| Last Cereal: Message Board: posting |
| re: Frerekhan: |
| [6591] by "FrereKhan" (bluebird.qut.edu.au) on Fri 12 Oct 2001 19:39:24 [ reply ] |
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Perhaps a slight stretch there, but here's a question: What happens to the internet when nobody's logged on?
I had a silly fantasy, many many years ago, before I knew so much detail about neural nets, of wirting a neural network virus. It would live on routers, and propagate its code throught the network, leaving a few neurons running at each node. All the information of the internet would be decoded and fed through the net. And then we'd see. But that's too inflexible. When I finally have time away from this eternal degree, THEN we'll see. Ok: but the internet is the sum of its parts, right? Neural networks are MORE than the sum of their parts; that's the most insane thing about them. The internet is the explicit combination of ideas and information from a goodly proportion of the planet (but mostly in north america, unfortunately). To your last question: I would say yes. We can understand an ant's nest, because we are more complex systems than an ant's nest. An ant cannot understand an ant's nest. We cannot understand our societies and the forces that shape them, while being involved in them. The past is obvious, because it's a fixed, simple system. The future is infinitely more complex. But the internet is a combination of not only people, but cultures, societies. It is much more complex than we are. However, it has no 'I', unless you read Gibson. FK |