I'm not taking the idea from Dennett.

My argument is that once we develop a technology we really have little control over what becomes of it.

Until the planet acts as one, I don't see this changing.

I'll use cloning as an example: in America it is illegal to clone a human, but many other places in the world it isn't. The technology is being developed. The Chinese or someone else will clone a human being, it will happen.

As a race (humans) we don't have much to say about it.

I'm also saying that the development and implementation of technology isn't really a consciously planned proposal but more like evolution. We tend to see what the motor car really meant only in retrospect.

All of this is part of a nagging idea I have been toying with that (briefly) man is more subject to the systems that develop around him as he plans to do other things.

I'm not sure I believe the whole idea as yet but it is interesting to explore, to look at history through only the lens of pattern recognition.

But my investment in it is rather like Sartre's in existentialism after it fell out of fashion.

It occurs to me that in this proposed world view man might be seen as subject to primal forces (biological and existential) and meta forces (systems and such) with the actual life squeezed between the crucible of the two.

Sentience would make us aware of said condition but largely impotent to do anything about it.

quote:

Originally posted by UberDog:


Richard K. Morgan sucks donkey dung through a flexi-straw.

Well, I'm not in to scat, but I imagine such talents could be put to other uses...I'm imagining donkey dung is fairly viscous.

Seems like a good candidate for a sex up, if you see what I'm getting at.

As for his writing...it's so...like those Deathstalker books...I'm convinced we'll be able to make machines write with the same level of quality in a few short years, probably Doctorow novels as well.

So what?

I'm not asking to be mean. I'm asking because: you are stating truisms as if they're the big answers. Your example of cloning: of course someone else is going to do it. Individual (and even groups of individual) humans are very bad at controlling other humans unless they physically dominate or otherwise coerce them (China, again, being an interesting case in point, and even then there are holes in their system of government, strain points where group and individual resistance breaks through).

But your idea that humans are technology's "reproductive" system is very like Dennett's notion of the brain as a "meme machine" or how memes reproduce (especially useful memes). Since I consider language to be our major technological innovation beyond mechanical tools, what's to stop other technologies from developing along the lines of Dennett's memes, especially since our memes seem to propagate through language? I don't think it's much of a leap. It's even an interesting one.

quote:

I'm also saying that the development and implementation of technology isn't really a consciously planned proposal but more like evolution. We tend to see what the motor car really meant only in retrospect.

This, too, strikes me as another, "yeah, so?" moment. Some of our technological development is conscious. So much of that planning comes from unconscious wants, needs, etc. (often desires of an individual or even how the individual considers the desires of a group). It's also an artifact of how we exist within time, how we come back in our conscious thought to make a narrative out of our own existences. The collective version of this becomes history, and, again, we all know that there are always alternative narratives embedded within that history.

Of course technological development must be evolutionary: people use what's useful, and tech (like a meme) will go on if people find a use for it, even if that use is unexpected, and even if someone else finds them not useful at all. Crudely: Biological features continue if they contribute to survival, if they're somehow useful to the species. We no longer exactly evolve new bodies: we now evolve new ways of thinking and new technologies.

Again, we're talking about systems so complex that I, as an individual, can only go so far in understanding it. I must break it down into chunks, and see how this chunk might work, even if I ignore, for the moment, how that other chunk over there works. But to consider that humans are not simply part of a much larger system, spookier perhaps than we know, and to discount to what extent we play roles in those systems, to what extent we have some agency in those systems because we don't control every aspect of them, is to miss a large chunk of the puzzle. To leave out, in fact, an examination of how humans try to understand what they do, how they try to control the technology they create (and make narratives about that process), in the midst of making an argument about how humans aren't actually in control is to miss out on some data.

quote:

To leave out, in fact, an examination of how humans try to understand what they do

This is precisely what I'm trying to do, I'm simply looking at it from a different POV.

I'm saying what if and seeing where it leads. Off to work, more later.

Well, I don't agree with doing that, but, whatever.

quote:

Originally posted by UberDog:

It does. Gaming is interactive-ish, you start "feeling" the story, or rather, the experiential content. As Justy pointed out, who didn't duck out of the way of demon balls?

The more immersed, the more story has a compelling way to entrance. it isn't about telling a linear story at that point but exploring a "garden of forking paths."

I think that if we ever had a "game" or "narrative" engine which did that we'd open ourselves us to something truly unique.

Not merely something that was "cool" but something that was by definition a conceptual leap. What if there really was a Holodeck?

I mean, we're talking people living in customozed worlds, more so than they do anyway.

That to me is what Gibson was really getting at with the locative, the ability to personalize the actual daily existence of the world as one sees fit. At that point, who and how do you speak with?

How far does disintegration go?

How many pieces can something break into and still be a "somehting?"

You see what I'm getting at here, we are going from (maybe) the hideously monolithic (Milgrim's single bandwidth Medieval Europe dream) to the white noise of the profusion of personality where everything is so unique as to be wholly without context and meaning.

From the very big and imposing, to the very small and all but unintelligible.
Kind of like the difference between the heat death of the universe, the Big Crunch and what they now think will be the slow, lonely cold death of impossible vast spaces.

But, counter-point, who ducks those things now? Once the new rubs off will it still be entrancing? People used to be excited by Pong for chrissakes, or just HAVING a computar-machine at all, novelty flakes off quick, like cheap Mexican chrome.

Again tho, it's all very interesting, but after a point it's just a story, a specific story, or else it's just a cloud of vague possibility in which case...it's pretty vague. So it's hard to talk about.

I do agree with Justy, or is it you I'm agreeing with, that, I don't know if Gibson does this on purpose, or if it just works out that way, but...nobody gets to see the future coming, they just get lucky.

So we can speculate but it's ultimately down to, "where's my flying car?", in that things don't work out like we think they will, ever, tho they might be pretty close.

If it's the philosophical implications of such things, like, what they really *mean* man, heavy, then it's the same as tech spec, either it's a story, a specific one, or it's a vague cloud.

Perfectly interesting to talk about, but it's not as if anything concrete beyond a "ripping" good bit of "sci-fi" is likely to emerge from it.

With all that out of the way:

Pressures. Networked beings.

I could see it either way, on the one-hand we are very much busy beavers toiling away to make technology we don't "need" or "understand" and it ends up having applications we don't plan on, on the other hand they used to make atomic artillery shells, and those never saw use, and there are plenty of other promising bits of tech that are\were real, but never got used.

So I don't think it's fair to say that tech controls the advancement of tech anymore than it would be accurate to say people do. We do get a choice about what we make, but we don't get to control what gets done with it after that.

It's also a factor of economics. If a thing, object, is rare and expensive, then "we" do get to control it pretty well, tho the we in this case is just the small select group that can afford\control whatever it is and the naturally the reverse, the more of it, the cheaper, the less control "we" have because there are so many of us in that situation.

But there's still work to be done, even if we've got integrated data displays. Unless we just drop the whole locative thing and figure it's post-singular and throw up our hands at trying to nail it down. If we restrict it to just integrating the two realities (dataworld and realworld) then we've still gotta grow that food, drive that stuff around, those sorts of things. So the limit on the disintegration you're talking about will be the need to get those things done.

Context and meaning are likely to be held in common to the extent that they are required for communication. Maybe we'll add in universal instant translation from Idoru in to the tech-spex mix, so then context and meaning become extremely suspect, since you have to trust the machine with the nuances, but since the things in common are still there, it's unlikely to be "wholly" w.o. context\meaning.

If you want that soda pop and you say "gimme honkey" and the machine translates that to Korean as "please sir, might I purchase this drink" and the Korean sez, "Round-eye punk, I'll take your money", but we hear, "Certainly my good man".

But you still get the soda and the Korean still gets your money.

That's the limit on the "game" as well, in that we've still got work to do, of course it can be hidden in the game, but building a house is still building a house, even if it's fantasy castle and you build it with elves and pixies. 'Cause an open air holodeck can't be a good idea.

quote:

Originally posted by UberDog:
I'm not taking the idea from Dennett.

My argument is that once we develop a technology we really have little control over what becomes of it.

Until the planet acts as one, I don't see this changing.

I'll use cloning as an example: in America it is illegal to clone a human, but many other places in the world it isn't. The technology is being developed. The Chinese or someone else will clone a human being, it will happen.

As a race (humans) we don't have much to say about it.

I'm also saying that the development and implementation of technology isn't really a consciously planned proposal but more like evolution. We tend to see what the motor car really meant only in retrospect.

Ha! So..you're saying since we are going to make it we don't have control over making it?

You mean individuals don't control it, or governments don't control it, but certainly WE control it, I mean we, humans, make it, we want it, it happens, so how can you say "we" don't control it?

The Chinese want it, we don't, they'll get it, so then, "we" have everything to say about it.

I do agree that it's very much like evolution and tend to think of a type of Gaia Hypothesis for it. That life, as a whole, has plans, that humans are just a microscopic cog in, unwitting machinery. Which is kinda what you are saying, but I don't think the controller\cause is technology but life itself. Tech is the stuff life evolves to make more of itself.

quote:

Originally posted by UberDog:
All of this is part of a nagging idea I have been toying with that (briefly) man is more subject to the systems that develop around him as he plans to do other things.

I'm not sure I believe the whole idea as yet but it is interesting to explore, to look at history through only the lens of pattern recognition.

Or apophenic "seek and ye shall find" lenses.

So you mean humanity, by not acting with a single purpose is subject to the resolutions of those tension, which occur in quantities and vectors which we cannot predict the consequences of?

Because I'm certainly subject to the legal system, tho I don't create or control it, but then I'm not subject to China's legal system, so I don't create it and it doesn't control me.

Certainly I think it's accurate to say that because there is no driver at the collective wheel of humanity that of course we don't "control" "our" systems.

But that doesn't mean it's an absolute and external process, that we cannot, ever, control our systems effects on us. Tho, again, at an individual level, that will always be true.

I mean if I feel like driving on the left side of the street today....that's not going to work out so well for me, but if we ALL decided to drive on the left today, it's all good. No?

So I agree and disagree with you on this one.

quote:

Originally posted by Justy:
Well, I don't agree with doing that, but, whatever.

Well how the hell do you think people come up with theories for anything except by looking at something and seeing where it leads?

If you don't do that you rehash someone else's theories ad infinitum.

So, you're saying we should only debate the thoughts of others and not try and come up with something else?

Surely that isn't what you mean.

quote:

Originally posted by jbx:

quote:

Originally posted by UberDog:
I'm not taking the idea from Dennett.

My argument is that once we develop a technology we really have little control over what becomes of it.

Until the planet acts as one, I don't see this changing.

I'll use cloning as an example: in America it is illegal to clone a human, but many other places in the world it isn't. The technology is being developed. The Chinese or someone else will clone a human being, it will happen.

As a race (humans) we don't have much to say about it.

I'm also saying that the development and implementation of technology isn't really a consciously planned proposal but more like evolution. We tend to see what the motor car really meant only in retrospect.

Ha! So..you're saying since we are going to make it we don't have control over making it?

You mean individuals don't control it, or governments don't control it, but certainly WE control it, I mean we, humans, make it, we want it, it happens, so how can you say "we" don't control it?

The Chinese want it, we don't, they'll get it, so then, "we" have everything to say about it.

I do agree that it's very much like evolution and tend to think of a type of Gaia Hypothesis for it. That life, as a whole, has plans, that humans are just a microscopic cog in, unwitting machinery. Which is kinda what you are saying, but I don't think the controller\cause is technology but life itself. Tech is the stuff life evolves to make more of itself.

OK, what I am suggesting is that while we might make a tool, the ultimate uses the species puts that tool to or to what other tools it might lead is something we don't control because we do not think as a species.

I'm saying that anyone who thinks Man the Toolmaker is in charge of the tech he makes hasn't been very observant of history.

I'm not merely talking about A-Bombs and cloning but other things. Take Gibson's example of the internet: If the people who caused that to come into being knew what it would do they never would have caused it come into being.

The fact that we do not have very good prescience alone is proof that we can't control the shit we make. What we've done to our planet is ample proof.

I'm saying that this belief that man is somehow outside the ecosystem, outside instinctive bullshit is certainly comforting but not altogether true.

We are, all told, another system and I think that people always conform to the system rather than the system to people.

The institutions, the tools, the plans we make, they take on lives of their own. Call it simple chaos theory but we aren't real good at planning things as a species, not for long periods of time. Our shit takes control of us, our Empires demand things, our wars demand things, our cars demand things. This prevalent notion that we're in control of the things we make is, to me, terribly naive.

Now, my other point is that one need to turn shit around, look on the undercarriage and try out new ideas in order to form new theories.

Justy seems to think this is a waste of time, but I prefer to attempt to generate content rather than merely regurgitate it.

(I don't actually think Justy believes this or he would be a terribly boring person, but it surely sounds like that is what he was saying.)

We are all here reading Gibson because Gibson came up with some new ideas about how the world operates.

quote:

Originally posted by jbx:

quote:

Originally posted by UberDog:
All of this is part of a nagging idea I have been toying with that (briefly) man is more subject to the systems that develop around him as he plans to do other things.

I'm not sure I believe the whole idea as yet but it is interesting to explore, to look at history through only the lens of pattern recognition.

Or apophenic "seek and ye shall find" lenses.

So you mean humanity, by not acting with a single purpose is subject to the resolutions of those tension, which occur in quantities and vectors which we cannot predict the consequences of?

Because I'm certainly subject to the legal system, tho I don't create or control it, but then I'm not subject to China's legal system, so I don't create it and it doesn't control me.

Certainly I think it's accurate to say that because there is no driver at the collective wheel of humanity that of course we don't "control" "our" systems.

But that doesn't mean it's an absolute and external process, that we cannot, ever, control our systems effects on us. Tho, again, at an individual level, that will always be true.

I mean if I feel like driving on the left side of the street today....that's not going to work out so well for me, but if we ALL decided to drive on the left today, it's all good. No?

So I agree and disagree with you on this one.

I think in the broad picture,m in the long view, we have little intentionality at our disposal.

quote:

Originally posted by UberDog:


We are all here reading Gibson because Gibson came up with some new ideas about how the world operates.

Welllllll....I'm here because Gibson makes beautiful word choices actually. Which I think is what makes people read him. The ideas are good, but I think his real talent (one of them at least, as a writer) is the poetry of prose expression.

Particularly compared to idea-heavy authors who I do not feel write nearly as well as our distinguished host.

quote:

Originally posted by UberDog:

quote:

Originally posted by Justy:
Well, I don't agree with doing that, but, whatever.

Well how the hell do you think people come up with theories for anything except by looking at something and seeing where it leads?

If you don't do that you rehash someone else's theories ad infinitum.

So, you're saying we should only debate the thoughts of others and not try and come up with something else?

Surely that isn't what you mean.

Clarification:

You quoted me saying:

quote:

quote:

To leave out, in fact, an examination of how humans try to understand what they do

This is precisely what I'm trying to do, I'm simply looking at it from a different POV.

It seems I've misunderstood you. I thought you were saying that you *were* leaving out an examination of how humans try to understand what they do. That's the bit you picked out of my post. That's what I disagreed with. Not the process itself.

The problem being: I thought you were responding to the whole sentence, rather than just the part after the "in fact".

quote:

Originally posted by Justy:

quote:

Originally posted by UberDog:

quote:

Originally posted by Justy:
Well, I don't agree with doing that, but, whatever.

Well how the hell do you think people come up with theories for anything except by looking at something and seeing where it leads?

If you don't do that you rehash someone else's theories ad infinitum.

So, you're saying we should only debate the thoughts of others and not try and come up with something else?

Surely that isn't what you mean.

Clarification:

You quoted me saying:

quote:

quote:

To leave out, in fact, an examination of how humans try to understand what they do

This is precisely what I'm trying to do, I'm simply looking at it from a different POV.

It seems I've misunderstood you. I thought you were saying that you *were* leaving out an examination of how humans try to understand what they do. That's the bit you picked out of my post. That's what I disagreed with. Not the process itself.

The problem being: I thought you were responding to the whole sentence, rather than just the part after the "in fact".

No, I'm trying to figure out how and why we do things.

Mostly is seems to involve sticking bits of oneself into bits of another self either by flesh or proxy.

They call the porxies bullets, I hear.

quote:

Originally posted by jbx:

quote:

Originally posted by UberDog:


We are all here reading Gibson because Gibson came up with some new ideas about how the world operates.

Welllllll....I'm here because Gibson makes beautiful word choices actually. Which I think is what makes people read him. The ideas are good, but I think his real talent (one of them at least, as a writer) is the poetry of prose expression.

Particularly compared to idea-heavy authors who I do not feel write nearly as well as our distinguished host.

Yes, my favorite part is his prose, that's why I rereading SC for the fourth time in a year.

But you can't speak a whole lot about prose.

Well, you can, but...

It's better to just consume it, I don't know of anyone who can actually teach it.

Though a thread might be nice...

quote:

Originally posted by UberDog:

OK, what I am suggesting is that while we might make a tool, the ultimate uses the species puts that tool to or to what other tools it might lead is something we don't control because we do not think as a species.

I'm saying that anyone who thinks Man the Toolmaker is in charge of the tech he makes hasn't been very observant of history.

I'm not merely talking about A-Bombs and cloning but other things. Take Gibson's example of the internet: If the people who caused that to come into being knew what it would do they never would have caused it come into being.

The fact that we do not have very good prescience alone is proof that we can't control the shit we make. What we've done to our planet is ample proof.

I'm saying that this belief that man is somehow outside the ecosystem, outside instinctive bullshit is certainly comforting but not altogether true.

We are, all told, another system and I think that people always conform to the system rather than the system to people.

The institutions, the tools, the plans we make, they take on lives of their own. Call it simple chaos theory but we aren't real good at planning things as a species, not for long periods of time. Our shit takes control of us, our Empires demand things, our wars demand things, our cars demand things. This prevalent notion that we're in control of the things we make is, to me, terribly naive.

Now, my other point is that one need to turn shit around, look on the undercarriage and try out new ideas in order to form new theories.

Justy seems to think this is a waste of time, but I prefer to attempt to generate content rather than merely regurgitate it.

(I don't actually think Justy believes this or he would be a terribly boring person, but it surely sounds like that is what he was saying.)

We are all here reading Gibson because Gibson came up with some new ideas about how the world operates.

Hmm, but who is the "we" you mean?
Like you say there's no overmind for all humanity, so then, who would control stuff?

If collective-we isn't making the decisions then of course we've no control over the out come.

But if singular-we (governments, corporations) are making the decisions then we do control those decisions.

I don't think lack of prescience is actually proof that we can't control things. It's more proof that we can't see the future.

If "we" (some of us) could see the future, perfect prescience, it wouldn't change anything, at least not without concomitant control over peoples actions.

Saying you can't predict something is not the same as saying you can't control it, just that you lack enough knowledge to predict it.

Which, I think, personally, is more related to available data than anything else.

Certainly it's a very very complex system, The World System, and if you can't perceive all your inputs then you can't make predictions, but that doesn't mean you can't control it.

Let me try this example: The human body is a very complex system, lots of things happen to it that we can't predict, but we can certainly control it.

A friend of mine once stepped backwards and spiral fractured her tibia. Just like that. She could have not taken the step, of course maybe her leg would've broken anyway.

Or, maybe smoking that one next cig is the thing that gives me the tumor that doesn't stop growing, I can't predict which cancer stick will do it, but I can control smoking or not smoking (well...probably not, but you get the idea).

I guess mostly it's when you say the institutions\tools\plans take on their own lives that I disagree on.

Which is NOT to discount such mysteries as being possible! Very fun to think about!

But "they" are used by "us" to our purposes. But they are our products and we command them.

Human beings put up all these websites, generated content for them. It's hardly as if "The Internet" took over and did all this itself.

Sure it's not what was intended when it started, but that doesn't mean "we" did not make it happen.

You seem a tad fixated on the tech maybe?

More accurate to say having 6+billion humans all engaged in commerce and life in general without a central control will produce chaotic unpredictable effects, mostly because we can't perceive or plan on things of which we're not aware.

For instance the people that caused the internet to exist, they didn't imagine this? Sure, but, so what, they didn't implement it either.

That's like saying Henry Ford couldn't have predicted a Ferrari. Maybe it's true, but, why would he have?

The people that caused "the internet" to come in to being certainly knew what they were doing, the uses it's been put too since then are not things "they" did so why would they predict them?

Kinda circular at this point.

I suspect it's probably semantic, the circularity. You say "we don't control our shit! It controls US!" and I say , "I control my car pretty good when I drive it, but that doesn't mean I can avoid an accident".

So we're talking about different things. But, you seem to say that "we" don't control "it" and to me, there is no "we" and there is not "it". But you seem to want it both ways. Technology is a monolithic "thing" and "we" are just some dudes?

Maybe that's what confusing me. You say "we" don't control "it", but you also admit that "we" don't make decisions as a single group, so then who is the we that would control it?

In a car with 6 steering wheels who is the driver? And can you say "we" are bad drivers if "we" are trying to go 6 different places?

It's the same effect in the end, no doubt, things which we can't predict do happen, but that seems like a prediction failure, not a control failure, since there is nobody to control anything.

quote:

Originally posted by UberDog:

quote:

Originally posted by jbx:

quote:

Originally posted by UberDog:


We are all here reading Gibson because Gibson came up with some new ideas about how the world operates.

Welllllll....I'm here because Gibson makes beautiful word choices actually. Which I think is what makes people read him. The ideas are good, but I think his real talent (one of them at least, as a writer) is the poetry of prose expression.

Particularly compared to idea-heavy authors who I do not feel write nearly as well as our distinguished host.

Yes, my favorite part is his prose, that's why I rereading SC for the fourth time in a year.

But you can't speak a whole lot about prose.

Well, you can, but...

It's better to just consume it, I don't know of anyone who can actually teach it.

Though a thread might be nice...

Ask and ye shall receive...something like that.

And it is wrought of pixel dust and good intentions.