Hot & new consumer electronics are here – highway to the future or a technocultural dystopia unfolding?

Today is The Big Day for Nokia. In a few hours the the company is going to launch it’s latest Windows phone that is rumored to host the new Windows 8 OS. Later next week it’s the same with Apple and the new iPhone. The modern internet with it’s unimaginable power to transmit information boosts these two events to planetary proportions. Will Nokia finally be able to break (back) into the lead with the new phone or is the hype going to melt down with the – so far – superior Apple.

This must be what the singularity feels like but is this what it is supposed to be? I mean, virtually lining behind large companies in their attempt to dominate the market. The market? Do you mean the financial market? You know, the system behind the world scale economic disaster looming in the horizon?

I was a young man in the 90’s. Back then there were was a fast awakening to the ecological disaster facing the world. Researchers argued – and still do – that the economic boom of the 20th century is culminating in a fast depletion of natural resources. People around the world became aware of the fact that the lifestyle we enjoy does have a double edge. In the past two decades nothing much has happened to correct this “cycle of doom”.

Now we are in a situation where most of the planet is affected by how “people receive” their new mobile devices. Will the stock go up or down. It’s not long ago that Nokia and Apple both had to answer some odd questions about how, where and by whom their devices were manufactured. It turned out, that there were some mistakes made. And remember when Apple announced it would with draw from EPEAT? After a world wide protest they decided that it’s better not to.

At the start of the 21st century some of you may have noticed a modest rise of the “new consumer culture“. What this means is that people are not just buying stuff they want (like the theory of consumerism has been thus far) but people would be eager to invest in things that are ecologically and socially sustainable. This is a part of the “green revolution” and frankly, I am surprised that it still remains a very small part of the combined marketing economy that keeps our world going (faster, closer and more mobile).

I have absolutely nothing against such products like Lumia or the iPhone. Not at all. I could not imagine living with out one. Mobile devices along with other innovations of the 21st century makes my life better, easier and perhaps fuller.

And the very same things I slightly criticize here are the things I can use to look up stuff like sustainable economy or consumer movements such as “Buy Nothing Day“.

And it is after doing some thinking of my own, I have decided that the way we are “hyped about the future” may well be the thing that prevents us getting there. From a Transhuman standpoint it’s easy to see why. It’s not just the fastness of development or the availability of new products that push the world forward. Those things push the economy forward and all though that is needed to keep pushing towards a more techno-oriented society, culturally, it’s not enough.

The Transhumanist in me is seeking to find the right technologies to push forward. Deciding what is right goes deep into the basics of being human (and especially Transhuman). I’m not a big fan of “nature before everything” since I have a deeply antrophocentric world view. That said, I believe we need to look at the big picture here.

And the picture states the obvious. We can’t expect to enrich our lives with depleted meanings. Even that the technology offered here is state of the art, we should ask for more. Do we really need a new cell phone or an iPad every year? By asking more we are asking not only more sustainable technological progress but a deeper and richer content as well. You may or may not know that the bloody competition in the high end technology market puts the consumer “needs” before everything else. Where is the innovation in that? Why would any company – even super rich Apple – invest billions in research and development if what they really “need” to do is keep up with competition?

We should build less and slower. At the same time we should look at what the gadgets actually offer from a cultural and social perspective. This is totally against the ideology of the “free market” since it’s said that the free market is all we need to get the best products and practices. But is this true in a situation where best ideas are nothing but market projections for a certain market segment?

If we find our selves asking who to make the markets “smarter”, we may then wake up to the fact that there still are people on the planet who can’t read or write. Or who have trouble getting food and fresh water. The planetary infrastructure of social well being is undermined all the time, not to mention that the nature around us is dying and taking us with it. This must be something for Transhumanist’s to think about and in my understanding they are. This could also be a message what would make Transhumanism even a more interesting world view among the peoples of the world. It just needs good packaging.

No singularity worth the effort is going to happen unless we take care of the present first. We are loosing massive human resources due to poverty and we are loosing the battle to master nature – because we are continually at risk of being extinct because we are still very much dependent on the natural environment.

Despite this I’ll be rooting for Nokia this week. It’s still a Finnish company in name at least. I’ll also be dreaming about technological progress that would actually benefit humanity and pave the way for a better, happier and richer future.

Even if caloric restriction is not connected to longevity, you should still keep at it

It’s one of the the greatest success stories in nutrition science. Caloric restriction is a much studied phenomenon that is said to lead to longevity and good health. This has been tested time and time again in mice and other creatures. Caloric restriction, or CR, was known even in the medieval times when people thought it could kill tumors. Modern science was aware of it in the 19th century and the modern CR research was institutionalized in the 1960’s. The boom of the “Longevity Diet” began in 2004 when the researchers at Washington universtity at St. Louis confirmed in a long term study on mice, that caloric restriction does indeed increase health and lifespan. The mechanism of why this is, was not discovered.

Up to today, we were all amazed. Now, after the latest research report in Nature, it seems we are back at square one, exactly where the legendary Gilgamesh left us three thousand years since. Well, it’s worth noting that the latest research is still to be debated within the science community and the new findings offer loads of questions about the mechanisms of aging.

Longevity and (radical) life extension is an integral part of the Transhuman worldview. In the 21st century especially such figures like Aubrey de Grey and Ray Kurtzweil have been the prominent proponents of life extension. As modern medicine pushes the barriers of molecular and DNA research even further, life extension or even relative immortality seems to be looming just behind the horizon. However, the effects of caloric restriction has been the only confirmed way to keep the body in good shape in comparison to a non-CR diet. Even the well known BBC Horizon series produced an hour long documentary about the topic.

The argument for CR for the past decades has been this: if the body receives 10-40 percent less calories than is required, it will remain in good health for a longer period of time. Research conducted on mice and primates seems to give strong backing to the speculation that it applies to humans as well. So far long term research on humans has not been possible, since such research projects have been around only for a few decades – and the human quinea pigs are still thriving.

However, the new findings from a 25 year experiment with rhesus monkeys that were fed 30 percent less calories than the control group seems to cast doubts on the caloric restriction basic premise. The indication is, that the “eat lesser calories” does not switch the body to a longevity mode but the key factors in longevity would be more about the genes and the quality of calories consumed. And if you read this carefully, it implies only that the amount of calories consumed does not correlate with longevity. What the research seems to imply is that caloric restriction is connected with longevity on a less utopian way: if you have a high quality diet with little or no “bad substances”, you will lose weight and you don’t put too much strain on your body.

Good news for those who are on CR and for those who are not. It would, in my opinion as a layman, justify two things. First, people who are not on a CR regime could benefit much for having a CR-type diet, and that could be much easier to accomplish than a rigorous CR program. Second, people on a severe CR program, such as eating only 60 percent of the calories needed, can now shift to a more modest CR and begin consuming 80 or even 100 percent the calories needed. The key point in the research seems to be that what you eat affects your health.

Sounds trivial doesn’t it?

Well, it is. If you look up your national eating recommendations, you will likely get similar instructions. We all know what eating healthy means and I am not in a position to give any advice.

Now, the challenge that this research poses is mostly about genes. If your genetic makeup is a major player in your expected lifespan, you should try to even the odds with good nutrition and at least modest exercise. There really is no reason what so ever to allow your body to deteriorate because of fatty foods and sugery substances. Laissez faire eating means you are letting go of your self control and your life. If you are one of the lucky ones who come from a family saturated with 100 year old’s there is even a greater incentive for a healthier diet. Wouldn’t it be great to live for a century and remain in relative health?

Those extra decades also increase your change of being able to use future medical technologies to combat aging and increase well being even beyond that 100 year marker. This is of course highly speculative but looking at the medical progress we as a humanity have had in the past 100 years, it would seem like a safe bet.

By getting your self in shape and being aware of all the possibilities in life, there are many more pressing matters on earth you should focus on. Between healthy lunches you could try to figure out who our species is going to survive with nature going down the drain and increasing economic instability is threatening the very institutions our society (and medical science) is grounded on. By adopting a healthy and life centered worldview, you are more likely to be an answer to the collective problems we face every day. Now, if you really are in this for the long haul, you might consider getting in step with life and humanity by joining a new movement. Here is the Facebook group for the International Longevity Party. Join. Do it now. We need people just like you – and your friends too.

Please take a minute to think about this

What do you think, are the following categories wise if I try to sort out my research data (a collection of written texts about transhumanism) with the following categories. This is not yet the analysis phase of the research, merely a way to categorize the material. I am trying to create some crude categories that help me to differentiate various ways of looking at human-technology relation in transhumanism.

1. Performative

– Technology has a function.

– Tools, enhancements, etc.

2. Cognitive

– Technology affects thinking and/or is somehow experienced by the subject

– Mental abilities, communication, spirituality

3. Esthetical

– Technology makes things “better”.

– Human perfection (body), rationality

4. Philosophical

– Technology defines categories

– Societal aims, things deemed good or bad.

 

The list has a lot of contradictions etc., but do you think it would be useful in finding very crude categories. After I get this going, I’ll start getting results. And of course, you will be the first to know 🙂

 

Preparing the argument: The technology-actor problem

I decided to start establishing some ground by trying to define some initial model for the ‘actor’. Some major assumptions have to be taken if one wishes to connect technology and to subject to a larger ‘macro theory’. This is a problem in any such research because it is very difficult to compel readers to accept the leap from the particular technology and it’s user to a larger scheme of ‘technology-as-culture’. However, this is something I hope to do and Alain Touraines theory actually implies it.

Here is a crude first version of my hypothesis.

An actor is an actor because it constitutes an active individual. In order for an individual to be active, it has to be able to perform intentiotal action. What exactly I mean with intention here is not relevant. We can just assume that intention means that an individual is able to make assessments, make choices based on those assessments and act upon the made choice. Clearly, this is what humans – or any intelligent beings – are able to do and it defines us as actors in our lives. So, an actor is flesh and blood. How can we then make a ‘leap’ from an individual actor or act to a larger scheme, like Touraines ‘action system’?

Well, I’m not yet prepared to make that argument but I hope I’ll get that far some day.

With my crude outline of an actor I’ll define technology as follows. An actor can either accept or decline what she considers ‘technology’. This means, that I assume technology as something given. Obviously a more precise definition of technology should start with the question of what is technology, but, since I’m just trying to get a handle on the whole, this will do.

Okay, so, technology is something given, so what our actors call technology could be pretty much what we in our mundane speak also call technology. Computers, railways, tooth pics, etc. The point I am making here is that technology is something that has intrinsic relevance to the actor. If not, then it would be irrelevant so the actor could not really accept or decline it. It would be invisible or to use an analogue, it would be like the tapestries of your home: they are there, but you don’t really notice them until you start focusing on them.

So, technology is relevant in a way that an actor can accept or decline it. An actor therefore has an opinion about technology so we can say (in a crude way) that the actor can have intentions that have something to do with ‘technology’.

Technology is not a ‘discourse’. In other words, it is not something that is just built out of meanings. People who are used to the foucaultian way of thinking would do well with just assuming that technology posits a kind of a discourse, a cultural text, and that would be all. The analysis would concentrate on the discourse and the actor would pop up equally constructed within (or with) that discourse. I’m sure you are aware, that this is also a very crude way to talk about Foucault.

Now, here is where I make my epistemic hand in hand with Touraine. At the center of my analysis there is a ‘flesh and blood’ actor that has a certain relation with the thing she calls technology. That’s great, but how does this play out when I try to connect this particular actor situation with some wider context, like an institution or – the biggest of them all – culture?

Let’s call a particular piece of technology an artifact. Now we have actors who can identify artifacts to be part of something they refer to as technology. Artifacts are, in a way, ‘owned’ by the actor. Different actors share the concept of an artifact and they all agree that it is a technological ‘thing’. If one feels like it, one can envision technology as being an attribute of the artifact.

Now, we have a flesh and blood actor that can touch, use and talk about real objects as pieces of technology.

At least for me, it gets tricky here. Since technology is something actors have to be able to identify and what they can also use, are there some competences or resources the actors must possess to identify an artifact as ‘technology’? If not, then how can anyone argue that a particular artifact has the attribute ‘technology’? It seems, there has to be some cultural (or cognitive, if we assume we are talking about people as actors) competence to ‘see’ technology.

I believe that actors must have some knowledge that helps them to classify things as technology. I am making an argument that technology is defined within a cultural system all though it does exist as an object and it can have causal or functional properties even if it is not identified by actors. This is probably something Ulrich Beck’s theory on ‘risk’ has in the theories epistemic assumptions.

This is one reason I’d like to have a real actor in my vision. If we treat technology as discourse, it would look much the same as above but there would be a very big problem in trying to relate the technology as discourse to a particular person or even a particular event in space and time.

Now, I have an actor with intentions and with an ability to identify technology and technology that is an objective part of ‘reality’ but what can also be ‘classified’ as artifacts.

I now assume that actors can relate to each other. To put it simply, they can talk and understand one another. This means they can communicate by using technological artifacts and they can also communicate about ‘what is technology’. Here I assume that the ‘culture’ of technology starts building on top of the world of artifacts. In fact, the reason these actors can even have technological artifacts is that they were together able to grasp the concept of ‘technology’ and then identify some objects as ‘technological’.

In the empirical world (?) there is a concept called ‘the technology divide’. It is often used in reference to the modern communication technology and it roughly means, that some people (children, poor, elderly) do not have the same access to technology as some technology savy individuals. In other words, some people have access to technology and they know how to use it. In our modern world this is an increasingly growing source of inequality.

I am assuming, this is how technology can be viewed as creating social relations among different groups. By using a simple dual model we can say that there is a divide between techno elites and techno populus. I’m not yet claiming that these are class differences, but I’m going in to that very direction with this argument on some other post.

At this point, I am defining the transhumanist concept of technology as follows.

Technology constitutes a cultural system where some people are more able to own and use technology. All technological artifacts draw their meaning from this shared cultural bed of knowledge. Transhumanists operate on a unique knowledge base withing a larger culture of technology. This means, that they can give extra meanings or new meanings to artifacts other people use for other purposes (like genetic engineering) or what other people don’t even consider ‘relevant technology’ (like perhaps creating a super artificial intelligence).

And, since technology is defined with a culture of ‘transhuman technology’, this culture gives the base for the cultural orientations, that Touraine speaks of when he conceptualizes the conflicts with actors: the elites and the popular classes have different cultural orientations to the same objective environment. We can talk about a ‘transhuman way of life’ as such a cultural orientation to the world.

With this definition I can start working on how actors relate to each other socially and how these relations can be seen as a creation of different and conflicting ‘classes’. The interesting part here is that the conflict is (at least partly) created by the use of technology. To do this, I’ll have to figure out how the ‘relation’ is built up from groups to institutions and organizations and ultimately to the tourainean concept of historicity. This is especially interesting in connection with transhumanism, since their ‘utopian’ technology does have a possibility to create really big cultural differences among social groups.

Against the static orientations to nature and institutions

Note. This text is meant to be provocative. It does not reflect the way my PhD is done nor are the points argued as my ‘true beliefs’. It is meant to provide a background of an ‘ideology’.

Today I’m hosting a workshop at Onnistamo 2012, the an event on Social Entrepreneurship at the Hub Helsinki. Due to some very unexpected challenges in my personal life, I have not had much time to prepare so I’m doing it now. The workshop is about a co-op company I’m trying to piece together but It has very little to do with my PhD so don’t think of this as a commercial thing. Why I’m writing about it here is because the underlying ‘philosophy’ me and some of my friends are developing is somewhat future and change oriented. It also involves some of the same questions transhumanism faces when political and societal issues concerning humanity is conceptualized.

I’m trying to argue that a) we are facing an uncertain future that will very likely bring about major threats to all life on earth, and b) we should focus on survival of humanity and c) to do this we need to get rid of the static thinking societal institutions and ‘harmony with nature’ entails.

The risks to our living are large. The first time I came to realize a concept of risk was in the writings of Ulrich Beck. He is the father of the idea of ‘risk society’. In short, a risk society is a world much like ours. The risks are no longer personal or limited but international and unlimited. This has very much to do with the development of technologies that destroy nature and perhaps even crush what is considered ‘human’. This pessimistic vision is something that has grown from the project of modernity and is seen as an ever increasing expansion of technological systems. In short, Beck famously puts it: “there is no way to test the safety of a nuclear plant, it’s too complex. We have to build one to see if in fact is safe to use”. This ‘risk consciousness’ is reflected as a feeling of uneasy about everyday living.

A prominent proponent of transhumanism, Nick Bostrom, has brought this discussion of ‘existential risks‘ in major focus. He is currently running the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford that focuses on the ‘foresight’ of different technological ‘extermination scenarios’. There are some quite utopian options out there as well as the more known, like the destruction of our living environment. Existential risks are risks that threaten the survival of our entire species and are hard to predict.

Now, we might be living in such a scenario when it comes to the destruction of our environment. There are also major species threatening risks that involve the use of biological weapons or nanotechnology. None of the possible futures can be predicted with certainty. The way I see it, is that taking in to serious consideration, there is a reasonable chance that this is right now happening in our world. This comes just short of being an ‘end times faith’, which I am against. We should not take the ‘precautionary principle’ too seriously. It is a technical way of addressing realistic risks and therefore the ‘strong program’ of it would cause us to stop everythinfg.

The biggest problem is when we become static. Too much emphasis on ‘danger’ makes only stand still while in reality nothing gets really stopped. The other sources of static behavior is the focusing on traditions or ‘institutions‘ or taking the stand that we should live in ‘harmony with nature’.

Institutions are static by nature. One way to define an institution is to claim that it is a social configuration that no one person can hope to change. Institutions do change over time, but very slowly. When I say that institutions are static by nature, it is important to note, that nature itself is in fact very much static. Evolution does occur but it takes millions or at least thousands of years to happen. Humans are only partly connected with nature. Yes, we are natural beings that are rooted in biology. But also, we are able to transgress these boundaries in our imagination – or ‘The Will‘ if you need a reference to philosophy of much of human history.

Nature through the idea of a ‘Gaian‘ system and institutions in form of culture are ways of not thinking in progressive terms. The other way to address the situation is to call the bluff. Nature is a constricting factor in human existence and culture is conservative by definition.

Some people say, that giving up on the belief in ‘bigger things’ life is devoid of meaning. This is sometimes referred as ‘postmodernism‘. I’m not going in to that here, since postmodern is a huge discussion in various sciences and it deserves a better handling than what I can give here.

Here is where my workshop begins. I claim, that we need a new breed of thinkers and activists, who can transgress the boundaries set to us by culture and nature. This does not lead to losing our values – completely the opposite is true. Once we focus on the human actor, we focus on the flesh and blood of existence. This is also where the influence of Alain Touraine becomes evident in my thinking. The transhuman concept of expanding the possibilities is, in my opinion, all about this.

Some of you readers might have realized that I am very much opposed to relativism. If we give up on tradition and stop believing in natural constrictions, do we then have to slide in to a relativistic way of thinking? No, because there is a universal human nature. This is also a big conversation that has certainly not started with transhumanism. It also deserves to be discussed in real detail and I will do that once my PhD gets there.

Here I’m just following on the lines set by an English philosopher Robert Scruton in his book Beauty. In the book there is much to debate about, but it also focuses in trying to find the experience of beauty. Beauty, according to Scruton, is objective and therefore a universal part of human nature. I would widen this definition and argue, that our sense of beauty is a way to sense things that are satisfactory and things that aren’t. There is a true risk of taking this argument to far, like the conservative thinker Leon Kass has shown in support of the ‘yack argument‘.

When we hear news about a famine in a far away country, we often struggle to care. It offends us in some sence, but the feeling does not manifest in a strong moral resentment. However, once we go there and get personally involved, we feel uneasy – we feel it is ugly.

The challenge for the new breed of thinkers and activists is to focus on creating beauty through their action.

And this is done by resisting the static forces in nature and in society. We need to start thinking about the ‘harmony with nature’ argument in another way. Nature is a restrictive force that subjucates us by our mental, psychical and existential borders. The reason to protect nature is not for it’s sake but for ours. I’m not against nature here, mind you that. I just see humans and nature forming a one system that is not our master but our partner.

We also need to resist conservative views when tackling questions of uncertain future. Here we would go against traditions, ethics, religions, political systems and economic ‘laws’. Again, nothing wrong with the mentioned, but we should not hold on to them if we are seeking new ways of thinking and acting.

In the light of the possibility of an extermination scenario of all life on earth, the stakes are high. Risks must be taken. The new thinkers I call Exeptional Challengers (written in an exceptional way in purpose) adhere to this ethics of exception.

The final point about ‘exeptionality’ is that it calls for sacrifice. Sacrifice of the old, our time and our resources – even our lives. This is difficult pitch to make in a world that has just had a few decades of economic growth well being (oh, this is actually not at all true if we look at the entire planet).

So, it comes down to this: we need to start considering what we should sacrifice for beauty in order to survive to the next millenia.

What!? The Established Scientific Community is an illusion!

Cultural definitions are sometimes defined as something so incorporated in everyday life and understanding that we hardly ever start to question them. Like furniture, we don’t pay much attention in them unless something gets broken or is being talked about. So, what makes a theory or a device a part of the ‘real science’ or the Established Scientific Community? Such a thing must exist since almost every transhumanist I have met or chatted with do claim that ‘transhumanism is not (yet) accepted in the scientific community’.

That is a duality I can start off with.

As a sociologist I have questioned this duality from early on. A few days ago I was reading more books about the sociology of knowledge. Sociology of knowledge is a field of sociology, that examines the different forms of knowledge in society as well as the way they are created and how they interact. It is not only because of methodological concerns that sociology of knowledge is important but it also raises theoretical issues. This is especially true in the field of science and technology research.

Technology is a rather novel concept. I’m not going to discuss the origins or the formation of the modern concept of technology. There is plenty of time to go into that in later posts. For now it suffices to bear in mind that technology is not the same as science and that technology is much more than just devices we use to make our microwave diners. In fact, at this point, the question of what is technology gets very tricky.

Unsurprisingly I am currently reading Scientific Knowledge – A sociological Analysis by Barry Barnes, David Bloor and John Henry (1996). The book is built from blocks that you can imagine analogous with the process of scientific research. It starts off with ‘observation and ‘interpretation’ and then moves on to discuss how scientific theories are created in and with language. The rest of the book is refining the main argument: every scientific theory is culturally produced knowledge and there is no objective link between it and the “real world”. That is a very crude shortening of the 200 and so pages but it will do for now.

There are two things from the book I’d like to point out here.

One, scientific knowledge is always linked to other systems of meaning in society. The microwave oven is a technological device that has a certain meaning in culture of cookery, urban living or healthy eating. The machine itself is connected to different fields of physics and the way it is produced is a part of a very large global economic and transport system. Also, the theoretical work behind the technology exists somewhere in thousands of research rapports and university lecture halls.

The second point is, that scientific knowledge is not a special kind of knowledge. Science as a ‘method’ does not stand for absolute objective guarantee for truth. I know it’s hard to stomach, but that’s what some theories of the sociology of knowledge come down to. For a sociologist, this is good news because it means we can address the ‘culture of science’ like any other field of human social behaveour. However, it may be bad for the atheist trying to peace together his argument against Intelligent Design (actually, it’s not a problem because it is possible to point out that intelligent design is not a scientific theory in the ‘common’ meaning of the word.)

Now, these are big claims and I do agree with them to some extent. I do take a stand against relativism, so I hope to find some way to postulate information that could pass as ‘objective’ in a sense that all humans or human-like-actors would agree. I’ll have an interesting angle on this subject as I get to the ‘technology as social relations’ part of my PhD.

If science and technology are just one kinds of cultural systems, how can transhumanism as a movement or a philosophy be ‘cast out’ from the “main stream science community”?

There must be power at play here somewhere! As I was trying to get my research question fine tuned to post here in the blog, I realized that until I get a clear understanding of how transhumanism and ‘the established scientific community’ are related, I actually have no place to start collecting my data. I’ll start of with two fundamental questions:

1. How the relation between society and science (and technology) is defined historically.

2. Does the transhuman concept of technology open some new ways to conceptualize technology AND relate to society.

Something like that I’ll try to figure out in my first article that I’m now starting to work on.