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Digital People: From Bionic Humans to Androids
Aeonite writes "Cybernetics (that is to say, the sort associated with Cyberpunk) has long been an interest of mine, and so I was eager to dive into Digital People: From Bionic Humans to Androids , which is about exactly what it proclaims to be about. Sort of. The book does indeed cover everything from Bionic Humans to Androids, but the continuum of artificial beings is heavily weighted towards one end of the spectrum. Overall, the book is quite comprehensive in dealing with physical aspects of artificial intelligences, but when it comes to the nature of intelligence itself, the book barely dips its toe in the water. As the author himself says, the question here is not "Can machines think?", like Turing, but rather 'Can machines live?'" Read on for the rest of Aeonite's review.
Digital People: From Bionic Humans to Androids
author
Sidney Perkowitz
pages
248
publisher
Joseph Henry Press
rating
7
reviewer
Michael Fiegel
ISBN
0309089875
summary
A detailed exploration of the history of artificial beings
Where Have We Been? The book opens with a 13-page introduction ("Androids All Around Us") that sets up the material to follow, exploring the nature of artificial things and how we bond to them, personifying everything from the obviously inanimate cars and computers, to seemingly lifelike robots like MIT's Cog and Kismet, Sony's AIBO and Tiger's I-Cybie. The lines between what's alive and what's artificial are blurred even further when one considers that some 10 percent of the U.S. population are by definition bionic, possessing some degree of artificial parts -- everything from prosthetic limbs, to artificial hearts and hips, to breast implants and hearing aids. Not that this is anything new; the author tells us, for instance, that Aristotle imagined artificial beings in the 4th Century BCE, and several of the Norse gods and heroes had artificial hair and limbs. The difference now is that we're on the verge -- how close is up for debate -- of creating artificial, intelligent life, and it is the author's argument that now is the time to start thinking more about what that means. "To create artificial minds and bodies," he says, "we must first better understand ourselves."
The bulk of the book is split into two parts. The first, "Artificial Beings: Meaning and History" is semi-self explanatory, featuring three chapters that cover the history of robots, automatons and the like, from ancient times to the present day.
Chapter 2, "The Virtual History of Artificial Beings", is devoted entirely to fictional beings -- not only R2D2, Robocop, The Six Million Dollar Man, and other modern examples, but also Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Pygmalion's ivory statue, the bronze Talos, Jewish golems and Frank L. Baum's Tin Man and Tik-Tok, among others. Interesting tidbits abound here: for example, the revelation that the term Robot -- first featured in Karel Capek's R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) -- comes from the Czech word "robota," which means "forced labor." Also interesting is the acknowledgment that for all the attention paid to Asimov's three laws of robotics, many of his stories deal with situations where those laws are broken, bent or otherwise shown to be invalid.
Chapters 3 and 4, on the other hand, cover real examples of artificial beings and bionic devices, from classical times to the early 1990s. Everything from Jacques de Vaucanson's musicians and Pierre Jaquet-Droz's automata, to explorations with galvanism in the 18th Century, to the development of computers and robots through the first half of the 19th Century are addressed. Again, the author digs up some fascinating insights and revelations here: mention of iron prosthetic legs in ancient Indian poetry; wooden and bronze legs for Greek and Roman soldiers; and the idea that advances in medicine since World War 2 have allowed soldiers to live with grievous wounds more often, which in turn has led to an increased need for development of better prosthetics.
Where Are We Now? The second part of the book, "How Far Along Are We?", spans five chapters, and covers mind-body interfaces, methods of robotic locomotion, sensory input, self-awareness and the like.
Chapter 5, "Mind-Body Problems", is very theoretical, offering more questions than answers, particularly as compared to the respectively crunchy material already covered. Can an artificial brain support a conscious artificial mind? Is a soul something special and unique to humans, or just the collective perceptions of a 3-pound mass of watery tissue? The following two chapters are a bit more crunchy, covering "Limbs, Movement and Expression" and "The Five Senses, and Beyond", respectively. Both provide plenty of concrete examples of the subject matter, with today's most advanced robots -- Honda's P2, P3 and ASIMO; Tokyo IT's snakelike ACM R-1; NASA's Robonaut, Spirit and Opportunity; and MIT's Kismet -- covered in reasonable depth. Problems and limitations of robots are also dealt with, including sensory bandwidth limitation, facial detection failure rates, the concept of "good enough" speech recognition, etc.
Chapter 8 takes us upstairs, covering "Thinking, Emotion and Self-Awareness" and the basics of what it means to have a robot brain. The world's three "smart" digital beings are covered in some depth here: ASIMO, the oldest, can walk backwards, keep balance, react to body language, recognize its name and wave hello; Kismet, who consists of only a head and face, can react to movements and expressions, but requires 15 networked computers to do so; and Sony's QRIO is only 23 inches tall, but can have 20,000 word conversations, sing in harmony, and greet people it knows by name, based only on facial recognition. Also covered are Commander Data's emotion chip, monkeys controlling robot arms with their brains, and the infamous light-seeking eels, ever a favorite on Slashdot.
Chapter 9, "Frankenstein's Creature or Commander Data", explores the ramifications of robotic development, and how they differ from society to society. In Japan, where roughly half of the world's million robots reside, artificial creatures have a mostly civilian role, whereas in America, military applications have a larger role. Does this result from religious differences? The author, citing Robert Christopher, suggests that Buddhists take a different view of robots than do Christians because Buddhism "does not place man at the center of the universe, and in fact, makes no particular distinction between the animate and the inanimate." Samurai swords have souls, and machines have ghosts.
Where Does That Leave Us? What, in the end, does this mean for us? Can machines be truly human if they never grow up, have no accumulated cultural experience? What does it mean for humans when the cost of labor rises while the cost of robots falls? Will it happen in our lifetimes? Turing predicted that a machine would pass his infamous test by the end of the century; Kurzweil says it will happen by 2029. Who's to say? Not the author -- he leaves off with no conclusions but that the journey will be uplifting, and will give us a sense of wonder at what we might accomplish.
This seeming lack of conclusion leaves the book a bit shallow, though one can't truly fault the author for not answering such a difficult question, especially since he backs away from "going there" at several points in the book. The author's refusal to speculate deeply about such matters make it clear why certain examples were "missing" from Part 1. While relatively minor works such as Marge Piercy's 1991 "He, She and It" were covered there, William Gibson's Neuromancer was notably absent (the author is only mentioned once, in passing, on page 189). And in a section that covered Blade Runner, The Terminator, Robocop and the Six Million Dollar Man, where were Ghost in the Shell and Max Headroom, both of which cover the nature of what it means to be artificial? The answer can probably be found in chapter 5's final sentence, which reads (in part): "...although the full mind-body recipe remains unknown for us and our artificial kin, a great deal of progress has been made on the bodily ingredient..." In other words, "we don't know much about the mental stuff, so let's look at the physical." This particular focus means that the book skews heavily towards a discussion of robots and robotics, with comparatively little attention paid to bionics and cybernetics; a better subtitle might have been "From Robots to Androids".
Also a bit troublesome is the fact that several areas -- particularly those dealing with more recent developments -- are glossed over, mentioned briefly, even tantalizingly, and then left behind. Electro-Active Polymers and the AMRI (Artificial Muscle Research Institute) are mentioned only in passing, and although brain-machine interfaces are mentioned several times, it's never with any real depth. The book's Filmography suffers from this focus on the past as well; only two of the 23 films and TV shows listed are from the past decade, with Star Trek and The Terminator left to represent the 1990s all alone. Although the book's historical perspective is intriguing, I would have preferred to hear a bit more about current events and examples.
Overall, Digital People is an enjoyable read, and is heavy with substance for those interested in learning about the history of artificial beings and robots, from ancient times to the 1990s. Those looking for more about cybernetics and human-machine interfaces might find themselves wanting more, but if your own tastes run more towards Asimov than Gibson, you won't be disappointed.
You can purchase Digital People: From Bionic Humans to Androids from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Where Have We Been? The book opens with a 13-page introduction ("Androids All Around Us") that sets up the material to follow, exploring the nature of artificial things and how we bond to them, personifying everything from the obviously inanimate cars and computers, to seemingly lifelike robots like MIT's Cog and Kismet, Sony's AIBO and Tiger's I-Cybie. The lines between what's alive and what's artificial are blurred even further when one considers that some 10 percent of the U.S. population are by definition bionic, possessing some degree of artificial parts -- everything from prosthetic limbs, to artificial hearts and hips, to breast implants and hearing aids. Not that this is anything new; the author tells us, for instance, that Aristotle imagined artificial beings in the 4th Century BCE, and several of the Norse gods and heroes had artificial hair and limbs. The difference now is that we're on the verge -- how close is up for debate -- of creating artificial, intelligent life, and it is the author's argument that now is the time to start thinking more about what that means. "To create artificial minds and bodies," he says, "we must first better understand ourselves."
The bulk of the book is split into two parts. The first, "Artificial Beings: Meaning and History" is semi-self explanatory, featuring three chapters that cover the history of robots, automatons and the like, from ancient times to the present day.
Chapter 2, "The Virtual History of Artificial Beings", is devoted entirely to fictional beings -- not only R2D2, Robocop, The Six Million Dollar Man, and other modern examples, but also Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Pygmalion's ivory statue, the bronze Talos, Jewish golems and Frank L. Baum's Tin Man and Tik-Tok, among others. Interesting tidbits abound here: for example, the revelation that the term Robot -- first featured in Karel Capek's R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) -- comes from the Czech word "robota," which means "forced labor." Also interesting is the acknowledgment that for all the attention paid to Asimov's three laws of robotics, many of his stories deal with situations where those laws are broken, bent or otherwise shown to be invalid.
Chapters 3 and 4, on the other hand, cover real examples of artificial beings and bionic devices, from classical times to the early 1990s. Everything from Jacques de Vaucanson's musicians and Pierre Jaquet-Droz's automata, to explorations with galvanism in the 18th Century, to the development of computers and robots through the first half of the 19th Century are addressed. Again, the author digs up some fascinating insights and revelations here: mention of iron prosthetic legs in ancient Indian poetry; wooden and bronze legs for Greek and Roman soldiers; and the idea that advances in medicine since World War 2 have allowed soldiers to live with grievous wounds more often, which in turn has led to an increased need for development of better prosthetics.
Where Are We Now? The second part of the book, "How Far Along Are We?", spans five chapters, and covers mind-body interfaces, methods of robotic locomotion, sensory input, self-awareness and the like.
Chapter 5, "Mind-Body Problems", is very theoretical, offering more questions than answers, particularly as compared to the respectively crunchy material already covered. Can an artificial brain support a conscious artificial mind? Is a soul something special and unique to humans, or just the collective perceptions of a 3-pound mass of watery tissue? The following two chapters are a bit more crunchy, covering "Limbs, Movement and Expression" and "The Five Senses, and Beyond", respectively. Both provide plenty of concrete examples of the subject matter, with today's most advanced robots -- Honda's P2, P3 and ASIMO; Tokyo IT's snakelike ACM R-1; NASA's Robonaut, Spirit and Opportunity; and MIT's Kismet -- covered in reasonable depth. Problems and limitations of robots are also dealt with, including sensory bandwidth limitation, facial detection failure rates, the concept of "good enough" speech recognition, etc.
Chapter 8 takes us upstairs, covering "Thinking, Emotion and Self-Awareness" and the basics of what it means to have a robot brain. The world's three "smart" digital beings are covered in some depth here: ASIMO, the oldest, can walk backwards, keep balance, react to body language, recognize its name and wave hello; Kismet, who consists of only a head and face, can react to movements and expressions, but requires 15 networked computers to do so; and Sony's QRIO is only 23 inches tall, but can have 20,000 word conversations, sing in harmony, and greet people it knows by name, based only on facial recognition. Also covered are Commander Data's emotion chip, monkeys controlling robot arms with their brains, and the infamous light-seeking eels, ever a favorite on Slashdot.
Chapter 9, "Frankenstein's Creature or Commander Data", explores the ramifications of robotic development, and how they differ from society to society. In Japan, where roughly half of the world's million robots reside, artificial creatures have a mostly civilian role, whereas in America, military applications have a larger role. Does this result from religious differences? The author, citing Robert Christopher, suggests that Buddhists take a different view of robots than do Christians because Buddhism "does not place man at the center of the universe, and in fact, makes no particular distinction between the animate and the inanimate." Samurai swords have souls, and machines have ghosts.
Where Does That Leave Us? What, in the end, does this mean for us? Can machines be truly human if they never grow up, have no accumulated cultural experience? What does it mean for humans when the cost of labor rises while the cost of robots falls? Will it happen in our lifetimes? Turing predicted that a machine would pass his infamous test by the end of the century; Kurzweil says it will happen by 2029. Who's to say? Not the author -- he leaves off with no conclusions but that the journey will be uplifting, and will give us a sense of wonder at what we might accomplish.
This seeming lack of conclusion leaves the book a bit shallow, though one can't truly fault the author for not answering such a difficult question, especially since he backs away from "going there" at several points in the book. The author's refusal to speculate deeply about such matters make it clear why certain examples were "missing" from Part 1. While relatively minor works such as Marge Piercy's 1991 "He, She and It" were covered there, William Gibson's Neuromancer was notably absent (the author is only mentioned once, in passing, on page 189). And in a section that covered Blade Runner, The Terminator, Robocop and the Six Million Dollar Man, where were Ghost in the Shell and Max Headroom, both of which cover the nature of what it means to be artificial? The answer can probably be found in chapter 5's final sentence, which reads (in part): "...although the full mind-body recipe remains unknown for us and our artificial kin, a great deal of progress has been made on the bodily ingredient..." In other words, "we don't know much about the mental stuff, so let's look at the physical." This particular focus means that the book skews heavily towards a discussion of robots and robotics, with comparatively little attention paid to bionics and cybernetics; a better subtitle might have been "From Robots to Androids".
Also a bit troublesome is the fact that several areas -- particularly those dealing with more recent developments -- are glossed over, mentioned briefly, even tantalizingly, and then left behind. Electro-Active Polymers and the AMRI (Artificial Muscle Research Institute) are mentioned only in passing, and although brain-machine interfaces are mentioned several times, it's never with any real depth. The book's Filmography suffers from this focus on the past as well; only two of the 23 films and TV shows listed are from the past decade, with Star Trek and The Terminator left to represent the 1990s all alone. Although the book's historical perspective is intriguing, I would have preferred to hear a bit more about current events and examples.
Overall, Digital People is an enjoyable read, and is heavy with substance for those interested in learning about the history of artificial beings and robots, from ancient times to the 1990s. Those looking for more about cybernetics and human-machine interfaces might find themselves wanting more, but if your own tastes run more towards Asimov than Gibson, you won't be disappointed.
You can purchase Digital People: From Bionic Humans to Androids from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Do they dream of electric sheep?
Starsucks
We, for one, welcome ourselves as overlords. As members of the Slashdot community, we could be useful in convincing each other to toil in our above-ground beef and soybean and titanium mines.
Is there anything on the web like this that is more current?
Onward to the Aether Sphere!
Seems to me that the book will most likely pose more questions than it answers. Although, the type of questions it may pose may likely be the book's most entertaining aspect.
it's really happening this time. hopefully an ornery austrian will come from the dystopian future to rescue us all.
and did the little girls who lacked daisies seem very morose...
In The Future There Will Be Robots!
Advanced life gives life to promote life.
Software freedom...I love it!
My wife will be replaced with a robotic replica of her when the technology is available. Except the replica will be of her now, and not in the future. She is young now and it wouldn't make sense making a replica of an old woman.
Androids are great, but do they run Linux?
Imagine a beowulf cluster of androids
etc...now let's actually discuss this book.
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
This is an implicit point of Dijkstra's quote:
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim."
Am I open minded towards open source, or closed minded towards closed source?
Whatever nitwit modded this 'redundant' obviously has never played GTA: Vice City.
*sigh*
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
I for one apologize for my previous comment.
Post-rock/Ambient/Drone and other noise.
The jokes are funnier when you've made puns on some real comments, or, god forbid, some of the actual content. Reading the drivel that's been posted on this /. article so far has wasted precious minutes of my life that I will never get back.
You are not funny, people. I can't wait until there are more comments and you drop below my threshold.
New slang when you notice the stripes, the dirt in your fries.
Are you the same Aeonite from Fark?
Did the book offer any insights on how the robots propose to protect us from the Terrible Secret of Space?
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
ouch, pun not intended.
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
this test posting was auto-generated by an anonymous robot, trying to explore itself..
This has been explored in the Anime world for some time. Both in Mecha anime and Ghost in the Shell. I think that half the reason I watch anime is because they can come up with a idea and put it into place much cheaper then Hollywood can hold a party. info here Do we really need millions to tell a simple story? Seems such greats as Masamune Shirow and Mamoru Oshii have picked up this idea long ago.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
Please, Please God do not let Will Smith be in this book.
and not buy groceries for you, but strappy high heels and other consumables that have cultural/fashion existence.
at least that's the definition of people in our society according to Work, Consumption & Culture: Affluence and Social Change in the Twenty-First Century by Paul Ransome.
So, the question is not "Are They Alive?" but "What Do We Consider To Be Alive?"
Sure, they can play chess and recharge their batteries, but if they can't work a remote and podcast, are they really alive or just simulated life?
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
If we incorporate water-resistant seals into the joints of the android, then it could be amphibious. I could easily imagine the following scenario.
In the earning morning hours of December 7, 2041, 1 million androids arise from the receding tide and onto the beaches of China. The mechanized soldiers march relentlessly westward, killing all Chinese soldiers confronting them.
The final destination is Tibet.
As the old Negro spiritual says, "[Tibet!] Free at last! [Buddha,] Almighty! Free at last!"
I think it's more important to know your cyborg name for when we welcome our new overlords.
A.N.D.R.E.W.: Artificial Networked Destruction and Rational Exploration Worker
Awesome.
that Will Smith has never been in any book.
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
I have enough trouble dealing with biological people. Why make the world complicated with people sporting a bionic Darth Vader arm or androids who think they are humans. Now where did my cloned cat wander off...
What they ended up with was something that sort of fakes human interaction. That's been done before. Remember Ananova? Chatterbots? My Real Baby, from Hasbro? COG is basically similar, but with a bigger budget.
The COG web site apparently hasn't been updated since 2000. Like the Leg Lab, it seems to have reached the limits of the ideas used.
This is sad, because there were some good ideas there. But they weren't anywhere near enough to even consider going to human-level AI in one jump. This is a classic vice of AI researchers - they have a reasonably good idea, and then start claiming that human-level strong AI is right around the corner. We went though this with the "expert systems" crowd in the 1980s, and that was even more embarassing and expensive, because doomed startups were launched. AI as a field was dead for a decade after that.
That's the price of overhyping a technology.
Well, I guess we had to go somehow. Its only a matter of time before some terrorist programmed super-bot decides to off us all. 1970 - Cold War 2001 - Terrorist Attacks 2021 - Reverse engineered Nanny-Droids I'll do my part now and wish our kind well, we did have a pretty good run. I wonder if Slashdot will be considered historical data to the new robot civilization? *Please access file 00342: Slashdot: A comparitive study of meat sacks, and their opinions. Later.
"Life" is a slippery, self-defined term. We know what our life is, as humans, more or less. But the "less" part makes it impossible to translate to forms other than the ones with which we're familiar. Are viruses (RNA) alive? Are prions, which are selfreplicating proteins? How about mules, which don't replicate: they're alive. "Life" is a term for chemical processes with some degree of complexity, some degree of spatial segregation, some degree of energy processing. Those degrees vary too much for a rigorous definition, because life transcends limits.
The definition of intelligence is more interesting, and still more relevant. We don't need other intelligences to be necessarily "smart" for them to be interesting to us. Intelligence is merely any degree of representation of the world, both inside and outside the thing, within the thing, which can be changed by changes in the world. In other words, anything that has a model of the world, including itself in the world, that dynamically changes corresponding to changes in the world, is intelligent. So computers are already intelligent. Just like fish are already intelligent. Some people who believe destroying a fish's intelligence by killing it might also believe that turning off a computer is killing the computer. They're probably right.
These debates show that we've now filled the natural world so much with human invention that we're bumping into our own creations, and trying to sort them out according to rules we made for creations we found before we could make our own. As long as we don't update our models to account for the new orders in the world, we're losing our own claims to "intelligent".
--
make install -not war
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
It seems insane for anyone to go about attempting a "human-level strong AI" when there are much more basic levels that could be mastered. I would love to see some good ant AI first. I don't mean " capture the flag" ant AI... i mean build-an-ant-hill, fight-the-other-ant-colony, protect-the-queen ant AI. I bet there's some decent software versions of said AI, but i'd like to see it done with ant robots (i.e. - mini robot with feelers, mandibles, etc). Now that would be a doozy - managing communication via feeler tapping instead of by phat pipe. I would pay to see that.
(seriously.)
I've always felt that I was born a few decades (at least!) too soon. The human body is so frail and limited. I want to be part of a vast computer network. I want to communicate at the speed of light. I don't want to have to sleep or crap or get old and die. Unfortunately, bionic technology, uploading, etc., will all be finalized too late for me. Those technologies that do make it in my lifetime will be expensive and supposedly have "moral" concerns to further slow their development. End rant. :-)
I wonder if the personal sound effect comes with that ... nununununu or nenenenenene
Felt Better! Big headache is gone.
The real promise of androids won't be realized until people get implants in the first few months of life. That is when the brain is the most plastic -- a blank slate that could learn how to interpret signals from a laser-ranging scanner or to innately operate some novel effector in the world (e.g., brain-stem connected keyboard). Such early-age androids would be able to use their augmentations as seamlessly as most people see or walk -- they just won't have to think about it. I'm not saying that older people can't learn (although in the cases of some phonemes, it is a problem), only that the full opportunity for the higher performance will come when androids have from-birth experience with artificial augmentation.
The ethical issues are horrible but not insurmountable -- current societies would lock away any parent that tried to implant experimental hardware into their baby. But I wonder if research on prosthetic devices -- implanted in babies who are accident/cancer victims -- will reveal how powerfully a young mind can make use of artificially attached hardware. With valid data on the value of the device, people (and society) may be less frightened of early-age augmentation.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Also interesting is the acknowledgment that for all the attention paid to Asimov's three laws of robotics, many of his stories deal with situations where those laws are broken, bent or otherwise shown to be invalid.
First of all, Asimov's "three laws of robotics" aren't "laws" in any stretch of the imagination. They were only a plot device in a series of really good books. However, if we do start building robots to which the laws could apply, we would do well to keep them in mind. They should instead be called Asimov's "three very good suggestions to avoid building homicidal robots."
Second of all, the laws would only apply to robots with positronic brains, which would give said robots consciousness and the ability to make decisions. They would not need to be (and most likely could not be) applied to robots controlled by other humans via remote control, programming, or some other input (e.g. - every robot currently in existence). So the laws could not be properly applied to any robot in existance today.
I think this is a case of the writer and/or reviewer taking a concept well-known to the target audience, and then trying to get attention by creating a false sense of controversy about it. However, when taken in context (the three "laws" are a small part of a fictional world), it doesn't really matter. Sorry, but no laws broken here.
That doesn't sound like Buddhism to me
Well, you are right about Shinto way of thinking, but that intertwines with Zen Buddhism which is a different thinking of Buddhism.
Many Japanese would consider both Shintoists and Buddhisms or at least believe in them both.
I guess this would be different from Tibetian Buddhism.
However they key words often used in Suttras are "Sentient life" which does not mean "just humans". However I only slightly study it and can't really give you a definition on what "sentient life" means because as far as I have read it is not clear in the definition and could encompass all forms that are sentient. Which was maybe their point...
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Take a lesson from Flint my friend.
You don't want to live forever.
Unless of course you have your own planet and personal "companion".
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
sorry... had to do it.
There's no place like ~/
hi. you're an idiot. very unfortunate.
why would you want to communicate at the speed of light? you obviously don't have anything very useful or interesting to communicate.
would you feel satisfied? would you feel powerful? is the internet really not good enough for you-- do you really feel limited in the expressive bandwidth that's available?
would you... mind explaining why you find your inability to be part of a vast computer network LIMITING? in other words could you please tell us what would be so great about being part of a "vast computer network"? would it matter? or, do you just find it appealing because cyberpunk and techno-romanticizations are so cinematic and engaging?
maybe i should point out to you: you're part of a network right now. you can send your text to me and many other people at amazing speeds over long distances. we're actually networked to a degree that's unprecedented in human history: we can share ideas across the planet, practically in real time as fast as we can express ourselves; written language closed the gaps of TIME and SPACE that distanced people and their ideas (thousands of years, thousands of miles), and now the digital age let's us use search-through and organize the wealth of pre-existing (and new) information in ways never before possible, and to disseminate information with unprecedented simplicity (you would realize this if you had anything interesting or thorough to offer anyone, because you would have duplicated it electronically and sent it at the very least to all your friends, just by pressing a few buttons, -- maybe that's too much for your body to handle)
you are designed to perceive body language and facial expression, at the speed of light (...plus the speed of cognition). this relates closely with the way you are designed to be very satisfied loving, and very satisfied being loved.
if you do not want to sleep, then you will sacrifice those things that necessitate sleep-- using the human body as an example of a very elegant piece of equipment.
the body isn't so frail and limited. especially with the help of the internet (and some physical training: see: martial arts, gymnastics.) you're just lazy.
have you ever had fun using a TRAINER in an rpg?
what would you like to achieve with "bionic technology" and "[brain?]uploading"?
the thrill of running real fast? doing complicated computations easily? flying? jumping high? living a long time?
what's the point? you're boring. you're unimportant. you use none of your potential, in fact you're not even aware of your potential.
apparently you're NOT doing what your body is designed expertly to do. what a waste.
maybe i'll get modded as flamebait, if you fools aren't ready to accept that bionic technology is just another cheap thrill-- except when used to allow inherently-disabled people to live a "normal" physical life if they so choose-- and ultimately (insultingly) only alleviates the boredom of your bag-of-bones and your dull, need-more-stimulus-because-you-can't-create-it mind.
reminds of the Space Colonizers: yeah, let's colonize space as soon as possible, it "makes sense", it's "logical".
even though an earnest endeavor of that calibur, if redirected to appropriate goals, would eliminate all of the problems that compel people to believe in the necessity of space colonization in the first place.
There are many growth issues that need solved before we can start augmenting kids. Hardware as we know it will have to change to grow with the child; otherwise, every few years (every few months in the first couple of years) the kid would require a refit. Not a good idea when talking about the brain.
We need to get rid of the wires altogether. Something like bluetooth might work (NOT the insecure bluetooth, but something *like* bluetooth). Put several nanos in the brain that will grow out with the expanding cranium. The kid would still need an arm or leg refit every few years (in the case of a lost limb), but the controlling device could remain in place.
Hm. Lots of tech possibilities here, fun things to explore.
Me, I hope to see a world in which the morality issues of augmentation amount to, "Damned Luddites won't augment their kids. Don't they know what's good for them?" Personally, I want to be augmented to the point were I am wrapped up in photosynthetic material to feed me, with photoreceptors around the perimeter so I can see around me in every direction without moving my head, and with organic plasma propulsion so I can move around in space, without the need for spacesuit (I *am* the spacesuit) or spacecraft.
Give me solar sails, the ability to slow my mind down a billionfold, and drop me off at the nearest La Grange point.
Oh, and I also want a pony augmented to be a liger.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
As a proud owner of a new Stepford 9100SX, I can tell you that you won't be sorry you bought one.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
So if one of these things joins the marines would it be a Hero?
This post approved by Shampoo.
Tragic, it is, that the above didn't get modded up.
We should be doing more with what we have, rather than pining for more more more. That's the source of most of our fucking problems right there.
"Are you there Bog? Is a computer one of Your creatures?"
The reason being, if it truely went in-depth into the philosophical and technical issues behind what I will term "AI Research" (some researchers make distinction between "strong AI" and "weak AI", calling the former "AI" and the latter "connectionistic"/"neural net"/"bottom up" - but really, it all is supposed to lead to the same place, right?), the book would be huge, and for most people, it would be very boring.
I have in my library of materials at home about 20 or so volumes relating to AI research, both in fact and fantasy, and related topics ("Ghost in the Shell" manga sits between "Godel, Esher, and Bach" and Barabasi's "Linked" - for instance). They range from fun and easy to understand, to "OMG - MY BRAIN IS FRIED" complexity (the latter I keep because although I lack the mathematical skills needed to decipher what is being talked about, the challenge to try to understand them still absorbs me at the task). Some are for the layman (still, they contain great information), some are for the programmer (I have one book on creating expert systems using Apple IIe BASIC!!!), and some are for the hard-core research/theoretician. I even have a printed copy of AI4U on my shelf (more on this in a bit).
Despite all of this (and many more works which I am not aware of or have copies of) - man has yet to succeed in coming up with an answer as to how we think. Tantalizing clues have been unearthed, for sure - some of the most recent have built upon the connectionist viewpoint, that our brains are neural-nets, but have a hierarchical structure coupled with feedback loops between sensory inputs and memory, and that what we think of as "thought" is merely pattern playback (interestingly, this is the sort of system which Mentifex's AI4U proposes, but rather than use a connectionist approach, his model uses a more easily built "streaming consciousness" system, similar to a "mercury delay line memory for thoughts" - sure, Mentifex may be an internet kook, but you would be surprised at the similarities behind his self-published work and "more accepted" mainstream AI research).
In the end, none of this has created any AI that we would recognize as thinking and creating as we humans do. I think througout this research, though, is a common thread. I have seen through what I have read commonalities and what appears to be rediscoveries, by different researchers over the course of time, of methods toward true AI. Interestingly, some of these methodologies and ideas get either drowned out or lost in some manner - I have read a couple of books that you would swear would be referenced in later years, for example, by other authors, since the ideas seem so similar or even identical, but the original author/researcher seems completely unknown in the field in later years.
I think this may be part of the problem, the lack of cooperation between "strong AI" proponents and "weak AI" proponents, and those in-between. I think there needs to be cooperation, and I think there needs to be historical continuity in the research, otherwise we will just continue argument and reinvention of the wheel. I think there needs to be more cooperation (which we are seeing, fortunately) between AI researchers and their biological research counterparts. I think that both expert systems and fuzzy logic (ie, multi-valent or vague logic) have roles to play as well with being able to allow a machine to define and reason within our universe.
There is much left to do when it comes to AI. I have only scratched the surface as a dabbling hobbyist in the field. This lack of training and discipline in the field has helped me to see that there is a lot of bickering and in-fighting where th
Reason is the Path to God - Anon