The internet is not external to our body it is an extension of our nervous
system . (Marshall McLuhan)...
"We shape our tools," he said, "and then our tools shape us." Technology,
according to McLuhan, is an extension of our own natural faculties. Just as
a knife is an extension of the hand, and the wheel an extension of the leg,
writing is an extension of speech and of memory. In this general metaphor,
automobiles become extensions of our personal bodies, and the city an
extension of our collective skin. Electronic communication is an extension
of our nervous system, just as computers are extensions of our brains. Once
extended, however, these technologies are "amputated." They exist as
external and independent objects, though we remain dependent upon them.
) http://www.histori.ca/minutes/minute.do?id=10226(
-----Original Message-----
From: yasmin_discussions-bounces@estia.media.uoa.gr
[mailto:yasmin_discussions-bounces@estia.media.uoa.gr] On Behalf Of Jennifer
Kanary Nikolov(a)
Sent: Friday, January 28, 2011 8:20 PM
To: YASMIN DISCUSSIONS
Subject: Re: [Yasmin_discussions] Around Simulation II - Simulating
Empathyand Subjective Experience
Dear Natasha,
You write:
"Empathy may be the most needed and also the most difficult experiential
behavior to obtain. To have empathy an agent needs to understand the
thoughts, feelings and state of another agent/person. To have empathy then,
the agent would also have to have "personhood." So, what is personhood if
it is not to be alive, self-awareness, and able to make decisions. How can
something make decisions if it is not alive and self-aware? Certainly AI
makes decisions and interacts with its environment, but not alive. So the
issue is what makes AI alive?"
Here I would like to refer to my reaction to Simon (not sure in which order
my posts will appear), containing the question by Sejnowski "When will the
Internet become aware of itself." and the reference to the evolution of the
internet as resembling bio-evolution.
I often wonder if my computer is empathic with my moods because it is
connected to the internet. In a sense mimicking my moods. It seems all too
often, when I am angry, it refuses to communicate, when I calm down, it
works again. When nothing else changed but my emotion in time. Is my
computer the 'body part' of the internet that is its 'mind'?
How does the internet make decisions, and what are the senses of the
internet?
I remember well, Roger Malina's question posed to me at Trondheim's Making
Reality Really Real conference, if I believed that computers also know
Madness.
My intuition says that they do...Madness, we might say, is when the senses
are flooded and one cannot filter anything out anymore, as everything seems
equally important and connected. What if madness is the beginning, from
where the filters, our senses, start to evolve...starting to make us alive?
Where is the madness in the Internet? If it is aware or might become aware,
how does the internet make decisions, and what are the senses of the
internet?
Perhaps then, we will find simulation of subjective experience and empathy.
Perhaps it is already there.
Jennifer
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