When the creators become the creation - our relationship with our technolgies

Some time ago I posted the following thoughts on technology and our relationship with it:

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, the French phenomenological philosopher, understood that human interaction upon the world is not a one way street... We don't simply act upon the world!  There is a reverse action from the world upon us...  For example, if you were to walk into an empty room that had nothing but an chair in it what would you do?  At some point the emptyness of the room and the presence of the chair would act upon you consciously, or subconsciously, and they will cause you to sit.  This illustrates how the space and the objects in the space have informed and transformed your thought processes.  However, the very act of sitting (as an act of physics, where the human body and the structure of the chair encounter one another) is a mutual interaction of material realities in which each has an effect upon the other.  When you sit on the chair the structure of the chair flexes and takes up strain in certain areas.  Conversely the structure of the chair exercises pressure upon your body (changing the shape of your body, supporting your back, lowering the pressure on your feet etc.)

Technology thus has both 'subtle' and 'gross' interactions with its human creators - by this I mean that technology interacts both with what is unseen (thoughts, choices, dreams, hopes, aspirations, desires, fears etc.) and what is seen (our physical being, our environment, our proximity to self and others...)

When one comes to consider this complex relationship between consumers of technology, creators of technologies, and the technologies themselves one can begin to understand that the ethical considerations of what we do (and do not do) with our technologies is even MORE complex!  For example, how far do we go in manipulating the human genetic code to do away with certain pathological conditions (mental illness, disease etc.)?  When have we taken our use of technology too far, and when have we not taken it far enough!?

 Today I came across another very interesting post on the relationship between persons and the technologies we create.  Once again, I was interested by the naive view that the author had concerning our existing (and historical) relationship with the technologies we create in order to make our lives more comfortable.  The author's assumption is that we are only just beginning to see a shift in power from being creators of technology to being 'recreated' by our own technologies!

The reality is of course that our technologies have impacted, and changed, us since the very first time we used them!  The development of farming changed nomadic tribes to static people groups.  The ability to harness the energy of animals or aspects of nature (such as wind and water) made production possible that introduced surpluses into the economy that moved societies from an agrarian economy to a trading economy...  I could go on forever citing historical examples of such shifts in our behaviour as a result of the impact of our 'created technologies' upon us, their creators!

I would simply state two points once more.  The first is that this affirms, for me at least, the fact that all of reality is interconnected.  We act upon reality and there is always a reaction as a result.  This fact should cause us to be mindful of our relationship with creation, and of course also with God our creation, with whom we are in relationship.  It is not by accident that the fundamental expression of the mystery of God is the concept of 'Trinity', three persons in a relationship identity and life forming interaction (called perichoresis by the Greek philosophers who influenced and formed early Christian Confessing (Creed based) theology).

Second, I would affirm once again that the central aspect of human identity - the human brain, is a simplistic system geared towards survival.

Remember the 3 questions that every human brain asks:

• Can I eat it?  Will it eat me?  (Survival through avoiding threat, or through gaining sustenance - which is why action movies and food advertising work so well!  They reach straight to our primal brain).
• Can I mate with it?  Will it mate with me?  (The preservation of the species in general, the furtherance of our gene pool in particular - which is of course why sex advertising works so well, and also why we find ourselves more readily attacted to persons who personify the best qualities of people like 'us' (e.g., Caucasian people tend to be more attracted to Caucasians, Hispanics to Hispanics, Orientals to Orientals... This is not always a race based bias (in the negative racial sense), it is to some extend a social and genetic predisposition that is 'hard wired' into our makeup in order to protect our gene pool within the species!)
• And then of course the 'efficiency' question, have I seen this before (or do I recognize what I see, hear smell or taste?)  This final question forms a recursive loop into the two questions above.  If I have seen it, is it a threat or a help, will it harm me or help me?

Your response to people, situations, and just above every stimulus you encounter will result from these questions.  Interestingly enough the largest portion of our decision-making competency comes from visual stimulus (I have written about this elsewhere and here on visual stimulus) - this makes sense in a survival and efficiency system!  The eye is almost directly connected to the hind-brain (or old brain), which is the decision-making centre.  You brain receives visual stimulus and reacts upon it many times faster than smell or sound.  For example if you're walking down a pathway in the forest and see what looks like a snake you will jump without thinking!  Before you even have a chance to process what you're seeing your brain tells your muscles to react...

OK, so how does this relate to technology?  Well, our use of technology causes the development of new neural pathways (and the strengthening of existing neural pathways).  For example, I can type on my computer keyboard without having to look at my fingers on the keys.  Or, I can drive my car without having to think about exerting pressure on the clutch when I change gears.  I have done it so frequently that my mind can manage these tasks without having to interrupt my regular thought processes - that efficiency!

In some sense the technology of driving a car has had a radical effect on my life!  Because I can cover large distances at speed without exerting much energy I have had to devise other ways to generate fitness and maintain muscle tone (so, in my case I go to the gym for spinning classes and I cycle two or three times a week)...

But there are also other technologies that have changed my life - for example because of an inbalanced diet I have to take vitamins and supliments.  Because I work more hours than I sleep I have had to learn to manage my mood and state of mind (manage stress etc.) through prayer and meditation...

In short, the technologies we have created are recreating our lives!  I'd love to hear what you think!

Anyway, here's the article that got me thinking along these lines:

We make technology, but our technology also makes us. At the online science/culture journal Edge, BB pal John Brockman went deep -- very deep -- into this concept. Frank Schirrmacher is co-publisher of the national German newspaper FAZ and a very, very big thinker. Schirrmacher has raised public awareness and discussion about some of the most controversial topics in science research today, from genetic engineering to the aging population to the impacts of neuroscience. At Edge, Schirrmacher riffs on the notion of the "informavore," an organism that devours information like it's food. After posting Schirrmacher's thoughts, Brockman invited other bright folks to respond, including the likes of George Dyson, Steven Pinker, John Perry Barlow, Doug Rushkoff, and Nick Bilton. Here's a taste of Schirrmacher, from "The Age of the Infomavore":

We are apparently now in a situation where modern technology is changing the way people behave, people talk, people react, people think, and people remember. And you encounter this not only in a theoretical way, but when you meet people, when suddenly people start forgetting things, when suddenly people depend on their gadgets, and other stuff, to remember certain things. This is the beginning, its just an experience. But if you think about it and you think about your own behavior, you suddenly realize that something fundamental is going on. There is one comment on Edge which I love, which is in Daniel Dennett's response to the 2007 annual question, in which he said that we have a population explosion of ideas, but not enough brains to cover them. As we know, information is fed by attention, so we have not enough attention, not enough food for all this information. And, as we know -- this is the old Darwinian thought, the moment when Darwin started reading Malthus -- when you have a conflict between a population explosion and not enough food, then Darwinian selection starts. And Darwinian systems start to change situations. And so what interests me is that we are, because we have the Internet, now entering a phase where Darwinian structures, where Darwinian dynamics, Darwinian selection, apparently attacks ideas themselves: what to remember, what not to remember, which idea is stronger, which idea is weaker...
It's the question: what is important, what is not important, what is important to know? Is this information important? Can we still decide what is important? And it starts with this absolutely normal, everyday news. But now you encounter, at least in Europe, a lot of people who think, what in my life is important, what isn't important, what is the information of my life. And some of them say, well, it's in Facebook. And others say, well, it's on my blog. And, apparently, for many people it's very hard to say it's somewhere in my life, in my lived life.

The Age of the Informavore

How computers can replicate (but not replace) scientists...

Strong Artificial Intelligence formed a large part of my doctoral research - yes, I've heard most of the jokes about being an 'artificially intelligent' doctor... And, the good news is that most of them are true! ha ha!

I proposed a hypothesis, among other things, based on a mathematical model for the exponential growth of representational and emulative intelligence in machines (showing an exponential increase in computing capacity from data retention, to information processing, to knowledge management, and then to intelligence and finally sentience). In order for this to take place Moore's law would need to be exceeded (which has happened), and we would need to harness the accuracy and computational power of artificially intelligent machines to create even more intricate and powerful machines (much to complicated for a human person to create in the limited space of our lives, and with the clumsiness of our knowledge and skill). These are likely to be quantum computers, or possibly some form of enzyme based biomechanical machines...

The long and the short of it was that we could see the rise of truly intelligent machines by as early as 2029 (as per Ray Kurzweil's suggestion).

Well, some of this is already taking place in credible scientific research. Simply linear (and some more complex parallel) emulative processes are already being reproduced using super computers. However, as this post below suggests, whilst computers can perform comparative tasks between existing models, they are not yet at the place where they can fathom the creative mustre to develop new models by themselves... But, who knows, that may not be too far off! All that we need is to find some realiable self agregating code that gathers knowledge, tests it through a simple Turing test (in comparrision to other valid data - of course both of these processes are already possible), and then agregates and adjusts its code base for increasing accuracy and complexity. If a machine can do this faster and more accurately than a human person it may just be able to develop more stringent and previously unfathomed models of knowledge and perhaps even wisdom!

But for now, here's what is possible:

In his first column for Seed magazine, my Institute for the Future colleague and pal Alex Pang looks at efforts to create software that doesn't just support scientific discovery, it actually does new science. From Seed:

Older AI projects in scientific discovery tried to model the way scientists think. This approach doesn’t try to imitate an individual scientist’s cognitive processes — you don’t need intuition when you have processor cycles to burn — but it bears an interesting similarity to the way scientific communities work. (Cornell professor Hod) Lipson says it figures out what to look at next “based on disagreement between models, just as a scientist will design an experiment that tests predictions made by competing theories.”

But that doesn’t mean it will replace scientists. (Cornell graduate student Michael) Schmidt views it as a tool to see what they can’t: “Something that is not obvious to a human might be obvious to a computer,” he speculates. A program, says Schmidt, may find things “that look really strange and foreign” to a scientist. More fundamentally, the Cornell program can analyze data, build models, and even guess which theories are more powerful, but it can’t explain what its theories mean — and new theories often force scientists to rethink and refine basic assumptions. “E=mc2 looks very simple, but it actually encapsulates a lot of knowledge,” Lipson says. “It overturned a lot of older preconceptions about energy and the speed of light.” Even as computers get better at formulating theories, “you need humans to give meaning to what the system finds.”

Why We're Not Obsolete: Alex Pang in Seed

From boingboing

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I would be interested to hear your thoughts. Do you think that sentient machines could be a threat to humanity? I once postulated that perhaps the extinction of the human race was part of God's evolutionary plan for the redemption of the cosmos... It would seem that humanity has two radical problems. First, we have a tendancy to displace God from the centre of the universe (so much popular theology goes around humanity, the needs and will of humans and the actualisation of human desire)... Surely that can not be right!? Second, humans are clearly a destructive force in the greater scheme of cosmic reality. We fight, we consume, we destroy and generally seem to be quite bad for the cosmic ecosystem.

Of course the converse argument is that the Gospels show that Jesus died for BOTH humans and the cosmos... But, I could be wrong (or right)! What do you think?

Is radical unity between God and creation (and created beings) New Age, or is it in fact a Biblical view of reality?

A friend emailed me a few days ago to ask a question about some research he is doing. I hope to be able to chat with him in person when he comes down to Cape Town. However, one aspect of our email conversation struck with me.

I have often been confronted (because of the nature and content of my own research) with the question about the quantum theoretical view of reality and fundamentally interconnected and interrelated and some elements of new age spirituality. In particular persons have asked me whether what I propose is not some form of new age spirituality - my response is quite simply NO! I believe that a view of reality in which everything lives, and moves, and has its being in Christ is the only truly Biblical view that one could hold with any Christian integrity (Acts 17:28)! Whilst God is wholly 'other' from creation (in the sense that God is creator whilst we are creation) does not suppose that we are separate from God! There is great unity in distinction! The mystery of the Christian Trinity is a testimony to 'otherness' in radical unity....

Anyway, here's a version of the email that I sent to my friend explaining some of my reasoning, and pointing to some things that I've written about this radical unity between God and God's beloved creation.

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This is a very interesting topic indeed! I have written a few things in this area, and done some research on identity, consciousness and the new science. Here are a few documents that you can download to see some of what I've written on this subject. I prefer to speak of quantum theory and integrative theory rather than pure quantum mechanics (which is a sub-field of quantum science, which in turn is a sub field of quantum theory - one of the things that we learn in the 'new science' is that the boundaries between science and spirituality, or for that matter identity and being, are quite thin, and often don't exist).

A) You can download a copy of my doctoral thesis here: http://www.spirituality.org.za/files/D%20Forster%20doctorate.pdf This has the most detailed discussions I've yet written on some of these ideas (quantum theory, identity, relationship and consciousness). In particular you may find the following of interest:

1. Simply search for 'quantum', 'tunneling effect', 'EPR', 'implicate' or 'Bohm' in the PDF and see what I've written about quantum theory.

2. There is a chapter devoted to your subject (Chapter 3 that is entitled 'Consciousness and the functioning of the human brain: A discussion of biological, physical and philosophical theories relating to individual human consciousness and the brain'. In particular section 3.4.3 is worth considering, the first part talks about computational models of the brain from the perspective of classical physics (i.e., Newtonian physics and Euclidian mathematics), and section two in that same subsection discusses quantum theories of the brain and consciousness in relation to identity - it is entitled 'A holographic model of the conscious brain: A perspective from quantum physics'.

3. Chapter 4 of the thesis is, in my opinion, much more radical than quantum physical (or quantum spiritual) theories of identity and conscious. In this chapter I present and discuss the incredible work of Ken Wilber the integrative theorist who is a brilliant scientist, philosopher, and a deeply spiritual person (Buddhist, not Christian... But we pray!) Section 4.3 is of particular interest, it is entitled 'Holistic consciousness in relation to Ken Wilber's four quadrants of reality'. In summary all of quantum theory would fit into the upper right and lower right of Wilber's four quadrants, then there are the upper left, and lower left which are largely not considered by even the most enlightened of quantum theorists!

4. I also do some work in chapters 5 and 6 on the relationship between all of this 'stuff' and African models of relationship and identity which are much more balanced than those of the dualistic 'West'....

So, that's enough for the thesis.... By the way, it is soon to be published as a book. The working title is 'Why you're not who you think you are: Adventures in neuroscience, artificial intelligence, and theology'

B) I have also done some work on the quantum stuff in one of my recent books entitled 'Christ at the centre - discovering the Cosmic Christ in the spirituality of Bede Griffiths' You can download PDF copies of the book here: http://www.spirituality.org.za/2008/04/copies-of-my-three-most-recent-books.html In this book I devote just short of a chapter to quantum physics (and micro biology in relation to the 'new science'), you'll find it at around pp. 34-52.

C) In my recent little book 'An uncommon spiritual path - finding Jesus beyond conventional Christianity.' you'll find a similar discussion around pp. 79 ff. You can also download a copy of that book in PDF format here: http://www.spirituality.org.za/2008/04/copies-of-my-three-most-recent-books.html

D) Finally, I wrote his paper which gives some insight into the relationship between quantum theory and the evolution of the cosmos from the 'gross' material level to the 'subtler' spiritual levels. This is quite a controversial paper in and of itself... Here I argue that the extinction of humanity may well be part of God's evolutionary plan for the perfection of creation... The problem with us humans is that we tend to centre all of reality upon ourselves (even God)! So, this may be one possible way of placing God at the centre of creation once again.... Anyway, it was more tongue in cheek than serious, plus it got published because it was so contentious! You can download the paper here: http://www.spirituality.org.za/files/Post%20human%20evolutionary%20cosmology%20Teilhard%20de%20Chardin.pdf

Well, there you have it... Since my understanding is clearly that quantum theory is one possible explanation of the breakdown of duality between spirit and matter, and so a measure of identity in which we come to discover the mystery of the person of Christ who draws all creation truly into himself (Ephesians 1:10), and the Holy Spirit who holds all things in constant, present, existence (Colossians 1:16-17), I do believe that there is value in appropriating and understand this new 'language' for the purposes of expressing and grasping the mystery of being fully alive in Christ. I do not think this is 'new age' in any way. I think is fundamentally biblical and scriptural! One of the HUGE problems with the characterization of such spirituality as 'new age' is that it is based more on Western dualism than scriptural unity. Most of the Bible (the Old Testament or Hebrew Scriptures) does not have the radical dualism between spiritual and profane, between religion and ordinary life, and between divine reality and the created order. This dualism was introduced INTO the New Testament through neo Platonists (of which the Apostle Paul was primary), and the Gnostics - Hebrew is the clearest neo-platonic dualism in scripture.... That is interesting in and off itself since it is supposedly the most 'Hebrew' of the New Testament books, yet it has the most impeccable Greek of all the New Testmanet writtings and displays a clear textual vorlage to the Septuagint and the Greek philosophical schools of the time... But. of you read the chapter listed under B) above you'll get quite a detailed discussion on how we went from Old Testament harmony between God and creation, interior life and exterior life, through the Greek philosophers, to Descartes, Netwon, Francis Bacon, and ultimately Western metaphysics. The point is quite simply that most of the Old Testament, and some of the most 'lucid' elements of the New Testament (which is the majority of the teaching in Christian scripture) proposed an integrated view of reality (which has sadly been lugged in with the 'new age movement' when in fact it is simply Biblical!), not the dualistic view of reality that conservative evangelicals have labeled as orthodox...

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Well, let me know what you think (if you have the mirth to wade your way through my scattered A.D.D thoughts!)

Singularity and the Matrix... Spiritual Machines... Mmmmm... Contemporary crazies!? Maybe not?

John van de Laar gave an interesting persepctive on a 'religious movement' that has formed around the central ideas of the first Matrix movie.
I can certainly understand the appeal - after all, throughout history generations have always attempted to locate the sacred within the tools, symbols, and nomenclature of their contemporary culture. The Matrix seems to be so expressive of some of the existential questions, queries, and framing aspects of our reality (these include such issues as the relationship between humans and our technology, eternal existence in terms that we can understand, issues of good and evil etc.)

Some scientists have suggested that these issues may have a far greater influence, and in fact be truer than just sociology, theology, and psychology, could explain. Some others have suggested it is in fact nothing more than 'wish projection' (along the lines of Feuerbach and Freud's theory).

In short, every generation has a built in need to believe that there is more to life than just being born, living, and dying - we seek a transcendent truth (which you can read about in my Doctoral Thesis, by the way - please see the chapter on Neuroscience (chapter 3 I think it was) where I discuss the holistic and transcendent a-priori neural operators that are present in the human brain from birth). In our generation the 'mythology' of our time is intrinsically linked with technology (particularly those technologies that make our lives easier, and in some sense bearable).

A final perspective, which I think is the most rational of them all, is the perspective offered by Professor Cornel du Toit, who suggests that any duality that we create between ourselves and our technology is a false duality. Just think about it, your cell phone is not just an object that performs technological functions, it has become an integral part of your life. For many of us it extends our ability to communicate, it offers us a sense of security, connection with others, and for some (like myself) it even regulates how one lives one's life (e.g., my cell phone has a diary function that alerts me to appointments etc.). Another example cited by du Toit is contemporary banking. We have created both a hard technology (notes, coins, cards, ATM machines) and a soft technology (values, exchanges, commodities etc. which cannot be felt or weighed, or seen, but which have value). Just try to live your life without money and you will soon see how we have allowed a 'created' technology to become an integral part of our identity. How many people do you know whose identity is formed by what they earn, what they drive, and what they use?

I tend to agree with this - faith and technology are not separate realities that are discovering one another, they are complex interwoven system of creating and forming meaning. Both are dependent upon each other.

Anyway, enough of my 'ramblings'....

Read the article below for more on the concept of 'singularity':

Science fiction writer and mathematician Rudy Rucker takes a running swing at the idea of the Singularity, the moment in human history when we disassemble raw matter, turn it into "computronium" and upload ourselves to it, inhabiting a simulation of reality rather than real reality. It's a fine and provocative turn from our Mr Rucker, who has a fine and provocative and deeply weird and wonderful mind.

Although it’s a cute idea, I think computronium is a fundamentally spurious concept, an unnecessary detour. Matter, just as it is, carries out outlandishly complex chaotic quantum computations just by sitting around. Matter isn’t dumb. Every particle everywhere everywhen is computing at the maximum possible rate. I think we tend to very seriously undervalue quotidian reality...

This would be like filling in wetlands to make a multiplex theater showing nature movies, clear-cutting a rainforest to make a destination eco-resort, or killing an elephant to whittle its teeth into religious icons of an elephant god.

This is because there are no shortcuts for nature’s computations. Due to a property of the natural world that I call the “principle of natural unpredictability,” fully simulating a bunch of particles for a certain period of time requires a system using about the same number of particles for about the same length of time. Naturally occurring systems don’t allow for drastic shortcuts.

Link (via Futurismic)

By the way, my own doctoral research considered some of the theological issues in relation to these notions - you can download a copy of my Doctoral Thesis here (please see chapter 2). Two other superb books to read are:

The age of spiritual machines, and Are we spiritual machines. By Kurzweil.
Wiredlife - who are we in the digital age? By Jonscher.

Technorati tags: The Matrix, Singularity, Spiritual Machines, Ray Kurzweil, Dion Forster

The Matrix... It may not be all that far fetched after all!

I loved the first Matrix movie! It appealed to my love for gadgets and computers, and also had some great action scenes in it!

Other than a Barney (yes, the purple dinosaur) DVD that I bought for Courtney, the Matrix was the first ever DVD that I owned! In fact in some ways, it was that, and the movie Blade runner were the first movies to challenge me to ask the question 'what is true identity?'. This would eventually become to subject of my doctoral research. My research led me to discover others who had considered this, and similar, issues - these included Jacques Vallee, John Keel, Rudy Rucker, and Hans Moravec.

Now, however, an Oxford philosopher named Nick Bostrom has developed a mathematical theory to support this notion of complex virtual identity.

More recently, however, there has been a further development (among credible scientists), that suggest that this notion is not all that incredible!

This is in the form of a paper entitled "The Physical World as a Virtual Reality," written by Brian Whitworth and published by Massey University's Centre for Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science in Auckland, New Zealand. From the abstract:

This paper explores the idea that the universe is a virtual reality created by information processing, and relates this strange idea to the findings of modern physics about the physical world. The virtual reality concept is familiar to us from online worlds, but our world as a virtual reality is usually a subject for science fiction rather than science. Yet logically the world could be an information simulation running on a multi-dimensional space-time screen. Indeed, if the essence of the universe is information, matter, charge, energy and movement could be aspects of information, and the many conservation laws could be a single law of information conservation. If the universe were a virtual reality, its creation at the big bang would no longer be paradoxical, as every virtual system must be booted up. It is suggested that whether the world is an objective reality or a virtual reality is a matter for science to resolve. Modern information science can suggest how core physical properties like space, time, light, matter and movement could derive from information processing. Such an approach could reconcile relativity and quantum theories, with the former being how information processing creates space-time, and the latter how it creates energy and matter.

Link to PDF of paper

Previously on BB:
• Hans Moravec on living inside a simulation Link
• NYT on the "simulation argument" Link

Technorati tags: The Matrix, bladerunner, identity, research, virtual reality