In Search of Cyber Humanity 

02:00 AM Oct. 28, 2000 PT

CAMDEN, Maine -- In his groundbreaking book The Age of Spiritual Machines, Ray Kurzweil argued that humans could attain near immortality by becoming one with technology and robotics.

Ellen Ullman, however, believes that while Kurzweil is a great thinker in many ways, he is a better scientist than humanist.

"It always makes me nervous when people talk about an improved human race," said Ullman, a programmer, adding that it makes her think of dictators like Mussolini and Stalin.

Kurzweil has taken his knowledge of the computer sciences and "superimposed it on every thing he seeks to understand," Ullman told attendees at the Camden Technology Conference.

Kurzweil's ideas got Bill Joy, the co-founder of Sun Microsystems, thinking about the issue as well. A long piece that he wrote for Wired magazine, "Why The Future Doesn’t Need Us," sparked much discussion when it appeared earlier this year. It has also acted as a touchstone for the conference.

Like Joy, Ullman is leery of those who view the body as a machine that can be augmented or replaced. Ullman told an estimated 500 attendees that it is a big mistake to view human beings as modular units that can be split into separate components, such as body and mind, to make them more efficient.

Pattie Maes, an associate professor at MIT's Media Laboratory, came at the issue from a different angle. Her lab isn't working on replacing humans, but on giving them a little extra assistance through "intelligence augmentation."

"There is this mismatch between the complexity of our lives and our cognitive abilities," Maes said.

She is hoping that software "agents" developed at the Media Lab over the last eight years can help by serving as information filters, problem solvers or in a variety of other tasks.

One is called a "remembrance agent," and it tracks files, e-mails or other data for its user. If someone is having a conversation with their boss about a particular project, it can automatically pull up all the data relating to the task on the computer, Maes said. There is also a version of this agent that can be worn on the head; it has an eyepiece that projects data, she added.

Another program called Letizia browses the Web with its user, looks in the vicinity of the Web page in use, and suggests links to follow that will bring the user to information that interests them.

"It's sort of a scout that browses along with you to point you to information that you might regularly miss," she said.

She believes scientists and futurists alike have made the same mistake of using "the whole view and mindset of computing overlaid on the long-time question of consciousness."

And although she said she was compelled to address these issues, it is often difficult to do so in the tech world: "These days, it's almost impossible to criticize cyber visionaries without being called a bleeding heart humanist," Ullman said.

During a question-and-answer period following the session, Ullman said, "I'm not a futurist, I'm an alarmist."