Comments on: Edge Question 2010

By: HAL-1701

HAL-1701 — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 15:21:40 +0000

a blog about “will uploaded minds be alive ?” and “the ethics of military robots”:

http://moralmachines.blogspot.com/

By: Alex

Alex — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 12:09:47 +0000

So good search results are an optimized consensus of the global mind.

By: HAL-1701

HAL-1701 — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 14:44:23 +0000

“All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace”

( by Richard Brautigan, 1967, San Francisco )

I like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.

I like to think
(right now please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms.

I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.

(( a nice original 1967 print of this with collage: ))
(( http://www.brautigan.net/graphics/machines/machines-computer.jpg ))

By: HAL-1701

HAL-1701 — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 13:17:46 +0000

uh, do you know about Jaron Lanier’s new book “You are not a gadget” ?

quote:

from
http://www.jaronlanier.com/poleconGadgetqa.html

" Q: In YOU ARE NOT A GADGET, you argue that the idea that the collective is smarter than the individual is wrong. Why is this?


Jaron: There are some cases where a group of people can do a better job of solving certain kinds of problems than individuals. One example is setting a price in a marketplace.  Another example is an election process to choose a politician.  All such examples involve what can be called optimization, where the concerns of many individuals are reconciled. 
There are other cases that involve creativity and imagination.  A crowd process generally fails in these cases.  The phrase “Design by Committee” is treated as derogatory for good reason.  That is why a collective of programmers can copy UNIX but cannot invent the iPhone.
In the book, I go into considerably more detail about the differences between the two types of problem solving.  Creativity requires periodic, temporary “encapsulation” as opposed to the kind of constant global openness suggested by the slogan “Information wants to be free.”  Biological cells have walls, academics employ temporary secrecy before they publish, and real authors with real voices might want to polish a text before releasing it.  In all these cases, encapsulation is what allows for the possibility of testing and feedback that enables a quest for excellence.  To be constantly diffused in a global mush is to embrace mundanity.

"

By: HAL-1701

HAL-1701 — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 04:28:48 +0000

the kids are allright. i think that’s the correct way to write that. not “alright” or “all right”, and they’re certainly not “all Right”.

taking apart the television set to find the capacitor or glowing tube that is thinking up those Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea episodes (the ones that know what you’re wearing and the names of your friends and yet seem to have been made in another era and maybe in another world), is not where it’s at.

the ineffable fertile void is surrounded (and poked-into, ever-further, ever and always) by towers of babel and other perhaps-not-so-flimsy structures, but really nobody needs any of the telepathy-stifling encrustationality we’re being harnessed with.

silence is where it’s at. the four words ‘forwards’ religion: “What, Do, You, Want ?”

things are As They Should Be. of course, you may be a part of the “Hey Let’s Debug The Worst Problem We Can Think Of” team… but that’s okay!

it’s funny that engineering the gathering and containment of the volume of heated air or helium needed to lift a “life”-boat off of the forever-endevour plane between sky and ocean is just beyond the reach of most nonmillionaires. but the birds (or the fish, as submarines are equally just-out-of-reach) laugh at the poor human in his sailboat of life, forever torn between two lovers. so we aim for the far shore (there’s a lighthouse there, with a warm pot of stew dating back hundreds of years, they don’t scour the pan) with “grim determination”. and watch dvds (in the back seat only, there’s no autopilot for the driver), to “pass the time”; and pretend to ignore the copyrighted-ephemeral-”annoying”-unrecordable-left-out-of-the-archive “commercials” which are actually the best part of it all. and meanwhile those birds and dolphins and squid and stars and manganese nodules “on the bottom” play dumb.

By: paradoctor

paradoctor — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 07:37:17 +0000

The difference between Multivac and the Web is that Multivac was supposed to have a personality, or at least an identity, but the Web is impersonal. Multivac was supposed to be the world’s transcendent digital king, but the Web is an immanent republic of data. Multivac’s an It Above; the Web is Us Everywhere. Multivac is God-like, the Web is Tao-like.

It amuses me that the Web fakes intelligence by large-data-base search. I agree, wetware does the same thing. We’re _all_ faking it!

It also intrigues me that the Web’s synthetic intelligence – literally, an artifice – inheres in the global system of computers, and not in any particular single program or machine. Can the same be said of human intelligence?

What happens if the global mind takes over? Well, if it’s _our_ global mind, then we _want_ it to take over!

By: emilio

emilio — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 23:13:13 +0000

@Alex, Google gives extra weight to sites like Wikipedia, Stanford Philosophy Encyclopedia, etc. which is why they are at the top. i.e. they give extra weight to consistently useful sites because it keeps us coming back to also see the advertisements.

I really like the construct of the web as an emergent intelligence. I’ve posited since like 1980 when I was a CS student that intelligence would emerge from the “network” (not then called the web). Of course I didn’t know nor could I imagine what the network would become thirty years ago. Thirty years later I find myself working on a little piece of web intelligence, intended to bring better inquiry via voice. Funny.

By: Alex

Alex — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 17:02:51 +0000

In the last few years, when looking for information, I directly search in Wikipedia more than with Google. As more often than not, the wikipedia result will be at the top in Google.

A very good book on the history of Google and web search is ‘The Search’ by John Battelle.

By: theo

theo — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 04:57:06 +0000

Dear Rudy,
Regarding your photos – you have a great compositional eye. I’m not sure if it’s editorial as well but composition is great (editorial for me is non-static images). I think there is a wealth of saleable stuff that you have.

The giant databases that the internet affords us is incredible. I don’t think of it as AI although I suppose one could attribute that characteristic if one were sufficiently un-informed. The biological analogy is good. Lots of self-interested submitters act as white blood cell or anti-pathogens to the BSers. It will be interesting to watch how the net evolves. I know there are lots of big players who want to control everything but I have faith that the crackers and hackers will keep everything off balance enough to allow an evolution driven by the smallest bits of the internet and not the power freaks. Short of turning off the pipes entirely I just don’t see the internet being throttled by corporate and government self-interest. Here’s hoping, anyway.