September 04, 2006
(#3: Humans can choose their dynamics.)
An Anti-Primitivist Essay
We exist immersed within a dynamic system and remain deeply dependent on its conditions. At the same time there's no denying that we can affect both our local conditions and the system as a whole.
On the face of it, this appears to present us with the two extremes: We can strive to interact with our external environment in as close to the same manner as worked twenty thousand years ago. Or we can seek different ways of engaging with it.
To the degree that we choose the first, we throw up our hands at the thought of out thinking millions of years of evolution. Uncountable trillions of calculations were involved in the formation of our bodies and ecology. Granted, the Earth isn't finished processing through all the fluid interactions of its scummy crust --and when it is, there will be nothing left-- but, in the short term, it's certainly amenable to assume that enough of the overarching patterns of equilibrium involved in our upkeep will be maintained for a few dozen more millennia. ...Provided we continue to participate in roughly the same manner.
The second option, deviation, is, at least evolutionarily, a great tactic. But the most efficient processes of evolution take steps inversely proportional to the evolving structure's size. The greater the trial, the greater the error. Large scale structures have more net components involved and thus more points of interaction with the external dynamic system. A single misstep has larger consequences.
The best way to sneak around this dangerous process of physical trial and error is conceptual modeling. We can think through possible changes to way we interact with the world. We simplify perceptions into cognitive structures and then allow them to evolve against one another in our minds. The resulting successful structures we then translate back into external form.
This is technology.
It's the process of how we choose to arrange our interactions with the material world.
Problem is, the greater the abstraction involved the greater the imperfection. Symbolic representations diverge from material behavior as, by nature of their comparative simplicity, they cannot calculate every interaction in a fluid system. 'Chaotic' behavior thus emerges as a phantom remainder, left behind to torment the carefully calculated and brittle structures we so proudly abstracted.
It's one thing when it results in a snapped vine rope, it's quite another when the structure at hand coats the entire Earth. But, irregardless of degree, in every technological channel we might use to interact with the material world, whether it be through our traditional biological bodies, adopted behavioral patterns, symbolic logic, mechanical tools, or agglomerate ecosystem, our ultimate choice is between fluidly integrated structures and clunky or tractionless structures.
This is the greater truth. Our choices are ultimately a matter of dynamics. Rather than a choice between two sets of patterns, "technology" and "non-technology," every manner of interaction with the world can be seen as a kind of technology. At heart, it's their efficiency in providing the most fluid contact with the world that's really of value.
An Anti-Primitivist Essay
We exist immersed within a dynamic system and remain deeply dependent on its conditions. At the same time there's no denying that we can affect both our local conditions and the system as a whole.
On the face of it, this appears to present us with the two extremes: We can strive to interact with our external environment in as close to the same manner as worked twenty thousand years ago. Or we can seek different ways of engaging with it.
To the degree that we choose the first, we throw up our hands at the thought of out thinking millions of years of evolution. Uncountable trillions of calculations were involved in the formation of our bodies and ecology. Granted, the Earth isn't finished processing through all the fluid interactions of its scummy crust --and when it is, there will be nothing left-- but, in the short term, it's certainly amenable to assume that enough of the overarching patterns of equilibrium involved in our upkeep will be maintained for a few dozen more millennia. ...Provided we continue to participate in roughly the same manner.
The second option, deviation, is, at least evolutionarily, a great tactic. But the most efficient processes of evolution take steps inversely proportional to the evolving structure's size. The greater the trial, the greater the error. Large scale structures have more net components involved and thus more points of interaction with the external dynamic system. A single misstep has larger consequences.
The best way to sneak around this dangerous process of physical trial and error is conceptual modeling. We can think through possible changes to way we interact with the world. We simplify perceptions into cognitive structures and then allow them to evolve against one another in our minds. The resulting successful structures we then translate back into external form.
This is technology.
It's the process of how we choose to arrange our interactions with the material world.
Problem is, the greater the abstraction involved the greater the imperfection. Symbolic representations diverge from material behavior as, by nature of their comparative simplicity, they cannot calculate every interaction in a fluid system. 'Chaotic' behavior thus emerges as a phantom remainder, left behind to torment the carefully calculated and brittle structures we so proudly abstracted.
It's one thing when it results in a snapped vine rope, it's quite another when the structure at hand coats the entire Earth. But, irregardless of degree, in every technological channel we might use to interact with the material world, whether it be through our traditional biological bodies, adopted behavioral patterns, symbolic logic, mechanical tools, or agglomerate ecosystem, our ultimate choice is between fluidly integrated structures and clunky or tractionless structures.
This is the greater truth. Our choices are ultimately a matter of dynamics. Rather than a choice between two sets of patterns, "technology" and "non-technology," every manner of interaction with the world can be seen as a kind of technology. At heart, it's their efficiency in providing the most fluid contact with the world that's really of value.
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