#5 - Book Murdering and Human Augmentation
Book Murdering and Human Augmentation
To those who celebrate it, happy lunar new year. A while ago, when spending some time in Korea over this period, I learned that not only the Chinese marked time in this way, so in the interest of avoiding any kind of ethnic parochialism, “lunar new year” it is.
The month of January is nearly at an end, and this newsletter is five issues old. As you might tell, I haven’t quite figured out what all this is about, but making myself write something (anything!) every week is a helpful discipline. Something overly courteous in me wishes to apologise to you, dear reader, every week, but I imagine it might be getting old. Onwards and upwards.
Confessions of a book murderer
At The Guardian, Alex Christofi writes an apologia for his habit of cutting large books into smaller chunks for easier reading. Many people have a visceral response to what he does (the photograph above shows some of his handiwork), but he counters (emphasis added):
It’s tragic when books are used as trays for a restaurant bill, or bought in bulk to give a pop of colour to someone’s interior design. But the real tragedy is that those books aren’t being read. The codex is just a mortal husk – the soul of a book is the story, and the form of words used to tell it. Authors don’t generally dream of seeing their books cellophaned in mint condition, like Star Wars memorabilia. The biggest compliment you can pay an author is to read their book, let them tell you their story – take it to heart and tell others. So I don’t like to think of myself as a book murderer. More like a gung-ho reader. And if you find one of my (short) books in your possession, you have my permission to chop it in half.
If cutting books up like this counts as book murder, then what is reading on an ebook reader other than a particularly brutal form of torture, a kind of stripping and reconstituting that takes away all dignity from its victim and leaves it as an endless, formless, spineless, immaterial series of electrons firing on a circuit? Doesn’t the e-book do significantly more violence to the book than cutting a paperback up ever could? As I look at the Kindle on my table, I catch a glimpse of the immense, uncompromising meat grinder that it is — books becoming mere words, re-formed on the screen as the need arises, in font sizes and spacings and pagination that shift according to my own tyrannical preferences.
The book is dead, long live the book. That got dark really quickly.
Human Augmentation
I came across this quote the other day from Tim O’Reilly speaking to the New York Times about recent developments in the internet.
"Q. The way most companies sell it, the Internet of Things is about gaining efficiency from putting all kinds of devices online. What is wrong with that definition?
A.The IoT is really about human augmentation. The applications are profoundly different when you have sensors and data driving the decision-making.
Q.Can you give me an example?
A. Uber is a company built around location awareness. An Uber driver is an augmented taxi driver, with real-time location awareness. An Uber passenger is an augmented passenger, who knows when the cab will show up. Uber is about eliminating slack time and worry.People would call it “IoT” if there was a driverless car, but it already is part of the IoT. You can measure, test and change things dynamically. The IoT is about the interpolation of computer hardware and software into all sorts of things"
In a real sense, that isn’t saying anything particularly new. All technology is human augmentation, in one way or another. Forks and spoons are human augmentation, which enable us to eat more efficiently and cleanly. Microwaves are human augmentation, which give us the capacity to heat food up. Cars are human augmentation, enabling us to go farther faster. Human beings, the users of technology and tools, are the most versatile creatures in the world because we can augment ourselves with so many different things to do what we need to do.
But at the same time, O’Reilly’s point is still an important one. Our technological augmentations in the past have been rather restricted both in scope and in ability. They have been task-specific and, more often than not, location specific. With the advent of the Internet of Things, however, it is likely that our augmentation will take on a ubiquitous form, ever-present in each and every item on our bodies, in our houses, our work places, our public squares. And it is likely to be ever-expanding, as more and more devices are added into this network. As this happens, we may gain a greater mastery over our environment, being able to coordinate every piece of technology around us in a manner that helps us as individuals achieve what we want to achieve.
That is the optimistic view. There are a number of ways all of this could go terribly wrong, and I think that some are more likely than not. Characterising the whole issue as one of human augmentation is an important step, however, as it brings into focus the easily-obscured truth that whatever we do with this technology, we will be intimately bound up with those choices. Our human capacities (even our capacity to be humans) will be affected whatever happens, for better or for worse.
In any event, this little exchange is a small part of my larger, abiding interest in the question of human augmentation (more on this in a future issue, I hope).
Status Board
Reading: I’ve just finished Leviathan Wakes by James SA Corey — it’s a gripping tale and got really crazy really quickly after around the middle of the book. At first, while I appreciated the story, I was a little worried that it would be a rather staid space opera, but those concerns were quickly allayed. Aliens, existential risks, intra vs interstellar expansion, political intrigue, and moral quandaries are found aplenty in this riveting book. On to the next one, Caliban’s War.
Listening: An interview with Nadia Eghbal on Venture Stories has provided some really interesting insight into her research into Open Source Software, as well as her views on the economics of creation on the internet. Also, finally catching up on Daring Fireball #274 — Gruber talking about his slipper-buying adventures was a great time.
Watching: Critical Role is now taking up more and more time, but the way I see it, as long as I only watch it instead of any other YouTube videos, I’ll still be ahead (I think).