Tag Archives: Whose electric brain?

My ‘Whose electric brain?’ talk on March 15, 2012

Later this week (March 15, 2012), I will be giving a talk in Vancouver,

The Canadian Academy of Independent Scholars

Notice of Meeting

Date: Thursday, March 15, 2012

Time: 7:30 pm

Place: Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, BC campus, 515 West Hastings Street (between Seymour and Richards Streets) in the Diamond Alumni Lounge, Room 2065 (second floor)

Speaker: Maryse de la Giroday

Topic: Whose electric brain?

Memristors are collapsing the boundaries between humans and machines and ushering in an age where humanistic discourse must grapple with cognitive entanglements. Perceptible only at the level of molecular electronics (nanoelectronics), the memristor was a theoretical concept until 2008. Two different researchers without knowledge of each other had postulated its probable existence respectively in the 1960s and the 1970s. Traditionally in electrical engineering there are resistors, inductors, and capacitors. The new circuit element, the memristor, was postulated to account for anomalies that had been experienced and described in the literature since the 1950s.

Conceptually, a memristor remembers how much and when current has been flowing. In 2008 when it was proved experimentally, engineering control was achieved months later in both digital and analogue formats. The more intriguing of the two formats is the analogue where a memristor is capable of an in-between state similar to certain brain states as opposed to the digital format where it’s either on or off. As some have described it, the memristor is a synapse on a chip making neural computing a reality. In other words, with post-human engineering we will have machines that can think like humans.

The memristor moves us past Jacques Derrida’s notion of undecidability (a cognitive entanglement) as largely theoretical to a world where we confront this reality on a daily basis.

A Brief Bio:

Maryse de la Giroday is a science communications consultant and writer who focuses on nanotechnology and science in Canada. Her blog (www.frogheart.ca) offers “Commentary about nanotech, science policy and communication, society, and the arts” and it currently enjoys an average of 50,000+ visits per month.

She has a BA (honors-Communications) from SFU and an MA (Creative Writing and New Media) De Montfort University, UK.

As an independent academic, she has presented on the topic of nanotechnology at the 2009 International Symposium on Electronic Arts, the 2008 Congress of Humanities and the Social Sciences, the 2008 Cascadia Nanotechnology Symposium, and the 2007 Association of Internet Researchers.

She gratefully acknowledge the 2011 grant from the Canadian Academy of Independent Scholars which makes the publication of her latest paper, Whose electric brain? possible.

I expect to be exploring ideas about machines and humans as buttressed by the notion of the memristor. The talk will be recorded (tarted up/edited) by Sama Shodjai and posted, in the near future, here and elsewhere online.

Human enhancement, brains, and transhumanism: what does nano have to do with it?

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A Sept. 14, 2011 conversation on Slate.com about Extreme Human Enhancement started with this provocative title, Should We Use Nanotech, Genetics, Pharmaceuticals, and Augmentations To Go Above and Beyond Our Biology? The official discussants are Kyle Munkittrick, Brad Allenby, and Nicholas Agar. Here’s a little more about Kyle, Brad, and Nicholas, from page one of the the Slate discussion,

Nicholas Agar is an associate professor at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. He is the author, among other things, of Humanity’s End: Why We Should Reject Radical Enhancement (2010) and Liberal Eugenics: In Defense of Human Enhancement (2004).

Brad Allenby is the Lincoln professor of engineering and ethics; a professor of civil, environmental, and sustainable engineering; and the founding director of the Center for Earth Systems Engineering and Management at Arizona State University. He is co-author with Daniel Sarewitz of The Techno-Human Condition.

Kyle Munkittrick is a bioethicist and a program director at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technology. He blogs at Pop Bioethics and Discover magazine’s Science Not Fiction. [Note: I have made some formatting changes.]

Nanotechnology and the other technologies are mentioned in passing, the focus of the discussion is ‘should we or shouldn’t we enhance ourselves’ along with some comments as to whether or not humans have a biological imperative to create and apply technology to the planet and to ourselves.

This Slate discussion is a way of publicizing a Future Tense event in Washington, DC being held today, Sept. 15, 2011.

This conversation is part of a Future Tense, a partnership between Slate, the New America Foundation, and Arizona State. On Thursday, Sept. 15, Future Tense will be hosting an event in Washington, D.C., on the boundaries between humans and machines, “Is Our Techno-Human Marriage in Need of Counseling?” [I removed the RSVP]

You can watch the livestreamed event here.

Coincidentally, Brain Gear is opening today. From the host’s (University of Groningen in The Netherlands) website page,

BRAIN GEAR, A conference in Groningen on September 15 and 16.
Neuroscientists, psychologists, sociologists, regulators and artists discuss the available and emerging technologies to repair and enhance the brain.

Professor Andy Miah, one of the invited speakers at Brain Gear, has made his presentation, Neurodevices for the Posthuman Mind, available for viewing at Prezi.

I find all this quite exciting given my paper, Whose electric brain? about memristors, artificial synapses, and cognitive entanglement. I have currently raised $460 towards my presentation at ISEA 2011 (International Symposium Electronic Arts). Thank you to everyone who has given funds toward my dream at DreamBank.

Time is ticking on my Crowdfunder pitch: Whose electric brain?

Whose electric brain? Crowdfunder pitch

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Last I wrote (July 5, 2011) about my proposed presentation at the International Symposium on Electronic Arts in Istanbul (Sept. 14-21, 2011), I was looking for ideas on how I might fund my way there. Since then, I’ve decided to try crowdfunding. It’s like crowdsourcing, i. e., posting a question and getting ideas from a host of people but posting a pitch for money to follow through on a project.

There are a number of sites where you can upload a pitch and solicit funds: IndieGoGo, which has been around since 2008, Kickstarter, Funding 4 Learning, and Crowdfunder (the one I picked), amongst others.

Here’s a little bit About Crowdfunder,

Whether your project is big or small, hare-brained or thoughtful, serious or just for fun – we want to hear from you. Crowdfunder aims to fund all sorts of crazy, arty, funny, ingenious and jaw-dropping projects. So if you’re an artist, explorer, musician, writer, entrepreneur or thrill seeker get in touch and kick start your project with Crowdfunder today.

I chose this site partly because it has a go/no go policy. In other words, I have to reach my target (4000 GBP) to get the money. IndieGoGo for example, will let you keep whatever percentage of the funds you raise, which is not helpful to me since I either have enough money to get to Istanbul or not.

Here’s an excerpt from the Whose electric brain? pitch I’ve submitted,

You’ve heard of the ‘uncanny valley’, the point at which human beings become uncomfortable with robots because they look too much like humans? Well, I’m taking it a step further with cognitive entanglement, a new concept I’m proposing and developing for a presentation and paper at the 17^th International Symposium on Electronic Arts (ISEA). This conference presents cutting edge academic and artistic work internationally and in 2011, it is being held in Istanbul from Sept. 14 -21 concurrently with the 12^th Istanbul Biennial, considered to be one of the world’s most prestigious art festivals.

Whose electric brain? my presentation about memristors (a nanoelectronics concept), cognitive entanglement, and artificial brains (accepted from a field of over 2000 submissions) is scheduled for Sept. 19, 2011 in a session titled, Biosynthetics and Body – Machine Presentation.My co-presenters include an engineering team from Brazil, the director of the SymbioticA Lab (University of Western Australia; they developed the Fish & Chips project), and an artist from Montréal, Québec. You can find the description here: http://isea2011.sabanciuniv.edu/content/biosynthetics-and-body-machine-relationships

My latest work on cognitive entanglement and memristors is the outcome of thousands of hours of research and thinking. The next logical step is to share it at a cutting edge conference where the ideas will be challenged and hopefully become part of the international discussion about what life biological and/or artificial in the 21^st century. As a contributor you can be part of this journey with me to Istanbul.

Here’s an excerpt from how I describe my self in relation to this work,

As an independent scholar, my current work centres on how nanotechnology is communicated and its social implications. Previous successes include, producing and writing a video on intercultural communication (Bridging the Cultural Gap) that was used as a teaching tool internationally. I also produced an event (WritingWise) which brought together songwriters, technical writers, comic book writers, games writers, new media writers, poets and others to discuss the impact that technology is having on the word in its various forms.

As for Whose electric brain?, I’ve gone just about as far as I can alone. Developing my current work further means that I need to present and discuss it with colleagues and there just aren’t that many people in the world who have the same interest. That’s why this conference is so important to me and, more importantly, the work, which pulls together concepts in electrical engineering, philosophy, physics, and literary theory, while introducing something new, cognitive entanglement.

Please pass the link on to anyone who might be interested in the topic and/or funding my presentation in Istanbul. (I hope to post a video about my paper and the symposium at the Crowdfunder website in the next few weeks and to update my pitch in other ways on a regular basis.)

Here’s the unadorned link, http://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/investment/whose-electric-brain-298#entrepreneur_details

One final note: Crowdfunder is based in the UK, so all funds are in GBP.