Abstract
Human activities are progressively defined by interactions with products
that embed increasingly higher levels of immaterial component (software,
patents, design principles and patterns). After presenting the
continuity between seminal concepts in Cybernetics, Information Theory,
Network Analysis, AI practices on one side and cognitive behaviour by
leveraging a minimalist approach to cybernetic systems based on the
concept of capacity of network; the text tries to establish the concept
of interface to define logical rule-based automata that can be
considered shareable instances of a self-model approach to
consciousness: in first instance, a rule-based descriptive construct for
an ‘economy of information exchange’ between systems (or an ‘economy of
time’), and in second instance a rule-based framework for approaching
the hard problem of consciousness. These are critical waypoints in
navigating fast-growing knowledge-intensive landscapes. This review into
patterns of growing complexity is concluded with an hypothesis that aims
to extend Ashby’s definition of machine to include interfaces to enable
self-modeling for possibly intelligent digital machines. Starting from
this background, conclusion tries to define a clearer pathway to tackle
the difficult problems about the positioning of biological and digital
machines in what the paper points out to be the
sentience-intelligence-consciousness spectrum.