- March 11th, 2013, 1:59 pm
#126483
Well, Norbert Wiener defined cybernetics as "the scientific study of control and communication in the animal and the machine." (Basically studying, in a variety of ways, the nature of information processing and manipulation by animals and computers alike.) Quoting wiki: Concepts studied by cyberneticists (or, as some prefer, cyberneticians) include, but are not limited to: learning, cognition, adaption, social control, emergence, communication, efficiency, efficacy, and connectivity. These concepts are studied by other subjects such as engineering and biology, but in cybernetics these are abstracted from the context of the individual organism or device. It's had a large variety of meanings beside that, but I think that's basically the gist of it. In popular culture and science fiction of course, the term cybernetics has, perhaps misleadingly taken on a life of it's own. It describes the process of integrating the biological with the technological---i.e. 'cyborgs'. This is very much connected and influenced by the idea of 'transhumanism'. Transhumanism is of great interest to me partially for the sci fi thrill of the idea, and partly because it's not only possible but has already begun.
The whole point of technology is that it is something which augments our lives; it gives us greater autonomy than we would otherwise have. Throughout most of human history, this endeavour has been focused an tools. The first being basic e.g. flint knives these gave us the ability to cut solid objects in a way that we could not before, despite millions of years of evolution. This then developed into more advanced tools like spears and axes, allowing us to hunt bigger animals and build bigger and stronger buildings. Couple that with discoveries about how the world works, like that friction can cause fire, or that burying seeds and watering them makes plants grow, and bingo, civilization was born. The rest, as they say, is history, namely a history of gradually discovering more and more about how the universe works, and thus endowing us with the knowledge we need to build ever more ingenious tools to make our physical abilities more spectacular.
Then actual science came along, the process of rigorously testing and investigating the physical forces of the universe, and with it an entirely new way of looking at things. Originating from the renaissance and leading to the industrial revolution, it meant that we were suddenly able to manipulate matter and energy in a way that had never been imagined. We could make carriages that travelled without being pulled, could have instant conversations without even being in the same country, we made it possible to fly and eventually even to penetrate the sky itself and travel into outer space.
The current latest and greatest principle of technology is the computer, which is where cybernetics comes in. The computer is the first tool we've built that augments not just what human beings do, but even how we think. We can now make calculations using computers that would take a human mind millions of years to work out in a matter of days, and yet whilst computers have spectacular abilities at specific tasks, they have nowhere near the general information processing ability of a human brain. Cybernetics believes this can be changed.
Computers currently work via a binary system, 1 or 0, yes or no, true or false. Information is processed using codes of electromagnetic patterns across circuit boards. Human brains work using a similar a code of electromagnetic patterns firing off between neurons, but in a far more elaborate and complex fashion, each neuron linked to thousands of others, and it's not just a simple 1 or 0 system. If a computer could be designed to mimic the language of the mind, something that neuroscientists are only beginning to understand, then maybe, just maybe, we could create a machine that not only imitates how we think, but actually thinks what we think.
Technology is meant to augment our abilities, the more we let technology do, the less we have to do ourselves e.g. 10,000 years ago, your average human could spear a fish in water, now almost nobody can do that, but that is irrelevant seeing as how technology can now enable us to catch millions of fish in massive mechanized nets. The logical conclusion of all this is that eventually, technology will entirely replace our evolutionary abilities, giving us supreme technological abilities. However, this is not possible so long as we physically remain separate from the machine. So long as we are physically separated from our creations, there will always be some things that we will have to rely on good old fashioned evolution to deal with.
This brings up an age old philosophical debate. Should we abandon our genetic, physical being in favor of a higher, more autonomous and powerful, technological form? Or, should we retain what nature intended for us, at the expense of potential power and glory? In my subjective opinion, I prefer the former. If we truly desired to be as 'nature' or 'evolution' intended, then why did we continue to expand our technological expertise, and knowledge of the universe, as well as our culture, and our civilization? None of which would exist without it. We would not even be aware of what evolution was, were it not for science and technology. So I say, let the machines take us to glory! This does not necessarily mean burn the natural world, technology has given us ways to harness energy and technology without polluting the atmosphere or causing droughts and destroying ecosystems, it's just that, for the moment, they aren't particularly cost effective, but this will change in time. However, if the reason to hold onto our humanity is for its own sake alone, simply ask yourself, what is humanity really worth?
If we can create a machine that can think as we do, then there is no reason why we cannot transfer our own systems of thoughts, our personalities, our consciousnesses etc, into a machine format. The ultimate end for technology is for the created to join with its creator, to become its own god. For us, however, we ARE the creator, as far as machines are concerned, we ARE god, and god's goals are without limit. Once we have merged with our own technology, then there is no limit to how far we can take it. To that end, I'll be making a post soon based on the Kardashev scale, a system of measuring the development of an advanced civilization, which might just be the future of both human and machine alike.
- By Fried Egg
- By Bethel Saint Bright