love in a hive mind August 22, 2006

Language programs our behaviour in such heavy ways; how we interrelate and decide one anothers’ fate is hedged about with possessives.

I’ve recently been involved in a couple of different kinds of governance discussions. In one, a group of decision makers is assembled, some of whom are engaged in philosophical disputations, others are rigorously attepting to make decisions. Given a majority, there is no real valid discussion. In the conversation there are a lot of assumptions about what “we need” which don’t stipulate who we are or what our problems are. We need different things depending on who talks. There’s a lot of “I think” in the conversation – exchange of opinions about things which can’t act on things – which aren’t presented in terms of immediate facts, near potential consequences. people talking about what We Need get it pointed out by a couple of others, maybe build a little circuit devoted to it in themselves.

Seven of Nine talks up the concept of a hive mind, of a borganisation – a seeming perfect vehicle for collective action. I read We, Borg then re-read bits of Hobbes’ Leviathan. Inside a hive mind, relations would be all different. “Governance structure” of a cellular network isn’t the right term; just mediation and exchange mechanisms; operations, not instructions. If this-I were inside a hive mind, i’d feel a very different kind of connection to the other-I people inside it with me.

Our words for describing relations are all possessive – emphasise difference between i and you ness, differing status, differing privileges, control ability. My brother, my friend, my staff, my wife. Of-me-ness shouldn’t be necessary. The constant stating of it can be un-learned. Action on any implicit assumption about rights, precedence, ability to tell one another what to do, can be unformed.

In all conversation between two persons, tacit reference is made, as to a third party, to a common nature. That third party or common nature is not social; it is impersonal; is God.
Ralph Emerson, The Over-soul

In a hive mind there would be no such situation where “a blank I loves blankly a blank You“; love in a hive mind would be complete, or be more complete.

skewed distribution March 12, 2006

I was lucky enough to spend time with RG recently, and i had a fun conversation with him about singularity related optimism, positivism. He talked of Information-carrying, information-sharing objects, simple replicators, a revolutionary potential therein, in the Bruce Sterling type narrative, to provide a basic level of material support to every person on the planet. A level of sufficiency that could guarantee 100% literacy, time for every person to pursue their interests, to participate in the collective genius.

It’s a good narrative, but i wonder what basis there is for equitable and ubiquitous availability of technologies like this. The suggestion that at a certain point in development, a new infrastructure will reach everywhere at once, very fast, is appealing. I wonder how replicators will be powered, will be distributed from place to place; i wonder how an economic system based on the allocation of scarce resources and pricing by establishment of arbitrary scarcity, will encourage the distribution of powerful ne technologies. My offering to RG on this subject was the following anecdote which i read on a mailing list, a few months ago.

When a project put recycled computers into rural Indian villages without providing expensive training or support, the kids were able to figure it out for themselves — against received judgment. Well, the boys were able to pick it up for themselves — the girls were firmly told they weren’t even allowed to enter the shed where the computer had been deployed. I saw film of the boys crowding around the terminal whilst a couple of girls lurked about longingly outside the shed and most girls retreated to discuss the novelty at a safe distance. The boys treated the equipment with respect and formed heirarchies amongst themselves for access to the computer and for the provision of solutions to problems they encountered… the boys narrated the exclusion of the girls in terms of “propriety” (they shouldn’t mix with boys in physical proximity around the computer).

Imbalance can become a license to profit.

Distribution can become skewed according to the distribution of distribution networks.

The narrative of such as Bruce Sterling, of Kurzweil, does not reflect on the nested complex of social-environmental factors around it, that has always been problematic for me. I don’t mean to deny the potency of such a narrative, but it is the creation of a bubble of apparent prosperity which contains the occlusion, the unvisibility, of many kinds of people.

I think i still hold to my weird theory about the singularity: i don’t think we see a big shift, a kind of “Boom!”, everywhere at once, but a series of supercessing waves, each building on the last. I don’t think there is a need for a totalising narrative; shared stories differ in every place.

There are many weird theories about The Singularity, but this one is mine. January 28, 2006

It always surprises me when i hear that people have a 2012 fixation. It reminds me of one storyline in Philip K Dick’s “Confessions of a Crap Artist”, which i heard was based on a real-life sequence of events in California (to the extent that any sequence of events happening in California can be called part of “real-life”). A group of people are convinced that Everything Will Change, and that Only They Will Be Saved. They pick a definite place and time for it to happen, out of the ether. The protagonist doesn’t turn up at the meeting due to a nested complex of personal reasons. And what happens when Everything Still Looks More Or Less The Same? The group blames the person who didn’t show up; they start Talking About It Even Louder; and life goes on.

I decided that i had a weird theory about The Singularity back in 2002, when i actually read Vernor Vinge’s writing about it for the first time:

This is my theory:

How people look at, and talk about, The Singularity, is dictated by their experience of orgasm. Either it’s a one-shot, big pulse, big mess, and all over, or it’s a series of augmenting waves, each driven by the impetus of the last, without a definite endpoint, just a glorious supercession.

Of course even the best orgasm has to stop sometime. Then what happens? You nap for a little while, get up and have a snack, go to the toilet, and life goes on.