The Future of the Mind FACT, April 23, 2008.
AL and AL - celebrity closes down space between people, - reduction of icons - less able to find stronger eccentric identities
can we know what is real?
Finish year with broadcast of debates – BBC Radio 3
Ernest Edmonds here in June
Margaret Boden
Cannot expect to answer what is future of mind
Why did Ernest ask me to get involved?
I suppose because…I think about the mind in terms of concepts that relate to computer systems. We’ve learned a lot in last 50 years
Difference between mind and body?
Consciousness?
Self? - under threat from posmodernist, humanities people and cognitive scientists, sherry turkle, - individuality : prized in some cultures, to what extent can new technologies help express and reinforce individuality or smear it? - Same icons - Net art - Myspace - So-called communities, but is this a real community? Robin Dunbar – primatologist – formerly in Liverpool – primates have limits on group size for levels of intensity, there for evolutionary reasons.if so, what about so-called communities of 100s.
ME: Milan Kundera – immortality – gesture of agnes
Mike Wheeler -
Laura - open source conferencing - set 10 questions to answer
Helen Sloane, curator - Data Golum – adaptive – piece of code tht will be taken around partner venues o Working with an AI scientist who wants to polish, but artists like the flaws - Chamelon – Tina Gonsalez – HCI Ross Piccard – simulate group interaction - Hive mind – simulation Promised Lands – flomotion – what does promised land mean to users?
David Ingram –John Moores - HCI – to develop better computer systems that are more effective - Moving computers to whole body interaction - HCI conference - ‘How the body shapes t way we think’
Mike Wheeler- philosopher, nature of mind - working on a book that deals with visions of minds that have influenced - distributed/embedded cognition - I’m interested in what these different things say - Gestures as part of thought processes – bodily movements as thinking - Thinking takes place around brain, body and world - Is it true that if a bunch of us are using same computer system, are minds overlapping? - AHRC Interactive Mind project –
Simon Blackmore, artist, sculpture and sound - explore physical structure of technological space - trees, mathematical algorithms to generate trees
Marta Ruperez – new media curator at FACT - utopia - free internet idea not strong
Ross Dalziel, sound music curator, fact - remote mics around UK to create neural net - run Sound Network – artist based network
Fragmented Orchestra
Patrick Fox - Tenantspin fact’s community programme - Interested in web 2.0 philosophies - Questions about reality
Julia Youngmann
DISCUSSION
Language
MB: what is creativity? 3 answers. Distinc between computer art and generative art. Computer art as art where computer is used. Eg. using photoshop. Generative art: processes produce final thing are not under control of artist – these latter raise interesting philosophical issues – authenticity, creativity.
HS: individuality – signature of individual
MB: methods of writing in science and art differ – science – supposed to be third person, so not ‘I did’ but ‘it was done’
MW: idiosyncratic – generative technology – if adaptive over time synchs with artists work, beginning to lose technology – add something extra to art – eg. Amazon adsense capability –
RD: writing as technology
MB: doug hofstader – Godel, Escher, Bach – virtual reality and fiction
GROUP DISCUSSIONS
Virtual reality and fiction
MB: Virtual Reality and Self-Fictions: Are these the same?
HS: Adaptive systems
MB: anything that learns – chequers programme from 1950s – it was adapting to player
MB: creativity joke generating programme -
GROUP ONE
Laura Sillars, Mike Kelley, David England, Marta Rupérez, Ross Dalziel
Frame and articulate a question; the direction of their thinking
What are the implications of technology increasingly integrated and embedded; toward the self in relation to culture and the world ...a series of question...
Fragility of technology
Shifting patterns of effectiveness
Control/autonomy
How much
The unconscious itself Mind as consciousness? Technology is the unconscious
Collective ness
danger of increasing the offloading of responsibility
How you think of yourself in relation to technology 2 approaches A customised gadget that knows everything is just naturally used: confident in it
Like a map being overtaken by tom tom
Reflection
Its seamlessly integrated;and also there's self regulation;
DISTRIBUTING RESPONSIBILITY:GROUP MIND
Glitches in technology/Mis & Dis-information/Is it new?
Shared in some deep sense and you can rely on the technology...
Homogenisation
Increase
Is the future of the mind based on the self or on wider communities...
Worries around loss/dissolving of the self
Tesco Clubcard Of the Mind Individual experience Is it the tools
view of the world about the self...
Cognitive Science Artificial Intelligence Artificial Resistance
The role of the individual in network art?
Is there a future for the individual mind?
Is the future of the mind collective?
LS: collective or distributed – individual agency within something
MB: Ed Hutchins – how things work on a ship – lots of people on a ship – from anthropology – entered cognitive science
MB: collective/distributed intelligence and the individual artist.
Collective production and individual status? Can they co-exist?
MB: Roy Ascot – interactive art
Collective Products and Network Art: where is the individual?
Responsibility
Does increasing embeddedness in contemporary technology raise dangers of…..?
LS: How do you have a meaningful conversation, construct space to have conversation?
MB: start with questions that are specific but open up broad issues? Their sounding specific enables access.
LS: How do you deal with collective responsibility? Man at war.
MB: distance and responsibility – How can responsibility take place at a distance? (ME: less remote)
MW: how certain technologies disrupt indiv responsibility. Allowing the technology to make decisions for you.
MB: David Levy – computer chess – love and sex with robots – love with robots not possible – new book:
ME: link to Zizek
MB: Could you love a robot?
MW: or, emotions – whether not interacting with someone over a piece of technology – genuine feelings – people might argue could never be genuine love. Communities and internet – niche communities – liberating – also ghettoizes –
MB: something on computer companions – something on robots – bk: EMW Fisher – ‘Personal Love’ – philosophical analysis of love
HS: déjà vu – some of the questions have been asked many times before –