Emergent AI falls into line with postmodern thought and a general turn to “softer” epistemologies that emphasize contextual methodologies … Its constituent agents offer a theory for the felt experience of multiple inner voices. Although our culture has traditionally presented consistency and coherence as natural, feelings of fragmentation abound, now more than ever. Indeed, it has been argued that these feelings of fragmentation characterize postmodern life. Theories that speak to the experience of a divided self have power.
Predictor: Turkle, Sherry
Prediction, in context:In her 1995 book “Life on the Screen,” Sherry Turkle – an accomplished social psychologist, sociologist and anthropologist from MIT whose studies centered around people and computers for decades – writes: ”Emergent AI [Artificial Intelligence] manages to be seductive in many ways. It presents itself as escaping the narrow determinism of information processing. Its images are appealing because they refer to the biology of the brain. Like fuzzy logic and chaos theory, two other ideas that have captured the popular and professional imagination during the last decade, emergent AI acknowledges our disappointment with the cold, sharp edges of formal logic. It is consonant with a widespread criticism of traditional Westerm philosophy, which, as Heidegger once put it, had focused on fact in the world while passing over the world as such. Emergent AI falls into line with postmodern thought and a general turn to ‘softer’ epistemologies that emphasize contextual methodologies. And finally, its constituent agents offer a theory for the felt experience of multiple inner voices. Although our culture has traditionally presented consistency and coherence as natural, feelings of fragmentation abound, now more than ever. Indeed, it has been argued that these feelings of fragmentation characterize postmodern life. Theories that speak to the experience of a divided self have power.”
Biography:Sherry Turkle was the author of “Life on the Screen: Computers and the Human Spirit.” and a professor of the psychology of science at MIT. (Research Scientist/Illuminator.)
Date of prediction: January 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: Community/Culture
Subtopic: Human-Machine Interaction
Name of publication: Life on the Screen (book)
Title, headline, chapter name: Chapter 5: The Quality of Emergence
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
Pages 143, 144
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney