Posted at 2014.01.28 Category : New Yorker
ニューヨークタイムズの記事によるとケネディ大使のイルカ漁発言は、政府の方針を確認してからのものですので、思いつきで語ったというよりも準備をして行動に出たと考えられそうです。ただ名護市市長選のタイミングでしたから、沖縄の基地移設の話題をそらすことが目的ではなんて思ってしまいたくなります。
Star Envoy’s Frankness Puts Kennedy Mystique to Test in Japan
By MARTIN FACKLERJAN. 24, 2014
The United States Embassy in Japan referred all requests for comment to Washington, and on Friday, the White House spokesman, Patrick Ventrell, said that “Ambassador Kennedy is doing a great job representing the United States in Japan.” The State Department said that even before Ms. Kennedy’s confirmation hearing last fall, she received numerous comments about Japan’s dolphin hunting practices and decided she wanted to address the issue. She consulted with the department about the administration’s policies before posting on Twitter, an official said.
Animal Liberationを書いたピーターシンガーがイルカ漁に反対なのは分かりますが、オリビアニュートンジョンやテニス選手のパトリックラフターのような有名人がオーストラリアでの反対運動に参加しているは意外でした。
今回の問題は、動物をどのようにみなすか、につながるものでしょうが、その対象をどこまで広げることができるでしょうか。植物は意識がないからとのコンセンサスがありますが、もし植物に意識があるとしたら、我々の植物への接し方は変えていかざるを得ないのでしょうか。
こんなところまで考えさせてもらえる、年末のニューヨーカーの大変興味深い記事がありました。Omnivore’s Dilemmaで有名なMichael Pollanが植物は、コミュニケーションを取り、痛みを感じ、学習をしているという研究がなされていることについて現状を報告しています。記事が出た時は定期購読者しか閲覧ができませんでしたが、今は全員が読めます。１万語近くの大変長い記事で、しかも記事のほとんどが植物研究の紹介なので挫折率が高いかもしれませんが、知的好奇心を大変刺激してくれます。
A REPORTER AT LARGE
THE INTELLIGENT PLANT
Scientists debate a new way of understanding flora.
BY MICHAEL POLLAN
DECEMBER 23, 2013
Words checked = [9670]
Words in Oxford 3000™ = [87%]
イルカ漁と随分と遠ざかってしまいましたが、これくらい視野を広げてみて再度考えてみるのもいいかもしれません。植物は感覚もある知的な生物なのだから、植物の生息地を守るべきだと考える研究者もいるようです。Plants evolved to be eatenと食用にすることは賛成なのはありがたいですが。。。
Mancuso believes that, because plants are sensitive and intelligent beings, we are obliged to treat them with some degree of respect. That means protecting their habitats from destruction and avoiding practices such as genetic manipulation, growing plants in monocultures, and training them in bonsai. But it does not prevent us from eating them. “Plants evolved to be eaten—it is part of their evolutionary strategy,” he said. He cited their modular structure and lack of irreplaceable organs in support of this view.
「植物にも意識があるか」なんてのは英検の長文問題でも出そうなトピックですね。ただ、そのようなマッドサイエンティスト的なノリの理解ではなく、人工知能やコンピュータ、ロボットの分野に新たなあり方をもたらすものかもしれません。
前の記事で脳の仕組みを真似たコンピュータについてNatureが記事にしていましたが、こちらは脳を必要としないコンピュータ、ロボットのあり方のヒントが植物にあるのではないかという可能性を記事の最後で指摘してくれています。
When I met Mancuso for dinner during the conference in Vancouver, he sounded very much like a plant scientist getting over a case of “brain envy”—what Taiz had suggested was motivating the plant neurologists. If we could begin to understand plants on their own terms, he said, “it would be like being in contact with an alien culture. But we could have all the advantages of that contact without any of the problems—because it doesn’t want to destroy us!” How do plants do all the amazing things they do without brains? Without locomotion? By focussing on the otherness of plants rather than on their likeness, Mancuso suggested, we stand to learn valuable things and develop important new technologies. This was to be the theme of his presentation to the conference, the following morning, on what he called “bioinspiration.” How might the example of plant intelligence help us design better computers, or robots, or networks?
Mancuso was about to begin a collaboration with a prominent computer scientist to design a plant-based computer, modelled on the distributed computing performed by thousands of roots processing a vast number of environmental variables. His collaborator, Andrew Adamatzky, the director of the International Center of Unconventional Computing, at the University of the West of England, has worked extensively with slime molds, harnessing their maze-navigating and computational abilities. (Adamatzky’s slime molds, which are a kind of amoeba, grow in the direction of multiple food sources simultaneously, usually oat flakes, in the process computing and remembering the shortest distance between any two of them; he has used these organisms to model transportation networks.) In an e-mail, Adamatzky said that, as a substrate for biological computing, plants offered both advantages and disadvantages over slime molds. “Plants are more robust,” he wrote, and “can keep their shape for a very long time,” although they are slower-growing and lack the flexibility of slime molds. But because plants are already “analog electrical computers,” trafficking in electrical inputs and outputs, he is hopeful that he and Mancuso will be able to harness them for computational tasks.
Mancuso was also working with Barbara Mazzolai, a biologist-turned-engineer at the Italian Institute of Technology, in Genoa, to design what he called a “plantoid”: a robot designed on plant principles. “If you look at the history of robots, they are always based on animals—they are humanoids or insectoids. If you want something swimming, you look at a fish. But what about imitating plants instead? What would that allow you to do? Explore the soil!” With a grant from the European Union’s Future and Emerging Technologies program, their team is developing a “robotic root” that, using plastics that can elongate and then harden, will be able to slowly penetrate the soil, sense conditions, and alter its trajectory accordingly. “If you want to explore other planets, the best thing is to send plantoids.”
たまにはニューヨーカーの読み応えのある記事で視野を広げて見るのもいいのではないでしょうか。
Star Envoy’s Frankness Puts Kennedy Mystique to Test in Japan
By MARTIN FACKLERJAN. 24, 2014
The United States Embassy in Japan referred all requests for comment to Washington, and on Friday, the White House spokesman, Patrick Ventrell, said that “Ambassador Kennedy is doing a great job representing the United States in Japan.” The State Department said that even before Ms. Kennedy’s confirmation hearing last fall, she received numerous comments about Japan’s dolphin hunting practices and decided she wanted to address the issue. She consulted with the department about the administration’s policies before posting on Twitter, an official said.
Animal Liberationを書いたピーターシンガーがイルカ漁に反対なのは分かりますが、オリビアニュートンジョンやテニス選手のパトリックラフターのような有名人がオーストラリアでの反対運動に参加しているは意外でした。
今回の問題は、動物をどのようにみなすか、につながるものでしょうが、その対象をどこまで広げることができるでしょうか。植物は意識がないからとのコンセンサスがありますが、もし植物に意識があるとしたら、我々の植物への接し方は変えていかざるを得ないのでしょうか。
 | The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (2007/08/28) Michael Pollan 商品詳細を見る |
こんなところまで考えさせてもらえる、年末のニューヨーカーの大変興味深い記事がありました。Omnivore’s Dilemmaで有名なMichael Pollanが植物は、コミュニケーションを取り、痛みを感じ、学習をしているという研究がなされていることについて現状を報告しています。記事が出た時は定期購読者しか閲覧ができませんでしたが、今は全員が読めます。１万語近くの大変長い記事で、しかも記事のほとんどが植物研究の紹介なので挫折率が高いかもしれませんが、知的好奇心を大変刺激してくれます。
A REPORTER AT LARGE
THE INTELLIGENT PLANT
Scientists debate a new way of understanding flora.
BY MICHAEL POLLAN
DECEMBER 23, 2013
Words checked = [9670]
Words in Oxford 3000™ = [87%]
イルカ漁と随分と遠ざかってしまいましたが、これくらい視野を広げてみて再度考えてみるのもいいかもしれません。植物は感覚もある知的な生物なのだから、植物の生息地を守るべきだと考える研究者もいるようです。Plants evolved to be eatenと食用にすることは賛成なのはありがたいですが。。。
Mancuso believes that, because plants are sensitive and intelligent beings, we are obliged to treat them with some degree of respect. That means protecting their habitats from destruction and avoiding practices such as genetic manipulation, growing plants in monocultures, and training them in bonsai. But it does not prevent us from eating them. “Plants evolved to be eaten—it is part of their evolutionary strategy,” he said. He cited their modular structure and lack of irreplaceable organs in support of this view.
「植物にも意識があるか」なんてのは英検の長文問題でも出そうなトピックですね。ただ、そのようなマッドサイエンティスト的なノリの理解ではなく、人工知能やコンピュータ、ロボットの分野に新たなあり方をもたらすものかもしれません。
前の記事で脳の仕組みを真似たコンピュータについてNatureが記事にしていましたが、こちらは脳を必要としないコンピュータ、ロボットのあり方のヒントが植物にあるのではないかという可能性を記事の最後で指摘してくれています。
When I met Mancuso for dinner during the conference in Vancouver, he sounded very much like a plant scientist getting over a case of “brain envy”—what Taiz had suggested was motivating the plant neurologists. If we could begin to understand plants on their own terms, he said, “it would be like being in contact with an alien culture. But we could have all the advantages of that contact without any of the problems—because it doesn’t want to destroy us!” How do plants do all the amazing things they do without brains? Without locomotion? By focussing on the otherness of plants rather than on their likeness, Mancuso suggested, we stand to learn valuable things and develop important new technologies. This was to be the theme of his presentation to the conference, the following morning, on what he called “bioinspiration.” How might the example of plant intelligence help us design better computers, or robots, or networks?
Mancuso was about to begin a collaboration with a prominent computer scientist to design a plant-based computer, modelled on the distributed computing performed by thousands of roots processing a vast number of environmental variables. His collaborator, Andrew Adamatzky, the director of the International Center of Unconventional Computing, at the University of the West of England, has worked extensively with slime molds, harnessing their maze-navigating and computational abilities. (Adamatzky’s slime molds, which are a kind of amoeba, grow in the direction of multiple food sources simultaneously, usually oat flakes, in the process computing and remembering the shortest distance between any two of them; he has used these organisms to model transportation networks.) In an e-mail, Adamatzky said that, as a substrate for biological computing, plants offered both advantages and disadvantages over slime molds. “Plants are more robust,” he wrote, and “can keep their shape for a very long time,” although they are slower-growing and lack the flexibility of slime molds. But because plants are already “analog electrical computers,” trafficking in electrical inputs and outputs, he is hopeful that he and Mancuso will be able to harness them for computational tasks.
Mancuso was also working with Barbara Mazzolai, a biologist-turned-engineer at the Italian Institute of Technology, in Genoa, to design what he called a “plantoid”: a robot designed on plant principles. “If you look at the history of robots, they are always based on animals—they are humanoids or insectoids. If you want something swimming, you look at a fish. But what about imitating plants instead? What would that allow you to do? Explore the soil!” With a grant from the European Union’s Future and Emerging Technologies program, their team is developing a “robotic root” that, using plastics that can elongate and then harden, will be able to slowly penetrate the soil, sense conditions, and alter its trajectory accordingly. “If you want to explore other planets, the best thing is to send plantoids.”
たまにはニューヨーカーの読み応えのある記事で視野を広げて見るのもいいのではないでしょうか。
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