Temes: An Emerging Third Replicator

by Susan Blackmore

All around us information seems to be multiplying at an ever increasing pace. New books are published, new designs for toasters and i-gadgets appear, new music is composed or synthesized and, perhaps above all, new content is uploaded into cyberspace. This is rather strange. We know that matter and energy cannot increase but

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Cultural Evolution: A Vehicle for Cooperative Interaction Between the Sciences and the Humanities

by: William L. Benzon

Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which humanity casts upon the present; the words which express what they understand not; the trumpets which sign to battle, and feel not what they inspire; the influence which is moved not but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged

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Can computer models help us to understand human creativity?

by Margaret Boden

Creativity and computers: what could these possibly have to do with one another? “Nothing!,” many people would say. The two are simply incompatible.”

Well, I disagree. Computers and creativity make interesting partners with respect to two different projects. One, which interests me the most, is understanding human creativity. The other is trying to produce

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Qualitative experience in machines

by William G. Lycan

Abstracted from ‘Qualitative experience in machines,’ The Digital Phoenix: How computers are changing philosophy.

1. Many people, perhaps most people, have the idea that, however problematic qualitative experience is for the case of human beings, it is a lot more so for that of machines constructed by human beings.  Few philosophers doubt that

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Contemplating Singularity

by: Timothy Lenoir

Most researchers agree that there is no reason in principle why we will not eventually develop conscious machines that rival or surpass human intelligence. If we are crossing to a new era of the posthuman, how have we gotten here? And how should we understand the process?

Cultural theorists have addressed the topic

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On Reading 300 Works of Electronic Literature: Preliminary Reflections

by Joseph Tabbi

In a panel discussion at the 1998 “Bookends” conference at SUNY Albany, Jacques Derrida spoke of Internet initiatives under way by his younger colleagues in France at the time. The first thing they would do, he said, is set up editorial boards, appoint in-house grant writers, and establish closed review processes – effectively

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Biopower, Dignity, Synthetic Anthropos

by Paul Rabinow

Whatever the terms “biopower” and “biopolitics” might mean, and they are being used in a growing number of simplistic ways, most of which bear scant relation to how Michel Foucault deployed them. Foucault’s genealogical elaboration of these terms had been conceptual, historical and non-totalizing. Above all, Foucault deployed concepts like “biopower” or “governmentality”

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Distributing/Disturbing the Chinese Room

by N. Katherine Hayles

Fifteen years ago, John Searle posed a challenge to “strong” artificial intelligence (the program to create in an artificial medium intelligence comparable to that of humans).  He confidently proclaimed his challenge would withstand the test of time, including any possible advances in computer speed, memory, and robotic appliances.  His challenge, the so-called

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Willard McCarty: Who am I computing?

by Willard McCarty

In Terrence’s Self-Tormentor the old man Chremes proclaims, “I am a human being. I consider nothing human alien to me” (homo sum, humani nil a me alienum puto) – a proclamation of magnanimity that lept out of this 2nd-century B.C. play and took on a proud, expansive life of its own. But alongside

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Do You Know What You're Doing?: follow-up

Thanks to everyone for their challenging remarks. This post contains such responses as I’ve been able to make for the posted comments; I didn’t take them up in the order posted, so I’ve italicized author names to make them easier to find.

Bommarito (like Olin) seems to find the experimental results unsurprising, given the commonplace that

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