X-Message-Number: 14789
From: "Mark Plus" <>
Subject: Fwd: Wired News : In Search of Cyber Humanity
Date: Sat, 28 Oct 2000 21:23:41 PDT

>Subject: Wired News : In Search of Cyber Humanity
>Date: Sat, 28 Oct 2000 21:14:55 -0700 (PDT)
>
>  From Wired News, available online at:
>http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,38846,00.html
>
>In Search of Cyber Humanity
>by Patrick McGee
>
>2:00 a.m. Oct. 28, 2000 PDT
>
>CAMDEN, Maine -- In his groundbreaking book The Age of Spiritual
>Machines, Ray Kurzweil argued that humans could attain near
>immortality by becoming one with technology and robotics.
>
>Ellen Ullman, however, believes that while Kurzweil is a great thinker
>in many ways, he is a better scientist than humanist.
>
>"It always makes me nervous when people talk about an improved human
>race," said Ullman, a programmer, adding that it makes her think of
>dictators like Mussolini and Stalin.
>
>Kurzweil has taken his knowledge of the computer sciences and
>"superimposed it on every thing he seeks to understand," Ullman told
>attendees at the Camden Technology Conference.
>
>The theme of this year's conference is "Being Human in the Digital
>Age." Ullman, author of Close to the Machine: Technophilia and Its
>Discontents, made her comments during a session on the human being and
>the machine.
>
>Kurzweil's ideas got Bill Joy, the co-founder of Sun Microsystems,
>thinking about the issue as well. A long piece that he wrote for Wired
>magazine, "Why The Future Doesn’t Need Us," sparked much discussion
>when it appeared earlier this year. It has also acted as a touchstone
>for the conference.
>
>Like Joy, Ullman is leery of those who view the body as a machine that
>can be augmented or replaced. Ullman told an estimated 500 attendees
>that it is a big mistake to view human beings as modular units that
>can be split into separate components, such as body and mind, to make
>them more efficient.
>
>"I think those traits -- speed, efficiency and accuracy -- are machine
>traits, not human traits," she said.
>
>Pattie Maes, an associate professor at MIT's Media Laboratory, came at
>the issue from a different angle. Her lab isn't working on replacing
>humans, but on giving them a little extra assistance through
>"intelligence augmentation."
>
>"There is this mismatch between the complexity of our lives and our
>cognitive abilities," Maes said.
>
>She is hoping that software "agents" developed at the Media Lab over
>the last eight years can help by serving as information filters,
>problem solvers or in a variety of other tasks.
>
>One is called a "remembrance agent," and it tracks files, e-mails or
>other data for its user. If someone is having a conversation with
>their boss about a particular project, it can automatically pull up
>all the data relating to the task on the computer, Maes said. There is
>also a version of this agent that can be worn on the head; it has an
>eyepiece that projects data, she added.
>
>Another program called Letizia browses the Web with its user, looks in
>the vicinity of the Web page in use, and suggests links to follow that
>will bring the user to information that interests them.
>
>"It's sort of a scout that browses along with you to point you to
>information that you might regularly miss," she said.
>
>But despite the promise of such technologies, Ullman said she is
>unconvinced by arguments that scientists can create humans and human
>consciousness.
>
>She believes scientists and futurists alike have made the same mistake
>of using "the whole view and mindset of computing overlaid on the
>long-time question of consciousness."
>
>And although she said she was compelled to address these issues, it is
>often difficult to do so in the tech world: "These days, it's almost
>impossible to criticize cyber visionaries without being called a
>bleeding heart humanist," Ullman said.
>
>During a question-and-answer period following the session, Ullman
>said, "I'm not a futurist, I'm an alarmist."
>
>Copyright  1994-2000 Wired Digital Inc. All rights reserved.
>
>
>

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