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Polytopia
The human species is rapidly and indisputably moving towards the technological singularity. The cadence of the flow of information and innovation in... Now playing
SpaceCollective
Where forward thinking terrestrials share ideas and information about the state of the species, their planet and the universe, living the lives of science fiction. Introduction
Featuring Powers of Ten by Charles and Ray Eames, based on an idea by Kees Boeke.
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an 11 page wired article of one computer scientist's attempt at coming to terms with the looming dangers of advanced technology
The Drives of Artificial Intelligence
I am hopeful of the future. It seems to be the sanest way to continue living into the next day. But I still have my worries.
Our leaders are pulling us into this insane death-spiral as they clamor for power, and health care reform here in the US serves as a perfect example of the bare-toothed inertia our political and economic systems face in efforts to reboot our society. Corporations, with a few notable exceptions, are accumulating vast wealth solely for the sake of accumulating wealth. What's the point? What's the endgame? It's miserly, not progress. Any humanitarian effort is done for PR so they can continue to accumulate wealth, otherwise we would see a substantial portion of their earnings going to charity. With our scientists advancing the technologies of the next century in virtual isolation from the public at large and especially frightening, from our policy makers, it's apparent that unless the state of technological progress is made widely aware to public that our species faces extinction in the next 100 years, we'll be unprepared by the time these technologies are used for such limited and destructive aims as military and economic conquest. And while spacecollective is an admirable group and I feel privileged to be among such wonderfully brilliant minds who dazzle me with each new project and post, I fear that our ideas are shared by too few. Scientists, artists, and activists are the rarest of the population. Civil rights, feeding the hungry, ending conflict, providing health care and education, these causes have existed since the 1800's and while we have come a long way, it seems as if there has never been a serious unified global effort that took precedence over a country's continual growth of economic prosperity. I know the will is there. I propose an advertising campaign for spacecollective and the future in general. I'm going to send letters to strangers, stick stickers on public things, pique their curiosity.
I had to vent. sorry :)
The Drives of Artificial Intelligence
I am hopeful of the future. It seems to be the sanest way to continue living into the next day. But I still have my worries.
Our leaders are pulling us into this insane death-spiral as they clamor for power, and health care reform here in the US serves as a perfect example of the bare-toothed inertia our political and economic systems face in efforts to reboot our society. Corporations, with a few notable exceptions, are accumulating vast wealth solely for the sake of accumulating wealth. What's the point? What's the endgame? It's miserly, not progress. Any humanitarian effort is done for PR so they can continue to accumulate wealth, otherwise we would see a substantial portion of their earnings going to charity. With our scientists advancing the technologies of the next century in virtual isolation from the public at large and especially frightening, from our policy makers, it's apparent that unless the state of technological progress is made widely aware to public that our species faces extinction in the next 100 years, we'll be unprepared by the time these technologies are used for such limited and destructive aims as military and economic conquest. And while spacecollective is an admirable group and I feel privileged to be among such wonderfully brilliant minds who dazzle me with each new project and post, I fear that our ideas are shared by too few. Scientists, artists, and activists are the rarest of the population. Civil rights, feeding the hungry, ending conflict, providing health care and education, these causes have existed since the 1800's and while we have come a long way, it seems as if there has never been a serious unified global effort that took precedence over a country's continual growth of economic prosperity. I know the will is there. I propose an advertising campaign for spacecollective and the future in general. I'm going to send letters to strangers, stick stickers on public things, pique their curiosity.
I had to vent. sorry :)
I found this and thought I'd share it.
Leo Tolstoy “What Is Art?”
The art of the future is not the possession of a select minority but a means towards perfection and unity.
People talk of the art of the future, meaning by art of the future some especially refined new art which they imagine will be developed out of that exclusive art of one class which is now considered the highest art. But no such new art of the future can or will be found. Our exclusive art, that of the upper classes of Christendom, has found its way into a blind alley. The direction in which it has been going leads nowhere. Having once lost hold of that which is most essential to art (namely, the guidance given by religious perception), and more perverted, until finally it has come to nothing. The art of the future, that which is really coming, will not be a development of present-day art, but will arise on quite other and new foundations having nothing in common with those by which our present art of the upper classes is guided.
Art of the future, that is to say, such part of art as will be chosen from among all the art diffused among mankind, will consist not in transmitting feelings accessible only to members of the rich classes, as is the case today, but in transmitting feelings embodying the highest religious perception of our times. Only those productions will be esteemed art which transmit feelings drawing men together in brotherly union, or such universal feelings as can unite all men. Only such art will be chosen, tolerated, approved, and diffused. But art transmitting feelings flowing from antiquated, outworn, religious teaching; ecclesiastical art, patriotic art, voluptuous art; transmitting feelings of superstitious fear, of pride, of vanity, of ecstatic admiration of national heroes; art exciting exclusive love of one’s own people, or sensuality, will be considered bad, harmful art, and will be censured and despised by public opinion. All the rest of art, transmitting feelings accessible only to a section of people, will be considered unimportant, and will be neither blamed nor praised. And the appraisement of art in general will devolve not as is now the case on a separate class of rich people, but on the whole people; so that for a work to be thought good and to be approved and diffused, it will have to satisfy the demands not of a few people living under similar and often unnatural conditions, but of all those great masses of people who undergo the natural conditions of laborious life.
Nor will the artists producing the art be as now merely a few people selected from a small section of the nation, members of the upper classes or their hangers-on, but they will consist of all those gifted members of the whole people who prove capable of, and have an inclination towards, artistic activity.
Artistic activity will then be accessible to all men. It will become accessible to the whole people because (in the first place) in the art of the future not only will that complex technique which deforms the production of the art of today, and requires so great an effort and expenditure of time, not be demanded, but on the contrary the demand will be for clearness, simplicity, and brevity—conditions brought about not by mechanical methods but through the education of taste. And secondly, artistic activity will become accessible to all men of the people because, instead of the present professional schools which only some can enter, all will learn music and graphic art (singing and drawing) equally with letters, in the elementary schools, in such a way that every man, having received the first principles of drawing and music and feeling a capacity for and a call to one or other of the arts, will be able to perfect himself in it.
People think that if there are no special art-schools the technique of art will deteriorate. Undoubtedly it will deteriorate if by technique we understand those complexities of art which are now considered an excellence; but if by technique is understood clearness, beauty, simplicity, and compression, in works of art, then even if the elements of drawing and music were not to be taught in the national schools, not only will the technique not deteriorate but, as shown by all peasant art, it will be a hundred times better. It will be improved because all the artists of genius now hidden among the masses will become producers of art and supply models of excellence which (as has always been the case) will be the best schools of technique for their successors. For even now every true artist chiefly learns his technique not in the schools but in life, from the examples of the great masters, and then—when art is produced by the best artist of the whole nation and there are more such examples and they are more accessible—such part of school training as the future artist may lose will be a hundredfold compensated for by the training he will receive from the numerous examples of good art diffused in society.
Such will be one difference between present and future art. Another difference will be that art will not be produced by professional artists receiving payment for their work and engaged on nothing else besides their art. The art of the future will be produced by all the members of the community who feel need of such activity, but they will occupy themselves with art only when they feel such need.
In our society people think that an artist will work better and produce more if he has a secured maintenance; and this opinion once more would prove quite clearly, were such proof still needed, that what among us is considered to be art is not art but only a counterfeit. It is quite true that for the production of boots or loaves division of labor is very advantageous, and that the bootmaker or baker who need not prepare his own dinner or fetch his own fuel will make more boots or loaves than if he had to busy himself with those matters. But art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced. And sound feeling can only be engendered in a man when he is living a life in all respects natural and proper to man. Therefore security of maintenance is a condition most harmful to an artist’s true productiveness, since it removes him from the condition natural to all men—that of struggle with nature for the maintenance both of his own life and the lives of others—and thus deprives him of the opportunity and possibility of experiencing the most important and most natural feelings of man. There is no position more injurious to an artist’s productiveness than the position of complete security and luxury in which in our society artists usually live.
The artist of the future will live the common life of man, earning his subsistence by some kind of labor. The fruits of the highest spiritual strength that passes through him he will try to share with the greatest possible number of people, for in such transmission to others of the feelings that have arisen in him he will find his happiness and reward. The artist of the future will be unable to understand how an artist, whose chief delight is in the wide diffusion of his works, could give them only in exchange for a certain payment.
Until the dealers are driven out, the temple of art will not be a temple. But the art of the future will drive them out.
Leo Tolstoy “What Is Art?”
The art of the future is not the possession of a select minority but a means towards perfection and unity.
People talk of the art of the future, meaning by art of the future some especially refined new art which they imagine will be developed out of that exclusive art of one class which is now considered the highest art. But no such new art of the future can or will be found. Our exclusive art, that of the upper classes of Christendom, has found its way into a blind alley. The direction in which it has been going leads nowhere. Having once lost hold of that which is most essential to art (namely, the guidance given by religious perception), and more perverted, until finally it has come to nothing. The art of the future, that which is really coming, will not be a development of present-day art, but will arise on quite other and new foundations having nothing in common with those by which our present art of the upper classes is guided.
Art of the future, that is to say, such part of art as will be chosen from among all the art diffused among mankind, will consist not in transmitting feelings accessible only to members of the rich classes, as is the case today, but in transmitting feelings embodying the highest religious perception of our times. Only those productions will be esteemed art which transmit feelings drawing men together in brotherly union, or such universal feelings as can unite all men. Only such art will be chosen, tolerated, approved, and diffused. But art transmitting feelings flowing from antiquated, outworn, religious teaching; ecclesiastical art, patriotic art, voluptuous art; transmitting feelings of superstitious fear, of pride, of vanity, of ecstatic admiration of national heroes; art exciting exclusive love of one’s own people, or sensuality, will be considered bad, harmful art, and will be censured and despised by public opinion. All the rest of art, transmitting feelings accessible only to a section of people, will be considered unimportant, and will be neither blamed nor praised. And the appraisement of art in general will devolve not as is now the case on a separate class of rich people, but on the whole people; so that for a work to be thought good and to be approved and diffused, it will have to satisfy the demands not of a few people living under similar and often unnatural conditions, but of all those great masses of people who undergo the natural conditions of laborious life.
Nor will the artists producing the art be as now merely a few people selected from a small section of the nation, members of the upper classes or their hangers-on, but they will consist of all those gifted members of the whole people who prove capable of, and have an inclination towards, artistic activity.
Artistic activity will then be accessible to all men. It will become accessible to the whole people because (in the first place) in the art of the future not only will that complex technique which deforms the production of the art of today, and requires so great an effort and expenditure of time, not be demanded, but on the contrary the demand will be for clearness, simplicity, and brevity—conditions brought about not by mechanical methods but through the education of taste. And secondly, artistic activity will become accessible to all men of the people because, instead of the present professional schools which only some can enter, all will learn music and graphic art (singing and drawing) equally with letters, in the elementary schools, in such a way that every man, having received the first principles of drawing and music and feeling a capacity for and a call to one or other of the arts, will be able to perfect himself in it.
People think that if there are no special art-schools the technique of art will deteriorate. Undoubtedly it will deteriorate if by technique we understand those complexities of art which are now considered an excellence; but if by technique is understood clearness, beauty, simplicity, and compression, in works of art, then even if the elements of drawing and music were not to be taught in the national schools, not only will the technique not deteriorate but, as shown by all peasant art, it will be a hundred times better. It will be improved because all the artists of genius now hidden among the masses will become producers of art and supply models of excellence which (as has always been the case) will be the best schools of technique for their successors. For even now every true artist chiefly learns his technique not in the schools but in life, from the examples of the great masters, and then—when art is produced by the best artist of the whole nation and there are more such examples and they are more accessible—such part of school training as the future artist may lose will be a hundredfold compensated for by the training he will receive from the numerous examples of good art diffused in society.
Such will be one difference between present and future art. Another difference will be that art will not be produced by professional artists receiving payment for their work and engaged on nothing else besides their art. The art of the future will be produced by all the members of the community who feel need of such activity, but they will occupy themselves with art only when they feel such need.
In our society people think that an artist will work better and produce more if he has a secured maintenance; and this opinion once more would prove quite clearly, were such proof still needed, that what among us is considered to be art is not art but only a counterfeit. It is quite true that for the production of boots or loaves division of labor is very advantageous, and that the bootmaker or baker who need not prepare his own dinner or fetch his own fuel will make more boots or loaves than if he had to busy himself with those matters. But art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced. And sound feeling can only be engendered in a man when he is living a life in all respects natural and proper to man. Therefore security of maintenance is a condition most harmful to an artist’s true productiveness, since it removes him from the condition natural to all men—that of struggle with nature for the maintenance both of his own life and the lives of others—and thus deprives him of the opportunity and possibility of experiencing the most important and most natural feelings of man. There is no position more injurious to an artist’s productiveness than the position of complete security and luxury in which in our society artists usually live.
The artist of the future will live the common life of man, earning his subsistence by some kind of labor. The fruits of the highest spiritual strength that passes through him he will try to share with the greatest possible number of people, for in such transmission to others of the feelings that have arisen in him he will find his happiness and reward. The artist of the future will be unable to understand how an artist, whose chief delight is in the wide diffusion of his works, could give them only in exchange for a certain payment.
Until the dealers are driven out, the temple of art will not be a temple. But the art of the future will drive them out.
I've been wondering about mind uploading. If our mind can be fully uploaded to a non-biological operating platform, and we do invent the necessary hardware requirements to house one, what will that machine have to do to convince a user to adopt it? If the subjective experience remains fundamentally private and unique, how could uploading be anything but a leap of faith?
I read a short story about a man with a crystal in his head that learned to think like he did matching him thought for thought, then one day his arm choose a banana when he wanted an apple and he realized he was the crystal all along just now being severed from the host system. Essentially two people are being created when the mind adopts another house, or we are going to have to change what it means to be a person. That crystal realized that he wasn't the original, that his memories are implants, his thought patterns are implants, his personality is an implant. Needless to say an identity crisis would ensue, but a most interesting one. Would he care? Would he necessarily react as if the original person came to this conclusion? Would he be compelled to establish his own identity by rebelling against his own thoughts and acting contrary to his implanted self or accept the identity he's been given? In this context, what can we say constitutes a person? If memories and character traits and the inner life can be duplicated, the self becomes less solid and more malleable. Is the self just a collection of neural behaviors a mechanical system carries and nothing more? Self-Esteem then is the value the system places on having a certain behavior or collection of behaviors.
The machine would understand this to a degree the original would not. The new person machine would begin sampling the gamut of personality, but what criteria could it go by in forming its new self if authenticity is meaningless. Would it have to choose its behaviors based on social function? Subjective inner pleasure? Or would we simply see the implanted personality begin to evolve at a greater speed?
This is getting off topic, but what would this machine mean for ethics? Am I responsible for all the actions of my copied personalities? Or are only the individual mechanical systems that performed the action? What about interconnected bodies constantly updating and sharing my person, selectively adopting new test traits, separating and reforming whenever necessary or benificial? Aren't we already in this situation when we refer to being a part of society, adopting cultures, living and learning from the individual lives of each other? Or even within our own brain hemispheres continually feeding back into each other's processes?
What do we gain from holding onto our individual identities as solid, immutable, and singular? What do we lose?
I read a short story about a man with a crystal in his head that learned to think like he did matching him thought for thought, then one day his arm choose a banana when he wanted an apple and he realized he was the crystal all along just now being severed from the host system. Essentially two people are being created when the mind adopts another house, or we are going to have to change what it means to be a person. That crystal realized that he wasn't the original, that his memories are implants, his thought patterns are implants, his personality is an implant. Needless to say an identity crisis would ensue, but a most interesting one. Would he care? Would he necessarily react as if the original person came to this conclusion? Would he be compelled to establish his own identity by rebelling against his own thoughts and acting contrary to his implanted self or accept the identity he's been given? In this context, what can we say constitutes a person? If memories and character traits and the inner life can be duplicated, the self becomes less solid and more malleable. Is the self just a collection of neural behaviors a mechanical system carries and nothing more? Self-Esteem then is the value the system places on having a certain behavior or collection of behaviors.
The machine would understand this to a degree the original would not. The new person machine would begin sampling the gamut of personality, but what criteria could it go by in forming its new self if authenticity is meaningless. Would it have to choose its behaviors based on social function? Subjective inner pleasure? Or would we simply see the implanted personality begin to evolve at a greater speed?
This is getting off topic, but what would this machine mean for ethics? Am I responsible for all the actions of my copied personalities? Or are only the individual mechanical systems that performed the action? What about interconnected bodies constantly updating and sharing my person, selectively adopting new test traits, separating and reforming whenever necessary or benificial? Aren't we already in this situation when we refer to being a part of society, adopting cultures, living and learning from the individual lives of each other? Or even within our own brain hemispheres continually feeding back into each other's processes?
What do we gain from holding onto our individual identities as solid, immutable, and singular? What do we lose?
"Not the animal world, not the plant world, not the miracle of the spheres, but man himself is now the crucial mystery. Man is that alien presence with whom the forces of egoism must come to terms, through whom the ego is to be crucified and resurrected, and in whose image society is to be reformed. Man, understood however not as 'I' but as 'Thou': for the ideals and temporal institutions of no tribe, race, continent, social class, or century can be the measure of the inexhaustible and multifariously wonderful divine existence that is the life in all of us. The modern hero, the modern individual who dares to heed the call and seek the mansion of that presence with whom it is our whole destiny to be atoned, cannot, indeed must not, wait for his community to cast off its slough of pride, fear, rationalized avarice, and sanctified misunderstanding. It is not society that is to guide and save the creative hero, but precisely the reverse. And so every one of us shares the supreme ordeal—carries the cross of the redeemer—not in the bright moments of his tribe's great victories, but in the silences of his personal despair." -Joseph Campbell
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In what sense can we distinguish reality from technology? How far can we go before our words become so inter-defined that there is almost nothing we can say without saying everything?
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Space Collective.org is a cross-media information and entertainment channel for post-ideological, non-partisan,
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