Technosemiotics

May 8 @ 18:00 – 19:30 EEST
The second seminar in the Technosemiotics discussion series will explore the conceptual apparatus offered by biosemiotics and its cybernetics-inspired analytical models.

Relying on a recently published joint paper,* Victoria Alexander, Josh Bacigalupi and Òscar Castro discuss the qualitative or interpretive aspects of biological semiosis. The slime mold as a minimal cognitive organism is compared to the quantitative deep learning algorithms and their generations. The paper in question also proposes a concept of Turing systems as better artificial models for biological processes.

The session will be recorded and published. More info.

* Alexander, V.N., J. Augustus Bacigalupi, and Òscar Castro Garcia. 2021. “Living Systems Are Smarter Bots: Slime Mold Semiosis versus AI Symbol Manipulation.” Biosystems 206 (August): 104430. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biosystems.2021.104430.

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I’ve finished my new novel, “C0VlD-1984, The Musical,” and now…

About a year ago, I announced that I was starting to write a new novel, COVlD-1984 The Musical, a dark comedy about the 2020 lockdown and the 2021 vaccine roll out. As the title suggests, I have tried to rewrite Orwell’s story of totalitarian oppression so that it ends happily. I want to break the spell of Nineteen-Eighty-Four, which starts low and descends even lower, with the hero Winston giving in to Doublethink. Orwell didn’t have any faith in the “proles”. I do. I want to inspire readers to stand up.

My first inspiration to write this story came from the Danser Encore protests in the Paris train stations, where people took off their masks, forgot about social distancing rules, and starting singing and dancing. That defiantly joyful display presented a stark contrast to dance videos of the medical professionals that were so popular then, showing those automatons doing their absurd clockwork dances, so symbolic of the mass formation psychosis erupting around the globe.

Although the plot follows the lead of Orwell’s novel, the tone of C0VlD-1984, The Musical is inspired by the gallows humor of Kurt Vonnegut’s, Slaughterhouse-Five, or, The Children’s Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death.  Readers of E. L. Doctorow’s Ragtime will hear echoes of his descriptions of J. P. Morgan and Henry Ford in my descriptions of our modern day equivalents.

This novel is a sequel to my last novel, Locus Amoenus, which retells the story of Hamlet as a 9/11 conspiracy theorist. Ben Jorgensen narrated the audiobook. He was suicided by the lockdowns. C0VlD-1984, The Musical is dedicated to him.

I’m looking for a publisher.

A short synopsis (contains spoilers)

Transhumanist Harari Believes “Humans are Hackable Animals”; Therefore, Democracy is Impossible.

And We Need To Be Hacked For Our Own Good.

“Liberalism tells us that the voter knows best, that the customer is always right, and that we should think for ourselves and follow our hearts. Unfortunately, ‘free will’ isn’t a scientific reality. It is a myth inherited from Christian theology. Theologians developed the idea of ‘free will’ to explain why God is right to punish sinners for their bad choices and reward saints for their good choices.” – Yuval Noah Harari

Although World Economic Forum (WEF) transhumanists may not have a unified ideology per se, we may look to Yuval Noah Harari, a WEF member who is a prolific writer and voluble frontman, to get a general sense of the assumptions held by that coterie of financial elites who think they can alter the course of human civilization, human evolution, and re-codify human rights. While their grandiose narcissism verges on the cartoonish-ness of the comic book villain seeking world domination, we must, nevertheless, take their words and their plans seriously because their claims to ownership and/or control of monetary systems, communication infrastructure and natural resources do, unfortunately, lend them quite a bit of power over us—at the moment.

The Perils of Coding Humans: A Response to Transhumanism

15 week live online course
Mondays at 12PM EST starting Jan 9, 2023
Instructor: Dr. V. N. Alexander
IPAK-EDU

The September 12, 2022 White House Executive Order* pledges R&D funds to the biotech industry to enable it “to write circuitry for cells and predictably program biology in the same way [emphasis added] in which we write software and program computers.” We may be glad of this implied admission that the biotech industry currently cannot “predictably program biology” nor effectively “write circuitry for cells,” as demonstrated by the failure of the COVlD-19 synthetic mRNA injections. But we may also be concerned that technocrats—who believe that such advances will be possible once they “unlock the power of biological data, including through computing tools and artificial intelligence”—will continue to use us as lab monkeys as they pursue impossible goals.

Some see the issue as a battle between the ideologies of pure mechanism and spiritualism. As long as we see the problem this way, it might remain irreconcilable. In this course, we will use lessons learned from science—complex systems science, the philosophy of creativity, and

Message without a Sender

Once again, the masters of The Strange Recital podcast, Brent Robison and Tom Newton have brought my short stories to life.  In this episode I read two, “The Narrative” and “Signs and Symbols,” from a collection that I’ve been working on called Chance that Mimics choice. Like the other stories in this collection, these are about the art of making/finding meaning.

Why do writers write? Why do readers love to read?  If you’ve ever wondered why people might enjoy fiction so much that they spend the better part of their waking hours engaged in it, listen to this podcast and the interview that follows.  There is no greater pleasure for this writer than being able to sit and chat with other writers, like Brent and Tom, about writing. It’s the only kind of reward I need.

Listen to find out what a “message without a sender” might be.

You can also listen on Spotify.  Just search “The Strange Recital.”

 

Is counting things always more “objective”?

Social science researchers employ so-called qualitative methods, such as case studies, interviews, documentary evidence, participant observation, and the quasi-quantitative method of survey research. Physical science researchers employ quantitative methods; they take measurements, collect and count data points, and formulate equations that model how systems change. The difference in methods is said to make the social sciences more subjective compared to the hard sciences. Interdisciplinary studies departments worldwide now offer courses combining quantitative and qualitative methods as a compromise intended to resist the privileging of one method over the other. In this talk, I will argue that we’ve been coming up with answers to the wrong question.

Free Range Humans

In my latest paper, “Free-Range Humans: Permaculture Farming as a Biosemiosic Model for Political Organization,” I apply the lessons of my field to governance and economics.  The title is a mouthful, I know, but it’s actually a pretty accessible read. I offer this as an alternative to the Great Reset, which proposes to centralize all assets under the control of a Corporate State and, essentially, make us into livestock. 

Abstract: Modern agricultural approaches attempt to substitute biological self-reinforcing networks, which naturally sustain healthy food economies, with technology that seeks to control nature — not work with it. Artificial solutions (caging, pesticides, genetic engineering) tend to address symptoms of problems that the artificial approach has itself created. The great error of modern agriculture is the assumption that Nature is not intelligent. In fact, we can learn much from natural smart technologies that far out-perform recently invented artificial “smart” technologies. These lessons can also be applied to other political and economic systems, allowing self-organization to foster creativity and intelligence in the populace at large.

Download PDF.

 

 

Slime Mold is Smarter than AI

The Next Rembrandt is a multi-million dollar project, funded in part by a Big Bank and Microsoft, which trained AI to mimic the style of the great master in order to paint a mediocre original painting (left). In this article,  J. Augustus Bacigalupi, Òscar Castro Garcia and I show how complex and sophisticated even the most primitive forms of life are as they sense and respond to their worlds.  Artificial Intelligence, in comparison, is slow-witted, boring, and completely unable to get puns or jokes, much less to make art. We caution against anyone who might argue that current AI can begin to replace human judgement in, for instance, medicine or education.  We also offer a means by which machine sensors might be designed so that they are a little bit closer the abilities of slime mold. Click to download: Living systems are smarter bots: Slime mold semiosis versus AI symbol manipulation

Hudson Valley Currents

I have long been interested in monetary policy in general and local alternative currencies in particular.   In Locus Amoenus (2015) I wrote about an imaginary community in upstate New York that created an alternative economic system.  As I begin to write part 2 of the Locus Amoenus narrative, I note with pleasure how life imitates art: such a community now has started in the Hudson Valley.

Hudson Valley News

It’s news in Amenia when a local novelist starts thinking about writing.  Over salads at Four Brothers Pizza in Amenia, I chatted with fellow novelist, Steve Hopkins, about my plans to continue the story line of my 2015 novel, Locus Amoenus. That book is a satire about a 9/11 widow who remarries and her son Hamlet becomes depressed.  You get the idea.  I think of the new work as a Hamlet Part 2, or possibly Covid-1984, or Covid 9/11, or some other such satire in the posthumous style.

Seeing my plans in print, I’m committed now to writing it. In fact, the work has begun. Thank you, Steve, for getting me started.

George Orwell’s works seems rather too relevant these days.  But his Winston Smith is unlikable, without wit or irony. He is not funny.  This tragedy needs some dark humor. And a happy ending.