Tuesday, March 25, 2003

Source: Neurotechnology and Society; 3/25/2003; 8:29:14 AM Emotions and Neurotechnology. What are emotions? There exists broad contention across disciplines as to what constitutes our emotions. Physiological and cognitive psychologists view emotions as existing within the individual.  More interpersonally oriented social psychologists and cultural anthropologists view emotions as being created among people. Within the field of neuroscience there is also debate about the biochemical nature of emotions and location of emotions in the brain. In Looking for Spinoza, Antonio Damasio's third book on the subject, he categorizes emotions as follows: Background emotions: influences of basic metabolic, reflex and regulatory processes Primary emotions: anger, fear, sadness, surprise, disgust, joy and happiness--shared by all human societies Social emotions: sympathy, embarassment, shame, guilt, pride, jealousy, envy, gratitude, admiration and contempt Emotions influence our interpretations of events, giving a slant to our thinking, self-reflection and recollection.  In this respect, emotions play a primary role in our economic, political and social lives. From an evolutionary perspective, emotions have been honed over millions of years by natural selection to be trigger-happy. In today's modern society we can see that emotions are far from perfectly designed systems.  For example, anger, sadness and depression are mostly counterproductive in a world that has over six billion humans. Advancing neurotechnology will provide individuals with new tools to modulate, control and change their emotions at an ever-increasing level of accuracy and extent, having a profound influence on how society organizes itself. I will continue to pay special attention to the emotional implications of neurotechnology. [Neurotechnology and Society] 10:16:24 AM    trackback []     Articulate []

Source: Fragments ~ from Floyd; 3/25/2003; 8:29:18 AM The Worth of a Picture In the same way that there is disappointingly less in the words than there was, or is, in the thing spoken of, images almost always let me down in the end when it is my purpose to share them with you by this medium. While they may be worth a thousand words, this is of little comfort knowing it would have taken just the perfect finely-ordered ten thousand to begin to say it all. I'll look back at this image years from now and see it in full-color stereoscopic memory that will pull together all the senses associated with being there. I will remember this place in context of space and time: the barn crossing was just behind me, the steep rocky bluff covered with ferns was to the left. I had come here just at 3:15 knowing that the sun would be pouring only then down the cleft cut by Goose Creek, and the water would glory in a dazzling animated brilliance that I longed to remember, if I could capture it in a picture. I will see this image and know that a week before, floods had scoured the creek to bedrock in places just ahead, tossed around massive boulders, and undercut the bank in front of me. And the next week, I found Hepatica and Trout Lily blooming on the high banks to the right, just there. The viewer, on the other hand, must imagine depth, must infer the 360 degree context of being there when the shutter was pressed; cannot know the intentions behind the lens, or the expectations, what was hoped for it. In the image, you will only see pixels, while I will remember being.   [Fragments ~ from Floyd] 10:09:25 AM    trackback []     Articulate []