Blogging the Noosphere

Finished reading Daniel  Suarez’s The Daemon, in between getting grants and writing papers and such, this semester.  This is maybe the best book I have read about technology, and its threats (as well as promises) in our immediate future, in the past year or two (and that is saying much when compared the likes of Charlie Stross, Neil Stephenson and Vernor Vinge).

Some might say this is cyberpunk reborn.  Others might raise an eyebrow at some of the parallels to, for example, the Matrix trilogy and cyberpunk (the writing predates the Matrix trilogy AFAIK).  This IS neo-cybperpunk, it has all the elements (underclass and high-technology), but it is better!  Imagine William Gibson in his prime (Neuromancar), but a writer who is a real programmer and hacker, and knows plausible threats (and possibilities) that might emerge from the technology as it is currently implemented in our world.  This is Suarez, and this is the brilliance of his book.  As with the best of SF, it takes current trends and extrapolates them, to image a  plausible (and chilling) near-future scenario. I’m not saying that the distribute AI Daemon he imagines is easy, or even likely to become reality.  But so much in this work is spot on and insightful, in terms of the impacts of technology on our society and culture, and the struggles between nation-states, corporations and individuals  (see Life Inc. ).

I loved this book, and can’t wait for the promised sequal coming in 2010 (hopefully that will be early rather than later in the year).

Lots of interesting content on Edge on the question of “What will change everything?“   I especially like Kelly and Hillis’s responses, which probably would not surprise those of you who know or read me. But I was also fascinated by Sherman’s response, discussing energy, environment and economics.  These issues, more and more, are being perceived as inextricably linked to one another, and key to all kinds of challenges we face.

The civilization type classification system discussed has a satisfyingly Star Trek feel to it.  And the fact that it was first articulated in 1964 by a Soviet astronomer, Nikolai Kardashev, should show that these concerns and ideas are not simply reactions to recent events like the financial market’s implosion or global warming trends, but have been thought of and discussed for some time.  The discussion of high-level patterns of civilizations and energy usage remind me strongly of De Landa’s thesis in his “A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History“, a wonderfully insightful book that I can’t believe I don’t see more reference to from authors such as Sherman and others like him on Edge in their writings.

Ever since reading a wonderful essay a long time ago by SF author David Brin, extolling the virtues of the progressive rationalist vision of Rodenberry’s Star Trek universe over the elitist world view of Lucas’s Star Wars, I knew here was a thinker after my own heart.

Brin recently published a new piece in Salon on a topic I have been thinking a lot upon lately.  I have commented on this before in the blog.  Somewhere else (that I can’t  find now) referred to it as that “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” paradox we seem to find ourself in.  We live in a time of great abundance, at least for most people in modern western societies.  At no time has so much wealth and power been available to so many, and at all levels of society.  Yet it also feels like no time has been more perilous, with the threat of unimaginable horrors barely held back, threatening the health of our planet, our societies, even the very existence of our species.

Brin’s article concerns the recent incarnation of this dichotomous view between the techno-transcendentalists and the (neo)Luddites, with the optimists proclaiming the near miraculous posibilities of our new information technologies to solve the world’s problems, and the pesimist’s predictions of imminent disaster and decline because of the very same technologies.

Brin argues for a truth to be found somewhere in-between the two perspectives. This is a vast over simplification of the argument, however, and one that Brin does a good job of developing in depth.  It is not so much that the truth is somewhere in the middle of these perspectives, but more so that each is correct but limited in context where it is applicable.  In the end Brin concludes that the optimal stance is that of the pragmatist.  The pragmatist attempts to understand and discover all of the facts, both the good but especially the worst.  But the pragmatic mind set of the Enlightenment, as Brin refers to it, can and does face such seemingly insurmountable problems.  Not with fizzy optimism, but with hard work, determination, and enlightened perspectives.

Just finished this delightful little book, Rapture for the Geeks, by Dooling (see MacLeod’s Fall Revolution series for the origin of the expression of his title).  A fun little book, and a bit different from what I was expecting.  It is about the singularity, of course, but it also channels parts of the Jargon file / Hacker’s Dictionary, Raymond’s Art of Unix Programming and other works of Unix and Open Source advocacy, with a dash of the Science v. Religion discourse of the likes of Dennett, Hitchins and Dawkins.

I quite enjoyed the book, though there is nothing really new here in terms of an original contribution to the topics by Dooling.  Those unfamiliar with the concept of the technological singularity, though, will find a lot of good references and ideas to follow up from here.  Dooling  collects quotes and excepts from all of the great original thinkers, from Turing through Kurzweil.  I was right with him till probably the last chapter where, to my mind, he looses the courage of his convictions on the value of religion regarding its moral and philosophical contributions.  He seems early on to be right with the scientists when talking about minds, brains and the “soul”.  So found his wishy-washiness in the end a bit perplexing.

But as I said there is a lot of fun to be had.  I haven’t mentioned my admiration of the poetry of Emily Dickenson yet in this blog.  For some reason, she appears to appeal enormously to those of the geeky mindset, especially her poem about the Mind/Brain.  Dooling presents a Python program version of Emily’s famous poem (again not his work, but that of Martelli and Ravenscroft of the Python Cookbook fame, and Google and, BTW, who are working with Guido, the inventor of Python, at Google on the Python language and other projects).  It is an example of the pure poetry of programming in general, and the Python programming language in particular.

Not my title, but that of an article in most recent Chronicle of Higher Education here.

As an educator and scientist in higher education I see what the author is talking about first hand all the time. I have little luck in convincing the American undergraduates I work with of the joys and benefits of pursuing higher education in the scientific and technical fields, while our graduate programs are brimming with foreign nationals. As the author says, I have nothing but admiration and respect for our graduate CS students, and greatly admire many of them in their determination and effort. My beef is with the American students, products of our American educational system. Will all of those undergraduates really find themselves as satisfied and fulfilled as their counterparts a few grades above them in the years to come? Some additional points to add, in no particular order:

• Self-esteem and all, as the author points out is greatly overrated. Self-confidence without a basis of real achievement and struggle is hollow at best, and will lead to a similarly hallow life.
• And conversely, there is nothing quite like the feeling of perspective one gets looking back on a long journey of constant (slow, steady, sometimes yes even agonizing) progress and accomplishment towards a difficult goal. The authors term is “arduous intellectual ascent”. It is not always arduous, there are many small joys and wonders on the slow long journey, mostly sufficient to counter the setbacks, dead-ends, frustrations and wanderings that will inevitably occur.
• I don’t know how to begin to (re)emphasize this type of personal and intellectual achievement and self-discipline as cultural ideals. But I know it is essential that we recapture it somehow as a cultural imperative and core educational perspective
• I knew the thrust of this topic was triggering some association, and now I just recalled that Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People makes some similar points, much better than I argue here, along the same lines in his introductory chapters. I’ll have to dig that up and reread to refresh myself on some of his points, but check it out, I highly recommend the book.

(Yes that title is a Benigni reference. The gist of this post got me to thinking about Benigni’s and other’s movies that present an unshakable core of optimism in the face of unspeakable tragedy.)

As those who know me well would tell you, at my core I have a bit of an optimistic streak concerning our future as human beings, as a race, as a society. Some might look around and see all the potentials for disaster and collapse (see some of my previous posts on the Unabomber and Jared Diamond). But I can’t help but look at the other side of the coin. I don’t think I am naive, or unaware of the very real problems that face us as a race, I try not to be an unabashed technophile. I suppose the general outlook does somewhat go hand in hand with being a geek and a technophile, how can you not be excited (but frightened as well) by the things being unleashed around us, by us; by the very interesting times we are living in!

Case in point. I can’t believe I haven’t mentioned the Grand Challenges of Engineering yet. I have even used these as a theme for a talk I gave this spring for our TAMUC college days to prospective students. If you want an example of something that gets me out of bed in the morning, something that really excites me, look through this list of items. The list was developed by some of the top minds of our days in the engineering and scientific field. Minds like Larry Page, one of the founders of Google and Ray Kurzweil, inventor and technologist (and a scarily unabashed technophile if there ever was one).

I’ll just point out to student who might be reading, most all of my research being done here at TAMUC, by me and my research group and colleagues, falls within one or the other of the areas given in this article. Much of my main research touches on reverse engineering the brain, trying to build smarter artificial systems by studying and emulating neural processes. We have recently become more involved in virtual environments for training. And I have always had a strong interest and involvement in computational modeling and scientific computing, which is the heart of the types of new tools we are building for cutting-edge science of the 21st century. So again to any of you student, if you are interested in learning more or even working on some of the Grand Challenges mentioned in the article, you might want to stop by and talk with me sometime.

A few people have been curious about the meaning of the word metacortex after seeing it here on the blog. I saw a column today by David Brooks on the New York Times that probably does as good a job as anything in giving an intuitive feel of the evolving concept of an exocortex.

Vinge, the originator of at least the term Singularity, if not the concept itself, has proposed 3 main routes to a technological singularity. One route is by the development of a smarter-than-human artificial intelligence. A second route is by the genetic enhancement of human intelligence to above current human maximum. But a third route Vinge proposes is through human augmentation, a man-machine cybernetic merger. In the NYT article I referred to earlier, you can get a feel for what he is talking about, of how technologies such as GPS auto navigation systems along with calculators, iPods, BlackBerries and other devices provide many of the functions of a cortical memory in an externally stored and accessed form. Now I don’t know if a technological singularity is really in our future or not, but one must admit that people do have a point with these observations of the trends we are seeing today. Our information technology devices and systems are greatly enhancing our memory capacities and practical functionality in many interesting and unforeseen ways. And this is happening today, right now, and it is not our children but we who are participating in this transformation.

Metacortices and Exocortices (from Wikipedia ): Though etymologically similar, the two are quite different — the former, in effect, being composed in various ways of the latter. An EXOcortex can best be described as the portion of a trans- or posthuman entity’s brain (or cortex) which exists outside of that entity’s primary computing structure, usually the brain inhabiting a person’s “meatbody.” For example, a person’s exocortex could very well be composed of all the external memory modules, processor, and devices that the person’s biological brain interacts with on a realtime basis, thereby in effect making those external devices a functional part of the individual’s “mind.” A METAcortex, on the other hand, is a processing construction built entirely out of the connections between other processing constructions — a sort of “higher brain” composed of lesser brains, all of which contribute to its functionality.

I just finished giving a talk this afternoon for our TAMUC Freshman Success Seminar. Not sure if I managed to convey anything of use or import to any of you all. If any of the Freshmen who were there in the class want to leave me a comment I would love to hear what you thought, or if you had any questions. I really should have mentioned the blog and suggested people leave comments.

Anyway pressed for time I sort of threw out one topic or point that I was going to make. I’m sure by the last slide some students would perhaps think that I am obviously a Technophile at best, and possibly a naive fool at worst, in spouting an overly optimistic and simplistic view of the power of science and technology as a positive force in our culture. I was going to quote the following excerpt from Ted Kaczynski, you know he of Unabomber fame, as a somewhat diametrically opposed view of what I was presenting:

1. The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. They have greatly increased the life-expectancy of those of us who live in “advanced” countries, but they have destabilized society, have made life unfulfilling, have subjected human beings to indignities, have led to widespread psychological suffering (in the Third World to physical suffering as well) and have inflicted severe damage on the natural world. The continued development of technology will worsen the situation. It will certainly subject human beings to greater indignities and inflict greater damage on the natural world, it will probably lead to greater social disruption and psychological suffering, and it may lead to increased physical suffering even in “advanced” countries.
2. The industrial-technological system may survive or it may break down. If it survives, it MAY eventually achieve a low level of physical and psychological suffering, but only after passing through a long and very painful period of adjustment and only at the cost of permanently reducing human beings and many other living organisms to engineered products and mere cogs in the social machine. Furthermore, if the system survives, the consequences will be inevitable: There is no way of reforming or modifying the system so as to prevent it from depriving people of dignity and autonomy.

By all accounts Kazcynski is a very smart individual, a bonafide genius. So it should at least be distubing to us that he can look at the same set of facts and come up with such a bleak and opposite view of our potential future. In response I would urge you to read the following except by Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger on Salon from their new book

Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility

As a response to the type of depressive vision of Kaczynski, I think it rather nicely sums up my own message (though I wish I had even a portion of their talent to communicate it so well).

For those who might have been interested, here is a link to the slides of the presentation I gave:

Computational Sciences and Scientific Literacy PDF

Computational Sciences and Scientific Literacy PPT

Computational Sciences and Scientific Literacy ODP