Notes
Out of Control: The Rise of Neo-Biological Civilization (1994) by
Kevin Kelly
Presuppositions of the Machine Worldview
Short emotive notes from a March 25, 1996 e-mail on a collection of
Kevin Kelly’s devaluations of humanity and its prospects.
Regimes of the twentieth century characterized segments of their
population slated for extermination as less than human (e.g., Russian
kulaks, German Jews, American unborn children). Deliberately
characterizing humans as mere machines is exactly the same
process.
________
“The only machine we know of that can reshape its internal
connections is the living gray tissue we call the brain.”
Sheesh!
“The message is: Behavior is computerizable. By arranging a
circuit of subbehaviors, any kind of personality can be programmed.
It is theoretically feasible to generate in a computer any mood, any
sophisticated emotional response than an animal has.”
Oh, no!
“I take the view that life is a nonspiritual, almost
mathematical property that can emerge from networklike arrangements
of matter. It is sort of like the laws of probability; if you get
enough components together, the system will behave like this, because
the law of averages dictates so.”
Ugh!
“The apparent individuals that life has dispersed itself into
are illusions.”
Dumb.
“The greatest social consequence of neo-biological civilization
will be the grudging acceptance by humans that humans are the random
ancestors of machines, and that as machines we can be engineered
ourselves.”
This is the living heresy of our age.
“Investing machines with the ability to adapt on their own, to
evolve in their own direction, and grow without human oversight is
the next great advance in technology. Giving machines freedom is the
only way we can have intelligent control. What little time is in this
century is rehearsal time for the chief psychological chore of the
21st century: letting go, with dignity.”
This is a pretty clear picture of what I term entropic
death-worship.
Reilly Jones
© 2001