Category — Business

I have been seriously remiss in my intellectual (and wifely) support! I haven’t even urged you to buy, read, and comment on hubby’s book – The Allure of Machinic Life: Cybernetics, Artificial Life, and the New AI (Bradford Books, MIT Press)!

Preview The Allure of Machinic Life at Google Books.

I’m a little annoyed about the title, since I preferred “The Lure of Machinic Life” to “The Allure of Machinic Life.” However, the absolutely wonderful bit on me me me in the acknowledgments almost makes up for it. The book cover is extra-special, too, because it features a suggestive artwork by our friend Joseph Nechvatal.

The book is a philosophically-minded constructive analysis that answers Heidegger’s critique of technology in subtle and completely unexpected ways. It builds on the understandings of such thinkers as Lacan, Foucault, Deleuze, Baudrillard and Kittler, but it’s also a very original tour through areas of research that haven’t been connected or critiqued from this kind of perspective. It’s worth the read if only for the interpretive history of research on (and ideas about) artificial life.

I’m biased, but I’m also a pretty good critical reader – and this book is fantastic. I think it’s been mislabeled by the marketing people, so I’m afraid that it won’t be read – and that would really be a shame.

Review
“John Johnston is to be applauded for his engaging and eminently readable assessment of the new, interdisciplinary sciences aimed at designing and building complex, life-like, intelligent machines. Cybernetics, information theory, chaos theory, artificial life, autopoiesis, connectionism, embodied autonomous agents—it’s all here!”
—Mark Bedau, Professor of Philosophy and Humanities, Reed College, and Editor-in-Chief, Artificial Life

In The Allure of Machinic Life, John Johnston examines new forms of nascent life that emerge through technical interactions within human-constructed environments—”machinic life”—in the sciences of cybernetics, artificial life, and artificial intelligence. With the development of such research initiatives as the evolution of digital organisms, computer immune systems, artificial protocells, evolutionary robotics, and swarm systems, Johnston argues, machinic life has achieved a complexity and autonomy worthy of study in its own right.

Drawing on the publications of scientists as well as a range of work in contemporary philosophy and cultural theory, but always with the primary focus on the “objects at hand”—the machines, programs, and processes that constitute machinic life—Johnston shows how they come about, how they operate, and how they are already changing. This understanding is a necessary first step, he further argues, that must precede speculation about the meaning and cultural implications of these new forms of life.

Developing the concept of the “computational assemblage” (a machine and its associated discourse) as a framework to identify both resemblances and differences in form and function, Johnston offers a conceptual history of each of the three sciences. He considers the new theory of machines proposed by cybernetics from several perspectives, including Lacanian psychoanalysis and “machinic philosophy.” He examines the history of the new science of artificial life and its relation to theories of evolution, emergence, and complex adaptive systems (as illustrated by a series of experiments carried out on various software platforms). He describes the history of artificial intelligence as a series of unfolding conceptual conflicts—decodings and recodings—leading to a “new AI” that is strongly influenced by artificial life. Finally, in examining the role played by neuroscience in several contemporary research initiatives, he shows how further success in the building of intelligent machines will most likely result from progress in our understanding of how the human brain actually works.

Language is not only a virus (grin) but also an essential bit of the block of the discourse network that co-evolves with technological change and human action to give rise to the computational assemblage; or, machinic life is always already within you (and without you) but here are some of the details.

Now – go forth and buy many copies, and tell all thine friends (and thine enemies as well) to read and discuss.

Try these too!

• Information Multiplicity: American Fiction in the Age of Media Saturation
• Literature, Media, Information Systems: Essays by Friedrich A. Kittler (Critical Voices) – (introduction, edited and translated)
• Carnival of Repetition: Gaddis’s the Recognitions and Postmodern Theory (Penn Studies in Contemporary American Fiction)
• Foucault Live: Interviews, 1961-84 – (translated)
• In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities (Semiotext(e) / Foreign Agents) – Jean Baudrillard – (translated)
• On The Line (Foreign Agents) – Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari – (translated)

In Georgia, it is always an especially wise thing to do to pay close attention to the other items on the ballot. Don’t ever be fooled by the wording, but dig into what it really means. If you know anything about state and local government here, you know enough to err on the side of caution. Here are my thoughts on the proposed amendments for this go-round.

Amendment 1 To Encourage The Preservation Of Georgia’s Forests Through A Conservation Use Property Tax Reduction Program.
Shall the Constitution of Georgia be amended so as to provide that the General Assembly by general law shall encourage the preservation, conservation, and protection of the state’s forests through the special assessment and taxation of certain forest lands and assistance grants to local government?

This is about whether Georgia can give tax breaks to those who own 200+ acres of undeveloped land. To grab the tax benefit, they have to keep the land undeveloped for 15 years. The state agrees to reimburse local governments for any lost tax revenue. My thoughts on this are mixed. I can see problems and advantages.

I’m worried that it’s really specific to the big landowners like Georgia Pacific, who would hold the forest lands in 15-year rotation, take the benefit, then clear the forest anyway. This would pay for them to do it. Note: “Ensures availability of timber to continue to fuel Georgia’s traditional forest industry as well as emerging markets such as bioenergy.”

The Georgia School Boards Association opposes it because they are worried that the Legislature will back off its commitment to help when the state budget is tight.

If it’s a matter of trust, I’d have to vote no. Things are pretty corrupt. But it’s possible that it could protect some land for at least a little while longer. If I had any real feeling that it would be closely monitored, I’d give it a cautious yes.

I’m undecided.

Amendment 2 To Authorize Local School Districts To Use Tax Funds For Community Redevelopment Purposes.
Shall the Constitution of Georgia be amended so as to authorize community redevelopment and authorize counties, municipalities, and local boards of education to use tax funds for redevelopment purposes and programs?

This is about TADs (or tax allocation districts), which would freeze the amount of property tax revenues collected, and direct revenues generated by rising property values into a fund used to pay for redevelopment projects. First of all, take a look around. This is moot. There is no fund from rising property values.

More importantly, this would permit special property taxes, including school taxes, to fund redevelopment. Translation: Use education money to benefit developers.

The Georgia Supreme Court ruled that Tax Allocation Districts were unconstitutional because they used educational funds for purposes other than education. Exactly right. This amendment would negate that. Boooo!

If developers cannot get market financing, and local governments refuse to issue general revenue bonds, then why should educational monies be used? Beyond all the obvious arguments, it seems to be that an inability to get funding for profit-development probably signals a problem with the project.

This is a no-brainer for me. No thank you. The PTA provides a big chunk of support for the school my son attends, and developers are already in a very privileged position in Georgia. I also don’t like the idea – in times like these – of government borrowings that depend on future property tax growth from an area under any kind of risky redevelopment.

Some have said that it’s the only way to get funding for things like the Atlanta Beltline project and some kind of reasonable public transit system. Bah! As far as I can tell, they just stole the I-400 toll money to build Atlantic Station, and the Olympics gave us numerous examples of where this kind of thing can go. Living here has made me very suspicious of developers. Now they want to involve school districts?

I vote no. No. NO.

Amendment 3 To Authorize The Creation Of Special Infrastructure Development Districts Providing Infrastructure To Underserved Areas.
Shall the Constitution of Georgia be amended so as to authorize the General Assembly to provide by general law for the creation and comprehensive regulation of infrastructure development districts for the provision of infrastructure as authorized by local governments?

“Infrastructure Development Districts” – IDDs are described as a “new economic tool,” and it sounds like it comes from the same people who dreamed up “tax allocation districts.” This alone is enough to make one pause. What you can’t tell from this wording is that what it’s all about is allowing local governments to to use bonds and private companies to pay for the construction and maintenance of new roads, sewers, schools or other infrastructure through bonds and private companies.

This would also allow developers to charge residents a fee/tax to pay for their infrastructure costs (sewers, bridges, water lines, roads). There is no real government oversight provision here, although there is a residential tax. My own feeling is that developers should pay for those things themselves if they don’t qualify for county/city/federal funding. They already charge residents enough, and I don’t like the idea of private taxation on top of all the other fees and expenses involved. This ends up being a form of double taxation, and there isn’t really anyone from the private side who can be held accountable to voters.

Although this is touted as a way to get funding for areas of Georgia that find funding challenging, I’ve been watching the development of neighborhoods that become little cities of their own and it hasn’t been a very good trend in terms of their tendency to privatize gain and socialize risk. There is little to no oversight, and I’ve seen some glaring conflict of interest problems. It also encourages what is already a serious problem with sprawl, and grants governmental powers to private entities.

I vote no.

Oh, and if somehow the Sunday alcohol sale issue gets to the ballot, I will vote to allow liquor sales on Sunday. Georgia is one of only three holdout states on this issue.

If you have counter-arguments, let’s hear them before Election Day.

There’s been a lot of discussion about the causes of our current financial crisis. I, for one, do not ever care to hear the Wall Street/Main Street framing again. Really, is that the best we can do? Have we no sense of language?

The “credit contraction” or “credit crunch” involved, among other things, financial institutions that were “shot through with short-termism, deceptive practices and self-dealing.” I can’t help but think that unrestrained (dare I say “unregulated”?) greed is at the root of quite a lot of what has happened.

In this regard, one thing I haven’t really heard much about lately are the predatory mortgage lending practices that have flourished under this administration. Predatory lending practices are abusive, stripping borrowers of home equity and threatening families with bankruptcy and foreclosure.

Abusive loan practices include:

• Intentionally steering you to a higher cost loan when you qualify for a lower one
• Putting you into a loan you cannot afford based on your income or assets
• Charging high interest rates and fees
• Breaking verbal promises & terms or “bait and switch” at closing (we saw this one ourselves in the difference between the “good faith estimate” and the reality of the mortgage payment amount)
• Getting inflated appraisals to loan you more than your home is worth
• Loans with balloon payments
• Coaching you to lie or be dishonest on your loan application
• Putting you into a “stated income” or “no document loan”
• Loan “flipping” or constant refinancing
• “Hard Money” lending
• Loans with payments that start low and go high (my student loan does this)
• Including prepayment penalties
• Failing to properly credit loan payments in a timely way
• Charging escrow fees when not provided by the note or deed of trust
• Issuing loan payoff statements full of inflated and improper fees

Let me tell you about the practices that have led to the ballooning of my student loan debt… but no, if I think about it I get heart palpitations and I’m already not feeling well today.

Something that seems to have made everything worse was the overturning of some regulatory safeguards. For some, the spotlight for this is on Sen. Phil Gramm, McCain campaign adviser and a lobbyist for a Swiss bank:

Eight years ago, as part of a decades-long anti-regulatory crusade, Gramm pulled a sly legislative maneuver that greased the way to the multibillion-dollar subprime meltdown. Yet has Gramm been banished from the corridors of power? Reviled as the villain who bankrupted Middle America? Hardly. Now a well-paid executive at a Swiss bank, Gramm cochairs Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign and advises the Republican candidate on economic matters. He’s been mentioned as a possible Treasury secretary should McCain win. That’s right: A guy who helped screw up the global financial system could end up in charge of US economic policy. Talk about a market failure.

I’m interested in the fact that there is very little real discussion (that makes any sense to me, anyway) about the effects of abstract speculation (gambling), or in the practices of usury (it used to be considered a sin) that surround every consumer every day.

Institutions that put too much of their working capital on the line with speculation and excessive risks went down – and shouldn’t they? But we’re so interconnected anymore that the markets have become like clusters of artificial intelligence with everything affecting everything else, so what can be done?

Paul Krugman usually has something interesting to say:

Paulson grabbed hold of the wrong end of the stick — he should have been seeking to expand bank capital, taking an ownership share in compensation, rather than trying to push up the value of toxic paper.

I just don’t know. A couple of days ago, my bank Wachovia was aquired by… Citi. Since I swore several years ago never to deal with them again, I turned to Washington Mutual (WaMu). Oops! Too late.

Meanwhile, there was the whole inflation of house prices… and then its decline.

Some are blaming immigrants. Economic crisis brings out the scapegoating impulse. Some are blaming anti-racist policies. Some are blaming poor people.

Lots of blame to go around, for sure. Blame war, blame the national deficit and the resulting increase in the mind-boggling national debt, blame corporations who send their money to Dubai after landing lucrative if wasteful and corrupt contracts (not naming names or anything), blame inflation, the average household debt, rising energy and food and healthcare costs, more productivity for less wages, the class warfare from the super-rich to the middle class…

There were a lot of people here in Atlanta that were pushed out of their homes because the neighborhood values went up, and so did their taxes. In some neighborhoods here, you could send a kid to a rather nice college for the yearly tax bill. I would like to see some figures on how that escalated in newly-gentrified neighborhoods.

There was also the optimism about jobs that led to unrealistic assessments of homeowner affordability (what happened to the 30% of your income rule?). Add to this the emergence of the professional home-flippers. I think that took a toll among the middle class.

(T)he tanking real estate market “shifted from subprime loans made to borrowers with poor credit to homeowners who had solid credit but took out exotic loans with ballooning monthly payments.” Bloomberg reported that 3 million American homeowners are holding prime (or, actually, semi-prime) “alt-A” loans (don’t ask) worth about $1 trillion, or $150 billion more than the entire outstanding subprime market. As those loans — many of which were taken on investment properties by people expecting a nice, quick turnover — started to go belly-up, a panic ensued. …That posed a risk to the mammoth and wholly unregulated market in insurance on bad loans that had grown up around these new kinds of investments. The market in what are known as “credit default swaps” is of unknown size, but it’s estimated to be worth as much as $60 trillion, most of it essentially paper backed by too little in the way of hard assets.

I’m not an economist, and I must admit that I don’t understand all the complicated workings of the financial sector. I do, however, have a very deep suspicion toward this administration, and some of the family background alone on these topics is a little chilling before you even look at the real power-players like the visible Cheney (and the less-visible ones, too).

Document uncovers details of a planned coup in the USA in 1933 by right-wing American businessmen. The coup was aimed at toppling President Franklin D Roosevelt with the help of half-a-million war veterans. The plotters, who were alleged to involve some of the most famous families in America, (owners of Heinz, Birds Eye, Goodtea, Maxwell Hse & George Bush’s Grandfather, Prescott) believed that their country should adopt the policies of Hitler and Mussolini to beat the great depression.

In light of all I know and suspect about imperial neocons and fascists in our government, I do feel pretty secure with the strategy of tracking and analyzing the flow of capital and power if you want to understand what’s happening. And, in this regard, I’m rather fond of Noam Chomsky. This is what he had to say at a recent summit on the problems of Latin America and the Caribbean:

We might also take note of the striking similarity between the structural adjustment programs imposed on the weak by the International Monetary Fund, and the huge financial bailout that is on the front pages today in the North. The US executive-director of the IMF, adopting an image from the Mafia, described the institution as “the credit community’s enforcer.” Under the rules of the Western-run international economy, investors make loans to third world tyrannies, and since the loans carry considerable risk, make enormous profits. Suppose the borrower defaults. In a capitalist economy, the lenders would incur the loss. But really existing capitalism functions quite differently. If the borrowers cannot pay the debts, then the IMF steps in to guarantee that lenders and investors are protected. The debt is transferred to the poor population of the debtor country, who never borrowed the money in the first place and gained little if anything from it. That is called “structural adjustment.” And taxpayers in the rich country, who also gained nothing from the loans, sustain the IMF through their taxes. These doctrines do not derive from economic theory; they merely reflect the distribution of decision-making power.

The designers of the international economy sternly demand that the poor accept market discipline, but they ensure that they themselves are protected from its ravages, a useful arrangement that goes back to the origins of modern industrial capitalism, and played a large role in dividing the world into rich and poor societies, the first and third worlds.

This wonderful anti-market system designed by self-proclaimed market enthusiasts is now being implemented in the United States, to deal with the very ominous crisis of financial markets. In general, markets have well-known inefficiencies. One is that transactions do not take into account the effect on others who are not party to the transaction. These so-called “externalities” can be huge. That is particularly so in the case of financial institutions. Their task is to take risks, and if well-managed, to ensure that potential losses to themselves will be covered. To themselves.

Under capitalist rules, it is not their business to consider the cost to others if their practices lead to financial crisis, as they regularly do. In economists’ terms, risk is underpriced, because systemic risk is not priced into decisions. That leads to repeated crisis, naturally. At that point, we turn to the IMF solution. The costs are transferred to the public, which had nothing to do with the risky choices but is now compelled to pay the costs – in the US, perhaps mounting to about $1 trillion right now. And of course the public has no voice in determining these outcomes, any more than poor peasants have a voice in being subjected to cruel structural adjustment programs.

A basic principle of modern state capitalism is that cost and risk are socialized, while profit is privatized. That principle extends far beyond financial institutions. Much the same is true for the entire advanced economy, which relies extensively on the dynamic state sector for innovation, for basic research and development, for procurement when purchasers are unavailable, for direct bail-outs, and in numerous other ways. These mechanisms are the domestic counterpart of imperial and neocolonial hegemony, formalized in World Trade Organization rules and the misleadingly named “free trade agreements.”

Hey, you knew I was a liberal, right?

I’m thinking about the Federal Reserve.

So, here’s a question for you: How much money is the U.S. government printing up right now? Can anyone give me a link to a chart that shows the history of that for the last ten years? I can’t find one -can you?

On Friday night, Ben had a sleepover planned and so we drove him over there and spent a little time with the adults. We’ve all been friends for about seven years now, and it’s always great to see them, but they have moved and it’s kind of a pain to get to their house. To avoid the northeast perimeter during rush hour(s), we take a back way over Windsor Parkway to Roswell Road. It’s not actually a parkway, but rather a small winding road chock-full of mcmansions and real mansions, too. Smack dab in the middle of all this there is a wee church, and the sign caught my eye (as church signs sometimes do). I’m not sure what the internal interpretation of the message might be at the church in question, but it was just the right message for me at the time:

So I unclenched my jaw and started to relax.

We went out to dinner at one of our favorite places, Woodfire Grill. We got there early enough to get a table right away.

Our waiter was a new transplant from North Dakota, here in Atlanta because of his beloved girlfriend who came to get an MA in Philosophy from Georgia State. He was absolutely charming, down to the sideburns and the groovy glasses. He answered all of our questions and, after some consultation with the chef, provided more detailed answers on a couple of items such as the origin of the littleneck clams (which sounded like closer cousins to the less edible kinds of quahogs than the soft and succulent steamers of my dreams. Anyway, the littlenecks were from the Carolinas somewhere – not for this New England gal, thank you!).

The bread basket had an assortment of soft fragrant breads, all from loaves baked on the premises. They have the best bread by far in Atlanta, and I have to remember to come back and buy some from the cafe.

Many of the menu items are from local food sources, and more of it is organic than not. It does make a difference.

There was a small taster, and then we ordered a range of “small plates” to share:

• Marinated red ace beets, sotto cenere cheese, organic truffle oil, micro celery
• Pan roasted sonoma artisan duck breast, chanterelle mushrooms, delicata squash, crushed pistachio, duck jus
• Pizzetta: house made fennel sausage, roasted peppers, san marzano tomato, fontina, parmigiano
• Their menu changes weekly, and the scallops we had are no longer on the menu. There were only a couple of them (read “two”) and I couldn’t tell you what else was on the plate, but it was yummy.

We savored every little bit. I don’t even like beets, but these were fantastic. To me, that’s the ultimate compliment to a chef – that he or she makes such a delectable dish that you enjoy food that you normally avoid.

To accompany the meal, we shared a bottle of Yering Station Pinot Noir, a very pleasant and balanced wine with a hint of cherry. It went perfectly with everything, even the scallops.

When one is fortunate enough to enjoy such a meal, happiness can be the only result (cf. Babette’s Feast). At least, that’s the case for me. Unfortunately, I observed another couple for whom that was clearly not the case. They spoke not one word to one another throughout the whole meal, and they both had that look of frigid annoyance that sends off waves of tension. I finally managed to block them out – by the third bite or so (grin).

By this time, I was in my sensual enjoyment state, which semi-automatically means that I felt a desire to step out for a cigarette. It had been several hours since my last one, and I was starting to feel the effects. I’m cutting down, but I’m not yet done with it. I asked the valet where smoking was still permitted, and he pointed me to a nearby bench. We conversed for a few minutes, and I guess I’m now to report back in one month on my progress on quitting.

Eventually, the new owner came over to the table to speak with us. We raved in praise of the food and the ambiance and the service. We weren’t kidding, either. The meal was divine in every respect. He must have enjoyed our descriptive prose, because he comp’ted us the dessert, a very small piece of dense chocolate cake, served with a bit of ice cream (We substituted vanilla for the caramel alternative). Mmm… a perfect ending.