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Arquivo para a ‘[:pt]Dispositivos[:en]Devices[:es]Dispositivos[:]’ Categoria

Different reactions to dominant thinking

03 Feb

In countries that were colonies of Europe, the term decolonization emerged, which differs from decolonization because it penetrates precisely into the dominant thought and epistemology (some authors will call it epistemicide), which is not the simple liberation of domination, but also the resurgence of cultures. subalterns.

Thus, authors appeared in Africa (such as Achiles Mbembe), in Latin America (Aníbal Quijano and Rendón Rojas y Morán Reyes), as well as authors of original culture such as indigenous peoples (Davi Kopenawa and Airton Krenak), but a dialogue with European authors is possible. open to this perspective like Peter Sloterdijk (speaks of Europe as the Empire of the Center) and Boaventura Santos (speaks of epistemicide and also some concepts of decolonization), there are many others of course.

Christian culture must also be highlighted in these cultures, seen by many authors as a collaborator of colonialism, one cannot deny the historical perspective and also the doctrine that is the liberation of peoples and a culture of fraternity and solidarity, it is also a minority today in Europe and persecuted in many cases.

Among the Europeans who defend a new humanism, or a humanism in fact, since the Enlightenment and materialist theories failed to contemplate the human soul as a whole, and are therefore a one-legged humanism, among the Europeans I highlight Peter Sloterdijk and Edgar Morin, the first who defends the concept of community as a “protective shield” capable of saving our species, and the second, a planetary humanism, where man is a citizen of the world and diversities are respected.

Both consider the proposals populist, it is good to know that there are left and right, they must lose with the current crisis and global consumerism depends on an atmosphere of “frivolity” or superficiality that humanity will be forced to rethink, we will not go back to that what we consider stable, the original writers themselves, as Davi Krenak highlights in several interviews, what we want to return to was not good, there was no real happiness and well-being in what was considered normal.

As an aspect of the construction of thought, in Sloterdijk I highlight anthropotechnics, for him modernity was a de-verticalization of existence and a de-spiritualization of asceticism, while the knowledge and wisdom proposed in antiquity leave the empirical and the deceptive to go towards the eternal and of the true, as religion does not exist for him, it would be a movement of wisdom and knowledge, and not just an asceticism of exercises, where the immortal soul was exchanged for the body.

In Edgar Morin’s perspective, it is the hologrammatic perspective that can give man a vision of the whole, now fragmented by the specialization and particularity of each branch of science, a paradox of the complex system in which man is a part that must be integrated into the whole, where “not only the part is in the whole, but in which the whole is inscribed in the part”, the pandemic taught us this, but the lesson was still poorly learned, in the middle of the pandemic crisis it was decided that everything is released and there is no protocol for protection of all in each (each part), and there is no co-immunity.

 

 

 

An oriental philosopher reads the “clearing”

19 May

Byung Chul-Han is a Korean-German philosopher who migrated to the West and does an odd reading of Western literature, in particular the context of networks and new media, studied in his doctorate Heidegger and with this his “clearing”.

He explains what the clearing is in a simple way: “Heidegger’s ‘truth’ loves to hide. It is not simply available. It must first be ‘taken off’ from its ‘veiling’. The negativity of ´veiling´ actually inhabits as its ´heart´ ”(Han, 2018, p. 74) and in this excerpt he quotes Heidegger´s work:“ On the question of thinking ”.

It penetrates what information means, the great input of the current veiled Being, “the information is lacking, on the other hand, the interior space, the interiority that would allow to withdraw or to be veiled. It doesn’t beat, Heidegger would say, no heart ”(Han, 2018, p. 74).

This absence of counterpart, is what Chul Han calls negativity, it is good to explain it well, “a pure positivity, a pure exteriority characterizes the information”, so is the reflection.

As the information of negativity would then be, in the sense of reflection, it is the “selective and additive information, while the truth is exclusive and selective. Unlike information, it does not produce any pile [Haufen] ”(Han, 2018, p. 74).

Thus, there are no “masses of truth” but “masses of information”, it is the “massification of the positive” (Han, 2018, p. 75), so information is distinguished from knowledge, and this is not “simply available”, I would say neither simply because it is complex nor available because it is hidden.

However, the philosopher confuses it with life experience, when he affirms: “not infrequently, a long experience precedes it” (page 75), and affirms only one side of the information: “the information is explicit, while knowledge often takes a implicitly.”.

Clarifying these two confused points, first the question of experience, the philosopher Plato was the first to announce that wisdom, as knowledge of the truth is not the result of age, if it were only in old age people would deserve to be heard, the other question is about tacit information, it exists as tacit knowledge, Michael Polanyi (1958), was one of the first theory, and Collins in the seventies returned to the concept in the scope of scientific communication. For this tacit information, Chul Han also points this out, “silence” is needed.

The deepest clearing the philosopher describes quoting Michel Butor, who gave an interview to Die Ziet on 07/12/2012, which points to the real cause: “The cause [of this] is a communication crisis. The new means of communication are worthy of admiration, but they cause a hellish noise ”(Butor apud Han, 2018, p. 42).

References:

POLANYI, M. (1958) Personal knowledge – towards a post-critical Philosophy. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

COLLINS, H. M. (1974) The TEA set: tacit knowledge and scientific networks. Science Studies, v.4, p.165-186.

HAN, B. C. (2018) No enxame: perspectivas do digital. No Enxame: perspectivas do digital (in portuguese). Trad. Lucas Machado. São Paulo: Editora Vozes.

 

Totality and infinit

16 Jan

The complex is fundamental for understanding wholeness, Edgard Morin wrote: “Only complex thinking can civilize our thinking” (Morin, 2008, p. 23), in the absence of a totalizing and comprehensive discourse, complex thinking itself is.

Giordano Bruno was the first to intuit that the infinite was fundamental to the nascent modern thought, but this one took refuge in the rational dualism (objectivism x subjectivism) and in the human finite that does not admit the mystery and the infinite present in the cosmic totality.

Current thinking, thanks to the physical complexity that came from quanta and relativity theory, is launched into the depths of the universe to think about matter and dark energy and their new and eccentric phenomena that challenge current models of physics, science, and maybe religion.

Edgar Morin, before reflecting on the paradigmatic turn, says that the West “the fruitful child of the schizophrenic Cartesian dichotomy and clerical puritanism, also commands the double aspect of Western praxis, on the one hand anthropocentric, ethnocentric, egocentric since it is the subject ( because based on the self-worship of the subject: man, nation or ethnicity, individual) by another and correlatively manipulative, icy “objective” since it is the object ”(Morin, 2008, p. 81).

Without considering themselves dogmatic, arrogant, and self-referential, this thought, even when projecting to the Infinite, even appealing to God and even invoking dialogue, is itself arrogant, the slightest amount of questioning enough to note arrogance.

Now, even for the religious to admit the mystery, it is indispensable to admit the idea of ​​God and the infinite, while for the “rational” thought (not the dogmatic rationalism) to admit the complexity of the phenomena is only to make serious science and to investigate the reality, nature on the one hand, and to admit man’s place within it is the only possibility of overcoming the objectivist and egocentric arrogance of modern thinking.

The infinite that is also claimed by current thinkers such as Ricoeur, Lévinas who explained the sense of alterity before the Infinite: “The idea of ​​infinity does not start from Me, nor from a need for the Self that accurately assesses its emptiness. In it the movement starts from the thought, not from the thinker. ”(Levinas, 1988, p. 49).

LEVINAS, Emmanuel. Totalidade e infinito. Tradução José Pinto Ribeiro, Lisboa- Portugal, Edições 70, 1988.

 

 

Quantum teleportation chip

30 Dec

The phenomenon is called quantum entanglement, or teleportation, once made with particles, now with signals was made between chips.
The feat was done by researchers from the University of Bristol and the Technical University of Denmark, where the team was able to send data without the chips being close.
The achievement means a jump in teleportation because it is now coded signals, which makes communication via teleportation possible.
The research paper has already accept to been published for publication in Physical Review Letters and is available on the open prepress access server arXiv.org.
The following video explains quantum entanglement:

 

Why did artificial intelligence emerge?

22 Aug

The long road covered by Artificial Intelligence includes the construction of languages such as Lisp, Prolog, Haskel, but environments like DialogFlow, Watson, and
At the end of the 20th century there was a major crisis in AI, but the emergence of researchers in the Semantic Web resumed study and gradually, subjects like IoT (Internet of Things), Natural Language and Machine Learning (there is no translation, but we could say learning by Machine) emerged.
The fact that scares some is linked to the concept of “intelligence” and “mind.”
This emergency has awakened the five largest technology companies in the world: Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Facebook, which have started investing in smart people who can talk to humans.
Now 28% of consumers in the United States currently use some virtual assistant, these devices that integrate the AI technology of a voice assistant with a common home product has had great success, such as Alexa, Echo and Google Home, but the increase of sales to 39% annually were celebrated by companies.
In companies the concern for privacy, the operation is done using cloud storage, companies with sound assistants use different measures to protect the personal information of their consumers, but know that there are flaws in these defenses.
The audio sent to Google and Amazon is encrypted before being transmitted, leaving the data exchange supposedly safe, but the people database needs to be accessed in order for the machine to “develop” its learning ability.
Recently a researcher in the field of information security has demonstrated that it is possible to transform an Echo manufactured before 2017 into a perpetual recording instrument whose audio can be transmitted to a remote location without the user knowing.
To protect yourself from hackers, a good practice is to access your account and erase history of interactions with the services from time to time, but it remains to be seen if it has not been hacked in this period.
Apple’s Siri, instead of associating the recording with the user account, associates the collection of the interaction with you with a series of random numbers.
With or without security, this market has grown and companies are watching, it is irreversible.

 

Material can help quantum chips

08 Aug

Researchers at the University of Central Florida (UCF) have discovered a type of material that could be used as a “building block” of quantum chips, consisting of hafnium, tellurium and phosphorus, Hf2Te2P.
According to UFC researcher Madabe Neupane, “Our discovery takes us one step closer to the application of quantum materials and helps us gain a deeper understanding of the interactions between various quantum phases.”
The material has more than one electron pattern that develops within its electronic structure, giving it a range of quantum properties. Neupane says that this material will increase computing power for large volumes of data on new devices and will considerably reduce the amount of power needed for power electronics.
The discovery has already attracted companies that are investing in research, Microsoft for example invested in its project called Station Q, the laboratory that is dedicated to the field of topological quantum computing, and Google has teamed up with NASA in an investment that works with quantum computing and artificial intelligence.
Because quantum phenomena need to be better understood so that electronics are totally replaced by photonics and quantum computation, computational scenario changes tend to change rapidly and continuously.
The discovery of Neupane’s lab is published in Nature Communications, and is a big step forward for this change of scenario.

 

News in Google News

02 Jul

After several announcements, finally in the second half of May Google launched its new application, only now I have been able to take a look at the application that replaces Google Play Nwesstad, now with use of Artificial Intelligence.

The application works on using machine learning to train algorithms that scour complex and recent news stories and divides them into an easy-to-understand format with timelines, local news and stories presented in a sequence according to the evolution of the facts, for example , the start of a football match, its most important bids, the result and the consequences.

This section which are news that the algorithms think important to you have the name For You, follow 3 more sections so divided: The second section is called Manchete, where the latest news and specific topics are presented. Here is a subsection where you can choose to read the news through Full Coverage by Google, where Google splits it into items from a variety of social media sources, letting you know where and when it happened.

The third section shows favorites, such as the top topics the user usually accesses, the AI ​​has great work there, goes to the owner’s favorite sources, saves stories for later readings, and saves searches according to the location of the texts.

And finally the White Play (White Play) which is the addition of the new Google news, which allows the user to access and subscribe services with premium content in news sites.

While a part of the critique continues to duel with the old canned news schemes linked to editorial groups, the world of personalized news evolves

 

 

Alexa: Amazon personal assistant

26 Jun

It may not seem like a new phenomenon in technology since there are wizards like Siri, Cortana or Google Now, but the fact that this wizard is really personal, that’s why I called the others for voice assistants, is the fact that it learns and stores the data in a private cloud from Amazon Web Service (AWS).
These personal assistants although all grounded by the use of voice there are differences, they can learn from specific people habits and functions they desire, while the voice assistant, as I call Siri and Google Now now empordered by Dialogflow, as we explained in the post above, they can respond and learn from human interaction, but may, if it is desirable to organize their own database.
Alexa (because I’m the personal assistant I think is masculine, but it can be the same) is centralized in the Amazon cloud and has its own equipment that is Amazon Echo, a column always connected to the Internet via WiFi that is attentive to dialogues of its “owner”.
Streaming music services using Spotify or Pandora, you can read the news of the main newspapers you prefer, inform the weather forecast or the traffic on the way to work, can control all equipment at home that are Smart Home, including it can identify and tell about compatibility, plus its capacity goes beyond.
In addition, it promises to check basic things like solving math accounts or getting into a conversation and even telling jokes, over time this bank and this ability will evolve.
But beware, we have already written here about the myth of singularity (especially the book by Jean Gabriel Ganascia), the idea that this will turn a monster and control you is less true than to individualize and stop talking to friends and relatives

 

Make holograms real, fast and accurate

20 Jun

We have already mentioned the development of holograms in space without the need for devices that recreate the artifacts, now it is possible to do them in an ultra-fast and very precise way. Scientists at the Lawrence Livermore American Laboratory in California have developed a technique that can create complex objects in seconds, we can say using Shannon’s sampling theorem for imaging, now being three-dimensional.

This technique creates the objects in layers simultaneously, the details were published in the journal Science Advances in December 2017, there are two really important innovations there, the possibility of creating real images in ultra-fast mode using a photosensitive resin recreating 3D printing with a powerful laser which hardens this resin making it a plastic.

This can also be done with metals using electron beam and a metal powder instead of the resin, so does not need the numerous supports required for 3D printers. LLNL engineer Maxim Shusteff, who leads the study, told New Atlas: “The fact that you can make totally 3D parts, everything in one step really overcomes a problem in additive manufacturing”, now holograms can return to material parts.

Another option would be live tissue bio-printing: “We made a good first attempt,” Shusteff said, “but we have not yet taken it to the limit of its performance, so the space is open to us and others to demonstrate what this approach is able to do. “living tissue bioprinting. “We made a good first try,” said Shusteff,

If 3D printing was already heralded as a revolution, this new technique promises to further accelerate this process

 

Networks and global crises

22 May

Social networks are provoking an organic change in society as a whole, it is already more evident than it was ten years ago, but networking is still confused with decentralization and there are strong conservative forces calling for a new social “hierarchy”.

The perception that this or that country is a country in “crisis” more acute than others is valid, but the truth is that it is those who learn the most from the crisis that can get out of it faster, the first lesson is that there is a society more attentive, more diversified and less able to support centralized and authoritarian schemes, but why then this wave?
Precisely because the vast majority of the “silent” now reveal the true face, that of convenience and coexistence with values ​​that were only “supported” by those who suffered some form of exclusion, and I do not speak only financially, even if it is serious.
Edgar Morin points out that now the public space “gathers society in its diversity. The right, the left, the crazy people, the dreamers, the realists, the activists, the piadistas, the rebels – everyone. Abnormal would be legions in order, organized by a single flag and led by party bureaucrats. It is creative chaos, not the pre-established order. ”
All this can go back in a civil war, I agree with Manuel Castells: “civil war and social movements are incompatible!”, But social movements are now not only the masses maneuvered by unions and parties, this is what the caudillos fear, there is much distrust and according to Castells “parties are universally despised by most people,” because we know that we pay his salary (high) and do not do what they should do.
But it is necessary to save social values ​​so as not to fall into the temptation of violence and authoritarianism that is what the radicals and their masses want, Castells says “you need a lot more courage not to be violent. Being violent is easy. ”
I am in Portugal that experienced a deep crisis and still feel reflexes of it, but they learned to live together, to talk and to have a little more patience with serious social problems, but this weekend there was a mega manifestation of teachers who had salaries affected and retirement (reform here) delayed, some may be entitled only at 70´s years old.