Ethics of Perception and Nanocognition (Nanorobot-aided Cognition)

It is not too soon to consider what kinds of ethics nanorobotic cognitive aids should have, and what kinds of ethics our QS (quantified self) gadgetry in general should have. Ethics is meant in an Ethics 2.0 sense of enablement, empowerment, and coordination of new ways of living as opposed to an Ethics 1.0 sense of judging and circumscribing behavior.

Cognitive nanorobots, an analog to medical nanorobots, could have applications in cognitive enhancement and perceptual aid such as bias reduction, memory management (access, suppression), and personalized ethics optimization.

In defining an ethics of perception, a number of core philosophical questions arise such as the possibility and desirability of knowing a true and objective reality, and selecting different realities.

Hear more and discuss this topic:
"Ethics of Perception and Nanocognition (Nanorobot-aided Cognition)" Terasem's 9th Annual Workshop on Geoethical Nanotechnology, July 20, 2013, 1PM – 4PM EDT, Terasem Island, Second Life

Web Analytics: a Precursor to Cognitive Enhancement

Any sufficiently complex, rapidly-responding, and self-adjusting computer system is sometimes heralded as the place that “AI could wake up,” but could be seen more broadly as the venue of algorithm development that might have extensive applicability, including for cognitive enhancement.

Some exemplar complex modern computing systems include big data analytics, high-frequency trading operations, multiplayer video game networks, weather-modeling systems, and now…mobile and web analytics. These latter platforms are becoming increasingly sophisticated, continually updating actual and predicted user behavior data and delivering this information in real-time. Web property owners can watch live engagement with their websites in a heads-up display (HUD) overlay on web pages, as Chartbeat demonstrated at an API-related mini-hackathon at their NYC offices on June 29, 2013.

Some of the most prominent mobile and web analytics companies currently include Google Analytics, Chartbeat, MixPanel, KISSmetrics, Omniture, and Visual Revenue.

The 800 pound gorilla of online metrics is the eCommerce use case, using metrics in endless iterations of A/B testing (e.g.; does version A or B of the website produce more click-throughs and product purchases?) However, it is now increasingly important to measure other kinds of web experiences, for example news consumption where the key metric is engagement time as opposed to a simple link click-through. The type of interaction is also important, where the user spends time on the page, and the type of engagement activity such as reading, commenting, and sharing/referring.

Interconnected Big Data World: API Services Marketplaces

A feature of the data-driven modern world is different companies (e.g.; Walgreens, BestBuy) and web properties (e.g.; eBay) offering access to their data and services via API (application programming interface).

In some part an ingenious crowdsourcing ploy and more broadly having the effect of enmeshing even more deeply the interconnected data world, API access requires a lot of coordination.

A new market segment, API management services, has sprung up to facilitate both public and private (white-label) access. Some of the leading companies in the segment include: Mashape, the cloud API platform, offering developer access to hundreds of APIs, Mashery (acquired by Intel in April 2013), an API network with standardized and richly-documented access to over 50 APIs, and Apigee, a leading provider of API services for enterprises and developers. Other related companies include 3scale, WebServius, and Layer 7 Technologies. A related company Zapier enables task-automation between online services like Salesforce, Basecamp, and Gmail.

API management services are growing marketplaces for the management, distribution, and consumption of APIs. Developers gain the ability to have a standard interface for quickly accessing and working with data from hundreds of sources. Web properties and corporations gain a standardized and outsourced management solution to coordinate external developer interactions and extend their ecosystems.

Technology vs. Free Will? Tuning into the Internal Qualitative Experience of Time

Henri Bergson, the French philosopher, was living and writing in a time (early 1900s) similar to today where the furious pace of innovation in science and technology was promising to elucidate the deepest secrets of the world such as how the mind works.

Determinism Victory from the Application of Quantitative Methods? 
As the social sciences gelled into departments of academic study unto themselves and sought to apply techniques from the hard sciences, Bergson became concerned about the potential loss of free will and a victory for determinism. Humans might be reduced to billiard balls in the sense that if human behavior could be predicted mechanistically like that of a billiard ball, it would mean that humans would lose their liberty and free will.

Doublings: Experiences with both Inner Qualitative Subjectivity and External Quantitative Objectivity
Bergson proposed that there are several concepts that are different in our internal experience (qualitative, subjective) than in our external experience of the world (quantitative, objective). This difference between internal and external experience (called a doubling) exists in areas like time, intensity, multiplicity, duration, self, and consciousness. The external aspects can be measured quantitatively, but the internal aspects cannot, they are states that overlap, merge into one another, and emerge and recede dynamically.

Prescription: Tune into the Qualitative Aspects of Inner Experience
To Bergson, freedom is most visible in spontaneity, the ability of a person to choose spontaneous action. To maintain free will, one should tune into the qualitative aspects of internal experience, understanding concepts like time as a qualitative overlap and ebb and flow of states dynamically, energetically. Bergson’s nomenclature for inner qualitative time is ‘duration’ as opposed to external quantitative ‘time’ – this is the difference between the sense of waiting for a train to arrive (qualitative) versus the time elapsing on the clock. Being attuned to the qualitative aspects of time, one can live more spontaneously.

DIY Philosophy: Crowd Models to Democratize Participatory Thinking

The model for computing and info tech exploded with the PC and the Internet – democratizing the field across all strata and making it accessible to any interested individual. The worldwide technology and startup industry has boomed and proliferated as a result. DIY science is doing the same for crowdsourced labor, quantified self-tracking, biology hacking, and the shift to the 21st century health paradigm of preventive medicine. The field of philosophy is ripe for similar democratization – some tip-offs are that it is one of the few remaining areas comprised primarily of white males, and where memorization is still important.

Philosophy Improves Sophistication of Modern Thinking 
Philosophy is the sport of thinking – one of its great benefits is its broad applicability beyond the dusty academic discipline to one’s own personal thinking and lifestyle. A key contemporary use of philosophy is in helping to provide a deeper and more sophisticated means of understanding our fast-paced technologized modern world and our place therein. Many people are interested in philosophy but few have the affordance or interest for full-time involvement which has seemed to have been required given the notorious density and inaccessibility of philosophical works.

Crowd Models Facilitating Philosophy Accessibility 
Crowd models (analogous to the PC revolution) are starting to change the former inaccessibility of philosophy. Philosophy courses and reading groups are popping up at free public universities (the Public School, the University of the Commons), podcasts are acquiring significant listenership, and online communities and publications have growing participatory audiences (e.g.; e-Flux, Plasticities Sciences Arts).

FQXi for Philosophy
While there are some research institutes supporting philosophy like the University of London's Institute of Philosophy, one next step in creating the more overt sensibility of the DIY philosopher as the analog to the DIY scientist and software hacker would be to have Philosophy Research Institutes that specifically promote DIY philosopher participation through essay contests, conferences, and other acknowledgement and community-building activities – an FQXi (e.g.; a research institute encouraging speculative innovation in physics and cosmology) for philosophy is needed.

Sensor Mania – The SmartWatch Arrives

The wireless Internet of Things is slowly rolling out – smartwatches (Pebble, Basis) have been some prominent arrivals alongside Google Glass.

A variety of two-way communication from each device type has been a quickly realized need that is starting to appear in SDKs and APIs. Pebble in particular is doing a lot to stimulate use and application development through developer community resources, an online codesharing cloud, meetups, and hackathon events.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the smartwatch rollout and actual use in applications (Figure 1) is the notion of a [seamless] interoperable computing system where the smartwatch, cell phone, and PC communicate together and perform different operations at different times like message alerts and data syncing. A future with a distributed on-board (e.g.; on-human) computing environment can be imagined with many different special purpose devices providing key functionality, all communicating with a utility device for power and connectivity.

Figure 1: Pebble Watch Faces / Apps

AAAI 2014: Connecting Machine Learning and Human Intelligence

The AAAI Spring Symposia are a place for worldwide artificial intelligence, machine learning, and other computer scientists to present and discuss innovative theoretical research in a workshop-like environment. In 2013, some of the topics included: learning, autonomous systems, wellness, crowd computing, behavior change, and creativity.

Proposals are underway for 2014. Please indicate your opinion by voting at the poll at the top right for these potential topics:

• My data identity: personal, social, universal 
• Big data becomes personal: knowledge into meaning 
• Wearable computing and digital affect: wellness, bioidentity, and intentionality 
• Big data, wearable computing, and identity construction: knowledge becomes meaning 
• Personalized knowledge generation: identity, intentionality, action, and wellness

Innovation in Epistemology

Rather than being a dusty old concept in philosophy, epistemology is a source of philosophical advance, and is perhaps shifting in some even more vibrant ways per the contemporary science and technology era of big data, information visualization, synthetic biology, biohacking, DIYscience, and the quantified self.

Epistemology (the study of knowledge) is one of the three main branches of philosophy, together with metaphysics (nature of reality), and aesthetics (nature of beauty). The study of knowledge remains one of the most dense and unresolved areas in philosophy. Some of the usual concerns of epistemology are: What is knowledge? How can knowledge be acquired? To what extent can any subject or entity be known? What are the limits of knowledge?

There are two main traditional theories as to how knowledge is obtained: either through the senses and perception (empiricism; e.g.; Locke’s “All ideas come from sensation”) or through reason (rationalism; e.g.; Descartes’ “I think therefore I am”).

There has been much movement in epistemology from the basic structure of this empiricism-rationalism debate. Both empiricism and rationalism seek common foundations upon which all other ideas are built (foundationalism). Foundationalism is problematic in several ways, two of the most basic are ‘what are these underlying foundations?’ and ‘how do these foundations connect to upstream ideas?’ Traditional/analytic philosophers propose coherentism as an alternative to foundationalism. Coherentism is the notion of it being more important that ideas make sense together and flow from one to the next than that they have immutable discernible foundations.

Continental philosophy too has a response to foundationalism and other aspects of the empiricst/rationalist debate. Gadamer enlarges the notion of epistemology, suggesting that discovering facts is just one of many edification activities; that man’s focus is self-betterment, a higher level than knowledge acquisition. Likewise Heidegger thinks that the higher-order engagement of man is beyond knowing facts and rather in understanding. Further that the circular structure of interpretation (the hermeneutic circle: acquiring new information and updating thoughts) is what makes knowledge possible. Rorty also calls for a larger, more holistic notion of epistemology that includes both conceptualization and the demonstration of practice.

Other new epistemologies also extend, reformulate and reinvigorate our understanding of epistemology and can be brought to bear on contemporary science and technology. Some of these alt.epistemologies are from the areas of social, feminist, queer, decolonial, and Eastern philosophy.

Pluralist Narratives in Digital Art and Philosophy

Much of contemporary human endeavor involves both art and technology. Objects are both technologized and aesthetically designed. Apple forever changed the expectation of high-quality technology and design in objects. Information visualization, 3-D printing, personal data, video games, and de novo biological design (e.g.; proteins, other molecules, synthetic biology) are some examples of the strong linkage between technology and aesthetic design.

Artists, scientists, and individuals alike are exploring these new venues of information, software, personal data, biology, and virtual reality for discovery and creative expression. Online tools facilitate the process and compress the required learning curves for proficiency.

As a result, there is a shift away from the institutional production of knowledge to include the more democratized production of art, science, technology, objects, and knowledge by individuals and crowds. This helps to enact change at three levels: a greater range of interesting and useful objects and technologies coming into existence; more fulfillment and expression of human creative potential; and new kinds of knowledge and meaning-making narratives about the world.

Friendship 2.0

The new mindfulness extends to every area of life. Communication and romantic relationships often exist now on much improved ground compared to even a few years ago. Now friendship is under the spotlight.

The new idea is becoming more active instead of passive with regard to friendships: learning and acknowledging that friendships are a dynamic process that needs deliberate focus and ongoing tending. At least two new genre-pioneering books are on the scene: Friendships Don’t Just Happen! and The Friendship Fix. The books are aimed at women, but have broadly applicable themes. The attendant friendship development meetup groups, workshops, and conferences are already popping up to help hone the new skillset.

Some obvious Friendship 2.0 things to examine and sync with friends and potential friends are your and their friendship rules. These are your potentially unconscious rules for how you think a friend should behave. Just like with unexamined relationship rules, friendship rules are likely to differ and could cause conflict. Stating expectations is one way to communicate intent and boundaries. The books suggest determining what is most important to you in a friendship – for example, sharing values, experiences, or interests. The more kinds of points of overlap (if possible), the better; but one cannot be overly perfectionist about the criteria list either. There are different steps to follow in identifying and cultivating friendships. Overall, Friendship 2.0 has an exciting esprit of empowerment and possibility for experiencing more fun and life fulfillment through friendships.

An obvious critique might be ‘Is Friendship 2.0 YASFSM (Yet another San Francisco Social Movement)?’ San Francisco is not just the home of technology innovation, but also social innovation. Numerous social movements, if not spawned in San Francisco have been taken up, popularized, and made more acceptable in the Bay Area. A few of these include: co-working, co-housing, hackathons, biohacking, DIY science, unconferences, polyamory, homosexuality, lesbianism, bisexuality, transgenderism, queer theory, happiness, calming tech, persuasive tech, spiritual intelligence, and mindfulness. Shifting models in romantic relationships, longevity, and the mobile fungible lives of the modern individual suggest that Friendship 2.0 could just be starting as a deeply relevant social concept.