Let's try to sketch a panorrama of means to augment autonomy.
There are parallels between three users of these means :
- nature itself, prior to manking or independently of us
- man upon nature, mainly machines
- man upon themselves.
Besides, for each aspect, there are complementary views: positive/negative (equivalently reduce/augment). And there are limitations.
- Use less matter for a given form, or operation. So the form can live longer, extend further.
- Free the being from any particular location
- Miniaturization. Moore's law. From Eniac to the tablet.
- Ascetics
More matter
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Explore and control as much as possible of the Universe, and as deeply as possible
- Augment the power of effectors
- Mystical sentiment of union with the whole world
Neg
- Make more in less time.
- Computers clock cycles
- Speed of vehicles
- Limit: relativiy. High speeds are energy costly
- Connect in real time
Pos
- Augment life duration
- Aument MTBF
- Augment perenniality of media
Autonomy is sefl-assertion, but goes along with cooperation and progress takes to complex architectures. -
That may seem quite paradoxical since "the others" are the fundamental limit of my liberty. And even if objects are more and more independent of matter, space, time and energy, they still have to share them as limited resources.
This connection could probably be illustrated if not demonstrated using formal models (automata, L).
- Specialisation, division of labor. Capitalism
- In politics, division of powers
- Identity, differenciation and specialization of machines as well as humans along with social and technical progress
- Crush colors for painting. Then you need a
- Crude oil cracking. Refining. Then you make ad hoc assemblies, e.g. for motor fuel.
- In matter, there is a limit to the cut : quanta. In signs, there are semantic limits, and the radical, non-semantic, bit
- Protect the identify of the being.
- Analysis/synthesis. Aristotle, Scholastics. Descartes. Axiomatics.
- Separate the being from the external world. The cell membrane. Within the cell, separation of the nucleus.
- Add external separations: clothes, walls, armours. Machine carters and bonnets.
- Autonomy is at the same time a danger (you are alone) and a protection (you can resist attacks with your own forces), e.g. autonomy for drones prevents their control by the enemy.
Connect
- Life is a collective process, and the higher are live levels, the higher are the communication means. Artificial life is also a collective process.
- More ane more I/O. Quantitatively. sensors/actuators, sample rate and depth, energy ranges.
- Machines are more connected than tools, would it been only for energy distribution. And complex machines are connected by networks. Complex machines have elaborate control interfaces, dashboards. Factories have congrol rooms.
- Machines were early (Sismondi, 1820's, Mumford 1967) seen as potentially part of a unique machine.
- Since machines communicate more rapidly and efficiently than humans, one could consider that humans are more and more rejected to the periphery of the dense net of connected objects. Financial FTS. As for cars, automation and connection progress hand to hand.
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One could find a echo of in the systemic construction of La bête humaine by Zola
- From protozoa to metazoa, multicellular
Architecture as a combinaion of Divide and Connect
- Trade individuality for cooperation. Unity is strength.
- More complex biological beings trade mobility and superior decision functions against enviromnent independence, they lose the autotrophy whic is natural to plants. Some (not all) superior mammals eat the flesh of the inferior ones.
- Limits: cutting is painful and glue has its costs.
- Limits: cooperation is limited in space by light speed limit. FTS demands to have facilities near to the exchange centers.
- Contradiction between identify perservation and cooperation. Altruism. Suicidal attacks.
- Even used for machines or groups, the term "organization" have a strong connotation onto life (organ/functions). The image of body is used by Esope and St Paul.
- Find proper balance between centralized and decentralized control. E.g. independent information channels between machines and the environment (autonomous perception and expression),
using self-controlled sensors and actuators
- Resonance, tuning.
- The post-modern data-base model (Azuma)-Externalize as a form of cut and glue. Franchise. Subsidiaries.
- Nest, tools, machines. Books, grammars and dictionaries. Computers. The Law
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Value analysis
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Complex behaviors, hierarchies.
4. Cycles : motors (divide) and reproduce (connect)
Motors
- The wheeel The motor. The machine.
- Mirrors, and mise en abyme.
- Blood circulation
- Life "cycle"
Reproduction.
- Sex and community
5. Signs: oppositions (paradigmatic semiology ) and assemble (syntactic semiology)
Signs use less matter and time that material exchanges. Basically, they are a division between signifier and signified, united by the sign (or more complex structures)
In a first stage, signs are a way to reduce connection costs (weight, violence). In a second stage, they become a new space.
Peirce's trilogy : symbolic, iconic, indexical. Similarly : analog/digital.
Paragdigms
Signs are systems of oppositions between themselves (Saussure)
The bit is an extreme limit. There remains no meaning in the individual bit. The totality of the meaning is syntagmatic and symbolic.
Syntax
- Language
- Language demands cooperation (codes)
Connection and architecture : codes and languages
- DNA and genetic reproduction instead of physical forces reproduction
Problems
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The gap between signifier and signifiied opens the way to approximation, uncertainty, error and deception (animal camouflage). Simulation. Uncanny valley
- The signifier has different strucdures than the signified. Connotations.
- The pain opens the way to emotional effects (art).
- From sign to reality, you must have actuators
6. Digitize. Bits and,data
Digitisation is the convergence of cut/connect and sign/control
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The binary is particularly adapted to automation, since a simple digital clodk is enough to put any level of systems in operation (maybe with synchronization issues if the parts of the machine are at some distance). Also easy for automata.
- Computer viruses
- That also allows software. Begins with tabulating machines. Seen from start (Ada).
- The semiotics doex not drills down to the bit, then does'nt say much about digital objects, in particular programming, communication protocols, data bases.
- Limits: strictly binary presentations are not adequate to human-machine communication (even less to human/human). Then, as far as technology allowed it, are rebuilt analog presentation, e.g; on dashboards. Knuth about typography. See also Bourbaki for mathematical symbols.
- Limits. Would there be a quantitative limit inherent to the binary systems (a digitgal relativity) whicheve be their materialization, beyond which uncertainty would come back. For instance by the "spontaneous" apparition of viruses.
From mineral to organic. That was the emergence of life some 4 billion years ago. It is also today a major aspect of science and convergence between technologies, as well for medicine as for information technologies.
Positively.
It is a gain in autonomy since the variety or large organic molecules offer larger spaces. And also because it introduces reproduction and current operations at a symbolic level with the DNA/RNA system.
Negatively. Organic structures are more fragile and prone to error than mineral ones (?).
From genetics to culture. The transfer begins with some animal species (birds, mammals), when the parents (mainly the mother) raise and educate their progeniture.
Positively. It widens the possiblity of transmission, extended beyond DNA and the environment, and uses symbols instead of chemical determinisms.
For humans, it is a estension beyond race and gender.
Negatively. It implies a period of dependency: parents have to educate, children acquire their autoomy only proressively.
For humans, the education time becomes enormous.
From authority to liberty. The teen age. The democracy.
Positively.
Negatively.