Human Intelligence Tasks

I love the concept of the Human Intelligence Task [ HIT ]. HIT is part of the Amazon Web Services. Amazon provides data storage, application serving, cloud computing, and now with HIT they are providing humans within the computers.

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Example snippet from the website:

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HITs - Human Intelligence Tasks - are individual tasks that you work on. Find HITs now. As a Mechanical Turk Worker you: Can work from home Choose your own work hours Get paid for doing good work or learn more about being a Worker

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This is progress, showing an exact line of demarcation of where the human and machine differ, and with that demarcation create a cooperative economic function involving both human and machine. The humans that design a HIT task, and the humans that accomplish a HIT task, are emblematic of a truly progressive cultural evolution.

Freedom to operate

Note: this entry is not supposed to be about military theory, but about something much larger. Also, the dialogue is neither pro-military nor pro-pacifist.

I discovered a definition of cyberspace that is worth unpacking and mash-up. Here it is:

"In light of the looming threat to U.S. cyberspace, the 2006 National Military Strategy for Cyber Operations recognized cyberspace as a warfighting domain. The cyberspace domain is characterized by the use of electronics and the electromagnetic spectrum to store, modify, and exchange data via networked systems and associated physical infrastructures. Cyberspace is primarily a man-made domain that exists across the physical domains of air, land, sea, and space. The cyberspace domain facilitates the conversion of operational planning and commander's orders into action within the physical domains. Thus, superiority in cyberspace - securing the freedom to operate - is the prerequisite to effective operations across the physical domains."

-2006 National Military Strategy for Cyber Operations

Particular phrases to isolate and mash-up are:

• Cyberspace is primarily a man-made domain that exists across the physical domains of air, land, sea, and space.

• The cyberspace domain facilitates the conversion of ... planning ... into action

• securing the freedom to operate [in cyberspace] is the prerequisite to effective operations across the physical domains

Honestly, I love these statements. They state in a short, memetically portable fashion what I see as a priori truths of contemporary Earth. I think anyone with control of their destiny has comprehended and operate with these memes. I am NOT talking about military operations, I am talking about living on Earth as a human. Everyone is in this game, including those staunchly opposed to the game's existence.

On to military theory as example of social theory for a moment. The buzz right now is 3rd generation warfare (Cold War tech and strategy such as submarines, CIA offices) and 4th generation warfare. The insurgents in Iraq are using 4GW. Not "supporting the terrorists" here, but the insurgents win battles (a suicide bombing) with less than $2000 investment using ubiquitous technology. Another key part of the "battle" is spread of information for further strengthening -they do this by posting a video of the bombing on the net as recruitment PR. The PR costs pennies.

The most advanced 4GW leader on Earth in 2008 is Henry Okah. Please read John Robb's summation of Okah here. Okah has used cell phones and email to command an army that is winning a war against oil corporation operations in Nigeria.

The juxtaposition of Okah and the DoD is worth a look. Not trying to say Okah is all good and DoD all bad, but the Okah success has something about it that generates enthusiasm. I think the Okah strengths and DoD weaknesses can be seen in these phrases:

• DoD Weakness: superiority in cyberspace (equated with ) securing the freedom to operate

• DoD Weakness: Expensive proprietary closed-source technology.

• Okah Strength: Ubiquitous technology.

• Okah Strength: Fluid labor pool along a non-unionized contract labor model. Low cost and no need for continual indoctrination.

• DoD Weakness: Labor pool along a unionized labor model. Need for constant indoctrination a drain on organizational capacity.

In the Middle Ages military power relied on rarity -only the knights had armor. Now rarity itself is a weakness, and the strong rely on the opposite -ubiquity. In the Middle Ages orthodoxy held cultures together and made their march at an enemy stronger. In the era of nation-states this morphed into allegiance to the nation's myth about itself. Now, with 4GW, there seems to be bifurcation from orthodoxy and myth believing -towards very short term allegiance.

But there is one phrase, a DoD one, that is worth special mention. Superiority in cyberspace. Note to Pentagon: the rhetorical focus on superiority is where you work on the right solutions to the wrong goal. You will work to maintain this superiority, at the cost of not winning the important battles. Superiority is somewhat synonymous with perfection, it is a fools goal. The Okah model doesn't entertain the ideal of "greatest military presence on Earth", and that is why Okah wins and you don't.

Bourgeoisie-Technologist versus Anarcho-Primitivism

Bourgeoisie-Technologists are a growing class symbiotically dependent on a global economy. These are non-elite equipped with mobility and communications, untethered to local circumstances of others, and symbiotically dependent on people not in their racial, religious, or national profile. This system methodically subordinates the natural world, constructing a world fit for machines and symbolic analysts.

Anarcho-Primitivists denounce modern technology completely. They see it as a complex system involving division of labor, resource extraction, and exploitation for the benefit of those who implement its process. They argue that the interface with and result of modern technology is always an alienated, mediated, and distorted reality. Modern technology too, like science, is seen as non-neutral. The values and goals of those who produce and control technology are believed to always be embedded within it. Modern technology is held by primitivists to be distinct from simple tools in many regards. A simple tool is considered a temporary usage of an element within our immediate surroundings used for a specific task. Tools are not viewed as involving complex systems which alienate the user from the act. Primitivists claim that implicit in technology is this separation, creating an unhealthy and mediated experience which leads to various forms of authority. Domination is said to increase every time a modern “time-saving” technology is created, as primitivists claim it necessitates the construction of more technology to support, fuel, maintain and repair the original technology. It is argued by primitivists that this leads very rapidly to the establishment of a complex technological system that seems to have an existence independent of the humans who created it. Primitivists believe that this system methodically destroys, eliminates, or subordinates the natural world, constructing a world fit only for machines.

Symbolic analysis of the corporeal world

"Symbolic analysists solve, identify, and broker problems by manipulating symbols. They simplify reality into abstract images that can be rearranged, juggled, experimented with, communicated to other specialists, and then, eventually, transformed back into reality. The manipulations are done with analytic tools, sharpened by experience. These tools may be mathematical algorithms, legal arguments, financial gimmicks, scientific principles, psychological insights about how to persuade or to amuse, systems of induction or deduction, or any other set of techniques for doing conceptual puzzles."
-The Work of Nations, Robert B. Reich, Vintage Books, New York, 1991^excerpt

Binding the above to tangible reference points is a means to avoid the cultural failures that occur when metaphysics is the reference point. Metaphysics is by definition impervious to facts, thus making it a pathological course-correcting mechanism in social systems. Cultures whose symbolic analysts are entirely metaphysical ( religious or psychological shamans ) guide the culture into a black hole of lost. Binding the corporeal to symbolic analysis is the distinction of cultures capable of progress or course correction.

All cultures have the corporeal as a reference point in their language, but not all have symbolic analysts who can move massive amounts of the material world by manipulation of symbols (example: mining engineers). Cultures without this mass moving capability are in more of a peer relationship with the biological and geological. This limitation means loss of control on a planet with cultures that use letter/number symbols or electrical-networked bits to move earth, water, air, animals, and people.

The dominance of one of these types over the other type is not rigid nor enduring. Cultures can be amorphous. Symbolic analysis of the corporeal world always dominates and succeeds, and even more so when those formerly not capable of it are encouraged to integrate into the elite skill set user group.

Me: The Mutation

This blog posting may appear as 100 per cent indulgent. I am going to talk about what I like. But the idea is not to propagate readers -you are not being asked to be like me. The focus is on two axioms:

1. No one is entirely alone in their preferences and methodologies. If I prefer, contemplate, or do something, there are others doing the same.
2. Humans have been evolving in very separate ways, grouped by continents (influenced by unique climates and landscape), and even more so in the last 5,000 years with culture (not nature) being the filter for surviving mutations.

These axioms are the a priori assumptions to keep in mind as you look at

Me: The Mutation: My Ambient Environments:

ice, mountains, and technology

rock and ice topped mountains

concrete bridges

power and communication towers

high population density (city)

high population density (remote village)

high altitude, treeless plains

big city urban core

command line interface

data link to globe

buckethead types of music

caffeine

surveillance

long tail economics

The point of listing these cognitive artifacts/biota is to press for their antithesis -all the types which do not fit on the list. Now think of all the humans that function at optimum on the antithesis list.

Those humans are of a different evolutionary track. We are genetically different.

Supporting and supplemental documentation:
The neural bases of complex tool use in humans Mesoudi, A., Whiten, A., & Laland, K. N. (2006). Towards a Unified Science of Cultural Evolution. Behav Brain Sci, 29(4), 329-347; discussion 347-383
Human-Computer Interaction: Cognitive Science, Memes and Evolution.
21st Century Public Safety

Buckethead video.

Long tail economics theory.

The Giant AI Series: The Text Machine

Supporting and supplemental documents:
http://www.edge.org/q2008/q08_11.html#oreilly

The Arc of Activity called Humanity, and Antithesis

One great arc through humanity's whole existence has been towards ever more mobility, distance from biological governance, and symbolic analysis.

No legislation can undo this iron law. No religion can control this through ethical constraints. To be human is to try to move to the next hyper-stage of mobility/anti-biology/symbolic-processing without all other humans following the same uptake.

This creates stratifications. Stratifications to the point of enslaving those who have not equally graduated to the upper limits of the arc -these stratifications are not wrong but the enslavement is.

Equality of all ways of being or equality of opportunity? That is the question that divides many progressives. My stance: Equating every strata as equal with the current upper limits of mobility/anti-biology/symbolic-processing is a mistake, a lie, and nothing to do with social justice. Being progressive is allowing all to move towards the upper limits of mobility/anti-biology/symbolic-processing.

One is not an equal within humanity's upper limits of mobility/anti-biology/symbolic-processing until one participates in its creation and maintenance.

Those who permanently oppose, or fundamentally abstain from, the upper limits of this "Arc of Human Activity" generate a unique class in the "Arc of Human Activity". An antithetical arc to the larger human enterprise, historically this class began as religious aesthetics in various cultures after the great migrations of 800 BC. Today the antithetical arc has matured, enabled by cheap, ubiquitous lethal technology and distributed informational warfare; resulting in a formidable religious aesthetic militancy.

The religious aesthetic militants, whether propagandists or violence professionals, benefit from cognitive dissonance -they oppose the classes and cultures representative of the current upper limits of mobility/anti-biology/symbolic-processing; and also use every last shred of those culture's industrial output artifacts in inventive ways to wage their opposition. This is not new, the Middle Ages had even more of this phenomenon present in wars that spanned out from Central Asia. What is new is the lethality of our portable and affordable technologies.

"The Arc of Activity called Humanity" is not going to cease, and the antithesis is always going to have practitioners. It will be interesting to see the mutations and adaptations humans are forced into through this great war of the Arc and Antithesis. Ironically, the religious aesthetic militants may push human evolution (through cultural induced evolution) to a more permanent and mechanical class difference.

We'll see.

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Forget the Frankfurt School (a compatible writing, more accessible terminology and developed critique.)

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Supporting and supplemental documents:
Terraforming War

Change is good

I am writing this for anyone who can read it. I am writing it for humans who can decode these symbols into meaning, and also for the multitude of bots that crawl the web parsing web pages looking for statistical occurrences of words in association with one another. The bots think a lot like you, e.g. if they see "hello world, I have this plain little web page viagra viagra viagra viagra that is about me" they know something suspicious is afoot.

I am not here to talk about web pages, but about us. By "us" I mean anyone that can read this web page.

Note what happened in the last two paragraphs. A filter was created ( a.k.a. a qualification ), and anything that passed through the filter was labeled. The processing, or rhetorical device, created a special class of cognitive beings. You are in this class, and there are many living things that are not.

This rhetorical device is one real instance of evolution. We "web page readers" are an exclusive class who can social network on the web, give each other paying jobs as a result ( and the pay buys food, water, and social prestige things that also function as evolutionary filters), or in very many instances mate and have offspring. That type of baby definitely came into being filtered through the first two paragraphs in my blog entry.

Human evolution is ...... I am not going to finish that statement. The statement makes a mistake of tense. "Is" should be "was". Hopefully you have seen a puddle of water that recently melted from ice (there are some humans who haven't seen this). You know it just melted, because some little bits of ice are still part of the spot of water. But you do not know the melting process exactly as it happened, including the original shape of the ice.

Like the ice changing its shape as it turns to water, we don't know the original shape of "human", nor the exact posture and way of being that was "human" along the way. The term is equifinality -there are many possible routes to our current configuration.

Human evolution has some of faster-legs-will-survive components to it. This is where we are like all in the biological realm. The entities with the better functioning parts, resulting in better functioning whole self, exploiting a niche in the surrounding environment to secure energy sources for ourselves -those entities survive to the next second in the timeline.

In the last 5,000 years the faster-legs component has taken on far less of a role. As an example, Tamerlane was not able to walk, but was leader of thousands and conquered/exterminated huge cities. He was physiologically inferior to the millions he subjugated. When you ask how Tamerlane could be is when you start exploring evolution that happens as a result of culture.

Evolution through culture is an even harder past tense to discern than physiological evolution. Right now there are people mingling and mating as a result of being in microtribes that exist in virtual worlds online, recently there was a love-triangle of NASA astronauts that got international press. My great-great-grandfather was an Irish immigrant raised with his brother in an orphanage in New York City. He and his brother fled the orphanage, with my ancestor working on the railroads and marrying a Cherokee and the brother becoming a stock trader who had a mansion in New York and San Francisco.

Babies are coming out of these processes. Then those babies are going to mutate the culture even more (e.g. James Brown and Henry Ford).

The trend in the last 5,000 years has been towards less adaptation in relation to nature, and more adaptation to the symbolic and cognitive. The gods have even changed their residence -once they inhabited every local tree and stone and now more likely are "sky gods". The sky gods are Allah and Yahweh, out away from all the daily mundane often leading their warriors on an abstract faith-based agenda on Earth. Lots of todays babies have come out of these warrior's progress, with whole portions of the planet having little or no people outside this class of family religion.

This process of filtering humanity's next generation based on symbolic and cognitive artifacts poses a dilemma for humanists. Remember the ice to water melting process, and how if you encounter it at 5:00PM you do not know exactly what it looked like at 3:00PM? Humanists worship the sanctity of humans at 3:00PM, are calling the current status at 5:00PM an outcome of social injustice, and would ideally like 6:00PM to see us progressing to something like what 3:00PM was.

The humanists are just another particular filter imposed on the present, a meta-aware systems intervention or systems disruption. The filter has little ability to deliver on producing a less exclusive society, it is merely another construct of exclusion -a church of contempt for the process that is ever more prevalent.

That process is change, and it is has no leader or cruel demagogue. It will be more fair, democratic and brilliant than what you or I could have designed with our best intentions.

Hopefully, see you in that future.

Supporting and supplemental documents:
Industrial Evolution
By BENJAMIN M. FRIEDMAN
Does natural selection favor the rise of capitalist economies?


Out of Control
Chapter 18 THE STRUCTURE OF ORGANIZED CHANGE
by Kevin Kelly


Searching for Similar Diagnosis Through DNA (new communities emerging from genetic mutations)
By AMY HARMON