“Painting became a schematic art. The painter’s task was no longer to represent or imitate what existed: it was to summarize experience.” (The Theatre Stage)
“In 1856 he wrote: ‘Reality is one part of art: feeling completes it . . . before any site and any object, abandon yourself to your first impression. If you have really been touched, you will convey to others the sincerity of your emotion.’” (Raft of the Medusa)
“The moment at which a piece of music begins provides a clue to the nature of all art. The incongruity of that moment, compared to the uncounted, unperceived silence which preceded it, is the secret of art. What is the meaning of that incongruity and the shock which accompanies it? It is to be found in the distinction between the given and the desired. All art is the attempt to define and make unnatural this distinction.” (Cubism and Politics)
I got the notion that man and technics are inseparable, impossible to be considered in isolation from one another. But also there’s this question of whether technology develops alongside, in advance of, or as moments of rupture (specific, serial events)?
There was also a part where he said “becoming must be isolated from being” – i found this really compelling; perhaps then is the ‘becoming’ representative of tech and the ‘being’ representative of humanity, of the ontological processes…
BBC The Brain Video – I watched episode 6 not episode 5 by mistake
There was this question of what comes next? How do we evolve with technology, how does technology force us to evolve – moving from this notion of humanity and technology to biology and technology. Something that repeatedly came to me was despite these cool, or innovative, or groundbreaking ideas, where is the question of how far is too far? what is really necessary? are we walking into our own undoing?
So many of the projects and ideas he discussed made me think of the Netflix series Black Mirror; watching the series there is always this sometimes obvious, sometimes obscured, unsettling undertone of a cautionary tale
The video talked about “expanding the experience of being human, beyond traditional senses”, “improving from human fragility”, figuring out how to “recreate the experience of being alive” – to me, these are not simple questions you can follow – perhaps I am more analogous but I find these pushes to something beyond the capabilities of ourselves to be inherently dangerous. If we create something greater than human capability what’s it to stop it from turning the tables on us, on humanity (here I thought of the movie Ex-Machina)
At the end the video came full circle to this sort of separation of what it means to be human citing Descartes “I think therefore I am” as a way to separate the human experience – relating it to ‘consciousness’ or the ‘experience of being alive’ something that in their particularity have yet to be established in technology in tech creations, as far as I know there is nothing yet that is able to seamlessly pass for a human yet not be biologically or ontologically derived from humans.
– how can we define, or perhaps set parameters on what is human and what is tech
– which comes first, which leads the other
– the idea that we are part of a system within which we are socially conditioned – requiring connectivity unconsciously and automatically
– is there a technological understanding of humans – do we run programs, are we coded, what are instincts if not specific codes that our body automatically responds to?
– the idea of the human condition as a society and how that then creates limitations or systems that we operate within; do we actually have choice? of are we merely a cog in the system following certain options/paths as they have been socially constructed
– Does our ability to engage in ethical or moral understandings separate us as humans?
– morphic resonance – collective unconscious
– the significance of alliances and empathies to the human condition and our drive for power, success, control, acceptance
– our relationship/involvement with tech distinguishes us from nature/other animals/species
– the importance of considering the ethical dimensions of new technologies -a consideration I felt was missing from the BBC brain video
– I find myself sharing this uneasiness that Joy continues to articulate; this sort of human drive to keep pushing and furthering technology, but without fully considering the cost, the sacrifice, the significance of the unknown result. What happens to us if we create technology that no longer requires us? Does this already exist? I think this relates to our desire to find definitions of what is tech and what is human and whether these concepts are separable or not…
“the rate of improvement of technology was going to accelerate and that we were going to become robots or fuse with robots or something like that, and John countering that this couldn’t happen, because the robots couldn’t be conscious.” – the BBC Brain video, and our class discussion kind of touched this; the significance of human consciousness and the inability (at least so far) for it to be successfully recreated as well as this notion of technology as an extension of us, literally becoming part of humans
“What we do suggest is that the human race might easily permit itself to drift into a position of such dependence on the machines that it would have no practical choice but to accept all of the machines’ decisions…On the other hand it is possible that human control over the machines may be retained. In that case the average man may have control over certain private machines of his own, such as his car or his personal computer, but control over large systems of machines will be in the hands of a tiny elite – just as it is today, but with two differences.”
“Kaczynski’s dystopian vision describes unintended consequences, a well-known problem with the design and use of technology, and one that is clearly related to Murphy’s law – “Anything that can go wrong, will.” ”
– the potential merits of understanding the Unabomber’s position, something that was discussed in the classroom
“He said, simply, that the changes would come gradually, and that we would get used to them” – I think this is pretty true; I think of Black Mirror which really investigates these conundrums of the merit/danger of technological advancement, but yet these advancements don’t feel foreign to the viewer, dont feel like a stretch of the imagination and thats maybe due to our acceptance of the gradual intrusion of tech into daily life
“Perhaps it is always hard to see the bigger impact while you are in the vortex of a change.”
“Given the incredible power of these new technologies, shouldn’t we be asking how we can best coexist with them? And if our own extinction is a likely, or even possible, outcome of our technological development, shouldn’t we proceed with great caution?”
“But if we are downloaded into our technology, what are the chances that we will thereafter be ourselves or even human?” – again, what defines human and what defines tech?
“This is the first moment in the history of our planet when any species, by its own voluntary actions, has become a danger to itself – as well as to vast numbers of others.” – Can we dial it back? Turn it around? Alter the path we are leading ourselves down?
“The clear fragility and inefficiencies of the human-made systems we have built should give us all pause; the fragility of the systems I have worked on certainly humbles me.”
With this video, I was aiming to capture this idea of almost being secondary to computers. Subverting this idea that we re the ones who hold the power or are dominant. I imagined a situation where the computers or the technology become this animated beings that discuss our relevance, our ideas of control…The goal was that it was like two computers/tech playing a game that effectively ridicules and/or diminishes the human position as we understand it. Just as we ask all these questions of technology and how we use it, how it developed, our degree of control over it, imagine for a minute if that was all a construct we have conformed to. What if we are a creation of their doing. What then?
My immediate response to the Chinese credit system was to think about a Black Mirror episode titled “Nosedive” where it follows the trajectory of this woman who having lived in this social credit based system begins to succumb to a downward spiral to her desire to climb her social rankings. It really makes me wonder what may happen to all of these people as they are forced into this rating system – what does that mean for their lives. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R32qWdOWrTo
Some parts in the google reading that really stood out are:
“for-profit, commercial enterprises to suit the needs of both the intelligence community and the public.” – perhaps net neutrality was never the goal, so we shouldn’t be surprised that this is an issue now, as this was the intention all along
“Could an entire world of digital information be organized so that the requests humans made inside such a network be tracked and sorted? Could their queries be linked and ranked in order of importance?”
“Did the CIA directly fund the work of Brin and Page, and therefore create Google? No. But were Brin and Page researching precisely what the NSA, the CIA, and the intelligence community hoped for, assisted by their grants? Absolutely.”
“Digital privacy concerns over the intersection between the intelligence community and commercial technology giants have grown in recent years. But most people still don’t understand the degree to which the intelligence community relies on the world’s biggest science and tech companies for its counter-terrorism and national-security work.”
“Hastily passed 45 days after 9/11 in the name of national security, the Patriot Act was the first of many changes to surveillance laws that made it easier for the government to spy on ordinary Americans by expanding the authority to monitor phone and email communications, collect bank and credit reporting records, and track the activity of innocent Americans on the Internet,” says the ACLU. “While most Americans think it was created to catch terrorists, the Patriot Act actually turns regular citizens into suspects.”
“…the Patriot Act legal process has now become so routinized that the companies each have a group of employees who simply take care of the stream of requests.”
This is not necessarily anything new; while Google may not have been forthcoming about this part of their backstory, for me, there was always an awareness that what you do on the internet is not exclusive to you, is not your own, is not private. I am not surprised by the use of the internet for surveillance purposes, and maybe thats a sad reality – that we expect that our business is not really our business anymore when we share online. I personally was raised to always think about what I was doing/posting on the internet and to be conscious that it can always be tracked back to you, and for that reason maybe that is why I don’t find this article so shocking or revelatory.
This is also a reason that for me when it comes to social media, and all of these sites and places where we are supposed to share our lives digitally, that I refrain from really posting all that much – i truly value the offline world, if people wanted to know about me we would talk in person or i guess through some of the other more “personal” digital communication tools like FaceTime, Skype etc. (yes I know that’s somewhat contradictory because who’s to say they arent spying on those calls) but i largely don’t believe in having my life broadcast all over the internet.
Also I find the part about making the internet a for-profit market something that is really interesting to bring up considering, as i mentioned, the dilemma of net neutrality that was being discussed legally last year/this year. Again there’s an element that this is unsurprising considering the capitalist environment that we operate within – it’s unfortunate because already access to the internet largely excludes certain social classes or groups, and the removal of net neutrality would only widen this gap between those who have access and those who don’t, and give even more control to the 1%… which is then something interesting to consider against the backdrop of surveillance and monitoring…
“But now imagine a system where all these behaviours are rated as either positive or negative and distilled into a single number, according to rules set by the government” – so then is any freedom (“freedom” as we largely do not actually have that much of it) impossible, free will and choice become even more controlled and restricted as the government can now control your life through your own choices…
“That would create your Citizen Score and it would tell everyone whether or not you were trustworthy.” – what happens to genuine human interaction, human connection, shared experience as the basis of relationships; trust is fundamental to relationships, and we know relationships are key to satisfaction and happiness in human life. what happens when trustworthiness is decided upon by a third party? Not everyone’s terms for trust are equal, but now these people will operate within a system where the 1% decide what constitutes good or bad, to determine how a person fits into a society, is received by that society, is able to thrive in that society
Only to be further controlled because not only do you suffer personally but your lifestyle and that of your family are also impacted – “Plus, your rating would be publicly ranked against that of the entire population and used to determine your eligibility for a mortgage or a job, where your children can go to school – or even just your chances of getting a date.” Darwin talked about survival of the fittest but now that can’t even happen naturally because its been co-opted into a system that fits a few people’s desires
“It will forge a public opinion environment where keeping trust is glorious. It will strengthen sincerity in government affairs, commercial sincerity, social sincerity and the construction of judicial credibility.” – OR, we will lose any real genuine human connection as everyone strives to be the best version that the system defines, people no longer retain their individuality, or distinctiveness because in order to thrive they must conform to a specified set of behaviours… i.e. the downfall as shown in the black mirror episode.
Also, if computers control the algorithm, what happens if computers become out of our control…
“The first is credit history. For example, does the citizen pay their electricity or phone bill on time? Next is fulfilment capacity, which it defines in its guidelines as “a user’s ability to fulfil his/her contract obligations”. The third factor is personal characteristics, verifying personal information such as someone’s mobile phone number and address. But the fourth category, behaviour and preference, is where it gets interesting.” – how does a computer judge this? We know that computers can not work in the same way as the brain, as humans do so how do they begin to understand behaviour in all of its multi-faceted human performance? Behaviour is never black and white, a simple right/wrong or yes/no, it is complex often contradictory or contextual…how is a computer going to be able to know all of that and assess all of that in a comprehensive manner?
“It “nudges” citizens away from purchases and behaviours the government does not like.” – see what I said before about people losing their humanity, their individual nature, their differences and distinctiveness…
“The fifth category is interpersonal relationships” – again there is a complexity here, will it discern between acquantainces, colleagues, mentors, family, friends, people you just know – there are so many levels to interpersonal relationships what makes the cut and what doesn’t?
“But here’s the real kicker: a person’s own score will also be affected by what their online friends say and do, beyond their own contact with them. If someone they are connected to online posts a negative comment, their own score will also be dragged down.” – again creating a world where everyone becoems confrmed to a set of specific human ‘parameters’ within which they will operate… what happens to society? do we even have a society anymore when all of these unique subsets of interests and differences no longer exist? when everyone is being conditioned to perform in the same way
“We already live in a world of predictive algorithms that determine if we are a threat, a risk, a good citizen and even if we are trustworthy. We’re getting closer to the Chinese system – the expansion of credit scoring into life scoring – even if we don’t know we are.” – very good point, I believe it, my question is, is there any way to dial it back? to stop us from ending up with these systems like the Chinese are implementing? Or am I just kidding myself because these systems already exist in our communities we just are given an imagined sense of control over their use? We know these big companies track us, so really is it just that we have a perception that we have some control over what we share, some kickback over explicit spying even though in reality we essentially are faced with a similar system? Maybe we’re so conditioned that we just don’t really notice how involved of a system we operate in…
“Barring some kind of mass citizen revolt to wrench back privacy, we are entering an age where an individual’s actions will be judged by standards they can’t control and where that judgement can’t be erased. The consequences are not only troubling; they’re permanent. Forget the right to delete or to be forgotten, to be young and foolish.”
“In his book The Inevitable, Kevin Kelly describes a future where the watchers and the watched will transparently track each other. “Our central choice now is whether this surveillance is a secret, one-way panopticon – or a mutual, transparent kind of ‘coveillance’ that involves watching the watchers,” he writes.” – YES
“It is still too early to know how a culture of constant monitoring plus rating will turn out. What will happen when these systems, charting the social, moral and financial history of an entire population, come into full force?”
“The real questions about the future of trust are not technological or economic; they are ethical.” – big takeaway! YES!
Will the future be human video:
the manufacture of bodies, brains and minds
controlled by those who control the data – data most important asset in the world
land to machinery to data – why is data so important? hacking the human being
“organisms are algorithms” – we are learning how to decipher these algorithms
why would you want to be run be an algorithm? I would rather learn about myself, learn about other people rather than following some system where I input and an output is prescribed
i keep coming back to who or what has control, who makes the ‘rules’? – “digital dictatorships”
natural selection, and organic bio-chemistry – evolution by intelligent design, “our” (being the 1% in control) designers or driving forces for revolution…
life breaking into the inorganic realm – downloading our consciousness? but WHY? I don’t see the point. isnt part of being human the fact that we live and die? isn’t that the commonality, the reality? I don’t want to live in in an unreal reality, I am content to understand that there will be a point where I no longer exist.
where does politics come into this? can we trust them? can they create meaningful futures?
“who should own the data” – again back to control, who should have it? should anyone have it? should there by “ownership”? is there an alternative?
“Painting became a schematic art. The painter’s task was no longer to represent or imitate what existed: it was to summarize experience.” (The Theatre Stage)
“In 1856 he wrote: ‘Reality is one part of art: feeling completes it . . . before any site and any object, abandon yourself to your first impression. If you have really been touched, you will convey to others the sincerity of your emotion.’” (Raft of the Medusa)
“The moment at which a piece of music begins provides a clue to the nature of all art. The incongruity of that moment, compared to the uncounted, unperceived silence which preceded it, is the secret of art. What is the meaning of that incongruity and the shock which accompanies it? It is to be found in the distinction between the given and the desired. All art is the attempt to define and make unnatural this distinction.” (Cubism and Politics)
Man & Technics Video, Stiegler:
I got the notion that man and technics are inseparable, impossible to be considered in isolation from one another. But also there’s this question of whether technology develops alongside, in advance of, or as moments of rupture (specific, serial events)?
There was also a part where he said “becoming must be isolated from being” – i found this really compelling; perhaps then is the ‘becoming’ representative of tech and the ‘being’ representative of humanity, of the ontological processes…
BBC The Brain Video – I watched episode 6 not episode 5 by mistake
There was this question of what comes next? How do we evolve with technology, how does technology force us to evolve – moving from this notion of humanity and technology to biology and technology. Something that repeatedly came to me was despite these cool, or innovative, or groundbreaking ideas, where is the question of how far is too far? what is really necessary? are we walking into our own undoing?
So many of the projects and ideas he discussed made me think of the Netflix series Black Mirror; watching the series there is always this sometimes obvious, sometimes obscured, unsettling undertone of a cautionary tale
The video talked about “expanding the experience of being human, beyond traditional senses”, “improving from human fragility”, figuring out how to “recreate the experience of being alive” – to me, these are not simple questions you can follow – perhaps I am more analogous but I find these pushes to something beyond the capabilities of ourselves to be inherently dangerous. If we create something greater than human capability what’s it to stop it from turning the tables on us, on humanity (here I thought of the movie Ex-Machina)
At the end the video came full circle to this sort of separation of what it means to be human citing Descartes “I think therefore I am” as a way to separate the human experience – relating it to ‘consciousness’ or the ‘experience of being alive’ something that in their particularity have yet to be established in technology in tech creations, as far as I know there is nothing yet that is able to seamlessly pass for a human yet not be biologically or ontologically derived from humans.
Class Notes:
– how can we define, or perhaps set parameters on what is human and what is tech
– which comes first, which leads the other
– the idea that we are part of a system within which we are socially conditioned – requiring connectivity unconsciously and automatically
– is there a technological understanding of humans – do we run programs, are we coded, what are instincts if not specific codes that our body automatically responds to?
– the idea of the human condition as a society and how that then creates limitations or systems that we operate within; do we actually have choice? of are we merely a cog in the system following certain options/paths as they have been socially constructed
– Does our ability to engage in ethical or moral understandings separate us as humans?
– morphic resonance – collective unconscious
– the significance of alliances and empathies to the human condition and our drive for power, success, control, acceptance
– our relationship/involvement with tech distinguishes us from nature/other animals/species
Reading: Why the future doesn’t need us
– the importance of considering the ethical dimensions of new technologies -a consideration I felt was missing from the BBC brain video
– I find myself sharing this uneasiness that Joy continues to articulate; this sort of human drive to keep pushing and furthering technology, but without fully considering the cost, the sacrifice, the significance of the unknown result. What happens to us if we create technology that no longer requires us? Does this already exist? I think this relates to our desire to find definitions of what is tech and what is human and whether these concepts are separable or not…
“the rate of improvement of technology was going to accelerate and that we were going to become robots or fuse with robots or something like that, and John countering that this couldn’t happen, because the robots couldn’t be conscious.” – the BBC Brain video, and our class discussion kind of touched this; the significance of human consciousness and the inability (at least so far) for it to be successfully recreated as well as this notion of technology as an extension of us, literally becoming part of humans
“What we do suggest is that the human race might easily permit itself to drift into a position of such dependence on the machines that it would have no practical choice but to accept all of the machines’ decisions…On the other hand it is possible that human control over the machines may be retained. In that case the average man may have control over certain private machines of his own, such as his car or his personal computer, but control over large systems of machines will be in the hands of a tiny elite – just as it is today, but with two differences.”
“Kaczynski’s dystopian vision describes unintended consequences, a well-known problem with the design and use of technology, and one that is clearly related to Murphy’s law – “Anything that can go wrong, will.” ”
– the potential merits of understanding the Unabomber’s position, something that was discussed in the classroom
“He said, simply, that the changes would come gradually, and that we would get used to them” – I think this is pretty true; I think of Black Mirror which really investigates these conundrums of the merit/danger of technological advancement, but yet these advancements don’t feel foreign to the viewer, dont feel like a stretch of the imagination and thats maybe due to our acceptance of the gradual intrusion of tech into daily life
“Perhaps it is always hard to see the bigger impact while you are in the vortex of a change.”
“Given the incredible power of these new technologies, shouldn’t we be asking how we can best coexist with them? And if our own extinction is a likely, or even possible, outcome of our technological development, shouldn’t we proceed with great caution?”
“But if we are downloaded into our technology, what are the chances that we will thereafter be ourselves or even human?” – again, what defines human and what defines tech?
“This is the first moment in the history of our planet when any species, by its own voluntary actions, has become a danger to itself – as well as to vast numbers of others.” – Can we dial it back? Turn it around? Alter the path we are leading ourselves down?
“The clear fragility and inefficiencies of the human-made systems we have built should give us all pause; the fragility of the systems I have worked on certainly humbles me.”
https://www.flickr.com/gp/139443858@N08/5Xvo2X
Visual Essay 1
Password: yes
https://vimeo.com/254031411
With this video, I was aiming to capture this idea of almost being secondary to computers. Subverting this idea that we re the ones who hold the power or are dominant. I imagined a situation where the computers or the technology become this animated beings that discuss our relevance, our ideas of control…The goal was that it was like two computers/tech playing a game that effectively ridicules and/or diminishes the human position as we understand it. Just as we ask all these questions of technology and how we use it, how it developed, our degree of control over it, imagine for a minute if that was all a construct we have conformed to. What if we are a creation of their doing. What then?
Last Week (Feb 2) – https://www.dropbox.com/s/wanraox5vph127q/VisualEssay1.mov?dl=0
This Week (Feb 9) – https://www.dropbox.com/s/69hyrvcyyta0cr7/481%20Video%20Essay%202.mp4?dl=0
This week’s video was an attempt to capture the threat & anxieties of pursuing a technology that ultimately proves to be better than us/can operate without us/overpowers us.
My immediate response to the Chinese credit system was to think about a Black Mirror episode titled “Nosedive” where it follows the trajectory of this woman who having lived in this social credit based system begins to succumb to a downward spiral to her desire to climb her social rankings. It really makes me wonder what may happen to all of these people as they are forced into this rating system – what does that mean for their lives.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R32qWdOWrTo
Some parts in the google reading that really stood out are:
“for-profit, commercial enterprises to suit the needs of both the intelligence community and the public.” – perhaps net neutrality was never the goal, so we shouldn’t be surprised that this is an issue now, as this was the intention all along
“Could an entire world of digital information be organized so that the requests humans made inside such a network be tracked and sorted? Could their queries be linked and ranked in order of importance?”
“Did the CIA directly fund the work of Brin and Page, and therefore create Google? No. But were Brin and Page researching precisely what the NSA, the CIA, and the intelligence community hoped for, assisted by their grants? Absolutely.”
“Digital privacy concerns over the intersection between the intelligence community and commercial technology giants have grown in recent years. But most people still don’t understand the degree to which the intelligence community relies on the world’s biggest science and tech companies for its counter-terrorism and national-security work.”
“Hastily passed 45 days after 9/11 in the name of national security, the Patriot Act was the first of many changes to surveillance laws that made it easier for the government to spy on ordinary Americans by expanding the authority to monitor phone and email communications, collect bank and credit reporting records, and track the activity of innocent Americans on the Internet,” says the ACLU. “While most Americans think it was created to catch terrorists, the Patriot Act actually turns regular citizens into suspects.”
“…the Patriot Act legal process has now become so routinized that the companies each have a group of employees who simply take care of the stream of requests.”
This is not necessarily anything new; while Google may not have been forthcoming about this part of their backstory, for me, there was always an awareness that what you do on the internet is not exclusive to you, is not your own, is not private. I am not surprised by the use of the internet for surveillance purposes, and maybe thats a sad reality – that we expect that our business is not really our business anymore when we share online. I personally was raised to always think about what I was doing/posting on the internet and to be conscious that it can always be tracked back to you, and for that reason maybe that is why I don’t find this article so shocking or revelatory.
This is also a reason that for me when it comes to social media, and all of these sites and places where we are supposed to share our lives digitally, that I refrain from really posting all that much – i truly value the offline world, if people wanted to know about me we would talk in person or i guess through some of the other more “personal” digital communication tools like FaceTime, Skype etc. (yes I know that’s somewhat contradictory because who’s to say they arent spying on those calls) but i largely don’t believe in having my life broadcast all over the internet.
Also I find the part about making the internet a for-profit market something that is really interesting to bring up considering, as i mentioned, the dilemma of net neutrality that was being discussed legally last year/this year. Again there’s an element that this is unsurprising considering the capitalist environment that we operate within – it’s unfortunate because already access to the internet largely excludes certain social classes or groups, and the removal of net neutrality would only widen this gap between those who have access and those who don’t, and give even more control to the 1%… which is then something interesting to consider against the backdrop of surveillance and monitoring…
China Social Credit article:
“But now imagine a system where all these behaviours are rated as either positive or negative and distilled into a single number, according to rules set by the government” – so then is any freedom (“freedom” as we largely do not actually have that much of it) impossible, free will and choice become even more controlled and restricted as the government can now control your life through your own choices…
“That would create your Citizen Score and it would tell everyone whether or not you were trustworthy.” – what happens to genuine human interaction, human connection, shared experience as the basis of relationships; trust is fundamental to relationships, and we know relationships are key to satisfaction and happiness in human life. what happens when trustworthiness is decided upon by a third party? Not everyone’s terms for trust are equal, but now these people will operate within a system where the 1% decide what constitutes good or bad, to determine how a person fits into a society, is received by that society, is able to thrive in that society
Only to be further controlled because not only do you suffer personally but your lifestyle and that of your family are also impacted – “Plus, your rating would be publicly ranked against that of the entire population and used to determine your eligibility for a mortgage or a job, where your children can go to school – or even just your chances of getting a date.” Darwin talked about survival of the fittest but now that can’t even happen naturally because its been co-opted into a system that fits a few people’s desires
“It will forge a public opinion environment where keeping trust is glorious. It will strengthen sincerity in government affairs, commercial sincerity, social sincerity and the construction of judicial credibility.” – OR, we will lose any real genuine human connection as everyone strives to be the best version that the system defines, people no longer retain their individuality, or distinctiveness because in order to thrive they must conform to a specified set of behaviours… i.e. the downfall as shown in the black mirror episode.
Also, if computers control the algorithm, what happens if computers become out of our control…
“The first is credit history. For example, does the citizen pay their electricity or phone bill on time? Next is fulfilment capacity, which it defines in its guidelines as “a user’s ability to fulfil his/her contract obligations”. The third factor is personal characteristics, verifying personal information such as someone’s mobile phone number and address. But the fourth category, behaviour and preference, is where it gets interesting.” – how does a computer judge this? We know that computers can not work in the same way as the brain, as humans do so how do they begin to understand behaviour in all of its multi-faceted human performance? Behaviour is never black and white, a simple right/wrong or yes/no, it is complex often contradictory or contextual…how is a computer going to be able to know all of that and assess all of that in a comprehensive manner?
“It “nudges” citizens away from purchases and behaviours the government does not like.” – see what I said before about people losing their humanity, their individual nature, their differences and distinctiveness…
“The fifth category is interpersonal relationships” – again there is a complexity here, will it discern between acquantainces, colleagues, mentors, family, friends, people you just know – there are so many levels to interpersonal relationships what makes the cut and what doesn’t?
“But here’s the real kicker: a person’s own score will also be affected by what their online friends say and do, beyond their own contact with them. If someone they are connected to online posts a negative comment, their own score will also be dragged down.” – again creating a world where everyone becoems confrmed to a set of specific human ‘parameters’ within which they will operate… what happens to society? do we even have a society anymore when all of these unique subsets of interests and differences no longer exist? when everyone is being conditioned to perform in the same way
“We already live in a world of predictive algorithms that determine if we are a threat, a risk, a good citizen and even if we are trustworthy. We’re getting closer to the Chinese system – the expansion of credit scoring into life scoring – even if we don’t know we are.” – very good point, I believe it, my question is, is there any way to dial it back? to stop us from ending up with these systems like the Chinese are implementing? Or am I just kidding myself because these systems already exist in our communities we just are given an imagined sense of control over their use? We know these big companies track us, so really is it just that we have a perception that we have some control over what we share, some kickback over explicit spying even though in reality we essentially are faced with a similar system? Maybe we’re so conditioned that we just don’t really notice how involved of a system we operate in…
“Barring some kind of mass citizen revolt to wrench back privacy, we are entering an age where an individual’s actions will be judged by standards they can’t control and where that judgement can’t be erased. The consequences are not only troubling; they’re permanent. Forget the right to delete or to be forgotten, to be young and foolish.”
“In his book The Inevitable, Kevin Kelly describes a future where the watchers and the watched will transparently track each other. “Our central choice now is whether this surveillance is a secret, one-way panopticon – or a mutual, transparent kind of ‘coveillance’ that involves watching the watchers,” he writes.” – YES
“It is still too early to know how a culture of constant monitoring plus rating will turn out. What will happen when these systems, charting the social, moral and financial history of an entire population, come into full force?”
“The real questions about the future of trust are not technological or economic; they are ethical.” – big takeaway! YES!
Will the future be human video:
the manufacture of bodies, brains and minds
controlled by those who control the data – data most important asset in the world
land to machinery to data – why is data so important? hacking the human being
“organisms are algorithms” – we are learning how to decipher these algorithms
why would you want to be run be an algorithm? I would rather learn about myself, learn about other people rather than following some system where I input and an output is prescribed
i keep coming back to who or what has control, who makes the ‘rules’? – “digital dictatorships”
natural selection, and organic bio-chemistry – evolution by intelligent design, “our” (being the 1% in control) designers or driving forces for revolution…
life breaking into the inorganic realm – downloading our consciousness? but WHY? I don’t see the point. isnt part of being human the fact that we live and die? isn’t that the commonality, the reality? I don’t want to live in in an unreal reality, I am content to understand that there will be a point where I no longer exist.
where does politics come into this? can we trust them? can they create meaningful futures?
“who should own the data” – again back to control, who should have it? should anyone have it? should there by “ownership”? is there an alternative?
https://prezi.com/view/Yz2i6UsFZxSLElCiUMxD/
https://prezi.com/view/Yz2i6UsFZxSLElCiUMxD/
https://prezi.com/view/UvvNCzv923CZAgS7DzgA/
For a final submission I created a clipboard of videos, text, and links surrounding the questions of the future of the human body and human relations.
On a separate note, for some reason my previous prezi has disappeared and so the two links above are now faulty. I don’t know what happened.