And as a pioneer in what I believe will become a transforming concept in human communication, I know that Jaron shares with me an underlying enthusiasm for the contributions that computer and related communications technologies can have on the quality of life. That is the other half of his manifesto. I appreciate Jaron pointing this out. It's not entirely clear sometimes, for example, that Bill Joy has another half to his manifesto.

And I agree with at least one of Jaron's six objections to what he calls "Cybernetic Totalism." In objection #3, he takes issues with those who maintain "that subjective experience either doesn't exist, or is unimportant because it is some sort of ambient or peripheral effect." The reason that some people feel this way is precisely because subjective experience cannot be scientifically measured. Although we can measure certain correlates of subjective experience (e.g., correlating certain patterns of objectively measurable neurological activity with objectively verifiable reports of certain subjective experiences), we cannot penetrate to the core of subjective experience through objective measurement. It's the difference between the concept of "objectivity," which is the basis of science, and "subjectivity," which is essentially a synonym for consciousness. There is no device or system we can postulate that could definitively detect subjectivity associated with an entity, at least no such device that does not have philosophical assumptions built into it.

So I accept that Jaron Lanier has subjective experiences, and I can even imagine (and empathize with!) his feelings of frustration at the dictums of "cybernetic totalists" such as myself (not that I accept this characterization) as he wrote his half manifesto. Like Jaron, I even accept the subjective experience of those who maintain that there is no such thing as subjective experience. Of course, most people do accept that other people are conscious, but this shared human assumption breaks down as we go outside of human experience, e.g., the debates regarding animal rights (which have everything to do with whether animals are conscious or just quasi-machines that operate by "instinct"), as well as the debates regarding the notion that a nonbiological entity could conceivably be conscious.

Consider that we are unable to truly experience the subjective experiences of others. We hear their reports about their experiences, and we may even feel empathy in response to the behavior that results from their internal states. We are, however, only exposed to the behavior of others and, therefore, can only imagine their subjective experience. So one can construct a perfectly consistent, and scientific, worldview that omits the existence of consciousness. And because there is fundamentally no scientific way to measure the consciousness or subjective experience of another entity, some observers come to the conclusion that it's just an illusion.

My own view is that precisely because we cannot resolve issues of consciousness entirely through objective measurement and analysis, i.e., science, there is a critical role for philosophy, which we sometimes call religion. I would agree with Jaron that consciousness is the most important ontological question. After all, if we truly imagine a world in which there is no subjective experience, i.e., a world in which there is swirling stuff but no conscious entity to experience it, then that world may as well not exist. In some philosophical traditions (i.e., some interpretations of quantum mechanics, some schools of Buddhist thought), that is exactly how such a world is regarded.

I like Jaron's term "circle of empathy," which makes it clear that the circle of reality that I consider to be "me" is not clear-cut. One's circle of empathy is certainly not simply our body, as we have limited identification with, say, our toes, and even less with the contents of our large intestines. Even with regard to our brains, we are aware of only a small portion of what goes on in our brains, and often consider thoughts and dreams that suddenly intrude on our awareness to have come from some foreign place. We do often include loved ones who may be physically disparate within our circle of empathy. Thus the aspect of the Universe that I consider to be "myself" is not at all clear cut, and some philosophies do emphasize the extent to which there is inherently no such boundary.

Having stated a few ways in which Jaron and I agree with each other's perspective, I will say that his "Half of a Manifesto" mischaracterizes many of the views he objects to. Certainly that's true with regard to his characterization of my own thesis. In particular, he appears to have only picked up on half of what I said in my talk, because the other half addresses at least some of the issues he raises. Moreover, many of Jaron's arguments aren't really arguments at all, but a amalgamation of mentally filed anecdotes and engineering frustrations. The fact that Time Magazine got a prediction wrong in 1966, as Jaron reports, is not a compelling argument that all discussions of trends are misguided. Nor is the fact that dinosaurs did not continue to increase in size indefinitely a demonstration that every trend quickly dies out. The size of dinosaurs is irrelevant; a larger size may or may not impart an advantage, whereas an increase in the price-performance and/or bandwidth of a technology clearly does impart an advantage. It would be hard to make the case that a technology with a lower price-performance had inherent advantages, whereas it is certainly possible that a smaller and therefore more agile animal may have advantages.

Jaron Lanier has what my colleague Lucas Hendrich calls the "engineer's pessimism." Often an engineer or scientist who is so immersed in the difficulties of a contemporary challenge fails to appreciate the ultimate long-term implications of their own work, and, in particular, the larger field of work that they operate in. Consider the biochemists in 1985 who were skeptical of the announcement of the goal of transcribing the entire genome in a mere 15 years. These scientists had just spent an entire year transcribing a mere one ten-thousandth of the genome, so even with reasonable anticipated advances, it seemed to them like it would be hundreds of years, if not longer, before the entire genome could be sequenced. Or consider the skepticism expressed in the mid 1980s that the Internet would ever be a significant phenomenon, given that it included only tens of thousands of nodes. The fact that the number of nodes was doubling every year and there were, therefore, likely to be tens of millions of nodes ten years later was not appreciated by those who struggled with "state of the art" technology in 1985, which permitted adding only a few thousand nodes throughout the world in a year.