Singularity: We, the Media

I plan to edit this short for the A. L. J.: This will be a part of our future. I have recorded the BBC Documentation, so I can extract scientific issues for a wider audience: MiSCA Singularity. I would like to support international work with this text: Some scientist explain utter fear by the possible misuse of the human brains and prospective developments. Some other scientists enjoy imaginations and fantasies concerning this machine future. Will we then be more human, unpredictable, spontaneous and creative? Or will we degrade ourselves to mere products, that are uploaded and downloaded? Will the best machines of all, the human body, only serve as a slave for data? In the following paragraphs I try to find basics of thought involved.

First I ought to explain what I mean by the Ziehharmonikaterm media. A medium is a thing to perceive and transmit something. A thing to translate or transport something of meaning to human beings. We, the media, receive intuitive information about what probably will happen in our lives. We, the media, in ritual stages, wiederholbare Sicherheiten in unserem Leben, transform into another level of being - referring to Van Gennep. Magic is defined as something we cannot explain by means of our daily life.


1 What does Singularity mean?
Singularity is a term symbolizing the uniqueness of mankind. So, in this context of computational research, what does the point of Singularity mean: It describes the moment, when A. I. - short for Artificial Intelligence - and the human brain equal by capacity and ability.

"This book, then, is the story of the destiny of the human-machine civilization, a destiny we have come to refer to as the Singularity."(Kurzweil 2005: 5)


2 What will Singularity mean for the future? The Theory of Utopia
"They moved onto our desks, under our arms, and now into our pockets. Soon, we´ll routinely put them into our bodies and brains."(Kurzweil 2005: 309)
Remembering 1984 and the kind of fear we young people had associated with it, I see, that we got used, nowadays, to what was called an Orwellian phantasy, then. "Big brother is watching you"(Orwell 1949)is a famous citation of George Orwell´s prose 1984. It does not scare us anymore. Instead of this, we make fun of watching people and how they sleep, shower, eat and communicate. Many series on TV proof, that endless human curiosity and a certain voyeurism cling to film humans even in their most intimate privacy. Values like the ability to communicate are asked to survive the audiences´ trial on who would be allowed to stay within units of emotional exhibition grounds.


3 The Non-Biological: Fascination Techné
I remember my cousin Eric explaining the why´s and when´s of computation to me: On the one hand, they refer to simple binaries, on the other hand, complicated circuits to build machines would be constructed. He, the physicist, tried to convince me, that everything imaginative would be possible.


4 So what, Anthropology?
As I have stated in my notice on MiSCA, millions of questions arise by thinking of the social and cultural consequences of this point of no return, for who would renounce achieved commodities?
How will we then treat our emotions or perceive our beliefs?
Will nanobots rather support our lives, or will they more control what we do?
Perhaps I should comment on meme before.
How will we think about thoughts?
Will cognition then mean the interaction between machine and human?
Will thoughts change in so far, that we become the media?

We are the media, someone would state, because of human variety, which covers intuition, unexplainables, magic, rites and the like. In the course of religion and consciousness research, students learn about the powers of thoughts. Our brains are mightier than we guess. Varying cultures developed lots of techniques to proof, that our thoughts are strong components of person: Mantras, meditation, concentration, rituals let us delve into another world of perception.

Social consequences would value intimate communication, tenderness, love and physical skin contacts as the center of our lives, I hope.

How about work then?

A glimpse of the truth might be caught by participating online communities like Second Life [...] Money may be made by registering and playing life, already. A simulation of what humans developed for thousands of years may be used to interact in virtual settings. RL, which means real life, mingles into VL - is Virtual Life - by attempting to imitate human life and creating new VL - cultures. [...] A picture of the whole thing is out some years already: A. I. by Steven Spielberg. Orga meets Mecha, [...] Will we wear T - Shirts with ORGA on it?

What if we come to the conclusion that we are the best and most sensitive machines ever made. We will drive back to the question who made us.
We also will create new kinship, already a category in Kinship research: Fiction kinship.


5 Thoughts
Some scientists prefer to warn about the option Singularity. Nowadays one brain would be one field of soccer in size of computers, approximately. Aurora, the ape, she showed us, that she was able to think (BBC Doc mentioned above - I will write more on it). It is fascinating to see, that this ape realizes what she was thinking, when she moved a stick. In consequence she succeeded in moving the same stick by only thinking about how to move this electronic stick in front of her.


6 A. R. M.
I will also include the Ape Rights Movement in this context, for apes already serve us to manage our households.

Blackmore, Susan (2000) The Meme Machine. New York: Oxford University Press.
Frijda, Nico H. / Bem, Sacha / Manstead, Antony S. R. (2000) Emotions and Beliefs. How Feelings Influence Thoughts. Paris: Cambridge University Press.
Kurzweil, Ray (2005) The Singularity is Near. When Humans transcend Biology. London: Penguin Books.

Photo A. I.: http://www.imdb.com/gallery/ss/0212720/Ss/0212720/AIC-392.jpg.html?hint=group

work in progress (wip): please comment on questions ... missing links ...

Amber, Sybil 2007 Anthropo Logic Journals. Vienna: Blogger. URL: http://anthropologicjournals.blogspot.com