Reflections on New Media (1)

I am writing a chapter for a book that will come out next year on New Media, edited by Oliver Grau whose most recent book was Virtual Art . The book will examine the historical origins of New Media and the links between digital culture and previous forms of expression, representation and performance. It will be published by MIT Press.

I have been researching this area for the last ten years. I put my first web site together in 1994. I remain unconvinced that New Media is a workable term and provides any added value to discussions of media in general. Nevertheless, the term has taken hold in the popular imaginary and given its presence and use in our culture, the question then becomes what do we actually mean when we use it?

There seems to be no point in engaging in a pedantic discussion of the meaning of the term. Rather, it would be useful to examine the inexorable manner in which digital activities are becoming increasingly woven into every medium that modern cultures use. The ecology of this communications system is best symbolized by the cell phone which has changed notions of mobility, but also resulted in a major shift in how people communicate with each other. As cell phones morph into cameras, video machines and PDA's, new kinds of relationships are established within and among communities. The convergence of cell phones and games means that peer-to-peer communications will become the norm as informal networks are set up to process the multi-faceted strategies that people use to communicate with each other. (More tomorrow)

Can Machines Dream? (Part Five)

John Avery continues the discussion

"I would like to add my own thoughts about dreaming: I think that one of the things that happens during dreaming is that data is transfered from a temporary mode of storage in the brain to a permanent mode. In this process, connections are made to previously stored associated data. Some of the associations that are tried and rejected are bizarre, and this, I believe, is why dreams often have a bizarre quality, while simultaneously including events stored in the temporary memory before sleep. Probably computers of the future will be able to reorganize their memories and to form associations in much the same way that the brain does. It is possible that computers of the future will also be capable of emotions."

Ron Burnett responds

I am not sure that we fully understand how the brain and the mind "store' memories. This is the difficulty with your comment. Gerald Edelman refers to the brain as part of a 'rich nervous system'. He does see memory as a process of categorization (something that computers could replicate) but then goes on to talk about the dynamic nature of neural populations and the continual process of change that characterizes the operations of the mind. This is important because if change is the main feature of thinking and remembering then it is likely that there is no fixed code for memory. The key question is whether computers could store ambiguous and continually evolving pathways of memory, where even the pathways themselves are open to change and transformation.

The other important question is whether it would be possible for computers to generate new properties, new ways of thinking and remembering. Our minds classify the world around us and then upset the applecart by dynamically combining complex properties gained from experience and the autonomous operations of the brain itself. Autonomy in this case means that the brain maps experiences and then recreates, transforms and recategorizes and then redistributes the entire flow in a way that we don't fully understand.

Further comment from Jan Visser

John's assumption falls in line with my own suggestion in my previous comment that dreaming has something to do with going beyond the immediacy of our perceptions and the processing thereof. This assumption seems to be supported by certain animal studies. It was already known that animals display REM sleep but it had not yet been established if this corresponds to actual dreaming. Recently, though, a 2001 MIT report of the Center for Learning and Memory states that “Animals have complex dreams and are able to retain and recall long sequences of events while they are asleep.? The same report places these findings against the scientific belief that “memories are formed in at least two stages: an initial process that occurs during the experience itself, followed by a consolidation period in which the experience is transformed into long-term memory. The hippocampus is believed to be involved in both stages.? As to the reason why animals dream, the findings in the report seem to suggest that “animals are capable of re-evaluating their experiences when they are not in the midst of them? and that such ability is not too far removed from the reason why humans dream.

According to Latrup’s remarks referred to by John, the emergence of dreaming would be a discontinuity in the evolution. If so, the quality of dreaming - the actual meaning of it from the point of view of conscious contemplation of the world - may equally be a discontinuity that distinguishes human beings from the other animals. However, evolutionary discontinuities do not represent changes of state from pitch black to brilliant white. There is a lot of gray in between and arguments may be construed (e.g. along the line of Michael Shermer’s “The science of good and evil?) to extend the concept of rights accorded to humans progressively to the animal kingdom and, why not, as machines become ever more lifelike, to machines. There would most certainly be an incredible benefit to the ecology of biological and physical resources if we became more conscious of such rights.

I am using the word ‘conscious’ in the above paragraph, thereby suggesting that a discussion of the capacity to dream in humans, animals and machines cannot be separated from questions about the meaning of consciousness in each of these categories, particularly moral consciousness. When I said earlier that “Perhaps we should [first] make machines enjoy the natural rhythm of their being? I was deliberately using language that pertains to the realm of consciousness. I am conscious and thus can enjoy (as well as suffer). The more I am conscious, the more I am able to enjoy and suffer, whence the traumatic experience of death in humans. Again, it’s not black and white and I am pervious to considerations about the suffering we inflict on animals other than ourselves as well as find it difficult to throw an outdated piece of computer equipment in the dustbin. I am also impressed by the display of humanlike emotions in primates when confronted with death, as for instance reported in the work of Frans de Waal of the Living Links Center.

End

Machines - Humans - Non-Humans - Dreaming

Jan Visser, President, Learning Development Institute comments on the dialogue about Machines and whether they can dream

Fascinating dialogue, Ron and Ronny. What it brings to mind in me is the idea that dreaming should perhaps be contemplated as an integrated part of our cognitive and metacognitive abilities. It has something to do with going beyond the immediacy of what we perceive through the senses and our processing of the signals generated by it. Letting our mind work in a focused manner on a particular problem can get us a long way. However, because of the focus we put onto it, we often also limit our creativity. Dreaming, as we do it at night while we sleep, may be a way of unfocusing and thus of allowing the mind to access experiences we would not otherwise link to our immediate concerns. Even while awake we often get the best ideas when we allow ourselves to leave the trodden path of focused pursuit and start daydreaming. I personally find the rhythmic movement of walking generative of such constructive daydreaming and have come across, in the literature, of quite a number of accounts of enhanced creativity linked to the act of walking. Perhaps we should make machines enjoy the natural rhythm of their being - if they have any - before they become able to dream. An artistic expression of this idea can be found in the work of Dutch artist Theo Jansen, which was brought to my attention by Diana Stirling a few days before the start of our colloquium. Jansen makes skeletons which are able to walk on the wind (see http://www.strandbeest.com/).

John Avery adds this comment

Ron, I was interested to hear that you are addressing the question of whether machines will one day be able to dream. I remember asking Benny Latrup this question at lunch one day at the Niels Bohr Institute. (Benny has written a book on neural networks and artificial intelligence). Someone at the table said "You have asked him his favorite question!" Benny then gave us a long lecture on dreaming. He said that if one looks at brain weight versus intelligence going up the evolutionary ladder, one finds that there is a sudden discontinuity, a jump upward in intelligence without a corresponding increase in brain weight. This discontinuity, Benny told us, is attributable to the evolution of dreaming. He concluded that dreaming computers will inevitably be developed.

Social Networks and Virtual Communities

Virtual Communities as social networks

There are some basic characteristics of virtual communities:

* Virtual communities need to know that they can multi-task and stay connected at all times;
* They need to know that they have something in common with each other and that even though identities can be played with and distorted, the foundations of communications are based on common understandings and truth;
* And that commonality has to significantly distinguish them from other groups;
* Virtual communities are about relations of an internal and external nature similar in form and substance to conventional communities;
* They are also about the establishment and maintenance of boundaries;
* Nevertheless, there is tremendous elasticity to the process of boundary creation and maintenance;
* Virtual communities break down conventional social and economic barriers.

Social networks

Maija Burnett comments
In an earlier posting, you make a distinction between discussions about the brain (science, matter), versus the mind (theoretical, phenomenological). Can a similar parallel be made in terms of discussions of mechanical vs. social networks — i.e. the virtual ‘nuts and bolts’ of the internet, and the complex ‘pathways’ of social interaction?

Response from Ron Burnett
Yes, there is a similar parallel, and this is part of Ronny Siebes argument as well. The difficulty is the movement from the nuts and bolts to something more intelligent happens within the body and the mind in ways that we don't really understand other than through the most limited of metaphors. It is just not enough to talk about neurons firing and producing effects. Trillions and trillions of interactions create a complex distributed network in the mind, which means that the mapping process can, at best, create an approximation of what happens and not a complete picture. The fascinating thing is that complexity does grow out of simplicity.