Sarthe

Comments on " The Myth of Black " : National Culture: Emigration and Race as definers of culture. In " The Myth of Black Culture " published in The Spectator in December 1979, Roy Kerridge debates the notion of the existence of a " Black Culture " in Britain from the 1960s to 1980s. He concludes that there existed no such thing as a real black culture, even though the presence of identifiable cultural elements could be perceived. In the first paragraph, he opens with a description of those features such as Reggae Music, Rasta religion and some such customs that were considered to create what became known as " Black Culture ". What he actually fails to notice is that he has formed an amalgam of all black people in the Inner City of London when he wrote " The blacks in the inner city are, apparently, identifiable. " He seems to addressing a white audience in attempting to subscribe them to the belief that all the blacks in London adhere to Reggae-Rasta cultural practices. The second paragraph traces the origins of Reggae and Rasta to Jamaica. In so doing, he compares the practices of adherents to the Rasta religion to the Hell's Angels and the Hippies while endeavoring to argue that the developments of the new identity of " Blacks " as culturally defined is simply a matter of generation: " It is a Question of generation. " He accuses the leaders and spokesmen of the black cultural movements as arrogant bearded men who feel like foreigners in Britain since most of them were emigrants. Kerridge, in his third paragraph, accuses these leaders as opportunists and revolutionaries who have duped the English public into believing that there existed a so-called black cultural identity, which he considered as a myth. He proposes that people should be described by their nationalities, especially when political correctness entails that one call black people " Colored " instead of Negros, considered offensive. Being a foreign, he claims, is a state of mind; thus, somewhat irrationally he suggests that English-born negroes who have English ways cannot be conceivably called " Blacks " as if being born in any place or country defies the biological determiners of race. The fourth paragraph adds little more to his argument than continuing to trace the origins of a pop music called " Blue Beat or Ska " to Jamaica. To this is adduced the idea that the Rasta creed and Reggae music induce the heavy use of drugs as exemplified in the case of the Beatles. He concludes that also generate antisocial tendencies, making it a cult and institution rather than a culture. The fifth and sixth paragraphs argue that young black people of little freedom, and when acquire such liberty they end up engaging in petty crimes and lawless activities. He compares them to white motorcycle boys.

Le point de vue adopté par Colin T. Schmidt dans cet article est particulièrement intriguant. Il s’agit en quelque sorte de ce que les physiciens et les philosophes appellent une expérience de pensée, appliquée à la question du pouvoir des logiciels informatiques. Plutôt que de discuter les différentes limites que peut rencontrer ce qu’on nomme souvent « intelligence artificielle » ou « interaction homme-machine », l’auteur part au contraire d’une hypothèse radicale, imaginant que ces derniers réussissent réellement à remplacer dans une interaction un humain de façon acceptable (le fameux test de Turing).
Il se demande alors ce que signifierait un tel pouvoir et s’il est favorable à la communication et souhaitable pour la société. Cela ne va pas sans quelque ironie vis-à-vis de ceux que l’auteur nomme « les individus techniquement souples d’esprit », à qui il est si difficile de résister au défi de faire des machines parfaitement humanisées.
-Yves Jeanneret

In speaking of ideas at the intersection of transhumanism, advanced robotics, and related fields, I wish to provide a few theoretical elements necessary for addressing questions like “Should we redesign humans?” While some find such a question somewhat out of place, others seriously think of alternatives to their present ways of life, even if they do not intend to take action. To fathom the extent of inquiry into alternatives, one must simply look to the strength of the human imagination – the various dreams it allows as well as our flirting with futuristic scenarios in popular books and films. It seems that some specialists of the human brain and body wish to bring scenarios of various human forms of being to life. It can be difficult though to accept novelties when it comes to modifying standard human heritage, no matter how similar it may be to our present state. My goal herein is not to provide a panorama of technical endeavours but to up-date the key concepts (originating in Computer Science and related fields) necessary in treating question of the said kind.

The raison d’être of this article is that many a spry-eyed analyst of the works in intelligent computing and robotics fail to see the essential concerning applications development, that of expressing their ultimate goal. Alternatively, they fail to state it suitably for the lesser-informed public eye. The author does not claim to be able to remedy this. Instead, the visionary investigation offered couples learning and computing with other related fields as part of a larger spectre to fully simulate people in their embodied image. For the first time, the social roles attributed to the technical objects produced are questioned, and so with a humorous illustration.

A l'heure où les scientifiques réexamine les points critiques en psychologie, ingénierie et communication humaine pour remédier à l'explosion informationnelle, un certain scepticisme se répand chez les concepteurs cognitivistes. Il concerne la plausibilité du modèle dialogique pour simuler l'Interaction Homme-Machine (IHM).
Nous palçant sur le terrain technologique de nos espaces publics, nous élaborons ici un programme de recherche fondé sur les soupçons 1/Que les cogniticiens ne modélisent pas en fait des dialogues informationnels [information-seeking dialogues] et 2/Que leur inspiration -- e.g. Nass, Suchman et alii -- par le paradigme de relations interpersonnelles est franchement utopique ; leur résultats sont relationnellement superficiels. Leur utilisation de la catégorie de "référence en interaction" qui caractérise la communication proprement dite est confuse. Nous recourons au Sciences humaines pour corriger sur ce point les théoriciens de l'information.

En revanche, nous soutenons que cette catégorie est bien en vigueur au niveau de la conception des machines réglant le discours supérieur de la communauté conceptrice. C'est que nous conduisons nous-mêmes l'investigation à ce niveau dans le but d'en tirer des conséquences au plan des manifestations simulées de la référence. En clarifiant l'objectif de la simulation on rend compte de l'accélération fonctionnelle apportée par les "dialogues" homme-machine, au bénéfice conjugé de l'usager et de l'entreprise prestataire de services. Nous adoptons une perspective pragmatique pour impulser, parallèlement au conceptions ergonomiques, les démarches fondamentales aux échanges personne-artefact. On propose une approche conceptuelle pour situer la notion de référence des concepteurs IHM à son vrai niveau stratégique.

Many endeavours in Artificial Intelligence work towards recreating the dialogical capabilities of humans in machines, robots, ”creatures”, in short information processing systems. This original goal in AI has been left to the wayside by many in order to produce Artificial Life entities in a futuristic vision of ’life-as-it-could-be’; scientists that have not ’abandoned ship’ confirm the difficulty of reaching the summum of AI research. This means the importance of language generation and understanding components have been reduced. Are the pragmatics of language use too difficult to deal with? According to Shapiro and Rapaport (1991), ”the quintessential natural-language competence task is interactive dialogue”. Man-made entities are not functional in dialoguing with humans. The benefits of re-establishing a ”proper” relational stance in the Artificial Sciences are twofold, namely, a./to better understand the communication difficulties encountered, and b./to bring enhanced meaning to the goals of building artificial agents. Point a has consequences for b in that it will change the very goals of scientists working on social and conversational agents. In the literature, the notion of agent proves unsuitable for the specification of any higher-order communication tasks; a Tower of Babel problem exists with regards to the very definition of ”agent” between Scientists and Philosophers. In the present article, I eliminate the nebulosity currently contouring agency’s terminology with a goal to improving understanding when speaking about entities that can mean.