http://cargocollective.com Voyager2 - Cargo example design Wed, 18 May 2011 16:44:36 +0000 http://cargocollective.com en http://cargocollective.com/voyager2/The-universe-will-fly-like-a-bird http://cargocollective.com/voyager2/following/voyager2/The-universe-will-fly-like-a-bird Wed, 18 May 2011 16:44:36 +0000 Voyager2 - Cargo example design 1466061 Posted at SpaceCollective.org by Rene In Spacewaver’s recent post about the Singularity University he mentions a discussion concerning the institution’s recent mission statement which, according to Jamais Cascio claims to be "preparing humanity for accelerating technological change," but is “spending a lot more time talking about nifty gadgets than about the connection between technology and society.” Spaceweaver considers Cascio’s opinion a possible “invitation to a discussion and exchange which is much in need,” and he believes that “the SpaceCollective can and perhaps should become a stage for such discussion.” <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/3/113338/1466061/1.gif" width="540" height="319" width_o="540" height_o="319" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/3/113338/1466061/1_o.gif" data-mid="7149683" border="0" align="left"/> Here are my thoughts on the matter: I admire Ray Kurzweil’s advocacy of radical ideas. However, like so many scientists and tech mavens he has never been able to frame the essential humanistic components of his master plan in a compelling way. When you promote powerful notions of human transformation it obviously becomes important not to portray humanity as something that must be overcome. Therefore it would seem to be essential to include a Future Humanities department as part of the Singularity University's curriculum. I agree with Spaceweaver that the futurist thinkers on this site can contribute something of value to the Singularity University, and even to the curricula of the regular universities, like the ones SC worked with on several projects, since they conversely tend to ignore the subject of the future altogether. Spaceweaver himself is a perfect example of how the thinkers who contribute such valuable content to this site could play a role in filling this vacuum. In post after post he demonstrates a phenomenal grasp of the ethical and philosophical implications of the impending changes in the equilibrium of our culture. Likewise, the Polytopia project has become an impressive forum for the evolution of Future Mind, while SC’s mix of art, science and design represents precisely what is so painfully absent from most blogs dealing with topics like Nanotechnology, Transhumanism, Artificial Intelligence, etc. Check out KurzweilAI, for example, and note the banner ad for Ray & Terry’s Longevity Products, which rather looks like an advertisement for a Bed and Breakfast. The artless quality of the site makes one long for Folkert’s designs, Xaos’ Singularity-inspired poetics, Andy Gilmore’s art and the multi-media that makes the future represented by SpaceCollective so enticing. Unfortunately, we have to assume that Kurzweil’s X-Prize-, Google- and NASA-sponsored university, heady and scientific as it will undoubtedly become, will be lacking some of the emotional and aesthetic experiences we aspire to. In all likelihood, little attention will be paid to the fact that the future could actually be a sexy and stimulating place and there will be a deficit of the magic many of us here associate with technology. Nor will there be many young faces gracing the institute’s vaunted halls, due to its prohibitive tuition. I can’t help but imagine the place as an ivied, corporate institute, rather than a desirable haven for techno-optimism. <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/3/113338/1466061/2.gif" width="300" height="410" width_o="300" height_o="410" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/3/113338/1466061/2_o.gif" data-mid="7149685" border="0" align="left"/> Many of us have been influenced by Eric Drexler’s brilliant introduction to nano technology, Engines of Creation, and I read The Singularity is Near from cover to cover. I was inspired by Vernor Vinge’s novel True Names and Timothy Leary’s plans to cryonically preserve his molecular framework for future resurrection as well as Hans Moravec’s dream of taking science to the edge where Humanity becomes Trans-Human. Being foremost a storyteller I would dream up future scenarios informed by the ideas of these Wizened Elders of Futurism that were populated by human characters people could identify with. These science-fact based stories became exciting exercises in creating entirely new worlds based on new potentials and rules, even though most of them stood little chance to become movies because the film industry has a longstanding policy to only fund dystopian narratives (check out this post on the subject). In response to that dismal state of affairs I’m now finishing up a SciFi documentary about the late Timothy Leary, my favorite ‘mad scientist,’ promoting the evolution of intelligence by whatever means possible. Leary’s main challenge in life was not to let dystopia’s henchmen – who chased him across the globe and kept him in jail for years – succeed at turning his life into a cautionary tale. As a result, his story is one of the most spectacular object lessons in optimism, defiant at every turn and as prescient as only the best futurists manage to be. It just so happens that Leary makes a number of posthumous appearances in Kurzweil’s The Singularity is Near, one of which is a fictional conversation with a character called Molly2004, who tries to figure out what will separate future humans from “bacteria who would talk and think” once we will be “saturating the universe with our intelligence.” Someone by the name of George2048 responds, “Indeed, Molly, that is fundamentally what the Singularity is all about. The Singularity is the sweetest music, the deepest art, the most beautiful mathematics…” “I’m still trying to envision what the universe will be doing,” Molly insists, whereupon Timothy Leary elucidates that “the universe will be flying like a bird…” No matter my critical remarks in this post, Ray Kurzweil deserves our highest admiration for encouraging so many people to take a giant leap into a future that not so long ago would have been considered unthinkable. Only someone willing to play the part of ‘straight man’ could have possibly succeeded at rallying the support which should make the Singularity a reality, by which time he may finally be able to transcend his cheerleader role. After all, by then everything will have changed. As Xaos put it in his first SpaceCollective post: The amazing thing about the singularity, the Story of the singularity that is, is the way it affects us. When projecting it on the line of our event horizon, the singularity is a story that brings us into deconstruction and moves us into composing ourselves anew. The human today lives in a radical time, actually an extremely radical time; the future is rushing at us, proposing for the first time the idea and reality of a better platform, distinctively different from the imperfect outcome of natural selection. It is the beginning of an accelerating change that is starting to gain a confident and attractive position, projecting the human over an open horizon. Changing the very meaning of what, who and how a human is. So Mr. Kurzweil, just to let you know, we are waiting for your call. In the meantime we’d appreciate a courtesy discount on your school’s tuition or perhaps even a few scholarships as a token for our relentless promotion of your cause. P.S. In an excellent comment by EINitro, he includes a great quote by RISD President John Maeda: Amidst the attention given to the sciences as how they can lead to the cure of all diseases and daily problems of mankind, I believe that the biggest breakthrough will be the realization that the arts, which are conventionally considered ‘useless,’ will be recognized as the whole reason why we ever try to live longer or live more prosperously. — Images via Lebbeus Woods Posted at SpaceCollective.org by Rene In Spacewaver’s recent post about the Singularity University he mentions a discussion concerning the institution’s recent... http://cargocollective.com/voyager2/New-Concepts-of-Self http://cargocollective.com/voyager2/following/voyager2/New-Concepts-of-Self Wed, 18 May 2011 16:43:14 +0000 Voyager2 - Cargo example design 1466056 Posted at SpaceCollective.org by Rene In our upcoming film The Terrestrials, made by a cast and crew of SpaceCollective members and dealing with, among many other things, the evolution of intelligence, the controversial ‘60s promoter of mind expansion, Dr. Timothy Leary, does a stand-up comedy routine which he calls a commercial for the brain: Now this moment I must stop for a commercial from my sponsor…and your sponsor: the human brain. You’re carrying around a perfect instrument. This instrument is designed to create any reality that you can wire it up to create. The brain is perfect. It’s that program that screws it up. The programs that they lay on us. I’ll tell you what the brain wants, the brains wants to be excited. To be surprised. Electrified. Your brain wants you to take your brain everywhere. Your brain doesn’t want to be stuck in cities all its life. Your brain wants to do it all and see it all. Your brain wants you to go all the way - wouldn’t you if you were a brain? And to continually show your brain that same old dumb soap opera…here’s what your brain is gonna do. It’s gonna turn you off. The brain wants to…evolve! That’s the end of the commercial. How about a round of applause for the brain! (Applause) You’ll notice that Leary’s routine centers around the dynamic between our brain and ourselves as separate entities, illustrating that we are a body, a mind and a person working together to maintain the illusion that the head contains a person: a Self. Technically, however, in the space behind our face is nothing but material substance; flesh, blood, bone and the “grey matter” that is the brain, which through interaction with the physical and social world manages to create a “mind.” <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/3/113338/1466056/1.jpeg" width="540" height="461" width_o="540" height_o="461" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/3/113338/1466056/1_o.jpeg" data-mid="7149636" border="0" align="left"/> In his post “Mind – The need for a new model,” Spaceweaver calls for an updated theory of mind: Theories of mind held by individuals arise at a very early age as a consequence of interactions with the environment. They can be fairly simple or incredibly complex depending on factors such as the individual’s mental and emotional capacity, upbringing, education, life experience and cultural background. He goes on to suggest that in the face of modern civilization’s “massive transformative pressures, a revision of the prevailing theory of mind, the very manner by which we perceive reality and ourselves, seems to become imperative.” From its inception we have endeavored various initiatives to create new paradigms on Space Collective, including inquiries into a New Society, a New Language, PR campaigns for the Future, the collective Polytopian Mind Space coined by Wildcat, all of which have since been perused by millions of visitors to the site. It is hard to gauge how influential all of this has been, but the work that is being done here has received numerous stellar reviews in the online community and has far exceeded our initial expectations. Yet futurists are by nature impatient and anxiously looking for evidence that the potentials they perceive will eventually come to some kind of fruition. Laymen like us derive great hope from the scientific progress that is tracked on blogs like K21st (and republished here via Wildcards), but between the discovery of DNA in the early ’50s to the completion of the first human genome in 2003 still lies a lag time of half a century. Therefor it is both disheartening and encouraging that so many of the thinkers and the concepts that are regularly referred to by this community go back to the sixties. They are the likes of Gregory Bateson mentioned in Spaceweaver’s forementioned post, the above quoted Timothy Leary (who is a recurring presence in The Singularity is Near and is reinvented for today’s audiences in The Terrestrials), Nano-technology, Kurzweil’s coveted Moore’s Law, Transhumanism, etc. All of these serve as milestones to measure our progress (and admittedly in every single case advances have been made), but sometimes one can understand why such great thinkers of the ‘60s as Brian Eno and Stewart Brand (the one time employer of maverick futurist Kevin Kelly) have established their Long Now Foundation for long-term thinking. In light of the above, it is reassuring that ‘60s media philosopher Marshall McLuhan’s premonition of a then non-existent internet has since changed the world beyond his wildest expectations. His concept of a global village is all pervasive in today’s online world and his other oft-quoted insight – the medium is the message – may provide a useful model for the yet to be realized Polytopia project. McLuhan famously proposes that media itself, not the content it carries, should be the focus of study. According to a Wikipedia entry on the subject, “a medium affects the society in which it plays a role not only by the content delivered over the medium, but also by the characteristics of the medium itself. This concentration on the medium and how it conveys information — rather than on the specific content of the information — is the focal point of his theory. McLuhan goes as far as to postulate that “specific content might have little effect on society. For example, it does not matter if television broadcasts children's shows or violent programming — the effect of television on society would be identical, and profound.” <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/3/113338/1466056/2.jpeg" width="540" height="365" width_o="540" height_o="365" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/3/113338/1466056/2_o.jpeg" data-mid="7149637" border="0" align="left"/> In keeping with McLuhan’s logic, one could say that the brain is the medium and the mind is the message. In that respect it’s interesting that the internet not only provides us with universal access to information (and each other), but its non-linearity and capacity to generate massive connectivity is responsible for a rapid rewiring of our brains, which at the very minimum suggests a significant evolutionary shift. Research has shown that today’s internet generation is growing up with brains that are wired differently from those of the previous generation. The book Grown Up Digital substantiates that there is evidence of younger generations processing information and behaving differently because they have indeed developed brains that are functionally different from those of their parents. Their minds seem to be incredibly flexible, adaptable and multimedia savvy. According to the Learning Center at the University of Washington’s Human Interface Technology Laboratory “they have developed hypertext minds. They leap around. It’s as though their cognitive structures were parallel, not sequential.” In his book Digital Game-Based Learning, Marc Prensky argues that digital immersion has literally rewired brains under 40, and the participatory culture enabling us to interact with both people and computers has expanded our mental abilities by allowing us to tap into a collective form of intelligence for “distributed cognition.” Evolutionary shifts in people’s consciousness have happened before of course. Just two weeks ago, scientists at the University College of London published a provocative study that puts a new twist on the long-standing belief that the hustle and bustle of cities is the most conducive environment for invention and innovation, whereby population density was the catalyst for the emergence of modern human behavior. This density, they argue, has led to a greater exchange of ideas and helped people develop, maintain and extend skills that led to technological and cultural innovation – not to mention a mental leap forward we now take for granted. <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/3/113338/1466056/3.jpeg" width="540" height="214" width_o="540" height_o="214" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/3/113338/1466056/3_o.jpeg" data-mid="7149639" border="0" align="left"/> The internet of course far exceeds the urban architecture in terms of its amazing density of connections, and by virtue of that fact alone its impact may serve as a key factor in bringing about some sort of Singularity. Even right now we’re experiencing a phenomenal upheaval forcing corporations, politicians and for that matter almost every established institution on the planet to adapt to the networked public sphere, which, incidentally, for the first time ever, makes it much more difficult for oppressive political regimes to squash such fundamental human accomplishments as free speech. All this we owe to software applications (i.e. Twitter or Facebook), which provide us with platforms that – to a much larger extent than their content – turned out to be revolutionary forces despite themselves, proving more than ever that the medium is the message. Ironically, my circle of friends has been consistently made up of on the one hand writers, artists and designers and on the other urbanist thinkers (architects) as well as software designers. In particular the latter have made me appreciate how the narratives of our time are most effectively shaped by those who are conversant with computer code. They, rather than my content creating friends, are the facilitators of the revolutionary paradigms artists and writers can only dream of. Their software development will ultimately set the stage for collective mental exercises like Polytopia, which once again serves as testament to McLuhan’s prophetic insight. Yet, regarding us content creators, our predicament is accurately expressed by Milan Kundera who writes that, “without the faith that expresses our Self, without that basic illusion, that arch-illusion, we cannot live or at least we cannot take life seriously.” Thus we will soldier on as we reflect on the tools that are rewiring our brains and take it upon ourselves to imbue recently acquired evolutionary conditions and fresh neural pathways with new theories of mind and enhanced concepts of Self. Posted at SpaceCollective.org by Rene In our upcoming film The Terrestrials, made by a cast and crew of SpaceCollective members and dealing with, among many other... http://cargocollective.com/voyager2/Notes-from-the-digital-diaspora http://cargocollective.com/voyager2/following/voyager2/Notes-from-the-digital-diaspora Wed, 18 May 2011 16:42:19 +0000 Voyager2 - Cargo example design 1466050 Posted at SpaceCollective.org by Rene Besides an occasional landmark building, the cities we live in aren’t all that different from the urban settings we’ve had to contend with since the day we were born, the most conspicuous variable being that there is more of it. But for those of us who are engaged with culture as an ever-changing expression of the zeitgeist it can be frustrating to live in a time capsule that exhibits the frozen relics of an otherwise long forgotten past. The main reason for this is architecture’s inherent immutability. Once erected, a building’s walls rigidly maintain the status quo while the culture at large constantly reinvents itself. As SpaceCollective contributor Greg Lynn puts it in his book Animate Form: “More than even their traditional role of providing shelter, architects are expected to provide culture with stasis. Because of its dedication to permanence, architecture is one of the last modes of thought based on the inert.” By contrast, today’s prevalent mindset, as exemplified by the internet, is all about breaking down boundaries between established and emerging forces, pitting yesterday’s top down hierarchies against the bottom up rule of the online population, and promoting the hegemony of the immaterial over the material world. <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/3/113338/1466050/2.jpeg" width="540" height="302" width_o="540" height_o="302" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/3/113338/1466050/2_o.jpeg" data-mid="7149622" border="0" align="left"/> By now we’re all familiar with the successful online community Second Life and its virtual landmass exceeding the area of Greater Boston, where people are effectively leading their double lives. It won’t be long before social networks like this will be fully immersive 3D environments where players can talk to each other in real-time lip sync while consummating their online relationships via telepresence, achieved through the transmission of stimuli from one location to the next. It is interesting to realize that the standoff between digital space and the built environment were at the heart of the two most recent downturns of the economy: On the one hand the dot com bubble of the late ‘90s and on the other the mortgage crisis which recently caused the real estate market to collapse. Meanwhile, the online world is thriving. Although by no means an economist these subsequent recessions somehow struck me as being tied to a clash between the old and the new vying for dominance of a world in transition. Because of the internet every traditional institution is suddenly subject to a wholesale transformation of its historical model, from the entertainment industry’s losses due to illegal downloading of its content, the waning import of the print media and academia’s changing role in the age of the search engine, to the economy’s response to globalization facilitated by the web. Until now architecture didn’t seem much affected by the emergence of this new world order, but it becomes ever harder to deny the unmistakable symptoms of a rapidly emerging digital diaspora. As more immersive internet strategies keep presenting themselves in the form of a million different services offered by the limitless digital information space, people will continue to transcend the physical restrictions of their residences as they expand their lifestyles ever further beyond their local zip codes. From an architectural standpoint it may be somewhat depressing to realize that the real estate in Second Life, where the imagination runs free, nevertheless mostly consists of the same old ranch houses and McMansions people prefer in the outside world. However it is the reality of the built environment itself that is to blame for this state of affairs. After all, these virtual houses closely resemble the places many of us were born in and have been surrounded by for generations. This is the stasis we have lived with all our lives. Indeed, besides the occasional cultural landmark, we have little reason to assume that the world will ever look any different, be it outside our doorstep, online or in the future. <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/3/113338/1466050/1.jpeg" width="540" height="292" width_o="540" height_o="292" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/3/113338/1466050/1_o.jpeg" data-mid="7149621" border="0" align="left"/> If, by contrast, you were to link up the computers of every one of Greg Lynn’s colleagues and students who produced virtual buildings for years, their combined output of computer-designed architecture would provide the online community with an alluring animated city the likes of which we’ve never seen before, neither in reality nor in science-fiction films So far few architects have been inclined to settle the unruly frontier of the internet because they’re way too busy promoting their buildings in the “real” world, even though in today’s economic climate that has become a rather hopeless task. Yet some of them, like the Argentinian designer Hernan Diaz Alonso, who studied under Greg and now has his own worldwide following, would rather break into the movies than sacrifice their lives at the altar of the built environment. Greg’s own work made it into the movies after being appropriated for the production design of Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report. And as you can see in this video clip he made with frequent collaborator Imaginary Forces, he at least considers the potentials of what architect Rem Koolhaas once called the “(digital) “revolution that seems about to melt all that is solid.” The problem architecture faces is that today’s technologies are beginning to merge with our minds, creating levels of immersion and interaction with which physical embodiment can no longer catch up. Historically, cities may have served as magnificent aggregators of human activities, elevating rural lifestyles to unprecedented levels of sophistication, but in the age of hyper-connectivity it becomes clear that the built environment is a major contributor to its inhabitants’ relative isolation. For more than half a century this walled in condition was alleviated by one way broadcast media but it is now busted open by the digital diaspora that is increasingly effecting our contemporary existence. In this context, people invariably raise the issue that the body does not migrate into the virtual world, but, as Edward Castronova argues in his book Exodus to the Virtual World, “that is not important...where you are is where you are looking. Gaze is location." In fact there is much less of a dichotomy between artificial and actual reality than most observers of the phenomenon acknowledge. The digital infrastructure is everywhere which allows people to free up their bodies and go anywhere in the physical world while remaining connected to our online “home.” This, more than anything, may ultimately re-vitalize today’s urban landscape. Besides the familiar internet connections in coffee shops, one can imagine a new generation of virtual flâneurs. In the 19th Century a flâneur was a person who walked the city in order to experience it or to actively participate in street life, not unlike the critical explorations of the built environment the Situationists called dérives. Today’s versions of these escapades in the analog world would be enhanced by the capacity of new-style urban drifters to tap into a seamless overlay of digital connections wherever they would go, infusing physical reality with potentials and narratives that would otherwise have been obscured by the buildings’ opaque demeanor. As I put it in an earlier post in the streets we may know what lies behind the facades of every store or public building, giving us an instant impression of its tagged contents, and people will have devices, as they did in a Japanese experiment, transmitting and receiving each other’s personal profiles, alerting them to the presence of compatible others. In this ultra-serendipitous environment we will experience far more advanced forms of socializing which will infuse the world with a plethora of social and romantic opportunities that have eluded us so far. <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/3/113338/1466050/3.jpeg" width="270" height="344" width_o="270" height_o="344" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/3/113338/1466050/3_o.jpeg" data-mid="7149624" border="0" align="left"/> Ever since the 19th Century young people, who in Germany were referred to as Wandervogel (meaning migrating birds), have been seeking an alternative to the bourgeois lifestyles that had taken them hostage, which in those days often meant losing themselves in nature. However, short of literally getting lost — which is not nearly as easy in the age of satellites and GPS — today we can have the best of both worlds. Thanks to the digital diaspora geography is no longer destiny as physical distance can be negotiated from any location and the virtual realm shows ever more potential for near physical immersion. The Japanese term for Virtual Reality translates into English as Intimate Presence, which is a great way to suggest the “real time” interactions that are currently facilitated by the web. Even though this immersiveness is still hampered by a poor visual component due to the current lack of available bandwidth, the analog and digital realms continue to merge as entire generations of internet users are engaging in a frenzy of instantaneous connectivity. The more the web will become an all-encompassing immersive place, the more we will be able to live in multiple dimensions at once without ever losing touch with the extended worldwide community that will be along for the ride wherever they or we may physically reside. This marriage of virtual and actual presence will provide us with a range of visceral and mental experiences that will increasingly transcend all boundaries that restrict us today. Somewhere along this trajectory we will be ready for our impending migration into the shared mind space that is foreshadowed in so many contributions to SpaceCollective under the aegis of the Polytopia project. Indeed, it would appear that in preparation for this event we are currently in the process of rewiring our brains, optimizing our personal relationships, expanding our access to knowledge and capitalizing on our collective intelligence, all of which in a bygone era were bogged down by the noise of a vast cognitive waste that we are finally learning to overcome. Posted at SpaceCollective.org by Rene Besides an occasional landmark building, the cities we live in aren’t all that different from the urban settings we’ve... http://cargocollective.com/voyager2/What-about-wisdom http://cargocollective.com/voyager2/following/voyager2/What-about-wisdom Wed, 18 May 2011 16:41:26 +0000 Voyager2 - Cargo example design 1466045 Posted at SpaceCollective.org by Spaceweaver As life in our world becomes ever more complex, there is an ever increasing pressure on us to accommodate this complexity. As Barry Schwartz indicates in his inspiring talk at TED 2009, we tend to increasingly oversimplify our interactions with the world and mold them into ready made and easily digestible patterns of stimulus- response that will save us such costly resources as critical thinking, reasoning, emotional sensitivity, tolerance towards views different from ours and more. Indeed it seems that one of the most serious maladies of modern times is that we have lost our confidence in the power and virtue of wisdom to provide viable responses to our everyday situations on the individual level as well as on higher organizational levels. We are deeply concerned about global warming, economical crises, dwindling resources, political corruption, violent conflicts and terrorism. It seems that we are almost compelled to describe these problems as arising in a world external to us and somehow (ridiculously so) independent from us, but they are not. These are not situations or events that can be thoroughly objectified as if independent from our perceptions, conceptions, beliefs, sensitivities and the general quality of our emotional and thinking processes as they become manifest in our interactions. On the contrary, the great and small existential riddles that we face are but reflections of the state of the human mind; the collective mind as well as the individual mind. In other words, many if not most of these existential riddles are rooted in ignorance, the neglect of wisdom that is. <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/3/113338/1466045/1.gif" width="450" height="357" width_o="450" height_o="357" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/3/113338/1466045/1_o.gif" data-mid="7149591" border="0" align="left"/> What is wisdom? How have we come to neglect it? And how could we possibly reinstate our trust in it? Wisdom begins where all conceptualizations and formal systems end. Wisdom, therefore will not easily give itself to the kind of conceptual discourse we find so effective and habitual in the way we usually think. As Barry Schwartz hints, wisdom is not part of any job description, it lacks function per se, it seems to be useless, but it is exactly this kind of uselessness that somehow makes everything else extremely useful and significant. Even in the light of modern evolutionary theory, wisdom seems to impart no immediate evolutionary advantage on its bearers. On a bit different perspective however, a clear evolutionary path can be drawn for the contemporary human mind: from being instinct oriented to being reason oriented; from being reason oriented to being wisdom oriented. And today, especially today, when our reasoning powers fail us, and they do, we can either transcend reason into wisdom or fall back to instinct. So, wisdom evades definition, seems quite useless and imparts no obvious evolutionary advantage. Yet, since the days of antiquity wisdom is treasured as man’s most precious resource. The Legendary Socrates explains to his friends and disciples that his pursue of wisdom overrides his fear of death. In fact, he argues that death may present better opportunities for him to pursue wisdom, and therefore it should be regarded as a good thing. In the epic story of the Mahabharata, Arjuna the hero is offered by Krishna, at the eve of battle, a choice between receiving the command over great armies of formidable warriors, or having Krishna (symbolizing the source of high wisdom) drive his chariot into battle unarmed. Arjuna chooses the company of Krishna and gives up the obvious advantage in the face of the immediate circumstances. With Krishna’s counsel of wisdom, he wins of course the mortal battle and meanwhile gains enlightenment as well. Barry Schwartz asserts that wisdom has to do with accumulating the unique and humane life experience we all gain and utilize when the rules, procedures and immediate interests that usually guide our lives fail to informs us how to respond to unexpected circumstances. He mentions a moral will and moral skills that involves both reasoning and emotion, empathy and intelligent improvisation. He certainly touches some good points here, yet it is quite clear that wisdom is something over and above the accumulation of life experiences, and even beyond the application of moral virtue in real life situations. 'What is wisdom' is an exceptional question in that that its primary function is to be recursively asked and not necessarily to be answered in the manner that conventional ‘what’ questions are being answered. In terms of linguistic and semantic utility, wisdom is certainly a unique perhaps even unnatural term because it does not relate or communicate a specific content or even a state of mind. Instead, it invites conscious reflection, openness, and interconnectedness. ‘Invites’, perhaps is the most important word here because wisdom never presses, compels or necessitates, wisdom therefore is bred in freedom, in free minds that is. As such, wisdom is always, always an option. As to the qualities mentioned, these are three of the deepest mysteries of the mind. In realizing the depth of our interconnectedness with all life and beyond that, with the entire universe, an ever expanding insight (and significance) into our instance of existence is gained. Openness is a great mystery in that that it admits and allows the boundless unknown laying so very close to us, just beyond our habituated perceptions and self affirming concepts. Conscious reflection is the paradoxical (by definition) bridge or perhaps mirror between the local and the universal, between the finite and the infinite, between the here and everywhere, between now and ever. In the ever quickening race of the information age, it would seem that wisdom is becoming a kind of an anachronistic and eccentric hobby to be left behind till it fades into the obscurity of old myth. Wisdom is neglected because of the ever growing pressure for immediate response, immediate reaction, and immediate utility. However, as we approach extreme cortical activation accompanied by its revolutionary technological side effects, we also approach a limit beyond which we will no longer be able control or guide this explosion of intelligence and complexity. This limit, which we already sense, marks the end of the current evolutionary phase of the human mind and pronounces a transition into a possible next phase; an epoch of wisdom. <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/3/113338/1466045/2.jpeg" width="424" height="318" width_o="424" height_o="318" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/3/113338/1466045/2_o.jpeg" data-mid="7149592" border="0" align="left"/> Once upon a time in a more or less far future, at least in our temporal continuum, some intelligent entities being perhaps descendants of the race of men, will create a whole universe for the sole purpose of observing the intricate unfolding of a single ethical riddle, or maybe to resolve an aesthetic debate. In their wisdom they will know that nothing less than a whole universe may provide the proper circumstances for such an issue to significantly evolve, they will also know that no intentional intervention is possible once such universal setup is initiated. They will certainly know they can afford it, and the allowance naturally extended from such conscious affordance will seamlessly realize itself as universe impregnated with the infinite potential of life. Such thoughts, though being well beyond my comprehension keeps me awake. Not so much during the nights as during the days… Posted at SpaceCollective.org by Spaceweaver As life in our world becomes ever more complex, there is an ever increasing pressure on us to accommodate this... http://cargocollective.com/voyager2/Beyond-the-speed-of-thought http://cargocollective.com/voyager2/following/voyager2/Beyond-the-speed-of-thought Wed, 18 May 2011 16:40:46 +0000 Voyager2 - Cargo example design 1466039 Posted at SpaceCollective.org by Rene An often recurring discussion on SpaceCollective concerns the limitations of language, typically meaning the written word, which seems most closely related to human thought. While other languages, like music or visuals, appeal more directly to our ‘intuitive’ capacities, written or verbal language, along with the abstraction and logical reasoning of mathematics, seems to appeal mostly to our ‘intellect’. According to the classic Myers-Briggs typological theory a relatively small percentage of people perceive the world intuitively. These individuals “tend to trust information that is more abstract or theoretical, that can be associated with other information (either remembered or discovered by seeking a wider context or pattern). They may be more interested in future possibilities. They tend to trust those flashes of insight that seem to bubble up from the unconscious mind. The meaning is in how the data relates to the pattern or theory.” <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/3/113338/1466039/brainmap_o.jpeg" width="540" height="396" width_o="540" height_o="396" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/3/113338/1466039/brainmap_o_o.jpeg" data-mid="7149564" border="0" align="left"/> This sounds like a reasonable explanation why, even though most people on this site communicate their futuristic ideas through writing, they simultaneously have an ambiguous relationship to a language which subjects their reasoning to a simple rule-based syntax. Most people contributing to SC are thinkers, who are very much tuned into the above mentioned “possibilities” and “patterns,” and whatever else the brain processes in between the thinking and the words. As a rule, futurists have a strong intuitive side. Where others experience the world in concrete terms, they see reality as a scrim revealing the future potential of things, so they understandably want to adapt the modes of expression to fit their advanced paradigms. Yet we continue to be highly dependent on a linguistic tradition which is firmly tied to conventional processes of thought and, although frustrating at times, at this point it must still be considered the best available option to futher the discourse. Just think about how often we launch into a sentence, stringing along words with only a general sense of where they are leading us. Somehow the words keep coming out of our mouth (or word processor) trying to catch up to the speed of thought while the stream of consciousness moves its argument forwards as if it had been preconceived. Just like the improvisation of a jazz musician or a shaman speaking in tongues to conjure a vision. Look how Wildcat pushes language around and coins new phrases in his relentless attempts to hone his Polytopian vision, while expessing his frustration that “we are in dire need of a new kind of language, a language that may be able to bridge the immensity of the gap we have created between the perception of the world and the manner by which we describe the same world.” Also check out the writings of Meika and Xaos’ Montevideo posts , which shed light on future realities by elevating their words to a more evocative intuitive level. Or read Obvious’ post in which he observes that “language is revealed through text as the mode of our conscious experience – a truth which furthermore transforms the very capacities of the thoughts which think it. Once text, in its essence, is transmitted and elucidated via readership there is transformation “of the process of coming-into-being of the world.” Meanwhile Al wants SC to “create its own dictionary containing new words and new understandings of old words,” Folkert calls speech “a bottleneck for modern thinking and communication” and wants us to “come up with richer forms of idea-exchange,” and Carel suggests “non-symbolic, non-representative ways to communicate.” All of these appear to be the stirrings of the non-linear associative mind that mark the beginnings of a new typology. Lately, I’ve been doing a little exercise, trying to imagine some actual experiences if the brain were to seamlessly interface with machine intelligence. We have to assume that once technology turns inwards it will change our very way of being and profoundly transform our sense of Self because we will be known in much greater detail to our newly enhanced mind, from the minute data of our human genome to the collective awareness of our constantly updated life on this planet. This “invasive” brain/computer interface will deeply effect the experience of our surroundings, providing new layers of immersion and annotating every aspect of our reality, adding a whole new dimension to wherever we go and whoever we meet. In the streets we may know what lies behind the facades of every public building, giving us an instant impression of its tagged contents, and people will have devices, as they did in a Japanese experiment, transmitting and receiving each other’s personal profiles, alerting them to the presence of compatible others. In this ultra-serendipitous environment we will experience far more advanced forms of socializing which will infuse the world with a plethora of romantic opportunities that have eluded us so far. Access to immediately available data anywhere will bring the world alive, creating connections, synapses and links that will keep us connected to everyone and everything in our immediate surroundings and the world at large. As our minds will attain the non-linear associative powers that will do away with the static mold of analog information we will finally break through the speed barrier of thought. At this juncture, our brains may more frequently experience the precious moments when suddenly everything seems to be falling into place, like the occasional epiphanies we have today. In such a hyper-conscious world a majority of people may be able to achieve a form of machine-enhanced intuition bordering on telepathy, which in the days of Myers-Briggs used to be the exclusive domain of a privileged few. Finally, through the scrim of “reality,” the future potential of things will be revealed to all. Posted at SpaceCollective.org by Rene An often recurring discussion on SpaceCollective concerns the limitations of language, typically meaning the written word,... http://cargocollective.com/voyager2/Changing-our-minds http://cargocollective.com/voyager2/following/voyager2/Changing-our-minds Wed, 18 May 2011 16:39:57 +0000 Voyager2 - Cargo example design 1466035 Posted at SpaceCollective.org by Spaceweaver The first decade of the 21st century is about to end in just a few weeks. Among many things, I find most impacting the explosion of knowledge in the field of brain sciences and human behavior in this decade. Though the great riddles of consciousness and the emergence of minds from brains are still open and far from any solution, many connections and bridges are already there in our understanding. Quite a few important and perhaps critical observations regarding human nature and the state of affairs of humanity are emerging from this explosion of knowledge and I will try to (very) briefly summarize them here below: 1. Our brains and our minds are initially products of biological evolution. Human behavior to this day is largely shaped by its biological origins. 2. In the course of just a few millennia, the human evolved language and culture. Culture has become the actual ecology where humans exist and where humans evolve. Human evolution as of today is not shaped by biological forces anymore but rather by cultural and mental forces. 3. Cultural evolution is much faster than biological evolution. Yet, individually, our bodies and brains are still constrained by their biology. Moreover, our social behavior is still shaped, to a large extent, by imperatives that ensured human survival in pre-cultural and proto-cultural eras. 4. As a consequence, humanity exists today within a rapidly growing adaptive gap. We have managed to create a fast evolving complex culture and this culture is certainly reshaping us individually and collectively. But this co-evolution is seriously constrained by the biological substrata of our minds. 5. It seems that we are not intelligent enough to cope with growing complexity of our social organization. This is already apparent in the dysfunction of governance systems, economic systems and the general coordinated addressing of large (planetary) scale problems. 6. It seems that human social behavior that was optimized to the way humans existed thousands of years ago is dangerously unfit to the complex demands of modern civilization. More specifically, certain necessary aspects of our collective intelligence such as emotional intelligence, extended empathy, sophisticated ethical reasoning, the capacity to communicate and cooperate within complex situations, augmented theories about other minds and more, evolve very slowly if at all. 7. (From here are some good news…) The human brain is found to be extremely plastic and adaptable in a very broad spectrum of capacities. It seems plausible that our brains and our mental capacities can be radically augmented. 8. Our understanding of the human brain and human general biology already allows people to be made smarter, perhaps much smarter. Brain enhancers that effectively augment human general intelligence are already available and will become much more effective and more available in the coming decades. 9. Even moderate increase of intelligence in the overall human population may have radical beneficial impact on the well being of humanity at large (see for an impressive example the micro nutrient initiative and its possible effects). 10. More controversially, human individual and social behavior can be altered to better fit the complex fast changing cultural ecology we are all part of. Specifically, human traits such as peacefulness, cooperation, empathy and trust can be reinforced by changing the chemical balance of the brain. Traits such as aggression, territoriality and other sociopathic dispositions can similarly be attenuated. 11. A bit further in the future, interventions at the genetic level can increase the general level of intelligence and shape the social behavior of new born children with the effect that whole populations will achieve better fitness and well being in our fast evolving circumstances. In the light of these observations a very profound question becomes clear: Should we take the reins of our future evolution? Should we engage in a coordinated, large scale, project of augmenting our brains (and eventually our biology) and by that to radically change our minds and our very human nature? What are the values and the ethical precepts that can guide us in addressing such question? At the end of the first decade of the 21st century, it is clear that there is a need for a change. It is also becoming clear that we are rapidly gaining the effective means to introduce it. Nevertheless, this is a very complex issue. The brief background I tried to bring here is only the tip of an iceberg. There are, I know, many views that will question the validity of part or all of the observations above, or the way that they are presented. My point however is to say enough to start a discussion here. Lately I have watched an hour long lecture titled “Genetically enhance humanity or face extinction” given by Oxford professor of philosophy and bioethics Julian Suvalescu. Though he presents the issue of human enhancement in a much bolder fashion, the arguments he presents are interesting and certainly provocative. I recommend watching it if only for one reason: to gain a very real sense of how dangerous this idea is and how unavoidable is the need for every forward thinking individual to seriously think about, it discuss it and consolidate an informed view. Genetically Enhance Humanity or Face Extinction Part 1 Genetically Enhance Humanity or Face Extinction Part 2 Posted at SpaceCollective.org by Spaceweaver The first decade of the 21st century is about to end in just a few weeks. Among many things, I find most impacting the... http://cargocollective.com/voyager2/Living-towards-the-Singularity http://cargocollective.com/voyager2/following/voyager2/Living-towards-the-Singularity Wed, 18 May 2011 16:39:26 +0000 Voyager2 - Cargo example design 1466028 Posted at SpaceCollective.org by Rene As the intellectual contours of Polytopian existence are coming into focus in Wildcat’s recent writings, the condition he describes still leaves us without the more conducive sense of a “mind habitat” expressed in this pre-polytopian post. When SpaceCollective received an invitation to join the upcoming Singularity Summit in San Jose it made me think that several posts by Wildcat and other contributions to the site are exploring the existential implications of the same trajectory that will ultimately lead to the Singularity, albeit in a more engaging and creative way. Sort of like we represent the Humanities in conjunction with the Singularity's Science & Technology focus. I must admit that I was impressed with the recent announcement by Intel’s chief technology officer’s pledge to bring the Singularity within reach 4 decades from now. <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/3/113338/1466028/cern_o.jpeg" width="540" height="334" width_o="540" height_o="334" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/3/113338/1466028/cern_o_o.jpeg" data-mid="7149528" border="0" align="left"/> I'm not suggesting that Polytopia should be looking for similar validation (to my knowledge none of our contributors are engineers), but it wouldn’t hurt if our own discourse would somehow become more actionable, even though I'm still not quite sure how that can be accomplished. Obviously, continuing to think about the subject and articulating a more complete philosophical vision remains extremely valid, especially if it becomes a more collective exercise. But we should simultaneously capitalize on the creative bend of the SpaceCollective community and revive earlier expressions of interest in creating models for a new society. Coining the name Polytopia was a great start, and, as Alan Smith has proven with his post about Nationhood giving a visual identity to such an initiative has a lot of potential to effectively brand the proposal for a newly established Society of Mind and turn it into more of a perceptual reality. Writing manifestos, bylaws, etc. can be an exciting thing to do as well, and Spaceweaver's commitment to develop the concept of Polyethics will give the project critically important added substance. Practical contributions like notthisbody's post Towards a Polytopa are of course very welcome as well. Another potent aspect of the Polytopian position is that its principles can be considered revolutionary and could well be framed in terms of a movement. If people know it or not, they are already partaking in a revolution which may be largely invisible but is nevertheless a pivotal world-transforming event. However, I feel that our own acute sense of already being part of this all-encompassing transformation is one of the impediments that has prevented us as like-minded thinkers and creators to coordinate our efforts and give projects like Polytopia the critical mass needed to manifest in the outside world. Just think about it, the Singularity movement came about simply because sci-fi writer/academician Vernor Vinge established the initial concept, which was then embraced by the more practical thinker/inventor Ray Kurzweil and now Intel’s technology director. As a result a broadly recognized idea has taken root in the world built around little more than a catchy word, a succinct definition (the moment when machine intelligence surpasses human intelligence) and Intel's co-founder Gordon E. Moore’s formulation of his now famous law. <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/3/113338/1466028/singularity_o.jpeg" width="330" height="359" width_o="330" height_o="359" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/3/113338/1466028/singularity_o_o.jpeg" data-mid="7149529" border="0" align="left"/> In light of the tremendous power of thought and creativity which has emerged on this site in a mere 8 months, I find it hard to believe that SpaceCollective wouldn’t be able to similarly push the envelope to the next level. I dare say that we are equally committed to pursue our own viable ideas, and on a creative level represent as versatile a force as anyone currently involved with the Singularity. Besides, Intel’s commitment as well as Moore’s law are working as much on our behalf as that of the Singularitarians. In fact, we’re in this together with them – as long as we continue to assert our own agenda and fulfill at least some of its potential to engage in the larger scheme of things. To be continued. Posted at SpaceCollective.org by Rene As the intellectual contours of Polytopian existence are coming into focus in Wildcat’s recent writings, the condition he... http://cargocollective.com/voyager2/What-comes-after-the-Internet http://cargocollective.com/voyager2/following/voyager2/What-comes-after-the-Internet Wed, 18 May 2011 16:38:42 +0000 Voyager2 - Cargo example design 1466022 Posted at SpaceCollective.org by Meganmay Last night I asked google, "is the internet over?" This was the response (be warned if you have little tolerance for internet gore do not click). The result was both ironic and nostalgic, like a last stand for the unkempt wilderness the internet has been. As I mentioned on Olena's post, it occurred to me the other night that lawlessness can be extremely beneficial to intelligence and the rapid growth of culture, particularly when it comes to the vast databases of music and movies we've stolen for our edification and enjoyment. It also struck me that those who've directly benefited from this lawlessness are simultaneously the most marketed to generation in history and a generation that's probably stolen more merchandise on a whole than any other group of people living in a semi-functional society. But I've had a distinct sense for the past few months that the internet is no longer the frontier, that it's well on the way to becoming as practical and depoliticized as the telephone. While cyberwarfare may be making appearances in the newspaper for months or even years to come, it'll more likely be evidence of governmental meddling than radical uprising. While I don't get off on illuminati flavored conspiracy theories, the use of Facebook friend photos to generate advertisements, in combination with the Supreme court decision, and Google deleting music blogs without warning has made me extremely aware how easily we can sleep through what promises to be (or already is) a corporate chokehold. While this all seems a little bleak, it's actually rather refreshing to realize. I've been feeling a little coddled by the neverending stream of utopian rhetoric surrounding the internet, which I myself am guilty of propagating, and with good reason! But it seems about time we set our sites on a new frontier. So...what comes after the Internet? <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/3/113338/1466022/1.jpeg" width="500" height="375" width_o="500" height_o="375" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/3/113338/1466022/1_o.jpeg" data-mid="7149507" border="0" align="left"/> Posted at SpaceCollective.org by Meganmay Last night I asked google, "is the internet over?" This was the response (be warned if you have little tolerance for... http://cargocollective.com/voyager2/My-Life-as-a-Severed-Head http://cargocollective.com/voyager2/following/voyager2/My-Life-as-a-Severed-Head Wed, 18 May 2011 16:37:56 +0000 Voyager2 - Cargo example design 1466014 Posted at SpaceCollective.org by Meganmay At this moment in the Internet's history I am one of many, I would suspect, who often prefers to receive the world on demand, to leave touch with my immediate surroundings in order to surf the information of my choosing. This is a very particular and unique kind of information acquisition, it's accelerated and intentional. I've asked several friends in the cognitive sciences what to call this variety of mental processing, it's not intellectual perse, not rational necessarily, cerebral? These synonyms all have connotations that disqualify them as adequate terminology, so instead I'll call it "severed head." This particular state of being is characterized by the feeling that your body is trailing behind your head at all times, only to be felt when some mentally stimulating idea triggers a release of adrenaline. A fine feeling indeed. <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/3/113338/1466014/1.jpeg" width="536" height="282" width_o="536" height_o="282" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/3/113338/1466014/1_o.jpeg" data-mid="7149485" border="0" align="left"/> Coop Himmelblau's Soul Flipper This way of absorbing the world is very different from the world experienced by the body as a whole. And being a severed head myself, I often prefer Google search results to more physical sources of information. Recent experiences, however, have re-covered my appreciation for the latter. Hana Van Der Kolk and I are like a lesson in fate. The strangeness of her recognizing me from the internet, unwittingly becoming my neighbor, finding out that not only are we both daughters of Dutch psychologists, but in the most remarkable twist of fate, it turns out an uncle of mine helped Hana's parents immigrate to America. So when Hana asked me to be in her next performance the answer of course had to be yes (and my solo would be nothing less than an incessant repetition of this positive affirmation). It was notoriously hard to describe Hana's choreographic style to inquisitive friends. A blend of minimalist dance and performance art? With long pauses and pop songs? I think she said it best by calling it a mix tape, and I called it a collage, a blend of performance techniques. At it's core though, it was the performance of an altered state, and getting there required a perception of "the whole body at once," a task comparable to listening for the sound of one hand clapping. After assigning us mental scores, Hana began to choreograph clichéd group activities, painfully simple solos, and duets that begged to be narrativized. The whole process was particularly interesting because Hana was in the position to direct us while reminding us not to plan or think. This was a bit of a struggle, every clarification was like dancing around the mind's tendency to take information and smother it with intellectual constructions. It began to seem like the whole thing was an empirical study of how this strange clump of matter and chemistry that we identify as the human body might communicate complex sentiments without interference from "higher" brain functioning. By the time the performance rolled around, I was eager to check this hypothesis with an audience. It was nerve racking, and slightly ironic, to present the work to a group of people harboring the very analytical agenda we were trying to debunk. It should also probably be noted that in addition to being told throughout my life that I "think too much," I'm not a seasoned performer, so the whole experience was like being in a foreign country with a bare minimum of vocab words at my disposal. It demanded complete dedication to those few words to facilitate this still unfamiliar relationship between body and mind. The performance ended, and the only thing I knew for sure was that the audience had been audibly shifty in their chairs. I soon learned though, that without any kind of character motivation or explicit direction, the performance not only hit certain narrative cues, but exceeded them. People were raving about transference, friends who I would never have expected to enjoy such a performance were trailing behind Hana to congratulate her, and on the third night I shed the most perfectly timed, completely uncalculated tear. It appeared that the intimacy Hana set out to cultivate was oozing from our unconditioned bodies with supernatural clarity. I've often vouched for the internet as a unique channel for achieving intimacy, and a superior instrument for streaming thoughts without physical interference. But Hana's method was a reminder of the body's refined capacity to transmit and receive hi-fidelity information. I have never experienced a performance so devoid of intellectual burdens, so painfully simple and yet gut-wrenchingly complex. Getting back to my life as usual has been like filing back into an anatomical hierarchy whereby my body is once again second in command. And as I sit here, a collection of limbs obediently stationed in front of a computer monitor, I'm imagining a sc-fi future in which the body is obsolete. In my mind, however, it's a mere perception that's been left behind, making way for a popular view of the body as an instrument of communication well worth being tuned. <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/3/113338/1466014/2.jpeg" width="540" height="360" width_o="540" height_o="360" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/3/113338/1466014/2_o.jpeg" data-mid="7149486" border="0" align="left"/> pre-performance rehearsal, more photos of the performance here Posted at SpaceCollective.org by Meganmay At this moment in the Internet's history I am one of many, I would suspect, who often prefers to receive the world on... http://cargocollective.com/voyager2/My-cranium-is-open-source http://cargocollective.com/voyager2/following/voyager2/My-cranium-is-open-source Wed, 18 May 2011 16:37:10 +0000 Voyager2 - Cargo example design 1466007 Posted at SpaceCollective.org by Spaceweaver A response to Wildcat's "My cranium, my castle?" <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/3/113338/1466007/noname3.16_o.jpeg" width="458" height="550" width_o="458" height_o="550" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/3/113338/1466007/noname3.16_o_o.jpeg" data-mid="7149470" border="0" align="left"/> Thank you Wildcat for the interesting post. Indeed the prospect of accessing one's private experiential space is a very plausible future scenario, and indeed it is a matter of deep concern. The concern however is not about the issue of privacy but rather about the profound impact such mind probing technologies will have on social structure and on the individual. In science fiction literature, scenarios that include full noetic (coming from noose the Greek word for mind) reading, memory erasing and editing, memory transference, experiential filters and other even more radical options, are abundant. (The Golden age trilogy, Pandora star, Total recall, Mind scan, Permutation City, and Johnny Mnemonic, just to name a few). Interventions in individual memory and cognitive functions enabled by technology, seem inevitable. However in the question of privacy and security, the same technologies that create the problem are also those that will offer solutions. Mental firewalls, external secure storage of experiential memories. Sensory and cognitive filters interfaced to the brain are already in the horizon. The value of privacy is not derived solely from our sentiments, but rather from its significance in the evolutionary playground. Privileged access to information stands at the basis of many important evolutionary advantages of living organisms from viruses and bacteria to humans and complex human organizations. Hiding and seeking, attacking and protecting privileged access to information, are therefore very ancient activities in the evolutionary playground. In the human realm, technology is continuously pushing the limits of this playground. The human mind is but a new frontier of the this evolutionary game. It is my belief the same technology that threats our privacy and cognitive liberty will also provide the means to protect both. In this sense technology's influence is on the very definition of the playground rather than biasing the game. In the light of the evolutionary perspective however, the ethical issue here needs refocusing and creative approach, and our very concepts of privacy and cognitive liberty must be augmented and given a new significance not in the light of the past but in the light of a future profoundly transformed by technology. This conceptual shift is necessary if we wish to meet this future on favorable terms. Where might such new ethical approach come from? It seems that an interesting step would be to identify the kind of change we are about to face. Heinz Von Foerster, one of the pioneers of cybernetics, noted that our nervous system has about 100-200 million external sensors, but five orders of magnitude more internal sensors, neurons sensitive to changes in the behavior of other neurons, that is. It follows that we are about 100,000 times more sensitive to ourselves than to anything happening around us communicated by raw sensory signals. The difference in degrees of interconnectivity is what significantly sets the brain as a private domain. It seems that the main impact of technology is primarily in the change it introduces to interconnectivity (can also be described in terms of bandwidth), and the difference in interconnectivity. This impact can be addressed in many domains of which the web is of course prominent. Our mental privacy and cognitive liberty depend first and foremost on the difference of interconnectivity. Moreover, the very concept of the individual, as currently understood, depends on the difference in interconnectivity. Once this difference changes, i.e. internal states of the nervous system are becoming increasingly accessible, our very notion of privacy, privileged access, cognitive liberty and individuality should be reassessed. Bottom line is that in the future the very definition of individuality will probably be derived not from the arbitrary conditions of one’s biological makeup, but rather how one is connected and to what. The degree of individuation will depend on difference in interconnectivity and this will become the subject matter of our ethical debate. On top of that, privileged access to information and controlling the degree of interconnectivity will certainly be correlated to the computation power available to the individual. The degree of individuality and privacy available will critically depend on computation power and bandwidth. The ethics of the future if so will probably deal with regulating interconnectivity, the flow of information, and the computation resources necessary to establish a basic domain of experiential privacy. Becoming interconnected minds who share all such resources might become an increasingly attractive existential option. It might be the end of individualism as we know it. Posted at SpaceCollective.org by Spaceweaver A response to Wildcat's "My cranium, my castle?" Thank you Wildcat for the interesting post. Indeed the prospect of...