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Foreword : ontology, cosmology ...

The Bit Saga (this part partly transfered into History_Short)

Le modèle de Christensen

We consider that the world develops according to an "exponential" function. Its builds itsef through succesive technology steps. Each step has a sigmoid development (emergence, rapid growht, stabilization), followed by a jump to a superior technology. This the disruptive model proposed notably by Christensen.

With some ristks, we consider that it's applie as well to geologie eras as to successive steps of life development, then to the technolgoies in the modern sense of the word.

In all cases, nature or human industry, these "generation jumps" can be explaid by an "economical gain" (least action principle).

Epistemology: we consider, as do the cyberneticians, that the same words can be used for ntural entities (including living and human beings) and for machines. With some precautions, of cours.

Epistémologie: je considère, comme les cybernéticiens, qu'on peut employer les mêmes mots pour les entités naturelles (vivantes et humaines comprises) et pour les machines. Avec une certaine prudence, tout de même.

The disruptive model

Links :
- LHD.
- Moore by Lecuyer
- History is oriented (LILH) Complexitx (notes) . Note about IHD.
- For a constructivist humanism
- Innovation in computer technologies

Let's start the narration.

The big bang.

15 billions years. Is it an absolute start? The question is probably undecidable. By principle.

Emergence of life

4 billion years. the first digital entity entered Earth: life emerged into the primeval soup. A phenomenon bot "analog" (molecule mass growth) and "digital": emergene of a binary code (by codons of six bits, with hardware made with three molecule pairs).

Emergence of signs and meaning

It is very progressive, or rather, made of multiple steps. The "economic" gain is important, since instead of exchange materials of force fiels, the beings exchange gesteures or smll objects (little matter, lower energy.

This advance is paid by a double drawback /
- approximation; a sign represents only a part of the object,
- error become possible.

In older times, we heard sometimes "A computer is never wrong"... implyng that the human capacity of being wrong was a superiority of sort. Actually, a computer is very rarely wrong when doing formal operations. As was saying a professional in the 1980's : if my computer would tell that 2 + 2 = 5, I would believe it.
That is due, partly, to the multiple devices which detect and correct errors in electronic circulits and transmission channels.

On the other hand, when you enter pattern recognition, or AI, the errors probability can be high.

Signs systems enhancement. Emergence of

With species evolution, the systems of signs become better, more sophisticated. "Articulated langauge" is considered typical of manking, even if some species (big apes, dolphins) are very near of it.

Since Saussure, we know that sign sytems are opposition systèmes, then basically binay (but of course this words is not used by Saussure himself).

Links : Meaning, Saussure

Renaissance, the Modern Times

Some hundred years ago, the Modern times drew Mankind out of its static views of the World,  and presented History as progressive. Digitization was a major component of the new impetus, from a neatly digital way of writing the numbers and computing, digital slicing of time ("foliot"), the cutting of printing elements into our present "cases" (upper and lower...) up to the philosophical division of problems recommended by Descartes.

In the 1940's, a lot of theoretical and technical advances led to the modern computer systems, and showed how central were the binary concepts and devices, from mathematics to corporation management, including nuclear physics and military applications. Von Ne perhaps the best at tying all these trends into the digital synthetic concept. And in 1947 John Tukey created the term "bit" in its informational sense.

In 1953, Watson and Crick deciphered the DNA, with it six bits code for proteins. Life began conscious of its intimate digital nature.

In 1965, Moore formulated its law of growth for digital integrated circuits, which has been transposed to all electronic devices. This exponential development law could be adapted to cover all kinds of technologies and to the whole span of World history.

Since then, the digital coverage of the World thickens and becomes more dense each year, tending even to replace the hitherto dominant processes of production, consumption and entertainment by a transfer into "second worlds". These could well be anyway the one and only safe way for the future of Mankind, if they prove able reducing the matter/energy dissipation/pollution problems.

Still more fascinating, for the best and the worst, the two digital tracks, life and machines, tend to merge into one, where bionics unite the digits of DNA (natural life) with those of electronic devices (artificial life).

A main concern is the weakening of all the borders which hitherto protect our individuality. Our body extends beyond skin with the proliferation of "prostheses", but is penetrated by rays, ultrasounds, drugs, chirurgical interventions, transplants and implants. Our soul projects itself to the limits of the universe, multiplies itself in virtual words, but our privacy is little resistive to the commercial, administrative and military information networks. And it will go further with direct link of the brain to the external word, to control it, or be controlled by it. And at the end, the brain to brain, telepathic relation? At present, properly unconceivable.

The singularity. Around 2050

End of the saga, as far as we can figure it..  

The commentators of today part themselves in pro- an anti-technology. The opposition is often expressed in dramatic terms, be they optimistic or pessimistic about the future of Human species. That does not prevent a bit of schizophrenia, with persons spending their time on the web to stress the dangers of computers, and others who claim both a simplification of Administrative processes and a strict protection of privacy.

This trend is reinforced by the new grand mythologies that have replaced as well the Greco-roman as the Christian doctrine : Starwars and the Lord of the Rings. Here clearly, even when advanced technology is shown, the ideal is clearly put not on progress, but on the restoration a “natural equilibrium”. The “bad” (Sauron, Dart Vador) have the most advanced technology. The “good” (Hobby One Kenoby,  Frodon) rely mainly on their “soul”.

Let us try to unify the knowledge fields implied in this saga. Let us try to go further, to show the depth of digitization, the riches of its perspectives and the subtlety of its possible theorization... while aiming to propose, with modesty, some guiding lines into our present and the building of our future.

We shall try to soothe these fears by showing that the digital entities have themselves their intrinsic limits and weaknesses, which we call globally "digital relativity". In some way, the global centralized control imagined by Orwell in his 1984 novel is fundamentally impossible. But we pay the price of these frailties with the ever increasing cost of safety, not to say "sanity" in our systems, with heavy anti-virus and firewalls of all sorts, at the individual as well as corporate and political levels.

Looking further, digital relativity opens also the way to the emergence, in digital "machines" of emotion, meaning, and art. Our Roxame software (among the works of so many "generative" artists or algorists) has begun to show how a "machine" can be considered as an actual artist in its own right, or, symmetrically, as an art critic. So, explode the last bunkers of the "human exception". In spite of many failures, in spite of the still wide power gap parting our machines from our brains, the visions of AI (artificial intelligence) have still their legitimacy. A lot of thresholds have been passed (win over a Chess great master; propose rather correct translations of much text...). At the same time, the limits of human rationality facing the over-complexity of modern World are but too evident. Then, the coming of some kind of post-human entities, possibly hostile but why not friendly and somehow respectful of us, the proto-humans, as we are of our ancestors, is not so mad a perspective (as Asimov told).

At this point, optimism or pessimism is a rather private alternative. And indeed of little pertinence, as such global ways of thinking lead to simplistic or schizophrenic action and politics. What we call for is more a due combination of creativity and vigilance. As far as we can, as far as the World evolution depends on us.

Four parts

We shall develop these themes in four parts.

1. The first one will show the generality of forms and structures met in the Digital universe. In that space, with is particular time, beings have their place and their roles. From the basic bits up to the global world, small and large beings develop their structures and co-exist. Some of them are representations, but a major part stands for itself. Among the different systems of assembling bits into entities or larger and larger series, language holds a pre-eminent place, as well for representations as for active beings, through programming.
See : bits, beings, objects, representation, model, digitization, incarnation, global

2. Metrics and values will take the second part, and we shall propose some innovative concepts. Upon a sort of thermodynamic base, we shall consider the now classical, but still disconcerting concept of complexity, and draw the sketch of a method to evaluate the power of digital beings.

The mere problems of these metrics will lead to the central issue of digital relativity, with its multiple sources, including but not limited to Gödelian logics. That will open the space to a concept of liberty for all digital beings, with its preservation and maximization as a general principle of development in the Digital Universe so extending in this domain the classical Minimal action principle. From this central principle can be studied the classical "transcendental" values: true, good and beautiful. We shall start from the good, and consider the true as a particular kind of good, letting the beautiful to the next part.

See : measurement, time, ops, complexity, L , emotion , true, good, yield, beauty,

3. We shall jump to a more sophisticated group of issues with more explicitly cognitive beings, with their operations of assimilation and expression, surrounding a generative/decision core. At this level may emerge the problematics of emotion, and of meaning in its deepest form (from the DU standpoint). Hence a rich basis to look at beauty and art, as far as it may be practiced by digital beings, seen as the summit of development of our digital universe.
See : life, mankind, Roxame, art, decision

4. At last, in the fourth part, we will connect our abstract construction with the "real" world, with its concreteness, its matter and energy, its relativity, and of course its "real time". Hence a look into History, which may be seen as emergence of the digits in physical as well as emergence of matter in the digital constructs. We shall, in a perhaps too classical way, consider mankind, that is We, and I among us, in our particular and - should I proffer that truism - eminent role. But we shall see this role in perspective, not as some end of History, but as a major stage towards something higher, some Omega point to speak as Teilhard... and so conclude on the vast drama that our generations, willing or not, are the players.
See : history, post-human, strategies.

Cosmology or metaphysics...

A cosmology has for aim to describe the whole universe, its history and developmental laws. A digital cosmology sees it as an indefinitely large set of bits (each one having at a given time the value 0 or 1. Or equivalently, true/false, black/white). It is a little easier, and rather equivalent (we shall discuss that later), to consider it as a text, a sequence of characters, including, of course, the numerical characters. or a hyper plane of any Idimensions.

We could as well use the word "cosmogony" since we give some basic hints to the origins.

We shall frequently use the term DU (digital universe). An hypothetical GOS (General operating system) manages its global operations.
We shall refer to the four Aristotelian causes : matter, form, efficient, final.
Matter will refer to the basic digital raster. Material objects in the common sense will be called physical.

The project, as well as the experiments with the development of Roxame, aims less to discuss metaphysical issues (in particular the "human exception") in abstracto than to explore the frontiers and bring new data in the debate.

This work has for object to help today human beings, beginning with the author himself, to feel better at ease in the present world and its trends. Or, to say more, to enjoy it more fully, lowering his inhibitions without, at the same time, lowering his vigilance about its negative sides and real threats.

For that, it tries to contribute to build a "conceptual frame, tending to unity" (Longo-Bailly), which could be compared to the cybernetics and systemics efforts in their time. A main common point is to go past the opposition between human and non human, and to soothe fears that relativization of humanity is a threat to humanity. For that, it should be shown (but we can give only partial hints)
- that something better than the present mankind is not unthinkable, but difficult to be imagined and demanding, at the same time
. some deconstruction of our binary conception of mankind, without falling into any kind of radical pessimism
. some elements of constructions of this "better world" which, paradoxically perhaps, includes a stress on the radically non-perfect nature of this future; any "perfect system" is from start inhuman and lethal; "idea kills life" (in the line of Freud through Denis Duclos, in the book of Vincent);
- that the digital systems have not the inhuman and lethal rigidity traditionally associated with "binary" systems. Here, the considerations about "digital relativity" are central. But also our efforts to show that terms like "meaning", "sense", "emotion" and art ; on this line, the role of art will be stressed as major ; not to give the artists an exclusive role, but more, in the line of Michaux "art in the gaseous state", that any activity has to become more and more artistic.

A sort of “summa” of all my ideas.
Let to others a rather concise and coherent view of my ideas.
The view may also be taken as “constructivist”, as far as a lot of the terms and concepts are not directly “natural” but constructs, if not “theoretical fictions”. And so more since artificial digital beings take such a part in the story !

Bits everywhere

In the XXIth century, to view the world as primarily digital is no longer revolutionary. We live, work and entertain most of the time with digital tools or toys. Interconnected through Internet, digital devices take as central a place in our minds as Earth for our bodies. Then we must do (and too bad if it is only one more, and waiting for the next to come) a Copernican revolution, placing in the centre the digital construct, in other words the set of patterns that machine rise proposes to day to men. If offers us a mirror, an antithesis, an extension, an ally, an accomplice for new steps.

The former views and philosophies of the world neglect or despise the technologies. They still set in the centre the human biped which emerged from the monkey to reach universal power on earth but also in atrocity. For all the philosophers, up to Husserl, Heidegger and their epigones, even Sloterdijk, humanity is central. Even if it is a superman, as for Nietzsche. Or a collectively divinized man, as the proletarian for Marxism.

Extending here the views of Hegel, we follow him in his long way of “Spirit” growth. But we negate his idea that History finishes with man unlighted by the Hegelian philosophy. We also push beyond existentialism, which explicitly puts man in the centre of the world, with his mere undetermination. For we think that machines also, at least since Von Neumann, can be undetermined.

The ideas that we propose here, aiming at a formalization, if not a computation, of all these concepts, cannot pretend to solve all questions, nor to bring a totally encompassing framework.

One of those tenets, expressed in our L'informatique libère l'humain book, is that the process is hopelessly endless. The digital dialectics has no stop point. Anyway, it would be even more horrible if one wall was reached, (in the Jean-Michel Truong manner). We can at least find some comfort in the digital relativity part of the reflexion : the impossibility of a totally computable work is both despairing and reassuring against the kind of rational dictatorship that it could result in. (a fear formulated for instance by Denis Duclos, in La technique et le façonnement du monde).

An important part of DU is its stable part, the bits stored for long term use, a patrimony. But DU is not static. I may be thought as a soup, as the primeval soup where life began, a magic cauldron with powerful bit currents, highly emissive poles as well as pure receptive poles, highly interactive sites... Globally, DU is expanding. To day. It is thence that we can look for the past, the origins, and the future.

We could entitle this work “The selfish” bit, as a generalization, or a deepening,  of Dawkins “The selfish gene”. Let us note that a bit is altruist by necessity: an isolated bit has no meaning.

Is the bit something subjective ? An “a priori” scheme, along a Kantian view. Or something objective, really observable in concrete, even material objects. The answer is : both. In an ADN molecule or in a computer, the digits a as objective as any other part or feature of the object.

A world that stand for itself

Bits, numbers, texts and bitmaps are not primarily the representations of something else. The digital beings are the reality itself. They beings exist and develop for themselves, or for other digital beings. . Some parts of it connect with "matter" or "physical world", but it becomes just a secondary aspect, an historical constraint. The map is the territory, contradicting the classical motto of the General Semantics "The map is not the territory". Or at least, digital is what matters firstly, even if it refers, and somehow demands, a physical basis.

Then the traditional problems of truth, the debates between realists, idealists, nominalists or positivists are left behind. Though, of course, we shall have to consider them at some time, but without the restlessness of Cartesian doubt or the cynical indifference of scepticism. In DU, significant and signified are all bits.

Our view is neither materialist, nor spiritualist. It tends to avoid any "dualism", though this question, even considered as lateral, cannot be avoided.

On another standpoint, computer are no basically a new category of tools. (See a note to Margo).

Digital beings stand for themselves... but bits are at the same time selfish (as the genes according to Dawkins) and altruistic, since one bit taken separately has no meaning.

A modernist"non-humanist" view

We wont start from man. Following part of the cybernetic and systemic view, we can say as Bertalanffy (1966 for the French edition) "It is a essential feature of science to desantrorpomorphize progressively, in other words to eliminate step by step all aspects due specifically to human experience".

But a digital view or the world is not incompatible with human, even mystical, view, as the great introduction of St John gospel prologue "In the beginning was the Word".

Here man is an aim, an ideal to build, or to go beyond. Not a datum, let alone a pre-existing nature that we should try to find and to reach. We have not to "become what we are" (as said Nietzsche after oriental philosophers). We are not, worse again, a lost pristine nature that we should restore by our own strength or the mysterious intervention of a Saviour.

Our view is modernist since it sees the history of the world as a saga, rather "monotonous" (in the mathematical decension, that is, here, constantly growing, but for recession phases, such as the end of the Roman Empire or of the middle-ages of Louis IX.

Limits and apologies

After such bold and immodest pretensions, let us show some basic limits of such an ontology.

- Our model refers to a global digital universe, and its operating laws and processes would call for something like a "general operating system", which probably bears contradictions like the "the set of all sets".

- On the same vein, our cosmology aims to a most general law of universe (at core, the L maximizing law), while precisely proposing a "digital relativity" which excludes the possibility of such a global views.

- Human conscience, and related concepts like emotions, are at present far beyond what we describe. Part of the work, then, must be taken as a rather simplistic model, a metaphor more than a real explanation. The metaphor must nob be pushed too far, considering the digital universe as a conscious being pushing its interest. That may be useful, or motivating at some times, like God for the pious, or Gaia for some ecologists, or the selfish gene of Dawkins.

In spite of these limits, we would not have undertook such a writing without the conviction that it may help to better understand the world of to day, to contribute positively to its development, and to enjoy it without guilty feeling.

Acknowlegments

This book has been, I must say, a quite solitary effort. It's interdisciplinary, technical and for some, shockingly anti-humanist stand, had not made easy the dialogue and cooperation. I could not even find understanding in the reflection club I had founded in 1991, Le club de l'hypermonde, which in spite of my efforts, went back to more conventional topics.

I must anyway give thanks to my family for the long hours stolen to them for this adventure, and to my brothers Joël (for his encouragements) ant Marcel (for his precious hints and reference providing).

My thanks go mainly to some other thinkers, whose recent books have been instrumental to develop the present text, from the bases elaborated in my L'informatique libère l'humain, la relativité digitale (L'Harmattan 1999). The book contains an extensive bibliography (I can send it by mail, at cost price, for 20 euros).

The last decisive one is Mathématiques et sciences de la nature, la singularité physique du vivant, by Francis Bailly and Giuseppe Longo (Hermann 2006). This book is the most recent (as far as I know) expression of their long and deep cooperation, which I first appreciated during a séminaire at ENS (Ecole nationale supérieure), at the beginning of this century. At the level of science they surf on, I confess that part of these lectures was well above my abilities. But, those days, I am not alone to sail by reckoning in the vast seas of modern science. After all, is it not another aspect of digital relativity... From my standpoint, they remain too faithful to the "human exception" thesis, and then under-estimate the importance and positivity of the digital beings.

Another key book was La révolution symbolique, la constitution de l'écriture symbolique mathématique, by Michel Serfati. What he says of the Viète-Descartes-Leibniz intellectual revolution, of the upturn in symbol role in science development came appropriately to feed my search about digital beings autonomy and self development. I tried to push him into my saga, with Renaissance mathematics as a major landmark between Aristotle and Von Neumann, but he resisted my lure into a so risky travel or, actually, not so in line with his own historical feel. Fortunately, I found in Des lois de la pensée aux constructivismes, an issue of Intellectica (2004/2, no 39), edited by Marie-José Durand Richard, a complement on the intermediary work of Babbage and Boole.

At some times, the cause of digital autonomy, mainly artefacts at first sight, comes in conflict with the traditional humanist motto : humanity transcends any artefact. That is a very old debate, of course, from the Golem to Frankenstein and Asimov, from cybernetics to systemics, from Pygmalion to Totalement inhumaine, by Jean-Michel Truong. I found fresh fuel for a new push along this way in the philosophical work of Jean-Marie Schaeffer, mainly his recent La fin de l'exception humaine (Gallimard 2007). Alas, he does not deal with the man/machine issue.

On the human sciences side, La technique et le façonnement du monde, mirages et désenchantement, edited by Gilbert Vincent (L'Harmattan 2007) shows the negative side of constructivism, and fostered me to answer these concerns with more... constructive views. Interesting ground along this axis has been ploughed by Razmig Keucheyan in Le constructivisme, des origines à nos jours (Hermann 2007). It is a rather detached view of constructivism, certainly not a pro-constructivism pamphlet. One of its main exciting themes is a connection made between various forms of constructivism, notably sociological and artistic versions.

The same Jean-Marie Schaeffer pushed also in this kind of intellectual genetics, in his L'art de l'âge moderne, l'esthétique et la philosohie de l'art du XVIIe siècle à nos jours (Gallimard1992). This last point entered in resonance with my development of the painter-system Roxame, and our reflexions in the artistic group Les Algoristes, which Alain Lioret and myself founded in 2006. His book Emergence de nouvelles esthétiques du mouvement (L'Harmattan 2004) concludes with an evocation of systems "which are based neither only on random, nor on human, not on machine". Cooperation of the group, and mainly with Michel Bret and his neural networks is in presently in progress, and gives force to artistic as well as theoretical new developments, of which this book is, at present, the most abstracted expression.

Let's say some thanks also to Jean-Paul Engélibert and Editions Garnier, for their nourishing compilation L'homme fabriqué, récits de la création de l'homme par l'homme (2000) which makes readily available in French 1182 pages of great classics, from Hoffmann to Truong, including Shelly, Poe, Villiers de l'Isle Adam, Wells, Capek, Huxley...

Readers may be surprised to see an English text based on such a French bibliography. That may be due partly to the rich life of French philosophical and interdisciplinary thinking of our times. In spite of critics, the "French theory" is not dead, even if its takes now other ways as in the good old times of Baudrillard. As far as I know (but we know so little, nowadays), there is no such effort of thinking global beyond the Hexagon limits...

As for me, with apologies to some of my French readers, who have still some reluctance for the Von Neumann language, I take it as an orientation to the future, which I see as globally speaking, if not English or American, at least some not too broken species of Globish. Perhaps am I wrong here also, and the poor times of the present United States will let the way open to Spanish or Chinese as the most common language. For the time being, in business and science worlds, English keeps a strong leadership. And I think that the best to be wished to French culture is to cut the umbilical cord with the language, and not to wait for translators to give the largest possible audience to our ideas.

Anyway, after some 40 years of daily writing in French (mainly as a professional computer journalist), and trying to pay the best homage to my native idiom, I have more pleasure in writing the language of Shakespeare or Oscar Wilde than of Corneille or Victor Hugo, and even of my children and grand-children. If that is excessive pride, I must assume the fault.

An ambition with such wide zoom aperture cannot avoid some naiveties here and there, and I hope that the reader will show understanding for its shortcomings. Still much better, warm thank to those who will take out of their time to send remarks, to which my email pmberger@orange.fr will give a hearty welcome.