The Brain is Wider than the Sky -- Bryan Appleyard

Presents his new book at the RSA, with discussion from Rod Liddle. Audio

Bryan Appleyard is a bit of an anti-tech guy, though he denies it. The talk had some good quotes, and I agree with some of his concern, but he takes it too far.


Rod Liddle is a journalist

The blurb for the book reads

Drawing on his experience as an acclaimed writer on science, new technology and the arts, he charts the tantalising choices we now face and the questions we should be asking ourselves. The book is a widely informed meditation on the fast-moving technological forces of the present and how they will shape our future and define the priorities of the new machine ag

My notes/summary. I here record Mr Appleyard's rant, these are NOT MY OPINIONS

The basic insight can be put thus: A computer might soon pass the Turing test, but not because the computer is smart, but rather that the human has become dumb.

Another way: Are you a computer compliant citizen?

Another way: the key insight for the book came while working his way down a telephone answer tree, and hating how dehumanizing it was. The system was dehumanizing him, quantizing him, (accompanied by a little recorded voice saying how valuable he was).

A complex system will not respond well to the merely complicated.

Complex would be human. Hard to predict, many connections, A merely complicated system is one that exceeds working memory-- a telephone tree, for example.

All explanitory arrows point downwards. It is a one-way theory.

Then Mr. Appleyard begins talking about neuroscience. He claims neuro is the new buzzword, now that genetics turns out not to explain everything.

Science seeks the beautifully simple explanation, but this MUST be insufficient for a complex system. He is reacting to things like the neuroscience of art, as if activation in the temporal lobe is even remotely sufficient as an explanation of what the artist (or viewer) was feeling. He also attacks Steve Plinkter

The cultural shift which concerns him is the nature of our gadgets. They now know us and categorize us. Private companies which can datamine their knowledge of our web history to "know" us better than we know ourselves. The massive surveillance. Your gps constantly reporting back to Apple about your location, which is then used to sell you stuff.

The devices constantly pushing us towards short-term attention. Hard to read a long text, you just want to get to the point. But sometimes the mood is the reason you are reading, not the author's point.

And the singularity is NOT an endpoint!!! If it is, it must be hell. Because you get swallowed by a device which does not capture what it is to be human, but sucks your entire sould