Meat!

Can the human body be a helpful determinate for what is human v. what is not human? Certainly. If nothing else, even when considering philosophies like “Transhumanism” - the idea could be that the “meat” stage is nothing more than the initial stage of human development. While it is currently practical for us to consider human beings in terms of “meat”, humans have found ways to augment themselves to make us “more then meat”, as one might say/consider. The brain, moreover, the type of brain and what it is capable of, being an absolutely crucial determinant to the species, is made entirely of meat.
Even in the future, with augmentation, it may very well be the function of the device and not the makeup of the device itself which provides for that gap. Is being human a way of feeling?
To make this blog entry short, because I am already bored of the topic, I can definitely conclude that the physical makeup is a good starting form factor for what is a human. But it certainly does not appear to be the final form.

Week 2 - Let's Answer Some Questions Right Meow, Then...The Utopian Videos

       

(two videos that display a "utopian" view of technology from Week 2 of our eLearning & Digital Cultures course)

When looking into the above two videos, it is important to notice how absolutely-god-awfully boring they are. I mean, not so boring that you rock back and forth in your chair, staring out whatever is the closest window, hoping that some sort of lifeform (preferably a bird or interesting insect of some sort) will interrupt the monotonous horizon with some sort of reprieve, so that the time you glance back at your screen all the sound effects have gone and the credits are rolling. No - they're not quite that bad, but they are close, and they do seem to be that "fairly dull, commercial that might run on your TV" type - only they're five minutes longer than the average commercial. 

In many ways, these two videos kinda remind me of the Dow "Human Element" ads (here). Not that Dow was at all trying to be technologically relevant - but they commercials themselves have that sort of placating positive incessantly smiling quality. We get it - you're not some scary faceless corporation, you're humans. 

Don't get me wrong, commercials have to be upbeat and positive (I'm not expecting a suicidal-salesman), but I also have noticed that pretty much all of these style of commercials have the same sort of routine - loving family, mom/dad works abroad, child is in school and itching to learn, technology paves the way. It's useful, it's helpful. It's so boring that I'd almost rather watch paint dry. 

However, here are my views on the two above videos, because I want to be a good little student and think/reflect on what I was able to gleam out of these movies. The Corning video, "Day of Glass 2", focuses on how individuals are going to be able to communicate in the future and is the more interesting of the two videos. Education here is visualized as the easy and fast interaction of both students and teachers in a traditional, classroom/school based education system. The students, however, are able to apply a more Kinesthetic form of learning to somewhat abstract ideas - like color integration, etc. People in this video were able to interact with their environments which ported the virtual into reality, as was the case with the "Dinosaur" simulations in Redwoods National Park. Professionals were also able to share information and provide guidance in a seamless way, as was the case with the neurosurgeons discussing brain patterns using the specialized glass that Corning is hoping to develop.

The second video, "Productivity Future" from Microsoft, shows a more familiar view of the future. Phones look like phones (even though the information is fully "wrap around", the device still is in a similar shape to the phones we currently use) - and information appears to be fluid on day-to-day objects like business cards, car windows, etc. While Corning imagined new objects which only slightly resembled their former counterparts, Microsoft sees development of already existing products leading us forward to the future. The Microsoft ad seems to be much more relevant and likely of a forthcoming world - but it was so boring. There was very little that was new or unique within the video and the presentation of how technology might aid us seemed very hypothetical. For some reason, the "believe-ability" of the Utopian films does not even seem to hold a candle to the scariness of the Dystopian ones. 

My question is why, with all of this "hypothetical" technology that hasn't even begun to remotely see the light of day, technology where conversations are going on in backrooms and developers are coding in the middle of the night which may or may not ever come to market, is the focal point of the "commercials" we are watching for this class. When we could be watching videos like the one below, for reach technology that will really go on sale in one year, that developers will be testing starting next month which will make day-to-day activities and communication easier....and a device which foreshadows the oh-so-scary dystopian video I will blog about later...

....until next time. #edcmooc #edcmchat

Jon Stewart Uploads his Stream on Your Facebook - The Daily Show with Jon Stewart - 02/05/13 - Video Clip | Comedy Central

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Saw this last night as I was watching my "nightly news", as it were. Very relevant to my #edcmooc course and super hilarious. Definitely worth reposting for my classmates and keeping around :)

E-learning and Digital Cultures Week 2 - Initial Musings, etc.

Ahhhh, eLearning and Digital Cultures course, how you appear to hate technology oh so much.

Not really, but I do believe that either - due to the choices of our educators or the creative collection of society in general - people are using technology to depict technological-futures in a very bleak light.

This may be because providing that sort of drama makes for a much better storyline than one where people communicate more openly, learn more vividly and complete mundane tasks with ease. I can't help but agree. Why would I want to see video of some kid learning in a Volvo when I can be on the edge-of-my-seat in suspense as a cell phone mysteriously chokes its owner using the power of cellular signal? No matter what the deal is, it is definitely creating an impression upon my fellow classmates in #edcmooc.

Not that technology has gone without slaughtering humans. We've been developing tech since our ancestors, with weaponry usage being exhibited by chimps who learned how to manipulate tools. And sure, they used some of these tools to bash each other's skulls in -- others used different tools for fishing ants out of anthills. Silly chimps...when are they going to realize, like us humans, that slaughtering your same species is wrong. Oh, wait...crap.

So, the first homo-made weapon are referred to as the Schöningen Spears and were used by Homo heidelbergensis. Since that time we've upgraded tanks and rifles, planes and atomic weaponry, even hypothetical Star Wars style anti-weaponry. But the focus of the class that I am currently taking hasn't surrounded any of these well developed, industrialized techs which have wiped the world clean of so many humans. Instead, the focus has been on the laziness of the human mind, how it has been entrenched by an overwhelming amount of day-to-day systems (like a phone, or an iPad), and how these things are capable of destroying society from the inside out. Definitely important subject matter, though it seems somewhat disconcerting that the focus of technology's imminent destructive tendencies seem to come through development and innovation, as opposed to through brute force, human ignorance and an inability to stop irrational actors from making moves upon the world stage.

In Week 2, the future view of technology as described above is crafted through images of the bleak. Of course, we do have two load balancing films which are supposed to anchor the staunch dystopian view that is put forward in the rest of the videos - but that doesn't really seem to playout in the student's mindframe. In fact, from watching the reaction of my classmates through TweetDeck and Google+, it is more then abundantly obvious that our society has directed its focus towards thwarting itself from its own impending doom that is caused by us having access too....too much information too fast, I think. Or something.

I will attempt in future entries to develop my thoughts regarding this division and to try and grasp the reasons individuals tend to lean towards this "Glass half empty" view of technology. Of course I don't really believe that my classmates hate technology, but maybe they fear it? Or maybe they see how much they use it as a crutch which will make them into weaker beings - just as the Periodic Table of Elements obviously made Einstein stupid because he no longer had to look up mass and atomic number of an element, and just as how people became inherently weaker when the Wheel was invented because they no longer had to work as hard for as long...oh...wait....damnit!

Determinism, Technological Determinism, and how to determine which Determinism has already chosen you

I never had much of a "spiritual" center, as it were. Which is okay by me.

While I am the social sort who enjoys like-minded people who come from similar situations, I have never found myself wanting for a greater community of believers who share a common understanding in the afterlife. I have never found myself looking for a deity to focus my complaints and desires towards. Never found myself looking for a set of rules and directives by which I should conduct my day-to-day activities that weren't dictated by homo sapien sapiens. 

And without this, my mind was free to explore numerous scientifically based Theories-of-Everything. While placing my focus in this philosophical realm, alongside the intervention of my Chemistry/Biology minded friend Adam, my studies began to surround a concept known as Determinism. This philosophical stance, as summarized by the grand Wiki, is simply:

is a metaphysical philosophical position stating that for everything that happens there are conditions such that, given those conditions, nothing else could happen

And that

often is taken to mean simply causal determinism, that is, basing determinism upon the idea of cause-and-effect. It is the concept that events within a given paradigm are bound by causality in such a way that any state (of an object or event) is completely determined by prior states.

Very basically, you could say "everything happens as it has to happen, otherwise it would happen some other way". This doesn't assume predictability - in fact, many overlaying/more specific philosophies (such as Chaos Theory) are deterministic concepts which indicate the near impossibility of predictability.

So, of course, my interest was piqued when I cam across the words Technological Determinism in a course offered through the always-amazing online learning organization Coursera. The concept of Technological Determinism (as provided to me by a cursory read of Daniel Chandler's Technological or Media Determinism) states:

a central controversy concerns how far technology does or does not condition social change. Each commentator emphasizes different facts in technological change.

And is thus part of the philosophical debate regarding determinism. But it seems strange that technological determinists need a specific realm of study. The fundamental crux of the philosophy is that change and existence has been determined through one principal factor, technology. I just have a hard time in my mind rectifying that, as determinists, these philosophers do not acknowledge the other coexisting circumstances that are impacting and influencing each other alongside technology.

This is of course the issue of holism v. reductionism. Daniel Chandler does an excellent job at explaining this and I am thrilled to have come across such a great piece of writing in my eLearning & Digital Cultures class. Very very nice to stumble so heavily upon philosophy in what I thought was going to be a practical application style course.

Yes, this post was mostly babbling, but here is what you can take away from it:

1. Reductionist prinicples can be useful, but Technological Determinism seems to be missing much of the larger point to the general philosophy. Causality requires indications as to what social/technological/biological/everything causes other social/technological/biological/everything changes. It's very hard to indicate that ONE of the MILLIONS of interacting stimuli is the principle driver of existence.
2. Coursera.org is the SHIT! You should go there, now, and sign up for a class (if you're not already in school).
3. I am a lowly atheist destined to burn in hell! Wheeeeeeeeee!!