Page 18 - 2011 - The 'X' Chronicles Newspaper - March 2011

Beyond The Super Computer BEYOND THE microprocessor. This superchip made possible a dimensional axes of depth and width felt their SUPERCOMPUTER: silicon version of what bacilli long ago evolved- world was infinite (Abbott, 1953). Yet there was -the massively parallel computer (Verity, 1995). an even larger infinity above them--if only they SOCIAL GROUPS AS As Cray Computer Corporation fell, Bill Gates' had been able to look up. Microsoft rose. Cray had been admirably When using the light of both group and SELF-INVENTION adapted to the environment of the mainframe. individual selection, the new evolutionary MACHINES But Gates was a creature of a new ecology--that sciences are able to lift their eyes and see our of the microprocessor-powered personal kinship with three-and-a-half billion years of Continued from Page 16 computer. precursors, thus vastly expanding their range of These are small scale battles compared explorable evidence and explanatory to those which constantly unleash their mechanisms. The world of the petri dish sheds RESOURCE SHIFTERS take over where the utility sorters leave off. Those who brutalities across the face of this planet. light on the conference halls of the Hague. The demonstrate the ability to generate or Zoology, ecology, history, and current affairs mathematics of materials science and of such non-linear newcomers as fractals and chaos abound with examples of competing group accumulate resources are given even more. It brains using their individual members as theory, the insights of cell biology and may be yams and pigs among Polynesians, modules, sensors, parallel distributed endocrinology, and the mysteries of psychology copper and blankets among the Kwakiutl information processors, pawns, and find a new place in the puzzle. If the (Benedict, 1934: 178; Johnson and Earle: 1987: 168f; Harris, 1978: 94-98; Harris 1977: 104- experimental test components in relentless evolutionary dogmatists of Lilliput and battles for supremacy. The largest of them, we Blefuscu will simply recognize the equal 108; Sahlins 1986: 308), cattle amongst the importance of each end of the egg, they may Masai and the Xhosa (Mostert, 1992), and cash, call nation states. These collective intelligences finally make it possible for science to reveal have frequently reengineered their Lamborghinis, and yachts in the West. But most organizational blueprints as thoroughly as the something far more fascinating--the workings humans are inordinately drawn to the material of an egg's interior. The inner workings of you indications of success. bacterial colony retooling its genome. and me. Individual selectionists have two major Resources are shifted in great quantities to those like Microsoft's Bill Gates and Wal- fallback positions to account for the otherwise 1) See unpublished papers by Ben-Jacob Mart's Sam Walton, who become the apotheosis difficult to explain--kin selection (the surrender and Shapiro listed in bibliography. 2) Amotz Zahavi first proposed that of self to benefit those who carry genes like of business success. People shower them with assemblages of birds act as "information- luxurious gifts. Hotels attempt to lure them with your own) and reciprocal altruism (the centers" in Ward and Zahavi. 1973. Since then, swapping of generous deeds). But a plethora of free rooms and restaurants with free meals. Men studies indicates that among humans, the avian experts like P. de Groot (de Groot 1980) and women of exceptional talent take pride in becoming members of their team. And, most victims of elimination are the group members and John and Colleen Marzluff with their with the fewest family ties or close friends sometime collaborator Bernd Heinrich have important, like the pay dirt striking bacteria (House et al. 1988; Severino, 1983; Pelletier, done much to probe the operation of bird roosts who find themselves the center of a crowd, 1983; Jarvinen, 1955; Arnetz et al. 1983; Cohen as collective brains, group intelligences successful humans become hubs of influence and Syme, 1985; Broadhead et al. 1983; (Marzluff et al. 1995). (Johnson and Earle, 1987: 52; White, 1993; 3) Credit for pointing out that isolation Freedman, 1979: 36; Bernays, 1928), Berkman, 1984; Bloom, 1995: 60-65; Konner, and lack of control are the two factors which 1990: 27f; Catanzaro 1995: 393.). The self- commanders of what primatologists call the sacrificers' pre-programmed renunciation does consistently produce laboratory models of social "attention structure" (Chance, 1967; not add a scrap of benefit to genes identical to depression in experimental animals goes to Tiger and Fox, 1971: 39f; Washburn and their own, nor does it store up favors for the Pulitzer-Prize-winning science journalist Jon Hamburg 1968: 471; Fossey, 1983: 64; Franklin in his Molecules of the Mind: The Altmann, 1967: 349). In short, their attitudes, future. This makes accounting for the survival Brave New Science of Molecular Psychology, of utility sorters ,and resource shifters in terms thoughts, and styles set the trend for the group. of individual selectionism exceedingly difficult, New York: Atheneum, 1987. Success produces the equivalent of the bacterium's chemotactic attractant; failure if not impossible. For more information about Howard Group selectionism can provide a richly generates the counterpart of a chemotactic Bloom, his books, his papers, his insght, please repellant (Lipkin, 1995; Zullow and Seligman, productive alternative explanation. Individuals visit his very populat website at within a social unit are ranked on the basis of 1990; Seligman, 1990: 187-198). As the old perceived relevance to a larger community. song says, "Nobody loves you when you're down and out." They either move to the sidelines or to the www.HowardBloom.net center depending on the verdict rendered by their psychophysiology and by their social or THE INTERGROUP TOURNAMENT. environmental milieu. Thus they become components of a communal intelligence. Put yet Everything from the subtle warfare between colonies of sea anemones to the another way, conformity enforcers, diversity generators, utility sorters and resource shifters territorial machinations of wolf packs and the aid in the construction of competitive machines outright pillage inflicted by armies of ants far more powerful than mere individual indicates the universality of intergroup strife. organisms. When matched against genes whose The forms of competition and bloodshed between troops of monkeys or apes are nearly disguised selfishness restricts them to family support and reciprocal exchanges, genes free to innumerable. And then we have those primates participate in the computational and inventive who have left us eloquent histories, elaborate tapestries, equestrian statues, oil-on-canvas power of a group brain will roll over their rivals like a tank flattening a Volkswagen. masterpieces, and heroic friezes testifying to their battles. "It is well that war is so terrible...", Eshel Ben-Jacob has been forced to infer said one member of this species, "or we should from his data on bacillus subtilis that we may be grow too fond of it." The name of that Homo sapien was Robert E. Lee. viewing "a new picture of cooperative evolution" (Corning, 1983; Corning, 1996; Beating the opposition is central even in Smillie, 1993; Smillie, 1995), one entirely peaceful commercial enterprise. Two decades "orthogonal" to standard neo Darwinism (Ben- ago the supercomputer company led by Jacob, 1998; Ben-Jacob, Cohen, and Czirók. In Seymour Cray seemed invincible. But Cray's last enterprise was shattered well before his press.). What does "orthogonal" mean? In Edwin A. Abbott's classic book, Flatland, death, the victim of a new technology, the creatures operating on only the two-