Ham, and Magnus, It's easy to scoff at Ray Kurzweil's exaggerated hype, but it's also easy to miss the point. (And what's wrong with clouds ?) Anyway ...
You asked Ham "Is Pirsig's philosophy built on cybernetic information?" Well yes it is, kind of.. Look at his life story. As well as motorcycles and barbecue sculptures, Pirsig documented manuals for early computing and control devices. recognising the "value in the machine". (I also suspect you are using a narrow idea of cybernetics.) Anyway there are two important points. Magnus makes a distinction between the "Digital" nature of most current commercial computing - (though I could point out that 31 years ago I was programming pilot interactions with simulated flight using analogue computers - they don't make 'em like that anymore) - and the "Qubital" nature of the (physical) quantum computer. Personally, I don't think that's the main distinction affecting whether computers will ever be living and intelligent / conscious - that's about scale and complexity - even digital computers "could" be intelligent, if arranged to genuinely evolve life and intelligence. (Ask Douglas Adams' white mice; the earth / cosmos is just a great big physical computer in which these things have evolved.) Another important thing about quantum computing is not the computers, they are just more physical devices. The interesting thing (to anyone with an open mind) is that quantum information throws into question the foundations of quantum physics' Copenhagen interpretations, and a lot more it seems. That old object-observer interaction stuff seems to be a very misleading analogy to represent Heisenberg's apparent uncertainty. The Qubit (the quantum of undecided information) is becoming much more credible, and underlies any material reality. It is perilously close to the dynamic interactions of quality being more fundamental than subjects and objects. BUT ... Like all bleeding edge stuff, new-agers and well intentioned ignorami, can hijack the metaphors before they have matured, but I suggest you do not dismiss this stuff out of hand. (Josephson does a good line in the distinction between scepticism and scoffing - this nobel-proze winner's web-site is worth a read.) There are serious multi-million dollar venture capitalists behind quantum computing, so the "new-age" tag is pretty ignorant. Ian moq_discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
