>>On a more practical level:
>>
>>1. Who will pay for the project [the Super-Brain] and maintain it? ...[etc.]
Francis Heylighen responds:
>Everybody interested. At the moment this seems to include almost everybody
>who has some money to spend (and who doesn't): government, firms,
>individuals, societies...
>>4. Who will maintain the individual knowledge bases?
>Whoever is willing to do the job (e.g. I am maintaining the PCP Web), or is
>appointed to do so by a higher institution (firm, library, university...).
>As the Web becomes more intelligent (i.e. turns into the super-brain) it
>will do more and more of the maintenance on its own.
>> How will you address
>>questions of reliability and validity?
>That is a more tricky question. In first instance, I would rely on natural
>selection: invalid or unreliable knowledge would lose respectability . . .
>
> . . . my brain contains lots of imprecise,
>ambiguous and outright false ideas and assumptions, but that does not stop
>me from living a relatively adequate life. The main principle is that the
>system should be able to learn from its mistakes, and to correct errors.
A few comments on the exchange represented by the above, much of which
seems to me very naive and simplistic as well as premature.
While I would agree that there is at present considerable tolerance for a
lot of experimentation in relation to an Information Highway, there will
also be a wringing out, as it were, of ventures that are not well founded.
In this regard sound values, policies and planning may be crucial.
Practical questions of program implementation belong to the level of
program administration i.e. of "how to do things right". The questions of
policy for funding agencies tend to concern "doing the right things", i.e.
what are the purposes and objectives, their feasibility and attainability.
There should not nor is there likely to be much tolerance for ambiguous
and/or false ideas which might well be clarified before proceeding to
invest resources.
So "practicality" depends upon the level of concern. In the early stages,
the practical questions for ambitious social enterprises (as opposed to
more narrowly technical thrusts), are those of political values and policy
options, not those of operational details - which can be worked out if the
planning is wise.
So I would come back to policy questions, and the values that are likely to
inform them. The problem that I am seeing with the proposal for a
Super-Brain is that, while it is technologically imaginative, little
realistic consideration is being given to societal impacts and/or a
tentative policy framework.
Why anyone accountable to others for spending public or other people's
money would choose to support such a scheme, except on the basis of a minor
experiment (which would not really appear to apply to what is envisaged) is
hard to see. People who offer to maintain things usually have some kind of
interest at stake, career-wise, political, or financial, etc.
It is hard to imagine that politicians, for whom the name of the game is to
control agendas and information sources, are likely to have confidence in
and authorize support for activities which might be coopted to an unknown
extent by politicians with differing views and values, commercial agencies
or others.
Until such factors as these, and many others, have been considered and
discussed, I think the notion of a spontaneously developing WWW Super-Brain
is technological dreaming on a grand scale. Without adequate discussion
such a scheme should hardly get off the ground, and will likely never pose
practical questions with respect to implementation.
At any rate, if there is genuine interest in this kind of technological
advance, are such factors as policies and values not worth serious
consideration?
Cheers!
Bruce B.
Bruce Buchanan