Cybernetic Totalism

Interesting article on Wired (appeared back in 2000, I think) by Jaron Lanier titled 'One-Half of a Manifesto Why stupid software will save the future from neo-Darwinian machines.'

It's a somewhat long read that requires some patient plodding through, but it's all quite coherent in general and I tend to agree with his points. Lanier makes some convincing arguments against "Strong AI" and criticizes the "Cybernetic Totalists" for their rigid beliefs. He envisions the future as a dystopia where cybernetic totalists enforce an ideology which they would then claim to be the only right one (sound familiar?)

A key point he makes is that software (in general) isn't necessarily getting better, rather, reality has to stoop to the level of software to make the software look smarter. Another interesting point he makes is that evolution isn't the whole picture as evidenced in this paragraph:

The first two or three generations of artificial intelligence researchers took it as a given that blind evolution in itself couldn't be the whole of the story, and assumed that there were elements that distinguished human mentation from other earthly processes. For instance, humans were thought by many to build abstract representations of the world in their minds, while the process of evolution needn't do that. Furthermore, these representations seemed to possess extraordinary qualities like the fearsome and perpetually elusive "common sense." After decades of failed attempts to build similar abstractions in computers, the field of AI gave up, but without admitting it. Surrender was couched as merely a series of tactical retreats. AI these days is often conceived as more of a craft than a branch of science or engineering. A great many practitioners I've spoken with lately hope to see software evolve but seem to have sunk to an almost postmodern or cynical lack of concern with understanding how these gizmos might actually work

A book I've read that explores the same topic is "The Cult of Information: A Neo-Luddite Treatise on High-Tech, Artificial Intelligence, and the True Art of Thinking" by Theodore Roszak. The concept of reality stooping to the level of software is discussed in this book as well.