POLITICS: Why Google has to appear to play nice with China

For America, especially American companies, The People’s Republic of China is like wild west for modern day: a vast, untamed opportunity for companies and all Americans with an ideological missionary impulse or anyone who salivates at the largest single-state market in the world.  That’s why Google represents such an interesting fulcrum in the battle of the hearts and minds of the People’s Republic: Google is both a economic success story and an ideological entity with its motto: “Don’t be evil.”  Indeed, “that's why China hits the American mind so hard. It is a country whose scale dwarfs the United States. With 1.3 billion people, it has four times America's population. For more than a hundred years, American missionaries and businessmen dreamed of the possibilities—1 billion souls to save, 2 billion armpits to deodorize” (Zakaria 87). 

China is at once enticing as a business landscape, scary as an emerging threat to America’s hegemony and easy punching bag for its closed, police-state society.  “Easy” is an important word there because, I think, the treatment of the China’s battle with Google over internet censorship has been the jumping off point for a lot of bloviating and easy answers but no real nuanced exploration of what that system of censorship really amounts to. 

I am of the opinion that up until the point where Google directly butted heads with the PRC in early 2010, they had played their presence in the country perfectly.  Winning a short term, Pyrrhic, and most importantly, symbolic victory by rubbing China’s nose in their own censorship (something everyone is already aware of, already) is not worth the long-term effects of pulling out altogether, giving China a tacit nod to continue to become ever more insular.

It’s difficult to argue for Google not to take a constant and open stand against China’s censorship because so much more than just the interests of the Chinese government and Google are at stake:

More than a battle over territory or market share, it is a conflict over ideology, one that pits a free and open Internet that empowers individuals at the expense of existing power structures against an Internet micromanaged by those powers. "What we're talking about here is a defense of the essence of the Internet," says Jeff Jarvis, director of the interactive journalism program at the City University of New York (Moyer)

If one wants to accuse Mr. Moyer of hyperbole, many other examples of the same sentiment litter the internet following Google’s showdown with the Chinese government. “Google is defending the Internet itself against censorship, repression and attack. Finally, someone is standing up to China. When will more companies and governments follow?" (Neuarth).

Indeed, the reaction to Google’s openly confrontational showdown with the PRC early last year was hailed with almost universal acclaim from technologists and foreign policy experts alike.  “Many U.S companies that make big bucks doing business in China have put up with the censorship and tight controls imposed by a succession of communist dictators. "That makes Google all the more gutsy for spitting in China's eye this week” (Neuarth). 

Later on, experts on Google itself as a country heaped their praise on as well: “The move, if followed through, would be a highly unusual rebuke of China by one of the largest and most admired technology companies, which had for years coveted China‘s 300 million Web users... I think it‘s both the right move and a brilliant one,’ said Jonathan Zittrain, a legal scholar at Harvard‘s Berkman Center for Internet and Society” (Jacobs, Helft).

Most importantly of all, the experts pointed out, Google has the means to stand toe-to-toe with the PRC:

[A]ny large-scale circumvention effort requires a huge number of addresses to cycle through, along with an enormous amount of bandwidth to support all the tunneling. ‘If we could magically convince all Chinese people to use [these services],’ [Hal Roberts of the Berkman Center]s says, ‘then someone would have to pay for the entire outgoing bandwidth of China.’ That might strain Google's resources, but not by much. (Moyer)

Open internet advocates now see a white knight in Google where before they saw just another greedy company looking to get as big a foothold as possible in the world’s largest and most profitable emerging market.  For Google to finally reverse their decision represented a new hope for American open-information advocates: “More than any other organization, Google has both the means and the incentive to ensure that the Internet remains open. It is also one of the few organizations with a broad enough online presence to define the standard operating rules of the Internet" (Moyer quoting Rebecca MacKinnon)

Given that A) Google and the Chinese government can’t and won’t see eye-to-eye on the issue of how and when to openly promulgate information and that B) the Chinese government has a long history of taking a hard line against companies and organizations that seek to disseminate that same information, many experts see only one solution: Google should openly challenge the PRC and when that government, in all likelihood balks, then Google should refuse to do business in China.  I, however, see this as a view the lacks nuance.  Let’s look a little deeper into the situation:

“Google executives declined to discuss in detail their reasons for overturning their China strategy. But despite a costly investment, the company has a much smaller share of the search market here than it does in other major markets, commanding only about one in three searches by Chinese. The leader in searches, Baidu, is a Chinese-run company that enjoys a close relationship with the government” (Jacobs, Helft).

In another section, Jacobs states:  “Google said it would otherwise [should the PRC not allow open access to information] cease to run google.cn and would consider shutting its offices in China, where it employs some 700 people, many of them highly compensated software engineers, and has an estimated $300 million in annual revenue” (Jacobs).  I’m not trying to denigrate Google’s standing in China, $300 million annual revenue is absolutely not nothing, but it’s also not enough to hurt the PRC in any substantive way.  Google is not even the number one search engine in the People’s Republic.  I think for Google to simply pack up their ball and go home would be an act of impetuousness – one that might score some short-term brownie points with advocates at home but one likely to make little difference where it counts: in China.
              
Let’s take, by way of comparison, an American issue that has similar overtones: In 2003, the French, German and Russian government all condemned the U.S. for its intention to invade Iraq. Lacking hard, shared evidence, these governments saw U.S. action on this front as hasty.  At the time, only a very small majority of Americans supported an invasion and the vast majority of people abroad were opposed to the same.  Given all that, the French, German and Russia opposition was treated with contempt, even open hostility. 

A large part of America’s political character is pride – as such, other countries telling us what to do, even if it is not an unpopular sentiment, only makes the other side ever more recalcitrant.  Germany, France and Russia's statement was treated suspicion at best and if they moved the needle of American popular opinion at all, they moved it in the wrong direction.

China, with its long history of a similar vein self-superiority by way of Sinocentrism (indeed, China has historically referred to itself as the Middle Kingdom) has and likely will continue to respond in the same way to the intervention of foreign interlopers. 

To return the original point: if Google; an American company, seeks to change China from the outside by way of direct confrontation it is likely only to calcify the PRC’s commitment to choking off open access to information.  Open confrontation with Chinese government will satisfy critics at home but ultimately do very little by way of substantive change for the Chinese citizenry.
Observe what Google actually did, and you’ll see that they’ve deftly navigated a third way where they’ve made substantive inroads to opening up information to the Chinese without flying too much in the fact of the government:

Google, in turn, agreed to no longer provide "lawbreaking content." In effect, Google agreed to automatically stop rerouting users of Google.cn, the Chinese version of Google, to its site in Hong Kong, which was not subject to China's online censorship. Search requests now made from Google.cn take an extra click in order to visit the Hong Kong site (Red Herring Staff)

Note the bold part.  Google acquiesced to China's demand to continue censoring search results?  It only takes one click more than it did previously to reach a site on google.cn to basically have free and open access to information via Google’s search engine.  How much computer savvy is really needed to push one extra button?  Further:

The challenge for the authorities is that there is just too much to police by moderators, and automatic filters don‘t work terribly well. Chinese routinely use well-known code phrases for terms that will be censored (June 4 might become June 2+2, or May 35). Likewise, Chinese can usually get around the ―great firewall of China‖ by using widely available software, like Freegate, or by tunneling through a virtual private network (Kristof)

By Kristof’s estimates China now has: “450 million Internet users, far more than any other country, and perhaps 100 million bloggers.”  Google is throwing a lifeline to these people, who from the inside of the PRC can move the needle knowing full well that an attack on the Chinese government’s policies from an American outsider will do much less good for everyone than grassroots action from within.

In my opinion, Google played it exactly right: giving the impression of acquiescing to the PRC while really working to undermine them where it counts and spread information through backchannels that really aren’t that difficult to find.  Sure, from a purely idealistic standpoint one would prefer that Google just stand up to the bully and good would triumph over evil but Google makes their decisions in this world, not a utopian vacuum.  As such, I think it’s easy to criticize any action on the part of Google to kowtow to Chinese pressure but I believe if you look just a little bit closer, the truth is they really haven't.  In the end, I think Google equated itself nicely against its motto.  It wasn’t evil.




Jacobs, Andrew; Helft, Miguel. “Google, Citing Attack, Threatens to Exit China.” New York Times. 1/13/2010
Kristoff, Nicholas D,. “Banned in Beijing!” New York Times. 1/22/2011
Kynge, James. “China and the west: full circle.” Financial Times. 1/15/2010
Moyer, Michael. “Internet Ideology War.”  Scientific American.  00368733, Apr2010. Vol. 302, Issue 4.
Neuarth, Al. “Google is gutsy to spit in China’s eye.” USA Today. 03/26/2010
Red Herring Staff. “Google vs China.” Red Herring. 1080076X, 7/15/2010.
Zakaria, Fareed. The Post-American World. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. 2008.

ESSAY: Sex and Technology Part 4: Sex and Machines in a World Beyond the Uncanny Valley

There is not a great deal of data regarding whether the uncanny valley reaction is based on social condition to fear robots or some inbred defense mechanism hard-wired into our brain. However, what little data there is seems to indicate the former:

These unsettling emotions [of the uncanny valley] are thought to have an evolutionary origin, but tests of this hypothesis have not been forthcoming. To bridge this gap, we presented monkeys with unrealistic and realistic synthetic monkey faces, as well as real monkey faces, and measured whether they preferred looking at one type versus the others (using looking time as a measure of preference). To our surprise, monkey visual behavior fell into the uncanny valley: They looked longer at real faces and unrealistic synthetic faces than at realistic synthetic faces” (Steckenfinger).

The World Beyond the Uncanny Valley

In the world of Do Androids Dream… concerns about the Uncanny Valley are obviously moot as it requires human beings with an extremely specialized skill-set to even be able to tell the difference between a human being and the ultra-realistic Nexus-6 replicants. That kind of technology simply doesn’t exist in a mass producible form today. It is, as of this moment impossible to create a face and body that have sufficiently human-like actions and reactions that it could fool most humans. “Natural human faces with abnormal visual features produce uncomfortable impressions” (Seyama).

Whether or not our attitudes towards sex with robots is based on an inherent emotional response brought on by something natural (like a built-in, uncanny valley that resides in all of us) there can be no doubt that the feelings of revulsion created by realistic robots that we are, ostensibly, supposed to feel amorously toward is the final frontier between human beings and satisfactory robotic sexual partners.

Robotocists like David Levy, however are supremely confident that crossing the divide of the valley is simply a matter of time. Levy believes that within a matter of years, robots will be able to provide for human beings a sexual experience that is satisfying, not only on a physical level, but on an emotional level as well. Moreso than the uncanny valley Levy sees the Turing test as the final frontier to creating a satisfying sexual partner

[A]s psychology and cognitive science began to consider what relationships might one day develop between man and machine, between human and robot. Suddenly it was important to think about what might happen when a robot communicates with a human on a personal level rather than merely for pragmatic reasons (Levy)

The word “partner” Levy mentions earlier is so very important when discussing these relationships because it implies a necessary reality if humans are to have robots as sexual partners, but also a tremendous ethical quandary. With obvious exception, human beings on balance prefer intimacy with someone whom the feel a connection, or with whom they feel they are on even footing. This is why, for example we have laws against statutory rape, as it is understood that a sexual relationship between a young girl and a full grown man is inherently unequal and manipulative.

Even if it’s not monogamous or a partnership in the traditional sense, many human beings tend to experience feelings of dissatisfaction and sometimes guilt when they have engaged in a sexual liaison that was not mutually satisfactory and enjoyable both physically and psychically. Such a connection with a machine may never be possible without the development of extremely advanced artificial intelligence or at the very least the development of a robot that can perfectly simulate a real sexual relationship.

[Levy] does not shy away from the details of how this could be done. ‘A robot who wants to engender feelings of love from its human,’ Levy speculates, ‘might try all sorts of different strategies in an attempt to achieve this goal, such as suggesting a visit to the ballet, cooking the human's favorite food or making flattering statements about the human's haircut, then measuring the effect of each strategy by conducting an fMRI scan of the human's brain.’ The robot would know it was on the right track when it saw brain activity in the appropriate areas, and continue the successful strategy (Trimarco)

Trimarco finds the scenario he describes above quite distasteful and one would have to assume he wouldn’t be in the minority. Thus, a logical conclusion would be that most human beings would not desire amorous relationships with a robot barring some seismic shift with regard to sexual expectations and social mores.

ESSAY: Sex and Technology Part 3: Overcoming the Uncanny

Part 2 of this series of essays can be viewed here

Sexual Robots: Can we? What’s stopping us?

“The initial forays by robotocists into the world of fully interactive autonomous robots focused on entertainment with creations as simple as robot toys robots pets, and robots that play sports. Simple electronic cats and dogs have been shown to provide psychological enrichment for humans, being both pleasurable and relaxing to play with” (Levy 9). For the time being, at least, it seems that robotics is well concerned with finding a way to provide true, satisfying companionship to human beings.

This is not a purely or even primarily sexual pursuit. In fact, one of the main uses for intelligent robots going forward may be as company for demographics that typically find themselves suffering from loneliness like the elderly, developmentally disabled or those lacking in traditional social graces. Phillip K. Dick presciently gave this scenario a face by way of the character Isidore whose primary company are the various machines which occupy his apartment and Buster Friendly on television: “'But,' Isidore said, 'it's good to have neighbors. Heck, until you came along I didn't have any.' And that was no fun, god knew” (Androids 62).

Robots that are designed for companionship and company are considered by many robotics-developers to be imminent in the relatively near future: “To researchers like Turkle, the widespread deployment of social robots is as risky as it is inevitable. With some analysts estimating a $15 billion market for personal robots by 2015, the demand for expressive machines is expected to be voracious” (Sofge).

However, while company is one question the question of sexual relationships with robots and androids is quite another.

And robots that are able to provide some measure of a satisfying sexual experience are equally imminent according robotocists like David Levy and professional technological prognosticators like Ray Kurzweil. However, providing a “satisfying” sexual experience requires more than just creating a machine that can assume the necessary positions and make the movements required to gratify a human being. “A new generation of AI researcher was investigating more meaningful relationships between humans and what… [is] called 'artificial partners'" (Levy 11). To create a “partner” or a machine that a human being could possibly consider to be on equal sexual and psychological footing, (which despite the focus on the sexual depravity of men is generally a requirement for both genders) is a much more difficult task than simply developing the robotics technology. One has to overcome the Uncanny Valley on one of the basest, most fundamentally human level: the level of sexual desire. This is no easy task.

Photo Sharing - Video Sharing - Photo Printing

“The corresponding recess in the supposed function is called the uncanny valley. The core of this explanation… will be a form of empathy involving a kind of imaginative perception. However, as will be shown, imaginative perception fails in cases of very humanlike objects” (Misselhorn 1). The uncanny valley is derived from an expository psychological essay by Sigmund Freud referred to as simply “the Uncanny” Freud described the phenomenon as being: “undoubtedly related to what is frightening — to what arouses dread and horror; yet we may expect that a special core of feeling is present which justifies the use of a special conceptual term. One is curious to know what this common core is which allows us to distinguish as ‘uncanny’; certain things which lie within the field of what is frightening” (Freud I).

Freud’s “Uncanny” has in recent times become a seminal work cited often, though, usually not in the field of psycho-analysis (Batnaes 1). Robot engineer Masohiro Mori posited the idea that if a robot were sufficiently stylized, that is, had human features but wasn’t actually human, than we would focus on those features that were similar to us and find them empathetic or endearing. However, if a robot crosses a certain threshold of realism we start to look for ways not to think of it as human and any portion of the robot which fails to meet our expectations of what is naturally human causes us to feel revulsion or fright. “It is hypothesized that this uncanny feeling is because the realistic synthetic characters elicit the concept of "human," but fail to live up to it. That is, this failure generates feelings of unease due to character traits falling outside the expected spectrum of everyday social experience (Steckenfinger 1).

ESSAY: A Brief Introduction to Sex, Technology and Science Part 2

You can view part 1 here

This realm that asks “What will become of the world” seems to belong to writers, the literary types, those who are able to conceive of expansive futures where nothing can possibly be certain. This is the realm of Phillip K. Dick

Of the thousands of thorny ethical and psychological questions that will crop up over the coming years and decades as we stand on the precipice of creating automata with truly remarkable abilities and realism perhaps the most complex is: what will our relationships be like to these machines? How will we relate to them? Will we love them? Will we fall in love with them?

Perhaps the toughest question of all is: will we want to invite them into our lives in an intimate capacity? Is there a sexual future for man and machine?

Leaving aside the (mostly) crude machines that already exist to gratify human beings now, most prognosticators of the future of technology believe that we are near the day when we will achieve a new type of sexual relationship with computers. For this essay, we will first explore the obstacles that stand in the way of our first question: “Can we?” For this portion we will examine questions of overcoming the Uncanny Valley, or that portion of automation wherein machines become too human and frighten us.

The second question we will seek to answer will come from some technological ethicists who pose the more agnostic: “Should we?” What are ethical ramifications of a sexual (and by extension for most, emotional) relationship with a machine that is designed to simulate emotions but doesn't actually experience them? When does simulation close the gap so completely with reality that the cannon between the two becomes moot?

Finally, that discussion will dovetail into a deep exploration of the psycho-sexual relationships present in Phillip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? also known as "Blade Runner." While predicting the future is impossible, Dick stands alone in his ability to flesh out a world where the sexual, economic and political meld together in a shockingly believable fashion. Dick’s predictions about the future in Do Androids Dream… presents a ideas which can be reverse-engineered as a metaphoric stand-in for the types of sexual revolution that was going on when the novel for first published and in Dick’s own life, coalescing in the culture wars ongoing today.

In other words, Do Androids Dream... shows a future that isn't necessarily different from the present in terms of its cultural make-up and prejudice, but it does show a future where the specific social mores and prejudice have simply shifted. In that regard, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep may be our best and only window into a world that answers the questions “What will the world look like if we do?”

Part 3 can be viewed here

ESSAY: A Brief Introduction to Sex, Technology and Science

If there’s a lesson to be learned from an examination of the technical writings within the scope of Strange Creations it would be that scientists, philosophers, technologists and those of the literary world do not remotely speak with one voice when it comes to expectations and/or worry regarding the future of technology. The scientific mind seems to necessitate a predisposition towards answering the question “Can we?” The question “Can we?” tends to be the first consideration before embarking down the road of creative, industrious and innovative thought but doesn't, however, always lead to the most ethical of outcomes.

Logically then, the next inquiry, and the one that scientists are less concerned with than philosophers and ethicists, is the question of “Should we?” The creatively minded (like scientists) are by their very nature supposed to be less apt to stop and question the ethical ramifications of their various endeavors as economics, Capitalism, the thirst for knowledge and their own curiosity all tend to propel the scientific mind ever-forward. Ethical questions, though raised occasionally, tend to take the backburner for minds that seek progress. And what does a scientific mind seek, if not progress? However, we will give voice to those that would seek to ask the "Should we?" question in the face of technology's ever-upward march.

The third question and the one that is most difficult, if not impossible, to answer is “What will the world look like if we do?”This is the realm the truly imaginative mind, where one must weigh one hundred thousand previously un-thought of variables and concoct a vision based on estimated guesses stacked upon one another. This realm that asks “What will become of the world” seems to belong to writers, the literary types, those who are able to conceive of expansive futures where nothing can possibly be certain.

Part 2 here