No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the author.
The Technological Singularity as the Emergence of a Collective Consciousness: An Anthropological Perspective
Abstract
The technological singularity is popularly envisioned as a point in time when (a) an explosion of growth in artificial intelligence (AI) leads to machines becoming smarter than humans in every capacity, even gaining consciousness in the process; or (b) humans become so integrated with AI that we could no longer be called human in the traditional sense. This article argues that the technological singularity does not represent a point in time but a process in the ongoing construction of a collective consciousness. Innovations from the earliest graphic representations to the present reduced the time it took to transmit information, reducing the cognitive space between individuals. The steady pace of innovations ultimately led to the communications satellite, fast-tracking this collective consciousness. The development of AI in the late 1960s has been the latest innovation in this process, increasing the speed of information while allowing individuals to shape events as they happen.
... Suponiendo una vida media de 60 años y actividad cerebral constante, la "computación húmeda" total sería del orden de ~10 31 a 10 33 operaciones (exaFLOP-años acumulados). Sin embargo, esta aproximación ignora aspectos cualitativos como creatividad, emociones o conciencia (O'Lemmon, 2020). ...
La cuantificación de la capacidad cognitiva colectiva de la humanidad, entendida a través de lentes computacionales y no deterministas, plantea un desafío multidimensional que trasciende las métricas tradicionales de procesamiento de información. Al analizar la "computación húmeda" humana-equiparando sinapsis a operaciones lógicas-se estima un rango histórico de ~10 31 a 10 33 operaciones acumuladas, aunque esta aproximación falla en capturar cualidades emergentes como creatividad o conciencia. Para superar este reduccionismo, se propone la Unidad Integrada de Mente Humana (UIMH), un constructo teórico que integra factores deterministas (plasticidad neuronal, razonamiento estructurado) y no deterministas (serendipia, intuición contextual), ponderados por influencias sociohistóricas como la colaboración y el acceso al conocimiento (Tononi, 2012). Este modelo sugiere que el desarrollo humano surge de una interacción dinámica entre patrones predecibles (transmisión cultural, avances tecnológicos metódicos) y aleatoriedad productiva (innovaciones disruptivas, arte), donde la conectividad social actúa como multiplicador de la UIMH colectiva. Sin embargo, la subjetividad en la valoración de contribuciones individuales y las variables éticas-como la distribución desigual de oportunidades-revelan limitaciones inherentes a cualquier métrica universal, enfatizando que la mente humana es un sistema adaptativo, no lineal y profundamente interdependiente.
... La posibilidad de la singularidad cambia esta tendencia. La singularidad tecnológica se concibe popularmente como un momento en el que una explosión de crecimiento de la inteligencia artificial (IA) lleva a las máquinas a ser más inteligentes que los humanos en todas las capacidades, incluso adquiriendo conciencia en el proceso, o provocando que los humanos se integren tanto con la IA que ya no se les podría llamar humanos en el sentido tradicional (O'Lemmon, 2020). La transición de la tecnología de IA actual a una AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) es ya una opción factible para cada vez más investigadores (Hutson, 2023). ...
Artificial Intelligence is a trend. The launch of ChatGPT has popularized the phenomenon globally, raising new suspicions about the risks and threats posed by this metatechnology to the human species. The objective of this research is to contextualize and synthesize the threats of artificial intelligence based on a review of the scientific literature, providing a historical perspective. In the results, five aspects stand out as concrete contemporary threats: bias, hallucinations, synthetic knowledge, malicious use and aggravation of contemporary crises. The main underlying threat arises, however, from the combination of curiosity, ambition and ignorance. In the race for technological development, there is an opacity in what is going on in the processes of synthetic electronic intelligence that no one is able to fully understand. Moreover, the articles analyzed point to a singu-larity sponsored by a conception of exponential growth and improvement, with a growing protagonism of technology that displaces the principles of humanism. A question could be raised: are we already entering a new Transhuman Age?
... В то же время целесообразно учитывать как позитивные, так и негативные элементы глобальной цифровизации общества. В частности, предвидеть проблему технологической сингулярности и формировать гибкие производственные решения (Meade & Islam, 2006;O'Lemmon, 2020). ...
... R.1 The integrator role of the biological and technological interaction (Matthew, 2020); R.2 The master's role in the interaction with the artificial intelligence (Upchurch, 2018); (Magee et al., 2011); R.4 The slave's role in the interaction with the artificial intelligence (Chitty, 2017;Turchin, 2018); R.5 The difficulty to identify a role (Goode, 2018). ...
ABSTRACT
The main purpose of this work is to achieve a very clear picture of the expected societal and economical digital transformations as a result of the manifestation of technological singularity (TS) scenarios. Thus, we aim to identify scenarios of manifestation of the technological singularity, to delineate the assumed roles of the humanity in the interaction with the artificial intelligence (AI) and to clarify the influence of some TS scenarios on the roles of the humanity in the interaction with the artificial intelligence. In order to achieve this goal, we used as a research method, the questionnaire addressed to the experts of the society and technology from different academic fields in Romania, the survey being also an associated tool. The results of the research confirm that the humanity wants to have an intermediary role between the biological and the technological and to consolidate its role as a master of the interaction with the artificial intelligence technology against the accelerated manifestation of technological singularity in society and technology background scenarios.
Our work is original meaning that not only it statistically substantiates scenarios, roles and influences the scenarios upon the roles but also it certifies the truths about the relationship between the man and the technology in the future societal context.
Quantifying humanity's collective cognitive capacity, understood through computational and non-deterministic lenses, poses a multidimensional challenge that transcends traditional information processing metrics. Analysing human "wet computing"-equating synapses to logical operations-estimates a historical range of ~10 31 to 10 33 cumulative operations, although this approach fails to capture emergent qualities such as creativity or consciousness. To overcome this reductionism, the Integrated Unit of Human Mind (UIMH) is proposed, a theoretical construct that integrates deterministic (neural plasticity, structured reasoning) and non-deterministic (serendipity, contextual intuition) factors, weighted by sociohistorical influences such as collaboration and access to knowledge (Tononi, 2012). This model suggests that human development emerges from a dynamic interplay between predictable patterns (cultural transmission, methodical technological advances) and productive randomness (disruptive innovations, art), where social connectivity acts as a multiplier of collective UIMH. However, subjectivity in valuing individual contributions and ethical variables-such as the unequal distribution of opportunities-reveal inherent limitations to any universal metric, emphasising that the human mind is an adaptive, non-linear and deeply interdependent system.
With the understanding that art and technology continue to experience a (rapidly escalating) historical rapprochement, but also with the understanding that our comprehension of art and technology has tended to be constrained by scientific rigour and calculative thinking by one side, or has tended to change to the extreme from the lyrical: the objective of this article is to provide a reflective look for artists, humanists, scientists, and engineers to consider these developments from the broader perspective they deserve, while maintaining a focus on what should be the emerging core of this topic; the relationship between art, technology, and science. The state of the art in mechatronics and computing today is such that we can now begin to speak comfortably of the machine as artists, and we can begin to hope, too, that an aesthetic sensibility on the part of the machine might help generate an intelligent, more friendly, and responsive machine agency overall. The principle of the inhuman emphasises that the questions of ontology are not questions of being as subject, of being as consciousness, of being as Dasein, of being as body, of being as language, of being as human, or of being as power, but of being as being. Finally, the ontological principle hypothesizes that all beings are ontologically on an equal footing or that all are to the extent that they make a difference. However, until now not much has been said about "algorithmic entities". From the above, it is clear that there are still many unanswered questions, for example: How to raise the question of techno-diversity when intellectuals yearn for a general artificial intelligence? We must go back to history to orient ourselves in our current situation with a sense of distance. Will it be possible to find strategies to free ourselves from this apocalyptic end of technological singularity and reopen the question of the creative future in machines in relation to humans?
The history of the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) serves as a crucial lens through which we can understand the profound nature, trajectory and scope of the ongoing technological and digital revolution that is intricately shaping our everyday lives. Delving into this history enables us to analyse and explicate the complex problems people face, while also discerning patterns within the technological upheaval accelerated by AI and its transformative values, which are reshaping societies, states and individuals alike.
In their efforts to dissuade Africans from engaging fruitfully on matters of design, including design anthropology, colonialists dismissed the indigenes as only capable of designing witchcraft and sorcery for which they were sadly famed in colonial anthropology. Arguing that twenty-first century African universities need to include design anthropology in the curriculum, this paper contends that the future of anthropology, and of Africa, lies in design as is evident in discourses and practices on designer babies, designer humanoid sex robots, industrial robots, designer robotic spouses, synthetic biology, Artificial Intelligence, human enhancements, nanofabrication, biohacking, gene and genome editing, reverse engineering and rewiring humans, gene and genome deletion, social designs and so on. Drawing on autoethnography and extensive literature review, the paper argues that design anthropology is increasingly becoming relevant in a world that is rethinking modernist designs which are at the core of the Anthropocene. Put differently, design anthropology enables [African] graduates to engage with contemporary, empirical issues of design in a twenty-first-century world where the discipline can only survive by shifting focus from an obsession with sterile discourses about, inter alia, the past and present of African witchcraft, culture, society and sorcery. ARTICLE HISTORY
The growth of technology is developing rapidly and cannot be controlled or reversed. The "Society 5.0 revolution becomes an ideal concept for various changes in human lifestyle. Notably, developments in the field of science, particularly in biology and medicine, have caused massive growth in bioinformatics and brain-computer interfaces. However, these developments have both positive and negative effects, as technology could become singular with human life, and there is still limited adaptation in Indonesia. This study aims to review the development of technology and the application of bioinformatics, brain-computer interfaces, and AIoT to enhance scientific knowledge and understanding, as well as community acceptance, to accelerate the Society 5.0 revolution in Indonesia. The descriptive analysis method is used to analyze qualitative data collected from sources such as books, journals, articles, and other online sources that discuss the research topic. Content analysis is a way to uncover information from qualitative data in articles and journals. The development of technology aimed at singularity also aims to develop many sciences, such as bioinformatics and brain-computer interfaces, which have already been applied as breakthroughs to solve some difficult or even impossible problems before. Despite its shortcomings, many positive effects can be applied to Indonesian society. Pertumbuhan teknologi berkembang sangat cepat, tidak bisa dikendalikan maupun dikembalikan. Revolusi Society 5.0 menjadi konsep yang ideal untuk berbagai perubahan cara hidup manusia. Tidak luput, salah satunya perkembangan pada bidang ilmu sains khususnya biologi juga bidang medis menyebabkan bioinformatika dan antarmuka otak-komputer berkembang secara masif. Namun, perkembangan itu memiliki banyak pengaruh baik secara positif maupun negatif dimana teknologi bisa saja menjadi singular dengan kehidupan dan manusia, juga belum banyaknya adaptasi di Indonesia. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mereviu perkembangan teknologi dan pengaplikasian bioinformatika, antarmuka otak-komputer, juga AIoT untuk perkembangan keilmuan dan peningkatan pengetahuan, pemahaman, dan penerimaan pada masyarakat agar percepatan revolusi society 5.0 di Indonesia semakin baik dan cepat. Metode Deksriptif Analisis digunakan untuk menganalisis data kualitatif yang dikumpulkan dari sumber berupa buku kumpulan jurnal yang dibukukan, jurnal, artikel, dan sumber secara daring lainnya yang membahas topik penelitian. Analisis Isi merupakan cara untuk menguak informasi dari data-data kualitatif di dalam artikel & jurnal. Perkembangan teknologi yang mengarah ke singular juga bertujuan untuk mengembangkan banyak ilmu seperti bioinformatika juga antarmuka otak-komputer sudah banyak diaplikasikan karena menjadi terobosan beberapa masalah yang sulit bahkan tidak mungkin sebelumnya, tidak luput dari kekurangan, banyaknya efek positif dapat diterapkan di kehidupan masyarakat Indonesia.
Singularitas teknologi yang diprediksi akan terjadi tahun 2045, bersamaan dengan titik waktu generasi emas, merupakan peristiwa adanya teknologi supercerdas AGI yang mempunyai kemampuan untuk memperbaiki, mengembangkan, dan menciptakan diri-sendiri. Kemampuan supercerdas yang melampui kecerdasan manusia, menyebabkan manusia akan kehilangan kemanusiaannya (terjadinya post-human atau dehumanisasi). Filsafat pendidikan yang merupakan pemikiran radikal terhadap upaya-upaya optimalisasi kualitas hidup dan kehidupan mempunyai tanggungjawab moral, maupun nilai dan etika untuk mengkaji peristiwa singularitas teknologi. Dengan menggunakan metode reviu literatur, diharapkan diperoleh gambaran lebih jelas tentang dampak peristiwa tersebut agar dapat diantisipasi sejak awal melalui pendidikan. Kesimpulan yang diperoleh dari kajian literatur diperoleh bahwa (1) titik waktu tahun 2045 terjadinya singularitas teknologi yang diprediksi oleh Ray Kurzweil merupakan keniscayaan yang harus diantisipasi terutama pada generasi emas Indonesia, (2) kemanfaatan AI baik yang supercerdas atau hipercerdas dalam pendidikan, sepanjang selalu terkontrol untuk tidak tergelincir dalam dehumanisasi patut tetap dijalankan sebagai media terancang atau media dimanfaatkan, dan (3) kerterlambatan dan keterhambatan untuk aktivitas antisipasi singularitas teknologi akan mengakibatkan kerugian yang mendunia bagi seluruh umat manusia.The technological singularity that is predicted to occur in 2045, along with the golden generation time point, is an event of the existence of AGI supercerdas technology that has the ability to improve, develop, and create itself. Supercerdas abilities that exceed human intelligence, causing humans to lose their humanity (post-human or dehumanization). The philosophy of education which is a radical thought towards efforts to optimize the quality of life and life has a moral responsibility to examine the events of technological singularities. By using the method of review literature, it is expected to get a clearer picture about the impact of the event so that it can be anticipated from the beginning through education. The conclusion obtained from the literature study obtained that (1) the time point in 2045 the occurrence of technological singularities predicted by Ray Kurzweil is an inevitability that must be anticipated especially in the future. (2) the expediency of AI, whether supercer smart or hypercerdas in education, as long as it is always controlled not to slip in dehumanization should still be carried out as a designed medium or media utilized, and (3) slowness and inhibition for anticipatory activities of technological singularity will result in worldwide losses for all mankind.
In the natural world, Swarm Intelligence (SI) is a commonly occurring process in which biological groups amplify their collective intelligence by forming closed-loop systems. It is well known in schools of fish, flocks of bird, and swarms of bees. In recent years, new AI technologies have enabled networked human groups to form systems modeled after natural swarms. Known as Artificial Swarm Intelligence (ASI), the technique has been shown to amplify the effective intelligence of human groups. This study compares the predictive ability of ASI systems against large betting markets when forecasting sporting events. Groups of average sports fans were tasked with predicting the outcome of 200 hockey games (10 games per week for 20 weeks) in the NHL. The expected win rate for Vegas favorites was 62% across the 200 games based on the published odds. The ASI system achieved a win rate of 85%. The probability that the system outperformed Vegas by chance was extremely low (p = 0.0057), indicating a significant result. In addition, researchers compared the winnings from two betting models - one that wagered weekly on the Vegas favorite, and one that wagered weekly on the ASI favorite. At the end of 20 weeks, the Vegas model generated a 41% financial loss, while the ASI model generated a 170% financial gain.
The aim of this work is to analyze the constitution of a new collective subject thanks to wearable computers. Wearable computers are emerging technologies which are supposed to become pervasively used in the near future. They are devices designed to be on us every single moment of our life and to capture every experience we have. Therefore, we need to be prepared to such intrusive devices and to analyze potential effect they will have on us and our society. Thanks to a phenomenological and postphenomenological analysis, we will show how these technologies are able to generate a new collective subject with its different collective needs and appetites by merging the living body of many subjects into one. The world becomes dwelled by these new collective subjects, and we will feed their own peculiar needs.
Television is most widespread medium of communication, having various implications in society. Nature of impact may be viewed positive or negative, that all depends on TV content. Purpose of this research study is to analyze its positive role in society, in the awareness of women rights among women. Dominant religion in District Naushahro Feroze is Islam; Islam is that religion which assures all kinds of rights to women. Not only religion but state also guarantees political, socio-cultural, economic and political rights to women. In spite of that women have been most sufferers and deprived of all kinds of rights. Development of women folk depends on their education, economic independency, political and social awareness and says in decision making. That is only possible when they would be aware of their rights. TV can play vital role in the empowerment of women by informing and educating them. This research has confirmed the impact of watching television on awareness of women rights.
This essay investigates the recent Singularity fictions of Robert J. Sawyer and Adam Roberts. More specifically, it explores how these science fictions—Sawyer's WWW trilogy and Roberts's New Model Army—are motivated by very different attitudes towards the future. These respective attitudes, I will argue, are in turn shaped by competing ways of understanding the relationship between democracy and media technology.
Quorum sensing is used in many biological systems to increase decision accuracy. In quorum sensing, the probability that an individual adopts a behavior is a nonlinear function of the number of other individuals adopting this behavior. From an optimal decision-making perspective, individuals should adjust their quorum threshold to the particulars of the decision problem. Recent work predicts that a key factor here is the quality of social information. In particular, it is predicted that individuals should adjust their quorum thresholds such that it lies in between the average true and false positive rate of the other group members. We here test this prediction with a predator detection experiment. First, human groups observed a group of animals (projected on a white screen) in which a predator was present or absent, and each individual made an independent decision to escape or not. Second, individuals received social information on the decisions of their group members, after which individuals decided again. This social information, however, did not represent their own decisions but consisted of responses that either came from a high-performing group (i.e., many individuals detecting the predator) or from a low-performing group (i.e., few individuals detecting the predator). We found that individuals adaptively adjust their quorum threshold to the quality of the social information: when receiving social information from high-performing groups, individuals employed higher quorum thresholds than when receiving information from low-performing groups. Our study demonstrates that humans can quickly evaluate the quality of publicly available information and adaptively adjust their decision rules.
In 1951 a man could walk inside a computer. By 2010, a computer cluster with millions of processors will have expanded to building size. In this new paper Gordon Bell explains the history of the computing industry, positing a general theory ("Bell's Law) for the creation, evolution, and death of computer classes since 1951. Using the exponential transistor density increases forecast by Moore's Law in 1965 and 1975 as the principal basis for the life cycle of computer classes after the microprocessor was introduced in 1971, he predicts that the powerful microprocessor will be the basis for nearly all computer classes in 2010, from personal computers and servers costing a few thousand dollars to scalable servers costing a few hundred million dollars. Soon afterward, billions of cell phones for personal computing, and tens of billions of wireless sensor nets will unwire and interconnect everything.
The role and impact of satellite television in the recent national development of India is explored from four metatheoretical viewpoints: the utopian view that technology is intrinsically good for humankind, the dystopian view that technology is an unmitigated curse, the neutral view that technology per se has no important effects on society, and the contingency view that the potentially desirable and undesirable impacts of a technology are differentially determined by the context in which the technology is introduced at a particular time. The contingency viewpoint is stressed and used to analyze the Kheda experimental communication project in rural India.
A brain-to-brain interface (BTBI) enabled a real-time transfer of behaviorally meaningful sensorimotor information between the brains of two rats. In this BTBI, an "encoder" rat performed sensorimotor tasks that required it to select from two choices of tactile or visual stimuli. While the encoder rat performed the task, samples of its cortical activity were transmitted to matching cortical areas of a "decoder" rat using intracortical microstimulation (ICMS). The decoder rat learned to make similar behavioral selections, guided solely by the information provided by the encoder rat's brain. These results demonstrated that a complex system was formed by coupling the animals' brains, suggesting that BTBIs can enable dyads or networks of animal's brains to exchange, process, and store information and, hence, serve as the basis for studies of novel types of social interaction and for biological computing devices.
Group-living animals have to make trade-offs to reach consensus and travel together. We investigated the recruitment processes underpinning decision-making at departure in a group of 20 female domestic geese (Anser domesticus) kept in semi-free-range conditions. Two observers continuously videotaped the behaviours of the birds. Data were analyzed using multiple regression analyses. We found that decision-making was a continuous and distributed process. Departure was preceded by an increase in the arousal state of group members and their initial orientation influenced recruitment. Patterns of group movement could be predicted from the behaviours of individuals before departure. Individuals' locations, moves and signals could act as passive or communicative cues. A higher number of vocalisations and arousal behaviours led to a larger number of individuals recruited. Some individuals were more efficient than others in recruiting followers but any geese could initiate a movement. First movers recruited a higher number of mates when they had a greater number of neighbours. Not only the first mover but also the behaviours of the second and third movers prompted further individuals to follow. There was no evidence that geese were able to intentionally recruit others, rather they synchronized and adjusted each other's motives until reaching a consensus.
The term “swarm” has been applied to many systems (in biology, engineering, computation, etc.) as they have some of the qualities
that the English-language term “swarm” denotes. With the growth of the various area of “swarm” research, the “swarm” terminology
has become somewhat confusing. In this paper, we reflect on this terminology to help clarify its association with various
robotic concepts.
The roots of swarm intelligence are deeply embedded in the biological study of self-organized behaviors in social insects. From the routing of traffic in telecommunication networks to the design of control algorithms for groups of autonomous robots, the collective behaviors of these animals have inspired many of the foundational works in this emerging research field. For the first issue of this journal dedicated to swarm intelligence, we review the main biological principles that underlie the organization of insects' colonies. We begin with some reminders about the decentralized nature of such systems and we describe the un- derlying mechanisms of complex collective behaviors of social insects, from the concept of stigmergy to the theory of self-organization in biological systems. We emphasize in partic- ular the role of interactions and the importance of bifurcations that appear in the collective output of the colony when some of the system's parameters change. We then propose to categorize the collective behaviors displayed by insect colonies according to four functions that emerge at the level of the colony and that organize its global behavior. Finally, we ad- dress the role of modulations of individual behaviors by disturbances (either environmental or internal to the colony) in the overall flexibility of insect colonies. We conclude that fu- ture studies about self-organized biological behaviors should investigate such modulations to better understand how insect colonies adapt to uncertain worlds.
A bstract
This work shows that the modular organization of voluntary open source software (OSS) production, whereby programmers supply effort of their accord, capitalizes more on division than on specialization of labor. This is so because voluntary OSS production is characterized by an organizational learning process that dominates the individual one. Organizational learning reveals production choices that would otherwise remain unknown, thereby increasing productivity and indirectly reinforcing incentives to undertake collective problem solving.
Increased competition and shrinking budgets have forced public service broadcasters around the world to reconsider their role. Doordarshan, India's public service television network, shares the problems faced by its counterparts in more developed countries. Although it continues to enjoy the luxury of being the only television network broadcasting its programs from within national boundaries, it has had to change its policies and programming to compete with foreign television channels including Murdoch's Star TV. However, it is the Indian audience that has benefited most from this competition from the skies in the form of improved quality and quantity of programs. This paper reports on an audience survey carried out in India earlier this year to gauge television viewers' perception of these benefits. The paper also gives background on the developments in the television industry in India.
Brian Hayes discusses how birds and bird-watchers compute the behavior of a flock on the wing. The new data suggest some refinements to the algorithms that are thought to govern the birds' movements. The three-dimensional reconstructions have also brought some surprises about the overall shape and structure of the flocks, and show that the birds' movements are even more delicately coordinated than casual observation would suggest. A more democratic vision of flock governance was proposed early in the 20th century by Edmund Selous, an intrepid English bird-watcher who kept careful notes on flocking behavior for more than 30 years. The key insight came not from an ornithologist but from an expert on computer graphics and animation. Craig W. Reynolds, now of Sony Computer Entertainment, wrote a program in which simulated birds gave a convincing imitation of flocking behavior.
Conventionally, flags are explained as symbols of group solidarity that achieve force through ritual processes. Alternatively, flags may be seen as symbols with positive or negative associations derived from our experiences with physical space. While this article accepts these interpretations, it also argues that they need to be augmented. Flag meaning is not entirely a social or linguistic construction because there is a link between flag displays and our inherent predispositions to cues about social rank. Our evolved social intelligence makes us sensitive to the topographic features of flag displays that signal relationships of dominance and subordination.
This study advances recent theorizing on causality and emergence by analyzing how new activist groups create a collective sense of plausible tactics. A comparative ethnographic approach is used to observe shifts in the discussions of four fledgling activist groups. In each group, implicit discursive rules, often set off by minor comments and events, authorize some options and silence others. Although such rules emerge without deliberation or explicit decision making, they shape the group's sense of possibility into the future. This study contributes both a new understanding of the role of contingency in collective activism and a method for using ethnographic observation to locate subtle causal mechanisms in social life.
Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to make recommendations to address the four limitations of Singapore’s Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau (CPIB).
Design/methodology/approach
– The paper begins by attributing Singapore’s reputation as the least corrupt Asian country to the CPIB’s four strengths: its independence from the police; its adequate staffing and funding; its adoption of the total approach to enforcement; and its impartial enforcement of the anti-corruption laws. It then proceeds to identify the CPIB’s limitations and provides four suggestions to address these limitations.
Findings
– The sentencing of Edwin Yeo, a senior CPIB officer, to ten years’ imprisonment on 20 February 2014 for misappropriating US$1.76 million for nearly four years reveals that there were weaknesses in the CPIB’s internal controls and procurement procedures in spite of its effectiveness in curbing corruption. This paper recommends that the CPIB addresses its four limitations by strengthening its internal controls and procurement procedures; enhancing public trust and confidence by further improving its outreach to the population; improving the external oversight of its activities; and developing its in-house research capabilities.
Originality/value
– This paper will be useful for those scholars, policy-makers, and anti-corruption practitioners who are interested in how the CPIB can further enhance its effectiveness even though Singapore is perceived as the least corrupt Asian country.
Archaeology offers a unique opportunity to explore the ways humans have created, lived within, and changed their communities. Recent research indicates important theoretical distinctions in the way in which archaeologists conceive of community, and further development of nontraditional
theoretical models is necessary to improve our ability to understand communities of the past. This study offers a reconsideration of community that focuses on the incorporation of multiple spatial scales with social dynamics. Through the use of ethnographic and ethnohistoric examples, the
link between community and spatial relationships in longhouse-using tribal societies is examined. A case study of community from the Oneota tradition of the North American midcontinent is then reconsidered using insights into kinds of community situated at and affecting multiple spatial scales.
The reanalysis emphasizes the way human relationships in multiple social contexts created a multitude of spatially situated community links, and illustrates the importance of using alternative theoretical approaches.
Drawing on recent survey data, digital ethnography and comparative analysis, this article presents a critical re-appraisal of the interactive blogosphere in China and its effects on Chinese social and political life. Focused on the discursive and behaviorist trends of Chinese netizens rather than the ubiquitous information control/resistance paradigm, it argues that the Sinophone blogosphere is producing the same shallow infotainment, pernicious misinformation, and interest-based ghettos that it creates elsewhere in the world, and these more prosaic elements need to be considered alongside the Chinese internet's potential for creating new forms of civic activism and socio-political change.
Technology and Culture 43.2 (2002) 315-350
The concept of globalization encompasses a number of different meanings that reflect the diminishing importance of national boundaries and the rise of worldwide social and economic processes. Analysts of globalization have focused on such issues as the growth of transnational companies, the expansion of international trade, and the increased tension between metropolitan and local practices and cultures. A crucial element in this process of transformation has been the development and implementation of global communication technologies. The communications satellite, an essential instrument of globalization, was first developed during the late 1950s and early 1960s. The popular media theorist Marshall McLuhan articulated his concept of the "global village" during the 1960s partly in response to the potential he perceived in this new technology. Satellites, in conjunction with telephone technology and, especially, broadcasting, created possibilities for global communications, education, and propaganda.
As the earliest, and arguably most important, example of the direct application of space exploration to social problems, communications satellites played an important role in the space race, the cold war competition between the United States and the Soviet Union for dramatic achievements in the exploration and exploitation of space. The cold war involved not only a quest for military superiority but also an effort to demonstrate national preeminence in science and technology as a means of asserting global political leadership. The German-born engineer Wernher von Braun aptly summed up what was at stake for the United States in the 1960s when he argued that "we are competing for allies among the many have-not nations for whose underfed multitudes the Communist formula of life has a great appeal."
The enhancement of national prestige through technological development became especially significant with the dramatic growth in the U.S. space program after the Soviets successfully orbited the first satellite, Sputnik I, in October 1957, and then sent the first human into space, Yury Gagarin, in April 1961. Project Apollo, the American program to land a man on the moon initiated by President Kennedy soon after the Gagarin flight, symbolized the effort to turn spectacular technological achievement into a tool of both domestic and foreign policy. Government officials sought not only to use achievements in space to convince the world of the superiority of American political institutions but also to carry out a mandate to share with the public the knowledge acquired in the course of building the space program.
This article focuses on the decision by the United States during the 1960s to establish a satellite communications system open to all countries of the world. Locked in competition with the Soviet Union for both military superiority and international prestige, President Kennedy overturned the Eisenhower administration's policy of treating satellite communications as simply an extension of traditionally regulated telecommunications. Instead of allowing private communications companies, most notably the dominant communications common carrier, American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T), to set up separate systems that would likely primarily serve profitable communication routes to Europe or other major "developed" regions, the new administration decided to take the lead in establishing a single world system.
Congress passed the Communications Satellite Act of 1962 to create a unique company, Comsat, which in turn helped set up and manage the first international system, Intelsat. By the end of the decade over sixty countries belonged to Intelsat, with twenty-eight members operating fifty ground stations. The system achieved worldwide coverage in 1969, when geosynchronous satellites successfully served the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Ocean basins.
Although AT&T pioneered research in satellite communications, the geosynchronous design of the final global system was mainly based on research by another company, the Hughes Aircraft Corporation. Especially during the early years of the Kennedy administration, U.S. officials sought out designs that would offer alternatives to AT&T's plan for a system of medium-altitude, random-orbiting satellites that operators would need to track as they moved across the sky relative to a fixed ground station. Government decision makers doubted whether traditional arrangements for international communications developed by AT&T were appropriate in the context of the cold war. They feared AT&T's system was not appropriate for establishing communications service to...
Preface to this edition, by Steven Lukes Introduction to the 1984 edition, by Lewis Coser Introduction to this edition, by Steven Lukes Durkheim's Life and Work: Timeline 1858-1917 Suggestions for Further Reading Original Translator's Note The Division of Labour in Society by Emile Durkheim Preface to the First Edition (1893) Preface to the Second Edition (1902) Introduction PART I: THE FUNCTION OF THE DIVISION OF LABOUR 1. The Method of Determining This Function 2. Mechanical Solidarity, or Solidarity by Similarities 3. Solidarity Arising from the Division of Labour, or Organic Solidarity 4. Another Proof of the Preceding Theory 5. The Increasing Preponderance of Organic: Solidarity and its Consequences 6. The Increasing Preponderance of Organic: Solidarity and its Consequences (cont.) 7. Organic Solidarity and Contractual Solidarity PART II: THE CAUSES AND CONDITIONS 8. The Progress of the Division of Labour and of Happiness 9. The Causes 10. Secondary Factors 11. Secondary Factors (cont.) 12. Consequences of the Foregoing PART III: THE ABNORMAL FORMS 13. The Anomic Division of Labour 14. The Forced Division of Labour 15. Another Abnormal Form Conclusion Original Annotated Table of Contents
What happens when machines become more intelligent than humans? One view is that this event will be followed by an explosion to ever-greater levels of intelligence, as each generation of machines creates more intelligent machines in turn. This intelligence explosion is now often known as the 'singularity'.
A swarm of honeybees provides a striking example of an animal group performing a synchronized departure for a new location;
in this case, thousands of bees taking off at once to fly to a new home. However, the means by which this is achieved remain
unclear. Shortly before takeoff, one hears a crescendo of a high-pitched mechanical signal—worker piping—so we explored the
role of this signal in coordinating a swarm’s mass takeoff. Specifically, we examined whether exclusively nest site scouts
produce the worker piping signal or whether it is produced in a relay or chain reaction fashion. We found no evidence that
bees other than the scouts that have visited the swarm’s chosen nest site produce piping signals. This absence of relay communication
in piping suggests that it is a signal that only primes swarms for takeoff and that the release of takeoff is triggered by
some other signal or cue; perhaps the takeoff of bees on the swarm periphery as they reach flight temperature in response
to piping.
Certain groups of organisms are capable of improving their collective performance with experience. In a recent study, we demonstrated
that, over successive emigrations, colonies of the ant Temnothorax albipennis are able to improve their collective performance by reducing the time taken to complete an emigration (Langridge et al.,
Behav Ecol Sociobiol 56:523–529, 2004). In this paper, by recording the performance of individually marked workers during
repeated emigrations, we were able to analyse some of the ways in which time gains are achieved. We found that: (1) those
transporters that also transported in the preceding emigration began to transport earlier in the current emigration and, in
the majority of emigrations, transported more items than those transporters that had not transported in the preceding emigration;
(2) the time that elapsed before the first item was transported into the new nest reduced over successive emigrations, and
this first item was, in the majority of emigrations, carried by a transporter that had also transported in the preceding emigration;
(3) the number of adults that were transported reduced over successive emigrations. Our results strongly suggest that the
behaviour of transporters that also transported in a preceding emigration may be modified as a result of their experience
and that, consequently, their efforts in the next emigration make a major contribution to the improved performance of the
colony as a whole.
What is the problem we wish to solve when we try to construct a rational economic order? On certain familiar assumptions the answer is simple enough. If we possess all the relevant information, if we can start out from a given system of preferences, and if we command complete knowledge of available means, the problem which remains is purely one of logic. That is, the answer to the question of what is the best use of the available means is implicit in our assumptions. The conditions which the solution of this optimum problem must satisfy have been fully worked out and can be stated best in mathematical form: put at their briefest, they are that the marginal rates of substitution between any two commodities or factors must be the same in all their different uses. This, however, is emphatically not the economic problem which society faces. And the economic calculus which we have developed to solve this logical problem, though an important step toward the solution of the economic problem of society, does not yet provide an answer to it. The reason for this is that the “data” from which the economic calculus starts are never for the whole society “given” to a single mind which could work out the implications, and can never be so given. The peculiar character of the problem of a rational economic order is determined precisely by the fact that the knowledge of the circumstances of which we must make use never exists in concentrated or integrated form but solely as the dispersed bits of incomplete and frequently contradictory knowledge which all the separate individuals possess.
People attribute minds to other individuals and make inferences about those individuals' mental states to explain and predict their behavior. Little is known, however, about whether people also attribute minds to groups and believe that collectives, companies, and corporations can think, have intentions, and make plans. Even less is known about the consequences of these attributions for both groups and group members. We investigated the attribution of mind and responsibility to groups and group members, and we demonstrated that people make a trade-off: The more a group is attributed a group mind, the less members of that group are attributed individual minds. Groups that are judged to have more group mind are also judged to be more cohesive and responsible for their collective actions. These findings have important implications for how people perceive the minds of groups and group members, and for how attributions of mind influence attributions of responsibility to groups and group members.
Electronic media have unlocked a hitherto largely untapped potential for swarm intelligence (SI; generally, the realisation that group living can facilitate solving cognitive problems that go beyond the capacity of single animals) in humans with relevance for areas such as company management, prediction of elections, product development and the entertainment industry. SI is a rapidly developing topic that has become a hotbed for both innovative research and wild speculation. Here, we tie together approaches from seemingly disparate areas by means of a general definition of SI to unite SI work on both animal and human groups. Furthermore, we identify criteria that are important for SI to operate and propose areas in which further progress with SI research can be made.
Conventionally, flags are explained as symbols of group solidarity that achieve force through ritual processes. Alternatively, flags may be seen as symbols with positive or negative associations derived from our experiences with physical space. While this article accepts these interpretations, it also argues that they need to be augmented. Flag meaning is not entirely a social or linguistic construction because there is a link between flag displays and our inherent predispositions to cues about social rank. Our evolved social intelligence makes us sensitive to the topographic features of flag displays that signal relationships of dominance and subordination.
What do ants and bees have to do with business? A great deal, it turns out. Individually, social insects are only minimally intelligent, and their work together is largely self-organized and unsupervised. Yet collectively they're capable of finding highly efficient solutions to difficult problems and can adapt automatically to changing environments. Over the past 20 years, the authors and other researchers have developed rigorous mathematical models to describe this phenomenon, which has been dubbed "swarm intelligence," and they are now applying them to business. Their research has already helped several companies develop more efficient ways to schedule factory equipment, divide tasks among workers, organize people, and even plot strategy. Emulating the way ants find the shortest path to a new food supply, for example, has led researchers at Hewlett-Packard to develop software programs that can find the most efficient way to route phone traffic over a telecommunications network. South-west Airlines has used a similar model to efficiently route cargo. To allocate labor, honeybees appear to follow one simple but powerful rule--they seem to specialize in a particular activity unless they perceive an important need to perform another function. Using that model, researchers at Northwestern University have devised a system for painting trucks that can automatically adapt to changing conditions. In the future, the authors speculate, a company might structure its entire business using the principles of swarm intelligence. The result, they believe, would be the ultimate self-organizing enterprise--one that could adapt quickly and instinctively to fast-changing markets.
The history of satellite communications is reviewed, taking into account
the Communications Satellite Act of 1962, the formation of Comsat in
1963, the formation of Intelsat in 1964, and the launching of the
world's first commercial satellite, Intelsat 1, in 1965. A description
is given of the development and the current extension of the Intelsat
system. Other satellite communications systems considered include
Telesat, Westar, Satcom, Marisat, and Aerosat. Attention is given to
aspects of operational progress, technological progress, organizational
and economic progress, domestic systems, mobile systems, electronics
contributions, and system trends.
Internet as common or capture of collective intelligence. Decentralised Citizens ENgagement Technologies
- F Bria
- F Primosig
Bria, F., & Primosig, F. (2015). Internet as common or capture of
collective intelligence. Decentralised Citizens ENgagement
Technologies.
https://www.nesta.org.uk/report/internet-ascommon-or-capture-of-collective-intelligence/
El poder de las redes
- M Castells
Castells, M. (2013). El poder de las redes [The power of social
media].
Google tells Glass users not to be “creepy or rude
- B Feldman
Feldman, B. (2014, February 19). Google tells Glass users not to
be "creepy or rude." Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/
technology/archive/2014/02/google-tells-glass-users-not-becreepy-or-rude/358241/
Shifting sands: The impact of satellite TV on media in the Arab world
- D Horan
Horan, D. (2010). Shifting sands: The impact of satellite TV on
media in the Arab world. CIMA.
Social and cultural impact of satellite-based television
- T Martelanc
Martelanc, T. (1974). Social and cultural impact of satellite-based
television. UNESCO.
Human swarming and the future of collective intelligence
- L Rosenberg
Rosenberg, L. (2015, July 20). Human swarming and the future
of collective intelligence. Singularity Weblog. https://www.
singularityweblog.com/human-swarming-and-the-future-ofcollective-intelligence/
Investigation of satellite impact on the people's beliefs and attitudes (A case study: Saghez City)
- A Ghaysvandi
- F Mostafaei
Ghaysvandi, A., & Mostafaei, F. (2013). Investigation of satellite
impact on the people's beliefs and attitudes (A case study:
Saghez City). International Journal of Advanced Studies in
Humanities and Social Science, 1(2), 127-143.
The coddling of the American mind
- G Lukianoff
- H Haidt
Lukianoff, G., & Haidt, H. (2015). The coddling of the American
mind. Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/
2015/09/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/399356/
Elon Musk launches Neuralink to connect brains with computers
- R Winkler
Winkler, R. (2017, March 27). Elon Musk launches Neuralink to
connect brains with computers. New York Times. https://www.
wsj.com/articles/elon-musk-launches-neuralink-to-connectbrains-with-computers-1490642652
Reimagining the self in a distributed world
- M Ritchie
Ritchie, M. (2015). Reimagining the self in a distributed world. In
J. Brockman (Ed.), What to think about machines that think
(pp. 491-494). Harper Perennial.
A brief survey of the history of Chinese translations of the Hebrew Bible
- Y Chen
Chen, Y. (2005). A brief survey of the history of Chinese translations of the Hebrew Bible. Peking University. https://www.sblsite.org/assets/pdfs/Chen_Survey.pdf