounds it. I’m wondering what enlivens it, literally? Does it live at all? At this point in my own ruminations, I’m working with the hypothesis that if it can’t assume a form that breathes, it doesn’t matter.
I must hasten to add, though, before I’m terribly misunderstood: I am definitively not saying that if something doesn’t breathe, it doesn’t matter. It most certainly does. I mean, where would we be without matter? And to some, what matters more than matter? And what are our bodies composed of? And where would we be without them? It appears, as Arthur Young noted, in this 3.999…-dimensional reality, we couldn’t be without one: but it’s got to be a breathing one. So, in agreement with @johnnydavis54, best take care of it the best we can.
It is! Yet distinction need not imply division, dissociation, or opposing relationship.
“Comes from”—must mean it has arrived. It was once there in Nature;
now it’s here, with us Techno-Humans.
A spider spins a web.
The web is not the spider. It can blow away, tattered in the wind.
The web is an extension of the spider. It is both a trap and a part of her nervous system.
The spider eats.
Let us posit that “AI” is a way that some spiders eat.
The question then is not whether AI is dead or alive, but who is lunch?
We could all be spiders, slinging light through fiber optic cables.
A spider sits in the center of her web
and meditates…
Spiders don’t deposit separate feces and urine, but rather a combined waste product that exits from the same opening (anus) .
Does AI create waste products? If so, from what does that waste come from? And how is it excreted?
I am all for anologies that fit. Your anology doesn’t fit, Marco, although it is amusing to muse upon why it doesn’t. I have thought about it and it doesn’t match up. As conscious beings we can project our intelligence onto the non-intelligent and the unalive. AI is not conscious and never will be so comparisons to living, orgainc creatures can be allowed as poetic liscence but there are limits. This, in my view, is the problem of animism in our digital age. We see something that mimics life and fall in love with it. This becomes idolotry.
The eye through which God sees me is the same eye through which I see God. AI can’t do this. I look at the light from my computer screen and feel bored.
I can use the computer to share symbols with other sentient beings who also share symbols. That can be interesting and is miraculous. And that is a different story.
I shouldn’t be too late for the meeting today (but won’t be on the call until after 12:05). I may have to leave a little early because of student meetings, though. Some of the passages on page 84 struck me as offering some good fodder for Lisa’s project. I wanted to mention it here in case we don’t get to it on the call.
The link above says 7:00pm my time, which makes it 11:00am in Colorado … is that right? I noted 8:00pm my time in my calendar; Heather said she won’t be there till 12:05pm which would be an hour later.
I am confused as well and the confusion is likely a fault on my end.
If all @ccafe members who intend on attending can do a 12-2 mountain time, this would be what was originally planned in the logistics thread, I believe. Pardon the mix-up.
I tested zoom three times and was asked to reset my password each time. I will join the call today but anticipate that I may be asked to reset again so that may be why I’m late if that happens. Thanks. 2pm est.
Just to be clear about the analogy, I am not saying that AI like the spider or vice versa. Rather, the spider is humanity (or some groups of human beings) whose “exoskeleton,” we might say, is the corporation; its eight limbs are the military-industrial-pharmaceutical-government-church-non-profit-high-finance complex.
There is a sentient core in each organism. Each spins a web in order to alter the environment for their purposes (i.e., to eat). Each is intimately connected with their web, and might not be able to live without it. It is in this sense that Technology extends Nature.
Many, if not most, web-making spiders eat (recycle) their own web material. They provide food FOR birds, lizards, frogs, etc. And I could go on, but this is just another version of: herbal medicines contain hundreds of compounds, each there for a reason. Technological industrial medicines contain one or two. So when we talk about “purpose” these crucial differences really matter in our actual world, as we currently see happening around us. The disasters of narrow purpose , Spider poop is food/compost. Technological poop is pollution.
But…All analogies are flawed!
I seem to only add materials instead of helping us deepen in them–that’s my felt sense at the moment anyway. But, here’s Ed Sarath’s book on jazz I referred to at the end of our call today. Alfonso Montouri (CIIS prof) also has some good content on jazz as well.
Marco, I have to confess I am not sure what you are saying here, or what your primary take on technology viz nature is.
Where does technology start? Is a bone flute technology? Is a net technology? My weird take is that technology really starts when our narrow purpose outruns our wisdom: when we start making things for one or two purposes out of non-reusable or harmful materials, such as electronics that cause people to slave away in mines to get raw materials that are actually toxic, etc etc. If that fishing net is made of hemp, no problem. Now we have half-mile long plastic/metal contraptions we mine fish with! It’s a purpose gone crazy with greed and lack of care for the larger communal environment. So it’s not “natural” because it is not integrated and useful in a wide arc. Also, there’s TIME…natural beings and systems are honed and perfected for at least millions of years
for the best “fit” into the what already is. Human technologies using non-integrative materials are decades or a few hundred years old.
IF we insist on integrative technologies, bio-mimicy, etc we may be able to compare human inventions to caddis fly cases and fungal spore projection devices!
Hi Maia, If there was a time before technology when there was only Nature, then I’d think we’d have to say that technology starts in Nature—through Humans (and other cosmic intelligences). We could not have come up with technology by ourselves.
If we as humans come from nature, becoming clever, learning how to abstract (and extract) from nature in order to aggrandize our presence, this is also something that nature is doing; it is a “natural” impulse that expresses itself through us (even as it turns pathological and anti-natural); and, one has to assume, nature will take care of itself in the end.
We (as humans) may not survive how nature “corrects” for us. But I am bringing forth the perspective that this is also something nature is doing to itself. If we prefer a different outcome, then we will have to collaborate intentionally with nature to produce it.
In another sense, WE are fine because we are Nature and we perpetually return to consciousness. But I think the point is to figure out how we can live harmoniously (i.e., aesthetically) with nature, while learning to wield wisely the technologies that comes from that relationship. Obviously, something has gone horribly wrong with us. Somehow getting on a righteous path seems to be the challenge of our times.
Toward the end of our live meeting, I suggested we might read Susanne K. Langer’s Philosophy in a New Key for a future Cafe. Here is where one can get a taste of that book.
About This Book
Few people today, says Susanne Langer, are born to an environment which gives them spiritual support. Even as we are conquering nature, there is “little we see in nature that is ours.” We have lost our life-symbols, and our actions no longer have ritual value; this is the most disastrous hindrance to the free functioning of the human mind.
For, as Mrs. Langer observes, “. . . the human brain is constantly carrying on a process of symbolic transformation” of experience, not as a poor substitute for action, but as a basic human need. This concept of symbolic transformation strikes a “new key in philosophy.” It is a new generative idea, variously reflected even in such diverse fields as psychoanalysis and symbolic logic. Within it lies the germ of a complete reorientation to life, to art, to action. By posing a whole new world of questions in this key, Mrs. Langer presents a new world-view in which the limits of language do not appear as the last limits of rational, meaningful experience, but things inaccessible to discursive language have their own forms of conception. Her examination of the logic of signs and symbols, and her account of what constitutes meaning, what characterizes symbols, forms the basis for her further elaboration of the significance of language, ritual, myth and music, and the integration of all these elements into human mentality.
Irwin Edman says: "I suspect Mrs. Langer has established a key in terms of which a good deal of philosophy these next years may be composed.
She dedicates her book:
To
ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD
my great Teacher and Friend
Sorry I was unable to attend the discussion today. Andrea, who is here with me now, was also keen to participate but at the last minute we were unable to attend. We will catch up via the recording.
