Using Technology to Deepen Democracy, Using Democracy to Ensure Technology Benefits Us All

Saturday, October 13, 2007

Have We Arrived at the Crux?

Upgraded and adapted from Comments,
Michael Anissimov bravely took up the thankless task of defending, or at any rate rendering a tad more palatable, the pronouncements of some Superlative Technocentrics from a piece I discussed here yesterday.

To this end, he wrote: Minsky goes too far. He is being extremely crabby and elitist. I challenge anyone to find another transhumanist with that view,

Oh dear oh dear oh dear oh dear oh dear.

Did we vote for there to be an Internet? No. This fact does not denigrate the causes of p2p, Net Neutrality, etc.

Maybe you're right, in stricto senso, but are you sure you're seeing the point I was making at all? In the part of my reading that you are objecting to I am citing the fact that Minsky's phrase "I don't remember voting for x" is regularly used as a way of expressing disdain for democratic processes, it's an incredibly popular conservative/libertopian trope. I read Minsky as making that sort of point (sensibly enough, I would have thought, since elsewhere he disdains popular government of science explicitly after all), and then against the grain of that point I mentioned a2k/p2p, Net Neutrality and such as a way of calling attention to all the political and social work that goes into creating and maintaining the Internet, such as it is. I was affirming politics where he seemed to me to be denigrating them.

I wasn't pointing in this instance to a relation of logical entailment between propositions, but alerting readers to the conventional associations of the citation of a frame, a figure, a topic. Calling attention to these sorts of associations does not provide the assured conclusions of logical analysis, but readings based on such moves are still often very illuminating indeed.

Again, maybe you're right that Minsky is not meaning to make the anti-politicizing point he seems to me to be making. I do think he is and I have offered up the evidence and provided a track through the analysis that says why I think this. That's all one can do, surely.

By the way, even at the literal concrete level of "who voted for what" that you seem to want to hold me to, it seems to me you are pretty conspicuously wrong, inasmuch as people did literally vote for the people who made the appointments and dispersed the research dollars that did bring the Internet into existence after all, articulated much of its development, continue to maintain it, and so on.

Against my own reading Michael proposes instead that: It -- the declaration that nobody "voted" on the Internet -- merely states that the Big Picture (Internet) was inevitable and unstoppable,

"Merely," indeed!

Let me put this plainly: The Internet was the furthest imaginable thing from "inevitable," and remains in my view very significantly still "stoppable." This matters to me enormously.

whereas the specifics (p2p, etc.) are negotiable, and dependent on activists to make progress.

We have reached a crux, my friend.

Have a glimpse into my world.

For me what you are calling The Big Picture doesn't exist at all -- except perhaps as some retroactive construction deployed cynically by corporate-militarist PR machines -- and what you call "the specifics" is all there is. For me, it's specifics all the way down, which, as you say, as such, "are negotiable, and dependent on activists [which I would use in the broadest possible construal of that term] to make progress."

8 comments:

Michael Anissimov said...

I do see the point you're making. Minsky is a libertarian and he does seem dismissive of the democratic process, to say the least. I do not share this dismissive attitude, but...

There are certain technological advancements that seem developmentally predetermined: the wheel, fire, ironworking, agriculture, radio, computers, nuclear technology, etc. To hold back any one of these milestone technologies would require a fascist world government preventing it. So, in this sense, you can say people "vote" for these technologies, but their doing so was inevitable all along.

I would say that nanoscale manufacturing (as envisioned by Drexler or not) and AI (as envisioned by Kurzweil or not) are similarly developmentally predetermined. Their arrival is not so much a question of if, but when. When I say this, I'm not "denigrating the political process". I have no particular investment in any narrow vision of nano or AI, however, there are certain parameters that MNT and AI must fall into if they are possible at all. For instance, the throughput of an MNT system is guaranteed to either be significantly faster or significantly slower than conventional manufacturing -- it would be a remarkably unlikely coincidence for nanoscale processes to be of similar speed to macroscale processes.

Saying that the Internet was "the furthest imaginable thing from inevitable" sounds like hyperbole to me. You don't think that most intelligent civilizations develop a worldwide communications network like this? Do most intelligent civilizations develop housing, or the wheel, or plastics? Is there nothing that is developmentally predetermined in the course of a civilization's trajectory?

We disagree on the last point. You want for everything to be dependent on activists, because that boosts the significance of social struggles, stakeholder politics, etc. But sometimes, individual agents have a disproportionate impact -- for instance, if the first atomic bomb ignited the atmosphere, we would not have "voted" for it with tax dollars per se, but enabled it, and a few uncautious scientists would have caused our doom as the result of their poor decisions. In anticipating threats and maximizing the benefits of technological change, we have to look at both shaping factors.

Individual scientists and the choices they make matter. It is perfectly possible to acknowledge this without coming from a Randian background. Because it's easier for me to influence a few people than to influence everyone, I think it's worthwhile to focus on influencing the inventors, the policymakers, the businessmen, rather than everyone, because the latter is extremely difficult. Most of the American public doesn't even know what the word "nanotechnology" means, and I doubt that I alone could be successful in teaching them what it does! This isn't pooh-poohing democracy, this is pragmatically acknowledging my own limitations. (Very modest, I know :)

But your response does elucidate your positions better, thanks.

Anonymous said...

I don't pretend to know what Dale would say but this is my view. The internet, as I'm sure you know, was a specific DARPA project at one point and thus, in some very indirect sense, was something people "voted for". Do all advanced civilizations develop ways to network computers? Well, assuming there are any others I think you're right that they do. What you are probably missing is that this process is not "natural" in any useful sense. That is, once a society reaches a certain level of complexity and technology further development always has a social/political dimension that you probably do not see with basic tech like the wheel or putting a roof over your head (even mountain gorillas seem to do a very primitive version of this when they make a "leaf umbrella" in the rain). This is the basic problem with a lot of technocentric discourse. It makes of certain technical programs a kind of "force of nature" (the Marxists used to call this process "reification") when it is very far from that. By the way, yes, I suspect that there are aliens and that their computers talk to each other just like ours (though certainly not with TCP/IP). But I also strongly suspect that something like DARPA once existed on their worlds and that, if they're still alive, they managed at some point politically to transcend the need to rely on military-industrial scams to provide technical innovation. And of course I don't think this meant selling their roads, police forces, hospitals and universities to corporate goons to please whatever analog of Ayn Rand they have come up with. Not that you seem to be much of a Randian. Frankly, I wouldn't even bother directing criticism to you if you were.

Dale Carrico said...

Greg in Portland said: Many sensible things with which I mostly agree.

Giulio Prisco said...

Hi Dale,

your writing is brilliant as usual and, as usual, you do make some sensible points.

But, and I am sorry to say that, you really begin to sound like a broken disk. Isn't there any social or political cause that you find important, and more worthy of your time than constantly criticizing others who think different from you? Because, my friend, your blog that used to be full of interesting writings about so many things, and a pleasure to read, now seems ONLY dedicated to trying to attack transhumanists.

Have a glimpse into my world.

It is a big world, it is a complex world, and it is beautiful and interesting because it is big and complex. There are different types of persons who find different types of things important and engage in different activities to try making the world a better place. There are animal right activists, world federalism activists, people who fight for BIG, minority right supporters, environmentalists, P2P activists... and transhumanists who think seriously about mind uploading. As it has always been the case in history, tomorrow's society will emerge from the interplay of all these different factors.

Diversity is GOOD. I would not wish you to become different from who you are, but if I may, I would like to suggest that you find a more constructive outlet.

Dale Carrico said...

If you're just looking to feel good get high or get laid. Or to be less glib about it, I think proper critique is constructive! What you are perceiving as a string of attacks is actually a series of engagements with actual people offering up actual arguments -- care to join in on those terms?

jimf said...

Giulio Prisco wrote:

> Diversity is GOOD.

Coming from somebody who is basically saying "Stop
this line of discussion!", it's interesting to hear
a claimed desire for more "diversity" being used to
support this demand.

It's sort of like hearing right-wingers lamenting their not being
allowed to enforce the uniformity of some ideology
(fundamentalist Christianity, fundamentalist free-market
economics, or whatever) blaming their frustration on
a "lack of toleration for diversity".

There's precious little tolerance for diversity of opinion
in the watering-holes where the >Hists typically congregate.

And Prisco is one of the enforcers of uniformity in those
forums.

Sadly (for him), his ability to simply pull the plug does
not extend to **this** particular forum.

GP said...

Dale: "I think proper critique is constructive! What you are perceiving as a string of attacks is actually a series of engagements with actual people offering up actual arguments -- care to join in on those terms?"

In most cases, I don't need to engage in arguments with you, simply because I already agree with what you say. In this particular case, I do not see any actual argument being made, besides "I do not like those who waste their time discussing superlative technologies" which is not an argument and is not relevant to anything concrete anyway.

I know that you have done your best to explain the difference, but your position still sounds to me like "you cannot play in my team because you are black / Xian / gipsy / gay / ... [insert some other thing unrelated to whatever the team does]". Which in this case, of course, is engaging in the cultural, social and political initiatives that all readers of this blog consider important.

Don't you see that the only possible result can be alienating potential allies? If you do not want someone in your football team because he is Xian, at some point he will say "well then, screw your team". Is that what you want?

Best,
G.

Dale Carrico said...

Guilio wrote: I do not see any actual argument being made, besides "I do not like those who waste their time discussing superlative technologies" which is not an argument and is not relevant to anything concrete anyway….. but your position still sounds to me like "you cannot play in my team because you are black / Xian / gipsy / gay / ... [insert some other thing unrelated to whatever the team does]". Don't you see that the only possible result can be alienating potential allies? If you do not want someone in your football team because he is Xian, at some point he will say "well then, screw your team". Is that what you want?

Of course, as you admit, I have written thousands upon thousands upon thousands of words explaining why identifying with idealized outcomes yields sub(cult)ural movement-politics that, I have argued and offered up reasons to believe, [1] tend to derange practical foresight, [2] tend to facilitate True Belief and hierarchical political organizations, [3] tend to support elite-incumbent political interests (even when advocated by people who explicitly renounce such politics), and [4] tend to frustrate actual diverse democratic practices of stakeholder deliberation over technoscientific change.

But, in spite of all that you don't see any argument happening here. What you see is me saying "I don't like you." My position still sounds to [you] like "screw your team."

In other words, with perfect behavioral predictability according to the terms of the very critique you are supposedly responding to (at least discounting), your sub(cult)ural futurism makes you literally unable to see anything but defamation of identity where I am offering up structural critical analysis.

You are sitting there, calmly, relentlessly proving my point. No, you can't see anything but sub(cult)ural politics in what I say, even though I am saying nothing of the kind. Sub(cult)ural Futurism is the organizational cul-de-sac you're caught in, it's the lens that is organizing your political intuitions.

That is, of course, the very problem under discussion. It seems to me you want to be on the "team" that holds the Keys to History. I want all the stakeholders to technoscientific change with whom I share the world to have a say in public decisions that affect them.

These are radically different political paradigms, it seems to me. This is a matter of something like Pan-Movement Politics Vs. Democratic politics. Superlative Outcomes Vs. Open Futures. (For Pan Movements read Hannah Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianism.)

My critique is not about Liking or Not Liking particular people. Perfectly likeable people can misunderstand politics at a fundamental level. I don't want "allies" for some Ideal-Futurological Implementation "Team," I want a world of Peers collaborating and contending with with me in democratic and emancipatory technodevelopmental social struggle toward open unpredictable futures. Education, agitation, and organizing is not the same thing as whomping up enthusiastic "members" for a would-be Pan-Movement.

The reason we have trouble playing this discursive game is that we seem to be playing on two separate boards and I don't think you have quite grasped that yet.