[-empyre-] effusion and miscommunication
Renate Terese Ferro
rferro at cornell.edu
Tue May 13 12:12:53 EST 2014
Dear Geert and Johannes,
Thanks Johannes for asking this important and critical question about the
non-human.
Geert wrote in relationships to robotsŠ.
but I would like to know who profits from them, who built them, what their
inner architecture is, which values and ethics they inhabit and spreadŠ It
is not so hard to delegate power and trust to machines. We can get used to
that, and in some cases even benefit from it, but in the end I prefer
full-employment for humans first. No sympathy for the machines.
....
If these values are important to you in regards to robots and machines
then the comment above implies that in order for you and us to actually
understand robots we do need the expertise of a whole plethora of experts
from designers, to psychologists, to theologians. To help us understand
the nature of robotics then a cross-disciplinary approach seems to be what
you are implying. Any thoughts on this especially in relationship to your
comment on e-flux
...Are you ready to hand over the ³new media² remains to the sociologists,
museum curators, art historians, and other humanities officials? Can we
perhaps stage a more imaginative ³act of disappearance²....
Thanks. Renate
On 5/11/14 10:26 AM, "Geert Lovink" <geert at desk.nl> wrote:
>----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>On 9 May 2014, at 7:42 PM, Johannes Birringer
><Johannes.Birringer at brunel.ac.uk> wrote:
>
>> What exactly are we meant to do with the (catholic? mystic?) notion of
>>excommunicationŠ? (..) What realm of the "non-human" do you propose for
>>our social and political and personal activities? and how do you intend
>>to get rid of media or convince others to join your sect?
>
>Thanks, Johannes. These questions are geared towards the authors, I
>guess.
>
>I can only say what I make of it, and what I can see what we can do with
>these notions, in my case, the context of net criticism, media theory,
>tactical media, new aesthetics activism of artists, geeks, designers etc.
>
>There is an urgency to study and understand the non-human. I can see
>that. I really started to 'dig it' and apply it to my own context when I
>got familiar with the work of Stuart Geiger
>(http://stuartgeiger.com/wordpress/) who studies the role of bots in
>Wikipedia. These days there are the social bots that people like you and
>me employŠ resulting in a recent figure that 61.5% of internet traffic is
>'non-human' (source: incapsula).
>
>There are people making millions of this by tooling and ticking companies
>like Google. And this brings me to the humans behind the non-human. In
>the end I am more interested in them. Robots can be cute, or cruel, they
>are here to stay and will gain influence etc., all that is true, but I
>would like to know who profits from them, who built them, what their
>inner architecture is, which values and ethics they inhabit and spreadŠ
>It is not so hard to delegate power and trust to machines. We can get
>used to that, and in some cases even benefit from it, but in the end I
>prefer full-employment for humans first. No sympathy for the machines.
>
>On Hacker News this weekend a related article was popular:
>
>http://www.bainbrdg.demon.co.uk/Papers/Ironies.html
>
>It is from 1983, so before 1984Š ;)
>
>The article "suggests that the increased interest in human factors among
>engineers reflects the irony that the more advanced a control system is,
>so the more crucial may be the contribution of the human operator."
>
>Greetings, Geert
>
>
>
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