Thinking Machines

Human-computer interaction and distributed computing is capable of enhancing learning and intelligent information management. There would be a lot to say about intelligence, but obviously, some of the basic assumptions are that long-term memory plays an important role in remembering conceptual building blocks for intelligent reasoning.

The ability to combine these building blocks into new concepts, allows for intelligent reasoning and behaviour.  

However, the validity and stability of concepts will determine whether the conceptual bridge will hold or collapse. Looking at the brain’s capacity for memory, Joseph LeDoux (LeDoux 2002, pp 132) in his book “Synaptic Self” mentions Shacter’s “Seven Sins of Memory” showing convincingly how memory can fail us. The seven sins are transience, absent-mindedness, blocking, misattribution, suggestibility, bias and persistence.

Computers allow us to bring conceptual objects in close proximity (temporal? vectorial?) allowing for quick analysis of validity and assessing relationships. Proximity can easily be enhanced through 2D or 3D geometry  This can lead to cognitive reinforcement, making new synaptic changes possible and reinforcing these for long-term memory potentiation (LTP pp 139)

So, what could we get?  

A simulated classroom for example, with 3-D avatars interacting audio-visually, a  useful tool for intelligence development and education.  

The hypothesis would suggests that a simulated virtual classroom would perform better than a real class room. This would need to be verfied.  It is still unclear what all the advantages could be – cognitive, learning, social advance – or the disadvantages ?

We enforce learning processes by enhancing stimulus intensity, looping pathways, and stimulus frequency, a process of continuing enforcement and rehearsal.  With computers we can validate our progress through immediate validation and verification procedures by accessing databases, encyclopedias, dictionaries, reference journals, computer simulations or ‘live’ expert knowledge.  This gives immediate feedback on whether the bridge will hold, or collapse.

The ZiF: Research Group 2005/2006, Bielefeld is currently working on embodied non-symbolic information transfer and in face-to-face communication. An interesting endeavour indeed. Integration of research in embodied AI, robotics, and human-machine-human communication is still lacking. Avatar interaction in virtual worlds could bridge abstract symbol transfer mechanisms in communication to a cognitive higher level, possibly an extended phenomenal self model (Metzinger 2003)

References:

LeDoux, J 2002, Synaptic Self: How Our Brains become Who we Are. Penguin Books, New York.
Metzinger, T 2003, Being No One. The Self-Model Theory of Subjectivity, MIT Press, Cambridge.

Writing

Writing today, it seems, is more difficult than in the past. We are not only swamped with information, we also have to churn out information in various formats, and fast!
Like the recently observed gorilla in a natural habitat in Africa, poking a walking stick into a swampy section of rainforest, the writer today is surrounded by a data swamp with data flushing in from all directions, bombarding auditory and visual cortices. Computers have become our walking sticks.

Absurdities ?

Buying real estate in a large international multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) seems like an absurd idea.

Normally such games operate by purchasing the client software and pay a subscription fee every 30 days, “while the internal game economy is just that –- a game economy.”

But in project Entropia, “the gamer, Jon Jacobs, who bought a virtual space station for $100,000 (£56,200) says he wants to turn it into a nightclub to change the face of entertainment”, according to the BBC News Site He wants to call it Club Neverdie and sees it as the perfect vehicle to bridge reality and virtual reality.

Now this may not be such a bad idea. Virtual 3D nightclubs, with awkwardly dressed friends to chat with, listening to celebrity DJs while sipping your cocktail (mixed at home in your kitchen of course) … or what about “live” VR concerts with celebrity bands ? Imagine Madonna as 3D avatar in front of a virtual crowd, and you’re one of them. No sweat!

Or what about watching a virtual movie, that has been produced “virtually” with virtual 3D characters, with virtual cameras in a virtual forest …ok ..too much virtual here.. but nevertheless we are quite familiar already with "virtual" environments, grabbing articles, books, music, watching video clips online while chatting away with friends.

A multiplayer online environment doesn’t  have to be for playing Dungeons and Dragons all the time. You could also attend lectures, virtual concerts, buy and sell on a virtual stockmarket, or visit the general assembly of the United Nations. Chat rooms or even graphical chat environments (The Palace) have been around for several years. What’s fairly recent is that there is a  3D character under your control acting in a 3D environment, who opens the bank doors, walks to the teller and actually talks to a person -  you embodied by an avatar.

Thanks to broadband and enhanced PC graphic cards 3D interactive environments are growing. They are here to stay. I see plenty of work for future 3D designers, modelers, information architects, digital film producers, audio engineers, DJs, etc.

According to founding Wired editor Kevin Kelly by 2015 the internet as we know it will be dead, killed by a globe-spanning artificial consciousness, writes the SMH. He predicts that the web continues to evolve from an entity ruled by mass media and mass audiences to one ruled by messy media and messy participation.

We all become authors, producers, 3D actors, musicians, and writers as well as simultaneously consumers.

The real transformation under way, however, is more to what Sun Microsystem’s John Gage had in mind in 1988 when he famously said: “The network is the computer.” The destiny of the web is becoming one big megacomputer not only wired to our personal devices but also to our minds. We will think, feel, interact, command, control, play, relate, love and hate through this brain.

Kelly reminds us that “this gargantuan Machine already exists in a primitive form. In the coming decade, it will evolve into an integral extension not only of our senses and bodies, but our minds.”

Beyond the hype, there no doubt that there will be plenty of new opportunities.

Just never forget. You can always switch off, go outside and smell the grass again.

Critical Thinking

If creation is to last at all, it can only do so on the condition of becoming far more critical than it is at present. The old roads and dusty highways have been traversed too often. Their charm has been worn away by plodding feet, and they have lost that element of novelty or surprise which is so essential for romance. He who would stir us now by fiction must either give us an entirely new background, or reveal to us the soul of man in its innermost workings. - Oscar Wilde

Over a hundred years ago Oscar Wilde, in his essay “The Critic as Artist”, pointed out that for modern society to become truly cosmopolitan we need to develop critical thinking, not only in the sciences but also in the arts. He said: "Criticism will annihilate race-prejudices, by insisting upon the unity of the human mind in the variety of its forms. If we are tempted to make war upon another nation, we shall remember that we are seeking to destroy an element of our own culture, and possibly its most important element. As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular."

Getting back into blogging

I'm finally getting around updating my blog..more to come