God, Human, Animal, Machine - Meghan O'Gieblyn

 This was a deeply philosophical read, a book created from a series of essays and new material. The author was raised a fundamentalist Christian and in college began questioning the teachings and now considers herself a humanist. However, her background allows her to draw parallels to humankind's creation of an omnipotent being and our speculation about the evolution of machines into sentient beings.  

I found in interesting how her spiritual beliefs evolved and as she left her fundamentalist roots brought a unique perspective to humanism. The book exposed me to many philosophers old and new and provided a context for their writings. I also learned about several technology contributors. The author wove both into a view of where we are going from where we have been.

Quotes:

"I can trace my interest in technology to Ray Kurzweil's 1999 book The Age of Spiritual Machines"

"...belief in an immanent transformation (resurrection) persisted, improbably, century after century... Dante in the Divine Comedy makes up an entirely new word [translated as] transhuman. It was the first time the word was used in the human language." 

"In addition to our physical bodies their exists -- somewhere in the ether -- a second self that is purely informational and immaterial...that lingers in the shadowy dossier of third party aggregators. It is they, not we that are the most valuable and real,"

[Poem by Swinburne] 

From too much love of living,

    From hope and fear set free,

We thank with brief thanksgiving

    Whatever gods may be.

That no life lives for ever;

That dead men rise up never;

That even the weariest river

    Winds somewhere safe to sea.

"Technology companies learned long ago that their products ar for more appealing -- and more profitable -- when humans manage to bond with them."

"reality is "that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away" - Philip K Dick sci-fi writer.

"...how much of our science and philosophy has been colored by the justifications of shitty men?"

"people become trapped within the mirror of their digital reflection, a process that Google researcher Vyacheslav Polonski calls 'algorithmic determinism'."

"Elon Musk - a man who once referred to humanity as the biological bootloaders for AI.  'Bootloader' is a computational term that refers to the minimal line of code that is used to start up a computer.  It is a tiny, insignificant program whose sole purpose is to initiate larger, more complex program."

Published: 2021 Read: September 2023 Genre: Philosophy

Invisible Women - Caroline Criado Perez

 Sub-title: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men

This is an important book to read to understand how the rise in the use of data has perpetuated bias toward women resulting in the loss of their potential contribution in a multitude of fields.  The author points out the well-reported lack of diversity in medical studies and goes on to address bias introduced via data to other areas of life as well.  She points out how the lack of consideration of women's needs and perspectives skews the  development of everything from phones to automated decision-making to healthcare.  

She points out in the Afterword that there are 3 themes that define women's relationship with the world:

1) the invisibility of the female body; forgetting to accommodate it in design in all fields

2) the visibility of the female body leading to male sexual violence against women and how it is measured and accounted for in design, resulting in limiting women's liberty.

3) Unpaid care work; pointing out that women are doing far and away more than our fair share of this work.  It naturalizes sex and gender discrimination to assume this is the female role.

Quotes and Notes

p 30 - Women do 75% of the world's unpaid care work and this affects their travel needs.  ..."trip-chaining', a travel pattern of several small interconnected trips that has been observed in women around the world."

p 118 - [regarding absorption of chemicals studies not taking into account] endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs)  harmful even at very low concentrations and they are found in a wide range of plastics, cosmetics and cleaners.

p 157 - There is plenty of data showing that women have, on average, smaller hands than men and yet we continue to design equipment around the average male hand as if one-size-fit-men is the same as one-size-fits-all.

p 167 - [discussion of AI systems] used to screen resumes] Has the algorithm been trained to account for socialized gender differences in tone an facial expression?"

p 175 - [women entrepreneurs in tech world, example of pelvic floor trainer] In a field where women are at a disadvantage specifically because the are women (and therefore can't hope to fit a stereotypically male 'pattern'), data will be particularly crucial for female entrepreneurs.  And yet it's the female entrepreneurs who are less likely to have it, because they are more likely to be trying to make products for women.  For whom we lack data." 

p 180 - Across professional computing as a whole in the US, 26% of jobs are held by women compared to the 57% of jobs women hold across the entire US workforce - "sea of dudes" problem.

p 223 - Understanding Girls with ADHD states that women are underdiagnosed because of early clinical studies being done on hyperactive young white boys.

p 247 - ..."the best job-creation programme could simply be the introduction of universal childcare in every country in the world."

Published: 2019  Read: December 2021  Genre: Science

Blockchain Revolution - Don Tapscott

 Sub-title: : How the technology behind bitcoin is changing money, business, and the world

This was a challenging, frustrating and quixotic book about a new technology that is said to revolutionize the world.  If I took nothing else from it, I learned the vocabulary of this emerging game changer.  The authors tout the many marvels that can be achieved with this secure, distributed transaction driver, as I understood it.  They provide multiple chapters on its potential application in financial services, business organization, education, healthcare and government, glossing over the details while stimulating creative thought. They claim it is the Internet of the 21st century and beyond.  I'll be exploring other interpretations to grasp a better understanding of its functions.  

Published: 2016   Read: March 2021  Genre: Technology, Science

A couple of misses

 I started, but didn't finish, a couple of non-fiction books this month.

An Intimate History of Humanity by Theodore Zeldin (1994) had been on my TBR list for awhile and I'm not sure where I originally heard about it. The author is a well respected historian and thinker.  His intent is to tell the history of man as it affected by culture over time, using stories of individuals or a group. It was dated and didn't capture my attention and I returned it to the library after a couple of chapters.

Because Internet - Understanding the Rules of Language by Gretchen McCulloch (2019) was one I had gotten picked for me by the librarian.  McCulloch is a linguist who examined the impact of the internet on our communication styles.  She suggests that internet communications, i.e., Facebook, messaging, Instagram, etc. for the first time captures our unfiltered speech.  Previous to the internet, only live recordings of people speaking revealed idiosyncrasies of language.  Once that point was made, the book lagged and I decided to return it too.  

Homo Deus - Yuval Noah Harari

Sub-title: A Brief History of Tomorrow

This was a heavy book, figuratively and literally!  Harari has a PhD in history and specializes in world history.  He wrote an earlier book on the history of mankind called Sapiens.  This book is a sort of sequel, describing the future of the human species.  He presents many provocative ideas based on the evolution of industry and technology in the modern age.  I was fascinated and fearful of some of his predictions.  Here are some quotes and snipets I wanted to keep:

Page 54 - "A baby was conceived using the mitochondrial DNA of a 3rd person so she has biologically three parents (this procedures was subsequently banned in the U.S.)"

Page 58 - "This is the paradox of historical knowledge.  Knowledge that does not change behaviour is useless.  But knowledge that changes behaviour quickly loses it relevance.  The more data we have and the better we understand history, the faster history alters its course and the faster our knowledge becomes outdated."

Page 132 - "...the crucial factor in our [humans] conquest of the world was our ability to connect many humans to one another."

Page - 143 - "All large-scale human cooperation is ultimately based on our belief in imagined orders.  These are set of rules that, despite existing only in our imagination, we believe to be a real and inviolable as gravity [examples, God].  As long as all Sapiens living in a particular locality believe in the sames stories, they all follow the same rules, making it easy to predict the behaviour of strangers and to organize mass-cooperation networks."

When he talks of "imagined orders" he's referring to a belief that is intersubjective - a belief that depends on communication among many humans, money being an example.  He posits that religious and nationalistic beliefs are also intersubjective and cease to exist if we cease to believe in them.

He goes on from this explanation of how the species acts based on commonly held beliefs to describe "The Modern Covenant" - an agreement we have made "to give up meaning in exchange for power".  Religion and nationalistic beliefs gave meaning to human life but restricted their power.  By letting go of a belief in a great cosmic plan life has no meaning.  "The modern world does not believe in purpose, only in cause.  If modernity has a motto, its 'shit happens'."  From this, he surmises, humans can do anything we want. "On the practical level modern life consists of a constant pursuit of power within a universe devoid meaning."

Page 304 - "If you want to make people believe in imaginary entities such as gods and nations, you should make them sacrifice something valuable".

Page 350 - "Most scientific research about the human mind and the human experience has been conducted on people from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic (WEIRD) societies.  The study of the human mind has so far assumed that Homo sapiens is Homer Simpson."

Page 366 - "Modern humanity is sick with FOMO - Fear of Missing Out and though we have more choice than ever before, we have lost the ability to really pay attention to whatever we choose."

He ends with three challenging questions:

1. Are organisms really just algorithms, and is life really just data processing?
2. What's more valuable intelligence or consciousness?
3. What will happen to society, politics and daily life when non-conscious but highly intelligent algorithms know us better than we know ourselves?

Published: 2015   Read: March 2018  Genre: History, Science