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(Next week’s letter will be the tenth essay-and-update I have written so far thus making this my most long-lived writing project in almost ten years. It feels good to have gone through with it and I’d like to know what you think so please feel free to hit the reply button.)
DEPENDENT VARIABLE*
There is something wrong with my iPhone. It still receives emails, it still plays podcasts, it still takes pictures of food but Siri can’t hear me anymore. I really only use the digital assistant when my hands are wet – either I need to set baking timers while I am doing dishes or I want a podcast playing while I shower. My phone is waterproof so the lack of Siri has not been a huge inconvenience but I was surprised to notice just how many times in the past week I have tried to talk to her. One could argue that this speaks to Siri being designed well – I relied on her enough to cultivate a habit but not so desperately that I would think that I cannot carry on without her. I am still marginally annoyed at having one more thing to do instead of just yelling it out. Convenience, no matter how small, is remarkably addictive.
My mother and I used to get into arguments about such conveniences and dictionaries. Her being a language teacher biased her towards paper dictionaries and my being of a different generation biased me towards just using my phone. She would argue that if students were allowed to use their phones to look up new words they would gradually forget how to use a paper dictionary. I would argue that knowing how to use a paper dictionary would soon be obsolete. This is a familiar debate that has been sparked by many of the technological innovations we rely on daily. I am pretty certain that I could use a paper dictionary but when it comes to similar things, such as spelling, recalling phone numbers or handwritten cursive, I am not so sure. I recently found that I am really bad at spelling ‘wavelength’ and while I am not certain how one would definitively test whether this is a consequence of all of my devices being equipped with auto-correct, it is not unreasonable to think that had I never been exposed to it maybe I would have memorized the order of the t’s and the h’s. Maybe I had memorized it at some point and then forgot because technology has allowed me to forget.
Whenever I find myself hooked on another app or gadget I am reminded of a William Gibson quote on whether future generations will have chips implanted in their heads:
“I very much doubt that our grandchildren will understand the distinction between that which is a computer and that which isn’t.
Or, to put it another way, they will not know “computers” as any distinct category of object or function. This, I think, is the logical outcome of genuinely ubiquitous computing: the wired world. The wire world will consist, in effect, of a single unbroken interface. The idea of a device that “only” computes will perhaps be the ultimate archaism in a world in which the fridge or the toothbrush are potentially as smart as any other object, including you. A world in which intelligent objects communicate, routinely and constantly, with each other and with us. In this world, there will be no need for the physical augmentation of the human brain, as the most significant, and quite unthinkably powerful, augmentation will have already taken place post geographically, via distributed processing.
You won’t need smart goo in your brain, because your fridge and your toothbrush will be very smart indeed, enormously smart, and they will be there for you, constantly and always.
So it won’t, I don’t think, be a matter of computers crawling buglike down into the most intimate chasm of our being, but of humanity crawling buglike out into the dappled light and shadow of the presence of that which we will have created, which we are creating now, and which seems to me to already be in process of re-creating us.”
I have always been irked by commentaries on modern technology that hinge on claiming that it is making us lazy, that forgetting skills that we have outsourced to machines is a blemish on our character or worth. As a fact, technology is without a doubt changing us. It is allowing us to forget old skills but forcing us to acquire new, making us simultaneously more dependent and more independent. It is giving us more ways to connect and more ways to divide into groups. As we see misuses and abuses of technology we re-calibrate the way we think about it but also about the human minds capable of seeking and conjuring up ways of such abuse. We start with a sense of self that needs help and then create a machine to help it. That machine then changes the self. This is an iterative process, one that feeds itself in every step and is amenable to negotiation between the user and the ever-evolving machine. Much like Gibson I am inclined to interpret this as us becoming closer to being screw-less, wireless cyborgs than just less adept at doing things on our own. In an ongoing process, we have integrated machines into our notion of a self that can perform and produce.
The ultimate argument against this sort of wireless integration typically consists of imagining a scenario where all of our devices malfunction at once, or a natural disaster wipes out all of the necessary infrastructure, and we are left helpless. The interesting thing about this argument is that it assumes a high level of inflexibility and rigidity in the way humans learn and acquire skills, a laziness and powerlessness presumably brought about by being dependent on using technology too much even though that technology is constantly changing. The catch here then seems to be exactly in the fact that those of us that have grown up surrounded with technology, or with parents that were early adopters, have learned how to quickly adjust and quickly learn, to upgrade our wireless cyborg software, whenever the next big thing comes around and becomes a part of our lives. It is hard to imagine that this constant update feature only applies to new versions of iOS. I know that building a fire or constructing a shelter is not the same as using an app that has been redesigned while you were sleeping but consider a person that has failed to learn how to add an attachment to an email after multiple explanations – would they really be more likely to adapt to a postapocalyptic survival situation than someone that has, since their birth, been an ever-updating Gibsonian cyborg?
Best,
Karmela
*Consider a particle traveling at some speed. When plotting its trajectory i.e. where in space it is at a certain point of time one would typically put position on the y-axis and time on the x-axis. When given an x-value, or a time, someone presented with the plot could identify where in space the particle was. Variations in time correspond to variations in position. Here, we would call time the independent variable (the changeable input) and position of the particle the dependent variable (the output reflecting the input).
***
ABOUT THIS WEEK
There seem to have been quite a few devastating natural disasters this week and I hope all of you and your friends and families are safe. My thoughts go out to those affected.
LISTENING: There are many great podcasts dealing with technology and the way we interact with it but one of my all-time favorite remains to be this two-part exploration of a possible Transhumanist Rapture from the Stuff to Blow Your Mind crew and this episode of Flash Forward, imagining and exploring a fully paperless future, reminds me of many of the discussions I had had with my mom, especially the heated ones about paper dictionaries (this one deals with an AI ridden future as well). Finally, keeping it at least vaguely topical, this week’s guest on Politically Reactive was Neil deGrasse Tyson and, among many other amusing things, he talked about his fearlessness when it comes to a potential future robot takeover. Along similar lines, this episode of TechStuff dives into the ways we tell human apart from bots on the Internet, including clicking on the seemingly sill box that says ‘I am not a robot’.
On the music side of things, I am slowly crawling out of the Johnny Cash so I have been listening to a lot of heavy metal classic while running and this Blood Incantation album as a quality death metal backdrop to my work.
LEARNING: I have been quite exhausted this week and looking back on it makes me simultaneously think that I did nothing and everything at the same time. It was not a week for deep research insights and I was slightly distracted by a logistical nightmare I had gotten embroiled in with my university’s payroll department. Hopefully next week I can focus more and hectically look for unfamiliar bussines offices less.
I sacrificed most of a Saturday to grading the first batch of homeworks for the semester. The students’ performance exceeded my expectations, which is unambiguously a good thing. I am also helping design a midterm exam, which seems to be even more involved than churning out weekly problem sets. The students’ good grades were of great help here since they can be taken as an indicator that the problems I had written so far have been at an appropriate level of difficulty. (Long story short, teaching is hard.)
In doing my own homework I learned a lot about the way hyperfine structure of atoms interacts with external magnetic fields. In a way, the process of learning about the quantum structure of atoms is an interesting one in itself because there are so many corrections to the seemingly simple picture we can put together for the hydrogen atom. Corrections such as the fine or hyperfine structure seem small when numbers are given without a context but they are all utilized to simulate two-level systems and artificial atoms in laboratories showing us that considering details is crucial. And then there is also the realization that we still only really know how to fully solve the hydrogen atom and nothing else. (Which makes the fact that elements such as rubidium or cesium are commonly used in experiments that much more impressive.)
I only saw one talk this week, given by a local postdoctoral researcher dealing with a very specific interplay of broken symmetries, topological order and superconductivity. It was rather technical and I am not sure I could summarize the punchline but since some of my work indirectly deals with interactions between topology and superconductivity, I filed it under the ‘read these papers at some point’ category.
WATCHING/READING: I wanted to see Columbus or Marjorie Prime at the local art theater but missed out on both because I was working late. I also haven’t had time to even open any of the books I had planned on reading this week. Hopefully next week will be better (and I can maybe soak up some media over the weekend).
TRAVELING: It is my boyfriend’s birthday this weekend and we are also attending a wedding so I will be travelling and taking a couple of days off from the Illinois-based chaos that is my job. I packed some homeworks to grade on the plane but I am still very much looking forward to this short trip - these sojourns always help re-charge my proverbial batteries.
EATING: The theme of this past week's cooking has most definitely been squash overload. At the farmer’s market I picked up a butternut squash, an acorn squash, a carnival squash and a zucchini and the soup I am sharing below is one of the many things I made from this haul (you can see the rest in my Instagram feed). It is vegan by design (rather than vegan-ized) so I am including some notes on how to potentially make it with dairy with a fair warning that some experimentation may be necessary. Regardless of your stance on consuming animal products, I would recommend having it with chickpeas and spinach like I did.
(I am a firm believer in roasting any vegetable and then turning it into a soup and this recipe is a great starting point for such experiments. Accordingly, at the very bottom of this recipe I am including some notes on how to reduce the squash soup to a simple roast-and-blend procedure as well.)
For two servings of soup, you will need
1 tablespoon of olive, coconut or vegetable oil
1 carnival or acorn squash, cubed
1 yellow onion, diced
4 cloves garlic
¼ cup raw cashews, soaked in water for a couple of hours (or give them a brief boil)
1 cup almond milk, unsweetened (or soy or cashew or coconut milk from a carton, also unsweetened)
2 tablespoons nutritional yeast
Salt, pepper and cayenne
For serving (optional): ½ cup of chickpeas, 2 minced cloves of garlic, ½ tablespoon minced fresh ginger (or powdered ginger), 2 cups spinach (or kale), 1 teaspoon olive oil, salt, pepper, cumin, red pepper flakes
Preheat the oven to 400 F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Toss the cubed squash with ½ tablespoon of olive oil and spread in a single layer on the sheet. Lightly season with salt and pepper and roast for 20-30 minutes, until slightly browned and fork tender.
To a large skillet or a soup pot add the remaining ½ tablespoon of olive oil followed by the onions*. Sautee until soft and translucent, about 5 to 7 minutes, then add the cubed squash and garlic. Sautee the mixture for a few minutes longer, then add just enough water to cover it and bring to a boil.
Add the mixture, together with the drained cashews, milk and nutritional yeast to a blender and blend until smooth. (Add a few tablespoons of water if your blender is struggling.)
Taste and add seasoning: salt and pepper to taste and a pinch of cayenne.
Transfer to a pot, add water to reach desired thinness (I left mine pretty thick) and bring to a boil.
To serve with chickpeas and spinach sauté the garlic and the ginger in olive oil until fragrant, then add the chickpeas and spinach, season and continue sautéing until the chickpeas are warm and slightly brown and the spinach has wilted. Pile onto the soup and add a generous pinch of red pepper flakes.
Tips: I decided to make this with a carnival squash since those (and acorn squash) tend to be somewhat more savory than butternut squash or pumpkin but I think both could still be used with some adjustment to the spices and the amount of milk. I would probably use only ½ cup of almond milk and substitute the rest with water or vegetable broth. If you are generally opposed to cow milk alternatives, you could use vegetable broth throughout. Additionally, you could use vegetable broth instead of water as well. As far as non-squash vegetables, I have successfully made similar soups with cauliflower, and a mix of broccoli and cauliflower** or cauliflower and potatoes would likely be quite good as well.
I used cashews here to make the soup more creamy but this is another thing that could be worked around easily (as I know that cashews are both expensive and slightly on the fatty side) as you could either leave them out completely for a lighter soup (it blends pretty well by itself) or use canned, full-fat coconut milk in place of almond milk as another way to make the soup more rich.
To de-veganize I am guessing the thing to do would be to leave out the cashews, substitute heavy cream for the almond milk and grated parmesan (or even some freshly shredded cheese such as cheddar) for the nutritional yeast.
Despite the cashews this is not a very heavy soup (a serving clocks in at about 350 calories) and as an alternative to eating it with chickpeas and spinach I would probably serve it with some brown rice or quinoa, maybe with some cucumber slices on the side and a garnish of fresh cilantro. Some toasted, crusty bread might be a good call as well.
*To cut down the number of steps involved in making this, cut the onion in quarters or smaller, toss with oil and roast them with the squash. If you would like to roast the garlic as well, roast the whole bulb wrapped in aluminum foil.
**You could buy a frozen mix and roast it without thawing. The flavor would be slightly more mild but in a pinch this is a big time and money saver.