Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
And Patrick, how does a creative understand "integrity" and how is
that reflected in your work(s)?
  

    
Integrity in the context of non-humans, transhumans and post-humans
deals with having strong ethical principles that are aimed at
advancing future society. That is why I write a lot about moving
beyond a human centric society only and the need to curb dominance
by any "species". In this next phase, it will be more about human
integrity developing AI for societal advancement rather than
destruction. I noted a number of the future challenges for AI in an
earlier comment, but probably the most critical in terms of
integrity lies within Gilbert Ryle's "ghost in the machine" theory
and the parallel, harmonized advancement of AI software and
hardware, say robotics. Programmed AI is one thing, self-generating
AI in this context is very different. There is much talk currently
about creating ethics committees and innovation safety and the
well-conceived Stanford report “One Hundred Year Study on Artificial
Intelligence” that reviews the impact of AI on culture and society
in five-year timespans, defining some of the more crucial
challenges, pathways to innovation and likely changes. These
primarily deal with human integrity. In order to survive,
self-generating AI will need to develop its own reasoning about
integrity in order to optimize its own existence. We can quite
possibly learn something on this by studying the role of integrity
in the development of AlphaGo Zero or its previous iterations. Did
the AI learn to play the game fairly and honestly, even though it
self-generated moves that we had never seen before and astonished
champion human players. As far as I know those moves were neither
dishonest nor disqualifiable. The same goes for robot soccer, which
we presented at Plutopia 2012 during SXSW. 
It would be interesting to take the debate on the importance or
otherwise of emotional intelligence to advanced human integrity into
the non-human, transhuman arena. If as I mentioned in my earlier
response, AI and its configurations achieved consciousness and
emotional-cognitive abilities, then aspects such as the role of
emotion perception, emotion understanding, and emotion regulation
facets will be critical for explaining AI performance. Here I am
considering both optimized efficiency and performative faculties.
IoT for example will have embedded performative capabilities early
on if its various renditions are credible and useful in terms of
situation awareness and response. Emotion perception precedes
emotion understanding as a causal sequence and in my view, will be
critical to optimized functioning of situation-aware IoT. 
Consequently, non-human in terms of AI and its subsets may need to
self-develop emotional and advanced cognitive faculties before it
can really prove to have integrity, but I believe that its
understanding of the need for survival will make that happen. Back
in the late 90s I watched a “fight” between a “scientific” robot
developed by the Leuven University in Belgium and a robot developed
by Mark Pauline’s SRL. It took place in Brussels and I covered it
for Fringecore at the time. It was a fight for survival, not in
terms of blowing up machines which was Mark’s speciality, but
fighting to see which could get to an energy source first. The
“scientific” robot won, simply because it had higher level of
intelligence and outwitted Mark’s robot.
  

    
It seems a little disassociative to be writing about non-human
integrity at this juncture, when the whole world is facing a massive
issue around human integrity. 

This World Economic Forum piece makes the same point.
https://www.weforum.org/projects/paci-the-future-of-trust-and-integrity.
  

    
That was my point, exactly...great pointer
  

    
Emotional intelligence!!  Now, that's a new spin, to me. 

That is something the others don't have, and probably never
will...singularity to the side please :)

EI is all about 'wise mind'....and that, indeed could be a bridge.

Nice.
  

    
From Patrick Lichty (voyd.com)

Human, Trans-Human, Non-Human integrity. Great stuff. 
But when thinking about this, I see two (out of an infinitude of
possible) models between Badiouxian and Mortonian non-humanism; such
as the inclusion of non-human actors (things) and the inclusion of
hyperobjects (like ‘humanity’ as an object) and all creatures. In
Derek’s discussion, I feel like the conversation is pointing toward
human-derivates and posthuman AI in terms of soft- and hardware AI
when we are talking about trans and non-humans. I would like to
stress the necessity to address this in lateral as well as vertical
terms, as Cetaceans are certainly more advanced than we are in many
ways, and the common housecat meows to us as a language construct –
they don’t meow to each other…  We just think we’re so hot because
of our suits and opposable thumbs.

 

In this way, I enjoy Bruce Sterling’s Schismatrix Plus views of
nonhumanity, such as in the story “Swarm” that suggests that unbound
intelligence (organic or artificial) is unsustainable, and I look at
this as a Malthusian critique.  A closed system has limits, and a
closed system that runs beyond its capacity can do so for a while. 

 

In this age, the world is ruled by capitalist forces, and these rule
the world that are much like the “forces of nature” speech in the
classic movie, Network. To quote.

There are no nations.
There are no peoples.
There are no Russians.
There are no Arabs.
There are no third worlds.
There is no west.
There is only one holistic system of systems.
One vast and immense,
Interwoven,
Interacting,
Multi-varied,
Multinational dominion
of dollars.
Petro dollars.
Electro dollars.
Muti-dollars.
Reichmarks.
Rens.
Rubles, Pounds and Shekels.

It is the international system of currency,
Which determine the totality of life on this planet.
That is the natural order of things today.
That is the atomic and subatomic,
And galactic structure of things today.

 

Being in the UAE, this is obvious. Dirhams override fatwas pretty
fast.  But in my own business on many fronts as a futurist and
developer as well as a teacher, even my knowledge production is
deeply shaped by market forces. 

 

But I would like to propose two markets and the artist’s place in
it. First is the global neoliberal market of conventional markets of
commodity, security, and exchange, and as such we are concerned
ostensibly with the use of technology in terms of innovation which
is centered around the creation of value, welfare, and profit.  But
these are human values, and I’m as interested in my colleague’s
notion of non-human value, and I call this the baseline market. In
my conception, this would possibly denote the overall ecological
welfare to its ability to maintain production capacity.  And again,
we are in a Malthusian situation, with debts building, with it being
OK, as long as profits outrun the load, with populations building,
with infrastructure holding up to stay ahead.  Eventually, these
will run out, and perhaps AI will show us the way to homeostasis
before we burn ourselves out.  And from this, I feel the wise person
will watch the second market, the market of ecological
sustainability, much more than the short-term market of conventional
markets.

 

How does VR, AR, MR and AI figure in this? I feel that they can be
made to simulate environments that will take us to distant lands to
help us know one another, critically engage issues of our humanity,
and inspire us to work out worlds we could not imagine.  But I also
fear that they may further abstract us from the world that we live
in, as it is a strict truism that humanity sees as normative what
they see around them.  I know for a fact that if you have not lived
in the UAE or the Arabic countries as a whole for any period of
time, the realities here are so different from what you’d imagine. 
I’m about to go to Central Asia for a tour; I imagine my mind will
be blown there.  The world is deeply heterogenous, and this is a joy
to explore, but a huge challenge to work out.

 

How do I see artists working these challenges? Inspiration,
speculation, simulation on the global condition, and not just human.
Can we begin to imagine talking with dolphins before talking with
aliens? Can we have games that have giant plastic-sucking
seamachines that create floating cities? Can I go to the greatest
rainforests I can ever imagine and just meditate if I cannot afford
to really go there? For the time being, I see so many in the media
arts, and especially in a realm called postinternet, reveling in
their current success and engaging in the lockstep machinery of the
artworld economic ecosystem of galleries, artists, curators,
collectors.  I’m more interested in projects like Mary Mattingly’s
Swale floating farm that asks about localizing urban food sources.  
Could we have something as fun as Cooking Mama but with a better
message?  Can we have media that address the “second market”? Can we
have human/AI partnerships to aid our imaginative thinking (again,
going back to Adobe Sensei).

 

In many ways, I feel that futurist media (AR/MR/VR) often shows
“presentist” scenarios, and we need to stop that.  Give a starving
person a menu and they’ll order a cheeseburger. No. remove the
cheeseburger from the menu, and have the baseline be the Curried
Shawarma Curry Fries.  Maybe AI can make those suggestions or even
make the menu.  We live in fantastic times. We need to be thinking
laterally, and if we have to think about profit as the bottom line,
then think of the second market and ecological sustenance as the
goal of sustainability, not a 0% growth.

 
  

    
This, from Patrick is interesting:

> In many ways, I feel that futurist media (AR/MR/VR) often shows
> "presentist" scenarios, and we need to stop that.

'We need to stop that' -- and do what instead?  By what criteria can
make such a judgement?
  

    
#28...yes, that was quite a turn Derek....I have been thinking about
this for two days....And then Patrick chimes in with even more
perspectives I have never considered.

I think of this as "flipping". Had not considered turning it all
around.
Current efforts are based on the human as the starting point, with
all of digital, AI, VR/MR/AR as "tools".

We well may be the first species at the top of their food chain to
have created their own predator!!

That's one "possible future". But, as you both say, there are plenty
of others....cetaceans, Charlie Stross' sentient lobsters, etc. etc.

The 'pivot' is that since all these 'non-humans' are now a part of
our universe, "how do we adapt to THEM"? Recognizing that, IF, an AI
ever satisfies the Turning Test, how do we help it gain its own
rules of ethics, both for its own kind and for us???

And, apart from that possibility, we are presently committed to a
universe dictated by AI, robots, IOT, etc.   How does that change
us??

Well, we are certainly a long, long way from what most people think
of as VR/MR/AR....which is mostly games and porn...

But this is all on the money.
  

    
Jaron's take on all this, and I imagine you both agree, is that it
is 'early days' and we have had a chance to see the consequences of
our biases and alogorithms and poor approaches....so there is reason
to be hopeful for the future.

Of course, Gaia may have something else to say about all this.

Put AI's on ships to Mars, ASAP!!!
  

    
This is our last 'official' day for this conversation....we will
continue responding to any questions or comments folks may have as
long as there is activity.

My profound thanks to both Derek and Patrick....there is so much
meat on the bones of this conversation..I cannot thank you enough
for you thoughtful posts and responses. You have truly covered the
waterfront of the VR/MR/AR digital futures and technology from just
about every angle and perspective.  Rich, rich, rich.

I will be going over this conversation for months   :)

Wishing you both all the best, all the power and every success in
all your endeavors.
  

    
If you both would do me one favor, please...

Given the current climate of tech, what do you see for the future of
women and people of color in the years ahead?
  

    
As you can imagine I loved the fact that Patrick used Bruce's Swarm
and the reference to "unbound intelligence". My entire existence is
built on that premise and quite regularly on "unbound
experimentation" to boot.

I'll let Patrick respond in full to Craig's question to him about
the criteria we should use to judge whether there is a tendency to
adapt a presentist perspective. However, I would like to say that I
agree with Patrick and I would like to chime in on the criteria
part. 

Firstly, I would like to refer you to a piece that Max More wrote
back in 2001 which has a number of ways of comparing and evaluating
the robustness of scenarios.
http://www.kurzweilai.net/grasping-the-future-comparing-scenarios-to-other-tec
hniques

Secondly, I would like to set out some of the criteria we use to
evaluate futures development, although quite honestly, I spend a
greater amount of time on creating them. Before we work on
scenarios, we have complex processes that create future leverage
points, future drivers or triggers, future platforms and much more,
all of which are evaluated using future-focused criteria and a
variety of exploration approaches beyond horizon scanning, weak
signals and pattern recognition. These include mapping the points of
perception-decision, the space in between the matrix (see my
explanation below), possible vs feasible combinations and shifting
from stagnant to dynamic knowledge. This allows us to create what
Deleuze calls the Becoming - the flux of the becoming, namely, the
passing of the present – into the relevance and purpose of the
future. In order to uncover this relevance and purpose we use
approaches such as: causal layered analysis, concept mapping,
opportunity mapping, future wheel, create 3D simulated worlds or
landscapes and use amorphoscapes or a type of automata to establish
random connections, which become our future triggers.  To bring
these to life, we use heavy dose of conjecture, hunches and thinking
without thinking techniques. Gerd Gigerenzer's Gut Feelings: The
Intelligence of the Unconscious; and Seth Godin has some great
thoughts on the subject. Once we have oiled the future triggers, we
build future platforms, which are both conceptional and directional.

Here we use flexible, but indicative criteria for platform
assessment. They need to:
- Implicate, not replicate
- Integrate disparate areas
- De- and re-territorialize the overarching domain
- Generate higher order properties
- See the platform as an overarching event not single acts
- Work in dimensions not units
- Are boundless, nomadic, mobile
- Liberate and are non-hierarchical
- Go beyond human-centric

Once the platforms are created we will generally develop two to
three scenarios for each platform. While our scenario development
processes include a lot of modeling, we apply rhizomatic thinking
and of course, my "think like a DJ techniques". TLADJ embodies an
approach that demands a robust and comprehensive deconstruction of
the platform and all of its assets and to use creativity to
reconstruct it with a novel and revolutionary outcome. The process
involves taking each of the assets and following a pathway of
development which includes actions such as:
•       Deconstruct
•       Mutate
•       Spin 
•       Transform
•       Migrate
•       Displace
•       Simulate
•       Fuse
•       Translate
•       Recombine

The concepts that flow from this process are subjected to further
manipulation, which involves:

•       Subverting assumptions
•       Peeling away the surface – experience the outcome as an adventure
•       Revisiting values and signifiers
•       Determining aspects of fracture, critical impact points and
disruption
•       Reconstructing the dystopian reality, paradoxes, hybrids
•       Changing perspective and conceptual relevance
•       Adding events and potential wildcards

These answer questions such as:
What are the hidden worlds in the concept?
 
What do we not see that would change the perspective of the concept?

 
What would happen if we turned the idea on its head or reversed the
focus? 

What could you connect to the idea to make it a high performance
hybrid or create a paradox? 

Scenarios are required to have: directional balance, leverage key
triggers, provide a new paradigm or competitive set, deliver a
significant contribution to societal progress, uncover potential
tipping points and identify critical opportunities.

Evaluating scenarios beyond their obvious practical qualities such
as level of risk and opportunity, fit, feasibility, flexibility,
etc. requires a set of emotional criteria as well. These include: 
•       Relevance
•       Level of affect
•       Empathy
•       Desirability 
•       Credibility 
•       Saliency 
•       Enthusiasm

The scenario must be action-driven.

Sorry about the lecture on the science of foresight, but I wanted to
point out that when today we talk about VR, AR, simulation and the
like, I feel we are only at the point of considering the low hanging
fruit rather than discovering new paradigms and worldviews that
would make these technologies truly meaningful to our future. I know
we are using VR in medicine, etc, but let's not think of how it can
do what we already do and know better, quicker and easier, simply
more efficiently. What we should be looking at is what could these
technologies do that we have never thought of, even beyond current
SciFi.
  

    <scribbled by tcn Mon 11 Dec 17 09:27>
  

    
#38 was a duplicate of #37
  

    
< What we should be looking at is what could these
technologies do that we have never thought of, even beyond current
SciFi.
>

Most excellent focus Derek....you can expand away on anything you
like...
  

    
This should have been my #38. It refers to a section in #37.

My point on the space between the matrix refers to Slavoj Zizek’s
piece “From Physics to Design” (The Parallax View p.237) in which he
deals with Daniel Dennett’s polemic about the human mind having a
central point of perception-decision at which all information is
gathered, appreciated and then turned into action. Zizek points out
that evolution (of ideas) take place in the space between the vast
synchronous ‘external logical matrix’ of all possible combinations
and the vanishing opportunity space of feasible combinations, which
are actually accessible or workable. So we have that gap between the
eternal logical combination and us being constrained to a particular
contingent situation. I would add here that we need to unshackle
these thinking constraints in order to arrive at paradigm shifts at
the point where we are looking to re-conceptualize concepts such as
“learning” and “education”.

Zizek also questions Dennett’s dualistic ontology around the “from
physics to design”, namely the two basic levels of reality are the
deterministic physical level and the higher ‘design’ level. While
Zizek explains through Dennett’s two-dimensional grid of pixels, I
relate this dualism to our grids in the Knowledge Bank, where the
data close up is stagnant or motionless with each piece of data
going on and off as we read and absorb it.  When that same data is
considered as a universe with no grid or frames, we see that some
data act like ‘flashers’ or alternatively form small patterns or
configurations while others flow like ‘gliders’ swimming across the
plane until they converge or unite with other data or become
‘eaters’ that swallow up those lines that have no real influence. 
  

    
Thank you, Derek, for that impressive list of techniques.

> What we should be looking at is what could these
> technologies do that we have never thought of, even beyond current
> SciFi.

Yes, and how can we do this in a way that makes sense to the 'presentist
perspective,' which so often is in charge of the resources needed to
unlease new technologies? There's a gap.
  

    
Good point Craig...that's where the current corporate money is and
they have demonstrated a la Ted Nelson, and so many others how they
deal with that kind of thinking.

We need Angels and Start Ups that can use venture capital for this.
Before quarterly reports rule the day.
  

    
We don't just write them off, there has to be conversaton and
hopefully some enlightenment, after all they did not initially get
into all this for the money, they just got successful and are now
driven by it.
  

    
Well, thankfully in AI for example we are seeing companies like
Austin's own Data.World and also SingularityNet creating for AI
expert collaboration outside of the corporate structure. We should
remember that there is always an alternative marketplace out there
that is slowly raising the stakes. The economy is more of a spiral
than aa circle. What remained from the inevitable dotcom bust are
the likes of Amazon, Expedia and Google - real market changers. The
next wave was social media, connectivity, convergence, which gave us
youtube and FB and so much more and the revamping of the music and
other industries. It is too easy to forget just how much of our
lives and services are provided to us for free or virtually free,
even without piracy. While it is easy to spot the substitute or
parallel industries like the Ubers and bitcoin, we should be paying
more attention to the new industries such as 3D Printing, biochem,
nanotech, smart dust and programmable matter that have popped-up as
they illustrate what we should expect in the future. The Gartner
Hype Cycle is always a useful insight. We should also remember the
rise and power of the non-employee, which is already around 40% of
the workforce and projected to grow to 70% by 2030 and the changing
labor structure. These emerging industries often call for adaptive
enterprises that often inspire completely new, non-corporate,
market-changing entities.

Of course that is my job to develop new marketplaces, new
industries, new products, new models and many of the techniques I
explained in my earlier piece are ways of approaching that task,
along with the innovation hubs, venture capitalists, universities,
geniuses and Joe Blow. Yes, corporations still rule, with 6% of
companies (28 leading corporations) making over 50% of US
profits.There are a number of newer compnies and industries in thaat
group, namely Apple, Gilead, Intel, Cisco... Yes, they have the most
influence on policy, etc. but the non-corporate share of the
marketplace is nearly 20% currently and growing.
   
This 2013 article below demonstrates the possibilities. 
https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/business-model-innovation-e-c
houpal-onemorepallet-sirum-alternative-marketplaces
  

    
Ted, your final question kept me awake at night and also Helga as it
provoke a 4 am conversation about the future for women and people of
color. Firstly, I am colorblind except for blue and red
(politically),  and gender neutral.  I came to the conclusion that
there are two primary drivers for the future, 1) The evolution away
from the stereotype to the individual (although we still seem to be
primarily, instinctively driven by our genetic family and sense of
survival). 2) Future jobs and the roles that both cohorts (if there
is to be a generalization, which I don't believe should be the case)
could play.

As far as the former is concerned, the shift in concepts, identities
and archetypes such as social, friend, mother, etc. driven by our
digital lives, together with globalization, greater migration,
decrease in marriage and the desire to reproduce is changing our
awareness, acceptance and integration of diversity. 

As far as the latter is concerned, as I wrote earlier on in this
discussion we are faced with the need for new skills that we were
not taught previously and which are critical to society's future
development. These include a number of soft skills and different
thinking approaches which will require different approaches by
everyone irrespective of their gender, race, circumstances, etc.

The most critical aspect is that we recognize the evil in
neoliberalism and the horrifying effects it has in creating the
massive differences between the haves and have nots - in particular
the top 5% and the rest of us, not to mention the 46 million US
citizens that live below the official poverty level, whatever their
cohort. To continue to allow a third world in the USA is a tragedy
and inhuman. I can only hope and personally try to make the future
technologies and social and cultural change agents and economic and
political influences fundamentally change the situation for the
better. 

That is my non-academic conclusion, from the gut. 
  

    

To hit some of the high points, the idea of “Presentism”. I think in
this way, Derek and I overlap in the future-forward, blue-sky
mentality.  I remember talking with Connie Yowell, who was head of
digital initiatives for the MacArthur Foundation when I was pushing
the edges of virtual worlds in the mid 2000’s, and she turned me on
to the notion of “orienteering”.  Her idea here is that when you
confront someone with a new sort of space, they reconstruct the
familiar.  Her point was that when Second Life was popular, the
first thing people wanted to do is reconstruct themselves as
realistically as possible and put themselves in an analogue of their
living room.  While perhaps interesting on the surface, my analogy
is that when you give someone a menu, they often order the familiar,
like vanilla ice cream.
 
Don’t get me wrong; I love the stuff. Really. My mom used to buy
Breyer’s that had three kinds – Bali, Tahiti, and Malaysian(?)
vanilla, and it was fun to see that each tasted different. This is a
bad analogy, but I don’t want to have that sort of zen experience in
virtual worlds.   In graduate school, I found my favorite trick –
localizing gravity to whatever I was standing on – the old Fred
Astaire thing. This is what I want to do in the Realities – things I
would never do normally, or could not.
 
This is maybe also a tie to that Bogost, Thacker, and more of the
Speculative Realists discuss when talking about Alien
Phenomenologies/Ontologies.  I especially enjoy Thacker’s
investigation of H.R. Lovecraft’s horror of that which is “beyond
thought” as a metaphor for the function of philosophy – exploring
the unthought. This is what I enjoyed in Beverly Mills’ “Not
Possible in Real Life” missives exploring virtual worlds, if not in
content, in thought.  This is especially potent thought in the
Realities.

This is what we do as futurists when we wrestle with unbounded
enthusiasm while being hemmed in by Malthusian constraints.  We seek
what is not possible in real life and make it real – this is the
speculative near future design paradigm of Sterling, Tesanovic,
Iaconesi, and Persico, and others.  Thinking the unthought; making
the unmade; this is the work of the inventor and innovator
(innovation being an incremental improvement, Invention being the
disruptive entry of new ideas.)  AR/VR/MR greases the wheels of this
thought as physics, materials, etc are not an issue anymore.
 
I would love to dig in deeper but am under time constraints that it
is finals week here in the UAE and I am developing a HoloLens
experience for the Echo Dubai Festival.  I’d like to address Craig’s
question about gender and color.
 
First I find the framing of this question to be mainly North
American, and then also First World.  Where I am, most women are of
color, and Indians constitute much of our technical class.  Before
talking about this, let me address the First World.  I think that in
the Realities, there is a more welcoming community, as there are
groups like the Virtual Worlds Society and the many Women in VR
groups which are large and significant.  Also, there are powerful
women such as Resh Sidhu, Mez Breeze, Jacki Morie, and Brenda Laurel
in the Reality ecosphere who shape the culture of that genre.  I’d
like to mention that few tech genres have enough female mavens to
mention off the top of one’s head.  I feel that in the Reality Media
industries, women, gender, and color are more included than other
tech sectors, and perhaps it comes from the great female pioneers in
this field.

In regards to the UAE, the design industry is nascent and booming
here.  For reference, all I teach are Emirati women in AR/VR design,
which is something in itself.  In this country, many governmental
officials are women, and there is an estimate of 60-75% of all
college graduates being female among Emiratis, and there is not a
Design school on our Men’s Campus (we are segregated)…  I cannot say
this is uniform across the MENA region, and there are decided gaps
in technical (i.e. programming) skills among the female population. 
However, the economy rules here, and it’s obvious that female
designers make money, and expertise is essential for the post Peak
Oil MENA region.  I think that you’ll be surprised as the complexity
of our society here in West Asia, and that we are a coming force in
the global media landscape (We have an emerging Ubisoft studio here,
for one…)

Thanks so much for the chance to talk, and for Derek being such an
amzing conversational partner.

Shukran, and Walaikum alssalam…
Patrick
  

    
Thanks from here too.

The slow turns of this discussion have been interesting. So much to
work on in each post.

In fast, I'm still chewing on Derek's <41>... I'll reply here a bit
more if that's ok.

Must say I'm bit surprized at Zizek's use of the word "dualistic" when
refering the simple ontology Dennett invokes while discussing Conway's
game of Life. (Dennett is, I think, steadfastly a non-dualist)

Is Zizek playing with Dennett here (or is this an artifact of
translation)?
  

    
Great finish...wonderful stuff everyone...Craig, thank you for your
participation...Derek and Patrick, maybe next year??  Love to catch
up on both your futures :)

Next up, State of the World, with our own beloved Bruce Sterling and
Jon Lebkowsky...WOOT!