Sunday, 11 January 2009
Please shoot me for my tardiness in posting this so late...
Will T4 be "Starship Troopers" reprised, but without the satire? I suspect so. Notice how reminiscent too the giant terminator is of the bug Johnny Rico destroyed with grenades.
As for "Persepolis", I understand it's just come out on DVD here, so it will be interesting to learn if it presents a purely reactionary interpretation of the Iranian Revolution. I understand though that Marjane Satrapi's parents were socialist activists, so there is some chance my fears may be allayed.
Tuesday, 6 January 2009
The Venus Project
My eyes are burning like 2 pissholes in the snow, after tracking the flood of trillionstars.com videos that have emerged in the last week or so. I'm hoping to post something about them in the next few days, time permitting.
I couldn't resist putting up something about a more collectivist utopian vision as a partial reply, but I advise extreme caution as I think The Venus Project is also moving towards loopy extremes. I started out by looking at Confessions of an Economic Hitman, then moved to Zeitgeist Addendum. Hence I'll be tagging this post with reference to "conspiracy theories" to signal my suspicions. To be sure, I like the sci-fi like design, somewhat reminiscent of Buckminster Fuller's arcologies, but I vow to reserve judgement pending academic verification......
Do You Want to Live Forever? (PT 1)
The film works on so many levels and can therefore in principle be enjoyable, even for Technology Review style detractors. For example, the accompanying footage of Ray Kurzweil, (performing as his female rock star avatar), was so unexpected and unusual that I wasn't sure at first whether to laugh or cry.
It would be good though to gain a fuller understanding of where de Grey would situate himself with respect to the ideal of democratic transhumanism propounded by the likes of James Hughes. Sadly, this is all I could find today. That said, there may be some merit insofar as the piece at least clarifies a few telling differences. I found this quote especially interesting:
While Hughes treats the "Christian right" as an enemy of progress, de Grey calmly suggests how it would be logical for them to join the quest for human betterment. First off, he notes, "God is not in favor of hastening death." Indeed, it is a sin to kill others or to kill yourself.
Second, de Grey points out, "God is also not in favor of apathy." It is a sin to refuse to help someone when you have the means to do so. For example, if someone is suffering from Alzheimer's, as was President Reagan, other humans have a duty to try to repair his injuries. That's what ultimately swayed Nancy Reagan who is now in favor of stem cell research.
De Grey also pointed out that while President Bush "is not the world's most progressive person," even he sees that "we should always err on the side of life." Hughes never reached these nuanced points, which clearly help to make the tent bigger, because his cause is not human life. Instead, his driving force is what he calls "personhood."
That is, those who are self-aware and have desires are considered persons. According to him, this means they should be allowed to live and be aided in that process. But for those who are non-persons, they should either be ignored or sentenced to die.
Hughes's definition of persons includes adult humans (enhanced or not), children, mentally disabled humans, and great apes (which he aspires to intellectually enhance). His definition of those who have the right not to suffer, but not the right to life, includes fetuses, fish, and permanently vegetative humans. In a third category, he places brain-dead humans, embryos, plants, and toasters -- to him, these are all "property."
Scarily then, Hughes comes across like Peter Singer (trying to marry the Left to Darwin), while de Grey, in this instance anyway, seems closer to Steve Fuller's effort to tease out the progressive implications of Intelligent Design by collectively harnessing the power to become our own intelligent designers (rather than leaving the outcome to capricious evolutionary forces or God's will "moving in mysterious ways").
Perpetual travel & "the 5 flags"
This promotional video for trillionstars.com, a New Zealand financial company (for personal and corporate finance), is something I've found morbidly fascinating. It is but one example of the "Perpetual Traveler" lifestyle and its attendant "5 flags" philosophy. Clients are urged to think of themselves basically as "human multinationals". I believe that social theorists such as Chris Rojek or Anthony Elliott would recognise here an intensification of individual experience. "Postmodernization" is a process typically understood to involve a blurring of the boundaries between work and leisure, whereas the ideal of the "perpetual traveler" appears more suggestive of a growing sense of fragmentation: hence the ideal and lifestyle of the "5 flags" divides identity into relatively discreet autonomous zones. For example, (according to the clip I've posted here), Thailand or Sydney serve as relatively inexpensive "playgrounds", while France is for "friends" and cultural sophistication, and New York or Frankfurt are chiefly financial repositories.
Those able to fully avail themselves of the opportunities afforded by the "5 flags" would, almost certainly, have to be the most mobile members in a global network of services. In this regard they stand at the opposite end of the spectrum detailed in the ethnographies of Aihwa Ong (previously posted on this blog). It follows that it is more proper to speak here of the development of globalisation to the exclusion of a cosmopolitan sensibility (i.e. the latter is closer to world citizenship than the individual sovereignty associated with the perpetual traveler).Hence global financial transactions are the closest approximation of a cultural Esperanto, as far as perpetual travelers are concerned (in tandem with legal indemnification against personal loss- i.e. as soon as the latter does not serve the former, the traveler will transfer their investments elsewhere).
By extension, the latter point is a stark illustration of the conventional nature of seasteading, given how easily one can imagine such degenerate utopias setting sail under the "5 flags". To my mind this is also indicative of how the book Evil Paradises may have benefited from a greater attempt to systematise the core literature with respect to the competing agendas of globalisation and cosmopolitanism. For instance, such an approach could have protected China Mieville's critique of seasteading from the predictable ad hominem attacks by the likes of Patri Friedman (which can be easily Googled),given the [libertarian] failure to understand how the method of immanent critique can be used to deconstruct seasteading, and, indeed, "perpetual travel".
Sunday, 4 January 2009
projectaiko.com
Those who have seen the sceptical documentary, "Where's My Robot?", would have concluded that it must be some considerable time before anything like a convincing android will appear on the scene. Well, I have to say that Aiko is the most impressive approximation I've seen so far, and has gone some way toward restoring my faith that it is possible. However, I am more dubious about the gender stereotyping associated with Aiko's development, which may speak volumes about less desirable future applications [sic]. It is best though to draw one's own conclusions by watching the video, and reading about Aiko's abilities on the official website:
Welcome to Project Aiko
This is the official Project Aiko website which talks about the making of a gynoid called Aiko. The original goal of Aiko was to help our aging population to do simple tasks like make tea and coffee, tell them the weather, read a magazine or remind them to take their medication at the correct time. There are many applications for Aiko in the home, office or public places.
Aiko was built in my basement using credit card loans and my entire savings account as funding. One of my dreams is to make Aiko walk and do other house chores. I cannot do this without your donations and support. The donations will go towards new motors, sensors and mainboards to design Aiko’s new arm and leg systems.
Aiko is the first android to react to physical stimuli and mimic pain. This technology could be applied to people born with or who have undergone amputations. Aiko is the first step towards a life-like mechanical limb that has the ability to feel physical sensations.
I started to build Aiko on August 15, 2007. About 1.5 months later Aiko version 1 was completed. Aiko made her first public appearance at the HobbyShow on November 2007 at Toronto International Center, and Ontario Science Center a week later. Aiko is bilingual, she can speak English and Japanese.
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