On Internet . . . Disembodied "Life"

For those of us who believe that any significant part of life can be fulfilled through an Internet-ridden existence and experience, Hubert Dreyfus' book On the Internet (2001) may be a necessary remedy and a good wake-up call.

Yes, he is the philosopher who shook the AI world by publishing his What Computers Can't Do (1972), updating it with What Computers Still Can't Do (1997).

I studied with Dreyfus for about two years, mostly focusing on philosophy of AI and a bit on Heidegger. This was during the seven years I spent studying Logic and Methodology of Science at Berkeley. It was a pleasant surprise to see his On the Internet come out. With about one hundred pages of text, it is a very tight extension of his philosophical analysis to the world of Internet.

Talking

Wiesbaden, Germany (Summer 2007)
Originally uploaded by M.Mortazavi

Yes, they are sitting.

... but they are also talking ...

What are they talking about?

The Porter

Tehran Bazar (2005)
Originally uploaded by M.Mortazavi

This porter still carries the ancient porters' back brace, made to drive goods through the narrow allies of the bazar.

He could be 60 or seventy but he still carries the load for any customer who is willing to pay.

Women are his primary customers although he shies not from the men either.

His profession is an endangered one.

Displaying One's Goods

Tehran Bazar (2005)
Originally uploaded by M.Mortazavi

The art of display is the art of life.

We display our skills, our devotions, our hopes, emotions and fears.

Often, display decides who buys what where and when.

Learning Together

Tehran Bazar (2005)
Originally uploaded by M.Mortazavi

Their ages tell the story.

The younger learns form the older and the older from the oldest.

There's much to learn, even in this narrow shop, selling trays, in the summer, when the schools are out.

A shop, even a small one, can be a microcosm of the whole world.

How many people can sit in a shop this small and learn about the world?

Or should I ask "how many generations"?

Sometimes Pictures ...

Sometimes, pictures can tell or cover-up whole stories—more than any news report or any press conference can.

In the English-speaking world, John Berger, more than any art critique I know, has shown how pictures and looking can disclose a great deal about events, people and places. (See his Ways of Seeing and class of the same name by Professor Lori Landay at UC Berkeley.)

When I write this entry, i.e. during lunch hour on August 8, 2007, two of the three pictures above are less than 24 hours old.

What do the pictures tell you?

A "Strategy" for Iraq

Thus, writes David Gardner of Financial Times ("America's Illusory Strategy in Iraq," August 9 2007):

But US commanders seem to have no trouble detecting the hand of Tehran everywhere. This largely evidence-free blaming of serial setbacks on Iranian forces is a bad case of denial. First, the insurgency is overwhelmingly Iraqi and Sunni, built around a new generation of jihadis created by the US invasion. Second, to the extent foreign fighters are involved these have come mostly from US-allied and Sunni Saudi Arabia, not Shia Iran. Third, the lethal roadside bombs with shaped charges that US officials have coated with a spurious veneer of sophistication to prove Iranian provenance are mostly made by Iraqi army-trained engineers – from high explosive looted from those unsecured arms dumps.

Shia Iran has backed a lot of horses in Iraq. If it wished to bring what remains of the country down around US ears it could. It has not done so. The plain fact is that Tehran’s main clients in Iraq are the same as Washington’s: Mr Maliki’s Da’wa and the Supreme Islamic Council of Iraq led by Abdelaziz al-Hakim. Iran has bet less on the unpredictable Moqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi army, which has, in any case, largely stood aside during the present troop surge.

So, in sum. Having upturned the Sunni order in Iraq and the Arab world, and hugely enlarged the Shia Islamist power emanating from Iran, the US finds itself dependent on Tehran-aligned forces in Baghdad, yet unable to dismantle the Sunni jihadistan it has created in central and western Iraq. Ignoring its Iraqi allies it is arming Sunni insurgents to fight al-Qaeda. And, by selling them arms rather than settling Palestine it is trying to put together an Arab Sunni alliance (Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia) with Israel against Iran. All clear? How can anyone keep a straight face and call this a strategy?