The Global Cow
For more then 40 years mathematicians, computer scientists and

philosophers have been working on the problem of Artificial

Intelligence (AI).
The aim is to program computers in such a way that they show

humanlike intelligence.
Within the last 10 years there has been opened up a new field of

research . 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 computers

through 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 deeply

rooted 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 standing

for something completely different: the world of "hard" science and

objective truth.
Computers are not only the preferred tool of hard science, they are

also its ultimate expression.


Science claims a position of priority against all other forms of

gathering knowledge.

"Culture is bad science". (Marvin Minsky "AI-Pope")
But as the examples of AI and AL show, the "objectivity" of computer

science 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 computer

science 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 the

complexity 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 the

machinic. Technological culture is declared as second nature.


Slowly and without the public taking notice the connotations of many

terms 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 contradictions

any 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" of

natural 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 fundamentalistic

reactionary 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 "artificial

intelligence" 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 analogy

to the metabolism of a cow.
The digestion apparatus of a cow with its rumen and its gedÉrme is

amazingly 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 computer

workstation 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 any

contemporary 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 not

only 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 cow

is 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 social

dimensions of techno sciences.
presentation at Hybrid WorkSpace, dX Kassel, mute- workshop on Technoscience, 24.08.97 <