Taking Turing by Surprise? Designing Digital Computers for morally-loaded contexts

There is much to learn from what Turing hastily dismissed as Lady Lovelace s objection. Digital computers can indeed surprise us. Just like a piece of art, algorithms can be designed in such a way as to lead us to question our understanding of the world, or our place within it. Some humans do lose the capacity to be surprised in that way. It might be fear, or it might be the comfort of ideological certainties. As lazy normative animals, we do need to be able to rely on authorities to simplify our reasoning: that is ok. Yet the growing sophistication of systems designed to free us from the constraints of normative engagement may take us past a point of no-return. What if, through lack of normative exercise, our moral muscles became so atrophied as to leave us unable to question our social practices? This paper makes two distinct normative claims: 1. Decision-support systems should be designed with a view to regularly jolting us out of our moral torpor. 2. Without the depth of habit to somatically anchor model certainty, a computer s experience of something new is very different from that which in humans gives rise to non-trivial surprises. This asymmetry has key repercussions when it comes to the shape of ethical agency in artificial moral agents. The worry is not just that they would be likely to leap morally ahead of us, unencumbered by habits. The main reason to doubt that the moral trajectories of humans v. autonomous systems might remain compatible stems from the asymmetry in the mechanisms underlying moral change. Whereas in humans surprises will continue to play an important role in waking us to the need for moral change, cognitive processes will rule when it comes to machines. This asymmetry will translate into increasingly different moral outlooks, to the point of likely unintelligibility. The latter prospect is enough to doubt the desirability of autonomous moral agents

Patterns of Participation and Motivation in Folding@home: The Contribution of Hardware Enthusiasts and Overclockers

Folding@home is a distributed computing project in which participants run protein folding simulations on their computers. Participants complete work units and are awarded points for their contribution. An investigation into motivations to participate and patterns of participation revealed the significant contribution of a sub-community composed of individuals who custom-build computers to maximise their processing power. These individuals, known as “overclockers” or “hardware enthusiasts,” use distributed computing projects such as Folding@home to benchmark their modified computers and to compete with one another to see who can process the greatest number of project work units. Many are initially drawn to the project to learn about computer hardware from other overclockers and to compete for points. However, once they learn more about the scientific outputs of Folding@home, some participants become more motivated by the desire to contribute to scientific research. Overclockers form numerous online communities where members collaborate and help each other maximise their computing output. They invest heavily in their computers and process the majority of Folding@home’s simulations, thus providing an invaluable (and free) resource

Authorship as cultural performance: new perspectives in authorship studies

This article proposes a performative model of authorship, based on the historical alternation between predominantly 'weak' and 'strong' author concepts and related practices of writing, publication and reading. Based on this model, we give a brief overview of the historical development of such author concepts in English literature from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century. We argue for a more holistic approach to authorship within a cultural topography, comprising social contexts, technological and media factors, and other cultural developments, such as the distinction between privacy and the public sphere

The Mobile Generation: Global Transformations at the Cellular Level

Every year we see a new dimension of the ongoing Digital Revolution, which is enabling an abundance of information to move faster, cheaper, in more intelligible forms, in more directions, and across borders of every kind. The exciting new dimension on which the Aspen Institute focused its 2006 Roundtable on Information Technology was mobility, which is making the Digital Revolution ubiquitous. As of this writing, there are over two billion wireless subscribers worldwide and that number is growing rapidly. People are constantly innovating in the use of mobile technologies to allow them to be more interconnected. Almost a half century ago, Ralph Lee Smith conjured up "The Wired Nation," foretelling a world of interactive communication to and from the home that seems commonplace in developed countries today. Now we have a "Wireless World" of communications potentially connecting two billion people to each other with interactive personal communications devices. Widespead adoption of wireless handsets, the increasing use of wireless internet, and the new, on-the-go content that characterizes the new generation of users are changing behaviors in social, political and economic spheres. The devices are easy to use, pervasive and personal. The affordable cell phone has the potential to break down the barriers of poverty and accessibility previously posed by other communications devices. An entire generation that is dependant on ubiquitous mobile technologies is changing the way it works, plays and thinks. Businesses, governments, educational institutions, religious and other organizations in turn are adapting to reach out to this mobile generation via wireless technologies -- from SMS-enabled vending machines in Finland to tech-savvy priests in India willing to conduct prayers transmitted via cell phones. Cellular devices are providing developing economies with opportunities unlike any others previously available. By opening the lines of communication, previously disenfranchised groups can have access to information relating to markets, economic opportunities, jobs, and weather to name just a few. When poor village farmers from Bangladesh can auction their crops on a craigslist-type service over the mobile phone, or government officials gain instantaneous information on contagious diseases via text message, the miracles of mobile connectivity move us from luxury to necessity. And we are only in the early stages of what the mobile electronic communications will mean for mankind. We are now "The Mobile Generation." Aspen Institute Roundtable on Information Technology. To explore the implications of these phenomena, the Aspen Institute Communications and Society Program convened 27 leaders from business, academia, government and the non-profit sector to engage in three days of dialogue on related topics. Some are experts in information and communications technologies, others are leaders in the broader society affected by these innovations. Together, they examined the profound changes ahead as a result of the convergence of wireless technologies and the Internet. In the following report of the Roundtable meeting held August 1-4, 2006, J. D. Lasica, author of Darknet and co-founder of Ourmedia.org, deftly sets up, contextualizes, and captures the dialogue on the impact of the new mobility on economic models for businesses and governments, social services, economic development, and personal identity

Participatory Transformations

Learning, in its many forms, from the classroom to independent study, is being transformed by new practices emerging around Internet use. Conversation, participation and community have become watchwords for the processes of learning promised by the Internet and accomplished via technologies such as bulletin boards, wikis, blogs, social software and repositories, devices such as laptops, cell phones and digital cameras, and infrastructures of internet connection, telephone, wireless and broadband. This chapter discusses the impact of emergent, participatory trends on education. In learning and teaching participatory trends harbinge a radical transformation in who learns from whom, where, under what circumstances, and for what and whose purpose. They bring changes in where we find information, who we learn from, how learning progresses, and how we contribute to our learning and the learning of others. These trends indicate a transformation to "ubiquitous learning" ??? a continuous anytime, anywhere, anyone contribution and retrieval of learning materials and advice on and through the Internet and its technologies, niches and social spaces.not peer reviewe

Autonomous Systems

The ubiquity of digital media provides an unprecedented possibility to redefine the process and methods of design. Through experience from a series of creative projects, I investigate how certain aspects of the web allow for design to attain a degree of autonomy, thus producing results that go beyond anticipation and expertise of the author. Utilizing an unlimited capacity to store the content and retrieve immediate feedback, the designer’s role can be shifted to that of an initiator defining rules and boundaries, from which the process can evolve independently based on the input of users and data. The design output in such conditions is the development of schemes in which the author remains, but is marginalized as a producer – consciously restraining his level of control. Rather then struggling to add something singular to the bottomless pit of information, the designer is relegated in the role of medium: collecting and recombining the bits of fragmented data into the structures conveying meaning

Santa Clara Magazine, Volume 27 Number 3, Winter 1985

2 - WHEN ARE LEADERS AT THEIR BEST? By James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner. There is a revolution in leadership style taking place in corporate America. This deals with how ordinary people get extraordinary things done in organizations. 7 - A MEDITATION IN ST. IVES By William J. Rewak, S.J. Some reflections on the essence of work taken from Father Rewak\u27s travel diary during a trip to England last summer. 10 - TAKING LAUGHTER SERIOUSLY By John Morreall. A philosophy professor shows how important humor is to human life and how understanding our laughter can help us understand our humanity. 14 - IN THE MANNER OF ANDY ROONEY By James P. Degnan. A wonderful spoof of one of America\u27s favorite commentators. 15 - WHAT\u27S A COLLEGE TEACHER TO DO? By Christiaan T. Lievestro. The trick, the author explains, is to turn students on so they will go on by themselves, liberated from the teacher. 20 - PAULO FREIRE HAS HIS SAY By James Torrens, S.J. A look at the famous Third World educator during his brief visit to Santa Clara last year. 23 - GIVING PSYCHOLOGY AWAY By Dale G. Larson. A new model of mental health training is emerging among a growing number of psychologists who want to share their skills with others. 27 - NEWS OF SANTA CLARA New leaders take over in the President\u27s Club and the Bronco Bench, and the activities of faculty on sabbatical leaves during the 1984-85 academic year are summarized. 30 - CAMPAIGN FOR SANTA CLARA By Kenneth E. Cool. An update on the Institute of Agribusiness in the Leavey School of Business and on the new Institute for Information Storage Technology in the School of Engineering. Also, a report on the progress of the engineering campaign as it climbs toward its $8.9 million goal.https://scholarcommons.scu.edu/sc_mag/1070/thumbnail.jp

Surprise. Aesthetics and Sensibilities of Rhetorics

This dissertation investigates relationships scholars have with information and art associated with aesthetic and theoretical disruptions. Its governing metaphor is the surprise affect, figured as a rhetorical and aesthetic event. My purposes are to evaluate institutional and scholastic responses to both desirable and disastrous information-aesthetic liminalities, trial performative engagements with surprises, and propose viable ways of engaging innovation for writing instruction. It is argued that aesthetic (i.e., relational in the sense that it is not immediate), performative, and temporal engagements with surprising objects of study are relatively viable options when considered alongside the critical manuscript. While the aesthetic has sometimes occupied a minor and inferior position relative to codified and metricized intelligences, such relegation rests on false and pernicious but well known and persistent dichotomies including intelligibility v. sensibility, knowing v. feeling, thinking v. experiencing, and aesthetic v. epistemic. The intelligibility presupposed by the critical model, however, cannot achieve immediate engagement with its ostensible object ; it therefore remains relational and aesthetic. Few would counter the claim, yet actual performances of relation are rare. To test its payoff, the dissertation performs two engagements with challenging objects associated with surprise: novelty or the new as such, and the currency of idiosyncrasy in the timbre of recent electronic music. While not incidental, novelty and timbre are examples in the project\u27s larger attempt to rethink not just any given surprise, but ways of treating and dealing with the inevitability of metaphysical shock and overhaul