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Fuzzy Future by Bart Kosko

Kosko, Bart (1999).
The Fuzzy Future. From Society and Science to Heaven in a Chip.
Harmony Books. New York

Dr. Bart Kosko lives in Los Angeles. He is on the faculty of the electrical engineering department at the University of Southern California. He has written many books, among them 'Fuzzy Thinking' and the novel 'Nanotime'. The research interests include adaptive systems, fuzzy theory, neural networks, bio-computing, nonlinear signal processing etc. For more information, please click http://sipi.usc.edu/~kosko/

Kosko's new book titled 'Fuzzy Future - from Society and Science to heaven in a Chip' (Harmony Books, New York, 1999) gives pretty much to readers who have time to think about the future. This certainly is not a book for narrow-minded! The topics range from politics throught science to digital culture. The book can be bought at http://www.amazon.co.uk/

I believe 'Fuzzy Future' is an excellent companion in thinking about our fundamental problems right here and right now (i.e. man-nature relationship, questions of ownership). The book tells about contemporary issues as well as it directs our thoughts tens and even hundreds of years ahead.

First things first; in the short introduction part the term 'fuzzy' is explained. Fuzzy means shades of gray between 0 and 100 percent. Kosko writes that in digital age "more precise "facts" have not made it easier to draw a line that decides whether a fetus is alive or whether a share of stcok is a good buy or whether crashing a country's banking software is an act of war".

Kosko sees irony in that things are fuzzier than ever in our digital age. There is less and less binary-like (zero or one) issues. There is no sense in asking so many "true or false" questions and having exact (conventional mathematical) answers to them.

Fuzz adds choices as it creeps into a process. Fuzz offers shadows of gray between the extreme choices of black and white. This continuum of gray choices can, according to Kosko, challenge simple either-or world views. And this is highly needed, indeed!

There is fuzzy logic in control chips of consumer products, although sellers of those products do not want to mention about it. Fuzzy might sound weird or negative.

You can find fuzziness also in heavy industry and process control. The city of Sendai in Japan has its fuzzy control of subway since 1988; Kosko sees this as the breakthrough in fuzzy systems.

The world of science once, not too long ago, did not want to get familiar with fuzzy thinking. But today "gray has become okay" even in science. Scientific American had Kosko's article on its pages first time in 1993.

In the part 'Fuzzy Politics' Kosko raises questions about 'Left and Right or Neither', 'The Fuzzy Tax Form', The Rights of Genomes', 'The Rights of Whales' and 'Smart Wars'.

In the other part 'Fuzzy Science' the author asks where do scientists get their equations and answers "they quess at them, brains quess at them". So, why not let computers quess, too? This part of the book covers new results in fuzzy and neural systems and in many fields of science and engineering that support them.

One of the chapters questions the view of physics that the world is nothing but binary information.

Coming to part 'Fuzzy Digital Culture' we find thoughts about "ever more diverse culture of fact and opinion and art and science and all those fuzzy patterns we call ideas".

Perhaps the closing chapter about the great digital threshold "when chips replace brains" is a bit difficult to understand. But it offers most exciting reading.

Is biology destiny? Although our genes condemn us to old age and disease and finally to death, it is worth questioning why we accept death so passively. Why are we deathists?

The digital culture might not accept deathism. This culture sees life forms as information machines that strore and process bit streams. That puts brains on the same bit-bases footing as computers.

Kosko thinks that our focus is shifting from the old world of atoms to the new world of bits and chip brain. Perhaps already in 2020 you will find that your brain's processing power fits in a chip the size of a sugar cube. And you suddenly face new questions about brain-chip interface.

All this would not be interesting if Kosko bypassed the meaning, purpose and will. But he does not, thus making everything so touching for the reader. Couple of times he mentions that fuzziness is not just about systems or thinking, it is about living and doing, too.

Kosko writes that even conciousness can be viewed as a matter of degree. "So, go from brain to chip in small steps".

The author wants you to picture this: nano-surgeons opening your skull and first cutting out a small chunk of your brain; then gradually making your brain better and faster; you being awake and conscious all the time. Finally you could be a chip or the net of chiplets; your will and your body could be one, information patterns in the bit stream, that is.

"Your new life can be hell or heaven in a chip. You can choose which. The will must impose on a bit stream any value or purpose it has even if the will is itself a part of a bit stream."

Your memory has gradually become a database that you can access at the speed of light. With intelligent agents you can search millions of databases and knowledge networks. And "you can sense all stored knowledge of art and science and news and history much as you now scan a newspaper."

Having read Kosko's 'Fuzzy Future' I get the feeling that I'm better equipped to meet old problems like mind-body dichotomy, or newer ones as understanding the Internet and digital interfaces. This book helps you to be fuzzy, and perhaps a little bit funny, too, but in a reasonable way.

20th of August 1999

Sami Määttä
http://www.kaapeli.fi/~smaatta/