Towards a Theory of Technology

the death of the internet? not damn well likely.

2008-06-12T17:20:00.004-04:00

Some ado over the past few days about a supposedly 'leaked' plan to 'kill' the internet by 2012--effectively reducing all access to a small number of corporate websites. This would reduce the internet's role as a medium from the almost pervasive dominance it now enjoys to something more or less akin to the radio. This is made all the more unsettling by the recent news that the nation's three largest internet carriers are banning Usenet outright.

There are several problems with this hypothesis. The first and most obvious is competition. While the analogy is tenuous at best in the context of net-neutrality debates, it's a bit different here. If a coalition of internet providers collude and decide to limit access to certain websites without any due cause, then there will likely be legal problems that even the Orwellian US government will have problems allowing. The agreement between the NY AG and internet providers to ban Usenet will no doubt be challenged in court. If any such challenge succeeds, then all the better for my argument. If it fails, it will probably fail because of a 'prevailing interest' argument on the government's part to the effect that blocking access to child pornography is an overriding interest of the government's and therefore free speech takes a back seat.

If this works--which is yet to be seen--then the burden will still be on the shoulders of whichever telecommunications company decides to restrict access to certain websites.

Similarly, the fragmented nature of the internet means that there will likely be a way to access the websites anyway through more devious means (off-shore proxies). US businesses are already too invested in their online operations abroad to allow telecommunications providers to simply block access to their sites from abroad. Again, like I mentioned in my earlier posts about how the 2008 elections will turn out, I think that the commercial interests of the united states are by and large behind the internet, and this election cycle will see the election of a more liberal congress if only because commercial interests both inside and outside the U.S. are afraid of the power that the telecommunications industry has been trying to exert over the internet.

Lastly I think the 'last ditch' safety against this turn of events is a common friend: Google. Google has been buying hundreds of miles of dark fiber, and noone really knows why. I think that regardless of Google's intentions, it is in their interest and their business philosophy to keep the internet an 'open' marketplace (as evinced by their fervent opposition to Ebay's attempts to monopolize the methods of payment available for auction sellers and buyers). Similarly, if we see the ascendancy of an internet that is without the freedom of movement and information currently afforded users, Google will step up and provide an alternative platform that will allow free communication.

iphone?

2008-06-11T20:58:00.000-04:00

I'm reading Tolstoy's War and Peace, and seeing as the time I spend reading is the same time I spend writing, 'time is tight', as the English say. I'm re-thinking the style of this blog and the pace that I want it to follow. Rather than long-winded and undoubtedly difficult-to-comprehend posts, I think that shorter, more succinct pieces that are also more modest in scope and scale will benefit both myself and my non-existent reader--as Wittgenstein himself believed, I belong to a different time. I think my life's journey will be to figure out whether that time is in the future or the past.

borders in a post-border economy

2008-05-30T18:30:00.000-04:00

The 2008 United States presidential elections have a certain air of queerness about them. I do not invoke that adjective as if I am somehow entitled to it as a student at one of the queerest (in the other sense of that word) college communities in the world.

As with any subject that is given almost 24-hours-a-day news coverage, the best way to gain a fruitful and yielding perspective on an important topic is actually to engage in a sort of foreplay in willful ignorance. Without bandying about with more words I think the aim of this post is to try and gain a perspective not so much on the various candidates that compose this electoral cycle but the forces that give them their poise. I think that what makes this election cycle important is not so much the candidates themselves (they are, with the exception of Barack Obama, expendable). What these candidates symbolize is a sea change within the architecture of the American economic and political apparatus. The forces that are lining up behind each candidate choose their side not because they believe any specific candidate will be particularly generous towards them. Instead this election is dictated by the 'bunker' mentality that has grown pervasive in the American consciousness. A cursory look at the supporters of Jon McCain, for example, will yield a list of people who do not look upon McCain as a friend but more as an enemy of an enemy.

There are roughly three groups of people and lobbyists who have the most to gain and to lose in this election. They are (roughly): The Military-Industrial complex, commerce, and the internet. It does not take much thought to see just how much these groups overlap, but I think that they are useful insofar as they provide a decent enough benchmark of just what a particular candidate stands for (especially considering how similar the policies and proposals of Obama and Clinton are). Additionally, I think that the criterion for a candidate's victory in the general election will be decided upon just how unified two of these groups will be around any one particular candidate.

To give an example in hindsight, George bush had the unified support of the military-industrial complex and commerce behind him in both the 2000 and 2004 elections. I do not think that the internet had yet come to realize its own potential in that election, which is why the 2008 election is so different: many groups that were considered essential to a coalition (religious groups, steel workers unions, etc.) are being cast by the wayside or have been supplanted by these three massive interest groupings that will determine the outcome of the election in 2008.

Commerce
Commerce has dominated any election in the relevant past; I think that the reason behind this was the gradual privatization and greater integration of the nation's media into the greater structures of corporate America. Because of the (until recent) monopoly that American corporations enjoyed on the dissemination of news and opinions, it was relatively easy for them to tilt the outcomes of any given election, especially elections on a nation-wide scale. in the 1996, 2000, and 2004 elections, the interests of commerce were closely aligned with those of the military-industrial complex. This however has changed in recent months, and I myself trace the cause of this to the Fed's recent creation of a lending vehicle which allows large-scale commercial banks to borrow large amounts of cash with shaky assets as collateral. This is not a root cause in itself; instead it is the outcome of the vast monopolization of available capital and monetary assets by the United States' military apparatus. Realizing that the pools of credit have all dried up, American commercial interests have slowly come to oppose the political clout that military contractors hold (in a few words, when the Fed prints money, most of it goes to the military contractors. this is not good for Commerce as inflation has already devalued this cash as it reaches their coffers).

Why do I think that commerce will side with Barack Obama?
Clinton is out of the primary (or will be presently). There has been a lot of cooing, from even the strangest corners of Corporate America, over the presumptive democratic nominee, Barack Obama. Where McCain has a demonstrably small brain for commercial manners, Obama seems to have taken a tempered, if a bit populist approach to the American economy, which most commercial interests like. The big losers inside of the "Commerce" bracket if Obama wins? Pharma (though not as much as it would have been with Clinton, which is why I think she will not be elected), News corporations (which makes the link above all the more ironic), and most of all manufacturing Unions. Service industry laborers are rabidly supporting Obama chiefly because he stands to be the catalyst for the last great shift in the American economy: namely an elimination of manufacturing-sector labor and a shift towards a mainly service-industry economy (this can be a good or a bad thing depending on how you look at it).

The Military-Industrial Complex
Not much needs to be said here about this one except that it is in a bit of a hard position during this election. On the one hand it has nothing to worry about from any candidate because none seek to dislodge it from its central position within the American economy (this would require someone absolutely crazy like Ron Paul). They of course are throwing their support behind Jon McCain but I think in the end they are seeing the boundaries of their ability to influence world affairs and what McCain promises does not seem to bode well in the minds of many military movers and shakers (war with Iran).

Who will they go for?
McCain, assuredly. However the military-industrial complex, contrary to its almost pervasive influence on the American economy, has very little voice for itself. On the one hand it is beholden to the interests of the Pentagon (which will be a force to reckoned with itself once the new president takes power) and also has its own system of rigid morals that prevent it from acting in the devious ways that Commerce and Unions have done in the past. Their support for McCain will in the end backfire for both McCain and the military-industrial complex, and at least the latter seems to recognize this possibility (which is why their support is so muted).

Finally this brings us to the Internet, the position I am most able to expound upon (I hope the writing above was a little more than drivel and was able to benefit those with a passing interest in this blog).

The Internet
Firstly, why am I choosing to represent the Internet on the same level as Commerce and the Military-Industrial Complex? Simply put, I think the Internet has come to represent free enterprise in the American economy--and given the threatened position in which free enterprise now sits (dried-up money supply, difficulty getting credit, etc.), this bloc of voters and campaigners has the most to gain and lose during the 2008 election cycle. I think that the Internet has come to replace the Media as America's 'fourth estate'. This is mainly due to the commercialization of traditional mediums of news. But also it is due to the simple fact that people who before could not find their voice in traditional media, commerce, or even the military see the internet as a truly functional staging ground for a public offensive against the current state of affairs (both political and economic). The Internet has enabled even the least savvy user to gain a perspective on the United States and the world that is forbidden to someone working in Government or in the Military who is beholden to national interests. Barack Obama, in his commitments to negotiate with enemy states like Iran and North Korea, is creating a thinly-veiled promise to surrender the United States' sovereignty to the wider international currents of diplomacy and commerce.

Years ago this would have been a bad thing, but with the internet the vast majority of influential people in the world are peeking beyond their own national borders. Instead of seeing a murky world that is on the whole antagonistic, they see a world that would stand to be benefited from as well as beneficial to the United States' admission of its previous faults and engagement with the international community as a whole. Obama will sign into the Kyoto protocols and meet with Iran.

The biggest remaining question, however, is who stands to win out from an Obama presidency?

This question will not be answered until 2012. Barack Obama is something of an unknown, but if I were to put the problem in an abbreviated fashion, I think that the problem that Obama will create will be a world of rampant corporatism with little oversight from any governing body (we saw this with the credit crisis). If Obama can successfully bring international corporations under heel, we may see the dawn of a new era of global prosperity, with the Internet (and its beholden interests) at the helm of a new global economy and political apparatus. If he fails we will see something akin to late 19th-century American fiefdom-economics. Needless to say, the next 8 years are going to be interesting.

two new posts in the next few days...

2008-05-30T12:31:00.001-04:00

Two things I've been mulling over these past few days (when not getting hit by collapsing cranes): methods of philosophical inquiry and issues of nationalism in the age of e-commerce and internet communication. I hope to give the latter topic a thorough treatment today or tomorrow. The former will probably not even get its own post as it has more to do with my preparations for a senior thesis than the subject of this blog.

I was planning on pounding out a post right now but I'm in something of a rut at the moment so far as writing is concerned; I just can't quite 'find my voice', as countless other writers before me have said (to the general 'boo-hoo' from their audiences above or below).

addendum to post 'faith in technology'

2008-05-07T10:14:00.001-04:00

An astute reader pointed out several things with regard to my post, 'faith in technology', posted on facebook. I will attach his comments in full after my response.

Alex does not really take a contrary viewpoint so much as say that science has never tried to yield a theory of 'truth' that is unequivocally true. Instead, he argues, science is given such stature in our society for its "astonishing effectiveness at solving our problems and making our lives more comfortable". Now, I will start by simply saying that Alex and I really have no substantive disagreement; he has conceded that it is 'easy' for me to make a successful religious or epistemological objection to scientism, but that I am not really disputing the usefulness of science in society.

I'm not sure Alex should allow me that. To me, that concession is made under the assumption that epistemologists and armchair theologians may come up with incontrovertible proof that science is wrong, but the improvements that it has brought to our lives through medicine, communication, transportation, etc. all show just how important science is to our society.

Now, any disagreement from me will be just how far and important epistemological objections to scientism are, and I would rather save Alex time than bother rehashing an argument to that end. However what I think he does not see is that science does make knowledge claims, with very damaging implications. A cursory look at the latest New York Times Magazine that purports to demonstrate exactly what is wrong with your brain if you have anxiety is not a constructive way to look at the mind. Modern psychotherapy has successfully medicated an entire nation of people with little mind for the consequences on our long-term sanity.

But Alex would probably object to my polemicizing against science with psychology as a surrogate. I'll leave him with one big, unanswered question:

Has science really made life better?

A few qualifications: I do not think that you can convince me that atomic theory has made life on earth better off. Similarly, I do not believe that the advent of coal-fired power plants has not necessarily made the world a better place. Of course, if you consider only the past and the present as case studies for your consideration, you would disagree (and be correct). But science itself is discovering what it has wrought in the form of global warming, lack of natural resources, etc. These problems, however, are not limited and are not going to be 'patched up' by science in order to make a better future.

They all stem from the one, fundamental problem of science: tunnel-vision. Alex may claim that Einsteinian Mechanics is better than Newtonian mechanics, but like he says, all scientific theories have a use. And unfortunately, this use involves a necessary separation of an object from its environment, and a denial of its relationship with all other things in the environment from which it was taken.

This mentality, older even than science proper, is given rise to in Greek metaphysics and epistemology; it is the idea (which has found itself perverted and extended beyond all reasonable limitations in modern analytic philosophy and its cognates, cognitive and the other behavioral sciences) that an object can be mastered and permeated through with our comprehension absent its surrounding environs. I do not dispute that science is the way of the future; I simply want to raise a simple, yet in my mind quite important objection: Every scientific advance that has been the cause of a problem (anti-depressants, utilization of fossil fuels for energy and heat) could have been tempered in order to avoid its consequent problem. However this is not the job of science, because contrary to what Alex believes, I think that science does make a knowledge claim, however bedecked it is in the robes of humility and good conscience.

Addendum to my addendum: Alex further claims that science is self-correcting, and that most scientists test their theories to the breaking point in order to further refine their theories and the current science. Does he really believe this? I would ask him: is it not the case that a scientist comes up with a theory which he then conducts experiments to prove rather than disprove his theory? To paraphrase my favorite philosopher: Every instance can be made to accord with a law, and a law can be made to account for every instance; I simply deny that in doing this you are actually following rules or creating laws.

Alex's Original Comments:

Sure, science may be something we almost worship and diefy, but it is mechanistically distinct from all other religions. While all of them are born from an unending quest for "Truth", science is the only 'religion' that fully takes into account the potential for human fallibility an bias in misleading our ascent to this divine understanding of the universe - and this is where the scientific method is born. With the scientific method, and with agreement upon certain metrics (distance, time, pH, etc.), humans of all shapes, sizes, colors and cultures are able to replicate the findings of others and test hypotheses- the hypothetical descriptions of reality provided by others.

It's agreed that science doesn't nor ever will yield "Truth" - for every epistemologist will raise hell whenever a scientist asserts that his/her theory is "known" to be true. However, the utility of our theories is confirmed as people worldwide repeat the experiments and find similar results.

Take Atomic Theory. To be blunt, Atomic theory was born as ejaculate from the intellectual masterbation of mathematicians found itself resting smugly upon phenomena nobody could explain. The math worked - it allowed people to predict with stunning accuracy the amount of given chemicals that will be used up or produced in certain reactions. Once the math worked, people had to come up with explanations for what the math seems to be describing - and so they said that billiard balls called "atoms" are the building blocks of all matter. The mathematicians didn't stop there. Call them nymphomaniacs or what you will, but the mathematicians time and time again pushed the frontiers of understanding of the subatomic world - and scientists had to come up with concepts that fit the math.

Nobody has ever seen an atom, much less an electron, proton, neutron, gluon or what have you (let's not mention this obscure concept of "energy").

So, we have no way of knowing if this concept of an "Atom" is actually "true". However, regardless whether or not these scientific theories are true, they still yield stunning accuracy of metrics and provide firm foundations for making predictions when we're faced with a novel scenario. Regardless whether or not we "believe in atoms", adopting atomic theory will allow an individual to take huge strides in understanding how the physical universe works.

This will be the case until some other guy, maybe some nympho mathematician, maybe some labrat, or maybe some little kid who asks a piercing question about matter, discovers some phenomenon (using metrics we've agreed upon) that atomic theory fails to explain, no matter how much we try to stretch it...
Delete

Then, the race is on to generate an all-encompassing theory. As a matter of fact, mathematicians and quantum physicists are confronted with this right now as they try to find out a theory that unifies all of the forces of the universe (the sadly named "Theory of Everything" - what happens when we find some phenomenon that this theory can't explain?)

This self-correction of science is what makes it so different from other religions. Buddhism, under our homeboy the current Dali LamaTenzin Gyatso, is one religion that has similar self-correction (they assert that you should never believe anything preached in Buddhist philosophy if your own experience proves otherwise), but nobody is actively trying to disprove the tenets of Buddhism. In science, there are geeks everywhere that would give a kidney to come up with a new and better theory - and so they try to push theories to the limits and find that anomaly that can't be explained by the present theory....

Philosophically and theologically, it's easy to make an argument that science is just another religion. However, it's important to notice the mechanistic uniqueness of science that yields its astonishing effectiveness at solving our problems and making our lives more comfortable. Science and math, founded on the premise that there are metrics and logical tools (cummulative addition, etc.) that we can all agree upon, allow us to correct the basic tenets of these 'religions', and this active self-correction is what makes all the difference. This self-correction, when powered by armies of geeks worldwide who are playing by the same rules, allows for such a rapid advancement of science that generates the myriad technological advancements we see today.

Why I support Barack Obama

2008-05-06T20:29:00.000-04:00

The cult-like following that surrounds Barack Obama (converts to which are second only in fervor to those followers of Ron Paul who I affectionately deem 'Paultards') serves mainly to obscure the man himself, and his vision. Network news is not to be relied on for any accurate depiction of world events themselves, much less what is going on in the mind of any given presidential candidate (though since I consider McCain to be so vapid that any fair comparison between him and another sentient organism would probably only be fair if the object of comparison were a nematode--but I digress).

The video above is a visit that Barack Obama made to the Google campus in Mountain View, CA; anyone who is interested in Obama's policies with regard to US technology would do well to watch this video (and its accompanying Q&A, available on youtube). I think that where Barack Obama succeeds in seeing a viable vision for the future of this country is in his understanding of just how essential technology will be towards the future economic viability of the United States.

Now, I could go into a further diatribe about what bothers me about the other candidates in the race, but I think that it would fall outside the confines of this Blog; and in any case those who would be in any way interested in seeing me rail against Hilary Clinton have probably already seen me do it in real life. The internet, in any case, has no lack of polemics, and I hope to subtract from the vitriol with this blog, not add to it.

faith in technology?

2008-05-04T17:39:00.000-04:00

Hello decent reading public; I hope this sabbath day finds you all content in your homes with your family and close friends; perhaps you have read a book today (scandalous!) or maybe even taken your wife to a dancing-hall (!). Hopefully you have spend a good deal of time thanking the creator for the wonderful life which he has bestowed upon you.

Of course, if you read this blog, the entire paragraph above is laughable. Sunday is just like any other day; it's a day to study for tests, a day to lie in bed with your lover, a day to cry about last night's injustices. We've all got our recompense on sunday.

It's often that I find myself stimulated by the philosophers I study for class towards thoughts about technology and its place in our collective consciences. Take Nietzsche, for example, the great "sham-smasher", according to Mencken. Now, I am not a sooth-sayer so do not take the following words to be any sort of spiritual meditation on our life. If my words are effective you might find your mind sharing a parallel path to my own, at least for a short while. Let us clear away some brush with our sharply-honed (or at least dense enough) machetes and see how Nietzsche comes to bear on the philosophy of technology.

Nietzsche's achievement was to call into question moral systems as a whole. That is, he was the first to ask: "What is the value of our values?" Nietzsche's answer is unsettling for Hegelians, Christians, and moralists alike. First, some background:

Nietzsche, in his Genealogy of Morals, undertakes an etymological investigation of the words "good", "bad", and "evil". He argues that firstly, there is no word for "Evil" in ancient Greek or Latin. Secondly he notices that the words "Good" and "Bad" are derived from positive, self-affirming values in the aforementioned cultures. There are no 'virtuous' connotations to the word "Good"; the words in Latin and Greek are derived from words for war ('bellum') in the former and 'strong' in the latter; hence the words for "bad" are only attributed to those things lacking strength or prowess in battle.

"Well, what does this have to do with the price of Dell laptops?" my faithful readership might ask. Hold on, hold on. We'll get there. Note now that the ideas of judeo-christian morals are cast in a peculiar light. No matter how 'virtuous' they are, we notice now that they are based upon denials of ego, upon restraint. What implications does this have for religion? Well, once we see that this is our conception of morals, then we see that Christian morality is based upon the restraint of our urges to avenge or commit violence.

Now, before we get to an examination of technology (and, more widely still, science) in contemporary discussion, an examination of Nietzsche's arguments against the existence of God. Nietzsche argues that notions of a 'god' are created from ancient communal worship of ancestors. As a society becomes more wealthy and prosperous, the 'debt' that a society feels to its ancestors increases, until what were previously ancestors are now transformed into demi-gods. One can follow the logical progression of this, but the important thing is to see that God is created out of a notion of indebtedness; the Christian God is the ultimate and logically complete form of this notion: a god that for your sins comes to Earth as a human and allows himself to be destroyed for your forgiveness. Talk about a large tally of debt!

Now, Nietzsche astutely points out that it is the achievement of the modern age to realize this truth, and subsequently turn to science to derive a meaning from life. But, Nietzsche notes, this is simply the exact same sort of worship associated with previous gods! Does one not see this idea of a God echoed in the wide-spread respect for 'scientific truth' and 'logical necessity'? Nietzsche's philosophy was about getting beyond this notion of Truth, but at this point I would recommend the reader to take his attentions to Nietzsche himself rather than listen to this poor conduit.

The important thing to realize is that what people take to be the full-hearted truth, and the thing into which people place the entirety of their hard-fought faith into, this is the same sort of dogmatism that existed before! Any cursory look at the place that technology holds in our society will yield this view. How can it be otherwise? Who do we expect to deliver us from the spectre of global warming? Science and human ingenuity, of course! What we have to realize is that science is something that is of use, not something that yields Truth, in any qualifiable form. We are not interested in Holism (and Truth without qualification is necessarily part of a holistic worldview) - we are interested in the things that will make life easier.

The Internet's case against Democracy

2008-04-26T11:44:00.000-04:00

With so much ado about the presidential nomination process going on in the states presently, I feel some commentary on this matter from a more technologically-inclined view might merit my attentions. The greatest question raised by these elections is not which of the three possible nominees are going to best serve the ideals of the nation. It is quite simply this: is the current methodology by which we determine our leadership at all adequate for solving the problems that our country currently faces?

First a bit of an ahistorical preface: I do not here intend to concern myself with facts and a politically correct (read: moralistic) account of the current state of affairs. It is possible that my current diet of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer has motivated me along this course; the important thing is that those who read this article must withhold judgment if it is based upon some petty disagreement with the facts I invoke. If you can see the ideas and processes with which I am struggling then the value of this essay will not be lost on you. If, however, you choose to assume a reactionary, moralistic stance towards me and deny my views a priori on account of their seeming to be politically incorrect, then I encourage you to visit a more palatable website.

The American electoral system has its roots in the founding father's desire for a sort of 'landed aristocracy' (or as close as possible in the then just-conceived USA) to make most of the political decisions. I believe that it is from this viewpoint that women and African-Americans were excluded by the constitution from the voting process, not because of any virulent racism (though it of course did exist and was jockeying for this state of affairs as well). The electoral college as such comes into being as a way to limit the ability for the popular vote to determine who holds power in a country. This is obvious to most people: it is for this reason that our political system is so inhospitable to 3rd-party candidates. Instead of getting into this fertile topic however, let us simply concede that the electoral college as such functions as a way to remove and diffuse the power of the popular vote. If an electorate votes in a 'winner-takes-all' local election for the right to decide who their representative will nominate as president, it logically follows that a candidate with popular appeal--that is, a candidate who wins the popular vote--may not and in fact will not necessarily win the election (2000 is the most recent example of this phenomenon; there are other instances as well).

How has this system gone wrong? For several reasons. First of all, the 17th amendment (changing the election of senators to a popular vote instead of being nominated by a state's assembly) and universal suffrage are two glaring examples of "just" or "virtuous" democratization that has had a detrimental effect on the country's election system. Now before I get into the meat of my argument I would like to preface that some of the views (indeed even the one just mentioned) I do not in any way espouse; I am undergoing an exercise to see just how viable our current electoral system remains in this hyper-technological world.

Now, the result of this diffusion of voting power has been beneficial in recent years. Indeed as a fully-liberal democrat I can only be happy that women and minorities are allowed to vote; these demographic groups form the backbone of the Democratic election effort. But what has happened as a consequence is that most people who vote today do not have the slightest knowledge about who they are voting for. Indeed the current state of American democracy is a paradox of epic proportions: presently the widest number of people exercise power over the election process (we are second-only to India in this regard), but also the centralization of both power and the media has induced a process of stultification amongst this country's electorate that is staggering.

And this is the crux of my argument: the internet and its associated de-centralization of media distribution has been a boon to those members of society who have the time to learn about those men and women who stand for election. But at the same time, the people who really do know about what is happening in this country are effectively silenced by the great mass of people who are either too busy or too ignorant to bother with learning about the calamities that stand on our collective doorstep.

So we must grapple with the democratization of information but the necessary limiting of power. Can you not see why this is necessary? The only alternative is to work towards the education of everyone so that they are not so ignorant of our situation. But this is impossible with the current politics in play. The republicans are of course aware of this and have successfully neutered our public education system. So what does a Democrat of good conscience do? Hope for the best and assume that somewhere down the line people will be educated enough to make decisions that are based upon informed opinions and rational debate?

It is saddening for me to have to say this, but if you asked me my political views today I would say that I am a fascist. Not in the antiquated 20th-century use of the term. Global Warming, the war in Iraq, the coming conflict with Iran, and the economic crisis cannot be adequately dealt with by any of the candidates that stand for election (though a cursory glance to the left will show you where the realist inside of me places his hopes and hard-earned cash). What is most necessitated by the internet revolution is a de-democratization of the political process; one that does not allow the current farce to continue. What I refer to as the 'current farce' is the fact-of-the-matter situation in which a select group of people are elected regardless--this is the same situation as the one I am advocating--but for one major distinction: We must realize the pervasive corruption that has taken hold of Washington and destroy it by replacing not the people who hold office but the people who decide who stands for office.

It remains to be determined just who will retain the power to decide elections (and I suppose in that sense this article is most lacking). In this sense my ignorance of history does not pay off: I haven't the slightest idea of how to create a meritocracy that on the one hand keeps the best interests of the nation as a whole in mind but on the other keeps complete fucking tossers such as Jon McCain and George Bush out of the political process. Because indeed our current political situation is the result of a perversion of the existing meritocracy. Where previously distinguished military service or an Ivy-league education were beneficial requisites for holding office, the administration of George Bush has proven this state of affairs to be woefully inadequate.

I do not propose any solutions but I think that it is the job of this generation (my own) to come up with a solution to this problem that can be summed up as: "disenfranchisement, but disenfranchisement of the right people". More later.

free will?

2008-04-17T14:50:00.000-04:00

I just watched John Searle's talk at Google about the question of the existence of 'free will'. I'm going to gloss over the details (the video is above for anyone interested in reading it), but Searle offers two contradictory theories of Free will:

Theory the first

The mind, like all physical objects, is directly affected and determined by physical processes. Thus all thoughts that are considered 'free' are actually determined by a long, causal chain of events.

Theory the second

The mind's processes are at base determined by quantum-mechanical models of reality, and free will arises from these quantum-mechanical processes, which are not deterministic.

If you are an adherent to the philosophy that Free will exists, Searle argues, then you must accept theory #2. However this theory is unsatisfactory because Quantum processes are only 'random' insofar as we cannot understand them fully. If we come to understand Quantum mechanics fully, we will come to understand this randomness as part of our physical picture. Additionally, this 'randomness' of quantum-mechanics does not do justice to our notion of 'free will'--our decisions are not 'random' when we make them, though they are free. Therefore the two concepts are actually incompatible.

But Searle is begging the question: what exactly was the point of free will in the first place? In the past we believed it was important that an earth-centric astronomical model be proven, because otherwise the importance of the human race (at least, with relation to god) would be diminished.

Now, what is the real consequence of conceding: yes, there is no 'free will', as such? Well, if this makes you decide to simply let life come to you, and let yourself slip into indolence, then you are simply fulfilling your own destiny. Indeed, the importance of 'free will' is just that: even if it is a mere figment of our imagination, it impels us towards achieving the most we can in life, and helps us keep at bay the dismal thought that life does not amount to anything at all, and that the collective existence of humanity is nothing but a small pebble tumbling through the downward, unstoppable flow of the sands of time and space.

So does it matter, strictly speaking, that free will can be explained by cognitive science to be mere epiphenomenological froth? Nay, I say. We must speak in these matters with regard to use, not simply verificationist 'truth'. If physics can explain biology, does this demand that we discard biology in favor of it? Both are simply conceptual systems used to explain the phenomenological milieu. Why not say the same of 'free will'?

politics, technology--and language?

2008-04-13T13:09:00.000-04:00

Dick Cavett writes a brilliant piece examining Ryan Crocker and David Petraeus' language in the recent Senate hearings about the Iraq war. Seemingly unrelated, but it raises a tangential yet important concern: to what extent is the 'cop-speak' which Cavett refers to a result of our technologic society? Without succumbing to the vagaries of Blog-writers I think I might do well to suggest that the rapid professional and educational specialization that has been a marker of the past 20 years has wrought (and has still to make) incredible effects on English.

What to make of the recession

2008-03-30T12:14:00.000-04:00

Though for my dear readers it must be quite easy to come across analyses of the current economic climate in the United States, I think the topic deserves some play here, if only because it will come to have a much greater bearing on the technological industry in the coming months.

The first relevant issue will be immigration. For the past 5 years the apparent lack of American engineering graduates has forced many technology companies (Google, Microsoft--the usual suspects) to look abroad to import labor. The ability for companies such as Google to attract engineers from all over the world depends in large part upon a valuable dollar. With competition from the EU and Asia increasing, the ability for US companies to snag the best graduates from 'farms' such as India and China (who produce massive amounts of engineering skill) will decrease.

Secondly, the preeminence of US information technology depends in large part on US cultural hegemony. Indeed, the two concepts seem inseparable: Computers worldwide use some form of Windows, and the word 'Google' as a synonym for 'Search' is not exclusive of english-speaking countries. As the US dollar slides and the US government's foreign policy clout recedes, will we see the rise of other companies (possibly russian or chinese) that will begin to take the place of Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and Apple?

These questions are relevant, but any sufficient answer is impossible, and this is why: There has never been an economic funk of this size and scale since the internet came into popular use. The so-called "burst bubble" of the 2001 dot-com boom was little more than a readjustment of stock valuations in the technological sector (something that was bound to happen, and did not hurt any of the really valuable companies in this market--it only eliminated redundant ones).

Contrary to what my questions above seem to suggest, the possibility remains that a market has developed in the US that will be nearly recession-proof. Why? Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft have been steadily building their international presences. Google recently inked a deal to build a massive datacenter in Taiwan, and the existence of computers with operating systems anywhere outside of the US and EU is largely dependent upon the efforts of Microsoft and Cisco.

So the coming years should turn out to be interesting ones--that is, what happens to Google & co. will be a drama of political, economic, cultural, and above all philosophical implications (will the world allow the US to become the gatekeepers of electronic information exchange?).

The case for pessimism on technology

2008-03-25T20:19:00.000-04:00

Most conjecturing and theorizing about technology is tainted by moral positivism. Even the lowliest gadget blog (Engadget or Gizmodo come to mind) can trace their lineage to the early projects of scientific enlightenment. Tall words coming from a blog that purports towards the development of a ‘theory of technology’, you might say. Indeed, undertaking even the most cursory examination of technology and its place in modern society (as if the two were somehow separable) is destined to be bent and manipulated by this pervasive, technological optimism. The belief that technology is good is fundamental to almost all human philosophy. Is it not artifice and craftsmanship that sets humans apart from animals? We reason that our frail, fragile bodies are more than made up for by our ability to adapt to any situation with our ability to adapt the environment that surrounds us to suit our purposes (Inuit tribes).

What, then, prompts our discussion today? If there is one thing which gives intellectuals reason for comfort it is the progression of technology. “Deliver us,” most pray, “from the sweaty hands of religious fundamentalists and our Paleolithic fellow-man”. With extremism popping up everywhere and the environment gone awry, there is little that seems to stand in the way between humanity and utter oblivion than our time-tested ability to get ourselves out of binds with the tools we make.

But that is just it: so far, industry, hard work, and ingenuity have saved humanity from its (often self-inflicted) destruction. What is there to say that things will continue to be so. My suggestion is not simply a petty adaptation of Hume to modern times, but a valid question to be asked of every person who believes in technology as part and parcel for humanity’s progress. Humans have pretensions towards enlightened thought and physical capability beyond their god-given means. We explore space, we turn over rocks on the bottom of the deepest of oceans. Yet one inescapable fact remains. As much as we may distance ourselves from animals, it is still bare, animal necessity that drives us.

An optimist (or a capitalist more likely) would praise animal necessity as the progenitor of all progress; I do not dispute this fact. Ask yourself: is man’s ability to think beyond his means the very undoing of his existence? I do not intend to turn this bit of words into praise for the ‘noble savage’, who lives off of the land and does not challenge the might of his gods. But the question would do well to be asked: If the collective natural costs for all of the technological innovations which we hold in exultations were to be comprehended by all men, could we still justify our headlong rush into technocracy?

Google Android and the Apple iPhone

2008-03-16T14:08:00.000-04:00

Dan Farber of cnet news.com writes about the recent release of the iPhone SDK and the effects this will have on the brewing war between Google and Apple for control of mobile computing in the next 10 years. Although Farber wants to say that the battle will not be between Apple and Google but between Google, RIM and Microsoft, I think he is wrong on this count.

We are at the tipping point of mobile technology. To anyone who has used an iPhone before, it is easy to see how someday a device that fits in your pocket could replace a laptop, especially if a user only needed word processing, e-mail, image editing, and web surfing capability. In this sense the coming battle is going to be between Google and Apple, because what Google has managed to do is create a mobile OS that is both easy to use and good-looking and appeals to carriers and manufacturers because it can be freely modified to suit a specific purchaser's needs.

Microsoft and RIM, to be certain, will play a large role in which permutation of mobile technology will become the 'de nouveau' progenitor of the next generation or itineration of mobile computing devices. However Microsoft and RIM are limited in the sense that they can only cater to business customers. What the iPhone has demonstrated, quite remarkably, is that personal, private demand dictates the demands in the business market. It should not be surprising, but there is little attention paid to this fact in the current analyses of the mobile market. Apple's iPhone is making waves in the business world not because of its capabilities. When I was interning for a small private equity firm in London this summer, almost all of the executives there were drooling over the iPhone. This is not because it possesses some capability which the RIM blackberry does not: by all accounts, the Blackberry is far and away the most capable business mobile device on the market. The reason they were jonesing for one was simple: they found the iPhone aesthetically pleasing, and the 'personal tech' features such as youtube videos and google maps far exceeded the Blackberry's.

This means that Google must first and foremost create an operating system that appeals on a visceral level (it seems like they are well on their way). If Google can stimulate on a purely sensory level, then the game is Apple's to lose, and Google's to win. Farber, in the article above, quite astutely points out that the current distribution model for the iPhone means that Apple must face the same problem with its iPhone as it faced with Mac OS: whether or not to confine it to its own hardware or to license it out to other manufacturers. Apple has of course taken its traditional view and is aiming to create a reliable revenue stream from hardware sales instead of software licensing. But this is exactly why Apple has so far failed to make a dent into the enterprise market for software computers, and it is exactly why Apple will not penetrate the business mobile market. Google, on the other hand, has the chance to succeed where RIM and Microsoft have both failed (by creating an operating system that is intuitive to use and pleasing to the eye) and also to succeed where Apple will undoubtedly fail, by creating a mobile operating system that can be used by any handset manufacturer and adapted to any carrier network. This is crucial for the success of any OS in the Business world, and Google seems well on its way towards realizing this goal (even more than RIM has so far).

the cityshrinker and other odds and ends

2008-03-16T11:49:00.001-04:00

This blog is going to be mainly a platform for theoretical babble, backed up by loosely-collected evidence. However from time to time I see some pretty awesome stuff online that I think is worth posting on here. Most of them (including the one above) will be collected from blogs I frequent. In any case, cityshrinker is a project by Ben Thomas to shrink various cities from their mind-numbingly complex and large-scale apparitions to bite-sized and easily understood diarama-type photographs, taken from a quasi-aerial perspective.

The blog I got this from, kitsune noir, was quick to downplay the Ben's clever technique when he realized that these were not actually hand-made dioramas of world cities but were actually photographs. While I think that making dioramas of these cities to this level of detail would have indeed been a task worthy of praise, I think these photographs are even more amazing for the progress they symbolize in the realm of digital photography. Take a look, you'll see what I mean. Maybe later I'll post some sorf of interpretation, but I'd rather just let it stand.

Towards a Theory of Technology

2008-03-10T20:46:00.000-04:00

One of the over-riding themes of this blog is the relationship that technology holds with human thought and existence (hence the blog title). Even though I may post on seemingly tangential news items or discourse, the over-arching mission of this website is to create a better knowledge of technology's relationship with humans, and foster an interest in its readers for the development of a more coherent theory of how technology is going to influence the course of humanity.

This question is a far-reaching one, and certainly cannot be answered thoroughly by this thoroughly unlearned writer. It is my hope however to illuminate those interested souls to not only the sheer pervasiveness of technology but also its ability to augment the human path - inherent in this capacity is its destructive (atomic weapons) and constructive uses. Thankfully the latter half of the 20th-century, though it did bear witness to a wide-scale nuclear arms race, also was the staging ground for fantastical advances in modern science and technology. Now, more than ever before, humans are at a launching-off spot that will carry them into the next millenium, dimension, eternity, or timelessness itself.

However do not take me for a science-fiction adherent that predicts weightless transportation and free energy within the next 20 years. More likely than not, we are about to stand witness to a heavy relapse (at least in Western, industrialized societies) into bucolic, antiquated living; that said however, the pace of technology continues to quicken, and if the Chinese take up the reins where the Americans are going to leave off, we stand to take part in some of the most revolutionary innovations of our time.

This blog is not intended as a platform on which I can wax poetic about the glorious onset of a technocratic government and civilization that will serve the common man as much as the wealthy industrialist; more likely than not you will see more material here that will exhibit the depravities of a society without the necessary legal structure and ethical morays necessary to properly deal with technology that allows government depravity to reach new heights. Anyway I look forward to filling up this blog with useful content and interpretation, and hopefully a few strident readers will stick around to provide some input of their own.

Pure travesty.

2008-03-07T02:03:00.000-05:00

Report: 6 Out Of 10 Americans Cannot Locate Payless Shoes On A Mall Map 

the MPAA & RIAA vs the Internet

2008-02-27T01:47:00.000-05:00

I just read an Economist article about how the MPAA (and, by extension, the RIAA) are ignoring the internet in the hope that it will go away, instead of taking full advantage of the amazing possibilities it could yield. Instead of summarizing the article I intend to expound on the possibilities that the internet holds for worldwide distribution.

What the MPAA fails to understand is that the current model of $20-a-pop DVD sales as the majority of revenue is fundamentally flawed: a the only people who are willing to pay that kind of money for a movie are those who are either too inept to use a computer or have the sort of disposable income to make that kind of purchase stomachable. For those of us in college without a significant source of income, or those of us who are too busy making mortgage payments and staving off creditors, the proposition is ridiculous.

What the MPAA must realize is that the first is far outnumbered by the second. By lowering the price to rent a movie online, the MPAA would make the prospect of buying movies (instead of pirating them) conceivable. In this case the MPAA makes $2.50 where they otherwise would have made nothing. It is imperative to their survival as a cornerstone of American cultural commerce that they realize as quickly as possible that their current revenue models are outmoded and inconvenient.

I reluctantly admonish the MPAA to start considering the reality around them instead of harking back to the "good old days" when competition was nonexistent for inspiration. I in all sincerity hope that the MPAA fails in this task, if only because the prospects for independent directors to succeed are vastly improved as long as the internet remains unfamiliar and unapproachable to the media juggernauts pacing its boundary. The internet will cease to be the creative marketplace of ideas and content that I grew up with once American corporate culture gains anything even resembling a steady footing online.

An Introduction

2008-02-25T15:53:00.001-05:00

Hello worthy readers, my name is Walker, and I'm a philosophy major at Vassar College in droll and drab Poughkeepsie, NY. I was strolling across the quad earlier today when a thought about the current state of affairs on wikipedia, digg, and other social networking sites. I'll write more on that below but I started this blog because I think I would do well to have a place to write down these thoughts as they are fresh on my mind instead of letting them go stale under the constant influx of college-associated poisons (I'll name none). The reason I chose this blog instead of a notebook is that I'd like to share them with the world.

Now, back to the subject at hand. The article linked above cites evidence that suggests that a measly 1% of total wikipedia users are responsible for almost all content on the encyclopedia. From this evidence it suggests that the idea of socially-driven content is really a 'myth' and that the perceived democracy of websites such as 'digg', 'twitter', is really an oligarchy. I do not dispute this claim (it is hard to disagree with empirical evidence, unless you are my childhood hero David Hume). However I dispute the notion that because of the relatively small pool of users determining what gets seen on Digg and Wikipedia these systems are inherently undemocratic. The article acknowledges that it is the people who use these sites who determine who is popular, but it does not pay this point the kind of attention it deserves. If it were not for one of the top 10 submitters on digg, would the site cease to function? I highly doubt this. Someone else would step up to the plate and start submitting popular articles. Similarly, if 1% of users determine the content and objectivity of the articles on Wikipedia it is because they are doing a pretty good job of it (as suggested a few years ago by the study in Nature comparing Wikipedia to Encyclopedia Brittanica).

This leads me to the meat of today's post: Vassar is holding seminars about how to use and contribute to Wikipedia. The thought has crossed my mind to hold a sort of informal seminar on this matter before, and obviously I wasn't the only person to think about this. What Wikipedia must and will accomplish in the next few years is a pluralization of access. Once the ethics and trivialities of Wikipedia culture are ironed out and a suitable open-source editing software for Wikipedia is released, any aversions that the technologically-inclined have to contributing online will vanish. Similarly, when Digg or another "Web 2.0" website successfully balances quality submissions with ease of access for even the newest users, you will begin to see the pluralization of the Web in full force.

This all notwithstanding, the current state of affairs is really not all that bad. Remember Anonymous's War on Scientology? This was not a case of the few duping the masses into participation in a wide-scale protest against an establishment of old. In actuality it was a few enterprising web users channeling the feelings of the whole, which is why it was a success. This article on slate makes the common philosophical mistake of conflating correlation with causation. It isn't that we are given the content to choose from but that we choose the content we want to see (and reward those who are best able to show it to us). More on this next week.