Plateaus of Completeness

By | March 19, 2008
6 Comments

Some interesting comments from reader Nato Welch in the discussion thread of the most recent FastForward Radio:

Take by way of example California’s recent law prohibiting employers from requiring their employees to take RFID implants. If jobs are scarce, and competition among workers necessitates taking on modifications in order to compete effectively, then a form of distributed //duress// (Dale’s term) accomplishes an effective circumvention of self-determination even where direct coercion may not.

So our commitment to morphological liberty, if it is to be practical, demands a bit more than simply enjoining direct forms of coercion, but also the creation and maintenance of societies where relinquishment of technological interventions is not only permitted, but actually practicable; not only allowed, but accommodated.

Excellent point. What Nato is describing as “morphological liberty” begins with non-coercion; it can’t end there. But where does market pressure end and out-and-out coercion begin? This is a tricky question.

Let’s step back from human augmentation and look at some more mundane forms of technological adoption. On a recent Frontier Airlines flight, I was surprised to hear the flight attendant announce that Frontier Airlines “no longer accepts cash.” Anyone wanting to use the DirecTV service or purchase a cocktail now has to use a credit card. Okay, granted, credit card “technology” is so ingrained in modern commerce — especially travel-related commerce — that the expectation that passengers on a commercial flight would have access to it seems pretty reasonable. The number of passengers who purchase their tickets via cash or check (is that even possible any more?) is no doubt vanishingly rare.

  • Harvey

    Is it the case that AI technologies are so far advanced in comparison to augmented human technologies that AI will win the race to the Singularity?

  • Phil Bowermaster

    Right now, human intelligence is much closer to greater-than-human intelligence than machine intelligence. We have a head start — we’re already at the human level! But human intelligence develops very slowly compared to machine intelligence. So we may augment ourselves to a level of greater-than-human intelligence, but ultimately the smart money is on the silicon substrate. If the Singularity occurs amongst modified humans, one of the first things they are likely to do (making an audacious post-singularity prediction from here in the past) is to figure out a way to transfer their intelligence into the silicon world, which works much, mush faster.

  • http://n8o.r30.net/ Nato Welch

    Wow. I’m glad to have provoked such a complex examination of these issues, and the very difficult ambiguities therein.

    I want to emphasize that the use of the word duress, in addition, rather than merely in place of, coercion (or consent) is the thing to think about.

    I also take issue with framing the acceptance or rejection of techniques as taking place along a linear measure, whereupon exist “plateaus” on which people build their technology platforms.

    The terrain on which people make technology decisions has, ultimately, little to do with this. The Amish, as the example, don’t really make their decisions of what to eschew based upon some date in history. Neither do questions of accommodating the disability, a case in which considerable regulation has been considered prudent. As an example, consider that some Amish farmers are [[http://www.whybiotech.com/index.asp?id=3947 growing genetically engineered crops]].

    I once considered starting a blog detailing expiring patents, as they expired, for the purpose of supporting a movement dedicated to rejecting patented technology. In a similar way that Free Software advocates commit themselves to not using proprietary software, some might have a similar predilection to avoiding patented hardware or software (or, more absurdly, business methods). What results is a kind of moving target of technology relinquishment, consistently 28 years behind the cutting edge (at least as far as patented tech goes).

    Avoiding coercion and duress is a far more complex issue than a chronological framing would suggest.

  • Phil Bowermaster

    Avoiding coercion and duress is a far more complex issue than a chronological framing would suggest.

    Well, dates don’t have much of anything to do with it, and of course any talk of lines and slopes and plateaus is metaphorical. I wouldn’t suggest that the Amish got together back in the late 1700′s an said, “Uh-oh. Industrial Revolution coming. Count us out!”

    But having said that, we do have people today pretty much saying “Uh-oh. Human Augmentation coming. Count us out!”

    My point is that there is a pretty clean break between the Amish world and the Industrial / Post-Industrial world and that our economy and society are more tolerant of technology rejection along that clean break line than within the cluster of technology developments that came after.

    I once considered starting a blog detailing expiring patents, as they expired, for the purpose of supporting a movement dedicated to rejecting patented technology. In a similar way that Free Software advocates commit themselves to not using proprietary software, some might have a similar predilection to avoiding patented hardware or software (or, more absurdly, business methods).

    And here you describe a sub-economy not completely unlike the “buy organic” movement that exists today or the “buy MOSH” movement that I suggested might one day exist. As I pointed out, any sort of relinquishment is possible — along the clean break lines or right in the middle of the cluster — but I don’t expect our economy to accommodate squeamishness about wi-fi vs. coax (or non-patented vs. patented technology) the same way it will accommodate the Amish or those who wish not to be augmented.

  • Karl Hallowell

    I don’t understand the lingo here. It doesn’t strike me that you have to be “complete”. Just good enough which may be rather exacting or it might not. It just seems to be standard networks of people. If you want to belong, you need to communicate and to some extent conform with the rest of the network.

  • Phil Bowermaster

    Karl –

    The original title was “plateaus of rejection.” I’m not sure; maybe that made more sense. The idea is people reach a point where they don’t want any more technological growth on top of what they’re currently comfortable with. I would say that “completeness” is the way the Amish view the world; the term may be less applicable to those who have no use for human augmentation.