Education Schmation

A while ago, about two years ago, I wrote a blog entry about the inanity of the applied Applied IT. I feel like I was too brief, and I can't think of anything else to write about, so I guess I'll expand on this.

Basically I when you decide to do a course in Applied IT, what you're really doing is signing up for a Microsoft Office course. If you're in the workplace and the employer wants you to brush up on your skills, this is okay, but this is what sixth formers, people who are entering higher education are getting into. And when I mean Microsoft Office, I mean Microsoft Office 2003. All those hours teaching you how to do various spreadsheets become redundant (a little fun anecdote: when I was in the class, I think I told my teacher about my concerns about the course, or talking about doing calculations in the sheets. The teacher said "yeah, Office 2007 is gonna make that redundant.", more or less anyway). This is the problem with trying to make your courses apply/pander with industry. You equip a number of students with a couple of skills that will be lost with the next generation of software. Other things we learnt was looking sat websites to show how useful they were to the customer.

It was really disheartening actually, because I really liked the stuff like Ruby, and programming-that wasn't taught in the course- which was tough, but rewarding to learn. This is the problem with schools at the moment. Yeah, it's nice to be abole to have a few applicable skills when you leave, but when every subject gears itself towards applicability, it kind of goes stale, and motivation goes down. A quick look at the prospectus of the Applied IT A level has the following modules:

1. The Information Age
2. The Digital Economy
3. The Knowledge Worker
A2
1. Using Database Software
2. Managing ICT projects
3. Using Spreadsheet Software


Hmm.





"Never increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of words required to explain anything" - Ockham Talk about typecasting yourself.

Joe's Guide To Transhumanism In A Nutshell!

Well, what is Humanism? It's a philosophy which tends to give privilage to human rights and dignity. Humanism often rejects superstition and seeks to base morality on rationality. There's a big emphasise on allowing people to do what they want, so it's pro civil-liberties. The British Humanist Association say "Humanism is the view that we can make sense of the world using reason, experience and shared human values and that we can live good lives without religious or superstitious beliefs. Humanists seek to make the best of the one life we have by creating meaning and purpose for ourselves." So we can now look at what transhumanism is. Transhumanism is the belief/philosophy that humans should be able to ethically enhance their bodies, mainly through technology. We're already in some stage already where people can augument their bodies significantly, but it's not at a stage where people can dramatically change

Criticism and Opposition

So we've looked at some applications of transhumanism, and it's potential benefits, but what is the opposition to this movement/philosophy? We'll take a look.
Opponants of the transhumanist network can be known as Bio-Luddites (bio being biological, duh, and luddites meaning afraid of technology). They present many arguments, here are some:

It's unatural

The thing is, natural doesn't make something good or bad. High levels of testostrome in people for example, leading to murder, rape and assult, stems from naturalness. Would we say that's a good thing? What about absolute selflessness? What about that? Well for one thing, we don't even know if that exists, so it's definatly not natural. So why condemn unnaturalness when history and a bit of common sense shows that naturalness should be seen as a neutral property?

People were talking about jetpacks and hovercars in the fifties, why do you think it'l be any more accurate than what they say?

Well for starters, technological progress is accelerating

Brain Uploading... Is It Possible?

(I apologise for the shabby layout, it's been a while)

You're on a great rockclimbing expadition, you're climbing one of the tallest mountains in Britain, let's say Scotland, Ben Nevis. You don't need rope, rope needs you, you're great at climbing, and you experience climbing withhout safty gear as a thrill, part of a challange. Suddenly, your palms get slippery. "Oh no!", you think, as you slide off. Ouch, a hundred foot drop, you're not going to make this. You close your eyes and your life flashes before you. ANNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNDDDDD..........................


You wake up, you're in a lab. Was it a dream? You look down and to your shock, you see that your arms have now been replaced by robotic objects! You look in a mirror to find yourself staring at a bulky robot. "WHAT!?" you say to yourself. "How could this be? I'm a robot, yet I can still remember all my memories, I have all my mannorisms, I am [insert name here], how can this possibly be?"*

The good news, is that you're a mind upload, a copy of your cognitive functions, a map of all your neurons mapped onto a piece of software. As insurance in case something bad happening with your rock climbing, you decided to get your mind mapped, so you could live on if something bad happened.

"Surly this is science fiction?" you might say. Not as much as you'd think. Mind-mapping is becomeing very talked about, and it's just the sci-fi fans who are talking about this marvel Nick Bostrom of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford (sounds kinda flashy, doesn't it?) has taken serious consideration with this. But Joe, I hear you say, surly the brain is a unique thing that cannot be translated into a mere computer program... I'm gonna take an attempt to show how it may be possible to have a concious emulation of a brain on a chip. Here goes:

Joe's wonderful argument for mind-mapping/emulation

Right, here's a nice little picture of a brain:



Hey brain! Anyway, on the left we have a closeup of the brain, durr. The nodes there are the neurons, and the links between them are the synapses. Information is transferered through communication of the neurons and synapses. Now, can we do something similar on a chip? Well, in topology, provinding the links are in the right place, nodes can be structured in any way you want, so on the picture of the right, we have our little silicon brain. It may look different, but if the BUS (the equivilant of synappses in computing, they allow power, and information to be transfered) structure of the system links all the silicon nodes (representing the neurons) in the exact same way as the brain, and the information and power is transfered at the same rate as the synapses in the brain, then we should have a system, that computes, and therefore behaves like a brain. It should even display conciousness. Cool huh? Well, I'm a uni dropout so this is an amateur attempt to explain mind mapping, but I'll be looking at the papers to see if my theory has any resembelance.



Here is a paper on Mind-Uploading http://www.philosophy.ox.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/3853/brain-emulation-roadmap-report.pdfnot


*I doubt given the circumstances you'd be as articulate as this, but oh well.