FIXING THE INTERNET What does this mean?

In  2020-2022, the internet played a dramatic role in communication of misinformation, and coordination of activities that threatened the stability of our political system.  There have been hearings in congress confronting specific leaders of internet companies,  with no intelligent response, and a general tendency across the society to blame the companies and the "internet" in general for current problems.  If the internet  is the problem then it should be possible to analyze the issues and fix them.  This is explored in this and several succeeding posts.

What is the "internet"?  A communication system.  A network of connections between computers managed by other computers that transfer messages according to specific addresses.  The idea to connect a group of computers to provide interaction between users was developed by a research arm of the US Dept of Defense ARPA (now DARPA) in 1969.  (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet   https://www.internetsociety.org/internet/history-internet/brief-history-internet/   To achieve this goal,  four elements are needed: 1) a group of computers/users to connect, 2) wires to transmit digital signals from one unit to another, (or some other method), 3) a system of addresses the switching computer uses to direct the messages, and 4) a program that performs the switching functions and sending the messages to the correct locations.  These addresses or "domains" are assigned by ICANN and have yearly renewal fees.  (Some domain names are so favorable to businesses that they command high prices.) 

Everything else is a  human elaboration of the potential that these elements provide.  Three expansions of the "internet" are important: 1) the "world wide web" (= www.) (1989-90) is a change in the method of addressing associated with expanding the digital content from purely text symbols to audiovisual information, and "hypertext", the placement of addresses within documents to other addresses.  2) This was associated with new user programs,  "browsers", to search and navigate the web more easily.  A vast expansion in the number of nodes/users occurred between 1980 and the present.  This has required a new address system with more capacity to address the increasing number of nodes. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv6 ).  and 3) Organizations manage the cable/computer systems that transmit the information globally.  The network of cables/computers is not owned or controlled by one country or company. (https://computer.howstuffworks.com/internet/basics/who-owns-internet1.htm )  But several major companies have part responsibility, the "upstream providers" including UUNET, Level 3, Verizon, AT&T, Qwest, Sprint, IBM.  Most of these are telecommunications companies in the US, and this poses interesting questions about management of the system.  These companies have providers that deliver communication to local sites,  but the "upstream" is open to all users (at least in theory) and none of them has full control, and so must work with the others to get access to the entire system.  These companies do not appear to exert any control over the distribution of messages in their networks,  and censoring, as in China, occurs at the entry points for data within the country's networks.  The main organization and linkage of the internet system is not regulated or controlled by any single country.  The internet is a complex communication system which delivers digital messages between addresses owned by users along world wide networks, managed by private companies.  The sending and receiving of these messages is controlled by local users with computer programs, browsers, etc. that manage the creation, search, and distribution onto the web. That is the definition of the operations of the  internet. 

The development of the world wide web and browsers allows all types of digital audio-visual information to be sent from one sender to one or more receivers selectively, individualized management of distribution of messages.  Every address/user is capable of sending all the information and types of messages it wishes to send. Every address/user is capable of receiving all the information and types of messages it wishes to receive.  The types of information sent require high rates of data flow as when movies or live TV etc are transmitted in real time.  Not all users have the data flow capacity to receive this,  but networks have been expanding to meet this demand.  (All messages are data encoded digitally, in a different encoding method from tv video digital encoding or radio transmission, which were previous forms of information transfer that were not point to point,  but point to group.)  Every message includes both content and data on sender and receiver.  This transmission data often is as valuable as the message content to businesses or other users.

Portals:  The switching computers that manage sending messages are capable of recognizing portals:  addresses which require additional codes for transmission,  or addresses that favor links to specific types of information.  The ability to control access allows charging for access (paywalls) and also provides the basis for securing sites from intrusion for data access. (Hacking)   Portals provide control of flow in and out for various uses:  content creation,  secrecy,  fee for use of portal, etc.  These features of the internet are created by human users,  not the structure per se.   Any user may block access to his site from other sites,  but the origin may be hidden or disguised. The following issues have emerged as key problems,  each of which requires solution(s).

ISSUE #1 Data content: ownership.  Whose data is it?  Does the sender own the data sent?  Receiver?  Jointly?  Is the data secure?  Is it encoded transmission by VPN?  Is the node protected by a "firewall"?   Portals allow some control,  but even youtube has no complete ability to control flow.  Messages may be encoded (as when adding CRM)  to prevent duplication,  etc.  Piracy of digital data has been a continuing issue, on internet or other modes (CDs) and programs like "bit torrent" were widely available for pirating by individuals, but have generally been suppressed.

ISSUE #2: PRIVACY AND SECURITY The data associated with transmission and reception is used by the switching computer system and can be stored for use by either node.   How much control does the sender have in limiting this information?  Data about content, sender, and receiver are frequently sold by "social media" companies as the basis for personalized advertising, and a lucrative business. Specific transmission programs ("cookies") are added to transmitted messages in order to monitor the activity of the receiver.  These are hacking into your computer to gain information access acknowledged by the sender at times, and recent public reaction has led to some states in US requiring notification  and permission for cookies.  The user can always prevent or delete cookie access,  but many commercial nodes will not operate without accepting them.  In addition to marketing,  the data provides information on activities that may involve illegal actions and be the basis for criminal prosecution.  Therefore the extent of law enforcement search is also an issue.   Networks can hide the source of the transmission.  Some sites specifically block access to search engine discovery of their addresses,  to make them inaccessible, i.e. DARK WEB.

ISSUE #3: DATA CONTENT: REAL INFORMATION AND ILLEGAL INFORMATION  Is the data sent from a node "real" or "true"?  There is no basis for authenticity beyond knowing the sender, and that the message has not been corrupted. There is no way to ensure the data is true, any more than ensuring a person's direct speech is true.  Why people expect this to be different on the Internet is a great mystery.  It appears that public transmission carries with it assumptions about messages carried over from print and TV media of previous eras; these media sources went to great lengths to support editorial claims that they were unbiased.  The same process occurs on the internet complicated by the assumption that the data is coming from "someone I know" and "they are telling the truth".  Real people commit fraud everyday in person or over media, and sometimes get away with it.

ISSUE #4: FINANCIAL Can you make money from the internet?  Can someone steal money from you? The node to node access allows a more  detailed advertising platform than any other medium.  Direct commerce from node to node is also possible.  Producing content and posting it along with advertising is one model, developed by Youtube.  Selling location reference data to business sites is the method, developed by Google Maps.  Search engines develop complex algorithms to favor sites in order of discovery and charge them to be favored in this way.  These are a few of the many possible legal methods of internet business.  Stealing money occurs by selling a nonexistent product and collecting money without delivery;  the more frequent method is hacking or phishing for personal information that allows access to  financial data that can be ysed to steal assets.  Money is digital.  Most savings and holdings are in the form of digital accounts.  Protection of this information is protection of your money,  and vice versa.  Tarnoff blames the economics of the internet for its problem and offers the plan to make it something like a public utility.  I don't that that addresses all the issues.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/27/opinion/technology/what-would-an-egalitarian-internet-actually-look-like.html

ISSUE #5 DATA CONTENT: The political and social impact of the internet. The great paradox of the internet is its apparent ability to unite different individuals to create a more diverse and socially balanced culture.  Tart calls the group agreement of certain perceptions "consensus consciousness",  a social construct.  Access to internet expands this construct,  but also enhances the isolation and silo-ing of subgroups.  This "internet clanning" can be compared to an organization like the original Klan, a feature of human activity enhanced by the net in ways not anticipated.  This has been utilized for political organization,  and for non political activities like "flash mobs" and impromptu musical performances.   The government  attempts to put the responsibility for control onto the private access companies;  ironic because the US government intervenes in other countries' rebellions, but is not happy with internal divisions.

ISSUE #6 PARTICIPATION what happens to the person who participates online, how are they changed or managed by the interaction, and sites they engage?  Is this influenced by age?  Is it more important with children?  Is there internet addiction? How can individuals manage their use of the interaction?    How should this use be controlled by each person?   Is it possible to remove yourself from the internet once you have entered?  All these issues were drastically exaggerated by the Covid pandemic when an un-accoutable expansion of internet use and interaction occurred to replace direct in person interaction.

Each of these topics will be addressed in a separate posting.  But there is a clear underlying theme:  The fundamental nature of the organization of the internet is the control by each node.  When China or other countries attempt to interfere with exchange of information,  government computers must block messages for control,  and draconian punishments are needed to limit or control diffusion of information.  In a democratic country with a constitutional protection of free speech,  the government definition of "dangerous speech" or "treason speech" is  difficult to define and manage.  Trying to offload this task onto non-governmental companies avoids the political responsibility and will ultimately fail, as it has so far.  Individual behavior on the internet must have legal consequences as speech does in public discourse,  and anonymous  messages of hidden origin must be suppressed.  In a true democracy,  only individual responsibility and legal recourse can control the safety of the system.  The EFF (https://www.eff.org/ ) is organized to safeguard individual rights with varying success,  but the issue of collective safety of the society has no obvious protector.  Both Brookings and Heritage foundations have explored positions on this issue.

https://www.brookings.edu/research/why-protecting-privacy-is-a-losing-game-today-and-how-to-change-the-game/

https://www.heritage.org/press/heritage-foundation-responds-preventing-online-censorship-executive-order

REFS

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/oct/22/what-is-the-internet-13-key-questions-answered

https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/12/18259700/world-wide-wide-turns-30-www-anniversary-favorite-sites

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jul/15/how-the-internet-was-invented-1976-arpa-kahn-cerf

https://starry.com/blog/inside-the-internet/what-was-the-first-web-browser

Abortion and patriarchy

WHY ABORTION?

Though the anti-abortion movement defines itself as “PROLIFE” in fact many of the positions taken by this group are anything but:  they generally favor the death penalty for murderers, and sometimes for other criminals as well;  some members of the group see no inconsistency in killing doctors who carry out abortions.  So what is so pro life about these views?

Also puzzling is the way that this issue has become a central one in recent American political debate.  It would be nice to think that our political system is so sensitive to the issues of the unborn child that it would center a major focus on this issue.  But in fact the politicians put almost no interest into children’s needs,  the preservation of the family, or any other core issue for children.  (In case you haven’t noticed, children can’t  vote.)  So why is abortion such a central issue?

A clue may come from the rhetoric of their opponents the “PROCHOICE” group.  According to this group the issue is not about life or death, but about a woman’s right to choose what happens to her body, ie, whether she chooses to have a baby after impregnation or not.  (In some versions, this even extends to whether she can choose to become impregnated, ie learn about certain birth control methods or not.)  If this is not about the lives of children, then what is so important about whether women can choose to have babies or not?

One answer comes readily from Anthropology:  the determination of control of reproduction is crucial to the definition of your family cultural system.  Typically there are two basic types, matriarchy and patriarchy, and variations on these.  In matrilineal systems, the woman bears  children by as many males as she chooses, who carry her name,  and the control of delineation of the family is down the female line.  The choice of reproduction is under female direction and control. 

In the patrilineal system, the woman bears children to a specific man,  who carry his name, and delineation of family including property etc is down the male line.  The choice of reproduction must be under male control in this system.  If women have control of reproduction, then males cannot entirely be sure that the children the mother bears are genetically their children!

Lest this seem like an abstract lesson in anthropology, please be advised:  in 2002, far more children were born to single household women in the USA than to women who had husbands.  This was not restricted to any ethnic or socio-economic group but was seen across the entire social spectrum of American women.   There is every indication that the trend is increasing in 2003.

If we look at recent presidential administrations in the USA a similar trend appears:  The Clinton administration  was probably the most “matriarchal” administration in our history as measured by 1) the single parent status of his mother, 2) the powerful role of females in his cabinet, ( including some that didn’t make it, like Zoe Baird) and 3) the powerful political role that his wife played in his administration.  (One could argue that N Reagan played a similarly powerful role in the Reagan administration, but that was never allowed to be overt or publicly acknowledged.  Which is typical of strong women’s roles in partriarchal systems.) By contrast, the Bush 2 administration shows many indications of being more partriarchal in values and attitude than any we have seen in a long time.

In the absence of evidence refuting this,  I would argue that abortion is the issue most suited to test the position of the individual on the matriarchy/patriarchy scale in current politics and is being used as such.  It is the test case for the ambiguous “family values”—which does not mean having a caring and loving family which is rare in politicians who spend so much of their time away from family ----  but “PATRIARCHAL family values”.  It is interesting that the Republicans have not seized on the fact that the Mormon culture is one of the strongest patriarchal systems in present day USA.  They do not seem in a hurry to point out that many of their initiatives lead toward  Mormon society.

The Supreme Court has removed the "right" of adult women to choose to terminate a pregnancy for the entire nation.  This decision has now shifted to the states, where the view of matriarchy and patriarchy is very different in different places.  Will this lead to a more personal approach to defining the basis of our culture?  I don't think so.  If we are to be one country,  we have one culture, and that is not currently the case.

 

Return of the Hunter-Gatherers

 RETURN OF THE HUNTER GATHERERS?

Anthropologists have distinguished two different cultural forms in human civilization that appear to have an evolutionary sequence. The earliest, often called "Hunter Gatherers" (HG), is characterized by a nomadic existence in which the group hunts game and gathers roots and naturally occurring plants as their food supply. These cultures have strong communities, religious rituals focused around the magic of the hunt, and the behavior of the animals hunted, with a strong emphasis on intuition and/or chance. There is a lack of  hierarchical political organization and separate bands deal with each other with distrust, except under special circumstances. Many have rituals of intense emotional ecstasy, sometimes chemically induced, alternating with periods of quiet rest. They have been labeled "Dionysian."

The alternative form of social organization is agricultural (A). The development of a planned, harvested foodsupply has several implications for social organization. It is no longer necessary to roam seeking game when a local plot of land is sufficiently productive. Awareness of planting seasons using astronomical observations becomes important  to maximize the growing season. Social organization benefits such societies by providing increased labor and the capacity for irrigation and tools for agricultural activities. Such societies often develop hierarchical political organizations and complex differentiated social roles within the hierarchy. These serve the function of protecting the agricultural lands from outsiders, and providing organizational support for the larger communal needs of irrigation, etc. The political head of such cultures is often also identified with the religious or spiritual head since the dependence on the seasons and other phenomenon of the natural world is  crucial to agricultural societies. The religious orientation of such societies tends to be focused on the land, with a sacrificial and supportive relationship to a higher Deity  to maintain the productivity.  This form of organization has been called “Apollonian”

Diamond, in his book, Guns, Germs, and Steel, puts forward the thesis that there are certain features of agriculturally organized societies which eventually allow them to overpower and dominate hunter gatherer societies. He cites examples from a number of situations, including European conquest of Indian and other native peoples in the 18th and 19th Century as support for his thesis.

Contemporary social organization in developed countries continues to follow this agricultural model. Political units, educational units, and social support systems are often land-based, to geographic markers. In most countries, voting is organized around geographic regions. Most countries also organize their educational functions around geographic domains.  By 1940, less than half the counties in the United States had agriculture as their primary source of income, and certainly by the year 2003, a much smaller percentage of counties are primarily agricultural in nature.  Which means that there is no absolute basis for maintaining this organization.

 Industrialization and Trade complicate this anthropology view.   There is evidence of active trading patterns in ancient cultures. Much of the dissemination of traditional technologies and inventions occurred through trading patterns. It requires some agricultural development to free up enough population to produce the various goods necessary to accomplish trade, so trade is dependent on the formation of a prior agricultural organization. Predominant trading countries develop from regions in which the agricultural pattern has been established. Trade also enables sharing of agricultural production.

Industrial development is different.  Freeing up resources in a society for the production of tools and machines presupposes the ability to feed the society, and exempt individuals from the daily activity of hunting and gathering or growing.  (In the Pacific Northwest, there was adequate available free time for fairly sophisticated development of the production of various goods and equipment. In that society, artistic creativity and the design of everyday objects became a significant part of the culture of the society.) The highly organized agricultural societies of Europe and North America went on to develop the full industrial revolution of the 18^th-19^th  Century. It is also interesting that the early development of industrial production depended on power sources, particularly water and rivers, in some ways similar to agriculture. As the result, early industrial development was locally based and locally controlled. Even in the somewhat complex industrial society of the 20th Century, certain features  remain.  Detroit has been identified as the “motor city”, due to its concentration of production of motor vehicles in the United States, though this production is distributed over a much wider area, and the localization of executive and management groups in the automotive industry in Detroit is an anachronism,  sustained by attachment to the "fertile soil" for the development of ideas.  Industrial development within agricultural societies uses an agricultural conceptualization of production, including "seasons" of new products, and other features, though the actual  production do not depend on seasonal variation.

Trends in the late 20th Century suggest that this preeminence of the agricultural model and the values associated with it are waning. Freidman’s book, The Lexis and the Olive Tree, the common interests across geographical boundaries s stronger than the interests or needs within a local geographical area.  At other times the traditions and interests of the local area tend to challenge or predominate.  An inconsistent change from a localized agricultural production to a different non-local one is inconsistent. Businesses have increasingly become global as opposed to national. This is true for large multi-national corporations, but equally for smaller organizations and even for some farm-production companies whose market now extends far beyond their local region. France has recently been criticized by the World Trade Organization for its protectionist stance toward its farm industry and an attempt to maintain the economic viability of its local farming against outside pressures from lower-cost producers. When migratory labor from other countries is necessary for farm production in certain areas of the United States it creates the  paradoxical situation of a nomadic group of people providing agricultural services without any direct equity or historic connection to the land on which they are working. An historic example of this phenomenon is the use of slave labor in the Southern United States and Caribbean and Latin America for the development of agricultural production in those new areas. The various revolutions and political reorganizations in these different regions have left a wide range of solutions. In some cases, there is an agricultural-like commitment of the original slaves to the agricultural land that they have worked, while in other places they have been displaced off the land into the general society.

Along with the change from local distribution to wider distribution in industrial production comes an increased emphasis on marketing. At first, this can be seen as simply an effort to expand trade and distribution of locally produced goods. In recent years, marketing in the broader sense has taken on a dominant role in business to direct the process of production and design of business activity, rather than serving it. This observation is not intended as a value judgment, but an accurate description of shifts in the current orientation of manufacturing and some other elements of the economy. Marketing resembles hunting more than it does agriculture. Each encounter in the marketing process represents an event with economic potential which is immediate, though some planning and organization is involved, as in hunting. Marketing does not depend on season factors except where established holidays (i.e., Christmas and Easter) drive it. Marketing often carries with it as in the case of real estate or large capital expenditure a "big kill" mentality in which a few successful sales ("kills") are sufficient to maintain the hunter-marketer and/or the associated organization for the entire year. This is especially true in certain sectors of the financial industry; investment banking shares more similarities with hunting than it does with the long-term view of nurturing or developing a product.

Do these factors, a) decline in local factors in society in production and labor, and b) marketing as a driving force in capitalist market economies, change the culture to one favoring "hunter gatherers"? It seems unrealistic to use descriptors from archaic society to describe the more complex evolution of the contemporary economic scene. However, it is interesting to notice that some of the features of organization that are traditionally seen in hunter-gatherer societies are re-emgerging. Some characteristics include: 1)An increasingly nomadic existence in which primary connection with a specific area of community or land is lost. This includes both legal and illegal immigration, and the tendency for next-generation family members to be widely distributed within a country. 2)An decreasing attachment to a lifelong commitment to a specific work environment, whether this be the land or corporate work environment. 3)Increasing emphasis on immediate economic compensation in encounter-based events, rather than a cycle of agricultural or industrial production. In order to control inventory, supply chain procedures for rapid manufacture of equipment respond to the sale of the equipment. This produces a whole new direction in which the rate and direction of the production process is  responsive to the marketing event. The role of labor, human services, in the economy becomes more event based than agri-cycle labor. 4)Decreased commitment to religious and spiritual-based activities which focus on a traditional time-bound seasonal view of religion.  There is a malaise about this loss of commitment to traditional spiritual/religious activities which are replaced by more personal and ecstatic forms of observance. 5) The commitment to a primary social group ends with the loss of local lifestyle.  Identification with the large company has also been eroded.  The immediate social group where the person is located becomes a source of reference, the family continues to be another, and there is confusion about one’s primary commitment.

September 11th (2001) challenged the country to look at its primary values. An interesting response sometimes heard was that the heroism of those fighting in World War II was echoed in the heroism of the Fire Fighters and Policemen who were involved in rescue efforts. (Many of these public workers live in close-knit family oriented communities which maintain the qualities of a local, family culture more than  the rest of the country.) When American citizens went to fight in World War II, they were clear about the "home land", the land where they came from, that they were defending, the family that they were defending, and a particular image of the United States that they were defending. By contrast, the "Department of Homeland Security" attempts to activate this image of local values that no longer exist.

The US must develop a new cultural image of  living together. This involves the complex process of living together at the daily level over time, and cannot be generated on a conscious rational basis. We can examine the basic human values that must be addressed  in order to make this new culture viable and stable. Prominent among these is a basis for human affiliation and support.   Creating support systems not based on agricultural locality is a problem.  This is well documented in Bowling Alone.  We struggle in our current culture to find ways to define these non-family support groups and it is clear that a way of doing this is necessary since the family is rarely accessible on a day-to-day basis due to our Nomadic nature. Television, media and other other surrogate experiences do not provide the real human contact that is essential, but have begun to be used as substitutes with unknown consequences.  It is worth mentioning in this regard that the use of Internet and telephone contact can facilitate family connection, but it appears that humans require ongoing face-to-face interaction to build a full sense of social and emotional support. This problem has been exaggerated by two and half years of relative isolation in the covid pandemic, which has intensified the problems of direct contact, and shifted the country even more toward "remote interaction".  This cannot be the realistic solution by itself. 

It is a failure of imagination to think that we can go back to the agriculturally grounded social system that was prevalent in the United States before World War II. Current trends suggest an evolution toward a more hunter gatherer style of society, but realistically, beyond the characteristics that we share with that more traditional society are a variety of other characteristics in our world that bear no resemblance to that of hunter gatherers, including global communications, marked diversity of population, etc.  What is needed is an evolving social dialogue that examines the areas in which we are failing to integrate our culture. In this process,  perhaps we can develop a new consensus culture which  benefits from an understanding of the unmet human needs and the task of the social system to find new solutions for them.

 

The storm over ChatGPT

The Wall St journal recently published an article "ChatGPT Heralds an Intellectual Revolution" which is possibly prophetic, but more likely promotional hyperbole.  The company has recently released its product to general use, and two of the three authors are highly invested in tech companies (but do not disclose whether they are invested in this one or not). Other language AI systems are in the works in other tech companies,  and this may be an effort to front-load this version for investment..   The technology combines strings of verbal expressions into sentences, and paragraphs, which are perceived as responsive to questions presented to the system.  A summary of features by Business Insider includes many pitfalls (https://www.businessinsider.com/everything-you-need-to-know-about-chat-gpt-2023-1) (and the Microsoft version may involve the authors financially).  ChatGPT can also be used as a text generator for school essays, applications, etc.  No one has yet proposed that it be used to generate legal documents, nor to write "scientific papers" with a data source.  To some, the ability to generate "human sounding" text that is related to an inquiry seems a high level of "human intelligence".  The authors of the WSJ piece compare its importance to the Gutenberg printing technology and the emergence of the enlightenment.  Similar pronouncements have accompanied other tech advances like the internet,  which in retrospect provides both opportunities and challenges to its effective use. (The same might be said of any technology including the printing press.)  

Chomsky has written a blistering critique of the technology claiming that it simplifies more complex human intellectual generative processes: (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/08/opinion/noam-chomsky-chatgpt-ai.html )  OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Bard and Microsoft’s Sydney are marvels of machine learning. Roughly speaking, they take huge amounts of data, search for patterns in it and become increasingly proficient at generating statistically probable outputs — such as seemingly humanlike language and thought. These programs have been hailed as the first glimmers on the horizon of artificial general intelligence — that long-prophesied moment when mechanical minds surpass human brains not only quantitatively in terms of processing speed and memory size but also qualitatively in terms of intellectual insight, artistic creativity and every other distinctively human faculty.

Chomsky emphasizes the more sophisticated search and organization features of the human process,  which depend less on brute statistical operations.   Also to the point is the question posed by Wladawsky-Berger "Are GPT3 and Chat GPT truly intelligent?" (https://medium.com/mit-initiative-on-the-digital-economy/are-gpt-3-and-chatgpt-truly-intelligent-38475c0c1692) In their paper, Bender and Koller explain why LLMs like GPT-3 are likely to become innovative language tools — kind of like highly advanced spell checkers or word processors — while dismissing claims that they have the ability to reason and understand the meaning of the language they’re generating. Their explanations are couched in linguistic concepts which they carefully define: form, communicative intent, meaning, and understanding.

Viewed from this perspective the WSJ article does seem a promo for investment.  But the interesting question of "true intelligence" is raised by these systems.   ChatGPT demonstrates that a specific capacity of human function, the ability to link together verbal information in an apparently meaningful (to humans) pattern can be simulated by computers. What more do humans add and how do we do it?  The obvious answer is that we add data from our bodies, somatic patterns,  hormones, "emotional reactions", in summary a range of responses that are not purely verbal and cannot always be easily translated into verbal form.  (That this might not immediately occur to computer scientists is not surprising.)  We also add the data of aggregate sensory experiences, the combination of signals entering the body through sense organs as we move around the world.  None of this is directly available to ChatBots and must be translated into verbal patterns that approximate human experience.  The result is that the output of the ChatBot is never time stamped.  It is not about the current experiential space though it may seem as if it is.  There are other differences as well, so it is surprising that some humans are impressed by the limited accomplishments of this interactive verbal process.   Do they suppose that ChatBots can replace meaningful human exchange?  Can ChatBots be used to engage patients in psychotherapy?  negotiate contracts? interrogate possible criminals?  There is no evidence that they have the ability to perform any of these tasks.  Their major contribution is showing that verbal exchange based on combining random verbal information is a weak simulation of a facet of human intelligence.

The more extensive question of computation and intelligence was raised by Turing (A summary in https://medium.com/@jetnew/a-summary-of-alan-m-turings-computing-machinery-and-intelligence-fd714d187c0b.  

Full text PDF: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwjVgo_bo9f9AhXbHkQIHcSBBjUQFnoECA4QAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fredirect.cs.umbc.edu%2Fcourses%2F471%2Fpapers%2Fturing.pdf&usg=AOvVaw1WyXuTomtTJiRGVWr5k5R3).   

Turing explored the range of issues as an interrogation by human of either a computer simulation or another human.  The analysis illustrates the fundamental issue of human intelligence: it is about the ability to interact with another intelligence in real time in a manner that can effectively influence the other, over a range of situations. (Computers can effectively play chess, go, and Jeopardy against humans, but this range of situations is very limited.)  Current technologies are far from this capacity,  but apparently can be used effectively to sell themselves in online opinion segments!

ENVIRONMENT "In wildness is the preservation of the earth."

This is a famous quote of Thoreau, who lived in a cabin on a pond in New England for a year, sometimes visiting town to have dinner at his mother's house, and was accorded honor and reputation for writing a book about it.  Recently a friend sent me a short article by a psychotherapist, George Sciple, about the importance of being in nature.  It stimulated me to think about my own experiences and what they mean.

He begins with:  “Many times in wilderness I have found myself in touch with processes through which I am actualized, I am filled with joy and peace and fullness.” The essay is a meditation on the impact of his experiences  in the natural world.  Throughout my life, I have also sought experiences in the natural world and wanted to compare with him.  Sciple emphasizes wilderness as not the world of persons,  but for me it is nature less modified by humans. Much wilderness in the US was already occupied by native people in ways that did not entirely disrupt the natural patterns.  Sciple calls this neutrality, the natural world does not engage him. He is being present without the need to attend to the expectations of others, but this is balanced by the need to attend to the risks and dangers of nature.  Sciple wonders why he doesn't persist in being in the natural world, his commitment to civilized society, and the fear of risk is important. Primitive cultures engage with the benefits and risks of the world around them, addressing the fears.  For him, the enormity of the natural world creates this neutrality, illustrated by a story of encountering a thunderstorm without protection, and experiencing its power.  Nature produces intense sensory experiences, and people are often unprepared when they live sequestered from it.  (People might prepare for the enormity and not be surprised or overwhelmed, as in “natural disasters”.)  His second principle is dealing without meta, i.e. abstraction, and he contrasts his use of abstraction when dealing with the unexpected intimacy of a friend with attending to the danger of dealing with a coiled snake.  Nature encourages relying on primary sensory communication. His third principle is ecotone, the boundary between eco-zones which humans often disregard, creating environments that block out nature.  This is closely related to the fourth principle congruence,  alignment with nature, whatever that means, which “increases the experience of self”.  Or maybe this isn’t congruence, but awe, and spiritual awareness.  This short essay,  written in 1988, anticipates our confused and changing interest in nature.  Item: more and more automobile ads show FWD vehicles, jeeps and trucks, crashing over natural roads to distant places.  Item: national parks are now often surrounded by gated expensive subdivisions to allow certain people to have a home near the “natural beauty”.  Jackson Hole and Bozeman are now areas of intense development.  Item: the attendance at national parks is so intense that vehicle traffic and parking must be restricted by reserved admission.  

It is useful to distinguish between people who live in the natural world,  and people who come to visit the natural world from the “developed world”.  His essay, and my experiences, are about people who periodically “escape” the developed world seeking an experience in the natural one.  We often bring food,  protection, and other devices to guide and “enhance” our experience of nature,  and we observe the dramatic differences, the recognition of ecotone, as he described.  People who live in regions with limited development must cope with the environmental dangers— weather, animals, water, and food, etc.  These are about daily survival, not special opportunities for awe and personal development.

Is it possible to blend the two worlds?  Can humans live protected lives that do not completely block nature?  Historically,  the very wealthy isolated property from the use of others as “hunting preserves” or other preservation of natural resources.  This was also done with redwood preserves. Parks, forests, and garden areas now provide managed and designed interactions with plants,  and sometimes animals as well.  But the boundary between these “natural regions” and the rest of the environment must be managed, and their desirability attracts the increase of human populations.  Plans like “30 percent protected in 30 years” seem to address the idea of protecting regions, but the problem with these plans is that no one tells the plants, the animals, or the weather.  People build small cattle ranches and are ravaged by wolves finding a new food source.  They plant food crops which are invaded by “weeds” and insects that use the fertilizer and water unless poisons are used.  Tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes and floods do not avoid designated human habitats. 

Creating a balance between nature and human development cannot be done by specifying rigid boundaries.  The only solution is an ecologic balance of human and other life into an integrated ecosystem in which selected parts do not destroy the others.  This is a disappointing answer.  Do humans need to give up developments in food, communication, housing, etc. in order to live ecologically?  I do not think we must give up all, but it will be necessary to revise and design the human footprint to accomodate.  Is this possible?  Is it possible politically?  Anybody got a crystal ball?

Stalking The "Snow Leopard"

 The Snow Leopard is a memoir-nature study written by Peter Mathiessen, published in 1978, based on his journey with George Schaller to regions of the Himalayas, and won the National Book Award that year.  (I chose to re-read it this week for personal reasons.)  Mathiessen grew up in a wealthy family in NY/ CT, founded the Paris Review in 1953 (as a cover, it turns out, for being a CIA spy), and went on to write a series of major works about other cultures that emphasize Nature and conservation.   The book weaves together several threads: a) It is a detailed description of the walk up a trail in Nepal to a region around the Crystal Monastery where Schaller wished to study blue sheep, and Mathiessen wanted to view the rare snow leopard.  Detailed comments about the bird, animal, and plant life are included along with descriptions of the mountain scenery.  b) It is a survey of the evolution of Buddhism and its development in Tibet, along with cultural details of the peoples and regions he traveled through.  c) It describes his experience with psychedelic experiments and his study of zen over the past few years.  d) And it is a memoir of the death of his wife,  a year before,  his struggles with her loss, with death, and the feelings about separation from their 8 yo son while on this trip.  He was invited to go on the trip by Schaller,  a noted field biologist, whom he had met only once a year before. There was no compelling reason why he would accept the offer,  which suggests that it was part of some personal transition he wished to accomplish.

In the context of the 1970s,  the book champions going on exotic journeys,  psychedelics,  meditation and eastern culture (the phase of Alan Watts), and the "personal journalism" of Hunter Thompson and Joan Didion, among others,  though the discussion of his wife's death is very different from their styles. It was well received critically,  popular among a certain group as part of the literature of the 70s and 80s that responded to the 1960s by withdrawing from political engagement.  From the perspective of the 2020s, another theme emerges.  Throughout the book M. and Schaller bitterly complain about the unreliability and laziness of the the porter's hired to carry their gear on the trip.  As in safari's in Africa (Kilimanjaro) and other regions,  the Europeans invariably depend on the local natives, their knowledge, and their physical strength, to accomplish the journeys.  Edmund Hillary was honored as the first to climb Mt. Everest, long before his co-climber Tenzing Norgay was recognized.  And the many sherpas and porters involved were never mentioned.  This is one more memoir of self preoccupied Europeans venturing out of their comfort zone, using natives to aide them in their journey, and complaining all the while that the natives do not perform to their satisfaction. From this perspective,  The Snow Leopard tells a different story of Europeans, who believe their intrusion into other regions of the world are associated with special privileges,  and local natives should feel honored to be selected for these journeys.  The journeys often lead to exploitation or outright confiscation of the lands.  Climbing Mt Everest has now become a symbol of fitness adventure that the path is clogged with climbers, and many deaths needlessly occur.  Schaller is described as a socially isolated man obsessed with his minor concerns about details of field biology.  He is more at home in the wild,  and eventually formed a foundation to protect wild felines.  Schaller scheduled this particular trip at an unfavorable season in the Himalayas supposedly to observe the mating rituals of the sheep for evidence of whether they were more goat-like or sheep-like.  (Today this issue would be answered by genetic analysis.) His Sherpas and porters must have thought him crazy to schedule the trip at such a time in the start of Himalayan winter.  

The Snow Leopard is a charming relic.  It's description of a walk in the Himalayas, and the villages traversed is a unique pilgrimage.  Its obsession with a minor European objective completely ignores the message of non-attachment of Zen.  Its sensitivity to local natives while berating the natives that supported the trip illustrates the confused ambivalence of the European adventurers.

BEING A TRAVELER: TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY

Three recent short trips have stimulated thinking about the experience of traveling.   

Traveling is one of many life experiences.  For most people, the everyday experiences of life are relatively repetitive and include the basic functions of maintaining a living space, traveling to and from some sort of work,  and performing that work.  These tasks repeat, and the experience  is often repetitive.  Some work tasks involve travel, most dramatically airline pilots and attendants, and these become repetitive in order to be performed safely and with precision. So the point of travel for most people is the opportunity to have an experience different from everyday life. Travel can take many forms including 1)tourism, 2) adventure travel, 3) exploration, and 4) personal development.  These may be combined in the same event,  and be different for different person's engaged in the same event.   

Tourism is travel in which the individual experiences a new environment that is designed, in some way, to attract and cater to travelers.  This includes comfortable accommodations that coincide with the affluence of the tourist, experiences designed to display unique features of the location to the tourist,  including local foods, and an arranged itinerary that ensures the tourist will not get lost or have undesirable experiences.  This may be arranged by a tour guide or other person, or be successfully arranged by the tourist himself.  The key to understanding tourism is the opportunity to experience a new location or culture,  without having to experience significant discomfort or conflict with one's own culture.

Adventure travel overlaps with tourism and has subtle differences.  An activity, an "adventure", is defined which the traveler will experience and or perform, which will challenge the traveler in some significant way.  The experience is created for the use of travelers,  and ranges widely.  It may involve physical challenges like scuba diving, skiing, hiking, horseback riding, bicycling, etc.  It may involve a physical endurance like walking across a specified region.  In adventure travel a specified activity is required of the traveler and the experience that results is partly dependent on how the traveler carries out the task.  For liability and other reasons,  adventure travels are always activities that are very likely to be safely performed by travelers,  but are sometimes presented as if they are dangerous in some exciting way.  The traveler's experience with the activity will affect this,  and very inexperienced travelers will, in fact, experience some danger.  Adventure travel is designed and organized like tourism experience but is often designed to create a specific challenge for the traveler.

Exploration is the travel experience in which neither the guide or the traveler can predict the experience that occurs.  This is sometimes seen in adventure travel when a hunting trip, a river passage, or some other journey includes encountering natural events or animals which are unpredictable.  It may also involve travel to places that are unfamiliar without the protective cover of tourism,  including dangerous locations,  or without careful planning.  Exploration adds both additional excitement to adventure travel, and some potential risk, which may contribute to personal exploration,  the last feature of travel.

Personal development is not an intrinsic feature of travel though it is often credited with being so.  "Traveling is broadening" implies that going out of one's comfort zone automatically provides learning experiences in a new environment.  But this is only true when the person is open to new experiences, and the design of the events does not prescribe the experiences.  Personal development  is likely to be more present in adventure or in exploration,  but this depends on the individual.  Personal development can also occur in very simple events that do not have dramatic features or depart from everyday life.  If personal development occurs, it is both  the type of experience the travel provides, and the person's openness to change.  This can vary widely. On a recent trip I visited the Steinbeck museum and was stimulated to read TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY.  

Travels was written as a journey to "learn about America" again.  It is a memoir in the first person, explicitly meant to be a "hero's journey", and begins with an heroic episode in which he saves his favorite boat during a hurricane in Sag Harbor, Long Island.  Steinbeck fitted out a special camper truck for the journey and brought along his dog Charley, a French poodle, hence the title.  The trip lasted three months or so, beginning in the Fall (September?) and ended somewhere around the new year.  Although the path circumscribes the US,  the trip included only certain spots. 

Steinbeck had recently had a heart episode,  felt his energies failing, and tells the reader that the journey is meant to show that he was still vital and able to take on the challenge;  the book provides evidence that this is not true,  that he is not physically or mentally up to the journey, and is a warning to older men that this is probably not a good idea.  Though he  intended to encounter "Americans" along the way to find out about where the country was going,  there are few actual encounters,  and at least half of the book are musings (rants)  about changes he does not like, which could have been written from his room in Sag Harbor. 

He is at his best describing the countryside, as in New England in the Fall with the color changes, which includes his sit down with a family of French Canadians who are picking potatoes in Maine, and enabled by cognac.  The warm fuzzy feeling he reports is more likely the cognac than the people,  with whom he struggled to communicate!

He dislikes people who are stuck in maps, and avoids using them (long before GPS)  and he frequently acknowledges getting lost.   He drives past Minneapolis-St Paul, completely missing the cities, he intended to visit!  He gets lost many other times,  including his arrival back home on Long Island.  His carefree "follow my spirit" attitude is offset by his anxiety about not knowing where he is going.  He dislikes the new highways that isolate drivers from the natural world, but uses them frequently in his hurry to make destinations.  In short, he is humorously inconsistent about how he manages the journey, is not used to traveling on his own, and is unfamiliar with how travel has changed.  A dialog with long haul truckers enlightens him.

He falls in love with Montana,  but it is difficult to understand what appeals to him.  Here his writing is not eloquent, and the magic is not transferred to the reader.  By contrast,  his spiritual feeling about redwoods is eloquently expressed,  including a humorous incident with Charley.  Indeed,  the entire episode in the Monterey Bay/Salinas area of his youth is poignant, and expresses the reality that "you can't go home again".  

Southern CA is completely ignored in his beeline to Texas for a Thanksgiving "orgy".  His wife was from Texas, and meets him at the ranch of some wealthy Texans.  He notes the wealth of the ranch owners and friends, and goes hunting without shooting anything, drinks and eats a lot, but no other "orgy" behaviors are reported for anyone.  Common stereotypes and misconceptions about Texas are repeated, but the Texas that was emerging in the 60s is not described, and there is no sense that he engaged with the state  despite his wife's background.

In the last major section, he goes to New Orleans to observe a crowd heckling a Negro girl who is attending a previously all White school by court order.  He documents the hatred, exaggerated cursing, and general attempt at public display,  along with moderating comments by several locals.  It is a limited journalistic account, very intense, and totally different from the rest of the book.

Steinbeck failed to accomplish his stated mission: to travel back roads in a camper.  He used freeways at times, and slept in motels at least some of the time.  He  met few locals to learn about the country: a total of about eight encounters, mostly casual, some political, but often injected his own view,  and many regions are ignored including much of the South, Florida, much of California, New Mexico, etc. He struggled to get an "overview" of Americans, and claimed that there is something "American" in common with all he met, but could not articulate it.

Travels with Charley was intended to be an exploration and a chance for personal development.  gives clear messages:  An intelligent, talented older man he was unhappy about the changes he saw happening in the world, and did not show much personal development.   An older traveler alone, he had difficulty managing the journey and frequent "adventures" in getting lost, etc.  All these "accomplishments", unintended by the author,  are clearly documented by his honesty, reporting his weaknesses and vulnerabilities.  It provides a useful warning to older individuals planning to save the world, or rediscover it.  "You can't go home again." And the world changes and you must accept it, or be unhappy that it has.