The Global Cow
For more then 40 years mathematicians, computer scientists andphilosophers have been working on the problem of Artificial
Intelligence (AI).
The aim is to program computers in such a way that they showhumanlike intelligence.
Within the last 10 years there has been opened up a new field ofresearch . AI obviously has failed to reach any of its goals. Although
computers are "better" then humans in some fields ("number
crunching") their ability to interact with real life situations is very
weak and they are not even able to understand "natural language".
(The reason for this inability is the so called "knowledge
bottleneck": To be able to understand natural language a computer
should have a huge amount of context knowledge and should be able
to access this knowledge database in a way which relates to a
specific situation. But the processor power as well as
contemporary programming methods are still unable to provide this
context specific access to knowledge.
The question is if this can be seen as a problem of quantitative
computing power at all.)
Instead of keeping on to feed this real world knowledge into computersthrough human programmers computer science has
chosen a different approach lately.
Computers should "learn" real life knowledge through evolutionary
processes.
For this new branch of AI the term "Artificial Life" (AL) was coined.
The terminology of AI and AL shows how terms which are deeplyrooted in culture - very "unsharp" terms in the scientific world
view - are applyed on to the rationalist world of computers and
their "machine logic".
This would not be a problem in itself if computers were not standingfor something completely different: the world of "hard" science and
objective truth.
Computers are not only the preferred tool of hard science, they arealso its ultimate expression.
Science claims a position of priority against all other forms ofgathering knowledge.
"Culture is bad science". (Marvin Minsky "AI-Pope")
But as the examples of AI and AL show, the "objectivity" of computerscience is deeply compromised by the cultural preferences of its
protagonists. They assume that they can create "intelligence" or
"life" but are not even able to define these terms.
This dilemma deepens drasticly through the fusion of computerscience with other fields of knowledge, namely biology, evolution
theory, robotics, medicine, genetics and economic theory.
AL is based on the belief that machines can come to terms with thecomplexity of living matter and that they can not only help defining
the essence of life, but also generate life itself and, in the
case of biotechnology, manipulate it in any desired way (human
genom project and its results).
With biotechnology and AL "life" is subsumed under the notion of themachinic. Technological culture is declared as second nature.
Slowly and without the public taking notice the connotations of manyterms have changed. The DNA is called the "genetic code" thereby
suggesting that the reproduction of living cells has a strong
analogy to computer processes like storing and copying.
Artificial (manmade) and natural (grown) are no strong contradictionsany more.
This is not a bad thing in itself but is very problematic under the
conditions of a technologically powered world capitalism and the
way how this system deals with human and natural resources.
Computers are the epistemologic as well as the symbolic agents of a
worldwide controll system through feedback (cybernetics -
cyberspace).
Philosophically seen a technologically grounded "biomorphing" ofnatural and technical systems can be quite seducing. But under the
restraints of the existing economic and politic power system with
its inherent social darwinism biomorphing is a serious threat
to mankind.
It would be nice to see no contradiction any more between "machine"and "alive". But the contradiction keeps existing on another level,
that of the pragmatic living situation of human beings.
In this context a solution can not be seen in a fundamentalisticreactionary defense of "life" against the "machine", but rather vice
versa in redefining the machinic through new metaphors. The
machine is not "objective". It is a part of human culture and can be
redefined in its essence.
Therefore we propose to stop using metaphors like "artificialintelligence" or "artificial life". Biological processes should not be
tautologised with machinic metaphors.
As an alternative we propose to introduce the metaphor of the "cow"into computer science. The "cow" is an ideal metaphor for addressing
questions of information processing and for giving
computer science a new goal.
Information processing in computer networks shows a strong analogyto the metabolism of a cow.
The digestion apparatus of a cow with its rumen and its gedÉrme isamazingly similar to the approach of distributed computing.
Computing power of various resources is used via a network of
connections instead of having just one cpu.
The cow therefore is not just a metaphor for a single computerworkstation but also for worldwide computer networks like the
internet. Hence we speak about the "global cow" (referring to the
notion of "global village").
In terms of evolutionary steps the cow is well ahead of anycontemporary computer systems. As opposed to computers the cow
is an almost perfectly self containing system.
- the cow almost needs no servicing and it is able to reproduce itself
- the cow has an input/output system that really makes sense, its
user interface is much more appropriate to humans then screens,
keyboards or the "mouse"
- even after its death all its parts can be recycled and used in
various ways
But the cow is more then the sum of its parts. We should see it notonly analytically but should make the cow as a whole the vorbild
of research nin computer sciences.
The global cow is the ideal computer of the future.
The global cow helps us understanding todays computers.We can avoid scientific paradoxa and technodeterministic and
reductionist metaphors like AI or AL.
At the given level of computer technology we think that the global cowis a very useful tool for elementary progress in the working with and
the thinking about computers.
The global cow opens up new horizons for the philosophic and socialdimensions of techno sciences.
presentation at Hybrid WorkSpace, dX Kassel, mute- workshop on Technoscience, 24.08.97 <