Michael Gurstein wrote:
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Bruce Podobnik <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Sent: Sunday, November 28, 1999 12:17 PM
> Subject: NYT on the Future
>
> > You may find this editorial from the New York Times interesting.
> > It addresses Marxism, Gandhi, and forecasts of the future.
> >
> > The Next Big Dialectic
> > New York Times Editorial
> > November 28, 1999
> >
> > By KURT ANDERSEN
> >
> > At this end of this century, as we bask happily and stupidly in the glow
> > of
> > our absolute capitalist triumph, no long-range historical forecasters
> > are
> > considered more insanely wrong-headed than Karl Marx and Friedrich
> > Engels. Yet the death of Communism makes this moment a fine one to
> > consider the emergence of Marxism 150 years ago as a historical
> > phenomenon, economically determined, rather than as the social and
> > moral debacle it became. In fact, looking back, Marx and Engels seem
> > prescient about the capitalist transformation of life and work. Writing
> > about globalization in "Principles of Communism" in 1847, Engels sounds
> > very 1999.
[snip]
> > In other words, the 21st century will have its Marx. This next great
> >
> > challenger of the governing ideological paradigm, this hypothetical
> > cyber-Marx, is one of our children or grandchildren or
> > great-grandchildren, and he or she could appear in Shandong Province
> > or Cairo or San Bernardino County.
[snip]
Alas, the Aristarchuses of this future are already dead. There are
quite a number of them. But, for me, one stands out: Enzo Paci,
who combined the insights of Marx and Husserl in his appositely
titled work: _The Function of the Sciences and the Meaning of Man_
(Northwestern Univ. Press, 1972). The book lives up to its
title, which encompasses everything we are thinking
about here -- but like many things that are in advance of their time....
> > The great new philosophical and political schism of the 21st century
> >
> > will concern computers and their status as creatures rather than
> > machines. In my lifetime, the sentimental regard for computers' apparent
> >
> > intelligence -- their dignity -- will resemble that now accorded
> > gorillas
> > and chimps. And it will not stop there. In his book, "The Age of
> > Spiritual
> > Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence," Ray Kurzweil,
> > the computer scientist, quite convincingly predicts that around 2030
> > computers will begin to seem sentient -- that they will "claim to be
> > conscious." And by the end of the century, he writes, there will no
> > longer
> > be "any clear distinction between humans and computers."
[snip]
This is utter Medieval Ptolemaic compounded epicyclic thinking.
It even misses the point that the only reason we can
respect apes and chimps today is that *we have taught
them language* -- thus actualizing a potential they "had"
all the time but could not realize by themselves (and
no 2001 slab came down to help them...).
Probably the day has long since passed when a computer
could pass "The Turing Test". But in the same way as
a photograph or sculpture can approximate what it
"represents": to *look* ever more like it, but without
ever decreasing the ontological *gulf* between the two
by even one angstrom. Emmanual Kant's Copernican revolution
in philosophy is still ahead of we who have never yet
really been modern. The great political tragedy of the
20th century was the destruction of the promise of
anarcho-syndicalism (and the communism which might have
led to it; see Robert Capa's great photograph of Trotsky
lecturing in Copenhagen, 1932, for a symbol to express this...).
The great philosophical tragedy of the
20th century is that the technintelligentsia and the
corporation-granted professoriat, with their
PhDs in craft skills, with only a few
exceptions, haven't the vaguest idea of the
difference between humanity as *subject* and psycho-bio-
compu-edu-penolo-...lumps as *objects*.
Of course it is theoretically conceivable that
computers shall one day be able to think (just as it
is possible that people will do so, too) -- if
consciousness can be produced by the chemical processes
which obtain between sperm and egg, then there may be
other ways to produce it. But, as Alan Turing said:
If ever a machine thinks, we shan't know how it does it.
The issue is not whether computers will become conscious
(which is highly unlikely, at least in the near term -->
what will happen is that computers will become increasingly
good facsimiles of people, especially of those persons,
like Sartre's waiter, who aspire to be objects [Sartre's
person employed as a waiter aspired
to *be* a waiter]. The issue is whether persons will
become awareness of their humanity: that they (we / I / you)
are not just objects in the world, but are also
perspectives on the world -- in each of whose living
experience (thought, praxis, etc.) all times
and places find their place. When the word
"transcendental" is as trendy as "algorithmic" there
will be some hope for a future.
Persons like this editorial writer who
predict a future that is like the past, only more so,
are a cliche in our time (or at least McLuhan
thought so, and we all know the cliche about
"preparing to fight yesterday's war"). He
means well, but, especially in our age steered by
massive corporation-university conglomerates,
good intentions count for even less than they
used to.
Read Paci.
Peace!
\brad mccormick
--
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
914.238.0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua NY 10514-3403 USA
-------------------------------------------------------
<![%THINK;[XML]]> Visit my website: http://www.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/
