What makes a person the same person over time? Is it our consciousness, the what-it’s-like to be us? Is consciousness like a light that’s either on
What makes a person the same person over time? Is it our consciousness, the what-it’s-like to be us? Is consciousness like a light that’s either on or off?
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What remains of a person once they’ve died? It depends on what we choose to keep.
Amy Kurzweil is a long-time cartoonist for The New Yorker. If the name sounds a bit familiar, but you aren’t a reader of that magazine, it may be because her father is Ray Kurzweil. He is a genius of wide renown. He invented a way for computers to process text in almost any font, a major advance in making optical character recognition (OCR) a useful, and ubiquitous tool. He also developed early electronic instruments. As a teenager he wrote software that wrote music in the style of classical greats. No gray cells left behind there. He happened to be very interested in Artificial Intelligence (AI). It helps to have a specific project in mind when trying to develop new applications and ideas. Ray had one. His father, Fred, had died when he was a young man. Ray wanted to make an AI father, a Fred ChatBot, or Fredbot, to regain at least some of the time he had never had with his dad.
[image] Amy Kurzweil - Image from NPR - shot by Melissa Leshnov
Fred was a concert pianist and conductor in Vienna in the 1920s and 1930s. A wealthy American woman was so impressed with him that she told him that if he ever wanted to come to the USA, she would help. The Nazification of Austria made the need to leave urgent in 1938, so Fred fled with his wife, Hannah. (He had actually been Fritz in Austria, becoming Fred in the states.) He eventually found work, teaching music.
Artificial: A Love Story is a physically hefty art book, a tale told in drawings and text. Amy traces in pictures her father’s effort to reconstruct as much of his father’s patterns as possible. To aid in the effort there was a storage facility with vast amounts of material from his life both in Austria and in America. She joins into the enterprise of transcribing much of the handwritten material, then reading it into recordings which are used to teach/train the AI software. It is a years-long process, which is fascinating in its own right. She also draws copies of many of the documents she finds for use in the book.
[image] Ray Kurzweil with a portrait of his father - image from The NPR interview - Shot by Melisssa Leshnov
But there is much more going on in this book than interesting, personalized tech. First, there is the element of historical preservation.
I always understood my father’s desire to resurrect his father’s identity as being connected to two different kinds of trauma. One is the loss of his father at a young age in a common but tragic scenario, with heart disease. The other trauma is this loss of a whole culture. Jewish life in Vienna was incredibly vibrant. Literally overnight it was lost. The suddenness of that loss was profound, and it took me a while to appreciate that. My great-aunt Dorit, who died this past year at 98, said they were following all the arbitrary protocols of the Nazis to save all this documentation. Saving documentation is an inheritance in my family that is a response to that traumatic circumstance. - from the PW interview
Kurzweil looks at three generations of creativity, (Fritz was a top-tier musician. His wife, Hannah, was an artist. Ray was also a musician, but mostly a tech genius. Amy is a cartoonist and a writer.) using Ray’s Fredbot project as the central pillar around which to organize an ongoing discussion of concepts. In doing so, she offers up not merely the work of the project, but her personal experiences, showing clear commonalities between herself and her never-met grandfather. This makes for a very satisfying read. Are the similarities across generations, this stream of creativity, the impact not just of DNA, but of lived experience? Nature or nurture, maybe the realization of potential brought to flower by the influence of environment whether external (living in a place that values what one has to offer) or internal (families nurturing favored traits)?
[image] Image from the book - posted on The American Academy in Berlin site
One could ask, “what makes us what are?” The book opens with a conversation about the meaning of life. But life is surely less determinative, less hard-edge defined than that. A better question might be what were the historical factors and personal choices that contributed to the evolution of who we have become?
[image] Image from the book - it was posted in the NPR interview
Existential questions abound, which makes this a brain-candy read of the first order. Kurzweil looks at issues around AI consciousness. Can artificial consciousness approach humanity without a body? What if we give an AI a body, with sensations? Ray thinks that we are mostly comprised of patterns. What if those patterns could be preserved, maybe popped into a new carrier. It definitely gets us into Battlestar Galactica territory. How would people be any different from Cylons then? Is there really a difference? Would that signal eternal life? Would we be gods to our creations? If we make an AI consciousness will it be to know, love, and serve us? The rest of that catechistic dictat adds that it is also to be happy with him in heaven forever. I am not so certain we want our AIs remaining with us throughout eternity. As with beloved pets, sometimes we need a break. Are we robots for God? Ray thinks such endless replication is possible, BTW. Kurzweil uses the image of Pinocchio throughout to illustrate questions of personhood, with wanting to live, then wanting to live forever.
[image] Every Battlestar Cylon model explained - image from ScreenRant
Persistence of self is a thread here. As noted in the introductory quotes, Kurzweil thinks about whether a person is the same person before and after going through some change. How much change is needed before it crosses some line? Am I the same person I was before I read this book? My skin and bones are older. But they are the same skin and bones. However, I have new thoughts in my head. Does having different thoughts change who I fundamentally am? Where does learning leave off and transition take over? Where does that self go when we die? Can it be reconstructed, if only as a simulacrum? How about experiences? Once experienced, where do those experiences go? These sorts of mental gymnastics are certainly not everyone’s cuppa, but I found this element extremely stimulating.
Kurzweil remains grounded in her personal experience, feelings, and concerns. The book has intellectual and philosophical heft, and concerns itself with far-end technological concerns, but it remains, at heart, a very human story.
As one might expect from an established cartoon artist who has generated more smiles than the Joker’s makeup artist, there are plenty of moments of levity here. Artificial is not a yuck-fest, but a serious story with some comic relief. It is a book that will make you laugh, smile, and feel for the people depicted in its pages. Amy Kurzweil has written a powerful, smart, thought-provoking family tale. There is nothing artificial about that.
I used to wonder if I could wake up into a different self. For all I knew, it could have happened every morning. A new self would have a new set of memories.
Review posted - 01/12/23
Publication date – 10/17/23
I received a hard copy of Artificial: A Love Story from Catapult in return for a fair review.
AMY KURZWEIL is a New Yorker cartoonist and the author of Flying Couch: A Graphic Memoir. She was a 2021 Berlin Prize Fellow with the American Academy in Berlin, a 2019 Shearing Fellow with the Black Mountain Institute, and has received fellowships from MacDowell, Djerassi, and elsewhere.
She has been nominated for a Reuben Award and an Ignatz Award for “Technofeelia,” her four part series with The Believer Magazine. Her writing, comics, and cartoons have also been published in The Verge, The New York Times Book Review, Longreads, Literary Hub, WIREDand many other places. Kurzweil has taught widely for over a decade. See her website (amykurzweil.com) to take a class with her.
I'm standing next to my table, everything neatly lined up, and I'm just hoping that my professors can see how much effort I've put into making my desi
I'm standing next to my table, everything neatly lined up, and I'm just hoping that my professors can see how much effort I've put into making my designs practical and ergonomic and sustainable. And I'm starting to get really nervous, because for a long time, no one says anything. It's just completely silent. And then one of the professors starts to speak, and he says, "Your work gives me a feeling of joy."…I asked the professors, "How do things make us feel joy? How do tangible things make us feel intangible joy?” They hemmed and hawed and gestured a lot with their hands. "They just do," they said… So this got me thinking: Where does joy come from? I started asking everyone I knew, and even people I just met on the street, about the things that brought them joy. On the subway, in a café, on an airplane, it was, "Hi, nice to meet you. What brings you joy?" I felt like a detective. I was like, "When did you last see it? Who were you with? What color was it? Did anyone else see it?" I was the Nancy Drew of joy. - from the author’s TED talk
Joyful is what she found out.
[image] Ingrid Fetell Lee - image from her FB page
The answers are directed at the immediate senses, and how external elements, form, color, shape, texture, scent, or sound can offer joyful sensate experience.
Seeing it all laid out, it was clear that joy was not a mysterious, intuitive force; it emanated directly from the physical properties of the objects. Specifically, it was what designers called aesthetics—the attributes that define the way an object looks and feels—that gave rise to the feeling of joy.
She notes commonality in the joyful things she found in the world, and breaks that down to ten subject areas she labels the Aesthetics of Joy; Energy, Abundance, Freedom, Harmony, Play, Surprise, Transcendence, Magic, Celebration, and Renewal, looking at how each can be applied to improving our lives. She offers diverse, interesting, and enlightening examples from the real world of how each has been approached. While her focus is on our living and working spaces, selecting how to shape and what to put on our walls, desks, coffee tables, and mantles, to create more enriched environments, she also looks a bit at where and how you might find joy in the outside world.
[image] Jihan Zencirli has made an uplifting business out a familiar joyous object – reflecting points about the joy of celebration and the impact of large objects in our festivities
If you are trying to engineer more joy into peoples’ lives, that is a form of psychological practice, whether board certified or not. (IFL does consult with several psychologists in trying to get a handle on joy.) But is this really so much different from any other artform that attempts to help us feel? Painting, writing/performing music, dance, writing poetry, fiction, and non-fiction, all seek to evoke a response.
A body of research is emerging that demonstrates a clear link between our surroundings and our mental health. For example, studies show that workers with sunny desks are happier and more productive than their peers in dimly lit offices.
She finds in the dominant modernist minimalism architecture and internal décor of contemporary life, the places we work, the buildings in which we live, the places where we learn, or secure needed services, a soul-sucking drain on our need for joy. She sees joy as a form of sustenance, no less than food, water, light, clothing, and shelter. We need at least some joy to keep going on.
We all have an inclination to seek joy in our surroundings, yet we have been taught to ignore it. What might happen if we were to reawaken this instinct for finding joy?
[image] Pierre Cardin’s iconic Bubble Palace designed By Antti Lovag – image from nine.com.au – the author writes on the impact on creativity of curvy shapes in one’s environment
IFL offers some concrete examples of the impact of design on behavior. A non-profit took on the task of repainting schools, to make them more stimulating and inviting. The results were eye-opening, both in attendance and performance metrics. I suppose it is possible that the schools thus impacted might have been self-selected, and might have improved anyway. I did not dig deeply into the report, but it does at least seem like a wonderful idea, and ther results were encouraging.
[image] Even aprons designed for professional use can make restaurant workers feel a bit better - Image from Hedley and Bennett
I was talking about this book with a dear friend who was a chef, had owned and run a restaurant or three in her time, but is out of the business now. She said that one of the things that was very important to her was that the plates on which a meal was served complemented the food, drew the eye, made for a presentation that was about more than just aroma and flavor, but built anticipation. IFL is doing that here, on a much larger table.
The repeating joy in my experience, outside of things interpersonal, is the visual stimulation of the natural world. During a period of several years, my wife and I managed to visit many National Parks, and each experience was most assuredly joyous, seeing so much rare and exquisite beauty in American landscapes. But those days ended and I had to find something else to fill that need. When I got out of work on Sunday morning, I took to driving to different NYC parks and shooting what I could of local visual delights. The combination of natural light and man-made elements was no less joyous and filling than seeing the Grand Canyon or Death Valley. My park tour days are also a fond memory now, but there is singular joy to be had spotting a late afternoon cumulo-nimbus in glowing white, while its neighbor clouds are in shadow. Or the god-light rays of a setting sun visible from the upstairs deck in the back of our house. No, the visions do not pay the bills, but they do provide significant moments of feeling at one with the world. One thing IFL looks at is how to incorporate into one’s personal and/or work spaces ways to reproduce such natural salves, ways to remind ourselves of things that are natural. Turns out there are many ways to fill that bill.
[image]
Are we going that high? - my shot from a joyous ride over the Willamette Valley in 2008 – (It is clickable, if you want a higher rez) IFL writes about the joy of transcendent feelings, and the correlation of upward movement with joy
One of the joys of this book is trailing along with the author as she talks with experts on design across the planet. I added some (ok, many) links in EXTRA STUFF. You will really enjoy checking out the linked designers and their work.[image] Work by Eva Zeisel – image from the British Museum – reflecting the Renewal aesthetic, as Zeisel’s design shapes suggest nature and growth
Here’s a bad idea for design. Yes, a newborn’s first cry is a source of joy. Replaying it over and over is something less than joyful. Small repeating elements can, however, evince joyful feelings, as in confetti, sprinkles, or glitter. But I suppose they can also become distracting and intrusive, not to mention no fun for the cleaning staff.
[image] A “Reversible Destiny Loft” in Tokyo – The author tried it for a few days - Can enough physical stimulation in a living space reverse aging?
One may wonder, does the aesthetic IFL espouses reflect anything more than her own personal preferences? There is certainly a danger that confirmation bias might play a role here. By offering thoughtful discussion, and the assistance of professional practitioners, she made me feel pretty comfortable with there being a minimum of such sample soiling here.
There might be real issues with the values espoused and the degree to which one might take the recommended strategies. For example, IFL looks for examples of order as joyful. The notion is reminiscent of the broken-window theory that projected an increase in crime in places where unrepaired, publicly viewable damage was left untended. There was a basis for that and the policy was effective in the real world. But on a personal level, it is also possible that one man’s mess is another man’s nirvana. This is not hard science, with firm edges, but scientifically informed advice for directions that may lead you to a place you want to go.
[image] Starburst lights at the Metropolitan Opera illuminate the Sparkle and Flare element of F-L’s Celebration aesthetic
The Brain Candy Corner Here is a list of some notions from the book that provide food for thought, or, you know, brain candy. They are legion here -----The impact of variable rather than uniform light -----Preferred human landscape – both to live in and see in paintings on our walls – there appears to be one in particular that is favored almost universally -----Can a living space that is stimulating enough slow aging? -----Consider the diversity of our senses – thought you had five? Nah, many more. -----A sparse environment numbs our senses -----On minimalism as anti-sensory -----On the shifting baseline syndrome – what seems wild today is less wild that what seemed wild a generation ago -----On the relationship of joy to play -----Association between play and circles -----Yarn bombing -----Ways to see the unseen -----Fear of loss of personal interaction resulting from on-line life -----On the roots of Carnevale -----The appeal of balloons -----Seasonality brings the promise of joy, while a simple one-way time flow makes the future always uncertain -----On anticipation as an enhancement to joy
[image] Yarn bombing in action – an element of the Surprise aesthetic – image from wiki – Bet this photo made you smile
One aspect that kept me wondering was a question of definition. Where does joy leave off and pleasure begin? Amusement? Enjoyment? Where do fun and happiness fit into this spectrum? How is joy different? Need joy be a purely positive thing? Can one have fun doing something awful? Sure, if one is psychologically damaged. But can one take joy in dark doings? Did Charles Manson experience joy when he was killing people? Maybe fun is less substantive. Like having had a fun time at a party, the beach, or a baseball game. Fun is ephemeral. It tickles our senses and then abates. How is this different from pleasure? Can pleasure be an ephemeral experience too? Joy, somehow, seems richer. I do not defend this notion at all. Going on feelz here. Joyful does not really address all this, and I guess it does not really need to. It seems perfectly ok to accept the presenting notion that joy is an absolute good thing, and that we human sorts have a need for joy in our lives, in the same way that we need more readily defined physical inputs. Is joy a sustaining experience? Can it become ecstatic, transcendental even? I think it can, based on personal experience. I once said to my son that the joy I experience from the beauty of the world was like a religion for me. His response was, “why like?” The lines between the sundry joy-like feelings remain squishy for me. But then, IFL is a designer, not a researcher in psychology, and it would be wrong to hold her to a requirement that she explain everything that goes on in our tiny minds.
In short, (yeah, I know, too late), Ingrid Fetell Lee has done an amazing job of explaining the impact of design on our lives, while offering a wide array of potential correctives. In doing so, she has accomplished that major victory of combining the imparting of information with delivering that intel in a manner that is engaging, entertaining, energetic and fun. Your brain may explode with all the possibilities on display in this book, but I expect I am not alone in reporting that Joyful is a thing of beauty, a classic of its kind, and will, I expect, be a joy forever.
Wonders never cease, as long as we are willing to look for them.
Some of the People (mostly designers) mentioned in the book (there are more, really) -----Ruth Lande Shuman - founder of the non-profit Publicolor, which offers a group of design-based programs aimed at helping high-risk students in their education. -----Ellen Bennett, while working as a line cook, decided to upgrade the aprons that kitchen staff wear, so designed a line of more interesting apparel and got her business started -----Shusaku Arakawa and Madeline Gins started The Reversible Destiny Foundation to design and promote “procedural architecture,” claiming that certain sorts of living spaces could reverse human aging. Color me skeptical, but their work is worth checking out. -----Dorothy Draper (no relation to Don) is noted in Joyful for her attention to texture, vibrancy, and richness of interior environment, particularly in the resort hotel The Greenbrier in West Virginia -----Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid, Russian emigres, devised a test to determine a universally favored painting. Turns out their “Most Wanted” project found its way into Darwinian Aesthetics -----British geographer Jay Appleton devised the “prospect-refuge theory” of human aesthetics. -----Landscape architect James Corner designed the High-Line park in Manhattan [image]
Consider life in black and white. Many creatures have dichromatic vision, (two kinds of cone receptors), which allows[image] Image from Videokarma.org
Consider life in black and white. Many creatures have dichromatic vision, (two kinds of cone receptors), which allows limited color perception. Monochromatics see only the gray scale from black to white. (Skates, rays). The cinematic and TV worlds were both certainly B&W for a long time, before color imposed itself on screens large and small. And, while B&W still holds a respected place in the visual arts, particularly in photography, film, and drawing, it is color that holds the broadest appeal, which should not be surprising. Color has played a major role in the development of homo sapiens, giving us more tools for making the best survival decisions.
If you are interested in how many colors we can see or the number of colors that exist, you’re gonna need a bigger palette. A computer displays under 17 million colors, of which we can see maybe 10 million, but a conservative estimate of how many colors there actually are puts it at 18 decillion. Yeah, you want to know. That’s an 18 with 33 zeroes after it. The top number is probably infinity, but it feels nice to have an actual number, however extreme, however arbitrary, to define the edges of what there is of anything in the universe. Thankfully, Kassia St Clair trimmed a few off the top, bottom, and middle, settling in at seventy-five. Any of us could name many more, but the odds are we would not be able to expound on each the way Ms. St Clair can.
What I have tried to do is provide something between a potted history [which would be more relevant to a compendium of plant colors] and a character sketch for the 75 shades [maybe Dante could help] that have intrigued me the most.
The project began with research on something else entirely, checking out 18th Century fashion intel at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, where she came across some mysterious adjective-noun combinations for the colors of things in fashion, which sparked more research, becoming a column on color in British Elle Decoration magazine.
[image] Kassia St Clair - From Psychology Today – photo credit – Colin Thomas
However minimal seventy-five may sound when compared to the theoretical number of available colors, St Clair has managed to put together a very broad spectrum, including basic colors Roy G. Biv never heard of, like white, black, and brown.
After an introductory section on the science and history of color and seeing, the book is divided into ten parts, white, yellow, orange, pink, red, purple, blue, green, brown and black, with short offerings on between five and ten different colors within each. This makes ideal bedtime reading, as the pieces on any color are never more than two or three pages, (a natural length given that the project originated with a column on color) so you can read as much or as little as you like without any concern about missing something, or delaying your shut-eye with stress over what might happen to a beloved character.
The content of the individual chapters varies. Many report on the materials from which coloring agents are made, animal, vegetable, mineral, and weird concoctions. Some focus instead on social significance, and in one case, military impact. It is the range of perspectives that offers the greatest joy here. It is one thing, and not a bad one, to learn where this or that color actually comes from in nature, tossing in some historical or character references, and that could have been pretty much the sum total of the book. But no paint-by-numbers writing here. St Clair’s wide range of approaches keeps us from settling into a single sort of appreciation, like a hamster on a color-wheel.
A more descriptive title might have been Interesting Facts about a Wide Range of Colors. Nonetheless, The Secret Lives of Color, (which is a wonderful world) offers a cornucopia of fascinating bits of information, which makes this a very high fructose collection of brain candy. The white cases of Apple computers are actually a shade of gray. Silver was used for flatware in the belief that it could detect poisons. The derivation of orange; which came first, the color or the fruit? A long-forgotten name for New York City. A bit of science on how fluorescents work. Some words that we think of as colors began as something else. A reason why the blue light from televisions affects us in certain ways. And on and on and on, delightfully. There are words in here that were quite unfamiliar in this context. Isabelline is a color? Really? Orpiment? Minium (must be a small color), Madder (an angry one?). Woad? (slow down. Woad is a color? Well, if you say so.) Best of all is Mummy. Suffice it to say that this was the most disturbing chapter of the book, one that kept coming back into my thoughts unbidden. Ironically, the pigment was a shade of brown that did not preserve itself all that well. So, oddities, surprises, and lots of “Gee, I never knew that.”
[image] Loooooove her - Image from Billboard -
So, next time you think you’re in the pink, you may then wonder which pink? Is it Baker-Miller pink, Mountbatten pink, puce, fuchsia, shocking, fluorescent, or maybe amaranth? Or if you are feeling blue, which shade? Ultramarine? Cobalt? Indigo, Prussian, Egyptian, woad, electric, or maybe cerulean? And when you are in a black mood, well, you get the idea. For the truly bleak there is
Vantablack, a carbon nanotube technology created in Britain in 2014, traps 99.965 percent of the spectrum, making it the blackest thing in the world. In person it is so dark it fools the eyes and brain, rendering people unable to perceive depth and texture. - NY times TV reviewers?
For any who enjoy learning new things, this book is the definition of a fun read, offering fascinating information in bite-sized, tasty nuggets of multi-colored brain candy for your synaptical munching pleasure. It’s to dye for. (Sorry)
[image] YInMn Blue is named for its chemical components: yttrium, indium and manganese - Credit - Courtesy of Mas Subramanian - Image and text from the above article in the NY Times
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