Many of us spend hours inside our virtual worlds of bits, bytes and avatars that can be customised with fantastical hairdos and clothing, virtual selves that can respawn if we die in the game. We may think of our online self is an extension of our physical self but viewing this video inspires a different viewpoint. If our physical self bounced around in real life like we do in the virtual world, it would seem completely bizarre and out of context. Skip to 7.20 on the timeline.
Sometimes it's nice to flip things around and view our actions a different way. Imitating GTA in real life…skip to 7.20 for a giggle! #mscedchttps://t.co/RYo3V4SjlL
Anthropologist Amber Case studies Cyborg anthropology, and in the video linked below she describes the use of smartphones to extend not only our physical selves, but our mental selves, creating ‘mental wormholes’ connecting our network of people on the globe at anytime- this is called ‘ambient intimacy’. Ambient intimacy poses a threat the ability of a person to ‘self reflect’ due to too much input, with not enough time for the ‘creation of self’ & long term planning.
Homo Sapiens, is also Homo Faber – the maker and user of objects (Miller 2011). Miller (2011) discusses how tool usage is an integral part of what humans do when they are being humans. Therefore technology doesn’t have to be viewed as ‘inhuman’ or set apart from the human body, but a “complex symbiosis between human bodies, tools and the social and physical environment”, (Miller 2011). Amber Case extends the idea of humans as technologically embedded tool-users by presenting us with an image of the mapping of the internet.
It does not look technological, it looks very organic. The map of data connections looks more ‘human’ than ‘technological’ because we are co-creating with each other the whole time, using the tool of the internet to increase our humanness. so is the technology of internet turning us into a new form of human or emphasizing our ‘humanness’
I’m not sure if this could be seen as an element extropianism (the conversion of flesh into data) or technological embodiment (the conversion of data into flesh).(Miller 2011). I’m edging more towards technological embodiment. An example of technological embodiment would be contact lenses, the user forgets they are wearing them but the lenses completely change the way the user interacts with the world. In the same way we can forget that we are using the internet when we use Google Street view to check out potential restaurants in a foreign city for our next tourist trip. We mentally ‘arrive’ at the location before we physically arrive.
Extropianism seeks to map human thought into a set of neural activity patterns (a set of informational channels) with the aim of creating a machine capable of similar or better, finally integrating our intelligent technology into ourselves in a posthuman synthesis. (ref Extropian principles article ). However I think Human thought patterns are too chaotic to be ‘mapped’ and ultimately duplicated by machines.
In any case I found the image of the Internet map fascinating because of its organic nature.
The study of Cybercultures looks at ideas developed in cybernetics and their translation into science fiction literature and film; films which more often than not offer the dystopian view where humans no longer have the agency or control over their future.
Elon Musk tends to share in this dystopian view of the future, unless we develop strategies early on to make the AI ‘safe’. In this video Elon Musk makes some commentary around the exponential rise of machine intelligence and the need for regulatory oversight and restrictions on its development.
When machine intelligence goes beyond human level intelligence, machines will then be better at inventing than we are and they will be doing so on digital timescales (nanoseconds). Humans would then have a future that is shaped by the preferences of this ‘Superintelligent’ AI.
Will it be a utopian world where the machine is ‘on our side’, or a dystopic future where humans are under threat? Knox (2015) notes that Cybercultures tended to emphasise a radical otherness to technology. But what if we continued to link ourselves with technology rather than keep it separate from us? One of the strategies to make super intelligent AI less of a threat might be to become part cyborg ourselves. Knox (2015) describes the algorithmic culture as a “complex relationship between humans and non-humans”, “pointing towards an increased entanglement of agencies in the production of knowledge and culture”.
Indeed this is what Elon Musk suggests in this video- for humans, to become an extension of AI, rather than to stay separate from it. Mr Musk envisions some sort of merger with biological intelligence and machine intelligence, a biological tertiary layer on our bodies, or within our bodies, that links the phone or the personal piece of technology with our brain in a way that allows interactions can take place in nano seconds, thereby rivalling a machine server.
References
Knox, J 2015, Critical education and digital cultures. in M Peters (ed.), Encyclopedia of Educational Philosophy and Theory. Springer, pp. 1-6. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-532-7_124-1
