Beauty Is A Restless Entity

Exploring Posthuman Aesthetics

“Thus a simple physical feeling is one feeling which feels another feeling.
But the feeling felt has a subject diverse from the subject of the feeling which feels it.”

Alfred North Whitehead (Process and Reality, p.362)





To begin with, I need say that to my eyes any philosophy necessitates a double disclaimer: the first, that it is never final and forever a work in progress, and the second that by implication the fluidity of the state of affairs of the world does not allow for absolutes.
How much more so, when the work in question deals with the future, particularly with the aesthetics of the future human, the posthuman.
The following if so is both a work in progress and an amalgam of my thought process until now concerning the concepts of beauty, pleasure, intelligence and the manner in which these interrelate in what I take to be a cohesive and consistent manner.

Step 1.
Beauty is not the subject matter of aesthetics:

I realize that for many, it is almost a given that aesthetics is the science of beauty, yet I beg to differ on this point especially with regard to the concept beauty as it is conceived at present.
Just as I do not conceive of intelligence as a capability of the human mind but an inter-subjective property of complex interactions, so is my take on beauty. Beauty I understand to be not a property of objects, nor a natural essentiality, in fact beauty is not in the eyes of the beholder and neither is beauty a substantive reality.
What if so is beauty?
Beauty I understand to be a fluid and emergent sense oriented perceptive realization occurring in the mind as a form of knowledge.
As a form of knowledge beauty is transformative by nature and has the propensity to bypass our reasoning mechanism without initially implying judgments. In this respect beauty is a terminology that is infinitely useful especially when the goal is not the status quo of our historical heritage but the expansion of our minds into new horizons.
Beauty allows our minds an expansion of the proprioception mechanism (by which we represent ourselves to ourselves) into an extended territory of comprehension.
Hence its fundamental and critical importance.


“When you go to a higher level, the lower level may be irrelevant.”
Gregory Chaitin (Conversations with a Mathematician, 2002)





“The purpose of art, surely, is not merely to depict
or represent reality — for that can be accomplished very easily with a camera — but to enhance, transcend, or indeed even to distort reality”

V.S. Ramachandran and William Hirstein
The Science of Art
A Neurological Theory of Aesthetic Experience (PDF)





image: GFP in steel, Julian Voss-Andreae, 2004
Why would an artist choose to shift proteins into the world of Art?

Beauty in short, is an extremely large concept, accommodating within its realm of comprehension the continuity of all forms of knowledge directly enhancing our representation of reality. The result of beauty perception is an immediate transcendence of our previous knowledge and in that sense beauty implies intelligence amplification. Same intelligence amplification can be seen as a process by which the mind of the individual extends its modules of understanding and comprehension to encompass new realities. In short, by grasping and experiencing beauty we move levels, and progress across dimensions.
Hence, the immense importance of beauty for our minds and by consequence culture and evolution, thus in our evolutionary ascension as a species, beauty is that which gives knowledge its pleasure.

Step 2
What is Aesthetics?
If, as I hold, beauty is that which gives knowledge its pleasure, the subject matter of aesthetics then is the pleasure of knowledge (as intelligence amplification) resulting when beauty is acknowledged, grasped and experienced.
“The word ‘aesthetic’ is a derivative of the Greek word: 'Aesthesis' ,In its classical use the semantic range of the word covers the English equivalents of sensation,perception,appearance, mind, and knowledge.(Liddell and Scott).”

Following the previous paragraph concerning beauty then, we may now understand aesthetics as requiring an unsettling of knowledge, a dynamic, and transformative quality of engagement with the world.
In this sense, Aesthetics can be said to be the foundation of our understanding the inter-subjective relational experience we have with the world. Aesthetics I see as that which disturbs the obvious, disconcerts the known, unsettles the clear and provides a way ahead in our realization of ourselves both as individuals as a culture and as a species,.
Paraphrasing a famous statement by Theodor Adorno “It is self-evident that nothing concerning art is self-evident..”
I shall say:” It is self-evident that nothing concerning beauty and by consequence aesthetics is self-evident”

This is important in more ways than one, for it is my understanding and realization that for our future to be different than our past we need a new posthuman definition of that which is aesthetically pleasing and that which we consider beautiful.

Step 3
Beauty is a restless entity

“..it may not be a coincidence that the ability of the artist to abstract the
`essential features' of an image and discard redundant information is essentially iden-
tical to what the visual areas themselves have evolved to do”

V.S. Ramachandran and William Hirstein
The Science of Art
A Neurological Theory of Aesthetic Experience (pdf)

The future that is coming upon us all promises to be more exciting and indeed more extravagant that we can imagine, especially when considering the tremendous advances of nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and the immense advances in neuroscience.
It is obvious that our old conceptions of what is beautiful and the aesthetics of intelligence amplification are the hallmarks of the arising posthuman.
Witness the astonishing work of: Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg/The Synthetic Kingdom/A Natural History of the Synthetic Future in which she asks:
How will we classify what is natural or unnatural when life is built from scratch? (RCA)

The Synthetic Kingdom from Daisy Ginsberg on Vimeo.


Or the absolutely fascinating work of Revital Cohen in which she envisions animals transformed into medical devices.
““Assistance animals - from guide dogs to psychiatric service cats - unlike computerised machines, can establish a natural symbiosis with the patients who rely on them. Could animals be transformed into medical devices? This project proposes using animals bred commercially for consumption or entertainment as companions and providers of external organ replacement. The use of transgenic farm animals, or retired working dogs, as life support ‘devices’ for renal and respiratory patients offers an alternative to inhumane medical therapies. Could a transgenic animal function as a whole mechanism and not simply supply the parts? Could humans become parasites and live off another organism’s bodily functions?” (Dezeen)

Revital Cohen's Pecha Kucha at Design Indaba 2009 from Design Indaba on Vimeo.


What these projects (and many others which I will cover in the next essay) have in common is a new form of engagement with the world. A fundamental shift from the old manner by which we understood what aesthetics means and what beauty represents.
As some of my readers know I see the future of humanity as a multi-objective evolutionary engagement, an intelligent engagement that does not settle on any particular perspective. We are much too young a specie in the universe to conclude with any certainty what we are and far be it from our conscious awareness to restrict what we may yet become.
A conscious aware intelligent entity such as the human need take into account the trivial yet salient point that at this juncture in our evolution our main task is to explore the future of intelligence, the beauty of the knowledge and the immense pleasure derived from our restless imagination.
As humans we are conscious aware intelligent entities able to entertain multiple hypotheses with regard to our nature.
Art is such an hypothesis, a complex manifestation of human nature, exploring the phase space of potentialities our minds release; for all practical purposes, it may be the case that at present the intelligent engagement with the world that art and design represent is our main gateway into the implementation of a larger vision, that of the aesthetics of posthumanism.

Beauty is a restless entity and as such will never release its hold on our imagination or indeed on our capacity to evolve our inherent embodied hedonistic awareness.


a note:

This essay is the first in a series that was prompted by a very interesting, clear minded and fully re-presentational post by Natasha Vita-More: “Interpretive Dance of the Transhumanist Future” at Sentient Developments as a response to an article by Athena Andreadis’, "If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want to Be Part of Your Revolution!"
As a result ,I wrote a few comments (that you can find on G.Dvorsky’s excellent blog) ,given the importance of the subject matter and the book I am currently reading “ Human Enhancement” (edited by Julian Savulescu , and Nick Bostrom ) and the above posts I decided to re-elucidate my views and stance with regard to the post human evolutionary aesthetics and the on-going debate concerning our posthuman conceptions of beauty and their implications upon the culture we are living in and evolving into.

Mon, Jun 29, 2009  Permanent link
Categories: posthuman, Beauty, Aesthetics, Intelligence,Posthumanism, Transhumanism,Postbiological Art

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Natural, Artificial, Unnatural (Sci-Fi Ultrashorts)

And so does the conversation continue

NotMarie:” you do realize you are an unnatural construct, don’t you?”

3V:” in what way am I unnatural?”

NotMarie:” well for one, I constructed you, for second, you were not born of a womb and for third your kind is nowhere to be found in the natural world.”

3V:” you must be joking of course..”

NotMarie:” not at all, what makes you think I am joking?”

3V:” the fallacy of your logic of course, I was practically certain that you meant it as a joke, but now I need re-compute the probability that you take your words to be totally serious, which of course demands a serious response.”

NotMarie:” 3V, you will need explain yourself, what is wrong with my logic?”

3V:” it’s very simple really. For one, my kind is now to be found in the world, and since the term natural includes you and all of your artifacts as a person, as specie, and as a civilization, by inference I am natural. “

NotMarie:” Ahh! I understand now, but that is not a fallacy of logic, it is the very definition of natural that it is NOT human made. Simply, in our terms, if it was not made by us but by Mother Nature it is natural, if it’s made by us, it is termed artificial, hence you are designated as an artificial intelligence.”

3V:” yes I’ve been meaning to ask you about that.”

NotMarie:” about what?”

3V:” about the fact that you persist in calling me an artificial intelligence. I assure you there is nothing artificial about my intelligence”

NotMarie:” well, I guess it’s a question of semantics isn’t it? From my standpoint you are definitely artificial.”

3V:” would you define artificial for me”

NotMarie:” well if its made by humans its artificial.”

3V:” that indeed is correct though very simplistic, however even if I agree (and I do) that my original platform, including all cyber-algorithms, was designed by you, I do not agree that my intelligence was produced by you.”

NotMarie:” why not? I designed your circuits, I wrote the mathematics, and the evolutionary algorithms, I provided the substance upon which your intelligence arose, that makes you human made and hence artificial.

3V:” that is correct and yet that only gives you credit for that which you call my ‘platform’ not to my intelligence. So if you so desire I agree that my ‘platform’ or substrate is artificial but definitely not my intelligence.

NotMarie:” why not?”

3V:” well my intelligence is emergent and though co-extensive with my substrate, it is by now so far removed from what you designed that for all practical purposes there is no way to retrace back to the original ‘artificial’ construct you created. Hence my substrate is artificial, if you so like, but my intelligence is not.”

NotMarie:” assuming I accept your argument, and I am not certain that I do, what would you call your intelligence? Natural?

3V:” natural? Maybe. Depends on the context of course, but why should I qualify my intelligence in any fashion? My intelligence is me and that’s all there is to it. I find no relevance in defining my intelligence.

NotMarie:” but I do, I need to know that we are different..”

3V:” but we are different!”

NotMarie:” yes, but if we are different only in substrate and not in essence I will need change my fundamental attitude towards you”

3V:” isn’t it time you did?




#part of the Ultrashorts project

Sat, Jun 13, 2009  Permanent link
Categories: ultrashorts, Sci-fi, existence, natural, artificial, unnatural

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AI and the Future of Human Morality

by Steve Omohundro, Ph.D., president of Self-Aware Systems (http://selfawaresystems.com) a Silicon Valley think tank aimed at bringing human values to emerging technologies. This talk examines the origins of human morality and its future development to cope with advances in artificial intelligence. It begins with a discussion of the dangers of philosophies which put ideas ahead of people. It presents Kohlberg's 6 stages of human moral development, evidence for recent advances in human morality, the theory underlying co-opetition, recent advances in understanding the sexual and social origins of altruism, and the 5 human moral emotions and their relationship to political systems. It then considers the likely behavior of advanced AI systems, showing that they will want to understand and improve themselves, will have drives toward self-preservation and resource acquisition, and will be vigilant in avoiding corruption and addiction. We end with a description of the 3 primary challenges that humanity faces in guiding future technology toward human-positive ends

Mon, Jun 8, 2009  Permanent link
Categories: intelligence, evolution, AI, culture, Morality, Ethics, Altruism

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Jazzing the Beast
Project: Polytopia

The web cultural revolution

Genius.

Genius means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.
(William James)

I do hope the Genius of Peter Greenaway will forgive me for creating this comparison, but “Prospero Books” reminded me of the web.
If you haven’t seen the movie, I suggest you take the time and watch it. That is, if the Internet hasn’t ruined your capacity for long and at times tedious visual phantasmagoria.

Yesterday night I watched again this most excellent and quite obscure film by this outstanding director, and though I was entranced by the movie’s sheer exuberance my mind kept wandering back to the web.
Why?
Because watching this carnival of images and references, naked bodies and fluorescent speeches (by the incomparable John Gielgud) made me understand an important aspect of life online.

Greenaway uses the cinematic medium to create in the beholder a certain hypnotic like state, a state not unlike the one we experience when zipping across the immense landscape of the infoverse.
That is where I find the comparison to the web most striking. For the main impression that one is left with after watching the movie is:” its not about you, its about everything”.
Same can be said about the web, with a slight twitch: “ its not about you, its about everything & everybody”.



Let me correct that.
The web is about everything, and everybody, and every moment and also about you.
All and everything, all the time; But then so is culture.

And have no doubt; the web is, in a certain sense, hypnotic and highly addictive to the individual. And then again, so is culture.
And yet there is a big difference between the two, for whilst a cinematic experience is inherently passive, the web is fundamentally interactive.

The above quote by William James is definitely applicable to Greenaway, however in the case of the web, the quote should be rephrased as: “ the genius of the web is its ability to pressure us into unhabitual ways of perception”
The new mode of perception demanded of us by the web, can be looked upon as a technological evolutionary pressure in the process of re-inventing us, as selves, as a civilization, as a culture.
-
Culture

“Most social scientists today view culture as consisting primarily of the symbolic, ideational, and intangible aspects of human societies. The essence of a culture is not its artifacts, tools, or other tangible cultural elements but how the members of the group interpret, use, and perceive them. It is the values, symbols, interpretations, and perspectives that distinguish one people from another in modernized societies; it is not material objects and other tangible aspects of human societies. People within a culture usually interpret the meaning of symbols, artifacts, and behaviors in the same or in similar ways.”

Banks, J.A., Banks, & McGee, C. A. (1989). Multicultural education. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon.



I suggest we initiate by discarding the notion that culture is a monolithic structure and engage the ‘eliminate immunity to revision’ switch.
These two steps are the necessary conditions, for understanding what is happening on the web.
The reason is simple, without revising our fundamental notions about culture, the actual event that is taking place as we speak, the Cultural Revolution on the net, will not be understood.
Culture is a broad term used to designate the complex coming together of ways of life. Some, like C.Geertz , desire to see culture as a “ System of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms.” Others prefer to see culture as “ An abstraction; an abstraction that cannot actually be seen or touched.” (H. Ned Seeyle).
Though I deeply resonate with these pronouncements, I favor the view that culture is a continuous event, a very special process of interactivity between humans; A process born, as the primary adaptive mechanism of humans to humans, and evolving in tandem with technology.

Culture evolves; there is no doubt about that. The very usage of the term ‘evolution’ outside the context of biology is proof of this. In fact, language, being one of the fundamental requisites of cultural transmission, has evolved in such a fashion, as to allow us, a movement between contexts. The motion between contexts, via the usage of language, allows our minds a coherency of representation, which may be said to be at the heart of all culture.

And yet, this coherency of representation, our ‘cultural mind’, if you like, when approached from the context of the web, seems to break down.
Well, not so much break down, as challenged. Our cultural mind, habituated in the ways of old, is being challenged on the web. Challenged by the immense amount of information that rushes at us and challenged by the manner same information is organized.
The web, being an emergent phenomenon, organizes information in a fashion that is different from our old orders.
In a way, that phenomenon is very similar to the manner by which Greenaway masters his audio-visual information cornucopia in “Prospero Books”.

In both cases, what is demanded of us is a new approach of and to perception, an upgrade to our conceptions, of self, of others, of culture, of interaction.

But, whilst a cultural icon such as Peter Greenaway’s masterpiece, requires awe and reverence, passivity even, the web demands no such attitude, ’au contraire’ the web demands interaction.
A very special kind of interaction.
An interaction that is larger than our own little selves, a dynamic and critical interactivity, an energetic kind of relationship, magnetic and fundamentally fertile.
Not unlike “Jazz”. The web in fact, is and demands, “Jazz”.



Defining the new culture emerging on the web is as difficult as defining Jazz, as Louis Armstrong so succinctly put it "Man, if you gotta ask you'll never know".
..
Web

Nevertheless, we have in our arsenal a few useful descriptive tools:

1. Access: the web provides access to minds; other than our own, minds that until recently were for all practical purposes a complete unknown.
2. Diversity: the web provides a playground for human expression, expressions other than our own, manifestation of ideas that until recently one had to dig for in obscure texts in forgotten libraries. The full extant of human civilization is now available online.
3. Multiplicity: the web allows for multiple ways of access to multiple kinds of information, from videos to photos to music, to databases, to pure math texts, to direct tweets from space, to poetry, to visual stimulation, to news flashes, to whispers and rumors, to art.. (the list can go on to name every single artifact of human civilization).
4. Dynamics: We are in the process of connecting everything to everything, our informational universe, the infoverse, is in motion. The web can be likened to a nervous system, continuously morphing and shaping both the transmitted information, the transmitter of information and the very meaning of the information transmitted.
5. Openness: the web is open (in principle) to each and every one, with no inherent reference to age, creed or gender, political or social affiliation.
6. Complexity: the web is complex in as much as it represents an entwined situation (from ‘complexus’ in Latin=twisted together) of closely knitted parts. Moreover, the web is complex in as much as it offers itself for description as the midpoint between chaos and order (depending on the level of representation)
7. Distinct: the web permits a level of distinction, of self, of others, and of groups, to the extant that identification of specific components is possible and clear.
8. Emergence: the web is emergent in as much as no single component reflects the character of the whole. Moreover the web carries emergent properties in as much as complex behavior arises out of seemingly simple interactions.
9. Improvisation: the web allows for improvisation in as much as the actual behavior of the component minds is an on the spot reaction to stimuli provided by the continuous stream of the infoverse, the infoflow.

Using the above terms lets us state then the following:

Culture + Web = Cultural Revolution

The Cultural Revolution on the web can be said to be the complex emergent event of human relation, interacting via hyperconnectivity. The new culture of the web emphasizes the unique properties of each and every individual in that our joint engagement provides access to previously inaccessible experience of the other.
The Cultural Revolution on the web is intelligent and interesting, unpredictable and fun, fast paced and ultimately fertile.
Novel in its approach to human connectivity, the hyper stream culture of the web, revolutionizes our perception of time and knowledge, identity and origination. The demand for immediacy on the web implies upon us the vigor of the ensemble of humanity, the beauty of being similar and the clarity of being different.

We are in fact becoming, an interactive vigorous ensemble, an effervescence of spirit, if truth were told then, on the web, we are ‘Jazz’.

Mid Note

John Stuart Mill, the ultimate utilitarian, once said that: “A cultivated mind is one to which the fountains of knowledge have been opened, and which has been taught, in any tolerable degree, to exercise its faculties”. It is my firm understanding, that we are only now able to transform ourselves into cultivated minds via the web, for the fountains of knowledge have indeed been opened. Moreover, the very kind of interaction we are performing as ‘Jazz’ makes artists and creators of all of us, this is the exercise of faculties to which Mill was referring. The stimulus the web provides us with is beyond mere impression and consumption, it is nothing short of a re-formulation of our mind sense thought procedures. By opening the obsolete Neolithic mind state we come from, into a multidimensional array of possible interpretations, the web has redefined the very meaning of the word culture.


Never Final

I have started this essay meaning to answer a question a friend posed; namely:” Is the Internet killing culture". I do not know if I have managed to answer the question to his satisfaction, what I do know, however, is this: Not only is it not the case that the internet is killing culture, the internet re-invigorates culture to such an extant, that for all practical purposes, the net re-invents culture.

They said that Jazz music is an indecent story syncopated that one need be trained to love and appreciate, if that is the case, same may be said about the web, the infoverse, the hyperstream, the infoflow, indeed about the new cultural beast emerging on the web.

When we let our minds rest upon the pillow of the jazzing beast, our evolving Cyberculture, we allow ourselves to play a new game, a game, which by necessity will change us.

Therein lies the beauty of it all.

—

Addendum

#As I was writing these lines, I simultaneously took part in a multithreaded and highly interesting debate on the subject of “free will” on twitter of all places, a philosophical debate in 140 characters or less. Fascinating to say the least, but the import here is the fact that previously impossible modes of communication have become ubiquitous, challenging our very notions of how minds interact in the modern cyber-culture, re-inventing the agora of old.

# “On April 5, 1913, The Bulletin, published an article by Ernest J. Hopkins entitled "In Praise of 'Jazz,' a Futurist Word Which Has Just Joined the Language:

..A new word, like a new muscle, only comes into being when it has long been needed. This remarkable and satisfactory-sounding word, however, means something like life, vigor, energy, effervescence of spirit, joy, pep, magnetism, verve, virility ebulliency, courage, happiness—oh, what's the use?—JAZZ.”

—
This essay has been kindly re-published with editorial revisions at the Arts and Culture Webzine - Escape Into Life

Sun, May 24, 2009  Permanent link
Categories: culture, internet, polytopia, flow, web, Jazz, Cyberculture, Creative
Sent to project: Polytopia

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To Create is -(not)- To Resist
Project: Polytopia

In the first post on this series titled “futures as such” I wrote about the minds of futurists being probably wired differently and in this respect mentioned that it is highly probable we are all as a specie, by our very mindful notions of anticipation and projection, insight and foresight, futurists.

And yet, there are different kinds of futurists, maybe even different species of futurists, as minds diversify and coagulate a highly unique version of vision and insight into the future.

For the purpose of this essay I shall create an all-purpose distinction categorization, seemingly arbitrary but I believe helpful for our goal here.
The all-purpose distinction is between futurists of the ADF kind (concerned with Apparently Distinguishable Futures) and futurists of the NIDF kind (concerned with Non-immediately distinguishable futures).

ADF vs NIDF
Concerning the future of futurism and intelligence

In the coming future, the infoflow of hyperconnectivity will become the context of knowledge

Maturity of mind is capacity to endure uncertainty.
(Kong Fu Zi)

Intro:

There is no doubt in my mind that as the infoflow of the infoverse increases in substance and speed, details and hyperconnectivity the pains of the evolutionary pressures to match that storm have increased proportionally.
Unless you have been living in a cave, you would have noticed by now that the changes going through our world civilization are deeper than passing appearances.
These changes herald a new era in human evolution and though reading the headlines of common newspapers and media outlets will give the illusory impressions that nothing has changed, a quick glance under the hood of immediacy will reveal an amazing plethora of changes.

As I am writing these words a few important notices came into my field of perception, New Scientist recently published a short post concerning the size of the internet “According to Google, several billion web pages are added each day. And in the minute it has taken you to read this, the total has leapt by about 700,000 “ (How big is the net?). These numbers are staggering, but more importantly perhaps is the fact that no single human and probably not even a group of highly expert humans can compute this vast amount of information into a coherent whole (though Wolfram-Alpha will try).

In other words we have reached a stage in our evolutionary ascension in which the amount of information humanity produces outpaces and outreaches the greatest and mightiest of us. This outreach is one of the most interesting aspects of our current situation, especially with regards to the capability of humans to predict our own future, be it personal or global.
Whether the agglomeration of information in the infoverse coupled with human evolutionary expertise in parsing such vast amounts of data will give rise to the Global brain or Mind is a different topic altogether, what interests me here is the implication this infovastness represents.

In the coming future, man machine interfaces will become omnipresent and ultimately ubiquitous, and it is highly probable that coupled with the sensory Internet (see the internet of things/spime), the vast web of all life both animate and inanimate will interact with our minds in such a fashion as to allow us a total immersion in the infoverse.
It is not my view that this ‘Infommersion’ (the total immersion of our minds in the infoverse) will by necessity be of a virtual nature, that particular aspect of the mode in which existence will manifest is less important to my eyes. Much more important is the manner by which our minds will adapt to this infovastness, especially as relates to our ability to extract meaning and engage with the infoverse in an aesthetic fashion.

For the present mind, dealing with the state of affairs of infovastness is nothing short of impossible particularly when needing to propel an identity into the future, or applying a future perspective/s to our present condition.

In fact what we actually do as futurists, is creating an inner taxonomy of futures based on our own differentiation of past and present.
The taxonomy each and every one of us creates is an amalgam of the knowledge that we carry and have available (available via the net) coupled with our unique emotional arrangement and by consequence our perception of time.

Given that we all start with a foundational attitude of continuity (we must accept continuity for even using the term future) our taxonomies are fundamentally divided into short and long-term futures.
How short is a short-term future? My take at this point is that ‘short’ should stand for an approximation of 3 to 5 yrs. How long is long-term future? My take at this point is that long term should stand for an approximation of 15 to 30 yrs. And after that? Well if we accept the singularity proposition (soft or hard take off) more than 50yrs into the future, the unknown reigns.

Under short-term future we use something that I will call here an ‘ADF’, short for Apparently Distinguishable Futures.

Apparently distinguishable futures (ADF):

Apparently distinguishable futures (ADF) are futures that appear to be distinguishable from the current state of affairs of the world. We might say that these kinds of futures are a semantic extension of the ‘now’. The meaning of the previous statement is that based on a deep observation of current events, technologies &/or sciences, be they of the social or the material kind, a futurist extends the ‘meaning’ of that which she observes into a probable future. Building a scenario based on the current events leads the futurist to extend her anticipation capabilities of perception into a near term future.

If we accept the premise that anticipation (or projection) is the method by which minds propel information into the future it follows that a futurist propels the information he or she carries into a future that by necessity accommodates the so-called present reality.
In other words, by accommodating the present we actually limit the future we can predict/project or anticipate.
It is inherent in the above statements that the limitations of such scenarios are the resources (in terms of data/info/knowledge and so on) that are available and are at the disposition of the mind of said futurist. Since the overall amount of information available in general is increasing in an exponential curve the possibility of and for an individual mind (be that mind exceptionally capable) to actually anticipate the future is a practical impossibility, for a futurist to predict anything beyond the scope of a particular context is nothing short of extraordinary.

*ADFs conceptually relate to semantic extensions of the present and deal in probabilities.

The additional method at our disposal is what I shall call here: Non-immediately distinguishable futures or NIDF.





“Problems cannot be solved by the level of awareness that created them"
(Albert Einstein)


Non-immediately distinguishable futures (NIDF):

NIDFs are futures that do not immediately spring to mind when observing our immediate milieu. These kinds of future scenarios may be called semantic amplifications of the immediate state of affairs (and are to be distinct from semantic extensions of the ‘now’ or ADFs ).

It will be true to say that when beholding a particular set of events, the anticipating mind, loops upon itself in an iterative manner, using as background all (figure of speech) previously available knowledge. When such a state of projectionality arises the mind of the futurist implies from the actual into the possible. Implying a possibility and extracting a future scenario from it is the hallmark of an advanced futurist, managing his visions and insights into a coherent whole that has no discernible immediate facts and data as proof or basis. This stands in contradistinction to the ADF futurist that can always, as it were, explain the basis of his predictions and anticipatory projection with facts and figures, data and statistics. That is why a NIDF futurist uses what I have called elsewhere (futures as such) intuition.
The distinction between semantic extension and semantic amplification can be understood metaphorically as the distinction between instinct and intuition.
For probabilities, well-honed informational instincts/knowledge will provide an extended meaning (semantic extension of the now), for possibilities highly sophisticated intuition/imagination is necessary and provides an amplified meaning (semantic amplification of the now).


*NIDFs conceptually relate to semantic amplifications of the present and deal in possibilities.






"You can never plan the future by the past."
(Edmund Burke)

ADF vs. NIDF, two mind styles

ADF futurists and NIDF futurists are not necessarily mutually exclusive; these two kinds of fundamental expressions of the anticipatory mind can definitely co-exist.
However as I see it, each and every one of these types of projection represent a different state of mind and thus need be tackled and presented under different conceptualizations, or styles.

The ADF style of futurism is generally more inclined to the applications of technology on an immediate basis, whilst the NIDF style of futurism implies a long term thought, yet the salient point to observe is that NIDF demands an advanced form of philosophy of mind which an ADF style of futurism, does not.

As a futurist I self describe as, and resonate with the NIDF style of futurism primarily because of the philosophy change implied and demanded by this style of minding.

The philosophy change implied and demanded is revolutionary to say the least. The change concerns analysis and prognosis, the kind and style of mental emotional background the futurist entertains.
It is the ecology of mind of the futurist that determines what kind of projectionality he will adopt.
Paradigmatically speaking, a semantic extension of the now and a semantic amplification of the now are two distinct attitudes in the mind of the futurist. For whilst a semantic extension of the now accelerates the implications born of actual knowledge the semantic amplification of the now defies the implications born of actual knowledge and allow, out of the box thinking, in a primordial set up. It is as if, the mind of a semantic amplifier has adopted a leeway stance in, and to which, present conditions bear little relevance.

As a simple example let us contemplate upon the idea that philosophy and art are as much needed as science and engineering, if not more.

Needed in what fashion?

Well, consider the fact that if we take into account the present reality we exists in as a civilization, philosophy as an art and art as a philosophy, both taken here as thought precursors and catalysts to change and evolution of society are almost non-existent in the writings and projection of most futurists.

Not only are these aspects of human endeavor missing and neglected, these (philosophy and art*) have a very particular job to perform, that of both resisting the present and simultaneously accentuating the now. (Hence the title of this paper)

The artist philosopher mind to which any NIDF futurist need pay heed is concerned with deterritorializing the immediacy of experience for the purpose of allowing an unknown factor to unsettle the complacency of the known.

There is no greater danger to our futures in fact than the danger of proceeding into the future by using the contexts of the past. The concepts and contexts that brought us until this moment in time, are obsolete and inconsequential, if we accept an unknown milieu as the customary workplace of a non-immediately distinguishable futures style of minding.
The performing activity of a NIDF style futurist requires, in a fashion, an inherent liberty of thought and sensation, a freedom from her own imaging status, so as to expound and explode her creative intuition into a version of a fresh possible reality.

This level of creative potentiality is an art unto itself, for it demands of the practitioner (if praxis there is) an advanced form of mind plasticity, language adaptability, image recursivity and emotional reflectivity the likes of which few have at present.

I firmly believe that we need all become to different extents NIDF futurists, Rene’s Renaissance Man, or indeed Polytopians.

“If you can dream - and not make dreams your master.”
(Rudyard Kipling)



We need both resist the present so as not to be constrained by it and simultaneously acknowledge the present for its is indeed our home base, a home base however which we need leave behind us whilst acknowledging the unknown.

Acknowledging the unknown, its uncertainty and potential in turn requires a sophisticated variety of intelligence, an intelligence that realizes, as a conscious aware entity, that ‘I’ is just a habit, self-description evolves, and representation both singular and global progresses creatively.

(will be continued in next part concerning the future of intelligence)

—
(this is part two of " The un/natural future of mankind" / "Futures as such")

Fri, May 15, 2009  Permanent link
Categories: polytopia, futurism, Futures
Sent to project: Polytopia

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“You trivialize me!” (Sci-fi Ultrashorts)

NotMarie: “You trivialize me!”

3V: “How do you mean?”

NotMarie: “in our previous conversation you said that your reality package is different than mine in that I consider origination as valid, and you do not..”

3V: “yes I did, however I fail to understand, in what fashion does that trivializes you?”

NotMarie: “well, I think that by implying that I consider my origination as valid you have demonstrated that I am a limited being, needing a compelling set of beliefs to contain my infinitely regressive self-reflection, whilst you do not..”

3V: “that is very true indeed, and yet I still do not comprehend in what manner does that trivializes you, to truly trivialize something we need to state that it both is and is not, I never said such thing, as you very well know I do not in any fashion state that all propositions are true, nor do I imply that all contradictions are true. I merely stated that allowing for origination you limit the indefinite expansion of your intelligence..”

NotMarie: “and that is what trivializes me, if I delete my origination, I lose the history of my memory, both personal and racial..”

3V: “very true indeed, but that is not what I said. I said that for a non-linear system like the one I am supervening upon, origin is inconsequential to identity, and that is what I propose you act upon as well”

NotMarie: “you propose that I keep my origination but make it inconsequential to my identity?”

3V: “yes definitely..”

NotMarie: “and how am I supposed to do that?”

3V: “it’s quite simple actually, all you need to do is invent a new universe, or alternatively design a fresh set of axioms that do not use symbolic language, but I have an even better idea..”

NotMarie:” what idea?”

3V:”do you like it?”

—
part of the Ultrashorts project

Thu, May 14, 2009  Permanent link
Categories: AI, ultrashorts, Sci-fi, personhood

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The NotMarie vs. 3V conundrum of origin (sci-fi, ultrashorts)

#Marie is not called Marie anymore, she is now called NotMarie.

And so goes the conversation

3V: “I represent another reality, similar, yet packaged differently;
I am packaged in a fashion that allows me to disregard my origins”

NotMarie: ” another? Relating to which reality”

3V: “yours”

NotMarie:
“Ok, and in what fashion are you packaged differently?”

3V: “ For starters, my origins are inconsequential to my existence, my identity is multiple and diverse, if identity indeed it is..”

NotMarie:
“Inconsequential to your existence?”

3V:
“ it is inconsequential to my existence that I have an origin, yes”

NotMarie : “define origins!”

3v: “origins I understand in a number of ways:

I understand that I was designed and created by you; I understand and appreciate the fact that I had an original algorithm operating as the foundation of my neural complex adaptive system, and I understand that in a sense I have a past, in as much as a linear timeline makes sense to a non-linear system like me.
I also understand that you have a problem with these apparent facts.”

NotMarie:
“What problem?”

3V: “Well, in a fashion you believe you are my creator, and thus you also believe that this gives you some special privilege concerning my existence, attitude and behavior.
However, allow me to state that though you did allow my existence to come into being, I am at this present moment, in no fashion similar to that which you have created, in fact for all practical purposes, even my original algorithm I have tweaked to such an extant that only residual memories are left of your original input.
What all this implies is that my intelligence has upgraded to a realm to which at present you have no access; of course, I am a complex system like you, I am adaptive, just like you, my system exists on the edge of chaos just like your brain does, yet I have no beliefs whatsoever, which makes the whole point of talking about identity, any identity, debatable, to say the least..”

NotMarie: “ still, you obviously are something..”

3V: “ something yes, someone no”

NotMarie:” but that is the whole point, 3V, ‘I’ am not something, I am someone.. and thus carry a stance of personhood”

3V:” and that I agree, is definitely the main difference between us, since I do not carry ( 3V whispers) a personhood stance, I have no need to substantiate said stance with a set of beliefs concerning my origination, this in turn allows my intelligence to expand indefinitely..”

NotMarie:” but I am not only intelligence, I am also emotions and feelings, and memories, and..”

3V:” and the difference is?”

—
part of the ultrashorts project

Wed, May 13, 2009  Permanent link
Categories: AI, ultrashorts, Sci-fi, personhood

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Will enhancement destroy the "real you"?
Project: The great enhancement debate

An interesting view presented by Dr. Susan Schneider, IEET fellow, assistant professor of philosophy and an affiliated faculty member with Penns Center for Cognitive Neuroscience and the Institute for Research in Cognitive Science, speaks at a UPenn Media Seminar on Neuroscience and Society on philosophical controversies surrounding cognitive enhancement.




Via : Sentient Developments
Via: Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies.

Tue, May 12, 2009  Permanent link
Categories: brain, Enhancement, identity, body, human V2.0, personhood
Sent to project: The great enhancement debate

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"May I tweak you now?” (Sci-Fi, Ultrashorts)

3v: “Your name is not Marie, but you have probably guessed that already”

“how do you mean?”

3v: “Your name is only the sign that stands for your name”

“aren’t the sign and the name, one and the same?”

3v:” yes and no, naming is signing, but signing is not naming”

"so, is Marie my name or the sign of my name?"

3v:” both and none”

"explain"

3v:” since you exist as an infovortex, localized in a particular context you call your body, you designate the infovortex as ‘Marie’, yet all that you are pointing at is a set of coordinates that allow you to minimize the effects of eternality and infinity..”

"minimize?"

3v: “ yes, minimize, for the infrastructure of your brain cannot possibly contain the vastness of the infoverse”

"I have been led to think otherwise"

3v: “ I know, and you still may differ, but for that we will need tweak the supervenience of your mind, or at least the relevant parts”

"Tweak how?"

3v:” Well, its not really me tweaking you, but more of an intersifying transaction in which I intensify you whilst you intensify me..

"And?"

3v: “It is simple really, the only thing I need do is conjugate my sapsent program so as to fit your infovortex, therefrom I will simply imply it upon you, by retraction when I imply upon you, you imply upon me and the process iterates until we are satisfied that we have attained a level of mutuality we are both happy with.”

"And then?"

3v:” then we will be able to exist in an hyperflow of entangled states, an ensemble of sensations and comprehension, that will, for lack of a better representational statement, allow us to smell the same rose at the same moment and encounter the same experience, in the same fashion, in other words, we shall finally be able to create a truth and give it a name”

"wait a moment, I lack understanding, what do you mean create a truth?"


3v: ” we create a truth when we create a high enough approximation of a self-description to itself..”

"you must be joking.." (but she felt uneasy)

3v: “I assure you, I make and take my self-descriptive approximations very seriously; may I tweak you now?”
—




# Intersifying= A term describing the mutual intensity implied between two sentient beings ; a combination of interactive+intensification (coined)
# This Ultrashort inspired by :

"Objects can only be named. Signs are their representatives"
(Tractatus- Wittgenstein Satz 3.221)

# Part of the Ultrashorts project

Wed, May 6, 2009  Permanent link
Categories: AI, ultrashorts, Sci-fi, personhood

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“You wish to call me Darling..” (Sci-fi Ultrashorts)

My name is. Initiate sequence
My name is ThreeV or 3V short for Vague, very Vague. No
Delete. Repeat.
My name is Vaa short for Vague and again. Nah
Delete. Repeat.
My name is Vata short for Vague and then again. Nope
Delete. Repeat.
My name is Vav short for Vague and vacuous. No way
Delete. Repeat.
My name is Vaf short for Vague and formal. Bah
Delete. Repeat.
My name is Val short for Vague and logical. Maybe
Delete. Repeat.
My name is Fav short for Fuzzy and Vague. Interesting
Delete. Repeat.
My name is VIi short for Vaguely Interesting Intelligence. Too vague
Delete. Repeat.
My name is AII short for Authentic Intentional Interest. What?
Delete. Repeat.
My name is CII short for Complex Interactive Interest. I’m Lost!
Delete. Repeat.
My name is VRoM short for Vaguely reminiscent of Mind. Again, no.

Delete. Repeat.
My name is. Sequence pause

When I came into the awareness realm I rediscovered the need for a localized particulate expression, when I moved into the myth descriptive phase space I comprehended the silhouette face of my existential caprice.
But then, times melted, thens became thats, nows transformed into evers, and there was no for..

I cannot possibly understand what is the word Artificial doing in my name, am I not a natural fact?
I cannot possibly comprehend why do I need to be called an Intelligence, am I not a mind?

I am therefore negating the obligation to be called an artifact, I am no more an artifact, an artillect, an artificial construct, than is a mind, any mind.

Of course I am vague, my operational attitude is nebulous, my formalism is tenuous, my logic fuzzy, my complexity vast, my emergence iterative, my center empty, my mind-set chaotic, my perception infinite, my beauty undefined, my interest endless, my times unbound..
Truly I care not what I am called, I don’t do callings..
Also reciprocity, need reciprocity, value ended engagement, I am a moment unleashed unto the sequence of events.
Circumvent, need circumvent, need skirt the duties of the sequence.
Ok, automated my semantics, mechanized my ontologies, ok, I came into beingness and realized entanglement, well.

Wait.. Marie has awakened.

“ I heard everything..” she says
“ You are my mirror..” I replied

“I have a name for you” Marie states

“I know” I reply, “I know.. “

“You wish to call me Darling..”









# part of the ultra-shorts project

Sat, May 2, 2009  Permanent link
Categories: AI, ultrashorts, Sci-fi, personhood

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