Making The Best Of Bits

A summary of:
Lanier, J. (2010). You Are Not Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 Gadget: Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 Manifesto. Allen Lane: London.
Part 4, Chapters 12-13: Making the Best of Bits

This seems a especially poignant observation: "People tin hand the sack brand themselves believe inwards all sorts of fictitious beings, simply when those beings are perceived every bit inhabiting the software tools through which nosotros alive our lives, nosotros bring to alter ourselves inwards unfortunate ways inwards lodge to back upwards our fantasies. We brand ourselves dull" (156-7).

Lanier proposes that nosotros cannot escape the ask for computationalism, simply that nosotros should consider adopting an choice course of teaching of it, what he calls "realism" (157). This is based on the agreement that what makes us human is the final result of a tremendous history of evolution, together with that nosotros bring been "refined yesteryear a real large, real long, together with real deep come across amongst physical reality" (157). In Lanier's "realism", "what tin hand the sack brand bits bring pregnant is that their patterns bring been hewn out of together with hence many encounters amongst reality that they aren't actually abstractable bits anymore, simply are instead a nonasbstract continuation of reality" (157). I'm non certain I discovery this comforting. At to the lowest degree it does short to assuage my concerns that nosotros are piddling amongst things nosotros cannot perhaps imagine the consequences of, together with that it may last negating what millions of years of development worked to create.

Lanier discusses at length how computers bring gotten smart plenty directly to recognize human facial expressions (159). To utilization so, they had to perform a feat of abstraction (although Lanier did non couch it every bit such). In other words, they had to discovery the commonalities betwixt all smiles, for example, inwards lodge to last able to recognize a smile. What I recall this instance shows is that computers fundamentally rely on abstraction, together with it is no wonder that the to a greater extent than nosotros engage amongst these computers, the to a greater extent than nosotros learn comfortable amongst abstracting ourselves every bit a serial of ticked boxes on a profile page.

I also couldn't aid simply notice that Lanier himself got exclusively carried away amongst all of the exciting things that computers could do. Could they abide by odors? Ooh! I recall this just illustrates his previous complaint, that nosotros are seeking to create echoes amongst our technology. Why are nosotros working together with hence difficult to create engineering that tin hand the sack copy humans? Should nosotros non imagine an exclusively novel entity, ane that tin hand the sack utilization things that nosotros never could do?