(From Wikipedia: The narrator of Haruki Murakami's novel Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World is a "Calcutec," a human data processor/encryption system who has been trained to use his subconscious as an encryption key. The Calcutecs work for the quasi-governmental System, as opposed to the criminal "Semiotecs" who work for the Factory and who are generally fallen Calcutecs. The relationship between the two groups is simple: the System protects data while the Semiotecs steal it, although it is suggested that one man might be behind both. See: Murakami, H., & Birnbaum, A. (1993). Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. New York: Vintage Books.)
Information technologies offer an accessible means by which to approach the coordinated development of our capacities for resilience and adaptability. How these technologies might be put to their most beneficial effect is an open question. All manner of schemes for networked communication, information architecture, knowledge management, data visualization, etc. are being developed and distributed on a monumental scale. These technological schemes have proven extremely popular, and begun to provide large segments of the population with new solutions to a variety of problems.
Because the term “I.T.” is something we hear frequently, it may be instructive to engage the concept by first examining the term itself in a slightly different light than has become customary. My favored approach here involves a fuzzy etymology of semiotic associations to get at a description of what might be called the “meaningfullness constellation” associated with this combination of words.
The meaning of the word technology has changed over the last century. Once upon a time this word referred to the systematic study of an art, but has come to be applied almost exclusively to the physical artifacts derived from applications of such systematization. This implies that technology has largely turned from a learning process into stuff, but may plausibly refer to either.
The meaning of the word information is more ambiguous, and has come to be almost entirely dependent on the context in which it is used. Wikepedia seems as good a place as any to source an agreed-upon meaning of this word, and describes information as any event that changes the state of a dynamic system. A dynamic system, of course, is any energetic and organized whole. Information technology, then, might plausible refer to any study or product thereof that systematizes an energetic, organized whole.
1.) Information
(from the Latin) “to shape the mind”
2.) Technology
(from the Greek) “systematic study of an art”
3.) Dynamic
(from the Greek) “power or energy”
4.) System
(from the Greek) "organized whole or body"
From this mode of consideration, it may be inferred that information technology is not necessarily contingent on the physical artifacts we have come to associate with this term, but rather that these artifacts -often embodied as computers and the like- are representative of one developmental pathway, typically based on what is called the Turing model, along which our pursuit of information technology has advanced. The extent to which this has occurred is phenomenal, and has “changed the game” we play with technology in foundational ways that are barely recognized at present. In light of this, it may be prudent to remain aware of an often overlooked and extremely important fact:
Information is only useful to the extent that it interacts with energetic systems.
Remaining cognizant of this allows information technology to be viewed in proportion to its actual potential. The information systems that govern the workings of our physical systems are often inaccessible. As our I.T. systems become increasingly sophisticated, such inaccessible “natural” information systems are increasingly replaced with human-designed systems. While some of these appear capable of effectively replicating the function of preexisting “natural” information systems, others fail, and often in unanticipated ways. Awareness of this leads into what appears as a convergence of techno-ideological developmental trajectories.
One of these is the notion that we would increasingly encode computational processing of information into our environments until the whole of these become intelligent by our standards. The other is the idea that our increasing ability to look ever-closer and more carefully at the world we inhabit will continue to reveal the depths of permeative elegance to which our universe's intelligence has already encoded itself, precipitating a shift in what we understand intelligence to be.
Collective Intelligence
Nothing I've found supports the notion that this is an either/or proposition. I suspect the emerging field of “collective intelligence” (or C.I.) and related studies can play a significant role in mediating the interaction between these techno-ideological trajectories towards satisfactory resolution. This field is yet in its infancy, and demonstrates promise in facilitating the resolution of other matters as well. Many of these appear as tangible and increasingly relevant questions around effective organization of collaborative human activities involving the appropriate use and leveraging of information technologies towards outcomes of societal resilience and equitable development. Such questions are unlikely to be answered by the same level of consciousness that asks them. C.I. and consciousness are interrelated, because an increase in collective intelligence theoretically represents an enhancement of consciousness.
A popular way to regard consciousness is as an emergent phenomena. This view holds that a number of relatively simple elements interact in a particular system, and these interactions give rise to what we observe as consciousness. The collective interaction of neurons in organisms like us are viewed as such collectively interacting system elements when our science takes a neurobiological approach to looking at human consciousness. Other systems also give rise to what can be observed as consciousness. For example, a colony of bees can be seen as an interaction of system elements consisting of individuated organisms that function as a single intelligent entity.
Collective intelligence is a term used to describe the “intelligence” of a group or system as a whole. A collectively intelligent group is one which effectively harnesses the diverse strengths of its constituents. Part of how this works involves informational encoding. On some level, every group is a space that allows for the generation, storage, transfer, processing, and retrieval of information. A collectively intelligent group adaptively optimizes this process, whereas a collectively unintelligent group does not.
If a group functions in an environmental context by operating as a group according to standardized procedures, and if the members of this group are able to access and modify these procedures in adaptive response to new environmental conditions, and if the process of doing so is effective and efficient, this group is collectively intelligent. Otherwise it is just a group. If the members of a group are people, the overall “consciousness” of this group of people can perhaps be viewed as an interaction between collective intelligence and the less desirable de-individuated swarm behavior commonly referred to as “groupthink.”
In a foundational and formalized sense, collective intelligence is a synergistic phenomenon that has been described as a process of “social computation” characterized by information processing that is unconscious, random, parallel, and distributed. (from Szuba T., Computational Collective Intelligence, Wiley NY, 2001) George Por has identified at least seventeen proposed formalized definitions. These are accessible from his
Collective Intelligence blog.
The value of formulating that “problem space” mentioned in the post "Here Be Dragons" as a simple sorting mechanism begins to emerge from work along these lines. If this sorting mechanism is viewed as primarily informational and secondarily energetic, then collective intelligence as a consciousness-enhancing device appears plausibly capable of increasing the capacity to evaluate both this mechanism and our activities in relation to this. Such increased evaluative capacities, in turn, represent a generalized increase in our adaptive potentials. In recognition of and contribution to this, I would like to offer some further thoughts on C.I., as well as further describe how these might inform what strategy is outlined here. This begins with the synapse, because according to MIT's collective intelligence program's evolving
Handbook of Collective Intelligence
“The key to how CI enhances consciousness resides in the mystery of the synapse.”
Okay, so then what exactly is a synapse? As an heuristic, the term synapse can be described as any point at which data changes the medium in which it is encoded. Not all synapses appear to allow what is viewed as consciousness to emerge, however, so MIT's Handbook of Collective Intelligence attempts to offer criteria for differentiating between consciousness-producing and non-consciousness-producing synapses with the following:
“The key characteristics of synapses that appear to lead to the creation of consciousness:
• Delay in time
• Ambiguity of the newly encoded data
• Ability of the new data form to stimulate multiple receptors in a synapse with a single emission
• The potential for emissions from multiple incoming data sources to strengthen or weaken the reaction of the receptors“
This handbook further attempts to apprehend the critical interaction between synapses, C.I., and consciousness with the following statement:
“Collective Intelligence increases the consciousness of both its members and the group as a whole not merely by pooling more data but by exponentially increasing the number, and sometimes, quality of the synapses in the system.”
From an information standpoint, then, everything is synaptic, because anything may be viewed as a point at which data changes the medium in which it is encoded. In human social terms, every person in a group does this with respect to the group. How intelligent a group is depends on its synaptic responsiveness. Computing technology has allowed people to augment such responsiveness in previously unavailable ways. Thinking about computing technology has allowed people to begin recognizing that the world is observably “constructed” of information interacting as computation in much the same way that it is “made” of protons, neutrons, and electrons. This recognition does not imply that the two conceptions are mutually exclusive, but appears instead as a “both/and” proposition in much the same way as those two techno-ideological trajectories mentioned earlier.
Propositions like this are tangly. One approach to untangling this one begins with a model called “human based computing.” This looks at both people and computers as “agents” capable of task accomplishment, and views tasks as discreet processes that either type of agent may undertake. By extending the definition of “computer” to include all the parts of our internal and external worlds that behave in observably computational ways, such may be classified as “agents” alongside and interacting with human “agents”to perform tasks.
In this way, both our internal (as in biological) and external computing elements may be viewed as synapses, and further as part of any group's overall synaptic network, and modeled in our considerations accordingly.
Many people appear too enamored of the technological novelty of this new arrangement to make full use of its potential at this time. This potential is not confined to wikipedia or social networking. Not at all. It shrinks time and allows multiple worlds to exist in the same physical space. It has the potential to mitigate geographic isolation in certain respects while also further contributing to our at-large experiential isolation in everyday circumstances if applied without regard for the biological aspects of fundamental human needs such as for acceptance and inclusion.
As food for thought to close this post, it may be appropriate to note that in the book Biology of Belief, author Bruce Lipton describes cell membranes as the “brains” of biological cells. According to the above descriptions of “synapse”, Lipton's work can viewed as describing biological cells as both containing synaptic networks and functioning as synapses themselves.
