On Leaving the Garden of Eden

The Edenic myth is about growing beyond and out of cultural comfort zones.  First, we had to deal with exposure as we forsook temperate climates.  "Adam and Eve" clothed themselves out of necessity, not modesty, as they learned how to survive harsher environments.  Modesty followed custom, not vice versa.

Then we learned how to produce and store enough food to last through longer and harsher winters; next we learned how to transport goods, including by sea and eventually air, to facilitate production, storage and distribution of essential goods.

What we learned in the second half of the 20th century is how to inhabit extremes of atmospheric pressure--from the vacuum of space to the breathing of compressed gases underwater.

Each of these advances takes us out of the "Garden of Eden" of our species' current comfort zone, always carrying with us the tools we learned to use in previous advances.

It makes me wonder where the next advance will take us....  Somewhere, no doubt, where outer space, inner space, and cyberspace converge.

And, of course, as individuals we are continually cast out of the Garden as we learn to be ashamed of our previous ignorance/innocence.

The serpent in the Garden is the urge to continually advance, to grow in knowledge, which eventuates in wisdom.  The forbidden fruit is knowledge itself, the fruit of our seemingly unwise desire to leave Eden in search of additional knowledge and greater wisdom.

Beyond Hive Consciousness, Part 1

Jaron Lanier begins his long awaited first book, You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto, by trying to explain his day job as a technologist of the late 20th Century. In doing so, he cannot help but allude to Marshall McLuhan:

We make up extensions to your being, like remote eyes and ears (webcams and mobile phones) and expanded memory (the world of details you can search for online). (5)

This would have been yesterday's news to McLuhan, whose 1964 opus, Understanding Media, is subtitled "The Extensions of Man." McLuhan understood well that Lanier and his technologist coworkers were merely extending human organs in new, virtual ways.

Lanier, however, is aware of his ironic position, and takes pains to separate himself from the hive mentality that dominates Web 2.0 and all of its adherents (including contributors to the blogosphere). And since his own subtitle is "A Manifesto," which would seem to indicate a high level of public importance, Lanier provides a self-help list of do's and don'ts for those addicted to the superficiality of Web 2.0 reductionism:

• Don't post anonymously unless you really might be in danger.
• If you put effort into Wikipedia articles, put even more effort into using your personal voice and expression outside of the wiki to help attract people who don't yet realize that they are interested in the topics you contributed to.
• Create a website that expresses something about who you are that won't fit into the template available to you on a social networking site.
• Post a video once in a while that took you one hundred times more time to create than it takes to view.
• Write a blog post that took weeks of reflection before you heard the inner voice that needed to come out.
• If you are twittering, innovate in order to find a way to describe your internal state instead of trivial external events, to avoid the creeping danger of believing that objectively described events define you, as they would define a machine.
(21)

That's some good advice. If we all adhered to Lanier's dicta, we would be spared the vituperative trash that infects topical forums, Wikipedia would be useful background to the real story, websites would be windows into our souls, YouTube would be worth watching, more blogs would be worth reading, and Twitter might actually be interesting. Imagine the kind of Singularity we could then produce!

In 1991, Brian Eno famously quipped that "Future TV will be made with simple equipment, unqualified people, small budgets, and bad taste." Lanier sees the fulfillment of that prophecy in a section called "Schlock Defended." Again, he can see the irony of YouTube, and suggests that, while it could--and should--be of much higher quality, the motivation to create schlock is inarguably human.

Lanier then takes on computationalism in his chapter titled "I Am a Contrarian Loop," an obvious spoof on our own Doug Hofstadter's work. Lanier critiques the three "flavors" of computationalism that are supposed to result in the Singularity--the awakening of the web. First there's the notion that sheer quantities of data held in databases such as Google's will somehow wake up to some kind of cosmic consciousness. A second flavor--that proferred by Hofstadter--requires self-aware recursion--a "strange loop"--in order to qualify as consciousness. Finally, there is Web 2.0 computationalism, which holds to a new twist on the Turing test: if you buy music based on the recommendations of the hive "then the hive is effectively a person" (156). Lanier then suggests that human evolution is, in fact, realistic computationalism, and we could construct a myth, a creation tale, "to think computationally that isn't as vulnerable to the confusion brought about by our ideas about ideal computers" (157). For McLuhan, myth "is the mode of simultaneous awareness of a complex group of causes and effects" (McLuhan, 1962, 266). This "complex group of causes and effects" is simply another way to express Lanier's realistic computationalism.

To be continued...

[NOTE: This blog post was four weeks in the making. Part 2 could be four more. :dj]

from "Nixon's Kids (My Generation)"

In fifth grade, an experiment
        Was tried on some of us to see
        If more kids simultaneously
In class was more efficient.

We had not one or two but four
        (To teach us all according to
        The strengths of every student who
Had tested high or low before

On various subjects) one of which
        turned out to be the niece of that
        old Presidential candidate
They'd kicked around: Old Tricky Dick

Himself, who also happened to
        Have lived just down the street from us
        In Yorba Linda. So what does
One do, but hold a vote to choose

Our own class president? It soon
        Got ugly, way beyond just signs
        And slogans, promises and lines,
Until we nearly, once at noon,

Had us a riot by the bars
        At recess when some seven guys
        Deplored the war we fought disguised
As just containment of Karl Marx.

I can't recall who won that day
        But never mind: Miss Nixon went
        To the inauguration bent
On stating America's way.

But having for one's teacher the
        Niece of one so powerful
        Had merit undeniable
And took me places unforeseen.

For instance, once when Nixon flew
        To the southland for a stay
        In his new place in San Clemente,
I dragged my parents, joined those who

Went out to see if Air Force One
        Would sink into the tarmac of
        Our little airstrip. Heads above
The rest he waved, the favorite son,

And I was quite inspired to write
        A news account of that great day.
        I showed it to Miss Nixon, a
Great source for her of no small pride;

She sent it off to Uncle Dick,
        Who sent it to his pilot: shall
        Lt. Col. Ralph B. Al-
Bertazzie tour his bailiwick?

And so we went, my parents and
        The press and I to El Toro
        Where Air Force One awaited for
Our entourage. I took a stand

From that day forth: I'd try to train,
        Become a pilot, hopefully,
        Serve God and country faithfully
And told Miss Nixon of my aim.

But then one day at recess I
        Observed a sonic boom fly by
        When we'd just learned astronomy
And all about the speed of light.

I ran across the asphalt lea
        To my beloved, said in glee:
        "Miss Nixon, everything we see
Is in the past!" She looked at me

And said with utmost certainty,
        "No, it's not!" I turned away
        And never held her in that way
Again. I still think she delayed me.

Consider That

The Sun never rises;
our star never sets.
It appears in the east
as Earth turns from west.

Quantum Leaps

Words cannot really replace mathematics—but on a subject like this, mathematics cannot really replace words.

— Jeremy Bernstein on the cultural transformation of quantum theory, in Quantum Leaps

* * *

Starbaby had a fair understanding of mathematics, apparently having studied differential equations and some number theory, enough anyway to cure me of my previous misconception that mathematics is the universal language. His argument went like this: Mathematics is a way of thinking, an approach to reality, not a language. When you look at a mathematical formula, the first thing you do is translate its symbolic shorthand into verbal language, such that "2 + 2 = 4" immediately becomes "two plus two equals four." In fact, the only way to accurately express pi is to use words: the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. As soon as you try to represent it numerically, you resort to some approximation; it might as well be Greek. Besides, if mathematics is a universal language, how is it that so few people understand it? Talking about the language of mathematics is akin to talking about the language of love: both are ways of thinking, both are valid approaches to reality, and both require verbal expression to convey that reality to another being. But I digress.

— Mark Shermin on the hybrid mind of Chris "Starbaby" Hayden, in The Life and Teachings of Starbaby

Americani Christiani

Walking past yuletide homes
—some pretty,
some pretty tacky—

funny how too many Christmas lights,
when you get right up close,
makes a house look dark.

Across from St. Patrick’s,
a cross painted in six white
Christmas lights

illuminates the stars and stripes
billowing in a breeze,
cold porch steps,

and a plastic, light-up crèche
where Mary meek and Joseph pious
gaze upon a childless manger.