- Email: [email protected]
Butler, machines, and life
Forum/Retrospective 309
produce escalating conflicts of various sorts to further human suffering. If we are to be serious about establishing evil on a scientific basis, we must come to a much better understanding of how to create, maintain, develop and control conflict in various areas of life. Thus, the dynamics of escalation and reaction processes which we find operating in price wars between firms, arms races between nations, and even quarrels within the family, all take on new importance in the development of sufficient knowledge to manage evil more astutely. The underlying idea, of course, will not be to abolish conflict once and for all, but to control it. The prospects for new patterns of coercion in this vast area of human endeavour are truly challenging.
Conclusions The design, application, and development of specific kinds of control systems over human behaviour in different areas of life is a necessary condition for the creation of viable evil in the future. The long-term hope, of course, is that the creation of such knowledge will eventually lead to a science of evil which will give future civilizations sufficient flexibility to control human suffering at some optimal level. Today, we cannot know what this level shall be. We can realize, however, that haphazard evil is no longer sufficient. We must align our efforts with current realities. To see our opportunities for malevolence is an admirable commencement. To practise and develop such matters is the need of the future.
Retrospective Butler, machines,
and life
Geoff Simons One of the most exciting types of predictive effort is the approach that is well supported by scientific knowledge but is nonetheless prepared to make untramelled imaginative leaps. This technique represents a halfway house between wild fantasy and careful extrapolation from established empirical data. One of the best historical representatives of this position is Samuel Butler (1835-1902), as shown in particular by Chapters 23 to 25 of Erewhon (first published in 1872). In these few short chapters (a mere two dozen pages), Butler gives a wealth of predictive detail that is truly
Simons is Chief Editor of the National Centre, Oxford Road, Manchester 7ED.
Geoff
Computing Ml
FUTURES
August 1983
remarkable. For instance, he anticipates the speech synthesis and speech recognition systems that are being developed today to aid man/machine communication (it being intended that such systems will be key components in the ‘intelligent interfaces’ of fifth-generation computers). Consider the relevant passage in Esewhon (pages 144-145 in the Everyman edition): As yet the machines receive their impressions through the agency of man’s senses; one travelling machine calls to another in a shrill accent of alarm and the other instantly retires; but it is through the ears of the driver that the voice of the one has acted upon the other. Had there been no driver, the callee would have been deaf to the caller. There was a time when it must have seemed highly improbable that machines should learn to make their wants known by sound, even
3 10
Rdros~ectiuc
through the ears of man; may we not conceive, then, that a day will come when those ears will no longer be needed, and the hearin will be done 62’ the delicacy ufthe machine’s OLU~construction-when its language shall have been develapedjom the cry of animals to a speech as intricate as our own? [my italics]
If this passage is interpreted as machines not relying on such natural languages as English, French and Japanese, then we already see them with their own intricate means of communication; today, computers talk to each other in code over telecommunication links. In another prediction, Butler suggests that the largest machines “will probably greatly diminish in size” [p. 1441. He notes that “a diminution in the size of machines has often attended their development and progress”. Over the whole spectrum of machines, this is sometimes true and sometimes not-but in one area of particular interest to Butler (“our sum-engines never drop a figure”), it is manifestly true. He was aware of mechanical calculating machines (eg Babbage’s Difference Engine) and would have been gratified to see the progressive reductions in size that have characterized modern calculators. Machines,
dive,
alive-oh
Perhaps most importantly, Butler suggests that machines will become conscious and able to reproduce their kind, and in particular that it will become reasonable to regard them as a form of life. Consider the following items from Erewhon: There is no security against the ultimate development of mechanical consciousness, in the fact of machines possessing little consciousness now [page 1411.
‘ . . there is probably no known machine which is more than a prototype of future mechanical life [page 1441. Surely if a machine is able to reproduce another machine sys.tematicalIy, we may say that it has a reproductive system. What is a
reproductive system, if it be not a system for reproduction? [page 1501.
The idea that machines may be able to think and be conscious is now receiving immense attention in the literature of computer
science
in
general
and
arti-
Cal intelligence (AI) in particular. And the notion that machines may represent emerging life forms is beginning to appear as a serious doctrine in journals and books. (I have developed this idea in detail in Are Computers Alive?, Harvester Press, Brighton, UK, 1983.) Where Butler discusses machine communication , machine consciousness and machine life, he clearly envisaged many of the possibilities inherent in modern computer artefacts. In regarding tools and machines as akin to human organs, it is also arguable that he anticipated the bionic additions to the human frame, eg such components as heart pace-makers, artificial nerve connections and the recent partially-successful experiments with an artificial heart. Dear Mr Darwin It is interesting to search for clues in, for example, Butler’s character or circumwhich will illuminate his stances, remarkable predictive abilities. Having raised sheep in Australia, and having come across Darwin’s theory of evolution, he was fascinated by the idea that living things grow, develop and change -and he quickly perceived similarities biological between and machine systems. He toyed with the idea that men were machines, but found it more exciting to speculate on the idea that machines would evolve into living lining this notion for a New Zealand creatures; he wrote a small piece outnewspaper. Later he used this sketch, and other material, to form the basis for Erewhon. A copy was sent to Charles Darwin, who was amused; Butler going to some lengths to explain that the work was not intended as a satire on The Origin
of Species.
FUTURES August 1983
Retrospective/Conference 3 11
Butler met Darwin and other members of the Darwin circle, yet came to feel that Darwin had feet of clay. In the words of William Irvine, “By a very romantic logic of his own, Butler had found Darwin to be first superhuman, then human, and finally inhuman” .l Butler tried to develop particular biological concepts in evolution, but had been anticipated by Lamarck and Hering. He also became increasingly sympathetic to criticisms of Darwin. It seems that Butler had an abrasive personality and was quick to anger. Perhaps he resented the scientific eminence of many of Darwin’s associates and other contemporaries. Clearly, he was acquainted with animal husbandry and the biological science of the day, but in some ways he was an outsider-“who had spent his boyhood in developing a sense of injury and half his lifetime in detecting elderly male-
valence
.“.z
What is there in this to throw light on Butler’s imaginative vision? One thought is that the outsider, less con-
strained by cultural convention, can think more freely, is more able to make audacious connections between seemingly unrelated fields (eg in Butler’s case, between life and machines). At the scientific knowledge is same time, essential, if only to restrain the excesses of crankiness and romantic fantasy. And perhaps Butler, if an outsider, would have been driven, through a desire for self-justification, to seek out an original and exciting vision. Butler’s scientific speculations are relatively brief, but they contain an uncommon predictive element that has been largely vindicated by later developments. He was obviously helped by scientific contemporaries, but not constrained by them. This is at least part of what is required for predictive success in any field.
References 1. Apes, Angels and Victorians Weidenfeld, 1956), page 173. 2. Ibid, page 171.
(London,
Conference An uncertain
revolution
Magda Cordell McHale “The information revolution: different socio-cultural perceptions”, convened by the Center for Integrative Studies, School of Architecture and Environmental Design, State University of New York at Buffalo, sponsored by the Intergovernmental Bureau for Informatics (IBI) (Rome), 18-20 April, 1983. Magda Cordell McHale is Director of the Center for Integrative Studies, School of Architecture and Environmental Design, State University of New York at Buffalo, Hayes Hall, 3435 Main Street, Buffalo, New York 14214, USA.
FUTURES August 1993
This conference was one in a series of ‘reflection groups’ contributing to the Intergovernmental Bureau for Informatics (IBI) preparations for the Second International Conference on Strategies and Policies for Informatics (SPIN), in 1984. The group, 20 people from nine countries, heard first from a representative of the IBI about the Bureau’s plans and expectations for the SPIN Conference and some of the questions it hoped would be discussed by the reflection group. Participants then had the benefit of an analysis from an historian of cultures
produce escalating conflicts of various sorts to further human suffering. If we are to be serious about establishing evil on a scientific basis, we must come to a much better understanding of how to create, maintain, develop and control conflict in various areas of life. Thus, the dynamics of escalation and reaction processes which we find operating in price wars between firms, arms races between nations, and even quarrels within the family, all take on new importance in the development of sufficient knowledge to manage evil more astutely. The underlying idea, of course, will not be to abolish conflict once and for all, but to control it. The prospects for new patterns of coercion in this vast area of human endeavour are truly challenging.
Conclusions The design, application, and development of specific kinds of control systems over human behaviour in different areas of life is a necessary condition for the creation of viable evil in the future. The long-term hope, of course, is that the creation of such knowledge will eventually lead to a science of evil which will give future civilizations sufficient flexibility to control human suffering at some optimal level. Today, we cannot know what this level shall be. We can realize, however, that haphazard evil is no longer sufficient. We must align our efforts with current realities. To see our opportunities for malevolence is an admirable commencement. To practise and develop such matters is the need of the future.
Retrospective Butler, machines,
and life
Geoff Simons One of the most exciting types of predictive effort is the approach that is well supported by scientific knowledge but is nonetheless prepared to make untramelled imaginative leaps. This technique represents a halfway house between wild fantasy and careful extrapolation from established empirical data. One of the best historical representatives of this position is Samuel Butler (1835-1902), as shown in particular by Chapters 23 to 25 of Erewhon (first published in 1872). In these few short chapters (a mere two dozen pages), Butler gives a wealth of predictive detail that is truly
Simons is Chief Editor of the National Centre, Oxford Road, Manchester 7ED.
Geoff
Computing Ml
FUTURES
August 1983
remarkable. For instance, he anticipates the speech synthesis and speech recognition systems that are being developed today to aid man/machine communication (it being intended that such systems will be key components in the ‘intelligent interfaces’ of fifth-generation computers). Consider the relevant passage in Esewhon (pages 144-145 in the Everyman edition): As yet the machines receive their impressions through the agency of man’s senses; one travelling machine calls to another in a shrill accent of alarm and the other instantly retires; but it is through the ears of the driver that the voice of the one has acted upon the other. Had there been no driver, the callee would have been deaf to the caller. There was a time when it must have seemed highly improbable that machines should learn to make their wants known by sound, even
3 10
Rdros~ectiuc
through the ears of man; may we not conceive, then, that a day will come when those ears will no longer be needed, and the hearin will be done 62’ the delicacy ufthe machine’s OLU~construction-when its language shall have been develapedjom the cry of animals to a speech as intricate as our own? [my italics]
If this passage is interpreted as machines not relying on such natural languages as English, French and Japanese, then we already see them with their own intricate means of communication; today, computers talk to each other in code over telecommunication links. In another prediction, Butler suggests that the largest machines “will probably greatly diminish in size” [p. 1441. He notes that “a diminution in the size of machines has often attended their development and progress”. Over the whole spectrum of machines, this is sometimes true and sometimes not-but in one area of particular interest to Butler (“our sum-engines never drop a figure”), it is manifestly true. He was aware of mechanical calculating machines (eg Babbage’s Difference Engine) and would have been gratified to see the progressive reductions in size that have characterized modern calculators. Machines,
dive,
alive-oh
Perhaps most importantly, Butler suggests that machines will become conscious and able to reproduce their kind, and in particular that it will become reasonable to regard them as a form of life. Consider the following items from Erewhon: There is no security against the ultimate development of mechanical consciousness, in the fact of machines possessing little consciousness now [page 1411.
‘ . . there is probably no known machine which is more than a prototype of future mechanical life [page 1441. Surely if a machine is able to reproduce another machine sys.tematicalIy, we may say that it has a reproductive system. What is a
reproductive system, if it be not a system for reproduction? [page 1501.
The idea that machines may be able to think and be conscious is now receiving immense attention in the literature of computer
science
in
general
and
arti-
Cal intelligence (AI) in particular. And the notion that machines may represent emerging life forms is beginning to appear as a serious doctrine in journals and books. (I have developed this idea in detail in Are Computers Alive?, Harvester Press, Brighton, UK, 1983.) Where Butler discusses machine communication , machine consciousness and machine life, he clearly envisaged many of the possibilities inherent in modern computer artefacts. In regarding tools and machines as akin to human organs, it is also arguable that he anticipated the bionic additions to the human frame, eg such components as heart pace-makers, artificial nerve connections and the recent partially-successful experiments with an artificial heart. Dear Mr Darwin It is interesting to search for clues in, for example, Butler’s character or circumwhich will illuminate his stances, remarkable predictive abilities. Having raised sheep in Australia, and having come across Darwin’s theory of evolution, he was fascinated by the idea that living things grow, develop and change -and he quickly perceived similarities biological between and machine systems. He toyed with the idea that men were machines, but found it more exciting to speculate on the idea that machines would evolve into living lining this notion for a New Zealand creatures; he wrote a small piece outnewspaper. Later he used this sketch, and other material, to form the basis for Erewhon. A copy was sent to Charles Darwin, who was amused; Butler going to some lengths to explain that the work was not intended as a satire on The Origin
of Species.
FUTURES August 1983
Retrospective/Conference 3 11
Butler met Darwin and other members of the Darwin circle, yet came to feel that Darwin had feet of clay. In the words of William Irvine, “By a very romantic logic of his own, Butler had found Darwin to be first superhuman, then human, and finally inhuman” .l Butler tried to develop particular biological concepts in evolution, but had been anticipated by Lamarck and Hering. He also became increasingly sympathetic to criticisms of Darwin. It seems that Butler had an abrasive personality and was quick to anger. Perhaps he resented the scientific eminence of many of Darwin’s associates and other contemporaries. Clearly, he was acquainted with animal husbandry and the biological science of the day, but in some ways he was an outsider-“who had spent his boyhood in developing a sense of injury and half his lifetime in detecting elderly male-
valence
.“.z
What is there in this to throw light on Butler’s imaginative vision? One thought is that the outsider, less con-
strained by cultural convention, can think more freely, is more able to make audacious connections between seemingly unrelated fields (eg in Butler’s case, between life and machines). At the scientific knowledge is same time, essential, if only to restrain the excesses of crankiness and romantic fantasy. And perhaps Butler, if an outsider, would have been driven, through a desire for self-justification, to seek out an original and exciting vision. Butler’s scientific speculations are relatively brief, but they contain an uncommon predictive element that has been largely vindicated by later developments. He was obviously helped by scientific contemporaries, but not constrained by them. This is at least part of what is required for predictive success in any field.
References 1. Apes, Angels and Victorians Weidenfeld, 1956), page 173. 2. Ibid, page 171.
(London,
Conference An uncertain
revolution
Magda Cordell McHale “The information revolution: different socio-cultural perceptions”, convened by the Center for Integrative Studies, School of Architecture and Environmental Design, State University of New York at Buffalo, sponsored by the Intergovernmental Bureau for Informatics (IBI) (Rome), 18-20 April, 1983. Magda Cordell McHale is Director of the Center for Integrative Studies, School of Architecture and Environmental Design, State University of New York at Buffalo, Hayes Hall, 3435 Main Street, Buffalo, New York 14214, USA.
FUTURES August 1993
This conference was one in a series of ‘reflection groups’ contributing to the Intergovernmental Bureau for Informatics (IBI) preparations for the Second International Conference on Strategies and Policies for Informatics (SPIN), in 1984. The group, 20 people from nine countries, heard first from a representative of the IBI about the Bureau’s plans and expectations for the SPIN Conference and some of the questions it hoped would be discussed by the reflection group. Participants then had the benefit of an analysis from an historian of cultures