Jaron Lanier Takes On “Cybernetic Totalists”
from the una-bummer dept.
SaiyajinTrunks writes "Jaron Lanier has made available what he calls 'One Half of a Manifesto' on the online publication, Edge. It's fourteen courses of good food for thought with a dessert of reactions from big names in the field." (Additional discussion of Jaron's hemi-festo can be found on Slashdot.)
[I might uncharitably summarize Jaron's argument as "I am right and virtuous, and you are all evil and deluded. Q.E.D." Years ago Jaron told me my "extropianism" was "contaminated by compassion and humility". He seems to still be of the belief that posthumanists must therefore hate humanity. -- dk]
October 2nd, 2000 at 2:59 AM
The poor bubby
Mr Larnier's rant served mostly to highlight his own fears and was really not much more than a rant. While I found many of his thoughts well argued, I found he resorted to a few well nailed old chestnuts a bit too often. I think he's spent too much of his programming life in front of windows machines
For example his insistance that software is brittle. In the last couple of years great strides have been made in software design which take the inherent brittleness of software into account. Jini is a good example of this. If you've ever built a system using Jini you'll know that it forces you to account for the fragilty of networked software, thus rendering the whole ensemble exceedingly stable.
And having a go at evolution by asking why nature didn't invent the wheel is really just anthropocentricism. He maintains a firm belief that human beings and our society are somehow apart from nature and the evolutionary process. Nature, in the form of some proto-human, did invent the wheel, it's just not that common outside of human activity because, in geometry, circles are actually a very rare form of curve. Also for what it's worth, wheels are a pretty crappy form of locomotion. What on earth would a fish do with wheels?
As an unashamed believer in the convergance of biology, physics and computing, I guess I am the sort of fundamentalist that Mr Larnier most fears. And he is right to. When I have my way, most people won't have jobs and will live a very long time in the sort of comfort they never dreamed that could exist.
October 2nd, 2000 at 6:50 AM
Not too much of a bad rant
I thought he was dead-on in a few places.
And, again, this Singularity does sound like "The Rapture for geeks." I can think of a wide, wide range of variables that leads to things like no singularity occuring, a singularity we might not enjoy, local singularities that don't happen everywhere, etc.
Seriously, though, the Rapture-for-geeks analogy is a good one. People into the Rapture are sure that it is just around the corner. They have a tendency to look at people who don't see it coming as being fooling. The Rapture is going to take care of them. Rapturists are very … smug.
Also, as it is "half a manifesto," don't go looking for it to have all of the answers. He stated that at the outset.