Reflections on cyborgs, embodiment and cognispheres
This week my lifestream reflects the readings I have been doing on Gies, Badmington, Hayles, Shields, and Muri. I have continued with my experiment of copying out into Tumblr passages from my reading on which I wish to reflect. My usual method is to outline writers’ ideas in MindManager – mapping out their logic. However, in my MindManager approach I also highlight key passages so that aspect is replicated in Tumblr. I then am able to review my selected passages in my lifestream. I was nervous about doing this initially but I am finding it interesting. My gleanings this week are:
Gies:
virtual selves leave many traces, are monitored, and it is difficult to maintain anonymity and multiple identities (see separate blog)
Badmington:
remnants of humanism in posthumanism
Hayles:
the cyborg is now obsolete because it is not networked enough; the notion of the cognisphere captures the dynamic relations and interactive exchanges between global networks of machines and humans
Shields:
the cyborg can be updated but the scale should not be at the human level but at the nano-scales of biotechnology as a potential counter-space
Muri:
debunking disembodiment when bodies are everywhere etc. – separation of mind/soul from body and distaste of body has routes in Christianity; gives cynical reasons why academics have promoted the idea of disembodiment
The way I decided to pull out summaries of these writers mirror the impression I get of their arguments from just reviewing the lifestream. However, in my lifestream I also have some links to current developments that I think link into the literature I have read this week.
The first link raises the issue of whether the cyborg is really obsolete.
Contact lens with built-in virtual graphics (article from New Scientist)
A contact lens that harvests radio waves to power an LED is paving the way for a new kind of display. The lens is a prototype of a device that could display information beamed from a mobile device.
Realising that display size is increasingly a constraint in mobile devices, Babak Parviz at the University of Washington, in Seattle, hit on the idea of projecting images into the eye from a contact lens.
One of the limitations of current head-up displays is their limited field of view. A contact lens display can have a much wider field of view. “Our hope is to create images that effectively float in front of the user perhaps 50 cm to 1 m away,” says Parviz.
On the one hand, this development seems to support Shield’s contention that we must look at cyborg developments at a microlevel but at the same time, it contradicts this, as the lens is to be worn by whole human body and the visual experience will incorporate both viewing the real world AND some projected virtual world. Will real and virtual intermingle? Is this where the cyborg joins the cognisphere? Driving while talking on the mobile phone seems safe in comparison. The body is in the real world!
IBM Press Release on Developing a Computer that can simulate the human brain
IBM (NYSE: IBM) announced significant progress toward creating a computer system that simulates and emulates the brain’s abilities for sensation, perception, action, interaction and cognition, while rivaling the brain’s low power and energy consumption and compact size.
The cognitive computing team, led by IBM Research, has achieved significant advances in large-scale cortical simulation and a new algorithm that synthesizes neurological data — two major milestones that indicate the feasibility of building a cognitive computing chip.
These advancements will provide a unique workbench for exploring the computational dynamics of the brain, and stand to move the team closer to its goal of building a compact, low-power synaptronic chip using nanotechnology and advances in phase change memory and magnetic tunnel junctions. The team’s work stands to break the mold of conventional von Neumann computing, in order to meet the system requirements of the instrumented and interconnected world of tomorrow.
As the amount of digital data that we create continues to grow massively and the world becomes more instrumented and interconnected, there is a need for new kinds of computing systems – imbued with a new intelligence that can spot hard-to-find patterns in vastly varied kinds of data, both digital and sensory; analyze and integrate information real-time in a context-dependent way; and deal with the ambiguity found in complex, real-world environments.
The last paragraph supports what Hayles is saying about the cognisphere – that most of the interaction is between machines. A cognitive computing chip would accelerate this process.
Cyberwar is now a fact (BBC News)
“To go to physical war requires billions of dollars,” he said. “To go to cyber war most people can easily find the resources that could be used in these kind of attacks.”
The targets of such future conflicts were likely to be a nation’s infrastructure, said Mr Day, because networks of all kinds were now so embedded in peoples’ lives.
In response, he said, many nations now have an agency overseeing critical national infrastructure and ensuring that it is adequately hardened against net-borne attacks.
Again, the notion of the cognisphere is supported by the statement that ‘networks of all kinds were now so embedded in peoples’ lives’.
I think Hayles is correct in saying that the unit of analysis is not the individual – whether human or cyborg – but in relationships and networks. And that is where ultimately the cyborg metaphor fails. Individualism has been a mark of the 20th century with roots going back to the Enlightenment. I suggest that we are moving away from individualism but it may be painful – and the realities of cyberwars may awaken us to this movement.
One of the key aspects of Hayles’ argument that resonated with me is her notion of the history of intellectual and scientific development having a seriated pattern – in the shape of a tiger’s iris.
