The Drama of Embodiment: 2001 and Moon

Although I've hear mixed opinions about last year's scifi release, Moon, I found it to be a startlingly well-done reflection on the limits and consequences of personal identity. Its relevance is, as with most scifi films, entirely abstract, but it is the semi-abstract narrative realm in which many of the most compelling ideas reside. The movie owes much of its success to the obvious, although by no means isomorphic, analogy to Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey - and when a film manages to derive meaning from its relationship to other gems of cinematic history, the conceptual snowball really gets rolling.

Both films occur primarily in a man-made space vessel - the Discovery spaceship in 2001 and the Sarang moonbase in Moon - each of whose austere and highly economical spaces renders the human characters nakedly embodied on an unfamiliar and inhuman stage. The foregrounding effects are, of course, tremendous, but the alien scene in which the action occurs engenders a sort of film making that relies on a profound situatedness: a constrained environment invites that extra importance be placed on the details of angle, shape, and distance. The audience stares in awe at the slow panning shots of spaceships and the well-designed environs of the Discovery. The novelty of strange topologies (running in a circle is nothing new, but the transformation of that activity into a different plane with respect to the body is spatially dramatic in the highest) dominates 2001, and the inexorably slow rotations of the unsupported pod crafts in vacuum disables the audience's physical intuitions. These new forms of embodied action, strange and precise, are paralleled in the immaculate form of the monolith.

The end sequence of 2001, opening with a close view of Bowman's eye, our primary form of sensory interface with the world, then panning to the juxtaposition of his space-fortified pod and a normal bed, turns out to be a long and brooding scene, dubbed by Bowman's breathing, on our embodiment and physical understanding of the world. Ultimately, 2001 gestures at a transcendent embodiment which is realized over the course of the end sequence, whose temporally recursive views of an aging Bowman allows the audience one last reflection on their own physical form, framed by rooms and human artifacts which are, in fact, more familiar to the audience than any of the spaces and objects shown previously in the film, despite their alien quality. The transformation of the human form is perfectly mirrored in the unusual transformation of the spaces and objects with which we are most familiar: bathroom and bedroom, fork and knife. Bowman pauses reflectively upon breaking his glass - it is the first time that the usually common presence of gravity has made itself known since the beginning of the film, but it turns out to be a farewell too, as the Star Child adopts the physics of space, which has been meticulously documented by Kubrick throughout.

Moon pursues another avenue of exploration, asking whether imperfect and inauthentic forms of embodiment, namely that of the clone, holds the same existential currency. Questions of personal identity, normally occurring internally, are externalized in Sarang in a dramatic manner. Although Moon does not share the same cinematography as 2001, many of the same questions are raised within similar astronautical confines. If 2001 primarily explores our physical embodiment, then Moon explores our social embodiment. But the genetic themes of Moon aside, the aspect of embodiment present in both films is our relationship to our machines, and more specifically, the forms of embodiment our machines take. Indeed, the largest source of similarity between the films is the presence of an artificial intelligence sequestered with the human characters. But this similarity is only superficial because the capacities and embodiment of HAL and GERTY are profoundly different. The audience's familiarity with HAL causes them to import many of their intuitions picked up from 2001 into Moon, only to find that they had guessed quite wrong. 2001 primes the audience for Moon, and Moon deconstructs those expectations.

HAL is almost entirely disembodied. The only semblance of a physical realization is his monolithic red eye which appears in a variety of locations in the ship. Indeed, it becomes clear quite early that HAL is nearly omniscient within the boundaries of the ship, and quite well informed about the external space environment as well - hence the necessity of using the pod craft as a makeshift cone of silence by Bowman and Poole. It becomes intuitive that the body of HAL - that physical extension housing the sensory and action capabilities of HAL - is simply the Discovery itself. Bowman is enveloped by HAL in this sense, as is Pinocchio in the bowels of the whale.

But that analogy is imperfect because embodiment is more about epistemic and action capabilities than about mere physical continuity. HAL's body is the ship in virtue of the fact that HAL has intimate perceptual access to the ship and his capabilities of acting are mediated by the ship (locking/opening doors, detecting hardware malfunctions - a quite different domain of action and sensation from that of ourselves, to be sure). The whale, in contrast, has only indirect (at best) access to Pinocchio in this stomach. The dramatic element of embodiment that is relevant here should be understood as the agent's domain of knowledge and control. This is also the functional notion of embodiment of primary importance to cognitive science according to the philosopher Andy Clark (2008), and of course Dennett's parable of local body and distal brain is echoed none to faintly.

GERTY (voiced by Kevin Spacey), unlike HAL, has a more concrete (familiar) physical manifestation. GERTY moves about Sarang suspended from the ceiling on a track. He is composed, in some sense abstractly, of both a primary lobe, which displays an ever present emoticon, and a robotic arm which moves independently from the main body. GERTY's lobe engages in many of the same sorts of perceptual actions that we ourselves do. That is, the lobe serves as GERTY's primary sensor cluster and social interface, much like a human head. This explains, for example, the smooth tracking motions that GERTY makes while looking at Sam as he moves about Sarang - it is necessary that GERTY physically move his lobe just as we do our heads, and thus GERTY's concept of 'watching' is much the same as our own. But GERTY is, nonetheless, physically continuous with Sarang, just as HAL is with the Discovery. This creates a confound from which the main dramatic role of embodiment in Moon derives: the audience in some sense expects that GERTY and Sarang are more intimately connected in virtue of their physical continuity. With this initial conception, it is somewhat surprising to see GERTY talking to his cohorts on earth via a video chat. That Sam is able to walk in on this conversation indicates that GERTY's form of embodiment plays a dramatic role in the narrative very similar to that of a human character, although quite different from that of HAL.

GERTY also has somewhat ambiguous access to information within Sarang. It is clear that GERTY does have privileged access to information about the state of the base and the harvesters, as GERTY is Sam's primary source for all such knowledge. GERTY also knows, for instance, exactly how many hours Sam has working on his toy models over the course of 3 years. Such informational cues, along with GERTY's physical continuity with Sarang, creates a picture of GERTY for the audience that is much like that of HAL. But this conception is largely incorrect because, as the drama unfold, it becomes clear that GERTY's knowledge is often incomplete, and its completeness depends on the physical positioning of his lobe. GERTY is not omniscient within Sarang, as it turns out, and it would be more suitable to think of his ceiling track as merely an inverted version of more familiar forms of robot locomotion - such as wheels - than as a profound informational bridge that constitutes the unity of GERTY and Sarang. Thus, GERTY drives a conceptual wedge between the functional notion of embodiment defined above - involving his domain of sense and action - and our familiar criterion of physical continuity. This divorce is the source of an ambiguity that is never fully resolved in the film and that springs precisely from the limitations of our intuitive and familiar conception of embodiment.

The form of the machine in both movies is commensurate with the machines' epistemic situatedness, and credit goes to Moon for completing this theme that 2001 opened. While 2001 motions toward new forms of human embodiment, Moon demolishes our notion of embodiment as relying primarily on physical continuity. The two films taken together, suggest a more fluid form of multiple embodiment that, as far as I can see, lies in the future of both our machines and ourselves. We are, after all, "indefinitely elastic."

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Moon: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1182345/

2001: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062622/

Clark, Andy. (2008). Supersizing the Mind: Embodiment, Action, and Cognitive Extension. New York: Oxford University Press. [google books]

Dennett, Daniel. (1978). "Where am I?" [html]

Avatar (from one pony-tail port to another)

So it's been a few days since I saw Avatar, and the desire to say something about it has not gone away. Firstly, if you have not seen it already, I urge you to go see it in 3D at the first opportunity. The characters are flat, the implications are political, the plot is sickeningly formulaic, and, if you are like me, you will have a few good chuckles at poor dialogue decisions. This movie would be a throwaway if not for the most amazing CGI that I have ever seen in my life. This movie is a game-changer and will no doubt go down as a significant landmark. I have to give James Cameron kudos for an unparalleled ability at making trite plots into successful films. I don't care who you are, you are lying if you saw this movie in 3D and say you didn't enjoy every minute of it.

Avatar is the environmentalist's version of the Singularity, complete with mind uploading and ubiquitous pony-tail ports. The Na'vi obviously embody a Native American aesthetic, but their nature-worship is justified in way that is not a traditional environmental rationale: their goddess Eywa is, apparently, a sort of planet-wide superconsciousness that inheres on the interconnections between the roots of all the plants and trees. This puts Earth's Gaia to serious shame, IMO - you could say that the ecological systems on Earth have some semblance of conscious intelligence, but then you'd have to face Ned Block's Chinese Nation head on. Making roots neurons sidesteps this - but is Cameron a neural-chauvinist? I wonder if Daniel Dennett has seen Avatar yet.

This is conceptually pretty cool, but why would this evolve? Well, at least its not so unlike technologic notions of superintelligent computers managing human society in a much more efficient way than possible by human social institutions - Eywa optimally manages the organic resources of Pandora for the benefit of life (and further organic resources from the death cycle, etc.). I'll buy it. Given a world-wide neural network, it may be survivally advantageous for animal species to be able to tap into it as a means of, perhaps, sensing activity in the nearby forest. In a most predictable plot twist, the animals of Pandora come crashing through the underbrush to drive out the technologic menace and save the day. In a world inhabited by a superintelligence with biological access to the brains of animal species and an obvious interest in preserving itself by ousting the humans, this plot twist is perhaps more believable. Much harder to reconcile is how the Avatar bodies are linked with their human inhabiters, and how exactly the human DNA contained in the Avatar bodies has anything to do with it.

The HCI in Avatar is cool and obviously a lot of thought went into it. I particularly liked the round rotating screens that the air traffic controllers were using - an example of a spatially situated interface with a natural mapping to the airspace around the spaceport. The mecha fighting suits put Star Wars AT-STs to shame. And the gesture recognition technology is not so far away. In fact, I don't ever remember seeing a movie with as much HCI eye-candy as Avatar. James Cameron shows us that technology is sick, nature is sicker, and he can make both look unbelievably ridiculously amazing.

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Technology making a anti-technology film? Good call on the irony:
http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2009-12/avatar-review-we-have-technology-now-what

The real Chinese Nation
http://w3.uniroma1.it/cordeschi/Articoli/block.htm

Paypal Teletubbies

Witnessed a very strange Paypal presence at a Berlin Christmas market: Paypal Teletubbies. I later found out that they were not officially associated with the singing Asians and that there were many more of these bulbous blue characters walking around. Sorry for poor video quality, there were many distractions.

District 9: a review (sort of)

I'll leave a full review to those more adept - besides, there are already plenty of them. But I will say that I thoroughly enjoyed the movie, in large part for its unique premise which somehow contributed to the film's believability for me. One of the best films I've seen this year, no doubt.

I'm one to take notice of computers in movies - what they do, how they are used, etc. I watch intently when a computer screen appears, and always enjoy the filmmakers vision of the interface. For example, the way agents in the Bourne series can quickly drum up information of all sorts is both a contributor to the real-time suspense of the film and a thought provoking illustration of the power of data access (do you really think the NSA can operate as they do in Ultimatum? - I'm quite curious). HCI as a visual and plot element naturally comes into its own in Sci-fi. Despite this, I often find myself disappointed in the computer interfaces that appear in movies. Many movies, like Star Wars for example, completely lack any compelling vision of HCI. For all the droids and hyperdrive ships in the Star Wars galaxy, it is frustratingly unimaginative for all the cockpits to have panels of buttons no more advanced than those in submarines 30 years ago. Also, obsessive gadgetry too often takes the place of truly compelling technological ideas (Bond movies are particularly sickening in this respect, although, to be fair, they are not sci-fi).

The HCI elements in District 9 were well conceived and nicely integrated. There are few scenes featuring computer interaction, with most of the film brooding on the destitution of the slum environment, highlighted by the presence of the insect-like Prawns. But the few moments of HCI are immensely satisfying. The audience first sees a static hologram of the Prawns' home-world, but soon is offered a glimpse at a more interactive holographic interface when the main character, Wikus van de Merwe, takes the helm of the alien command module. Later Wikus climbs into a robotic suit that transforms him into an augmented fighting machine. While he is in the robot, a camera shot of his face with holographic elements hovering in front is revisited as the action unfolds. A particularly cool shot shows that bullets hitting the robot's armor are being represented to the pilot as orange disturbances in the holographic sphere that surrounds Wikus's head. As the robot suit becomes damaged over the course of the firefight, its stuttering movements reflect Wikus's growing exhaustion. In one of the final scenes, we see the Prawn Christopher Johnson taking over the controls of the command module where he expertly manipulates the holographic interface, which it seems to utilize all three dimensions for gesture recognition and allows manual manipulation of the floating holographic elements.

The plot of the movie revolves around the fact that only the Prawns can operate their advanced weapons, which are somehow activated by their DNA. At first I thought this to be a convenient (possibly cheap) plot element and nothing more. However, I think there is something very appealing about the idea that the Prawn technology is completely continuous with their biology. This vision of computer interaction is a coherent theme of the movie - we see it again when Wikus discovers that he must press his alien hand into a blob of goo to activate the command module's interface. Likewise, the robot suit autonomously kills a group of Nigerian gangsters before it offers Wikus, who at this point is half alien, the pilot seat. Wikus becomes increasingly competent with the suit during the combat scenes which parallels his accelerating transition to the alien form. Clearly these ideas are appealing for a disciple of extended mind philosophy, like myself, and for those who think of technology as augmentations of our biological capabilities.

Why is cool HCI such a great movie element? Interacting with computers is a universal experience (at least among those watching movies), and there is an easily appreciable thrill when a character casually interacts with a computer in a seamless manner. Our interactions with computers at the present time are far from seamless, but Hollywood's visions of computer interaction can play a role in inspiring thought about what computer interaction should be like. And sometimes the interfaces just look so damn good. All told, I'd say this movie should be considered a notable vision of HCI, probably second only to Minority Report* in that category.



* Minority Report was the first film to my knowledge to bring in HCI scientists, including Jason Lanier, to consult on the computer technologies depicted in the film. I'd be interested to hear who gave the creative direction in D-9.

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District 9 Official Trailer

Review of the film from New Scientist focusing on the science of the film.

[pdf] A Survey of Human-Computer Interaction Design in Science Fiction Movies (2008)

Eyes as windows into the mind

http://thirtysixthspan.com/openEyes/eye_tracking_chess.mpg

Maybe not the most gripping video, but it struck me as great demo of a key principle in philosophy of extended mind: that our visual system does not work by constructing an internal representation of the world, but rather references the visual scene on a as-needed basis, allowing the external world to serve as the best representation of itself. You can actually see thoughts tracing themselves out on the board and the ongoing process of visual exploration that accompanies a computational task like playing chess.

That the mind does not form explicit internal representations of the world is fairly uncontroversial in cognitive psychology, but the extended mind research program actually takes the notion a step further. It suggests that the exploratory way in which we reference the world in cognitive activities does not just show that we eschew internal representations when external ones will work just as well for much less cognitive cost. Instead we should understand our involvement in the world as part and parcel of cognitive activity - that the mind depends on the world to accomplish cognitive tasks and exploits the world not just for cognitively cheap representation, but also as an extended working memory. Consider solving a calculus problem on paper. This activity is an iterative process consisting of writing, thinking about what you have written, and writing again, etc. The paper and pencil are not just aids to your mind because in many cases you couldn't solve the problem without the pencil and paper, by just thought alone. They are active participants in the cognitive process that eventually yields an answer. Andy Clark calls this "active externalism," and characterizes it as consisting in cognitive feedback loops that link brain, body, and world into a single coherent, temporally extended, cognitive process.

This is a compelling notion for human computer interaction. Eye tracking has been of great interest recently: we generally have to look at an object on a computer screen before we can manipulate or interact with it, so presumably we can greatly improve the efficiency and naturalness of the interface if we are able to take eye movement into account. This interest has largely focused on the potential use of eyes as a pointing device - a replacement for the mouse. I propose that the utility of eye tracking could be much greater than just this if we are to take the extended mind seriously. After all, vision is our primary sensory modality, and, as such, it figures prominently in cognitive activities as the world-to-brain component of the cognitive loop. Perhaps the eyes can tell us not just what we are thinking about on the screen, but instead how we are thinking about it. By tracking eye movements over time during a cognitive activity, a computer may be able to key in on elements of the thought process as it unfolds.

It's true that the notion of computers reading our thoughts is somewhat vague, so I pose it as only a suggestion. Much must be learned before anything of the sort could be fleshed out. Nonetheless, it seems, in principle at least, that keying in on eye movements will, in a manner of speaking, bring the computer to our cognitive level and allow it to tightly embed itself in our cognitive loops. To put it differently, we should hope for a day when our cognitive loops are more than just screen-deep.

I'll add as an aside another implication of extended mind for HCI. If we take the notion of feedback loops comprising cognitive activities seriously, then we have the basis for a new characterization of interface design. The traditional view is that interfaces mediates the interaction of human and computer. While this is no doubt true, the notion of extended mind begs for an amendment. The design of computer interfaces could be seen as the engineering of an external component that, when it enters a cognitive loop with the user agent, becomes an active piece of the user's thought stream. This extends as well to all sorts of design - from formatting and layout to product design. It is in this way that design can be understood as the creation of an external module of mind. We don't need neural implants to incorporate computers into our thoughts - active externalism accomplishes that through our senses.

(This one reminds me of a video game, which is obviously cool. And augmented reality applications come to mind.)

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Clark, A. (1997). Being there: Putting brain, body and world together again. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Clark, A. (2008). Supersizing the Mind: Embodiment, Action, and Cognitive Extension. New York: Oxford UP.

Johnson, S. (1999). Interface culture: How new technology transforms the way we create and communicate. San Francisco: HarperEdge.

Some Really Dumb Vanity URLs

I'm sure that by now you have a nice Facebook vanity URL for yourself, probably one of the ones Facebook suggested for you. Well, these people decided to get creative... and probably doomed themselves to shameful monikers for the rest of their Facebook days. This is a short list I've compiled of the silly or just plain vulgar URLs I've found. My methodology? You just have to type them in and hope to hit something. Thanks to Adrienne for some of these.

http://www.facebook.com/DrunkDude - with that name, this guy chose a career in the fast food industry

http://www.facebook.com/sexylady - a questionable self-dubbing to be sure. (This one, however, is more believable: http://www.facebook.com/Lazylady)

http://www.facebook.com/SEXYMAN - I can't wait for this guy to meet sexylady. Perhaps there kid will turn out something like this: http://www.facebook.com/sexychild

http://www.facebook.com/captain.sparrow - A little too trendy?

http://www.facebook.com/cokehead - if you liked DrunkDude...

http://www.facebook.com/pLaYaZ - gangstaaaaaaa

http://www.facebook.com/Loves.Cock - Ok, this one I pity because I think it wasn't his choice...

http://www.facebook.com/rimjob - No such pity here. This is actually despicable.

http://www.facebook.com/assman - Certainly not a great epithet, but I appreciate the Seinfeld reference.

http://www.facebook.com/hugecock but tiny self-esteem. (Dude's holding a trophy in a boxing ring in his profile pic for god's sake...)

http://www.facebook.com/dickinabox - Definitely too trendy.

http://www.facebook.com/RainbowWarrior - Cute. Perhaps even noble.

Now start searching on your own! These fools need to be exposed....

Introduction

Blogs seemed to me to be largely a self-indulgent activity. But of course, what is Facebook? Or any internet activity? I think I am right that for the most part, internet use is self-centered, but I think I had it wrong: it's self-expanding, not self-indulgent. It makes me, in a manner of speaking, cognitively bigger than I am without it - and for too long we as a culture have seen things that make us bigger and better as things that are indulgent and unnecessary.

I think, though, that although things have so far been quite individual-focused, we have already started perceiving it rather differently: network focused. So this blog is both the expansion of me and my unity with you - you dig? I wish I could convince you easily that that is not tautological, but it is perhaps too long an argument to make in an introduction.

I have ongoing dialogues with myself, as well as a smattering of unrelated miscellanea, but only recently have I sensed a unity in my thought that seems to me worth sharing. I do accept, however, that this may not be the case - but I think that the necessity of carefully formulating my thoughts in a way such that they can be read and criticized can only serve to help create unity. So perhaps this is mostly for myself after all. I'll offer no apologies though.

What can you expect to see here?

Well, topically you'll see items concerning network science, systems theory, cognitive science, philosophy of mind and of science, consciousness, and computation.

But a more substantive description is in order.

My main interests are
- developing a systematic and unified way to understand networks, whether they be neural, computational, or social
- understanding the ternary relationship of technology, mind, and world
- considering how dynamics can provide a framework for understanding the mind
- evaluating the usefulness of a philosophy of the internet in conceptualizing salient theoretical issues involving the internet

I certainly have nothing systematic to say about them now (nor do I expect too anytime soon), but you'll probably see a lot of related ideas on the blog. Probably the odd movie review as well (after all, I can put anything here).

Please comment if you have any ideas on these matters because dialogue begets ideas, rarely the other way around. Thanks for reading.