This tendencyis apparent in what we are trying to do via informatics.
Indeed, we are forced to conceive with respect to society, yet
we do not realize that our daily work is gradually conducive to
a new chapter in the becoming of man and of the human
society10.
An automaton of social scope, which by virtue
of its artificial intelligence will also incorporate elements
of the social consciousness, is now getting formed. The immediate
question is whether this social automaton superposes over a society
which is understood, or behaves with respect to itself, as an
automaton, or over a society in which each individual is an item
going beyond the limits prescribed by the automaton and hence
the whole society transcends this automaton. It is easier to superpose
the new information-based social automaton over an already automated
or forcibly automated society.
If we accept that each man is a natural automaton,
then the sum total of the individuals and of society on the whole
would be an automaton ever. The history of mankind itself would
be an automaton. However, we shall accept the partially automated
character of history while recognizing its creative character
which transcends the automaton. History may work like an automaton
over definite time-spans, but taken as a whole it springs out
of the automaton reality both in terms of the past and particularly
so in terms of the future.
If we come to understand that society is better
than the automaton, then owing to informatics, it becomes a new
body, a new "animal" at the social scale, and so it
is likely to bring about a new stage in the evolution of society.
In order to achieve this, society should be attached beingness
and its own consciousness, but this cannot be done until the nature
of beingness and consciousness for the animal and the individual
man are elucidated. This explains why it is insufficient to say
that man, society and history go beyond the automaton. One should
account for this process in social terms, referring to the whole
human population. These problems relate to the management ways
and the spiritual life of society. That the limits of the automaton
are exceeded in society comes off in social terms as innovation
and change, which will also become a mode of creation with society.
The man of the future will no doubt rise against his definite
automation as soon as he has established a well-balanced philosophical
relation with the surrounding material world and has grasped the
meaning of the philosophical future in history. In this respect,
society should be both system and civilization for the common
breadth of mankind to get an unprecedented scope of activity and
creation.
Let us also observe that man is both an open
and intro-open system. One may righteously say that society socializes
both these kinds of human openness, it should not close off in
any sense, it should not be thought of as an automaton. If the
social system has stepwise developed during the history of society,
civilization must likewise develop in steps. That is why the idea
of a socio-technical nervous system must also account for aspects
of civilization pertinent to society, in compliance with the steps
to be followed by the social system and civilization. The aspects,
or rather the civilization requirements of society are thus mirrored
in the informatic system itself.
Using a general model of man which should
correspond to a thorough objective reality, we have to revise,
or more exactly to examine more carefully, our scientific concepts
on society. Society is an effect of man's need and aspirations,
whose satisfaction depends on the relations at work among
people. These relations determine themselves certain structures
in society.
If we regard man as being body + biological
automaton + psychic programmer + beingness,
while recognizingthe adjacent interpenetrations between these aspects and some
phenomena pertinent to these interpenetrations which cannot be
described by each aspect apart, we may righteously ask how each
of these aspects changes in the social realm and vice-versa
and how far they depend upon the social. Let us only observe
that nowadays social consciousness does not reflect the constituents
of the human model in their unity though society is fairly complex
and manages to reflect these constituents. The lack of an adequate
human model in the social consciousness brings about distortions
and misfortunes, given that the norms we prescribe in society
are not entirely consonant with the social reality.
** The social information system and the nervous
system of a body are frequently subject to comparisons in the literature.
History, Philosophical Futureand Science
33
