Nexialism and the Future of Education: Part I

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A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love, 1973

Since the rise of homo sapiens (literally the “knowing man”) some 250,000 years ago, the body of human knowledge has grown exponentially. Over the same period, the intellectual capabilities of humans have remained mostly stable: the brain still holds roughly the same finite capacity to store information, and life expectancy, despite its improvements, has been hopelessly outpaced by the amount of years that would be required to learn, well, everything there is to be learned.

The implication is a decreasing capability, in relative terms, of humans to absorb knowledge. The depth at which knowledge is now available, regardless of the field, calls for an ever-increasing specialization of the mind in order for one to be able to contribute meaningfully. This gives students an incentive to engage in highly specialized studies that will ensure their employability – i.e. they are led to choose depth over breadth of knowledge. Jacks-of-all-trades are increasingly cornered by the masters of, well, just one. An effective indicator of this trend is degree inflation, which is the raising of academic requirements for a particular job over time. As an ever-increasing proportion of a class age reach higher academic distinctions, with often too few qualified jobs for everyone, employers are able to hire only the most skilled candidates, and leave others to take on lower-paid jobs, often below their own qualifications. This in turn creates a new standard for those lower-paid jobs, where, for example, a graduate degree may become the norm when a bachelor degree used to be a sufficient entry ticket. Similarly, the increased competition among universities pushes them to be less selective and demanding from their students, and to award degrees at a lesser standard of performance over time.

Leonardo da Vinci may have been an early nexialist.

This degree inflation has two practical implications: first, working professionals must ensure that on-the-job learning increases their employability faster than their own degrees erode in value – otherwise, they will be naturally replaced by less experienced versions of themselves, only cheaper and with more advanced degrees. This in turn calls for increased attention to lifelong learning, and professional certifications in particular in order to validate the on-the-job learning. The second, and deeper, implication of increased specialization is that communication across practitioners of different disciplines becomes more challenging. The depth of current knowledge means that two PhDs, for example in theoretical physics, may speak different languages altogether depending on their field of specialization; as the difference between subtopics such as string theory and quantum chromodynamics is as wide today as the gap between, perhaps, mathematics and biology may have been a hundred years ago.

There is no indication today that this trend will not carry into the future; for there is no indication either that the growth human knowledge will decelerate or reach a plateau. But this author believes that this trend will come at a cost – in the harsh words of George Bernard Shaw, “no man can be a pure specialist without being in the strict sense an idiot”. Shaw was probably referring to a lesser-used etymology of the word “specialist” into the Greek ἰδιώτης, “idiôtès”, literally “private” i.e. idiot not by being ignorant or mentally deficient, but by lacking a broader perspective on the issues at hand (ironically, Shaw went on to co-found the London School of Economics which specialized many a mind since then). This specialization of the minds into narrow fields could lead to a society of “idiot savants”, largely unable to comprehend, contribute or function effectively beyond their respective academic silo. Of course, one could expect those “idiot savants” to contribute greatly to their field – but what if they entered a research dead-end and needed to backtrack? Wouldn’t they actually resist change and hinder progress if all they had was their flawed, deep but narrow education to live by? And what if the next scientific breakthrough came not from chasing the n-th decimal down the path, but from stepping back and connecting dots across several, seemingly-unrelated disciplines?

Case in point: two astrophysicists recently came up with a breakthrough theory – that cancer was a normal, albeit primitive, cell growth mechanism which the body would revert to under certain conditions of stress. How did astrophysicists, of all people, come up with a radical new perspective in oncology that goes pretty much against decades of highly specialized studies? Well, precisely that – they were not oncologists. They had a fresh perspective; from their astrophysical background, they became interested in astrobiology to imagine life on exoplanets, and that led them to the mechanisms of cell differentiation in early terrestrial life. Then they followed a course on cancer, and heard about how cancer cells reverse-differentiated… They eventually connected the dots by suspecting that the same genes that had a role to play in differentiating cells in multicellular organsims like us, also played a part in the same cells reverting back to a primitive state of aggressive growth – what we call cancer.

How many astrophysicists can we count on, now and in the future, to step outside of their comfort zone and bring fresh insight into foreign disciplines that are suffering from tunnel vision?

Now may be an appropriate time to resurrect the XVIIth century concept of honnête homme – French for “honest man”, a “well-educated, nonpedantic man of manners, as much at home in a salon as in his study, a gentleman of smiling wisdom and elegant, discreet disenchantment” as per the Encyclopædia Brittanica. The expression is not meant to convey “honesty” in its modern meaning, but rather to describe well-educated gentlemen (Montaigne’s XVIth century word for that was “gentilhomme”) of reasonably broad knowledge, albeit of limited expertise. The concept will take a modern twist however – the level of knowledge needed to be considered a honnête homme is not just higher than it used to be, it is also qualitatively different. While a XVIIth century honnête homme might have education in Latin, ancient Greek, poetry, astronomy and botany, the modern one may be versed in modern philosophy, particle physics, computer science and economics. Irrespective of their natural inclination for one field or the other, this modern breed of gentlemen must qualify in enough topics that are relevant to our times so as to be nexialists – sharp minds who are intuitively (rather than deductively) able to create connections across widely different fields that practitioners of these fields alone would be unable to make (science fiction author Alfred Elton van Vogt first coined “nexialist” as “one skilled in the science of joining together in an orderly fashion the knowledge of one field of learning with that of other fields”). The premise behind nexialism is that there is value in “stepping back”, looking at modern science’s big picture, and applying some meta-thinking into linking dots above the laser-like focus that is the rule in today’s research – as illustrated by our astrophysicists-turned-oncologists (interestingly, Mike Lazaridis, founder of Research in Motion and father of the BlackBerry, invested $100M of his personal wealth in 2001 to create the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, with the aim to promote interactions and cross-breeding of ideas across loosely related disciplines to generate new insight). All knowledge is inter-related; for instance, politics are an emerging property of sociology; which itself is driven by biology; which itself is driven by physics… The deeper one undertakes to study a field, the more removed one becomes from the needed contributions of other disciplines. This is where the nexialist steps in.

Becoming a nexialist can seem dauting – it implies exposing oneself to the whole spectrum of human knowledge, across disciplines but also across time (we are, after all, the product of our history, and cannot be taken out of that context). As an added difficulty, the goalposts keep changing – the body of knowledge is increasing so fast, that it will have changed more in the course of one’s life, than it has over the course of five previous lifetimes. To stay current, the nexialist must keep himself aware of all the major developments taking place, everywhere, in all disciplines – a daunting task that can only be unlocked with a high degree of intellectual curiosity and perseverance (and free time!). The make matters worse, the utilitarian view of academic degrees that prevails in the age of science means that humanities, for example, are disregarded as not applicable to the real world. To a limited extent, this is true – companies expect students to be fully functional fresh out of university, and at face value nexialist knowledge (which requires liberal arts among other things) seems superfluous. This has given academia the incentive to teach trades, with immediate professional applicability, at the expense of breadth of learning and general human enlightenment. This was not always the case – first, liberal arts used to encompass science as well (“artes liberales” in latin means “freeing arts”, as in making humans free); second, corporations used to have a societal responsibility in training their new hires, while university would focus on producing well-rounded people, not dissimilar to Montaigne’s gentilhommes. Now that this is less the case, some of the side-effects are showing – high-profile corporate fraud cases in the 2000s, for example, have caused a backlash and pushed some universities to put the philosophy of ethics back into their business curriculum. But these efforts are timid and, to a large extent, driven by opportunity. We have yet to see a formal curriculum that teaches inter-disciplinary relationships as a subject matter in itself (although there are meta-studies, like epistemology, but with limited practical applications).

Next: a second installment on the topic of the future of education, with a focus on how transhumanism will revolutionize the way we learn through brain implants and learning robots.

All hail Storm!

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It’s been a year since Tim Minchin’s excellent beat poem Storm was masterfully put into animation. If you’ve missed all the hype from twelve months ago, or if you feel like enjoying a refreshing trip down memory lane, spend the next ten minutes watching this little gem. And if perchance I have offended, think but this and all is mended: we’d as well be 10 minutes back in time, for all the chance you’ll change your mind…

Greenwich, your time is up (not)

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An article published by Saudi Arabia’s Arab News on the first day of Ramadan 2010 illustrates once again how simple, secular concepts that we take for granted can be challenged by political, religious or even commercial agendas. In summary: the city of Makkah, in Saudi Arabia, will soon be hosting the world’s largest clock tower, which, at 577 meters in height (or 601 meters according to the clock supplier), is touted to be visible from 12 kilometers away; it will also host a luxury 76-story hotel. This is all well and good, and makes perfect sense in a country where time plays such a crucial role in synchronizing all life around the five daily prayers mandated by Islam. One could argue that so much glitz has no place in a holy city where pilgrims come with no other possession than a white robe (the ihram) and their sense of humility, but that’s another topic.

Royal Clock Tower, Mecca

Royal Clock Tower, Mecca

What is more surprising is the not-so-architectural ambitions of the project’s stakeholders, as revealed by their recent comments. According to Mohammed Al-Arkubi, general manager of the Royal Makkah Tower Hotel: “putting Makkah time in the face of Greenwich Mean Time [...] is the goal“. Say what now?

The journalist, Syed Faisal Ali, provides an intriguing, if not entirely helpful, explanation.

Many scholars are of the opinion that Makkah Time can provide the world an alternative to the GMT.

Technically, any time can provide an alternative to the Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). GMT is, after all, a timezone reference by convention only. In 1884, at the International Meridian Conference in Washington D.C., twenty-five nations agreed for the Prime Meridian (longitude 0°) to pass through the Royal Observatory of Greenwhich, in southeast London. While the conference did not formally set the Prime Meridian to also be “timezone zero” (it was outside its purview), it made perfect practical sense for everyone to keep track of deviation from the Prime Meridian, not only in space (longitude), but also in time. As a result, all nations have since adopted standard time zones based on the Greenwich Mean Time (which had been the standard time in the UK since 1675). In 1972, Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) replaced GMT as the global reference, but with no practical difference since they are equivalent.

Whether “many [Islamic] scholars” hold the opinion that Makkah time can provide the world an alternative to the GMT is irrelevant; anyone is entitled to even the fanciest opinion on the matter, since GMT does not bear any physical or natural significance other than by convention. I, for one, am of the opinion that world time should be set according to when I wake up, and when I fall asleep; and that the time zone I am in should be the only timezone (so that I can call anyone around the world and not worry about waking them up; they should follow my time, not theirs). Of course, this very self-centered opinion is unlikely to gain universal adoption, leading to missed meetings, poor job performance reviews and much social isolation. Which is exactly why we had an International Conference in the first place!

But, the journalist goes on to say,

“these [scholars] have scientific arguments to back their contention, as Makkah is situated in the center of the world”.

Who can challenge that? Well, seventh graders, for a start. Anyone with an elementary understanding of geometry knows that the center of a sphere is located halfway along its diameter, not on its surface. Anyone who claims to have scientific evidence of the contrary is either a religious loon, a sixth-grade dropout, or some combination of both. Makkah is obviously the center of the Muslim world – but that is a religious argument, hardly a scientific one; much like saying that London is the center of the financial world, or Washington the center of the political one (for better or worse).

Yet, unfazed by this joyful confusion between religion and science, our fearless reporter goes on.

At a conference in Doha in 2008, Muslim clerics and scholars presented “scientific” arguments that Makkah time is the true global meridian. They said that Makkah is the center of the world.

Note the important quotes around the word “scientific”. Because, as we all know, there are scientific arguments, and then there are “scientific” arguments! Be careful – miss the quotes and you may be mistaking one for the other. So, what are these “scientific” arguments presented in 2008 by Muslim clerics (remember, they don’t need to be scientists – only “scientists”)? Unfortunately the article doesn’t say, but my curiosity was piqued enough to research what this 2008 conference was about.

I came across this Gulf Times article that reports on the conference. It almost makes me regret not having attended it.

A group of Islamic scholars presented on Saturday “scientific evidence” to prove that Mecca was the core of that [sic] the zero longitude passes through the holy city and not through Greenwich in the UK.

Poor copy editing aside, you must have noticed that our good friends, the pair of quotes, are back in action! There is a pattern here. But there’s more to it:

The participants recommended the unification of the time in the Arab world to the time in Mecca instead of Greenwich. They also called the Arab governments to abandon the new world maps “because they are forged to serve Western interests.”

This blogger is unsure exactly how geographical maps of the world and distribution of time zones (all roughly equal in width) could serve Western interests in particular. Furthermore, take any standard world map (such as the one below) and you’ll notice that its center is actually not far from Makkah: it is roughly located near Sarh, in the African country of Chad, and that’s only 2,400 km. away from the holiest Muslim city. If anything, standard world maps are rather supportive of a Middle-Eastern-centric view of the world. Certainly more so than of Antarctica, whose penguins must really feel unloved when they look at the same world map. Of course, pick any world map that’s organized differently (such as the ones centered on the Asia-Pacific region), and your results will vary.

Map of the world

Yes, Chad is the center of the world. Who knew?

I really wish that either article was a little more detailed on the “scientific” arguments brought forth (not that I would expect them to make any sense; but they could have great entertainment value). The article carries on:

The conference was organised to introduce Saat Makkah (the watch of Mecca). The inventor of the clock, Yasin al-Shouk, said it runs anti-clockwise [...] The moderator of the event, Rabaa Hamo, who is also the wife of the watch’s inventor [emphasis added], said “the West imposed on us the invisible Greenwich line” as the world’s reference time.

It all makes sense now – the whole “scientific conference” cover was a sham, initiated for the sole purpose of generating buzz around what must be the dumbest novelty gadget of the century (or a close second to the tamagotchi): a watch that runs counter-clockwise. From there, two unscrupulous journalists picked it up and baked a half-assed story around it. Shame on the whole bunch.

And to conclude with one last quote from the article:

Islamic scholar, Zaghloul al-Najjar, said that the West did not like the scientific proofs that “Mecca was located in the centre of our planet, but nevertheless we will go on our research to establish it as a truth”.

You do that, Zaghloul. The West and I will be anxiously waiting with a cup of chai.

Squeezing the tomato: the Pomodoro technique

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After a unusually grueling consulting stint that left me feeling burnt out, I found myself going through a motivational lull. Procrastination crept in, and I soon felt subject to the diktat of the ticking clock. I had lost my ability to concentrate, to focus on the task at hand. Hours would pass, and I still wouldn’t be done with my to-do list. Then days would pass, work would pile up mostly untouched, and with it my level of stress would increase. I first welcomed that as a mixed blessing – after all stress, when it reaches a certain threshold, eventually kicks the procrastinating mind into action. And sure enough, it did – I reluctantly completed the most critical tasks, just in time for their absolute deadline. Any deliverable that was not strictly a firefighting priority would be sent back to the end of the queue; and the quality of the work, while being good enough to pass, was not stellar. More importantly, I did not feel good about myself and my work.

Ironically, it was one work afternoon, as I was wasting more time than is reasonable reading an Ars Technica article about how RSS feeds are profoundly detrimental to one’s productivity, that I came across an elliptical reader’s comment about the Pomodoro technique. Not having heard of it before, I was intrigued enough to google the term, and came across Francesco Cirillo’s website.

To those unfamiliar with it, the Pomodoro technique is a time-management method not unrelated to time-boxing. The key principle is to come up with an indivisible unit of effort, called the Pomodoro, which becomes the founding block for an activity-driven approach to plowing through one’s to-do list. A Pomodoro lasts 30 minutes, of which 5 minutes are break time; and it is non-negotiable. If you get interrupted to the point that you have to draw your attention away from the task at hand, the Pomodoro becomes void; you’ll have to start it again. Every four Pomodoros, you take a longer break, of up to one Pomodoro in duration. This dominatrix-mistress approach to time management has one immediate benefit: it gives you a rigid framework to abide by, short enough to not seem daunting (a key factor in procrastination) and long enough to be productive.

Why call it a Pomodoro rather than a half-hour? Well, that’s the trick – the Pomodoro is a unit of effort, not time. Any activity may require two Pomodoros to complete, or five or ten, it doesn’t matter; what does matter is that you, the Pomodoro practitioner, put in one unit of effort at a time, with just enough break time for mental relaxation and learning reinforcement. This essentially turns any long, drawn-out intellectual production process into discrete, reasonable chunks that are a lot more appealing to the lazy or overworked mind. It also provides an alternative to the frenzied, and ultimately very unproductive, multitasking; Pomodoros give a clear and focused objective that requires exclusive attention from the brain, albeit for a short period of time.

I will not go into more details about the technique itself -refer to the free PDF on Francesco Cirillo’s website for that- but rather on the experience of subjecting myself to the practice.

The magic started when I casually read through the first few pages of the manual:

If we try to measure ourselves against the passage of time, we feel inadequate, oppressed, enslaved, defeated, more and more with every second that goes by. We lose our élan vital, our vital contact, which enables us to accomplish things. “Two hours have gone by and I’m still not done; two days have gone by and I’m still not done.”

This is exactly how I felt at the time; a slave to the ticking clock, too unmotivated to get any real work done, and too guilty to enjoy the unproductive time either. Incoming e-mails about trivial matters became welcome excuses to do something vaguely work-related, removing a bit of that guilt without actually achieving anything meaningful. Wikipedia and its infinite cultural maze became my place of debauchery, where I would waste more time than I really could afford. And yet the inexorable passage of time, in the form of a computer clock, a wristwatch, or the dimming daylight outside, would remind me that there was no escaping this denial of reality. Something had to give, and Francisco Cirillo’s depiction of our slavery to time was a call to action.

I downloaded Codenauts’ Pomodoro for iPad, and used it as a geeky version of a kitchen timer (the only physical tool you’ll need to apply the Pomodoro technique). The first task which I applied the method to was, unsurprisingly, writing this blog entry (full disclosure: it ended up taking four Pomodoros). I quickly realized one of the benefits of the technique: it makes an activity fun. Doing one Pomodoro of pretty much anything can’t be really boring, because it’s a short, focused effort; it sounds like a fun challenge in fact, and once it is completed, well, you are 25 minutes closer to the completion of the activity. There are two small treats to reward you at the end – the 5-minute break (which, importantly, should not involve anything that exerts the mind), and adding a checkmark next to the activity (not signaling the end of the activity, but only that you’ve just completed another Pomodoro of it). Also, the system is fair – you can’t deviate from the task at hand for 25 minutes, but it also requires that you stop all work once the timer goes off, even if you were close to being done. I then realized the second benefit of the technique: it acts as a mental coach that forces you into a discipline, while not requiring too much willpower. A bit like this 10-minute daily workout that promises to give you fab abs in just two weeks, except that this one actually works. Just keep in mind that for the technique to work, much like the gym discipline, you have to at least want to improve – Pomodoro is not going to magically rehabilitate a reluctant sloth.

An unnatural aspect of getting into the Pomodoro discipline is in crafting very detailed to-do lists. Most of us have used to-do lists at some point in our academic or professional lives; but the tasks we log are generally macro in nature (write this paper, read that book, etc.). Pomodoro encourages offloading your mind of all the more tactical, nitty-gritty actions of the daily life. If your current Pomodoro is interrupted (internally) by a rumbling stomach, log an unplanned interruption titled, “grab lunch”, and set it with today’s date. Regardless of the nature of the thought, if it’s significant enough to interrupt your concentration, note it down and assign it a tentative deadline; quite often you’ll realize that such tasks can be put off to the next day, or even week (okay, maybe not lunch). I found this approach unnatural because my inclination was to use my brain as a staging area for all these below-the-radar tasks that don’t seem to suck up real time (e.g. check e-mail); but if you force yourself to log them, you will decrease the creeping anxiety from brain overload, and you will also get a chance to reflect, in retrospect, on the number of interruptions that you’ve had to suffer in your workday. Over time, allegedly, you should get better at prioritizing, scheduling, fighting back interruptions, and assessing the duration of tasks – in other words, you should become more productive. Such payback makes it worth the overhead of the technique.

Now, there are a few more significant concepts to the Pomodoro technique -again, reading the PDF will provide all the details- and I am doing it injustice by writing only a cursory overview. The technique includes guidelines on how to make the break time more conducive to memorizing lessons learned, how to rearrange priorities based on unexpected tasks coming up, how to handle interruptions, how to generate meaningful reporting on time consumption, etc. But overall the effort required to understand and test-run the technique -a few hours, at most- may be well worth the payback if Pomodoro turns out to work well for you. It sure has for me.

A Divemaster’s Case Study

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Dive buddies

Dive buddies, courtesy of Scuba_thib on Flickr



I was recently the Divemaster in charge of leading two certified divers (both Advanced Open Water level) on a wreck dive, and experienced an unpleasant situation that I thought was worth sharing for the benefit of others.

All three of us descended normally along the boat’s anchor line to the deepest point of the dive (20 meters) where the plan was to conduct an external exploration of the wreck (neither of the two divers being trained or equipped for penetration). Visibility was around 5 meters, with no significant current and a temperature of 24C. I was swimming in front, with the two divers behind me, one on each side, forming a triangle; this allowed me to periodically check on them by rotating on my back while effectively leading the tour.

Shortly after we started our exploration, the diver to my left, who was closest to the wreck, took a peek through a porthole. I stopped, took out a flashlight from my BCD pocket, handed it to him and showed him how to operate it. By the time I turned to the other diver, who must have left my field of view for no more than twenty seconds, he was nowhere to be seen. I felt anxiety build as I looked for telltale bubbles all around.

I signaled to the remaining diver that his buddy was missing, and that he should follow me closely as I would initiate a search for the missing diver. I had in mind the buddy separation protocol that my diving organization instructs divers to follow – search for your buddy for no more than one minute and then surface. I made the call, however, not to follow this protocol for reasons I will explain. We kept on searching for the missing diver for about 3 minutes when we came across a group of fellow divers, led by an instructor, who had all been on the boat with us. I signaled to the instructor that we were missing one diver, and he motioned me to join his group. We continued going around the wreck, looking for the missing diver, and eventually reached the anchor line several minutes later. We ascended normally and swam back to the boat, where, much to my relief, the missing diver was waiting for our return.

As I climbed on board, he explained that his BCD had self-inflated abruptly, causing him to shoot up to the surface, and that he had been unable to disconnect the quick release on his low-pressure inflator hose. Thankfully he was not exhibiting any signs of lung over-expansion injuries or decompression sickness (both being caused by a rapid ascent), so the whole incident turned out to be nothing more than an inconvenience to everyone.

The reason I did not follow the buddy separation protocol is that it is primarily designed with the safety of the remaining diver in mind. A separated diver underwater can no longer count on his/her buddy in case of an emergency, such as an out-of-air situation. This is why the diver should search for no more than one minute for his/her buddy, and then surface. If both divers ended up just losing sight of each other, they will reunite easily at the surface; if it is more serious than that, then the remaining diver can call in a rescue team for help. In our situation, however, the remaining diver was not alone; he was accompanied by a Divemaster (myself), who was trained in search and rescue techniques. After one minute of searching for the missing diver, I figured that there were two options:

  • the missing diver had surfaced (either right away, or after one minute of being separated from us as per his training) – in which case the boat crew would pick him up and tend to him as needed
  • the missing diver was still at the bottom, which meant he was unable to ascend (e.g. from being unconscious, trapped in the wreck, stuck in a fishing net) – in which case prolonging the search for him until our air was up was the best chance we could give him

Following that logic, it seemed to me that the best course of action was to keep searching; but I cannot stop myself from wondering whether an investigation would have come to the same conclusion, had the outcome been tragic. Many psychological factors come into play, such as the guilt of having lost a diver, the dread of ascending and not finding him at the surface, the feeling of failure at having to abort a dive. I am still wondering if any of those affected my judgment when I made the call not to follow the buddy separation protocol. I also realize that I had not, at that time, articulated in my mind the logic described above as clearly as can in retrospect; however it just “felt right” to keep searching under the circumstances. Intuition is a powerful driver in the heat of the moment, but it is not necessarily the best adviser. Ultimately, a diving professional has a duty of care towards his customers and must display sound judgment in emergency situations; but as experience shows, there is no black or white definition of what sound judgment is – in this particular case, it may have been in violation of an established protocol. There is a broad spectrum of situations, from nominal to highly degraded, with many factors that make the answer not obvious and open to interpretation. While every situation is unique, it is desirable to rehearse as many scenarios as possible in one’s mind prior to the dive – that will form a baseline for action that can be revisited as needed, but takes away a lot of the angst of having to do all the thinking when the clock is ticking.

Hopefully sharing this experience can help a fellow diver.

Ars Longa, Vita Brevis

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Could the development of ars technica (the art of technology) be made to fit into a framework that would not only reflect the technological progress made by humanity so far, but also be reasonably accurate at predicting our future as a species? Of course, one could argue that anything can fit into a framework, provided you tweak the framework enough to reach whichever conclusion you aim for. But sophism aside, is there some predictability to be derived from the history of mankind’s command of technology? Here are five proposed stages of technological development.

The Garden of Earthly Delights by Jerome Bosch (detail)

The Garden of Earthly Delights by Jerome Bosch (detail)


The first is when a species is subject to its environment. Think of prehistorical times up to the lower paleolithic period, when the Homo and the Australopithecines species roamed the Earth; their mortality rate was high and acutely sensitive to environmental factors such as the weather, scarceness of food sources, competition with other predatorial species, etc. Hominids of that time were, for all practical purposes, passively dependent on the mood swings of nature and fate for their survival. We shall call this the “dependency stage“.

The second is when mankind started controlling its own survival. The discovery of fire, in particular, allowed for greater control over predatory animals, a seat at the top of the food chain, and constant warmth; similarly, the development of agricultural techniques allowed man to achieve relative self-sufficiency; he started to control his own destiny to a significantly greater degree, but not yet that of other species. We shall call this the “self-reliance stage“.

Then came the bronze age and, centuries later, the industrial revolution, which allowed mankind to control its environment. Not only were humans able to further control their own destiny, they also started shaping their environment, triggering a period of unprecedented expansion of their earthly footprint, both in breadth (land and sea occupation) and depth (of environmental transformation). With these technological developments, of course, came the woes of pollution and other nefarious impacts for the other species, and for the whole planet as a habitat for all things living. While we may be aware of these adverse impacts (as we are today), we are capable of mitigating them at best but not yet reversing them and producing more positive externalities than negative ones. We shall call this the “fruition stage“.

The fourth stage is when humans start engineering both their environment and their own selves. They no longer impact the ecosystem as a (usually detrimental) byproduct of their technological development, but actually think into ways of improving our habitat and making our sophisticated lifestyles sustainable, not only for our benefit but that of all species. Similarly, this is the stage where technology allows us to shape our biological destiny, substituting evolutionary randomness for engineering of the human body to be more resilient and better suited to a wider variety of future-relevant purposes. Notions such as wildlife conservation, renewable energy, geoengineering, DNA engineering, implants, nanotechnology, etc. are no longer technological novelties or cutting-edge buzzwords but are universally mastered and consistently embedded in the fabric of our society. These characteristics belong to what we shall call the “integration stage“.

The fifth stage is the logical application of this full technological command of our environment and our own selves beyond our earthly habitat – namely, to space, starting with the Moon, Mars and artifical orbiting ecosystems and further expanding as far as space travel technologies will allow. This is the “swarm stage“.

Considering our current capabilities and the problems that we are facing in the first quarter of the XXIst century, this author thinks that mankind is nearing the last throes of the fruition stage; although whether closing this particular chapter will take a few decades or more is a matter of speculation. We are becoming increasingly aware of the impact that our development and growth as a species is having on the habitat that we share with millions of others. This, in turn, gives rise to a global conscience about the need to address sustainability issues, and drives the development of technologies geared towards the conservation of our habitat in ways that yet continue to benefit mankind. This is where win-win technologies, that benefit human development as well as Earth as a whole (or at least, that does not harm it) start coming to life: renewable energy, smart materials, biological agriculture, the rise of digital information as a valuable resource with a beneficial footprint, etc.

Where does this fit in the transhumanist roadmap? If one can consider that transhumanism is god-like control over the condition and development of mankind as a species, then it obviously has its place in the integration stage and beyond: a time when humans stop riding shotgun and start driving for the better the common destiny of all things living on Earth and beyond; in addition to having complete control over their own bodies and minds, free at last from the material conditions that drives unwanted suffering and mortality.

Transhumanism and Evolution: the End of Randomness

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Dice

God does not play dice. Evolution does. For now

Transhumanism will be more than a mere improvement of man through technology; it is going to bring an end to evolutionary randomness, the fundamental principle which (coupled with natural selection) has driven the evolution of all organisms since the emergence of life on Earth (and quite possibly anywhere else in the Universe). Our genetic materials, like those of every living being, undergo minute arbitrary variations as they are being replicated; some are detrimental, some have no effect whatsoever, and others give the next generation’s organism a slight competitive advantage in the game of natural selection, yielding a higher probability that they will in turn propagate to its offspring.

While this process has been greatly effective at turning the early single cell prokaryotes into homo sapiens sapiens (among other species) and at giving rise to emerging properties such as sentience, culture or politics, it has also been very inefficient – being both extremely slow (3.5 billion years since abiogenesis, or the emergence of life from inanimate amino acids) and extraordinarily wasteful (only a fraction of the random genetic mutations are beneficial to the offspring, leading to the unnecessary death of countless organisms for the improvement of one).

As our mastering of technology grows exponentially, we will become increasingly capable of directing evolution in a way that is both effective and efficient. Our intelligence will allow us to engineer our own evolution (choosing which improvements, both mental and physical, we should bestow upon ourselves) and technology will allow us to execute it at a pace and an accuracy orders of magnitude higher than random evolution.

As a final digression, it is amusing to note that creationists could have been inadvertently having a point when talking about intelligent design – not that it has existed at any point in the past in some magical fashion, but in the way that it is likely to be part of our future and be driven by man himself. With the advent of transhumanism, we will essentially become the masters of our own evolution as a species, taking over a role traditionally assumed by deities; thus ushering in an era of post-theism, the next stage of mankind’s spiritual development that does away with the mental crutches of faith and religion.

Tactical Success, Meet Strategic Failure

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The January 19, 2010 assassination of Hamas’ military wing commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in a Dubai hotel has turned into a remarkable PR opportunity for the local police. In just a few days, the investigative authorities of the UAE’s glitziest emirate were able to piece together the 19-hour-long chain of events that led to the killing, resulting in this riveting 30′ video that tells us a few things.

Footage from the assassination (Part 1/3)

First, it provides a rare glimpse into a professional hit squad’s modus operandi. While we are mostly familiar with the methods demonstrated in spy movies a la Jason Bourne, we are very seldom made privy to the standard operations and procedures of real-life spooks. While one may remember the assassination of Georgi Markov in 1978 by the Bulgarian Darzhavna Sigurnost (secret police) using a ricin-coated umbrella tip, the Mossad’s abduction of nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu in 1986 with the help of a seductive female agent, or the botched sinking of Greenpeace’s trawler the Rainbow Warrior in 1985 by the French foreign intelligence services, most tactics used by these services’ special operations branches remain entirely unknown, or at best poorly documented. The Dubai tape reveals that the modern tactics are still rife with clichés — an operative enters a hotel’s restroom and comes out with a wig and glasses, another dresses up as a tennis player complete with racket and towel to look inconspicuous, etc. It also shows that they remain vulnerable to last-minute snags, such as an unexpected tourist making a stop at the floor where the murder is being committed. To a certain extent, it shows how much the upfront strategic planning of a hit remains sensitive to the inevitable role that luck and circumstances play in the tactical execution to make it a success or a failure.

Footage from the assassination (Part 2/3)

Second, the footage reveals the added operational complexity brought on by ubiquitous surveillance cameras. The pervasive video monitoring of public spaces -both in the open and within the confines of stores and hotels- is a relatively recent development, and may not have been fully integrated into the planning of this particular operation; also, the quality of the footage reveals how technological development, and the associated commoditization of surveillance devices, have allowed all surveillance spots to be equipped with high-resolution, high-speed color captors that are lightyears away from the jerky, grainy black-and-white frames from previous generation cameras. Combined with the strong investigative capabilities of a state (which the hit squad’s planning team may have underestimated in the case of the Dubai police), this becomes an essential tool for documenting the detailed chain of events post-hoc but also a deterrent for close-quarters hit operations in public areas.

Footage from the assassination (Part 3/3)

Taking this further, the advent of IPv6 will allow all these cameras -whether public or private- to essentially become standalone webcams and stream their feeds in real time to a police command and control center (as opposed to recording them on a local tape or hard drive, which requires investigators to seize the recording after the event). Of course, the centralization of streams puts a strain on the resources monitoring them; but it is only a matter of time (and computing power) before facial recognition software conducts blanket monitoring of all these streams at once, raising a flag whenever a “person of interest” shows up in the field of view of any of those cameras. Conversely, the police will be able to select a person from a video stream and rely on the software to track that person’s movements throughout the day, seamlessly switching from one stream to another as the person leaves a field of view and enters another (which is virtually impossible to do with human operators). If you fear that this is an Orwellian dream coming true, well, you’d better start getting used to it because every major city is either implementing the scheme or planning to. While the trend in itself looks rather unescapable, privacy issues can and should be mitigated by increasing the role of the judicial branch into the operations of such surveillance command and control centers, e.g. by establishing physical presence of judicial officers in those rooms to physically check and balance the increasing power of police and counter-intelligence officers (this, of course, does not apply in police states where judicial and executive powers usually blend). With regards to the subject at hand, it will be interesting to see how foreign intelligence agencies’ operational procedures adapt to the increased exposure brought on by surveillance cameras in their countries of operations.

The 11 first suspects in the Dubai assassination of Mahmoud Al Mabnouh

The 11 first suspects in the Dubai assassination of Mahmoud Al Mabnouh

Third, the Dubai footage is a testimony to the fact that the assassination was both a tactical success and a strategic failure. Tactically, the hit squad managed to get the job done and escape with no collateral damage; but strategically, the physical identity (pictures) of the 11 members caught on tape has been made very public, which, for all practical purposes, strips them of any further operational value for their agency’s special ops branch. They can no longer be commissioned without running the unacceptable risk of raising a flag wherever they go; Interpol even issued a red notice, which calls for their provisional arrest and possible extradition, forcing them to remain within the safety of their national borders. Their future will most likely involve sitting behind a desk at their agency’s headquarters, processing foreign intelligence through the lens of their operational experience — not the best fit. No foreign intelligence agency in the world can afford to lose that many valuable operatives in a single operation, considering the cost and time it takes to recruit and train them. Furthermore, diplomatic and political repercussions from this strategic fiasco may be far-reaching as the investigation unravels, and evidence against the prime suspect -Mossad- builds beyond the circumstantial.

Was it all worth the value of the target?

Will the robots make fun of us?

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Note: this post was contributed by guest writer Toxic Max from ToxicMemes.com.

While we may be tempted to look at humans as merely an evolutionary link from good mammals to greater artificial intelligence, one question remains, what’s our place in the post-Singularity world?

Some transhumanists argue that man will continue to hold a very central place in the great apparatus. While I agree that cyborgs may indeed be the future of AI, I disagree with the notion that cyborgs can be called humans. Once you have replaced your senses with sensors and upgraded your brain with faster computing power, your empirical experience of the world is unlike that of any homo homo sapiens. Calling cyborgs “humans” is akin to calling humans “chimps”… Of course we still eat/fuck/shit/fight all day but at least we don’t eat each other’s lice!

Bender from Futurama

How will we human weaklings will appear to technologically superior, sentient robots?


So, as the humans-as-we-know-them loose relevance in the intelligent world, becoming somewhat of a genetic artefact instead of the centre of universe, one has to wonder: what will the new intelligent beings think of us? I imagine they could be passionate students of humanism, fascinated by their ancestry and the mistakes we commonly make. Take it from our own experience: isn’t it fun to watch babies learn how to speak? Or to trick a dog into fetching an imaginary stick?

In a world where we are the Subjects in the redefined study of humanism, a big portion of the research will be focused on how we were limited by our biological nature and the slow evolutionary process it entails. The research will focus particularly on the period that preceded Singularity, from the Renaissance or the Industrial Revolution to say, 2030. This period will illustrate best how the pace of change challenged the limits of the human minds – and the need for a higher form of intelligence. Don’t feel bad about it: we’re still doing a pretty good job at surviving in a world where the parameters are changing so rapidly, considering how ill-equipped we are for the information age:

  • Hardware flaws: no wifi – stuck instead with this shitty comm device called voice; no memory card plugins – just some stupid peripheral called computer that we have to access by tapping a keyboard with our hands… laaaaaame
  • Software faults: what drives us, how we recognize patterns, our conception of time, etc.

So its no surprise that most transhumanists are ready to turn the page, be done already, fuggetaboutit, and move on to a greater world where supercomputergeeks be kings (teedeepee included). I went to see Surrogates the other day, and while I wouldn’t recommend the movie, it succeeded in getting me a little nostalgic/emotive about our old human ways.  Got me thinking that transhumanists should enjoy the day, laugh at our own inadequacies, carpe diem, and live the “human experience” which is all that we’ll have left soon enough. Got me thinking that we should all emulate Isaac Isamov, who was such a brilliant scholar of human frailties.