Thank you for your email and
your generous offer. I have looked at Tim Weaver’s website http://primamateria.org/index.html and feel a kinship and resonance with his work. I would
be delighted to be a complementary speaker.
It is because I think the
internet coupled with technological innovations and the human capacity for good
can change the world for the better that I have dedicated my life to doing what
I can to make sure systems using these capacities serves life to its fullest. After
spending a lifetime of studying, thinking and now my-shoulder-to-the-wheel putting
what I have learned and know to work in the creation a just system I call the
World Knowledge Bank®, I welcome each conversation as it arises. I don’t
mean to imply that I have all the answers but rather to declare openly and
unabashedly that our purpose, myself and the WKBank, is to create and help
others create a more just, humane and joyful world that values each and every
life, human and otherwise. A system that is dedicated to giving voice to the
voiceless that loves life and others’ lives as I love my own. I am prepared
learn, to sacrifice, to listen and to speak. I am not prepared to give up on
life on earth—each and every life.
Crazy or not I think I have
found a solid, practical and joyful way to do this.
I would like to give you a way to
measure the work of the WKBank, in addition to any other measure you would like
to use, to judge this work. “The way in which individual self interest
and the interests of others is bound together is at every level, a measure of
the strength, the integrity and the beauty of this work.”
In turn I would like to invite
you and others who might be interested to join a discussion at the Mission Café,
Carolyn Stephenson proprietor, on the World Knowledge Bank® and in general “Freedom
and the Internet”, Saturday July 26th at 1pm. 239 E De Vargas
St, Santa Fe, NM 87501 (505) 983-3033, or 505-310-8950.
Thank you again Steve, for your
generosity towards me. I know I will become a better communicator as I listen to
and learn from you and all at Friam and the Santa Fe Complex.
Ann Racuya-Robbins
Founder and CEO
World Knowledge Bank®
From: Steve Smith
[mailto:[hidden email]]
Sent: Thursday, July 17, 2008 9:47 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Agent Based Modeling and Biomimicry
Ann -
I am trying to arrange a visit talk by Tim Weaver http://primamateria.org/index.html
and think you might be a good complement/opposite speaker to him.
Read his "Statement" to see the connection with what I perceive to be
your position.
Forgive me if I have mis-identified you, but I am assuming you are the woman
who has spoken out (most recently at the Industrial Strength Networks talk last
night) only to be (mostly) dismissed/ignored or at-best
defended-from. If that is the case, I wanted to commend you on your
patience with this "Boy's club". There are elements among
us who are truly interested in a broader participation and view than might be
evident than from the conversations I've been around when you have spoken
up.
You must know better than I, that these are hard things for people to think
about. I, for one, think that the issues you raise are valid ones.
I tried to interject into one phase of the conversation last night (again
assuming you are who I think you are) that *we* (the technophilic community in
general and the Complex & friends in particular) are inherently naive about
the *effects* and *implications* of our technology. We have a lot
of good stories about how complexity thinking explains/alerts-us-to the
ever-present "unintended consequences" but it is rare that we
actually apply it to our own work.
I think this needs to be part of every discussion, yet I understand that it is
going to take some practice and "training" for us to be able to
address this in all that we do *without* going to either a blameful or a
defensive position. We currently tend toward dismissive, as you
have experienced at least twice. This may be endemic to all
"clubs" and "boys clubs" being worse?
I would like to help sponsor a discussion, not just about "ethics" in
technology, but how can we think (or learn to think) about the implications of
our work without going to one of the many extremes? How can we leave
ourselves open to being questioned about our motives, our goals, our true level
of awareness of our work? I have no answers except the few hard
knocks I've gathered along the way myself... and I'm not expecting anyone else
to have answers much larger or deeper than that, though I would welcome anyone
who has honest and deep perspective in this way of being.
- Steve
PS... my response to your original post inline below....
I have
noticed that often more men are interested in Agent Based Modeling than women
while more women are interested in Biomimicry than men. I am wondering why
this is? I would like to put out this question to others.
I have not noticed this myself, but this may be a deficiency in my
noticing/experience. For this conversation I will grant that your
observations may reflect the statistics accurately. I wonder if it is not
that more women are interested in B and more men in A, but rather that men are
*more interested* in A than in B and women more in B than in A?
Both ABM
and Biomimicry have much to offer. To me Agent Based Modeling takes a very
distant view of dynamic processes, like a five mile high view.
I would add that characterizing life (the universe and everything)
as a "dynamic process" is also a bit distant with ABMs being a
simplification beyond that of "dynamic process".
This
allows a broader view and greater scope. Individual behavior becomes a matter
of probabilities. Biomimicry on the other hand is a whole mind body empathic,
sympathic, compathic relationship with living beings as species and
individuals.
Unfortunately, much biomimickry is again low-fidelity.
Many ABMs are said to bio-mimicking... This is not to say
that the concept of biomimickry cannot be as rich as we choose to make it
(allow it?).
By copying
or mimicking living beings, probabilities are not required because copying
existing life behavior and physical properties is highly specific in design.
While vast, the number of possible design solutions is bounded by what can
live.
Certainly the biosphere (the one(s) we live in) is vast compared
to the engineered and even biomimicing technologies we have created ourselves
(in a hundred or even thousands of years).
What can
live also contains an ethical dimension that grounds and precepts
possibilities.
I'm not sure I know what you mean by ethical in this case? I
think of ethics as being a consequence of choice and that the world of
possibilities is much larger than what is "ethical". It is
possible that I can think of "ethics" as an organizing principle for
all-possibilities, but I have to admit to a bias from my culture that says some
(many) possibilities simply are "not ethical" in the sense of being
"unethical" and even more possibilities are somehow outside of the
bounds of ethics (neutral?).
In Agent
Based Modeling the death of individuals or groups is abstracted to be expressed
as parameters emerge and recede within the model. To a large extent, in
Biomimicry the death of a species or individual life is the ultimate
determinant of which biological qualities to mimic.
I'm not sure I see the distinction. I think of ABMs as
relatively simple computational structures which are most often used to embody
simple biomimetic models (or sociomimetic?).
I sense
that the Agent Based Modeling approach with its roots in western mathematics
carries forward some of the difficulties and even cul de sacs of western
intellectual life and philosophy.
I think of all computing models to be based in western mathematics
(and philosophy). Do you know of others?
Like
imposing platonic solid forms on the world, there are important similarities
that are revealed—a common language developed for qualities of the
physical world. But no individual contains or expresses these qualities except
in often large and varying degrees of approximation. It can be said that
these entities like platonic solids and other mathematical systems
such as Agent Based Modeling are not alive nor more importantly cannot
live. Of course to this extent they cannot die either which has its
benefits.
Yes, I think you have touched on the centrality of idealization...
it raises things to a plane of abstraction which often increases it's
utility/effectiveness though often at the cost of it's meaning/relevance...
It seems
to me that we need a deeper integration of approaches that are outside the
body but return to reside in the living and in the living body.
I work in Virtual Reality for this very reason. I believe
that the many things we have moved entirely into the plane of abstraction can
benefit from returning to the embodied experience... there are fundamental and
probably subtle risks in this concept... and I think maybe you are one of the
few in this mix able/willing to think deeply about such ideas without needing
to judge or jump to a conclusion (pro or con).
I would
like to propose a SapphoSocratic approach. But I will leave this for another
message since this one has become rather long already.
I will try to follow up on
this term... I can project into it all kinds of interpretations but I assume
there is a body of extant knowledge under that label and that your use of the
term is related to the same.
- Steve
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