Question Technology

Wisdom 2.0 Conference

If you're in the bay area you may be interested in the Wisdom 2.0 conference coming up at the end of April at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. It promises to be

"a one-of-a-kind event that brings together people from a variety of disciplines, including technology leaders, Zen teachers, neuroscientists, and academics to explore how we can live with deeper meaning and wisdom in our technology-rich age."

I've written a bit before about Buddhist approaches to technology and I think it can be an interesting area of thought (as it's been explored by philosopher David Loy, for example). On the other hand there's a lot of crap out there in the form of spiritual workshops, etc.

Some of the speakers for this do sound interesting...

It's $200 if you register early.

Galileo Goes To Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion

Interesting new book edited by historian Ronald L. Numbers: Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion. From the publisher's page:

If we want nonscientists and opinion-makers in the press, the lab, and the pulpit to take a fresh look at the relationship between science and religion, Ronald Numbers suggests that we must first dispense with the hoary myths that have masqueraded too long as historical truths.

Until about the 1970s, the dominant narrative in the history of science had long been that of science triumphant, and science at war with religion. But a new generation of historians both of science and of the church began to examine episodes in the history of science and religion through the values and knowledge of the actors themselves. Now Ronald Numbers has recruited the leading scholars in this new history of science to ­puncture the myths, from Galileo’s incarceration to Darwin’s deathbed conversion to Einstein’s belief in a personal God who “didn’t play dice with the universe.” The picture of science and religion at each other’s throats persists in mainstream media and scholarly journals, but each chapter in Galileo Goes to Jail shows how much we have to gain by seeing beyond the myths.

Chris Hedges on Atheism, Science, and Moral Progress

Chris Hedges's When Atheism Becomes Religion* might be of interest to readers of this blog for its critique of the scientistic thinking underlying recent books about atheism by the likes of Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens.

The book is not a defense of religion (and Hedges wrote a previous book criticizing Christian fundamentalism) but a defense of moderation. He sees these new figures as scientific utopians who have an irrational belief in moral progress and are just as dangerous as religious fundamentalists.

A quote from the last chapter:

The contemporary atheists, while many are noted scientists, are deluded products of this image-based and culturally illiterate world. They speak about religion, human progress and meaning in the impoverished language of television slogans. They play to our fears, especially of what we do not understand. Their words are sensational, fragmented and devoid of content. They appeal to our subliminal and irrational desires. They select a few facts and use them to dismiss historical, political and cultural realities. They tell us what we want to believe about ourselves. They assure us that we are good. They proclaim the violence employed in our name a virtue. They champion our ignorance as knowledge. They assure us that there is no reason to investigate other ways of being. Our way of life is the best. They indulge us in our delusional dream of human perfectibility. They tell us we will be saved by science and rationality. They tell us that humanity is moving inexorably forward. None of this is true. It defies human nature and human history. But it is what we want to believe.

*This is the title of the new paperback edition of a book published in hardcover with the too-clever title I Don't Believe in Atheists. He should have retitled his War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning while he was at it.

There's more info about Hedges at Truthdig, where he writes a column.

Googling God

I find this title amusing, though I know nothing else about the book: Googling God: Searching for a Faith You Can Believe in.

Further investigation, via Google of course, leads me to The Church of Google, a group of people who believe Google is God (or at least make this argument for the purpose of appearing clever on the internet).

It's apparently not just the kooks who think this, though.  New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman has made the same argument -- see his 2003 column Is Google God?.  Okay, maybe Friedman is a kook.  Novelist Douglas Coupland has also compared Google with God (see this Time magazine article).  Coupland may be a kook but he's a better writer than Friedman.

And one can't forget Ray Kurzweil, who has said that Google's database may evolve into a god (see this 2006 CNN Money feature that imagines four possible futures for Google, one of which is Google is God).

See also: Google image search on Google and God.

What are the True Threats to Reason?

Dan Hind writes in New Scientist:

The Enlightenment is in mortal danger from irrational forces. We know this because its self-styled defenders continually tell us so. Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins declares, in tones which make the flesh creep, that "primitive darkness is coming back".  Politician Dick Taverne warns that "the new Rome that science built is under siege by the barbarians". [...]

No one would want to deny the challenges to the Enlightenment that are posed by fundamentalist religion and the other forces of unreason. But if we consider the facts dispassionately, it becomes clear they do not deserve top billing among the enemies of free inquiry. In fact, the institutions that noisily lay claim to the enlightened inheritance - the corporation and the state - pose a much more serious, pervasive threat to reason.

Link: What are the true threats to reason? (subscription required)

The article is based on a talk that Hind gave last November, and he has posted a transcript and audio of the talk at his blog: The Threat to Reason.  That's also the name of his book, from which all of this is drawn: The Threat to Reason.  He describes it as "still the best book-length attempt to prise the Enlightenment from the grasp of Richard Dawkins, Dick Taverne and Christopher Hitchens."  Sounds like a fine endeavor.

The Politicisation of Science

Sociologist Frank Furedi has an interesting column at Spiked Online about how scientific authority is replacing religious and moral authority.  Link: The tyranny of science (via Arts & Letters Daily).

History, Digitized (and Abridged)

The NYT has a feature today on the risks of (partially) digitizing libraries.  Excerpt:

These Steinbeck artifacts are not the only important pieces of history that are at risk of disappearing or being ignored in the digital age. As more museums and archives become digital domains, and as electronic resources become the main tool for gathering information, items left behind in nondigital form, scholars and archivists say, are in danger of disappearing from the collective cultural memory, potentially leaving our historical fabric riddled with holes.

"There's an illusion being created that all the world's knowledge is on the Web, but we haven't begun to glimpse what is out there in local archives and libraries," said Edward L. Ayers, a historian and dean of the college and graduate school of arts and sciences at the University of Virginia. "Material that is not digitized risks being neglected as it would not have been in the past, virtually lost to the great majority of potential users."

Link: History, Digitized (and Abridged) - New York Times.

Listening to the Middle Majority on Stem Cells

Richard Hayes of the Center for Genetics and Society has an excellent article at Bioethics Forum about the current "policy stalemate" over biotech regulation.  In it he discusses a promising new report by Francis Fukuyama and Franco Furger.  From the introduction:

The stem cell wars of the past five years have been a divisive and unpleasant affair. At the root of this sorry situation lies the fact that the most politically influential constituencies addressing these issues occupy opposite ends of an ideological spectrum and have generally been unmotivated to seek workable compromises. On the one end are religious conservatives opposed as a matter of faith and principle to any procedures that destroy human embryos. On the other end are many scientists and patient groups, and the biotechnology industry, opposed to constraints on what they believe to be fundamental rights to research, treatments, and profits.

This polarized politics has given us the worst of all possible worlds: a policy stalemate at the federal level accompanied by a plethora of state-level stem cell funding programs lacking the sort of planning, ethical oversight, and regulation that biomedical research of such consequence requires. California's $3 billion stem cell program is the poster child of this predicament. Since its inception in 2004 it has been under fire for conflicts of interest, inadequate concern for the health and safety of women who provide eggs for stem cell research, unrepresentative policy-making bodies, and misplaced research priorities. [...]

The tragedy of this situation is that public opinion surveys consistently show that a strong majority of Americans support a morally serious middle ground regarding the new human genetic technologies. Americans are not irrevocably opposed to research involving the destruction of human embryos, but they want to make sure it is done only after alternatives have been exhausted, and with effective structures of public oversight in place. Americans want cures for diseases, but few are willing to turn the genetic future of the human species over to dismissively arrogant scientists and profit-hungry biotech boosters. Unfortunately, no organized constituencies with influence comparable to that of the religious conservatives or the research/patient/bioindustrial community exist to represent this majoritarian position in the political arena.

But this could change. Beyond Bioethics: A Proposal for Modernizing  the Regulation of Human Biotechnologies, by Francis Fukuyama and Franco Furger, could serve as a rallying point for those desiring an end to the current counterproductive policy stalemate.

Link: Bioethics Forum - A Majoritarian Proposal for Governing Human Biotechnology.

"Neutral" Websites That Aren't

Rory Litwin at Library Juice writes about Procon.org, a neutral-looking news site that claims to give you the straight dope on various controversial subjects, when in fact it's really a deceptive effort to push certain agendas.  His post begins:

Procon.org is a new set of websites claiming to promote informed citizenship by providing “both sides of the issue” in a number of topics of debate or political interest. Its pages are designed so that students will easily notice all of the indications of reliability that information literacy instructors have taught them to look for in a web page: the group’s 501(c)(3) non-profit tax status and non-partisanship is prominently located in the upper left; contact information is easy to find; it’s at a dot org domain; and it is written in cool and measured prose. And the organizing principle of the site - providing the “pros and cons” - especially invites students to trust it.

I find Procon.org’s websites dangerous for undergraduates but useful in educating librarians to be better information literacy instructors.

Spending a good chunk of time with these sites provides an object lesson in how control over the way a question is framed and control over what information gets applied to it can go a long way in determining how people answer that question. The site presents questions to students, such as “Is the United States a Christian Nation?,” provides pro- and con- statements relating to them, and lets students feel that they are answering these questions for themselves. It is what you might call “guided thinking.”

Procon.org’s claim of non-partisanship and neutrality is a deceptive strategy designed to influence students’ thinking about topics like the war in Iraq, homosexuality, the ACLU, medical marijuana, and the Pledge of Allegiance. Its presentation appears at first glance to be so neutral and harmless that I fear many librarians will be fooled by it. Certainly many students will.

Link: Library Juice - Fake Neutrality: Procon.org.

The comments to the post are worth reading as well.  They demonstrate his points -- many of the commenters can't seem to tell that the site has a bias (either that or they're just trolls trying to promote the site).

Pushing an agenda is fine, but not when you do it dishonestly to trick students and other people.  The Reader's Comments are especially disheartening (if they're real, and sadly I think most of them are).  For example,

"Thank you for your intellectual honesty and clarity. This site [Israeli-Palestinian ProCon.org] should be advertised on more traditional media so that curious members of the general public can learn. Traditional forms of news and information have let the public down by substituting salaciousness and 'infotainment' for facts and reasoned discourse."
Ralph 8/6/06

"I love your simple, precise rendition of history. It's better than going to school!"
Rose 7/14/06

"If the world would start looking at things like this pro/con way maybe people would learn to respect each others differences a little bit more."
Hazystrains 7/1/06

"I have said so often that a perfect teacher will give no clue to a student as to his personal beliefs. ProCon.org qualifies as one such teacher."
Bart 11/12/05

The irony is really too much.

I've visited this issue a bit before in reference to SourceWatch.org, who are truly unbiased and informative (or so say I -- you can judge for yourself whether it's just my lefty tendencies speaking), in comparison to ActivistCash.com, a site that looks like straight information, but is really run by a PR firm, in a previous post: Following the Money (Or Not) - Sniffing Out Corporate PR.

Update: Kamy Akhavan from ProCon.org has posted a response here and also at Library Juice.  Please read them both for another viewpoint.  Perhaps I'm just too cynical for my own good.  I admit I  haven't yet done much more than skim the ProCon sites, so if I was unfair I apologize.

One of the main reasons I'm suspicious is the choice of topics.  There are only seven, and four are medical marijuana, gays, "under God", and the ACLU.  Who besides conservatives thinks those are the most important issues facing the US today?  They're undeniably "hot button" or "wedge" issues, and maybe that's the reason ProCon thinks it's important to address them.  But simply giving prominence to a wedge issue gives some credence to it -- this is part of the political strategy.  People get upset about wedge issues largely because they're told that it's an important controversy.

For example (as I believe Rory pointed out at Library Juice), who asks "Is the ACLU good for America?" besides conservatives?  I can see now that the ACLU is a topic here because of the founder, Steven Markoff's past involvement with them, and so it's understandable that he's written about it.  So one suggestion I'd make for ProCon is to explain (or explain more prominently) the selection of topics.

The Internet Saves Tibet!

Xeni Jardin of BoingBoing has been filing a four-part multimedia extravaganza of a series from Dharamsala for NPR's Day To Day show.  It's called "Hacking the Himalayas" and it

explores how Western "hackers" are building low-cost communications networks to bring phone and Web service to displaced Tibetan refugees -- and how native peoples are trying to hold onto their culture in an interconnected world.

I'm trying to be open-minded about Xeni's journalistic skills and about the genuine benefits that the Internet will offer to exiled Tibetans, but certain passages just make me gag.

Inside the Gyuto Ramoche temple in the northern Indian city of Dharamsala, the scene is timeless, seemingly centuries old: Rows of scarlet-robed young monks from Tibet, hunched over prayer scrolls in mediation [sic].

But outside, an antenna sits on a rooftop not far away. It's one of 30 connection points in a wireless network that's bringing the Internet to this remote region where communication technology has been expensive, unreliable and hard to come by -- until now.

Praise Buddha!  There's hardly more depth to the rest of the feature, which is all written in this breathless techno-evangelist style.

At the Tibetan Children's Village, youngsters are learning "computer skills" like how to build web pages and do other things:

TCV officials envision a future where Tibetan exiles man up profitable call centers, like the ones in India's booming tech centers further south. Or e-commerce sites, selling traditional art or yak cheese online.

This is progress?  And have you heard about CD-ROMs?

Tibetan elders are also embracing technology as a way to share cultural knowledge. Sacred texts, once smuggled out of Tibet or hidden from the Chinese, are being preserved digitally. Hundreds of volumes can fit onto a handful of CD-ROMs.

Link: NPR : Hacking the Himalayas.

Mindful Technology

At the risk of alienating readers with the mention of religion and politics, I want to recommend this new book: Mindful Politics: A Buddhist Guide to Making the World a Better Place.  Yeah I know -- not another new-agey liberal screed!  I think the book's approach goes deeper than left vs. right, though.  Anyway, the blurbs pretty much speak for themselves.  See also the publisher's page.

Does religion give us any insight in discussions of science and technology, or does it just alienate?  That's a big question that I don't have time to get into right now...

I've looked in the past for what Buddhism and Buddhist thinkers have to say about technology.  There are some notable contributions -- David Loy comes to mind, and many writings on Buddhist ethics.  I think E.F. Schumacher occasionally used the terms "Buddhist economics" and Buddhist or "intermediate" technology.

Buddhism doesn't give anything approaching specific answers to today's ethical dilemmas, and there is such diversity within Buddhist philosophy that you could probably find any answer you like if you look hard enough.  But some core ideas -- compassion, mindfulness, meditation practice -- could probably serve as a sturdy foundation.  Maybe a positive theme ("mindful technology") is better than a negative one ("question technology")?

Francis Collins on Religion and Science

Geneticist Francis Collins is getting lots of publicity, and lots of flack, for his new book The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief.  There seems to be some disbelief that a scientist would try to push his faith like this.  I don't see how this is much different from some of Richard Dawkins's and Daniel Dennett's books, though.

For some of the flack, see this post over at ScienceBlogs: Neurotopia (version 2.0) : Francis Collins is Confused.

Update: Salon just published a good interview with Collins -- Salon: The Believer.  I think he and his book come across better in this interview than in previous media coverage.

Recent Reading - Suzuki, Midgley, Roszak, Coupland

This strange line-up is some of what I've been reading recently:

The David Suzuki Reader: A Lifetime of Ideas from a Leading Activist and Thinker.  Like most Canadians, I know David Suzuki best for The Nature of Things, the CBC TV show he has hosted for the past 30 years or so.  This book shows more of his environmental activist side.  Lots of folks are talking about global warming, but unlike others (I'm talking to you Al Gore), Suzuki goes deeper to the root causes -- our flawed economic system, and notions of technological progress and human superiority over nature.

The Essential Mary Midgley.  Mary Midgley is an ethics/moral philosopher who is well known in the UK as a social critic.  The main themes of her work are on human nature and ethology, on applying moral philosophy to current events, and on philosophy of science.  She writes incisively about science and its mythologies -- how science isn't just this abstract mechanical method that produces inevitable knowledge, as we're supposed to believe.  It's shaped by human concerns and beliefs that often fit the criteria of religion.

World, Beware! American Triumphalism in an Age of Terror by Theodore Roszak (buy it from the publisher, Between the Lines).  There has been a booming industry in liberal books since Bush Jr. took over, and most of them are not terribly deep or surprising.  Roszak gets beyond the trivial Bush bashing to tell what's really been happening in the past 20 years -- the neo-conservative agenda to realign the world to follow American corporate rule.  The book did not find a publisher in the US, and this first English edition was published in Canada (you can make of that fact what you will, which the blurbage encourages a little too much, I think).  So the book is couched as a warning to the rest of the world to beware of this emerging new colonialism.  This might sound like shrill, conspiracy material, but Roszak isn't a crank; he's a well-established and respected social critic.  His case here is intelligent, thoughtful, and convincing.

JPod: A Novel by Douglas Coupland.  And on a lighter note... I read this over the holiday weekend.  Despite the bad reviews, and never being attracted to a Douglas Coupland book before, I was drawn in by the subject matter -- video games and the lives of a group of cubicle computer nerds (described realistically as "mildly autistic").  This demographic is one I'm painfully familiar with.  It's a funny, quick read, and held my attention better than I expected -- no doubt because the characters are (thankfully) far more interesting than your average nerds.

Freeman Dyson on Daniel Dennett's Religion

The current issue of the New York Review of Books has a review by physicist Freeman Dyson of Daniel Dennett's newest book, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon.  The full article is available free online.  Excerpt:

Science is a particular bunch of tools that have been conspicuously successful for understanding and manipulating the material universe. Religion is another bunch of tools, giving us hints of a mental or spiritual universe that transcends the material universe. To understand religion, it is necessary to explore it from the inside, as William James explored it in The Varieties of Religious Experience. [...]

The sacred writings, the Bhagavad Gita and the Koran and the Bible, tell us more about the essence of religion than any scientific study of religious organizations. The research that Dennett advocates, using only the scientific tool kit that was designed for a different purpose, will always miss the goal. We can all agree that religion is a natural phenomenon, but nature may include many more things than we can grasp with the methods of science.

Link: The New York Review of Books: Religion from the Outside.