User:Francg/expub/media-writing/essaydraft-22february

Evolutionary Ethics and Technology: The Hybridization of the No-Gender

Essay Draft / Notes

Actually, this research takes me to the sound project I am developing called “Motion Dialogues”, which basically employs human motion as a mechanism to activate sound. In this particular case, despite that technology (this specific software "Puredata" and other electronic devices "Webcam", "Raspberry Pi", "Floppy Disk") and the human body are detached from each other, the connection exists.
There are other technologies such as the Kinect which started doing similar things a decade ago, initially meant to be used for playing games to even composing your own music. Devices like that develop different more significant functions for the needs of society, thanks to the numerous "hacks" that they experience. -> Check out "The Anarchist in the Library"

Lanier, J. You Are Not a Gadget
A widespread practice of fragmentary, impersonal communication has demeaned interpersonal interaction.

Communication is now often experienced as a superhuman phenomenon that towers above individuals. A new generation has come of age with a reduced expectation of what a person can be.

How small changes in the details of a digital design can have profound unforeseen effects on the experiences of the humans who are playing with it. p.4

What is a person? If we knew the answer we might be able to program an artificial person in a computer, but we can’t. Being a personal is not a formula, but a mystery, a leap of faith.

Faith: future can be better than the past. Confrontations by people who fears technology: e.g. virtual reality might unleash the demons of human nature, creating addiction like a drug and trapping people in. p.5

Occasionally, a digital eden appears. Dave Smith a music synthesizer designer presented a way to represent musical notes called MIDI, made of digital patterns p.7

Computers are growing more powerful. The consequences of tiny, initially inconsequential decisions often are amplified to become defining, unchangeable rules in our lives. P.9

While MIDI squeezes musical expression through a limiting model of actions of keys on a musical keyboard, UNIX does the same for all computation, but using the actions of keys on typewriter-like keyboards.

Command line interface: in this system, you type instructions and press “return”. UNIX can’t tell if a person or a program hit return. This doesn’t have to happen at a precise moment in time. The human organism, meanwhile, is based on continuous sensory, cognitive and motor processes that have to be synchronized precisely in time. p.11

The way the Internet has changed is truly perverse. Its early design has been changed by a different faith in the centrality of imaginary entities manifested by the idea that the Internet is coming alive and turning into a superhuman creature. p.14

Effect of degradation of ordinary people. People created their own webpages. The Internet had flavor, increase of the “network effect”, commercial interests promoted the widespread design of standardized blogs, commercial aggregations. p.15

The intentions of the “cybernetic totalists”; they are following movements associated with Freud and Marx both claimed foundations in rationality and the scientific understanding of the world. Both perceived themselves to be at war with the weird, manipulative fantasies of religions. And yet both invented their own fantasies that were just as weird.

The singularity and the “noospehere” the idea that a collective consciousness emerges from all the users on the web’.

The future of religion will be determined by the aspects of the software that gets locked-in during the coming decades.

Why it matters:

Emphasizing the crowd means deemphasizing individual humans in the design of society, and when you ask people not to be people, they revert to bad undisciplined, disorderly or lawless behaviors. p.18

This leads to an unfriendly and unconstructive online world.

Finance was transformed by computing clouds.

Online culture is dominated by trivial mashups of the culture, responding to the diminishing outposts of centralized mass media. It is a culture of reaction without action.

Spirituality is committing suicide. Consciousness is attempting to will itself out of existence.

The deep meaning of personhood is being reduced by illusions of bits. Since people will be connecting to one another through computers, we must find an alternative.

Don’t post anonymously unless you really might be in danger. Put effort into using your voice and expression outside of the wiki to help attract people in your topics. Create a website that expresses who you are that won’t fit into the template available on a social networking site.

As long as you are not defined by software, you are helping to broaden the identity of the ideas that will get locked in for future generations. p.21

Robot generations improves the next generations faster, making them smarter. They can be microscopic (Transcendence movie Johnny Dep), that are net-connected. Humans might enjoy immortality within virtual reality. - If a machine can be conscious, then the computing cloud is going to be better and far more capacious consciousness than is found in an individual person. If you can have a conversation with a simulated person, how far your sense of personhood degrades you in order to make the illusion work for you? p.32

Imagine a computer software that can simulate a neuron or a network of neurons, and that a tiny wireless device can send signals from one another. Is your consciousness now in the computer? Does the computer then become a person? p.40

Consciousness is situated in time, because you can’t experience a lack of time or experience the future.

Computers have an unfortunate tendency to present us with binary choices at every level, not just at the lowest one, where the bits are switching. p.63

What happened to musical notes with the arrival of MIDI is happening to people. Idealized icons like Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia or other free/open/Creative Commons in which you have to manage you online reputations constantly. Surely this new strain of gadget fetishism is driven more by fear than by love.

FB/Twitter enthusiasts reminds me of the anarchists and other nutty idealists who populated youth culture when I grew up. The ideas might be silly, but at least the believers have fun as they revel against the parental-authority (like record companies that attempt to fight music piracy) p.70/71

Morality needs technology if it’s to do any good. Technological change is stressful, one dark side of industrialization is that any skill, no matter how difficult to acquire, can become obsolete when the machines improve. The devaluation of everything: one of our essential hopes in the early digital revolution/open culture was that a connected world would create more opportunities for personal advancement for everyone.p.81

Ideal computers can be experienced when you write a small program. They seem to offer infinite possibilities and an extraordinary sense of freedom. They can trap us in tangles of code and make us slaves to legacy. p.119

We should reject cybernetic totalism as a basis for making most decisions but recognize that some of its ideas can be useful methods of understanding. p.151 - Pattern recognition technologies. Facial tracking. Digital algorithms must approach. The online world has been shocked that companies like Google are willing for the first time to compromise that all data-flows should be given equal priority. What would become of the Internet if there was an unfair and undemocratic concentration of power.

While there is a lot of talk in the air about whether to believe in God or not, I suspect that religious arguments are gradually incorporating coded debates about to even whether to believe in people anymore. Are people just one form of information, one gadget? When I suggest we should act as if we are real.

L. Paul, Real Space. The Fate of Physical Presence in the Digital Age, On and Off Planet
(Interesting analogy with cybernetics, ethics, media or control)

Cyberspace takes us to any part of the planet we want to visit. When it comes to essential aspects of life, we prefer to take our bodies with us. Regardless the transport, we want to really move through our world. Is planet Earth the end of the line or is space itself the next stop?

Why there is a deep-stated human desire to know what’s out there? Is our desire to get into space natural, spiritual or military?

We live in a world where webpages, TV shows, phone calls, newspaper headlines, and many other medias compete for our attention.

In outerspace, we have no such real experiences as in Earth. A way to get out there would by using computerized equipment. p.13

Viewing the landscape of Mars through robot eyes gives us as second-hand interaction with that environment, a representation, not the real thing. It is a form of television and cyberspace. We have the opportunity now to take this new access to huge amounts of information and this increasing global-mindedness with us. p.14

Communication without context can be harmful and certainly misleading. They can lead to wrong and even nonexistent paths. We are living in a world of representations rather than realities, of seeing and hearing rather than touching. p.16

Since information is intangible, we are more likely to notice movement of bodies than movement of data. Our senses are forms of touching, which allow living organisms, including us, to know more about the world without coming into direct physical contact with it. p.17 (another interesting analogy for gadgets on humans).

Evolution improved the results of our transport via communication and locomotion p.18/19

Cyberspace can be a “place” to be, a realm to inhabit, an alternate, “virtual” world. p.36

Information is not real; it is a representation of something else that is real. It has profound effects on real things. It is perceived by real/living things. Information certainly exists and in that sense, is part of the universe and so in that sense is real. But the reality of information is very different from the reality of what it describes. p.39

Virtual sex therefore contains an advantage for those who wish to have sex without babies. p.40 Can we consider certain technologies a progress if they disrupt people? If we can claim a net gain in human happiness. Further from home, closer to truth. Is democracy the best Launchpad to space?

Hayles. K, How We Became Posthuman. Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics.
Is it possible to believe that mind could be separated from body? Would consciousness in an entirely different medium remain unchanged, as if it had no connection with embodiment? p.1

Shannon’s theory defines information as a probability function with no dimensions, no materiality, and no necessary with meaning. It’s a pattern, not a presence p.18

Control information, and power follows. Like Shannon, Wiener thought of information as representing a choice. p.54

Conceptualizing control, communication and information as an integrated system, cybernetics changed how boundaries were conceived.

“A manifesto for Cyborgs” by Donna Haraway: Cyborg is a rejection of rigid boundaries, notably those separating "human" from "animal" and "human" from "machine.” P.84

Should a cybernetic machine, sufficiently powerful in its self-regulating processes to become fully conscious and rational, be allowed to own itself? p.86

Brooks and Moravec see the future of human being inextricably bound up with artificial life. They envision a future where natural and artificial, human and machine intelligence, will be difficult or impossible to distinguish. p.235

Becoming Posthuman evokes terror and pleasure. Moravec’s dream of downloading human consciousness into a computer. (“Transcendence” movie). Humans may enter into symbiotic relationships with intelligent machines p.284

Although some current versions of the Posthuman point towards the antihuman and the apocalyptic, they might also be conductive to the long-range survival of humans and other life-forms, biological and artificial, with whom we share the planet and ourselves. p.291

First human “infected” with computer virus <http://www.bbc.com/news/10158517> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uE7Yf4bw41E>

British scientist Dr Mark Gasson, had a chip inserted in his hand (sophisticated version of ID chips used to tag pets) which enabled him to pass through security doors and activate his mobile phone.

The chip then got infected with a computer virus, which could even be passed on to external control systems.

This test has important implications for a future where medical devices such as pacemakers and cochlear implants (implanted to the body) become more sophisticated. However, they also have the risk to be contaminated by other people’s implants and so in this context it is appropriate to talk in terms of people themselves being infected by computer viruses.

"This type of technology has been commercialised in the United States as a type of medical alert bracelet, so that if you're found unconscious you can be scanned and your medical history brought up."

"If someone can get online access to your implant, it could be serious," he said.

"From an ethical point of view, the surveillance of implants can be both positive and negative. Surveillance can be part of medical care, but if someone wants to do harm to you, it could be a problem."

"If we can find a way of enhancing someone's memory or their IQ then there's a real possibility that people will choose to have this kind of invasive procedure." (e.g. people suffering Alzheimer).

Meet the Cyborgs <http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08bzl96>

Five different cases of people / cyborgs with implanted devices on their bodies: Frank Swain. He opens an app on his phone and he gets the sound/representation of all the networks / signals around.

Moon Ribas. She has an implant on her arm, which vibrates stronger or wicker everytime there is an earthquake. It is like a new heartbeat. She takes advantage of it by using this new sense with visual art and percussion.

Dena Lewis. They create an algorithm that helps to cure diabetes. Train computer to do things.

Scott Cohen. The north sense is a sense they created that is anchored on his chest with a titanium device, which boozes everytime he faces north.

Neil Harbisson detects the light frequency of colors by using an antenna implanted on his skull. Each tone sends a different audio signal.

Pascal’s Wager <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal's_Wager>

Pascal asks the reader to analyse humankind's position, where our actions can be enormously consequential but our understanding of those consequences is wrong. Pascal mentions a number of distinct areas of uncertainty in human life:

Uncertainty in all: This is what I see, and what troubles me. I look on all sides, and everywhere I see nothing but obscurity. Nature offers me nothing that is not a matter of doubt and disquiet.

Uncertainty in Man's purpose: For after all what is man in nature? A nothing in relation to infinity, all in relation to nothing, a central point between nothing and all and infinitely far from understanding either.

Uncertainty in reason: There is nothing so conformable to reason as this disavowal of reason.

Uncertainty in science: There no doubt exists natural laws, but once this fine reason of ours was corrupted, it corrupted everything.

Uncertainty in religion: If I saw no signs of a divinity, I would fix myself in denial. If I saw everywhere the marks of a Creator, I would repose peacefully in faith. But seeing too much to deny Him, and too little to assure me, I am in a pitiful state, and I would wish a hundred times that if a god sustains nature it would reveal Him without ambiguity. We understand nothing of the works of God unless we take it as a principle that He wishes to blind some and to enlighten others.

Uncertainty in scepticism: It is not certain that everything is uncertain.

Pascal describes humanity as a finite being trapped within an incomprehensible infinity, briefly thrust into being from non-being, with no explanation of "Why?" or "What?" or "How?". On Pascal's view, human finitude constrains our ability to reliably achieve truth.

Given that reason alone cannot determine whether God exists, Pascal concludes that this question functions like a coin toss. However, even if we do not know the outcome of this coin toss, we must base our actions on some expectation about the outcome. We must decide whether to live as though God exists, or whether to live as though God does not exist, even though we may be mistaken in either case.

In Pascal's assessment, participation in this wager is not optional. Merely by existing in a state of uncertainty, we are forced to choose between the available courses of action for practical purposes.

H. Donna, A Cyborg Manifesto <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Cyborg_Manifesto>

the concept of the cyborg is a rejection of rigid boundaries, notably those separating "human" from "animal" and "human" from "machine." She writes: "The cyborg does not dream of community on the model of the organic family.

The Manifesto criticizes traditional notions of feminism, particularly feminist focuses on identity politics, and encouraging instead coalition through affinity. She uses the metaphor of a cyborg to urge feminists to move beyond the limitations of traditional gender, feminism, and politics; consequently, the "Manifesto" is considered one of the milestones in the development of feminist post-humanist theory.

Haraway explains three boundary breakdowns since the 20th Century that have allowed for her hybrid, cyborg myth: the breakdown of boundaries between human and animal, animal-human and machine, and physical and non-physical.

The unified human subject of identity has shifted to the hybridized posthuman of technoscience, from “representation” to “simulation”, “reproduction” to “replication”.

Haraway calls for a revision of the concept of gender, moving away from Western patriarchal essentialism and toward "the utopian dream of the hope for a monstrous world without gender," stating that "Cyborgs might consider more seriously the partial, fluid, sometimes aspect of sex and sexual embodiment. Gender might not be global identity after all.

Wired Magazine overlooked the feminist theory of the cyborg and instead used it to make a more literal commentary about the enmeshment of humans and technology. Despite this, Haraway also recognizes that new feminist scholars "embrace and use the cyborg of the manifesto to do what they want for their own purposes".

"Patchwork Girl's thematic focus on the connections between monstrosity, subjectivity, and new reproductive technologies is apparent from its very first page, when readers, or users, open the hypertext to find a picture of a scared and naked female body sewn together with a single dotted line...Readers enter the text by clicking on this body and following its 'limbs' or links to different sections of the text.” The Patchwork Girl, the aborted female monster created by Victor Frankenstein in Mary Shelley's 1818 novel Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus, is an aberrant and monstrous creature that is "part male, part female, part animal, 175 years old, and 'razed' up through hypertext technology."

Wired Magazine <https://www.wired.com/1997/02/ffharaway/>

Jordan Wolfson: (Female Figure) 2014 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVTDypgmFCM> Stedelijk museum

Jordan Wolfson's piece (Female Figure) 2014 is an animatronic robot that dances in front of a large mirror, while at the same time seeking eye contact with the spectator. Jordan Wolfson's work has been chosen by the curators Hans Ulrich Obrist and Klaus Biesenbach as an epilogue to the Live Art exhibition 14 Rooms, which ran concurrently to this year's Art Basel art fair in Basel (Switzerland). 

14 Rooms was presented by Fondation Beyeler, Art Basel, and Theater Basel. The curators Klaus Biesenbach and Hans Ulrich Obrist invited fourteen international artists to each activate a room, exploring the relationship between space, time, and physicality with an artwork whose "material" is the human being. Jordan Wolfson's kinetic piece (Female Figure) 2014 is not performed by human beings, but a robot, and can be seen as a look into the future.

More refs to be further documented:

Cyber Aesthetics, Blog <http://uglyassthetic.tumblr.com/>

V. Siva, The Anarchist in the Library. How the clash between Freedom and Control is hacking the Real World and Crashing the System

C. Florian, Anti-Media. Ephemera on Speculative Arts

G. Alexander, Protocol. How Control Exists after Decentralization.

C. Wendy. Control and Freedom. Power and Paranoia in the Age of Fiber Optics.