teaching the machine

Comments

4 responses to “teaching the machine”

1. 

   March 17, 2007

   Matt Astill

   For some reason the University computers won’t stream videos, and since I’m now living over the road and don’t have a computer, I’ll have to admit defeat in being able to watch.

   As you know I think that our ‘connection to’ and ‘use of’ technology are fundamentally uncritical – the inanity of clicking to feed the beast is a good example of this.

   You write: “Of course this is nothing more than an apocalyptic thought-experiment. There’s no reason to hold this dynamic as dominant over the more positive hued dynamic usually surrounding the ’social web’ meme.”

   The way in which the face-to-face series is disconnected and other series are connected raises in me the suspicion that the ease of flow is guaranteed by whatever most belongs to the current form of common sense – that the selection of these series as lines of least resistance (user-friendlyness, more clicks, more ‘participation’) is a straightforward fascism.

   This said, the new material that is created can be considered increases of power (puissance), and the academic view you indicate should go as far as it can, and we should go as far as we can, in the direction of finding these connections interesting. But I’d like to say this is analogous (!) to the image of the man beating the dog, where there is a real virtue of action involved in the raising and lowering of the arm, and yet an obvious moral content that we go against in affirming this. But what of a world of people beating dogs?

   I want to suggest, therefore, to read your comment: “Of course this is nothing more than an apocalyptic thought-experiment. There’s no reason to hold this dynamic as dominant over the more positive hued dynamic usually surrounding the ’social web’ meme.” As a kind of ethical vs moral position. As is my wont these days it seems.

   LikeLike

   Reply
2. 

   March 19, 2007

   Metaphilly

   I must admit I watched the film, then read both comments then watched the film again. I got the Mary Shelly feeling, which in many ways it pure myth making, myths being that which resembles nature in some way but is far enough removed to allow us to ponder on it – more like a fable I suppose – the cautious warn us – go slowly, don’t be in such a hurry (or maybe that was just my mother). The moral of the story is that there is no morality, ethically speaking there is only governance, and the ethics that governs governance is governance. Are we born free and giving rights or are we born into serfdom and obtain rights – it’s an old question – who decides the answer is the answer. Maybe at best we are given the illusion that we can change things, the duality of them/us is lubricated, the KY slips from our fingers – it only makes us more slippery – then it only makes them more slippery. We look over our shoulders, a single bead of sweat falls from our brow – we ask, plead – who is the machine – is it our fault, my fault – should I have done something, is there something to be done? It is easy, maybe, for me, to say that morality is a myth, one that in the twisted, dark cavern lives only Nietzsche – the will to power – slashing at those that want more than a material world, full of god knows what and ready at any moment to take away any power you may feel you have – crushing your will with the myths that only warn. But then what?
   If Blair decides to take the line, moving those oh so honest hands, the windmill that grinds away at your freedom, ‘there is no morality’, of course the music is now “who’s zooming who” as against “things are only going to get better” – he continues, some say even his eyes lie – but if you watch them – they don’t, there is no soul but many windows – ‘God is Dead!’ – ‘I am God’ – ‘Long live the God’ – now it is he that sweats – ‘the only conspiracy is that there is not conspiracy’, he gives a nervous laugh, one arm manages to do a full circle – ‘there is no machine – no them and us – there only is – IS!’ – one reporter suggests Blair must have been reading Heidegger. Yet, no morality, ethics as governance, what does it all mean, what is the meaning – socialization, who was that masked crusader? We are then the machine – the questioning machine (strange how my mother’s comments are bleeding into this text) – ‘who’, ‘what; and ‘when’ – we are frozen by fear – running for our very lives – keep moving, then they will not get you – if you gonna be a target, best to be a moving one. The story unfolds, as with time, maybe, at some point the questions that have been launched into meta-space, come back, generally whilst enjoying a nice cup of tea – morality vs ethics – something vs nothing – time vs space – intelligence vs passion – rich tea vs jaffa cakes! Then it starts all over again –no one person wins and no one person loses – the machine is lubricated – with clicks – it too becomes slippery – the poor die young – the rich die fat – or visa versa; until the end – no more lubrication, stillness, nothingness – then we will not look over our shoulders, we will not ask why – then will be the time to really worry about “who’s zooming who”.

   LikeLike

   Reply
3. 

   March 19, 2007

   notebooker

   The question of ‘is this right’ (or wrong) – that moral question – is redundant since, as we all know, it depends on the ethics we adopt. the stance we take in the world is inevitably ethical, it reveals an ethics whether we want it to or not. my stance is materialistic, in the sense that it is immanent. i see no need to posit something beyond the world, no god, no self that is ‘like a soul’, no ‘thing that is not a thing’. in this sense, I accept that I am a machine but I don’t accept that machines cannot think, or love, or feel, though each according to its means, each according ot its instantiations. Somehow, of course, we need to have a response – we are always responding, just as we’re always ethical (unethical) and thought is the only virtue in this regard, forcing ourselves to think, being forced to think.

   So I don’t think it’s simply a matter of the ethical/moral problem, I think it’s one of acting. The same, here, for both Matt and Metaphilly. I will and do act, even in my inaction. I don’t need to pose a set of choices which my act relies upon but I need to act and sometimes these acts _do_ result from a conscious choice of some sort. Given the option to step outside the machine, why not? Of course we know in the abstract that it means entering another machine (the enviromnmental) and it might even mean we cannot fully step outside the ‘capitalist’ machine (globaly catastrophe) but the option to become a hermit exists. Others are taking it. The weight of evidence, the believability of the ‘capitalist machine’ that sucks us into its intellectual alienation, is it seems increasing, thus the choice ‘to hermit’ seems to rise up…I don’t think the point here is to _make_ a choice but merely to raise this act as a kind of virtual surrounding, it’s pressing possibility and urgency lending a kind of terror to our lives except I find it no more than curious, not threatening…

   I could at any point just stop doing this and I know that.

   That is what cannot be denied.

   And that is enough.

   Perhaps.

   LikeLike

   Reply
4. 

   March 20, 2007

   Metaphilly

   I agree we are complex, so complex that we don’t, after thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of years, understand ourselves completely, this in my mind seems to be because of the type of synthesis that creates materials like the mind, that then create ideas, which merge with emotions and visa versa; thus create contradictory notions that have yet to be fully comprehended. Ethics, although to study, for me, is not that interesting, however in the lived experience I am troubled by it most days, the whole nature / nurture bit – even this morning I wanted to do violence on someone that was being ignorant on the train, it really gets to me, but the conflict in this case is internal, caused by the external – the rude man – and possible because not only the socialization that has informed me of accepted behaviour, the sub cultures that I have been influenced by and my own processing, but also that of silent biological factors. However, as I think Freud suggested, the one thing that you cannot run away from is yourself, I would add that we can’t undo, completely, all that socialization, thus even the hermits, in their little, cold caves still deal with the ethical concerns, even if it is just their own. It is a strange notion that we have not only the them and us, but also the me and me, the battles within ourselves, I don’t think the Super Ego notion really hangs together the fact that at some point ideas taken from without merge with the within – when does a idea become my own – is it only my ideas that I can claim to be mine – have I really had a private idea, against the public language of Wittgenstein – the question is then how do you stop, what will stop, and right up to the very end, how could we really dictate how we will be in the very next five minutes. I have always liked the idea of the hermit on top of the mountain – then – some years ago I wondered what if near the time of death I really regretted doing it…

   LikeLike

   Reply