My Blog
Part II - Monsanto Westinghouse's Mid-January 2008 NY Times/LA Times Recap
Sun, January 20, 2008 - 12:36 PM
novel 1-19-08
FREE LABOR
A labor organization in San Francisco is looking for an anchor for a series of short monthly videos “to promote our organization online.” Qualifications include the ability to “read and speak, in a clear voice, in front of a camera.”
At the bottom of the unidentified organization’s ad on Craigslist is this crucial bit of information: “Compensation: no pay.”
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The Copyright Act sets out a four factor test (although other factors can be considered). The factors include the purpose and character of the use, the nature of the original work, the amount taken from the existing work and the importance of what is taken and the effect of the use on the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work. Thus, as a legal matter, a case-by-case analysis remains the standard.
Books begat films, character merchandising, giant fan guides, remix videos, fan art and other forms of secondary authorship that simply didn’t exist 100 years ago. These forms of authorship are in a gray zone; likely to fail the “four factor test” of fair use, but nonetheless largely tolerated by firms like NBC as a form of marketing. It is a sign of how ridiculous things are today that a copyright lawyer cannot give you a straight answer as to how much of Wikipedia is actually legal.
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Josh Quittner of Fortune magazine’s Techland blog thinks that is just what should happen. “If I were an evil genius running a board games company,” he wrote, “I might do this: Wait until someone comes up with an excellent implementation of my games and does the hard work of coding and debugging the thing and signing up the masses. Then, once it got to scale, I’d sweep in and take it over. Let the best pirate site win!”
==
How to Spot Important Trends Years Ahead of the Crowd
World Future Society members have access to the work of futurists around the world in the pages of THE FUTURIST magazine.
In the age of the Internet and 24/7 news, there is a serious glut of information, making it hard to determine what's really going on. THE FUTURIST gives you a way to make sense of our rapidly changing world. Each issue of THE FUTURIST will brief you on the most important trends that affect your business, career, family, investments, and the world in general.
We present the most significant trends divided into six sectors that are commonly used by professional business planners.
Nanotechnology Breakthroughs
of the Next 15 Years
Nanotechnology — the manipulation of materials and machines at the nano-scale — one billionth of a meter — promises exciting new developments. Interviews with a group of nanotechnology experts yielded this list of likely developments:
Two to five years from now:
1. Car tires that need air only once a year.
2. Complete medical diagnostics on a single computer chip.
3. Go-anywhere concentrators that produce drinkable water from air.
Five to 10 years
4. Powerful computers you can wear or fold into your wallet.
5. Drugs that turn AIDS and cancer into manageable conditions.
6. Smart buildings that self-stabilize during earthquakes or bombings.
10 to 15 years
7. Artificial intelligence so sophisticated you can't tell if you're talking on the phone with a human or a machine.
8. Paint-on computer and entertainment video displays.
9. Elimination of invasive surgery, since bodies can be monitored and repaired almost totally from within.
Exploring Tomrrow
Get complete details in our new special report Exploring Tomorrow. To find out how you can get it FREE with membership in the World Future Society
The sectors are:
* Breakthrough Technologies — You'll see the impact of new technologies and the latest innovations, discoveries and new solutions on the horizon.
* Economic and Business Forecasts — You'll get vital updates on major economic, business and consumer trends, and investment and financial outlooks.
* Environment and Resource Outlook — New ideas and reports on natural resources, habitats, sustainable communities and more.
* Social Trends — Changes in values and lifestyles and topics such as religion, entertainment, sports, arts, language, sex and family.
* Demographics — The latest trends on population, immigration, births, deaths, marriages, and other vital information.
* Government and Regulatory Trends — The impact of laws, regulations, taxes, politics, diplomacy and war.
This "Six Sector" analysis of trends saves you time by compressing a massive amount of information into six major categories. What you get in each issue is a careful selection of the most interesting and significant current reports on trends, forecasts, and potentially important developments.
THE FUTURIST will help you navigate through rapid developments and sort through this era of information overload. You'll have ready access to critical information that could affect your future, making this a unique resource.
.Nanotechnology Breakthroughs
of the Next 15 Years
Nanotechnology — the manipulation of materials and machines at the nano-scale — one billionth of a meter — promises exciting new developments. Interviews with a group of nanotechnology experts yielded this list of likely developments:
Two to five years from now:
1. Car tires that need air only once a year.
2. Complete medical diagnostics on a single computer chip.
3. Go-anywhere concentrators that produce drinkable water from air.
Five to 10 years
4. Powerful computers you can wear or fold into your wallet.
5. Drugs that turn AIDS and cancer into manageable conditions.
6. Smart buildings that self-stabilize during earthquakes or bombings.
10 to 15 years
7. Artificial intelligence so sophisticated you can't tell if you're talking on the phone with a human or a machine.
8. Paint-on computer and entertainment video displays.
9. Elimination of invasive surgery, since bodies can be monitored and repaired almost totally from within.
Tomorrow-in-Brief — You'll get updates on breakthrough technologies and high-impact developments that are changing the world. Recent issues of THE FUTURIST have covered exciting new solutions such as:
* Fireflies Help Fight Cancer — How researchers in England are using bioluminescence to target and kill cancer cells.
* 3-D TV Closer to Reality — Software that merges images from several projectors onto a single screen is about to make 3-D TV a reality. No funny 3-D sunglasses required. It's like "being there."
THE FUTURIST Brings You Expert Forecasts and Analyses of Trends
November-December 2006
World Future Society membership includes a subscription to THE FUTURIST. A small sampling of well-known experts whose ideas have appeared in THE FUTURIST includes:
Peter F. Drucker - business visionary
Rosabeth Moss Kanter - management expert
B.F. Skinner - psychologist
Ray Kurzweil - inventor
Harvey Cox - theologian
Amitai Etzioni - sociologist
Glenn Seaborg - Nobel Prize-winning chemist
Margaret Mead - anthropologist
Gene Roddenberry - Star Trek creator
John Challenger - employment expert
Hazel Henderson - economist
Anthony Fauci - NIH AIDS expert
Nicholas Negroponte - new media visionary
Richard Lamm - former Colorado Governor
Kofi Annan - U.N. Secretary General
Herman Kahn - defense analyst
Fritjof Capra - physicist
Alvin and Heidi Toffler - authors
Julian Simon - economist
Carl Sagan - astronomer
Neil de Grasse Tyson - astronomer
Frederik Pohl - science fiction writer
E.F. Schumacher - economist
John Naisbitt - author
Harold Shane - educator
Daniel Yankelovich - public opinion expert
Gerard K. O'Neill - space exploration expert
Vaclav Havel - statesman
Marvin Cetron - forecaster
Sir John Templeton - famed investor
David Walker - U.S. Comptroller General
and far too many more to mention.
Get the next issue
risk-free.
* Grow Your Own Replacement Teeth — Forget about crowns or implants. Soon you'll be able to grow your own natural replacement teeth. Stem cells are taken from an individual, treated and cultured in a laboratory, then reimplanted under the gum line at the site of the missing or extracted tooth. This then grows into a fully formed, live tooth in the same way that teeth develop naturally.
Get the Latest Trends & Forecasts
THE FUTURIST brings you the most important trends categorized into our 'Six Sector' analysis. You'll see remarkable developments now on the horizon, such as:
* New double-duty power plants could ease the water crisis. A new process to remove salt from seawater and make it drinkable can be powered by the excess heat from electric power plants. A small operating prototype shows that tapping the waste heat from a 100-megawatt power plant could produce 1.5 million gallons of fresh water daily. The cost would be only $2.50 per 1,000 gallons—well below that of conventional desalination methods.
* New System Reads Body Language — The truth is in your eyes—and your mannerisms. A system developed by University of Manchester scientists uses a camera and artificial intelligence to process patterns of non-verbal behavior. The system can assess levels of deception, aggression, exhaustion and even the initial stages of Parkinson's disease.
You'll get reviews of the most significant books and reports on the future, news about the activities of futurists around the world and resources you can rely on for more information. And, of course, you'll also receive…
Feature Articles You'll Find Nowhere Else
Each issue of THE FUTURIST brings you exclusive articles written by experts in their field. You'll get an in-depth exploration of the most important forecasts, trends and ideas about the future. Articles from recent issues include:
* The GNR Revolution — The convergence of genetic engineering, nanotechnology and robotics may change the very meaning of "human" as we shape our evolutionary destiny.
* A New Strategy for Globalization — As business breaks down borders and corporations roam the world in search of profits, we need to be sure the international system is built on a foundation of cooperation and consent.
* Learning for Ourselves: A New Paradigm for Education — Why learning should be taken out of the hands of antiquated school systems and put into the hands of learners, according to a leading education consultant.
What Experts are Saying
The World Future Society offers wonderful tools to grasp unfamiliar issues and help understand new technologies.
"I have been an enthusiastic reader of THE FUTURIST for many years, and applaud you on an excellent publication. It is hard to find people or publications that give serious consideration to what the future will be like."
Ray Kurzweil, Inventor, Author, The Age of Spiritual Machines
“I couldn’t resist the opportunity to join more than a thousand fellow futurists at the World Future Society’s annual meeting.”
Michael Rogers, The Practical Futurist, MSNBC
* Reshaping Retirement: Scenarios and Options — Retirement may disappear altogether in the future as aging workers outlive their savings or choose to keep working. Here's how individuals and policy makers can help ensure rewarding lives for older persons in the next 20 years.
* A Planet Under Stress: Rising to the Challenge — We need to restructure our economy with lower income taxes and increased taxes on environmentally destructive activities, such as use of fossil fuels, says one environmental advocate.
* The Superlongevity Revolution — The human species is in the early phases of an expansion of the average life span into the hundreds and beyond.
* Virtual Reality Is Getting Real — In the next 15 years VR experiences will be fully integrated into real life. We'll "attend" meetings, practice surgical techniques, travel to exotic places, test design flaws before building things, and create digital clones to be our representatives in virtual worlds.
* Prepare for the Opportunities and Challenges of Tomorrow — You'll be able to position your career, your business, your family, and your investments to capitalize on trends and avoid threats.
* See the Big Picture while Others Are Down in the Weeds. You'll understand the larger forces shaping day-to-day events. And you'll have advance notice of new inventions, new ideas well before others in your field.
* See the Connections When Others See only Random Events. You'll see how the sudden events that make the news in your industry are part of larger pattern of change.
* Learn to Manage and Lead Change — Creating change is the essence of leadership. You'll learn how change happens and how to make plans that anticipate a changing world.
What Experts are Saying
'The Cutting Edge'
"The WFS membership represents the cutting-edge cognoscenti of a host of fields, including science, academia, politics, government, even religion. Ideas that gain acceptance among the WFS crowd soon fan out into the general culture."
Michael G. Zey, Ph.D.,
Exec. Director, The Expansionary Institute; Author, The Future Factor
'Unequaled'
"The World Future Society is unequaled in the role that it plays in helping those interested in the future—from around the world—to be exposed to new ideas. Its publications are must-reads."
John L. Petersen President,
The Arlington Institute;
Author, The Road to 2015
* Be First to Know of New Inventions and Breakthrough Technologies — Chances are today's hot tech stock is based on technology THE FUTURIST covered years earlier. You'll get advance notice of exciting new technologies often years before they hit the news. And you'll have a context to evaluate the impact of new inventions.
* Gain Peace of Mind – With the perspective you'll gain from membership, you'll understand many of the larger trends now changing the world. As you see the larger view you'll feel much more able to understand and navigate the forces of change.
* Save Time — With the Internet and 24/7 news it can seem impossible to keep up with all the information. When you know the trends you can cut through the clutter and focus on the news most relevant to your goals.
* Find New Solutions — You'll gain new vision, expand your horizons and be able to overcome mental roadblocks. You'll understand the impact of changes outside your industry or area of expertise.
* Make Better Decisions — You'll have a much better understanding of your opportunities, potential threats and the long-term impacts of your choices.
* Act with Confidence in an Uncertain World — You'll have unique tools, information and a network to help you succeed amid complexity and rapid change.
The #1 Secret of Success
What is the key to great success? Is it hard work? Intelligence? Education? I believe real success comes from the ability to create the future. It's the ability to see possibilities that others don't see. And chart a path to get there.
Truly successful people are those who are ahead of the curve. They get there first. They see opportunities or dangers far ahead of the competition. In a world of rapid change, the first mover has a huge advantage. That's why truly successful people don't let the future just happen—they create it.
What Experts are Saying
"Examining the future is an essential competitive intelligence tool. World Future Society publications and conferences make interpreting the future easier for us and our clients."
Dr. Michael Jackson,
Chairman, Shaping Tomorrow
'A Vital Role'
"The World Future Society plays a vital role in the futures field. I am very grateful to the WFS for the wide range of activities it has sponsored and supported over the years."
Richard Slaughter,
Former President, World Futures Studies Federation
"Many thanks for sending THE FUTURIST which I read with great interest..."
— Sir Arthur C. Clarke, Author, 2001: A Space Odyssey
How much is a view of the future worth to you? This knowledge could help you find ground-floor business and investment opportunities… help you or your children find a new career… give you advance warning of changes or threats from outside your area of specialization… the inspiration to start a new business.
And you'll enjoy an exciting adventure on the forefront of change. You'll be first among your colleagues to know about exciting trends… breakthrough technologies… and the paradigm-shifting new concepts that are changing the world.
This information, this new, broader outlook can be priceless. But you can have all these resources at your service for just $49 a year—less than 14 cents a day. Many newsletters and professional associations charge many times this amount. And you'll get all the great free gifts described earlier with this no-risk offer. They're yours to keep even if you cancel and ask for a full refund. So this offer is better than risk-free because you keep the gifts.
Peter F. Drucker - business visionary
Rosabeth Moss Kanter - management expert
B.F. Skinner - psychologist
Ray Kurzweil - inventor
Harvey Cox - theologian
Amitai Etzioni - sociologist
Glenn Seaborg - Nobel Prize-winning chemist
Margaret Mead - anthropologist
Gene Roddenberry - Star Trek creator
John Challenger - employment expert
Hazel Henderson - economist
Anthony Fauci - NIH AIDS expert
Nicholas Negroponte - new media visionary
Richard Lamm - former Colorado Governor
Kofi Annan - U.N. Secretary General
Herman Kahn - defense analyst
Fritjof Capra - physicist
Alvin and Heidi Toffler - authors
Julian Simon - economist
Carl Sagan - astronomer
Neil de Grasse Tyson - astronomer
Frederik Pohl - science fiction writer
E.F. Schumacher - economist
John Naisbitt - author
Harold Shane - educator
Daniel Yankelovich - public opinion expert
Gerard K. O'Neill - space exploration expert
Vaclav Havel - statesman
Marvin Cetron - forecaster
Sir John Templeton - famed investor
David Walker - U.S. Comptroller General
Al Gore - Vice President
Newt Gingrich - House Speaker
Gerald Ford - President
Walter Mondale - Vice President
Sir Arthur C. Clarke - author
Buckminster Fuller - visionary designer
Gene Roddenberry - Star Trek creator
Betty Friedan - author
Fritjof Capra - physicist
Isaac Asimov - writer
Alvin Toffler - futurist
Marilyn Ferguson - visionary
Les Aspin - Senator
Hazel Henderson - economist
Lester Brown - environmentalist
Hubert H. Humphrey - Vice President
Marshall McLuhan - media guru
B.F. Skinner - psychologist
Margaret Mead - anthropologist
Timothy Leary - psychologist
Jay Rockefeller - Senator
Doug Casey - investment author
Ray Kurzweil - inventor
John Naisbitt - author
Glenn Seaborg - Nobel Prize-winning chemist
Ellen Burstyn - actress
Herman Kahn - defense analyst
==================================================
Romney’s response was the predictably clunky one about getting personal, which has become the habitual refuge of the lackwit.
“Heckler Stoppers: Snappy Retorts for All Occasions.”
Political comic relief is not a trivial subject. All candidates should bear in mind Mark Twain’s edict that “Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.”
Whenever I’ve seen him answer a question he has done so thoughtfully, intelligently, manfully, forcefully and articulately.
Barack Obama seems a sort of miracle. He has only frightened me once, when he seemed to have fallen into the royal “we.”
The quality work was done by the kind of man — so puzzling to us showbiz babies — who convincingly harbors no craving for the limelight and would be embarrassed to tears if I were even to mention his name. I’d hate to go against his wishes, so let’s just say that when the time comes for you to put out your own DVDs, you would be smart not to hire anyone whose name isn’t Robert Bader.
(Note to editor: None of this constitutes plugola, but is merely a factual reply to a reader’s lament. Now, if I were to throw in phrases like readily available at Amazon.com . . . that would be different, and reprehensible.)
The good feeling you get when hearing from someone you’ve admired like that reminds me of Jack Benny’s asking me if I knew of “that brilliant new young comedian, Woody Allen?” “I know him” I said, “and he’s a big fan and admirer of your work.” The great man beamed, and his reply was almost childlike in its sweetness: “Gee, it’s nice, isn’t it, kid, when somebody you like likes you?”
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"It's gonna have to happen," he said. "Every illegal download you do, you'd get a $25 ticket, like a parking ticket. What would 10 cuts for $12 feel like compared to that?
His solution?
Internet police.
"If I was just a hayseed from Oklahoma, starting out, I wouldn't do a record anymore," he said. "Every four months I'd release a single with a bonus track on iTunes. That way what radio gets is brand new every time. And then at the end of four or five singles, I'd release a record for the people who want to get it that way."
He'd like to see price structuring, so that a popular artist could sell single downloads for more than the industry standard of 99 cents. ("A Lexus isn't the same as a Volkswagen," he said.)
Oh, and one other thing.
"I would love to be the guy who fixes the Internet technology problem," he said. That's Garth, thinking small, at least for him.
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BOOK REVIEW
By Erin Aubry Kaplan, Special to the TImes
January 20, 2008
Sellout:
The Politics of Racial Betrayal
Randall Kennedy
The provocative educator tackles thorny questions surrounding racial identity and loyalty.
Pantheon: 222 pp., $22
Harvard University law professor Randall Kennedy closes his new book "Sellout: The Politics of Racial Betrayal" with a confession he should have made in the beginning: He himself has been accused of selling out. That's not surprising, given that among the many definitions of a black sellout he offers is having an Ivy League pedigree like his. But the incidents he details at the end of "Sellout" -- among them testifying in defense of a white man accused of beating a black man he called "nigger" -- are what prompted him to write the book. Why does he bury his lead?
The answer is that Kennedy wants to keep himself above the fray. He is a lawyer's lawyer who clearly believes that everything can and should be delineated by logic and argument. He wants to strip emotion and popular mythology from concepts like "sellout" and present historical and cultural machinations so we can judge their validity on our own.
But that's possible only to a degree. Emotion underlies American racial politics. Slavery and all the social turmoil it has fomented -- from Jim Crow to the ongoing consternation among black people about "selling out" -- has rested on subjective but very powerful views of blacks as incompetent and inferior. The purpose of laws that were made to undo obvious racial injustice was to change hearts and minds, not simply to mount better and more logical arguments.
Kennedy knows this, but he wants a reconciliation of emotion and rationality in matters of race, something America has never achieved. Ironically, he's going on faith and ideals here, not logic -- yet despite this quixotic mission, "Sellout" is worth reading for the light it shines on many subtleties of black history. (Marcus Garvey, for example, thought of W.E.B. Du Bois, the most progressive and influential black public intellectual of his era, as a total sellout.) Indeed, the book is brisk and enjoyable, no small feat given the density of its ideas and Kennedy's penchant for long footnotes that often take up more space on the page than text.
Still, the somewhat sticky question is: What are Kennedy's motives? Is he trying to show us what he believes is a more enlightened point of view? Is he sick of living with the burden of race and looking to lay it down? Is he answering his own accusers? These are but a few questions he leaves hanging, even as he exhaustively addresses others.
Kennedy may deplore the emotionality and intellectual shorthand of a phrase like "sellout," but he uses it to great effect -- the book's title is sexy, explosive, an entire drama in a single word. It implies struggle, violation, deceit; the subtitle, "The Politics of Racial Betrayal," is more accurate but hardly as compelling.
The same could be said of Kennedy's most infamous book, "Nigger: The Strange History of a Troublesome Word." Here, as there, he wants to get our attention first -- that is, to push our buttons -- in order to draw us into an examination of the issues such charged language often obscures.
And yet, in some ways, he has it backward. It's not terminology that's the problem but the racial crises that keep the terminology current. Accusations of selling out are often specious, as Kennedy shows us, but that doesn't change the fact that they matter to black people because overall racial progress has stalled and so much is still at stake. It is, therefore, terribly important what positions black public figures like Jesse Jackson and Clarence Thomas take or don't take on a whole range of issues, from affirmative action to family values. This is the unfair -- but critical -- burden of blackness that Kennedy acknowledges but doesn't especially like. In the end, his argument is much more about emotion than he's willing to admit.
Kennedy's indignation comes through most clearly when he discusses black identity. More than once, he claims that such identity should be a matter of choice, of individuality rather than community. This puts him on the side of multiracialists who argue that anyone who is, say, one-quarter black and three-quarters white should have the right to identify as white.
For Kennedy, however, what's at issue here is more than simple math; he argues that black identity is as much defined by ideology as it is by genetics and should, therefore, be considered optional. The resulting "racial citizenship" should be granted only to those who want it, an arrangement Kennedy says would go a long way toward reducing intraracial strife.
"In my view," Kennedy explains, "all Negroes should be voluntary Negroes, blacks by choice, African Americans with a recognized right to resign from the race. . . . By the same token, I see no reason why, in principle, an African American should not be subject to having his citizenship revoked if he chooses a course of conduct that convincingly demonstrates the absence of even a minimal communal allegiance."
Kennedy is referencing statutory and constitutional laws here that make expatriation possible. But although he goes on to cite someone whose racial citizenship he believes should have been revoked -- William Hannibal Thomas, a black Civil War veteran whose venal characterizations of blacks (he once described them as "the waste product of American civilization") went far beyond the crime of selling out -- such laws are, Kennedy admits, "difficult to effectuate."
That, of course, is something of an understatement, for while I agree with his repudiation of a self-hater like Thomas, banishment makes no sense. It's not even remotely doable, and anyway, allowing or disallowing members based on "minimal communal allegiance" only undermines the black solidarity Kennedy says he wants to bolster. As he notes, a sense of boundaries is essential to the credibility and coherence of any group, particularly one as historically oppressed as African Americans. Proposing black identity as a club that can be joined or left corrupts those boundaries and reinforces the notion that blackness is something to be escaped. Kennedy would rather invent a compromise than face an uncomfortable and inconvenient truth.
"Sellout" is at its most persuasive not when Kennedy is making an argument or taking a position but when he's musing -- expressing things that remain unresolved in his mind. Take, for example, his rhetorical questions about racial fealty, a list that builds with the startling force of poetry. "Was it in the best interest of blacks to fight with the American revolutionaries in the War of Independence that gave rise to what became the United States of America?" he wonders. "Or did the interest of blacks require fighting for the British? Was it in the best interest of blacks for antislavery activists to purchase runaway slaves and then emancipate them? Or did the interest of blacks demand an unyielding insistence that any and all transactions in slave markets be condemned as immoral?"
These are big questions, and they make one thing painfully clear: Black people have probably all been on the side of selling out at one time or another. The key is knowing that you've been there at all. Kennedy ends up condemning "sellout" as an idea that has outlived its usefulness, especially for the next generation. "It is more of a bane than a benefit to black folks' ongoing struggle for advancement," he writes on the last page of "Sellout." But part of that struggle is always understanding who -- or what -- is holding you back.
Erin Aubry Kaplan is a contributing editor to The Times' Opinion pages.
==============
Misreading the mind
If neuroscientists want to understand the mystery of consciousness, they'll need new methods.
By Jonah Lehrer
(an editor at large for Seed magazine and the author of "Proust Was a Neuroscientist.")
January 20, 2008
Since its inception in the early 20th century, neuroscience has taught us a tremendous amount about the brain.
Our sensations have been reduced to a set of specific circuits. The mind has been imaged as it thinks about itself, with every thought traced back to its cortical source. The most ineffable of emotions have been translated into the terms of chemistry, so that the feeling of love is just a little too much dopamine. Fear is an excited amygdala. Even our sense of consciousness is explained away with references to some obscure property of the frontal cortex. It turns out that there is nothing inherently mysterious about those 3 pounds of wrinkled flesh inside the skull. There is no ghost in the machine.
The success of modern neuroscience represents the triumph of a method: reductionism. The premise of reductionism is that the best way to solve a complex problem -- and the brain is the most complicated object in the known universe -- is to study its most basic parts. The mind, in other words, is just a particular trick of matter, reducible to the callous laws of physics.
But the reductionist method, although undeniably successful, has very real limitations. Not everything benefits from being broken down into tiny pieces. Look, for example, at a Beethoven symphony. If the music is reduced to wavelengths of vibrating air -- the simple sum of its physics -- we actually understand less about the music. The intangible beauty, the visceral emotion, the entire reason we listen in the first place -- all is lost when the sound is reduced into its most elemental details. In other words, reductionism can leave out a lot of reality.
The mind is like music. While neuroscience accurately describes our brain in terms of its material facts -- we are nothing but a loom of electricity and enzymes -- this isn't how we experience the world. Our consciousness, at least when felt from the inside, feels like more than the sum of its cells. The truth of the matter is that we feel like the ghost, not like the machine.
If neuroscience is going to solve its grandest questions, such as the mystery of consciousness, it needs to adopt new methods that are able to construct complex representations of the mind that aren't built from the bottom up. Sometimes, the whole is best understood in terms of the whole. William James, as usual, realized this first. The eight chapters that begin his 1890 textbook, "The Principles of Psychology," describe the mind in the conventional third-person terms of the experimental psychologist. Everything changes, however, with Chapter 9. James starts this section, "The Stream of Thought," with a warning: "We now begin our study of the mind from within."
With that single sentence, James tried to shift the subject of psychology. He disavowed any scientific method that tried to dissect the mind into a set of elemental units, be it sensations or synapses. Modern science, however, didn't follow James' lead. In the years after his textbook was published, a "New Psychology" was born, and this rigorous science had no use for Jamesian vagueness. Measurement was now in vogue. Psychologists were busy trying to calculate all sorts of inane things, such as the time it takes for a single sensation to travel from your finger to your head. By quantifying our consciousness, they hoped to make the mind fit for science. Unfortunately, this meant that the mind was defined in very narrow terms. The study of experience was banished from the laboratory.
But it's time to bring experience back. Neuroscience has effectively investigated the sound waves, but it has missed the music. Although reductionism has its uses -- it is, for instance, absolutely crucial for helping us develop new pharmaceutical treatments for mental illnesses -- its limitations are too significant to allow us to answer our biggest questions. As the novelist Richard Powers wrote, "If we knew the world only through synapses, how could we know the synapse?"
The question, of course, is how neuroscience can get beyond reductionism. Science rightfully adheres to a strict methodology, relying on experimental data and testability, but this method could benefit from an additional set of inputs. Artists, for instance, have studied the world of experience for centuries. They describe the mind from the inside, expressing our first-person perspective in prose, poetry and paint. Although a work of art obviously isn't a substitute for a scientific experiment -- Proust isn't going to invent Prozac -- the artist can help scientists better understand what, exactly, they are trying to reduce in the first place. Before you break something apart, it helps to know how it hangs together.
Virginia Woolf, for example, famously declared that the task of the novelist is to "examine for a moment an ordinary mind on an ordinary day ... [tracing] the pattern, however disconnected and incoherent in appearance, which each sight or incident scores upon the consciousness."
In other words, she wanted to describe the mind from the inside, to distill the details of our psychological experience into prose. That's why her novels have endured: because they feel true. And they feel true because they capture a layer of reality that reductionism cannot. As Noam Chomsky said, "It is quite possible -- overwhelmingly probable, one might guess -- that we will always learn more about human life and personality from novels than from scientific psychology." In this sense, the arts are an incredibly rich data set, providing neuroscience with a glimpse behind its blind spots.
Some of the most exciting endeavors in neuroscience right now are trying to move beyond reductionism. The Blue Brain Project, for example, a collaboration between the École Polytechnique Fédérale in Lausanne, Switzerland, and IBM, is in the process of constructing a biologically accurate model of the brain that can be used to simulate experience on a supercomputer. Henry Markram, the leader of the project, recently told me that he's convinced "reductionism peaked five years ago." While Markram is quick to add that the reductionism program isn't complete -- "There is still so much that we don't know about the brain," he says -- he's trying to solve a harder problem, which is figuring out how all these cellular details connect together. "The Blue Brain Project" he says, "is about showing people the whole." In other words, Markram wants to hear the music.
One day, we'll look back at the history of neuroscience and realize that reductionism was just the first phase. Each year, tens of thousands of neuroscience papers are published in scientific journals. The field is introduced to countless new acronyms, pathways and proteins. At a certain point, however, all of this detail starts to have diminishing returns. After all, the real paradox of the brain is why it feels like more than the sum of its parts. How does our pale gray matter become the Technicolor cinema of consciousness? What transforms the water of the brain into the wine of the mind? Where does the self come from?
Reductionism can't answer these questions. According to the facts of neuroscience, your head contains 100 billion electrical cells, but not one of them is you, or knows you or cares about you. In fact, you don't even exist. You are simply an elaborate cognitive illusion, an "epiphenomenon" of the cortex. Our mystery is denied.
Obviously, this scientific solution isn't very satisfying. It confines neuroscience to an immaculate abstraction, unable to reduce the only reality we will ever know. Unless our science moves beyond reductionism and grapples instead with the messiness of subjective experience -- what James called a "science of the soul" -- its facts will grow increasingly remote. The wonder of the brain is that it can be described in so many ways: We are such stuff as dreams are made on, but we are also just stuff. What we need is a science that can encompass both sides of our being.
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Sun, January 20, 2008 - 12:36 PM -
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