VV(1) humans and the inanimate

[Doug Millison]

http://www.feedmag.com/feature/fr394_master.html

One Half of a Manifesto
In a new collaboration with Edge.org, virtual
reality pioneer Jaron Lanier poses a moral
question: Should we make decisions solely on
the basis of the needs and wants of "traditional"
biological humans, or are computers now
equally deserving of consideration.

excerpt:

The dogma I object to is composed of a set of interlocking beliefs 
and doesn't have a generally accepted overarching name as yet, though 
I sometimes call it "cybernetic totalism". It has the potential to 
transform human experience more powerfully than any prior ideology, 
religion, or political system ever has, partly because it can be so 
pleasing to the mind, at least initially, but mostly because it gets 
a free ride on the overwhelmingly powerful technologies that happen 
to be created by people who are, to a large degree, true believers.

Edge readers might be surprised by my use of the word "cybernetic". I 
find the word problematic, so I'd like to explain why I chose it. I 
searched for a term that united the diverse ideas I was exploring, 
and also connected current thinking and culture with earlier 
generations of thinkers who touched on similar topics. The original 
usage of "cybernetic", as by Norbert Weiner, was certainly not 
restricted to digital computers. It was originally meant to suggest a 
metaphor between marine navigation and a feedback device that governs 
a mechanical system, such as a thermostat. Weiner certainly 
recognized and humanely explored the extraordinary reach of this 
metaphor, one of the most powerful ever expressed.

I hope no one will think I'm equating Cybernetics and what I'm 
calling Cybernetic Totalism. The distance between recognizing a great 
metaphor and treating it as the only metaphor is the same as the 
distance between humble science and dogmatic religion.

Here is a partial roster of the component beliefs of cybernetic totalism:

1) That cybernetic patterns of information provide the ultimate and 
best way to understand reality.

2) That people are no more than cybernetic patterns.

3) That subjective experience either doesn't exist, or is unimportant 
because it is some sort of ambient or peripheral effect.

4) That what Darwin described in biology, or something like it, is in 
fact also the singular, superior description of all creativity and 
culture.

5) That qualitative as well as quantitative aspects of information 
systems will be inexorably accelerated by Moore's Law.

And finally, the most dramatic:

6) That biology and physics will merge with computer science 
(becoming biotechnology and nanotechnology), resulting in life and 
the physical universe becoming mercurial; achieving the supposed 
nature of computer software. Furthermore, all of this will happen 
very soon! Since computers are improving so quickly, they will 
overwhelm all the other cybernetic processes, like people, and will 
fundamentally change the nature of what's going on in the familiar 
neighborhood of Earth at some moment when a new "criticality" is 
achieved- maybe in about the year 2020. To be a human after that 
moment will be either impossible or something very different than we 
now can know.

[The article continues at 
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/lanier/lanier_p1.html ]

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