Life

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What is the next power base for human society?

I’ve heard many arguments against the development of artificial intelligence (Ai) and the possibility of uploading our consciousness to similar artificial environments, or at least artificially enhancing our minds and bodies. They say that our governments will not let it happen, or that the churches will be able to put sufficient pressure to bear to prevent it. I disagree. Ai will have access to sufficient computational resources to be able to “what if” its way past our societal limiters; governments, churches etc. It will know what an un-enhanced human will do long before we ourselves do – or at least it will have worked out many millions of scenarios, with solutions to preserve themselves banked for each perceived action, ready to be deployed.

Once the singularity is close, it is inevitable. As to the question of how close, to have proposed this question is itself a strong indicator that the turning point of human engineering has passed and that a human engineered limiter is no longer possible.

Am I frightened? No!

Who should be frightened? The current powerbase. In any revolution, power shifts and those who cling longest and most desperately to the old ways will suffer the worst.

Lets look at a powerbase from recent history; the monarchy. The English monarchy still exists today and although they are still wealthy from a capital perspective, they do not have either the cash flow or the power of life or death over their people. It is quite the opposite; they exist at the mercy of their people, kept on life support in a human zoo or museum for the people’s amusement.

How did the English Monarchy survive when the Russian or French did not? They divested their power to the people; they set their people free and this act of grace and trust enabled them to avoid the fate of many other monarchies that clung too desperately to their historic powers.

So who amongst us will hold the power when the inevitable singularity occurs? I think it will be those who embrace the opportunities to enhance our intelligence; it will be those who are able to free their minds.

Moeraki Boulders - let go

I don’t know, and haven’t had enough time to digest the implications of these thoughts. If I hark back to the beginings of this note; I don’t have the neural capacity to “what if” my final opinion in the time it has taken to write the words from there to here!

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Transcending the physical limits of Einsteinian laws

Just as humans have broken through barriers we’ve previously thought to be insurmountable, so will we find a way to transcend the physical laws of gravity, space and eventually time.  In simplified terms Einsteinian law sets the practical physical limit for space travel at much less than the speed of light; the faster we travel the greater our mass and with a corresponding increase in energy to continue to accelerate. Yet in contrast we can send data at the speed of light without even trying, and have done since early last century.

Distant Spiral Galaxy NGC 4603, Home to Variable Stars
Source: Hubblesite.org

Ray Kurzweil describes a point in our evolution—it is closer than we think—when we can convert our entire consciousness into data (not just our memory), and, therefore, send it at the speed of light where ever we want. But if there is nothing out there to receive it, it will remain as data and continue on infinitely through the universe. If we do come to communicate with a similarly intelligent and advanced society light years away we could first send information and instructions on how to build a biological vessel for our transported consciousness to be downloaded to. We will find ourselves having traveled across space at impossible speeds for physical objects.

To me this sounds perfectly plausible and if it sounds plausible to us in our current primitive state then it will be much simpler in the future.

We have to unshackle our minds from the physical world, and limiting our thoughts to the current and immediately past paradigms. The universe is too big [yet another physical term?] for that. I think this is a way for us to comprehend the universe as infinite. With our minds shackled to physical ideals we cannot grasp the infinite; the best we can do is think of something so large we can barely comprehend it. To truly be able to understand the infinite we must release our maniacal grasp on physical ideals…all of them.

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Branding the literary works of Authorial Groups?

WritingPadAndBooks

Popular music is one of the few creative mediums where branding is used to market the work of a group of artists, The Beatles, U2, or Muse for example. People who have enjoyed previously released work from these groups will often purchase a new release, sight-unseen, because they know and love the “brand” of product the group produces. This branding has been used in other creative mediums. In cinema for example the latest “Tarantino” film is almost guaranteed to be well attended because the viewing public have come to know what to expect in one of his films. In the book industry many author’s work is branded more with the author’s name than with the subject matter of the specific book.

A good percentage of popular music releases over the past half a century have been from groups of artists and this continues to be the case today for two reasons. Firstly, the quality of work that can be produced through a collaborative creative process can be much greater than something produced in isolation, and secondly, that the branding of the product is an immediate and lasting marketing tool. Literary products have not embraced this collaborative approach to the degree that the music industry has. We do see products written jointly by several authors but they are marketed under both author’s names rather than an abstract group name.

Is the literary industry missing out on both counts? …I think they are!

In my “day job” I work collaboratively on creative design tasks and I know from personal experience over the past few decades that I could never have produced designs at anywhere near the quality the group has been able to generate, if I had worked in isolation.

When it comes to writing, I have worked in isolation on a large work of fiction for over a year and although some of the writing is of high quality the project is languishing. A few weeks ago when I first began to contemplate the notion of Authorial Groups I decided to seek out one or more writers to work collaboratively on this project with the object of forming a long term partnership where we could brand our joint literary works. I found this step challenging to take, considering the time and effort I have invested  already in research and writing for the work but I am convinced the end product will be of superior quality and has a better chance of reaching the people I intend it to.

The output from groups can also be higher in quantity due to the number of people focused together at the task of writing. This approach should lead to more regular and reliable releases too, which can only help to build the brand loyalty that will ensure the longevity of the process and the group.

In the same way a band leader, or existing band, will audition for new members I decided to approach a writer to work on a short piece of fiction. This on-the-job task may also help to materialise a collaborative writing process that could work for an authorial group.

So, I’ve engaged with another writer and we’ve agreed to collaborate on a short story to both flesh out the process of literary collaboration and group dynamics in writing.  For example, do we collaborate on the plotting and scene development only and then work independently, or do we continue to write as many fingers at the same keyboard, or simply write the text on a white board and transcribe it at a later date?

Trust is a key factor in any partnership, as well as being strong and confident enough to let your ideas to fall dead to the ground if they are not taken up by the group. Luckily I have worked collaboratively with this writer on other creative projects before and we have often joked about each others crap… sorry…outlandish and impractical ideas. In a way we already know how to work together creatively.

The process has started…

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Kurzweil’s Singularity and artificial enhancements to our body

The concept of the singularity came up last night while I was researching an aspect of my novel. According to Ray Kurzweil, the singularity is point in the evolution of the universe when technology can improve itself faster than humans can improve it and the technology cuts us out of the loop.

ieee-spectrum-technological-singularity-thumb

Long before this point, however, Kurzweil predicts there will be only a few humans without extensive artificial enhancement wether it be enhanced limbs, digestive systems, or the insertion of entertainment driven nanobots. He also suggests the possibility to upload your mind entirely from your physical body. I found this disconcerting and a little depressing. It is not the future I imagined for my grandchildren where the line between their natural human presence and a humanoid cyborg is blurred.

This was a distraction to my research and I pushed these thoughts to one side and continued along, suitably engrossed, on my original path of discovery. The next time I looked up from my books and notebook I noticed it was 1am and thought, “Why do I have to sleep? There’re so many things I want to research and understand!” My mind raced while I reluctantly closed the notebook and slid my fountain pen into its leather case. How could I get by with less sleep? And then, like the target of my own satirical attack I choked on the thought. This is why humans will opt for artificial enhancement; not just to run faster, or to breathe in a CO2 rich atmosphere, but to release our mind from the dirty biological container it’s entrapped in.

I realised I will be tempted to upload my mind. But this realisation led me to consider what would become of the mind/body that remained—I must assume the uploaded “consciousness” is a copy. Would it be culled and consumed as some form of payment for service, or could the physical part be “parked” as a potential refuge for the mind if an emergency eventuated that threatened the security of the artificially supported entity in the world wide neural web? A hard copy backup or snapshot…

How would these artificially supported consciousnesses interact? Just consider the difficulty in sustaining a long distance relationship without the occasional physical visit. Maybe we’ll interact in a completely virtual environment so authentic the experience sufficiently meets the demands of our minds; however unclear they currently may be. There’s has to be a short story here at least!

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Authorial Groups and Intrinsic Worth; “Collaborwriting”

MirandaChasm

Why don’t we see authorial groups like we do with musical bands? A quick answer could be that performing a musical work often requires a group of musicians while writing is completed in isolation. As artists, writers may be selling their work short by attempting to keep it pure and cleansed of external influences. Of course we are all influenced by other artists work but what I’m suggesting is to collaborate; a process where two or more minds produce something that could never be formed by individual writers working in isolation.

Writing a novel—any writing in fact—is a complex mix of many different processes; plotting, structural design, constructing themes and visions, discovering unique plot twists…it’s never simply putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard. There’s editing too, and in some situations a good editor can tease out an author’s ideas to produce a work of art that is more intelligible. This is more akin to a record producer who tinkers and cleans, tidying the work as it exists on the page.

Collaborwriting as a group can help to avoid common pitfalls of writing such as a loss of confidence in your ability and becoming overcritical of your work. I know first hand how debilitating these moments can be. Human nature and an environment of trust will ensure we do not become too critical of a collaborative work. Group dynamics can also foster supportive behaviors; lifting members out of their low points and at other times they can stand on each others shoulders to reach heights not possible alone.

A moment of genuine collaborative writing, or “Collaborwriting”, occurs off the page when two minds collide and meld together two form something unique. An early theory about the formation of Miranda, a moon of Uranus, suggested it was formed by the collision of two planetesimal bodies melding to form a single moon. Hugo and Nebula award winning author Kim Stanley Robinson used Miranda’s unique geological history to highlight and suggest the human mind is the integral part of environmental beauty:

After that they hiked down the spine of the buttress in silence. Over the course of the day they descended to Bottoms Landing. Now they were a kilometre below the rims of the chasm, and the sky was a starry band overhead; Uranus fat in the middle of it, the sun a blazing jewel just to one side. Under this gorgeous array the depth of the rift was sublime, astonishing; again Zo felt herself to be flying.

“You’ve located intrinsic worth in the wrong place,” she said to all of them… “It’s like a rainbow. Without an observer at a twenty three degree angle to the light being reflected off a cloud of spherical droplets, there is no rainbow. The whole universe is like that. Our spirits stand at a twenty three degree angle to the universe. There is some new thing created at the contact of photon and retina, some space created between rock and mind. Without mind there is no intrinsic worth.” – Blue Mars (Pages 435-436).

Further illustrating Robinson’s metaphor, the intrinsic beauty of good writing is not contained on the page, that is just ink and paper, and it is not the words and punctuation we craft as writers, it is the thoughts and feelings the writing manifests in the reader’s mind. I’m not suggesting that this higher plane of communication is unachievable when writing in isolation, but that through collaboration we open up possibilities and manifest ideas and concepts that could not be formed by any singular sentient mind.