Re: bah!
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Glen/Marcus -
Get a room! (and finish writing that post-CyberPunk novel you just outlined the tech concept for)! Seriously... When I first started reading proto-cyberpunk (PK Dick, John Brunner, et al) and then the more familiar works of Sterling/Gibson/Cadigan/Stephenson, et alia, I didn't believe we would get *close* to most of that in my lifetime even though it was Day-After-Tomorrow stories rather than a century and one or more revolutions in physics (e.g. FTL travel) away. I delivered my elder daughter to undergrad (pre-med) on the day they announced Dolly-the-Clone. All through her PhD and into her PostDoc in Molecular Biology/BioMed she insisted there were "too many unknowns" for most of the tech required in these BioHack/Cyberpunk stories until CRISPR hit the world. And modern Epigenetics. And all the contemporary implications of the microbiome on the individual. It all really plays havoc with traditional ideas of identity. And that is without prosthetics and other tech (rather than Bio) enhancements. Who are we becoming? The Amish are quoted as saying that when they consider adopting any new tech, their question is "who will I become if I use this (or that) technology?" I doubt most of us Ainglish think to stop and ask such questions. I think this last round of observations here highlight that in an interesting way. - Steve On 4/26/17 9:28 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote: > ..with branding like "Angelina" and "Scarlett" > > Sent from my iPhone > >> On Apr 26, 2017, at 9:21 AM, glen ☣ <[hidden email]> wrote: >> >> >> I suppose you're right. Like Apple products, custom flora will only be available to rich people in closed-source formats. The rest of us will hatch from DIYBio hacked pods in our grand parents' basements or burned-out warehouses, managed by Raspberry Pis and android. >> >>> On 04/26/2017 08:02 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote: >>> I imagine an iPhone app to tune the microbiome environment with continuous monitoring of white blood cells, antibodies, etc. >>> Machine learning systems to pre-tune baby's immune system. No risk to mommy because she's out running a marathon or whatever. >> -- >> ☣ glen >> >> ============================================================ >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
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> Steve writes: > > "Who are we becoming?" > > In spite of the Steve Bannon's of the world, whatever the hell we want. > > Marcus I have always operated on this tenet myself, but have observed others seeming to fail at that task. Chomsky's "Manufacturing Consent" and many other books on propoganda and social manipulation (right down to the fine grain of NLP) seem to suggest that "whatever the hell we want" might be a bit slipperier than I *want* it to be? Others' failures (as observed through my lens) and my own (younger) self's failure both serve as a cautionary tale for me on this subject. I think Glen's weigh in (covered in another post to follow) is salient. The "vagueness of self" or more aptly the oxymoron of "(each hu)man is an Island"? - Steve ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
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I think it is very likely that there will soon be technologies like `neural lace', artificial intelligence, and biotech that can change the balance of power in fundamental ways. One might argue it has already happened, and the latest whitelash was just the last gasp of an obsolete part of our civilization. That works for me. Let's go.
-----Original Message----- From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Steven A Smith Sent: Wednesday, April 26, 2017 10:46 AM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] bah! > Steve writes: > > "Who are we becoming?" > > In spite of the Steve Bannon's of the world, whatever the hell we want. > > Marcus I have always operated on this tenet myself, but have observed others seeming to fail at that task. Chomsky's "Manufacturing Consent" and many other books on propoganda and social manipulation (right down to the fine grain of NLP) seem to suggest that "whatever the hell we want" might be a bit slipperier than I *want* it to be? Others' failures (as observed through my lens) and my own (younger) self's failure both serve as a cautionary tale for me on this subject. I think Glen's weigh in (covered in another post to follow) is salient. The "vagueness of self" or more aptly the oxymoron of "(each hu)man is an Island"? - Steve ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
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In reply to this post by Steve Smith
> We don't need a room. We have the References header: http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2822.html >8^D Well, it was more a tongue-in-cheek reference to "you two are having too much fun!" than "you need some privacy for this". > I wonder if it's coherent to ask this question? As we've seen in "the arc" thread, the boundaries of "I" are not very crisp. I do think the lack of crisp boundaries on "self" is a key point and in fact, maybe the one I'm trying to make. While my ego responds positively to Marcus' answer to "who are we becoming" as "whoever the hell we want", it begs a few questions, maybe most acutely the one you bring up. What means "we" or "I" in fact? > I recently tried (and failed) to digest the argument made here: > > Wiener and Luhmann on feedback: from complexity to sustainability > http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1108/K-11-2016-0317 > > at a journal club meeting. The essence of the article is, I think, the distinction between two types of feedback: that which preserves order locally vs. that which helps organize the local order in response to the environment. In either case, our identity is coupled to the environment (more for some than others, perhaps). And to strive for an ideal decoupling sounds like suicide -- killing one's self. I do agree that "no man is an Island" though I do tend to prefer to think of myself as more of an "Archipelago". We are co-evolved with our landscape and to the extent that we (radically) modify our landscape, it is not that simple. Marcus' "we become whoever the hell we want" gets modified (in my mind) to "we become whoever the hell we do, based on the niches in the landscape we generate by *trying* to be whoever the hell we think we want to be". In the example at hand of the Sugar Tax, we have already become unhealthy, obese (well some of us) refined-sugar addicts partly because our genome evolved to be greedy for rich sources of energy and partly because we evolved a consumerist economy which seeks to exploit any and every significant "weakness" such as this. We have also become knee-jerk voters who hear a thin but opaque "good idea" and vote for (Sugar is evil, it is the next Tobacco!) or against ("the legislation is poorly written/formed/executed" or "I don't want to live in a nanny state" or ...) > I suppose what saves the monk/hermit from the accusation of suicide is the concept of "being present", in the news a lot lately with Pirsig's death. The monk chooses one environment and the "networking entrepreneurial catalyst" chooses another. In this sense, it's less about "who will I become" and more about "what environment defines me". And as (poorly?) illustrated above: "what environment do we choose?" and/or "how do we modify our environment?" - Steve ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
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Steve writes:
< In the example at hand of the Sugar Tax, we have already become unhealthy, obese (well some of us) refined-sugar addicts partly because our genome evolved to be greedy for rich sources of energy and partly because we evolved a consumerist economy which seeks to exploit any and every significant "weakness" such as this. > Perhaps what is needed is a better understanding of what knobs to turn. http://www.nature.com/nm/journal/v22/n7/full/nm.4137.html ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
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