For the last 20 years, I have found myself on the inside of a revolution, but on the outside of its resplendent dogma. Now that the revolution has not only hit the mainstream, but bludgeoned it into submission by taking over the economy, it's probably time for me to cry out my dissent more loudly than I have before.

[opening paragraph}: It turns out that it is possible to distinguish a zombie from a person. A zombie has a different philosophy. That is the only difference. Therefore, zombies can only be detected if they happen to be philosophers. Dennett is obviously a zombie.

In the conclusion to his article, `Consciousness as an engineering issue' , pp. 52-66), Donald Michie argues that the inclusion of intelligent computer systems in workgroups will lead to a blurring of the distinction between human and machine consciousness. He also refers to the increasing use of intelligent agent software in commercial applications. Given the exponential growth in the availability of on-line information through networked computer systems, AI routines are being developed to filter information, based on the user's own stated (...) needs and preferences. In this article Jaron Lanier, who originated the term `virtual reality', argues that the use of intelligent agents will devalue human intelligence and creativity and diminish the role of conscious experience. The mind-body debate needs to move beyond the confines of academic philosophy as it has important implications for practical issues such as the design of computer systems. (shrink)

Jaron Lanier: Maybe we should go over what Virtual Reality is. We are speaking about a technology that uses computerized clothing to synthesize shared reality. It recreates our relationship with the physical world in a new plane, no more, no less. It doesn't affect the subjective world; it doesn't have anything to do directly with what's going on inside your brain. It only has to do with what your sense organs perceive. The physical world, the thing on the other side (...) of your sense organs, is received through these five holes, the eyes, and the ears, and the nose, and the mouth, and the skin. They're not holes, actually, and there are many more senses than five but that's the old model, so we'll just stick with it for now. (shrink)

The encounter occurred aboard the presidential yacht USS Potomac, the same steel-hulled craft that, half a century ago, carried Roosevelt to his meeting with Churchill wherein they secretly plotted World War II. It cruised on the San Francisco Bay as helicopters hovered above, dropping smoke flares to mark a jumper from the Golden Gate Bridge.

Consider the idea of the present moment in time. This is one of the most imprecise of concepts. Does it last for an instant or for three seconds? Do all the parts of a brain share the same present moment? Is the present moment one is conscious of even coherent enough to compare to the position of the hands of a clock? In a relativistic universe, can it ever be sensible to talk about a present? To the best of our (...) knowledge, the answers to all the above questions must be had at the expense of the integrity of the idea of ‘now'. People do not make very good clocks -- we are poor at sensing the absolute passage of time, and, even if we were better at it, relativity would only allow us to share a ‘now’ with compromised accuracy. Despite the looseness of the present moment, the fact that we can talk about it at all, even with imprecision and ambiguity, is an important bit of evidence to keep in mind when considering consciousness. Let's suppose the universe is, for practical purposes, deterministic. The universe in this case isn't ‘doing anything’ that can distinguish one moment from another. And yet the human perspective does achieve such a distinction. The vaguely perceived present moment is distinguished from other moments. This human ability reminds one of the old joke about a dancing bear: it's not that the bear dances well, but that he dances at all that charms an audience. The very concept of a present moment is only meaningful to one who is trapped in time by being conscious. (shrink)

PAUL SOLMAN: Let's begin with a look at some estimates of Internet use and how it's been exploding in the past year. Our numbers come from a variety of sources. About 80% of Americans now have personal computers. About 100 million people are online and at last count the Net was adding 38 new users every second. Some 55 million Americans log on to the Internet, in a typical day. About 40% of them check their e-mail every day. About 30% (...) check several times a day. In 1998, the U.S. Postal Service delivered 101 billion pieces of paper or snail mail. The number of e-mail messages transmitted in 1998 is estimated to have been around 4 trillion. 60% of regular Internet users report watching less television; 34% spend less time shopping in stores; 13% attend fewer social events; more than 25% say they now have friends they've never met in person; and-- our favorite-- 48% of regular Internet users, according to a UCLA study, say they now deny their children on-line access as a punishment tool. In short, the Internet is becoming a given of the American and global landscape, whether we like it or not. (shrink)

The role of consciousness in contemporary scientific thought is similar to the role of death in everyday emotional life. It is usually ignored or denied outright, frequently obsessed over, and is sometimes the inspiration for uncharacteristic breaches of common sense. It is time to state the obvious. The problem of consciousness is deeply interwoven with the problem of death. And yet death is rarely mentioned in relation to consciousness studies. Consciousness is the thing of consequence that dies. Surely this explains (...) a great deal of why there is such an energetic conversation about consciousness, and why passions are so often raised concerning a subject whose basic nature is so elusive and disputed. (shrink)

The hendecachoron is an abstract 4-dimensional polytope composed of eleven cells in the form of hemi-icosahedra. This paper tries to foster an understanding of this intriguing object of high symmetry by discussing its construction in bottom-up and top down ways and providing visualization by computer graphics models.

An essential component of beauty is being undermined and will soon be practically eliminated, and that is scarcity. Botox is to cosmetics what cut-and-paste software is to music production. Whatever was precious five minutes ago becomes overbearingly omnipresent five minutes from now. The quest for beauty coupled with technological proficiency undermines the relative value of each beautiful invention. Find beauty in nature, but when it comes to culture, it's time to forget beauty. It will soon be nothing more than another (...) word for nostalgia. (shrink)

Since there isn't a computer that seems conscious at this time, the idea of machine consciousness is supported by thought experiments. Here's one old chestnut: "What if you replaced your neurons one by one with neuron sized and shaped substitutes made of silicon chips that perfectly mimicked the chemical and electric functions of the originals? If you just replaced one single neuron, surely you'd feel the same. As you proceed, as more and more neurons are replaced, you'd stay conscious. Why (...) wouldn't you still be conscious at the end of the process, when you'd reside in a brain shaped glob of silicon? And why couldn't the resulting replacement brain have been manufactured by some other means?". (shrink)

More than two centuries ago, Adam Smith, the great theorist of capitalism, argued that the free market was a self-correcting mechanism: a lot of people seeking profits for themselves would produce general public benefit. But does it work with ideas? Can there be an encyclopædia that corrects itself, as it grows ever larger on the Web?

When zoologist Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene was published 20 years ago, it practically snuffed out many readers' belief in God and in their own importance, for it described in stunning and terrifying detail a world where all life was merely the conveyor belt for the gene. Its mission: to replicate itself. DNA was the fundamental and irreducible unit of life that spun itself endlessly into the incredible diversity of flora and fauna. Everything we hold most dear--acts of love, altruism, (...) the painterly beauty of the peacock's tail, the birth of a newborn--could, according to Dawkins, be explained by the gene's attempt to survive, and to hitch a ride on the fittest organism possible, the one most likely to mate and reproduce. Darwinian natural selection was Dawkins' ruling theme. The gene looked like the most purely selfish entity one could imagine, but it was more like the Terminator--just programmed to survive. (shrink)

The easiest predictions to make about the next fifty years of computer science are those centering on the computers, ignoring the people. For example, I can predict with a fair degree of confidence that there will be fabulous increases in hardware capability, which will be largely consumed by a corresponding decrease in software elegance as decades of legacy systems tangle like parasitic vines. It's when people are brought into the equation, however, that the business of prediction becomes difficult.

properly, for instance, in today’s videoconferencing systems, because the camera and the display screen cannot be in the same spot. This usually leads to a deadened and formal affect in interactions, eye contact being a nearly ubiquitous subconscious method of affirming trust. Furthermore, participants aren’t able to establish a sense of position relative to one another and therefore have no clear way to direct attention, approval or disapproval. Tele-immersion, a new medium for human interaction enabled by digital technologies, approximates the (...) illusion that a user is in the same physical space as other people, even though the other participants might in fact be hundreds or thousands of miles away. It combines the display and interaction techniques of virtual reality with new vision technologies that transcend the traditional limitations of a camera. Rather than merely observing people and their immediate environment from one vantage point, tele-immersion stations convey them as “moving sculptures,” without favoring a single.. (shrink)

IÂ’m only talking about commercial big time music in the United States. Of course music is gloriously seething in odd corners of the planet as it should. I can team up with some compatible friends and we can go find or make our own music in any of a number of accommodating environments- on the net, in the forest, or in some dank club late at night.

[opening paragraph]: While there are many ideas worthy of test, and especially some exciting speculations on how ‘high level’ processing might feed back into ‘low level’ visual perception, the scheme of ‘laws’ proposed by Ramachandran and Hirstein underestimates the ambition of art, at least as it is probably understood by most serious contemporary practitioners. It should be retitled ‘The Science of Design'. If Ramachandran and Hirstein had looked into the literature of design, instead of art, they would have come upon (...) somewhat similar, though more subjective, explorations of significantly overlapping ideas; symmetry, contrast, methods of limiting distraction, avoiding confusion, etc. Design is an essential element of the artist's training, but it is not the equivalent of art; design is to art as engineering is to science -- it does a lot of heavy lifting but does not in itself contain or explain the agenda. (shrink)

The game of chess possesses a rare combination of qualities, from the point of view of a human mind. It is easy to understand the rules, yet hard to play well; and most importantly, the quest to master chess seems to be eternal. Human players surmount ever higher plateaus of skill, and yet no one has been able to make the claim that chess skill can be pushed no further.