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Refactoring Agency

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Mike Travers
Mike Travers

Prepared for but not delivered at Ribbinfarm Refactor Camp 2012 -- dredged up some old ideas from dissertation that refuse to die.

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Why VitalismWont Die; or Refactoring Agency Mike Travers mt@hyperphor.com http://omniorthogonal.blogspot.co m RefactorCamp 2012
Trained in the mechanist/reductionist tradition The world consists of physical objects and forces This is theoretically enough to explain everything Success story: molecular biology Not-so-successful story: AI
Refactoring Agency
Vitalism / Animism Mechanism violates peoples commonsense intuitions (eg free will) Not going to get into this tired debate Old, more or less discredited theories of life force
My nagging itch Despite its unscientificness, Theres something in vitalist and similar theories that we need to pay attention to.
How to be a vitalist at MIT I cheated -- with the epistemological / metaphorical turn How do people understand the world, and computers, and systems? Through a wide variety of metaphors including Animate Metaphors Agents Programming by creating networks of agents
Distributed Agency Minskys Society of Mind EO Wilsons Ant Colonies Hewitts Actor Model of Computation Agre& Chapmans Situated Action
Vivarium Project (Apple and MIT)
Refactoring Agency
Refactoring Agency
Other neo-vitalists Christopher Alexander from Pattern Language to a radical metaphysics of the living Bruno Latour and followers A democracy of objects
Refactoring Agency
Refactoring Agency In the case of ... potato chips, it seems appropriate to regard the hands actions as only quasi- or semi- intentional, for the chips themselves seem to call forth, or provoke and stoke, the manual laborTo eat chips is to enter into an assemblage in which the I is not necessarily the most decisive operator -- Bennett, Vibrant Matter
Refactoring the grammar of agency I ate the potato chips. The potato chips were eaten by me. The potato chips compelled me to eat them I ate the potato chips. The potato chips eta me. ???
So what? We are increasingly embedded in complex networks of sociotechnology How do we make sense of it? We need to be able to analyze systems through simultaneous application of a variety of cognitive systems: Mechanical Tool Agency Software has goals of its own, whether we acknowledge it or not
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Refactoring Agency

  • 1. Why VitalismWont Die; or Refactoring Agency Mike Travers mt@hyperphor.com http://omniorthogonal.blogspot.co m RefactorCamp 2012
  • 2. Trained in the mechanist/reductionist tradition The world consists of physical objects and forces This is theoretically enough to explain everything Success story: molecular biology Not-so-successful story: AI
  • 4. Vitalism / Animism Mechanism violates peoples commonsense intuitions (eg free will) Not going to get into this tired debate Old, more or less discredited theories of life force
  • 5. My nagging itch Despite its unscientificness, Theres something in vitalist and similar theories that we need to pay attention to.
  • 6. How to be a vitalist at MIT I cheated -- with the epistemological / metaphorical turn How do people understand the world, and computers, and systems? Through a wide variety of metaphors including Animate Metaphors Agents Programming by creating networks of agents
  • 7. Distributed Agency Minskys Society of Mind EO Wilsons Ant Colonies Hewitts Actor Model of Computation Agre& Chapmans Situated Action
  • 11. Other neo-vitalists Christopher Alexander from Pattern Language to a radical metaphysics of the living Bruno Latour and followers A democracy of objects
  • 13. Refactoring Agency In the case of ... potato chips, it seems appropriate to regard the hands actions as only quasi- or semi- intentional, for the chips themselves seem to call forth, or provoke and stoke, the manual laborTo eat chips is to enter into an assemblage in which the I is not necessarily the most decisive operator -- Bennett, Vibrant Matter
  • 14. Refactoring the grammar of agency I ate the potato chips. The potato chips were eaten by me. The potato chips compelled me to eat them I ate the potato chips. The potato chips eta me. ???
  • 15. So what? We are increasingly embedded in complex networks of sociotechnology How do we make sense of it? We need to be able to analyze systems through simultaneous application of a variety of cognitive systems: Mechanical Tool Agency Software has goals of its own, whether we acknowledge it or not
  • 16. End