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“Man Becomes the Sex Organs of the Machine World” (2012)
- jakear 7y agoDon’t miss the “view full essay” link. A user in the comments mentions a different take, worth a read as well.
- dang 7y agoWhy don't we just switch to the full essay. URL changed from https://mcluhangalaxy.wordpress.com/2016/04/19/man-becomes-the-sex-organs-of-the-machine-world/ https://mcluhangalaxy.wordpress.com/2016/04/19/man-becomes-t.... Thanks!
- fitnesshealth 7y agoYou Right they both are same. Thanks to give right place to read.
- rodneyg_ 7y agoIncredibly insightful. Great timing.
- molteanu 7y agoAnne Clark - Sleeper in Metropolis [1983]
- rumcajz 7y agoNot very effective sex organs at that. Eventually, we'll be dispaced by something that does the job more effectively.
- 314 7y agoThe idea that form communicates to us more strongly than function is particularly strong and resonant. We have moved into an era of fashion in hardware and software: look and style sells more than underlying functionality. Apple have rode this particular wave most noticably and successfully out of the tech giants, but the entire marketplace has shifted into this niche.
- Jedi72 7y ago"We refer to the question: What sort of creature man’s next successor in the supremacy of the earth is likely to be. We have often heard this debated; but it appears to us that we are ourselves creating our own successors; we are daily adding to the beauty and delicacy of their physical organisation; we are daily giving them greater power and supplying by all sorts of ingenious contrivances that self-regulating, self-acting power which will be to them what intellect has been to the human race. In the course of ages we shall find ourselves the inferior race. ... Day by day, however, the machines are gaining ground upon us; day by day we are becoming more subservient to them; more men are daily bound down as slaves to tend them, more men are daily devoting the energies of their whole lives to the development of mechanical life. The upshot is simply a question of time, but that the time will come when the machines will hold the real supremacy over the world and its inhabitants is what no person of a truly philosophic mind can for a moment question." - Samuel Butler, 1863
- ultimape 7y agoI like this quote because my research into the spread of information systems speeding up and accelerating the decline of man goes back to the 1700s. It suggests others have been seeing the pace of change in how society is structured and noticing the patterns. By the 1850s, the pooping duck machine might as well have been in a museum http://www.weirdhistorian.com/the-pooping-duck/ http://www.weirdhistorian.com/the-pooping-duck/
- indigochill 7y agoWhat he seems to have missed is that no matter how complex the machine, it always has a creator and a master. Even the most sophisticated AI was designed someone who, deliberately or not, encoded that AI with biases likely mirroring that of its creator (e.g. racial bias in facial recognition software). Even if we achieve the singularity and have software making other software ad infinitum, the biases are there in the original program.
- ben_w 7y agoThat’s only a good counterpoint if humans are different. I don’t think they are.
- apexalpha 7y agoSo, the Matrix? Kind of?
- octabyte 7y agoThis site is becoming weirder and weirder.
- drannex 7y agoI mean, finally. We were getting a bit bored of the "latest in web design 1/2/3".
- oaiey 7y agoThe Butlerian Jihad is coming
- michaelvoz 7y agoI cannot wait for it.
- incompatible 7y agoA few people may have stopped using Facebook. Take that, machine life.
- hef19898 7y agoIn the end the Ixians found ways around it!
- 52-6F-62 7y agoHappened before him, didn’t it? (Albeit, with a decidedly less philosophical bent) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ned_Ludd https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ned_Ludd
- ngvrnd 7y agoEverything happened earlier than you think https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism
- GistNoesis 7y agoAnd with the advent of dating apps, we, the machines, are selectively breeding them.
- dalbasal 7y agoIf 23 and me buy tinder... constant vigilance!
- dalbasal 7y agoI've always been interested in notional "starting points" like the appearance of writing representing the beginning of "history." Since reading "Sapiens" I buy into YNH's definition of the beginning as the point where culture takes over from genetics as the driver of progress. He attributes this to the paleolithic revolution, and supports the hypothesis that this poit represents a breakthrough in language, enabling cultural concepts like tribalism, money, priesthood or whatnot and leading to much more sophisticated group and intergroup behaviours. That resulted in a creature that was no longer an animal a meaningful sense. From that point on, human behaviour evolves so much faster than genetics that natural selection is replaced, as the meaningful driver of change. Biology becomes a legacy and a platform, but the culture grafted onto biology is what matters historically. It's hard, with our biases, to put younger events like the industrial revolution into context alongside palaeolithic events... but it certainly seems like a revolution on that scale. In any case, speculating about the present... It seems plausible we are currently at a point where technological advancement is (a) driving change rather than culture and (b) cultural institutions can't keep up. The wild card is that technology can influence biology (and culture) in ways that culture could not. But. whether technology replaces us or subsumes us doesn't seem that different to the eye-in-sky perspective. It is technological progress that dictates progress from now on...
- thrav 7y agoHah, that’s what Sapiens is about? That idea about social/culture vs. biology is almost straight out of Lila, by Robert Pirsig. He sets it up as a progression of giant leaps. Inorganic > Biology > Social > Intellectual, with each level being justified in its own priority over the patterns of the ones below it. (The community is more important than the cows — idea of ending slavery / freedom is more important than the social status quo) Both of his books are incredible.
- dalbasal 7y agoI'll check it out. Not exactly what the book is about, more a foundational assumption in the big narrative. Most of the book is about the subsequent examples driving history.
- adnjoo 7y agoreminds me of the unabomber's tech manifesto
- ahartmetz 7y agoTitle of the year. I like the thoughts provoked by the title better than the actual text, in fact.
- narrator 7y agoMachines can eat petroleum and electricity like cows can eat grass. That's why we have symbiotic coexistence with both of them. If machines could only eat human food, there would be a lot less of them. For example, it takes two acres worth of land to make enough biodiesel annually to fill up an suv gas tank. Properly cultivated, that could feed a significant number of people.
- pygy_ 7y agoThat's about to become a problem once a sufficiently large share of humanity is economically obsolete and not worth feeding by the industry. With an automated agriculture and seed production in the hands of a few companies (among which Monsanto/Bayer), it becomes trivially easy to start producing GMO seeds that are toxic to humans in massive amounts.
- whatshisface 7y agoYou could do that, but why? There's no motivation.
- pygy_ 7y agoWhy divert food to machines? Growth, competitiveness. Why make inedible seeds? As a safeguard.
- EGreg 7y agoThat’s the problem. Horses and mules were necessary for plowing the fields. And no matter how they unionized, fields have been turned into parking lots for cars. But those were animals. Will we value humans?
- pygy_ 7y agoWe're animals too. Machines will not value humans, and they will be in power. Even before that, many among the very rich consider the poor as sub-human, but few do it in public. Do you remember the PG tweet where he equated unions with potential energy ripe for startups to tap into, rejoicing at the idea of burning down people's life to get richer (edit, here: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/663456748494127104 https://twitter.com/paulg/status/663456748494127104)?
- avip 7y agoI’ve been envisioning a tinder-for-bots app. It could use tinder’s existing bot population (50%? 90%?). It’ll have a “I am not a human” recaptcha on sign up. It’ll feature influential celebs s.a Siri, kortana, Alexa and Tai. I only need to figure out monetization.
- EGreg 7y agoMy friend Siqi Chen built Frieds for Sale lol
- ngvrnd 7y ago"Marshall McLuhan, casual viewin', heads buried in the sand."
- snackstarvins 7y agohttps://www.wikiwand.com/en/Darwin_among_the_Machines https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Darwin_among_the_Machines
- cryptozeus 7y agoFirst comment on the site has link to intersting article with same title https://everything2.com/title/Humans+are+the+sex+organs+of+the+planet https://everything2.com/title/Humans+are+the+sex+organs+of+t...