Inmachine use of Machines
I found this week's readings quite fascinating. The breakdown of communications in the Shannon and Weaver text was something I had never considered. Communication, to me, had always been a vehicle for conveying information. The question of what made up the vehicle, and what the information it was conveying really amounted to hadn't crossed my mind.
The mathematical deconstruction of communication into small units of information and the process of viewing that information as a measure of freedom of choice seems groundbreaking. It's a bit like taking a step back compared to the other readings we've done. Whereas they are all concerned with meaning and manipulation based upon communication, Shannon and Weaver zoom in and examine the very nature of communication itself.
Weiner, then, comes in and makes a broader point. He agrees quite readily with Shannon and Weaver's thoughts, as he says on pg. 4: "If I am sending the letter e, it gains meaning in part because I have not sent the letter o." The more information contained in any method of communication, the more freedom of choice was available in communicating.
His most vocal point comes on pg. 16, as he states he "...wishes to devote this book to a protest against the inhuman use of human beings... ." To limit the human brain in any way, he feels, is one of the worst things a society can do.
So I begin to wonder, is this not a touch hypocritical when compared to his view on machines? The readings for this week all break communication down to a simple process, in many cases interpretations of electrical impulses. The human brain is only different from any other encoder and decoder in that it operates at ridiculous speeds.
If a human forced to row a boat as a slave is a terrible crime in Weiner's eyes, is it acceptable to create a machine to do it? Surely the machine could be put to better use, the components it would be made of would be capable of furthering communication had they been put into an encoder or decoder.
Not that I disagree with Weiner's sentiments about limiting the abilities of any human. It just struck me as a little strange, when he spends most of his introduction discussing the possibility of machines replicating human behavior, that he should suddenly exclude them from his great crusade.
This is an interesting post, Ryan. It never even occurred to me the possible contradiction that exists when machines that have become so advanced so as to possess something akin to cognition are required to perform the tasks and occupations abandoned by humans for being an impediment to an individual's ability to fully realize their psychological potential. I assume that in the future in which this scenario occurs, a hierarchy of machines would develop: some machines are programmed and used solely for manual labor, while still other "thinking" machines exist and are occupied in much more high-minded tasks. Your earlier comments on the break-down of communication, presented especially by Shannon and Weaver, into a language of statistical probabilities and mathematical certainties are likely relevant to such a future, as I'm sure such theories on the nature of communication will be essential to developing the first truly thinking machine.
ReplyDelete