I’m all for Futurism… but, global culture? What global culture?
How can anybody say it exists when, for millions of people and children, the globe is a war zone?
France in the Year 2000 (XXI century) – a series of futuristic pictures by Jean-Marc Côté and other artists issued in France in 1899, 1900, 1901 and 1910, originally in the form of paper cards enclosed to cigarette/cigar boxes and, later, as postcards. They depicted the world of the future, in 2000. The first cards were produced for the 1900 World Exhibition in Paris. There are at least 87 cards known that were authored by various French artists.
(All images via Wikimedia Commons).
At this year’s Coachella music festival, slain rapper Tupac Shakur was resurrected for a performance with Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg. Projected as a two-dimensional image, abs still ripped in the pixilated afterlife, Virtual ’Pac alternately dazzled and freaked out the crowd 15 years after his shooting. Forget keeping it real; thug life just got surreal. Kind of creepy but not exactly cutting-edge: Hologram Tupac was actually a 19th-century magic trick called Pepper’s Ghost, an image projected onto glass tilted 45 degrees. Pepper’s Gangsta, if you will, was flashed in high definition on Mylar, but it’s basically the same wizardry used by local community theaters for spectral castmembers. …
’Pac might be the baddest projection out there, but he’s neither the first nor the most audaciously futuristic. The latter distinction belongs to Japan’s virtual pop star Hatsune Miku, a digital-android pixie in aquamarine pigtails and knee-high boots. She performs via basically the same technology as Tupac, with flesh-and-blood musicians as her backup band. Since 2009, the Japanese-pop divatar has performed shows in her native land, as well as a Los Angeles debut at the Nokia Theater during the 2011 Anime Expo. In March, she sold 10,000 tickets for $76 a pop in Tokyo. Her most viewed clip on YouTube, in which she sings her megahit { “World Is Mine” } has gotten more than 15 million hits.
Finished Anathem last week; maybe too quickly.
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I wonder if anyone could recommend something similar, please?
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NOT THESE:
I’ve been searching for a similar book or author, but only finding references to other Neal Stephenson books (The Diamond Age was amazing; haven’t read Snow Crash or Cryptonomicon yet but didn’t want to get lost in a Stephenson-only literary world), other sci-fi that bears little resemblance (The Foundation Trilogy was interesting but not as memorable, and I don’t actually like William Gibson that much — Neuromancer was OK and had it’s hidden crevasses, but the writing style is totally different and the concept similarities end at future technologies and cyberpunk/space stuff), and the mention that Anathem is sort of a novelization of Godel Escher Bach : Eternal Golden Braid, by Douglas Hofstadter. I guess I could see how the latter might be true, but until they { digitally publish } that doorstop, I’m not about to carry it around again.
Somehow, after all that, I’ve been led to Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. It’s a funny, quirky, cute book so far… but not satiating.
MORE LIKE THIS
(what Anathem had that I want more of from sci-fi):
DEFINITION:
A cyborg, short for “cybernetic organism”, is a being with both biological and artificial (e.g. electronic, mechanical or robotic) parts. The term was coined in 1960 when Manfred Clynes and Nathan S. Kline used it in an article about the advantages of self-regulating human-machine systems in outer space. …
The term cyborg is often applied to an organism that has enhanced abilities due to technology, though this perhaps oversimplifies the necessity of feedback for regulating the subsystem. The more strict definition of Cyborg is almost always considered as increasing or enhancing normal capabilities. While cyborgs are commonly thought of as mammals, they might also conceivably be any kind of organism and the term “Cybernetic organism” has been applied to networks, such as road systems, corporations and governments, which have been classed as such. The term can also apply to micro-organisms which are modified to perform at higher levels than their unmodified counterparts.
{ Wiki }
FROM THE SOURCE:
“Here’s the thing: For most of us, cyborg ends at the human-machine hybrid. The point of the cyborg is to be a cyborg; it’s an end unto itself. But for Clynes, the interface between the organism and the technology was just a means, a way of enlarging the human experience. That knotty first definition? It ran under this section headline: “Cyborgs — Frees Man to Explore.” The cyborg was not less human, but more.”
{ The Man Who First Said ‘Cyborg,’ 50 Years Later }
- Alexis Madrigal - Technology - The Atlantic
POP CULTURE:
Fictional cyborgs are portrayed as a synthesis of organic and synthetic parts, and frequently pose the question of difference between human and machine as one concerned with morality, free will, and empathy. Fictional cyborgs may be represented as visibly mechanical (e.g. the Cybermen in the Doctor Who franchise or The Borg from Star Trek); or as almost indistinguishable from humans (e.g. the Terminators from the Terminator films, the “Human” Cylons from the re-imagining of Battlestar Galactica etc.) The 1970s television series The Six Million Dollar Man featured one of the most famous fictional cyborgs, referred to as a bionic man. Cyborgs in fiction often play up a human contempt for over-dependence on technology, particularly when used for war, and when used in ways that seem to threaten free will. Cyborgs are also often portrayed with physical or mental abilities far exceeding a human counterpart (military forms may have inbuilt weapons, among other things).
{ Wiki }
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OS:
It’s unfortunate that most of our “education” about matters of science and technology comes from pop culture / pop fiction and popular media, all of which distort these topics into something barely recognizable and tailored to fit a money-making form. A violent, supposedly “humanistic” form that, while appearing to tell action-packed stories about the preservation of our freedoms, actually destroys them in a way.
By adding certain connotations to those topics (like cyborgs), those stories limit the public imagination by nudging it toward that apocalyptic, man-vs-nature-vs-non-nature-vs… whatever — whatever you’d like to vs any given day if it reels in the cash — scenario. As opposed to actually inspiring that same public to imagine how we can extend our reach, ourselves, our understanding, via science and technology, and thereby actually improve our relationship with the world around us.
Valorizing machine-generated imagery is like valorizing the unconscious mind. Like Surrealist imagery, it is cool, weird, provocative, suggestive, otherworldly, but it is also impoverished.
That’s the big problem, as I see it: the New Aesthetic is trying to hack a modern aesthetic, instead of thinking hard enough and working hard enough to build one. That’s the case so far, anyhow.
{ How to Become the Engineers of Our Own Evolution }
The “transhumanist” movement says better technology will enable you to replace more and more body parts—even your brain
By Abigail Tucker
Smithsonian magazine, April 2012
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Also in response to: { Anonymous asked: …How can we -physically- transcend our sexes? }
How do we improve scientific literacy, prompt curiosity?
Then, once we accept our particle-based selves (the fact that we are made of star stuff), what does it mean for humans/Earth-beings/conscious partakers? How do we (scientifically-literate humans) proceed?
Answers? (t.b.c) —›
We become more aware of the changeability, the rearrange-ability, of our bodies, and thus,
our cultures, beliefs, knowledge, ways-of-being,
HIR becomes a sci-lit human term combining the sexes
an admittance that we are prone to change, especially in sexuality,
which has until now-then been taboo.
hir is a step towards embracing the trans- & post-human, the alien, the variety of life
We say:
hir, hirs, s/he, wo/man, misster, …
Much of what’s of importance for the human is an evolutionary need, and extremely local-mundane, and idiosyncratic to our species, thus,
the way we explain phenomena, the universe, is human-centric. it is not universal.
our words, images, sounds, ways of understanding — they are mostly only for us. they are not the only ways, they are not comprehensive. thus,
they are not always correct, nor our best option, because
We have not finished evolving.
slowly, we are ever-selecting and being selected.
we are coming of age together with the rest of the earth,
and with our machines
We are nature. Our creations are creations of nature. Machines are nature.
“If nature permits it, it is natural. If nature doesn’t permit it, you can’t do it.” - RBF
and
Cultural norms are only that.
they are mostly arbitrary and open for interpretation and subject to change.
the sci-literate human is unconcerned with appearing locally-normal, except with the understanding that a local-normal appearance can aid in blending in,
in making others in hirs current group feel safe, as an appeal to that evolved psychological trait that allows one to accept members who are like hir.
Science empowers us,
when it furthers our opportunities and understanding of our world,
when it enables us to better interact with our environment
The Body is not to be seen as only a structure containing some incorporeal “self”/soul/mind —
the mind is the body, Cartesian Dualism is to be dismantled.
There is no man in the machine — the machine is the wo/man.
More than a vehicle, a structure, the body is an interactive system
transmitting signals into its environment, and receiving them.
If the environment can be seen as a network,
the body is a single sculpture in and of that network
Get Ready for a New Human Species
Juan Enriquez, who spoke at Technology Review’s EmTech conference on Tuesday, says our newfound ability to write the code of life will profoundly change the world as we know it. Because we can engineer our environment and ourselves, humanity is moving beyond the constraints of Darwinian evolution. The result, he says, may be an entirely new species.
via MIT’s { Technology Review }
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That’s the general idea behind transhumanism. Enriquez’s assertiveness in the interview is great to see, despite how much disbelief and negativity this topic faces. However, many answers seem unfinished, and this first seems to lack a broader understanding:
The new human species is one that begins to engineer the evolution of viruses, plants, animals, and itself. As we do that, Darwin’s rules get significantly bent, and sometimes even broken. By taking direct and deliberate control over our evolution, we are living in a world where we are modifying stuff according to our desires.
Are they? This response takes the “man vs nature” stance as it implies that the ways in which we evolve are “unnatural.” { That isn’t true. } Whether Darwin’s idea of “natural selection” implies something specific that excludes controlled evolution is a different question, but what’s being discussed here doesn’t seem to be a challenge to that theory.
{ Artificial Selection } seems to be a better term for this:
As opposed to artificial selection, in which humans favor specific traits, in natural selection the environment acts as a sieve through which only certain variations can pass.
In taking a new perspective on the terms “nature” and “artifice”, all that means is that nature, at a certain degree of complexity, has become able to choose the paths of its own evolution and expedite it, instead of relying on environmental nudges over many generations. We (the complex-enough life form) might not necessarily choose the “best” traits for survival in our environment, since we can be short-sighted, but neither does natural evolution.
Also, as evolution is { partially non-random }, it seems that what we have now is just a greater degree of control over the direction of adaptations.
But, as I don’t have a solid understanding of evolution, please respond if I’m wrong.
?
Ray Kurzweil (figurehead of the { futurist } & { transhumanist } movements) responds to { The Singularity isn’t Near } Paul Allen’s (co-founder of Microsoft & chairman of Vulcan) & Mark Greaves’ (computer scientist, Vulcan’s director for knowledge systems) response to Kurzweil’s original essay “The Law of Accelerating Returns”, & the theory discussed in his book, { The Singularity is Near }.
