Category: Philosophy of Computing

Plaintext_Tools is a Zwiki (zope wiki) for the discussion of, “Theory and poetics of tools and codes. The analog and the digital. … ” It is run by the Center for Literary Computing at West Virginia University. Most of the wiki at the moment seems to be essays by Alan Sondheim with a few pages by others. I like the list of topics so far.

Humanist just had an intriguing post about The First International Symposium on Roboethics. This is being hosted by the Home > Benvenuti” href=”http://www.scuoladirobotica.it/”>Scuola di Robotica (School of Robotics) in Genoa which describes itself as a “CyberSchool. I wouldn’t have thought robotics and ethics were mature enough as an area for a symposium, but the section on the site on Roboethics Debate changed my mind. Since Kurzweil published The Age of Spritual Machines the debate has shifted from science fiction circles (Azimov’s 3 + 1 rules) to academic circles.

I should note that the Debate section of the Roboethics site, while interesting, has some inaccuracies. I don’t think Ray Kurzweil was “one of the develop of the Java programming language”. That would be Bill Joy.

Is a belief in God rationally consistent? Battleground God by TPM (The Philosopher’s Magazine) is a set of (presumably) branching questions designed to test how consistent your belief in God is. I got caught in a contradiction around justifying belief based on inner conviction (how can inner conviction be a source of belief if madmen are so convinced) which demonstrates how such a hypertext can be thought provoking and annoying.

What is strange about the “battleground” is the that contradiction is represented as “health.” Since when is consistency healthy?

Alltogether a good example of interactivity for philosophy, something rare indeed.

My colleague Mark Coté is working with an interesting idea borrowed from Foucaut, the “dispositif”. He has a short paper/abstract in the Proceedings of the GENEALOGIES DE LA BIOPOLITIQUE. He defines dispositif as,

The dispositif’s something literally “lost in translation” with English-language interlocutors’ a grid of intelligibility; a heterogeneous ensemble of discursive and nondiscursive elements that come together in response to an urgent need, a combinatory machine that allows us to ‘see’ and ‘speak’ and in the process producing not ‘ideology’ but their own ‘truths’. (Coté, Mark, “The Soft Revolution”,
Conference Proceedings : Genealogies of Biopolitics, Oct. 18, 2005)

How is a dispositif a machine? How is it different from a tool? Does it give us a way of understanding the limitations of tools?
Continue reading Coté: the Dispositif

KurzweilAI.net is a web site by Ray Kurzweil dedicated to Artificial Intelligence. From there you can launch an avatar “Ramona” with whom you can converse. (If you have Windows you can install the FX Player and see her move and speak.) If you click on “The Brain” there is a great visualization of the connections between people, concepts, implementations (like Eliza) and related things. Clicking on items shows the connections and brings up short defintions and links. This is implemented in Java. Thanks to Alexandre Sévigny for this.
Continue reading Kurzweil: Ramona and KurzweilAI.net

The Department of the Homeland Security now has a site, Ready.gov to help us ready for biological, chemical and nuclear threats. It is full of wisdom like,

Studies have shown that taking steps to temporary seal off a room using common materials enhances the safety of a room against the impact of a chemical plume. (Ready.gov – FAQ)

Reminds me of the paranoia I grew up with during the cold war. How to prepare for the end of the world. Perhaps that’s the point – a bit of fear goes a long way. Look at the graphics from the ready.com home page. The women looking up to a “ready” man. The Buisness looking confidently at us like the Ready Kids (who are coming soon.)

Ready-to-fear.

So why is the Ad Council advertising Ready.com on the Guardian Unlimited site? That’s where I saw the ad … Is the Department of Homeland Security so insecure they have to advertise in a left-wing UK online news site? Is the Ad Council just randomly buying advertising space? Is someone trying to make fun of Ready.com?

The BBC has a nice little article about that perennial subject, Moore’s law, that proposes “the number of transistors on a chip could double every 24 months”. See Law that has driven digital life, by Jo Twist (is that name for real?) The story raises an issue that comes around every … well … 24 months – will Moore’s law hold as we get to the physical limits of current chip technology.

Even Dr Moore is surprised about the longevity of the observation, but he admits the “law” has become a self-fulfilling prophesy.

I’m more interested in what would happen if computing ceased to appear to be improving technologically. What would happen if we couldn’t make faster and smaller computers? What would happen if the culture of computing couldn’t assume the hardware would improve dramatically and continually? We are addicted to the futurism and hype(r) of computing – for there to be a slow down would change the subculture.
Then again, will the industry even admit if things did slow down – if we did hit limits? That’s the nature of technology – there is always an improvement in your future.
Continue reading Moore’s Law: What if

Slate has a cute review on Defining Bullshit – A philosophy professor says it’s a process, not a product. By Timothy Noah (Wednesday, March 2, 2005). The review essay concludes that bullshit is a lie (or lying), but a disregard for the truth – the bullshitter doesn’t really care what is true – they just want to spout and be heard. Sounds like a lot of blogs to me.

Language is the principal – or perhaps the only – tool of the philosopher. For Wittgenstein, and for analytic philosophy in general, philosophy consists in clarifying how language can be used. The hope is that when language is used clearly, philosophical problems are found to dissolve. (Analytic philosophy – Wikipedia)

Bernie Frischer asked me what a tool is in the context of humanities computing. Setting aside a discussion of the discourse of tools and ends, here is a first pass:

1. An algorithm for the transformation of data. In the case of humanities computing this would typically be for the transformation of linguistic data or strings.
2. A utility program that implements an algorithm (see 1.) or simple set of processes in a form that can be used easily. Generally a tool is not a full blown interactive program like a word processor. Thus Excel I would not call a tool as you can use it interactively and you can use it to do many different things. You can, however, run transformations within it.
3. A technique that involves transformative or interpretative practices some of which might be automated on the computer. Thus a technique includes both human and automatable practices. Even more generally one can talk about methods that might be made up of various techniques.
4. A interactive environment or game in which one can run a set of transformations for a single purpose. See 2. above. There is obviously a grey area between an atomistic tool that does one thing (just what is the doing of “one” thing) and an environment that is multipurpose. At what point does a tool become an environment for processes that isn’t really ONE tool but more a workbench of tools. My point, however, is that we will call an environment a tool if it is used in a context for one end. Thus Excel becomes a tool if I just use it to sort columns of text.

Now back to the real problem which is the presumption that a tool is utilitarian – that is something used not for play, but for achieving a well defined goal.

The Liberty Alliance Project was set up to counter Microsoft’s Passport technology that threatened to put Microsoft at the centre of secure commerce and identiy technology for the net. Now that Passport is being declared dead (see InformationWeek), perhaps the alliance of equally commercial firms can get off the high horse of “liberty” and call themselves something less pretencious. Just how would technology for building identity for web transactions contribute to liberty?