Selma Singer wrote:
>
> Brad,
>
> Do you not think it is possible for us to 'use' the computer and the
> information it can provide as a tool for 'human' purposes?
Surely.
There is even a fitting role for the application of
statistical methods to human social and personal life,
particularly insofar as our "mixed" nature/essence
makes our physical bodies at least partly subject
to the laws of physics, etc.
Anyone who built a "space for peer speech and action"
http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/jpg/Kahn_Salk.html
today, without submitting the structure to validation by
engineering software (which the master builders of the
medieval cathedrals did not have...), would be grossly
irresponsible.
Similarly, computer modelling can help control the
spread of communicable(sic) disease, and even minimize
the wait time for borrowing library books,
minimize the amount of anything that is made but
not used ("waste"), etc.
But do you really find that in your social world individual
persons are primarily understood as perspectives on the
world rather than as components of objective systems
(including the "warm and fuzzy kind", like G-d's Creation
Mother Nature, "our" family,
"outr" ethnic-group [AKA: "roots"], etc.)? Do you feel my concerns
are perhaps as inappropriate as if one were to
worry about persons believing uncritically that the world is round --
excuse me, I meant: flat?
>
> I know that it can be strongly argued that, for the most part, technology
> has ruled over human reason in ways that may make us think that it is
> impossible for humans to use techological tools for 'human' ends.
The point here which is most exercising me today is how
technology without intelligent social control of biological
reproduction has produced the population explosion -- an
example of the Sorcerer's apprenticide if ever there was one!!!
>
> I do not believe computers, not matter how sophisticated, can ever have
> 'human' consciousness of the kind that produces philosophical thinking, or
> art or any number of other things that make us human in ways we may not even
> be able to describe.
I think it is a distraction to try to argue this point
either way. What is important is for each of us to
be a co-subject of the constitution of our universally shared
human world, even if one day that world includes not just
[excuse my lack of knowledge of Slavic languages...] robotnoi
[i.e., wage workers with whatever color collars...], but also
what in the English language would be called robots with
consciousness. This situation does not pertain today,
for employees, students and others (i.e., most persons).
>
> But I would like to believe that we can 'use' these tools to enhance the
> human capabilities that the tools cannot possibly have.
The desirable condition, as the Scandanavian model urges
[see, e.g., Pelle Ehn's _The Work-Oriented Design of
Computer Artefacts_] is for computers to be [what McLuhan called:]
extensions of man.
Back in the 1960s, my teacher John Wild already spoke of how the
machinist was ashamed of his pudgy fingers with compared with the
precision of a precision lathe.
>
> This may very well be a pipe-dream; it may very well be totally and
> completely unrealistic, but the alternative is that the tools will rule us
> and/or be used in destructive ways. If we only expect the negative and
> destructive use of these things, there is no possiblity that we can ever get
> anything else. The only possiblity that they might be used to enhance human
> life in human ways is if we think that is a possiblity and try to work
> toward that end
I think we both hope for what the medieval monks
already envisioned: that technologtical advance
would eliminate rote labor so that they [we] could
spend our time on this earth doing "higher" activities
Laborare est orare
Peregrinatio in stabilitate
Not to mention that time spent in wise oversight
of the performance of products of the human mind and
hand working together to produce what Jacob Bronowski
called The Ascent of Man -- such oversight -- both looking
over [like G-d on the 7th day...] and taking
responsibility for -- such oversight is surely
more gratifying than looking at the mindless
quasi-circular motions of the stars in the sky.
I have elsewhere noted how two particular
computer systems: SGML and APL have immense
possibilities for expanding human creativity --
and even word processing has enabled each of
us to have what only the very rich could have before:
a personal secretary to take dictation and
recopy our text to incorporate the changes we
make to it.
I am not anti-technology -- far from it: without
antibiotics, Mother Nature and the madness of
crowds [communicable diseases] would long ago
have crippled if not killed me.
For the spirit alone lives; all else dies.
Here endeth today's sermon....
\brad mccormick
>
> Selma
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Brad McCormick, Ed.D." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: "Michael Gurstein" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Sent: Friday, April 19, 2002 9:12 PM
> Subject: Re: Privatizing the Public: Whose agenda? At What Cost?
>
> > hMichael Gurstein wrote:
> > >
> > > I haven't been tracking it very closely, but there is an emerging field
> of
> > > Information Systems studies which is looking at what is being called
> > > Artificial Life. In this there is the designing of artificial organisms
> > > which live only within computers. They have a variety of the
> > > characteristics of real organisms including the capacity to reproduce
> and so
> > > on. It seems that the most recent development in the field is that the
> > > organisms are given some of the social characteristics of humans and
> they
> > > are left to see how they organize themselves into communities/societies.
> > >
> > > (Think Tamagouchi and the Sims as primitive examples)...
> > [snip]
> >
> > Given enough processing power, a digital computing system
> > can mimic the appearances of any phenomena to any desired
> > level of approximation. The best computer enhanced
> > astronomical images from the Hubble Telescope are
> > far more "believable" than the images produced
> > by a $80 digital camera.
> >
> > For those who believe that living human experience is
> > a specific type of empirically observable object,
> > there can be no doubt that eventually (and sooner rather
> > than later), a machine will pass the Turing test, i.e.,
> > present appearances which nobody can tell are not
> > "the real thing", and, therefore, computers
> > will *be* persons. But, as various other persons have said,
> > the map is not the territory, etc.
> >
> > I always believe in trying to grant people's most cherished
> > beliefs are true and then seeing what the conseqauences are.
> > If DNA can produce consciousness, why not silicon? Alan
> > Turing's mother reported her son said that if ever we
> > do make a computer that really thinks,
> >
> > "We shan't understand how it does it."
> >
> > So the only result of successfully producing
> > conscious beings via computer programming
> > would to have 2 instead of 1 incomprehensible
> > ways of producing consciousness (the other is via the
> > chemical processes of sperms and eggs).
> >
> > But the people who are fascinated by computer
> > consciousness and such have othe fantasies:
> > to either be God, i.e., to make living beings out
> > of clay, or to be Boss, i.e., to be able to control
> > other persons' behavior. Or maybe they just have
> > such high I.Q.s and are
> > so massively schooled that solving crossword
> > puzzles is no longer enough to keep them interested.
> >
> > --
> >
> > Where are the computer scientists who study Husserl?
> > Or who study Habermas? Or who study Susanne Langer?
> > Or Arnold Gehlen? .... More to the point, where are
> > the computer science *professors* who study such
> > works, so as to enable their students [tomorrow's
> > professors as well as tomorrow's technicians...]
> > to appreciate these things in a social world
> > which is some combination of oblivious and
> > dismissive of them?
> >
> > \brad mccormick
> >
> > --
> > Let your light so shine before men,
> > that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)
> >
> > Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
> >
> > <![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > -----------------------------------------------------------------
> > Visit my website ==> http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/
--
Let your light so shine before men,
that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
<![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Visit my website ==> http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/
