References

References:

Q&A: Author Nicholas Carr on the Terrifying Future of Computing (2007). Retrieved May 1 2012, from http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/16-01/st_qa
 
Vernor Vinge, The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era (1993) Retrieved May 12 2012, from http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/faculty/vinge/misc/singularity.html

Micah White, Consumer Society Is Made To Break (2008) Retrieved May 13, from
http://www.adbusters.org/blogs/blackspot_blog/consumer_society_made_break.html


Bill Joy, Why the future doesn't need us (2004) Retrieved May 2 2012, from http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy.html

Amy Wilis, Rich 'may evolve into separate species' (2009) Retrieved April 30 2012, from

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/evolution/6432628/Rich-may-evolve-into-separate-species.html

Living in the End Times

The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.

Already, in the 60's, our cities were coming to resemble electrical circuits; Today we have gone beyond the television and we operate in that Global Village that Marshall McLuhan described as an 'electronic nervous system' and─in a very cyber turn of phrase─an extension of consciousness. Indeed, in the age of cloud computing, the computer is the network; "The World Wide Web is becoming one vast, programmable machine." Nicholas Carr says in a Wired Magazine Q&A.

The science-fiction of yesterday has shaped our dreams and expectations of the future. Figures like Ray Kurzweil and Vernor Vinge argue that human-machine civilization is following an exponential curve and that it is approaching an event-horizon which will consist of an intelligence explosion as the result of the creation of a super-intelligence. Vinge says in The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era:

we are on the edge of change comparable to the rise of human life on Earth. The precise cause of this change is the imminent creation by technology of entities with greater than human intelligence.

Google is very much in the business of trying to create Artificial Intelligence. Besides the specifics of how this Singularity will come about, there are questions about whom will take part in this evolution of super-humanity.

Already, there is discussion of the technology gap between rich and poor. Will advances in bio-genetics and nano technology create a technological apartheid in which those with the money to indulge themselves in such technologies become post-human, leaving the rest of us behind in biological obsolescence?

Automation promises to free humans from the toil of hard labour and mundane, repetitive tasks. Already there are factories in which automobiles are produced almost entirely without human intervention. China this year is set to become the largest user of robotics. Foxconn ─ the world's largest electronics manufacturing contractor and the maker of Apple products─aims to have 1 million robotic arms in their factories this year. Steve Wozniak of Apple believes that in the robotic future, human beings will be the pets of the machines:

"We're already creating the superior beings, I think we lost the battle to the machines long ago," he said.
"We're going to become the pets, the dogs of the house."

Is the endgame of our technological development to produce robots and computers of such sophistication that we will, finally, be made redundant? What becomes of economics if it's end is to progressively make us all unemployed? Some people believe that automation and new forms of energy will lead to the dissolution of the monetary system and capitalism with it, to be replaced by scientific management of the economy in such a way as to create a post-scarcity world in which freedom can be reconciled with technology.

 Can humanity yet rise above politics and competition to create a better world? Or will our psycho-oligarch overlords simply choose to do away with all the useless eaters? Did someone say H5N1?

Technology is patented, commercialized, designed for obsolescence and drip-fed to the masses in version numbered, disposable chunks. On Channel TED there is talk of peak oil, ocean depletion and climate disaster, even the ATM asks me to consider the environment before I print a receipt. Even if we develop a super-intelligence, is there going to be anything left?

We seem to be racing towards a zero-point where any of these scenarios could come about but I think that ultimately, we can only maintain an attitude of open mindedness and remember that apocalyptic visions and existential angst are nothing new. Human history is certainly not yet over, the future will probably prove to be something less dramatic than the extreme scenarios that play in our imaginations.

I am tired of pessimism; the human race always changes when it is in danger of death. When we start dying in the streets, we will put a stop to pollution and other atrocities. We will react out of necessity.
─ Alejandro Jodorowsky, Psychomagic

The Invisible City

January 17 1961: Dwight Eisenhower, in his farewell address to the nation, warns against the increasing power of a 'military-industrial complex.' Three days later J.F.K. is sworn in as the 35th President of the United States of America. His military briefings include the latest plans (code name: Operation Pluto) for the invasion of Cuba.

On the morning of the final day of January, 1961, Ham the Astrochimp (officially No. 65 but known as Chop Chop Chang to his handlers) is rocketed into space aboard the Mercury-Redstone 2. In his pre-flight training 65 has been taught to push a lever within five seconds of seeing a flashing blue light; failure to do so resulting in an application of positive punishment in the form of a mild electric shock to the soles of his feet while a correct response from him earns a banana pellet. During the Mecury mission the chimpanzee's vital signs and tasks are monitored by computers on Earth. His lever-pushing performance in space is only a fraction of a second slower than on Earth, demonstrating that lever-pushing tasks can be performed in space. The capsule suffers a partial loss of pressure during the flight, but No. 65's space suit prevents him from suffering any harm.  The capsule splashes down in the Atlantic Ocean and is recovered by a rescue ship later in the day. His flight was 16 minutes and 39 seconds long. He suffers only a bruised nose.

1961 will see another first, though somewhat more obscure: Leonard Kleinrock at MIT (an R&D campus for the aforementioned military-industrial complex) publishes Information Flow in Large Communication Nets, the first paper on packet switching theory, the development of which will be a step towards the creation of an 'Intergalactic Computer Network.'

Lewis Mumford in the opening to his 1961 book The City in History asks the reader to consider the trajectory of modern urban civilization:  

Will the city disappear or will the whole planet turn into a vast human hive?─which would be another mode of disappearance. Can the needs and desires that have impelled men to live in cities recover, at a still higher level, all that Jerusalem, Athens, or Florence once seemed to promise? Is there still a living choice between Necropolis and Utopia: the possibility of building a new kind of city that will, freed of inner contradictions, positively enrich and further human development?

...When we finally reach our own age, we shall find that urban society has come to a parting of the ways. Here, with a heightened consciousness of our past and a clearer insight into decisions made long ago, which often still control us, we shall be able to face the immediate decision that now confronts man and will, one way or another, ultimately transform him: namely, whether he shall devote himself to the development of his own deepest humanity, or whether he shall surrender himself to the now almost automatic forces he himself has set in motion and yield place to his dehumanized alter ego, 'Post-historic Man.' That second choice will bring with it a progressive loss of feeling, emotion, creative audacity, and finally consciousness.

 Many cities, many existing educational institutions and political organizations have already made their commitment to Post-historic Man. This obedient creature will have no need for the city:  what was once a city will shrink to the dimensions of an underground control center, for in the interests of control and automatism all other attributes of life will be forfeited.