The top-ranked post at Hacker News right now is from a software developer who asks, “How do you stay emotionally efficient?” The question, with its assumption that emotions, like work flows, can be managed with greater or lesser efficiency, strikes me as another small but telltale sign – along with the rise of “social networking” sites and the structuring of “friending” as an automated process – of the insidious colonization of our personal and social lives by the ethic of the algorithm. As usual, the process of colonization begins with the warping of language. “We shape our tools,” wrote John M. Culkin, “and thereafter they shape us.”
Taoists, much before Culkin, affirmed the same. Emotions, in our dominant technological paradigm, are just another aspect of life which can be digitalized and “managed” by some sort of algorithm or by chemicals.
Somehow I think emotions might not be totally amenable to rationalization and efficiency gains. My money is on the personal over the “managed” this time around at least. :)
Nick, you’re showing the liberal-arts prejudices. Not talking like a Humanities major, is not the same as the Decline And Fall Of Western Civilization.
All he said, in the vernacular, was “How do you keep from stressing out?”
Absolutely, yes, stress can (to some degree) “be managed with greater or lesser efficiency”.
Without algorithms, thought itself would be impossible.
This is a fad. There is always the desire to apply popular scientific concepts outside of their original domains. Think of social darwinism and information entropy. I once read a book where someone said that they used to do that with the concept of electricity. Anyway its always good to bring new ways of thinking to age old problems, every once and a while you come up with something useful – like astrology.
I think you are off on a tangent here. I see this much like anger management, depression management etc. After all, civilization itself would not be possible if people were not controlling their feelings. How do you classify things like prayer which tends to make you feel better (regardless of your views on religion). Are all those algorithmic?
Cogito ergo sum–the ultimate algorithm.
I’m with Seth on this one, the person who made that statement is really talking about how to deal with stress, and using the lingua franca of his environment in which to express himself.
Nick makes a very good point by saying that the insidiousness of a colonization process is really the problem.
After all the fact that the by-product of such creeping technological language, when applied to human behavior, is in general, un-scrutinized acceptance that then permeates as accepted reality.
One glaring example would be the analogy of computers and the brain.
The miraculous advances of technology might have been likened to the miracle of the human being but in the log run will prove to be completely inadequate.
I like Shelly’s algorithm because it points to the ultimate mystery and Seth ‘s comment because in points to some thing that is sorely lacking today, common sense. Although the linking of thought itself and the algorithm makes me wonder. al-Khwārizmī might have been an all-rounder but he leaned toward mathematics.
Cutting edge technology has always pushed its language into common usage. The further such language removes us from our true nature, the less able are we to find our selves.
Regards, Alan
Wasn’t that what happened when the natural process for thinking, language was warped by “schools” — a transmission tool — into discourse, when Platon walked the Earth? And when those discourses where shaped into yet another tool, books, not the initial transformation (written word) or the second (compilation thanks to codex tech) but the third, print, when intensive copy made accurate spelling almost more important then proper understanding — the quality required for a copy-monk?
I’m feeling uneasy with frending (obviously less then you are, for I am of a younger generation) — but this formalization of emotions will never fully replace it, simply shape us into was, ex post, will appear as obviously better selves.
I beleive the cutting edge of this movement can be found here:
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/236
However orwellian, was he offers is effective pain releive; who wouldn’t want that?
This could be a long conversation, without the spoken word of course, and limited by our inability to respond in any adequate length or detail, broad strokes appear to do quite a decent job regardless!
A truly fantastic reach of technology into the workings of the human brain and only Orwellian if abused?
Bertil, I do think that the use of bicep flexing, as a the second example he used, might have no practical application.
The possibility of release from pain does sound promising but I wonder what percentage of individuals suffering from pain might have access to the extremely expensive technology. With the current state of health care insurance providers wanting to split hairs, who knows?
The possibilities were somewhat overblown though, truth, love, brilliance, and free will being the most unattainable assertion.
Regards, Alan