The Futures of Innovation in the DoD, Speculative Philosophy, and Technological Politics
How I am currently trying to grapple with different concepts at the same time
Hiatus or not, I’m back writing now. Quick updates, I plan on keeping the generalist focus of this newsletter, but I am considering changing the name. Multi-disciplinarity changed meaning to me once I read The Interdisciplinary Research Process by Rick Szostak. I’m tempted to do the easy thing and rebrand to Interdisciplined, but I don’t know if that’s the right answer. Let me know what you think about that one. Now onto the topic(s) at hand.
I’ve been reading much more philosophy lately. This has come from trying to venture deeper into my area of academic study, Science, Technology, and Society. This led me most naturally into public interest technology, which I’m hoping to continue my Master’s work in, but also to the philosophy of technology. The former led to Langdon Winner’s book The Whale and the Reactor, a book on the philosophy of technology which I had already read a chapter excerpt as part of my undergrad studies.
At the same time, I’ve been thinking about process philosophy again. I can’t pinpoint a reason why but I’ve learned to trust my instincts on when to learn something. The point of tension is in reading Alfred North Whitehead, his work has been incredibly difficult to parse and just reading a page or two has taken me about a few days. Sure I have changed the way I read these kinds of things which inherently slows down the way I read anyway (for more information, check out this video), but it still feels like I’m getting into the ring every time I sit down to read his work.
But I am making progress. Even his definition of speculative philosophy, which is how he introduces the entirety of Process and Reality took me quite a bit of time. For Whitehead, speculative philosophy is a coherent, logical, applicable, and adequate general system by which anything that is capable of entering consciousness is able to be interpreted through this system. Said more generally, but therefore with more inaccuracies, speculative philosophy is the act of creating a system of ideas that can then give answers to much of anything (perhaps everything) in our lives in a way that the specific ideas in this system cannot be abstracted from another.
Another product of my academic study has me doing a futures project for a class. My chosen topic were the futures of innovation in the Department of the Air Force (DAF)/Department of Defense. From my analysis over the last few weeks, I’ve been able to determine some of the most impactful and uncertain elements of the future of innovation, these are access to capital and innovation sources. What the DAF is able to fund, and therefore focus on and who innovates within or adjacent to this system, underpins much of how we will maneuver in the coming decade.
But how are these things related, Austin?
I’ve been thinking of ontological engines, a concept I learned through my first reading of Ian Bogost’s Alien Phenomenology. He mentions the game Scribblenauts as an excellent example of an ontological engine, a thing that can generate objects and explore the relationships between them in some confined way (note: that definition of ontological engines is based on a really rough understanding of that book, it is another one that is incredibly difficult to read).
What I realized as I’ve been holding these concepts in my mind for so long is that these concepts are also objects, as identified by Bogost, anyway. And because of that nature, it means for me that I should be able to play around with them more than I have. So, I decided to see if I could come up with a really rudimentary ontological engine that generated new concepts and objects around these three ideas. I was going to hard code it and put it on a website for you all to see, but you can actually use ChatGPT or your chatbot of choice for exactly this kind of thing. Here’s the prompt I used in order to do this:
Create 10 new objects (concepts, systems, products, etc..) in the following way:: 1.) Take a concept from Department of Defense Innovation relating to access to capital or the people who are supposed to do innovation. 2.) Take a concept from Alfred North Whitehead’s definition of Speculative Philosophy (a coherent, logical, applicable, and adequate system of ideas through which anything in experience can be interpreted) 3.) Take a concept from Langdon Winner's book The Whale and the Reactor (technological politics, technological somnambulism, Philosophy of technology, Social determination of technology, etc..) 4.) Combine the above concepts into a combine them into new objects (concepts, systems, products, etc..) and describe the role each object played in its creation.
With all things generative AI-related, you don’t take the outputs as is. You have to use your own critical-thinking faculties to evaluate the outputs. Some of the most interesting objects created from the three above are:
Technological Somnambulism Detection System (TSDS): A software program designed to identify instances of technological somnambulism, as described by Langdon Winner in his book The Whale and the Reactor. TSDS analyzes patterns of technology adoption and use to detect instances where society may be sleepwalking into unintended consequences or negative impacts of technology.
Defense Innovation Philosophy (DIP): A new approach to defense innovation that combines the ideas of Whitehead's speculative philosophy with Winner's philosophy of technology and the access to capital offered by DIC. DIP emphasizes the importance of considering the social and ethical implications of new defense technologies, while providing innovators with the support and resources they need to bring their ideas to fruition.
Philosophically Informed Technological Pedagogy (PITP): A new approach to education that combines philosophical thinking with technological innovation. PITP aims to teach students not only how to use technology but also how to think critically about its social and ethical implications.
Technology-Enabled Socially Engaged Speculative Art (TESA): A new art movement that combines social engagement, speculative philosophy, and technology. TESA artists use technology as a tool to create works of art that challenge existing systems and beliefs, engage with communities, and promote social change.
All of these ideas need to be disambiguated from existing concepts, but for me there is significant intrigue in this tactic of generating new objects. This can be done on your own, or like I did, with a generative AI assisting you. The strength is not in the generation but in how you engage with it post-generation. The more time and cognitive effort you put into evaluating, criticizing, etc. these ideas, the more pay off for you in the long run.
This is also the point in titling this article(?) the way that I have. It is not the point that there is a neat and tidy way to tie up these ideas. But the exploration of their intersection ends up meaning something to me more than when they existed as entirely separate concepts. It is, after all, the difference between multidisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity; when the concepts from multiple fields begin to fuse, you have partaken in something interdisciplinary.
We need to jam on this - I feel like this is a little more “mainstream” than I’m used to coming from you, but want to understand it more and just think it’s an important (or at least interesting) topic: “What the DAF is able to fund, and therefore focus on and who innovates within or adjacent to this system, underpins much of how we will maneuver in the coming decade.”