distributed networked intelligence Blue lobster in Bristol RI Audubon Society aquarium. I'm thinking about networked intelligence here, the relationship between complex articulations and overall systems behavior - and how we, as humans, tend to think of intelligence as located instead in a primary organ. Image: http://www.alansondheim.org/aud31.jpg blue lobster Video: https://youtu.be/vfALP-jPGm8 Image: http://www.alansondheim.org/aud33.jpg starfish tentacles Even systems ontologies break down; given that there is a consciousness at work here, that numerous limbs and joints need local and overall articulation, we have to admit, as so many already have, that we've got intelligence wrong, that distribution creates an economy of energy and localization that's absolutely brilliant, that results in different ways of thinking, even of life and death - consider the wood-net for example, or hive behavior; think of slime-molds or the dominating micro-biomes of the human body, in fact of almost every larger organism. Move not to the grid, but to transport topologies; our singular 'I' (ipod, ipad, my--) is fundamentally diffused, and what brilliance lies there, if one only has the patience to _look._ This lobster is a case in point; arms and feeding mechanisms interlock, as if they were communities them- selves. They're not, of course; there simply may not be the Barthian _punctum_ we insist on, from the vanishing-point inherent in three-dimensional visual triangulation, to Weyl's ego-location at the origin of the Cartesian graph. Move from geometry and manifolds to rubber-sheet topologies without ontology - pure epistemologies - and then think of this in relationship, first, to the rigidity of digital protocols, and, second, to the flexibility of digital protocols, which require neither realm nor location; so much hacking, for example, is fundamentally anonymous - all that seems to exist are the networks and their dynamics. Forget our heads and brains, look without looking at the flexible and networked habitus that constitutes our very existence on the planet; if we do so we might comprehend a bit more of the intelligence around us. (One might argue that what occurs might only be a simulacrum of intelligence, certainly not of consciousness. I err on the side of consciousness. We had, for close to a year, a fresh-water crayfish in a tank with fish and plants; we observed it (sex indeterminate) for a year, and it seemed clear to us that it was capable of recognition (it could tell us apart), trans-species relationships (with one fish in particular, with us as well), learning and meta-learning in Bateson's sense (based on climbing behavior), and so forth. Recognition was mutual recognition, that much was clear; whether or not the crayfish thought us worthy of consciousness seemed almost beside the point.) - - - In case you've missed the music (we have a holiday here in the States), the new songs are at http://www.alansondheim.org/yearning1.mp3 http://www.alansondheim.org/yearning2.mp3 and http://www.alansondheim.org/cccafe.mp3 version 1 http://www.alansondheim.org/cccafe2.mp3 version 2 The lyrics are in http://www.alansondheim.org/ux.txt Thanks for listening. _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list NetBehaviour@netbehaviour.org http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
