12 Bytes: How We Got Here. Where We Might Go Next | 
pickIt's been a while since I read something by Winterson I truly love, so this was a nice change, twelve essays on technology and the future, but tying in art and philosophy, Mary Shelley and the Gilgamesh. I liked arguing with some of her finer points (I'm a reductive materialist, Winterson isn't) but the reading experience was an absolute delight. One of her points is that more artists should be creating about technology, and that I agree with.
"Hatred of the body has increased over time. Probably now in the West, in the 21st century, we hate the body more than at any other time in history." Imma have to disagree, ma'am. Somatophobia is hardly new, and I believe both medieval ascetics and the puritans hated bodies more than we do today.
Doing a lot of arguing with this book, it hits many of the reasons I studied philosophy, although I'm more of a reductive materialist than Winterson.
Aaand that's why I read Winterson even when she isn't writing fiction
"... a kind or steampunk Victoriana, where everything was massive, solid, dimensional (think railways, iron ships, factories, piping, tracks, cylinders, furnaces, metal, coal) but at the same time a thought-experiment fantasy."
Reading Winterson is nearly always a delight, and while I didn't like my last two reads by her this is as deft and elegant as ever.
pickWinterson's latest collection of essays wrestles with artificial intelligence and current technologies, posing provocative questions about where humans find ourselves today and the potentials—both utopian and dystopian—of where we can go. She also examines how women have been erased in the history of computing and AI, tracing the origins back to Mary Shelley & Ada Lovelace, and imagines a vital place for women in the future of the field. Superb.
The brain is the most complex object in the known universe. It may not even be helpful to describe it as an object. The most mysterious thing the brain ‘does‘ is what we call consciousness. What the hell is that? And yet it is fundamental to the grand human journey. But where is it located in the dark meatspace of the brain?
pickSmart, witty, feminist essays that examine technology and artificial intelligence from the viewpoints of where we are now, how we got here, and where we might go next. Intellectually galvanizing!
When I lobby for the inner life it is because it must be nurtured. Nurtured by nature and culture—the twin pillars of humanity here on earth; our connection with this planet, and with the civilizations we have created, their glories of art and architecture, of science and philosophy. We create worlds—inner and outer worlds—and we need to live in both those worlds because we are born hybrids.
As Airbnb prepares its IPO, ask yourself, what are they really selling? They are selling your bed. You will make a few quid. They will make billions.
Staring at a screen all day is bad for the body and it is bad for the inner life. The inner life, like all forms of life, needs variety—and that‘s not the same as site-surfing.
The inner life is not one thing. For some, the inner life is a spiritual experience, for others a deep connection with nature, for many, a profound affinity with the arts—books, music, pictures, theatre—and these experiences overlap and deepen each other.
Orwell‘s insight was different. We are our own worst enemy. It is humans who enslave other humans. Humans who divide life into hierarchies of who has the power and who does not. It is humans who are destroying the planet.
In 2019, a Washington Post journalist had his iPhone tracking analysed by a data company. He discovered 5,400 hidden app-trackers busily sending out his data, including email, phone number, and address, to companies he had never signed up to. Or even knew about. Not over the course of a year. In one week.
Only in 1832 were children under 9 years old barred from factory work. Only then were children of 10 years and older limited to a 48 -hour working week.
Shall I write that again? A 48-hour working week for 10-year-olds.
(Internet photo)
Anything we start talking to develops into a relationship. If people can form a bond with the fish in their fish tank—and they do—forming a bond with a non-bio helper won‘t be a problem.
Vampires and axolotls can grow new limbs. Humans can‘t—at least not yet. We are intensely interested in physical rejuvenation, and not because we are vain and silly—though we are both those things—but because for all of us, ageing is disagreeable and absurd. As advances in nutrition and the deletion of infectious disease has helped millions to live longer, we don‘t want to live longer without health and strength.
At best, said Plato, art is entertainment. Just a laugh. At worst, art is a dangerous delusion.
That view has lasted well. It is probably the prevalent view among everyone who believes that their life would be no different if the arts didn‘t exist (except for Netflix).
Love is far from an anti-intellectual response. Love demands every resource we can muster—our creativity, our imagination, our compassion, as well as our smart, shiny, thinking self.
Love is the totality.
No one, at the end of life, regrets love.
Women are as smart as men. I am writing this self-evident proposition because the way the world is, it is not self-evident.
Women at that time had to teach themselves Latin and Greek, mathematics and the natural sciences, all the ‘masculine‘ subjects their brothers could expect to be taught at school. The assumption was that women didn‘t have the brains for serious study—and when they did have the brains, too much concentration made them crazy, ill, or lesbian.
Tokyo Olympics chief Yoshiro Mori had to stand down after saying that women executives talk too much. How would he know? According to the Japanese Business Federation, in 2019, women occupied just over 5% of executive positions—and in the World Economic Forum‘s gender-gap rankings of 2020, Japan stood at 121 among 153 countries.
The opera was staged in Paris in the late 1880s, complete with animatronic Olimpia (played by a real woman), and by the turn of the century, animatronic sex dolls went on sale. Their distinctly Frankenstein‘s-monster look must have undermined their sex appeal. But what is sex appeal, when you are talking about a doll?
The secret of what anything means to us depends on how we‘ve connected it to all the other things we know.
—Marvin Minsky, The Society of Mind, 1986
“…here‘s the circuit board looking like a badly packed suitcase.”
[This is the kind of science writing I love. Go, Jeanette Winterson!]
Remember (no, probably not, but I am old) how lightbulbs used to get really hot? That was wasted energy generated as heat, not light, hence the term, ‘more heat than light,‘ and the wonderful expression reminiscent of my entire childhood—‘incandescent with rage.‘
Big Tech is about global reach, global control, and a business model that seeks global power without local responsibility. […]
As Tom Paine put it back in 1791:
A body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody ought not to be trusted by anybody.
The brain is an enchanted loom where millions of flying shuttles weave dissolving patterns.
—Charles Sherrington, neurophysiologist and Nobel laureate, 1940
Just pre-ordered this in a hardcover. It‘s been SO long since I‘ve posted on here and so long since I‘ve read anything new from Winterson. It‘s a good time to be alive friends.
I‘m so happy to attend online book festival events. Today, Jeanette Winterson talked about where humankind is headed & how so much of what‘s been described in science fiction has come to pass. Gender is an important issue (“a dick is not a magic wand”) plus we need to laugh at ourselves while simultaneously taking ourselves seriously. Her optimism lies with young people, in whom she sees a strong sense of social justice.
