Optimism is a political act
Project: Polytopia

Optimism is a political act.

Entrenched interests use despair, confusion and apathy to prevent change. They encourage modes of thinking which lead us to believe that problems are insolvable, that nothing we do can matter, that the issue is too complex to present even the opportunity for change. It is a long-standing political art to sow the seeds of mistrust between those you would rule over: as Machiavelli said, tyrants do not care if they are hated, so long as those under them do not love one another. Cynicism is often seen as a rebellious attitude in Western popular culture, but, in reality, cynicism in average people is the attitude exactly most likely to conform to the desires of the powerful – cynicism is obedience.

Optimism, by contrast, especially optimism which is neither foolish nor silent, can be revolutionary. Where no one believes in a better future, despair is a logical choice, and people in despair almost never change anything. Where no one believes a better solution is possible, those benefiting from the continuation of a problem are safe. Where no one believes in the possibility of action, apathy becomes an insurmountable obstacle to reform. But introduce intelligent reasons for believing that action is possible, that better solutions are available, and that a better future can be built, and you unleash the power of people to act out of their highest principles. Shared belief in a better future is the strongest glue there is: it creates the opportunity for us to love one another, and love is an explosive force in politics.

Great movements for social change always begin with statements of great optimism.

Alex Steffen in March 2008
Via World Changing

Mon, Oct 13, 2008  Permanent link
Categories: polytopia, World Changing, Alex Steffen, Optimism
Sent to project: Polytopia

The Global Brain, Nova Spivack at Grid 08
Project: Polytopia

Thu, Oct 2, 2008  Permanent link
Categories: Singularity, Nova Spivack, Grid 08, The global Brain, The global Mind
Sent to project: Polytopia

Neurosky Neural Headset
Project: The great enhancement debate

California based NeuroSky is providing solutions to effectively interface bio-signal information, including brainwaves, to consumer electronic products such as music players that automatically select songs by analyzing the feelings of users, as well as devices to support nursing-care work and to measure learning effects. NeuralSky's MindSet reads brain waves, known as EEG's, and the brain's activity can be utilized by computers and other devices.

NeuroSky plans to demonstrate a brain-controlled video game at the 2008 Tokyo Game Show starting on Oct 9 at the Makuhari Messe convention center in Chiba, near Tokyo. A brain-controlled video game is expected to hit the Japanese market as early as 2009.

The MindSet™ is the first commercially available, "consumer-ready", brainwave-controlled headset for the mass consumer market. The headset reads and interprets different mental states associated with the headset user and transmits that information wirelessly to a variety of platforms (emphasis mine). Utilizing NeuroSky's fully-embedded, ThinkGear-EM technology, which manages the brainwave acquisition and interpretation chores, the MindSet communicates equally well with game consoles, PC's and mobile platforms, including cell phones. The MindSet is currently available to NeuroSky's OEM customers.
via robotland

Tue, Sep 30, 2008  Permanent link
Categories: neural headset, brainwave, man machine interface
Sent to project: The great enhancement debate

Polytopia is now open

Dear Polytopians,

The Polytopia project is now open, and the flow purports worthy and interesting happenings.
Your inputs, essays, papers, links, suggestions, comments and
sharing are the lifeblood of a collaborative effort to ascend.

Intelligence is being amplified as we speak

Let us make the Polytopia happen

Welcome
Wildcat

Fri, Sep 26, 2008  Permanent link

"Future Food - Meat without Livestock"

The Portal* "Future Food - Meat without Livestock" focuses on possibilities for replacing animal products with products that are not derived from animals. These products can be divided into two groups:

Vegetarian Meats, Non-Dairy Milk Drinks and Egg Replacements

These products simulate or copy the animal derived products. There is a wide variety of these products currently available on the market. We use the terms, “vegetarian meat”, “non-dairy milk drinks” and “egg replacements”.

"In-Vitro Meat" or "Cultured Meat"

Future Technology:
The point with this group of foods is that actual meat is produced without the use of animals, not “just” products which are copies of meat. This process is still largely in the research stages and therefore, for the time being, still a dream.
Money / Huge Market Potential
Market Potential

Meat: worldwide 250 billion US $ every year !!

That is approximately the worldwide annual turnover reached by using animal derived meat as raw material. With a product that is better, i.e. healthier, cheaper, less resource intensive, without animal suffering, without endless amounts of liquid manure, without animal epidemics and so on, than animal derived meat a huge market is just waiting to be seized!

Eggs / Egg products: Worldwide between 4 and 8 billion US $ per year!

The whole eggs that we know and eat as boiled eggs will probably be around for some time to come, but, it should soon be possible to replace egg products used for industrial baking, such as powdered egg white and yolk with a better substitute.

Our challenge to companies in the food industry: There are simply not enough internationally available vegetarian meats and egg replacement products on the market! Cultured meat could capture a vast future market. Invest a tiny fraction of the market potential in research today so that you do not find yourself at a disadvantage later!
EthiCS

“It’s time to stop killing meat and start growing it” (William Saletan)

The aim is to bring an end to animal suffering, environmental pollution, starvation, health risks and so on, by no longer using billions of domestic animals as meat, milk and egg machines, and to replace these products with ones which are healthier and are produced via more environmentally friendly and ethical means. Developing an alternative is always an important additional element to any ethically progressive step. The end of slavery in the USA, for example, would have been hard to imagine without the development of agricultural machinery.

Future Food

would love to hear/read your thoughts on this subject

Wed, Sep 24, 2008  Permanent link
Categories: future, food, meat, Cultured

Superstruct - 2019

Mon, Sep 22, 2008  Permanent link
Categories: 2019, superstruct

"Queerer Than We Suppose: The strangeness of science,"

Richard Dawkins is Oxford University's "Professor for the Public Understanding of Science." Author of the landmark 1976 book, The Selfish Gene, he's a brilliant (and trenchant) evangelist for Darwin's ideas. In this talk, titled, "Queerer Than We Suppose: The strangeness of science," he suggests that the true nature of the universe eludes us, because the human mind evolved only to understand the "middle-sized" world we can observe.

Mon, Sep 22, 2008  Permanent link
Categories: brain, Science, Dawkins, Evolution

METADESIGN, Humberto Maturana
Project: The Total Library, Polytopia

Human beings versus machines, or machines as instruments of human designs?

The answers to these two questions would have been obvious years ago: Human beings, of course, machines are instruments of human design! But now days when we speak so much of progress, science and technology as if progress, science and technology were in themselves values to be venerated, there are many people that think that machines as they become more and more complex and intelligent through human design, may in fact become alive so that they may supplant us as a natural outcome of that very venerated progress and expansion of intelligence. Also many people seems to think that evolution is changing its nature so that technology is becoming the guiding force in the flow of the cosmic change in relation to us. I do not hold this view. I do not look at progress, science or technology as if they were values in themselves, nor do I think that biological or cosmic evolution is changing its nature or character. I think that the question that we human beings must face is that of what do we want to happen to us, not a question of knowledge or progress. The question that we must face is not about the relation of biology with technology, or about the relation between art and technology, nor about the relation between knowledge and reality, nor even about whether or not metadesign shapes our brains. I think that the question that we must face at this moment of our history is about our desires and about whether we want or not to be responsible of our desires. (emphasis mine)

I wish to speak about this question, but in order to do so I want first to say a few things about living systems, human beings, technology, reality, robots, design and art as the general fundaments for what I shall say in relation to desires and responsibility. Let us proceed.

Continue with: Introduction - Part I - Part II - Part III

This post I see as part of the background thoughts and inspiration to the emerging polytopia.

Fri, Sep 19, 2008  Permanent link
Categories: polytopia, Humberto Maturana, emergence, Background papers
Sent to project: The Total Library, Polytopia

Polytopia , Our Mind Habitat in the Infoverse
Project: Polytopia

A project Proposal:
Polytopia , Our Mind Habitat in the Infoverse

A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.
John Lennon



Space collective has done an amazing thing; it has allowed the initial manifest of a collective intelligence to come forth and shine.
By that very allowance and acceptance Space collective has proclaimed itself as an avant-garde post of the emerging Polytopia.
By making available a space, a collective has emerged; many humans, diverse minds, attention-grabbing arts, undeniable intelligence, credible originality, unadulterated desire, sincere care and a sensibility to aesthetics and love of life, barely paralleled in the infoverse, have allowed the initialization of a dream to conjoin and advance the beat of our times.
The throbbing of our mutual Cyberconsciousness, our contextual awareness and conceptual netizenship is tender and fragile, that is what we feel.
The geist in the zeitgeist, the character of our era, is being defined as we speak and click, connect and share, post and paste, love and breathe the moment.
All these lead us to the need of alteration and transformation in the status quo; we ought allow the rhythm of our mutuality to flourish.




The cadence of the flow of information and innovation in the infoverse demands a response; the surge is rising, bit by byte and torrent by data swell, and it asks for a reply.
A rejoinder that is informed and humane, intelligent and poetic, ontological and technological, a reply to the coldness of circuits by the warmth of hyperconnectivity, which is how a Polytopia answers the cyber-existential question; it responds by emerging.
The emerging Polytopia thus responds to the tide of connected feelings by providing a home, a mind habitat for the cyber -sensitive humans. An open-sourced mind habitat, created by passionate minds, in charge of their own evolution, free to pursue their dreams and visions by partnering voluntarily with others for the greater undefined but certainly sensed, increase in well being and combined intelligence.
Polytopians if so realize that the timing has arrived, the enhanced timing of allowing our cybersenses to expand upon the pregnant pause of reality.
By firmly planting the roots of the Polytopia we are opening the doors for a better tomorrow that is neither a given nor a certainty.
The Polytopia offers itself to be the virgin ground upon which the newly born Cyberculture of openness and collaboration, ingenuity and aesthetics upables the mind in its strive for a more attractive form of techno-existence.
We are myth-creating entities, for good and for bad, yet we need seize the opportunity when a moment in time allows the madmen in all of us to reach beyond the confines of our ephemeral routines of mere survivability, and unfold the myth of a possible future into the extended now, our immediate reality.




Polytopia is such a liberty upholding worldview, an umbrella meta-concept, which will permit us all to join in the adventure of our scientific and technological oncoming future, without rating systems based on outmoded Neolithic brains.
Polytopia- a transcultural occurrence, out of this time, in this time, critical and intelligent, sagaciously allowing the upgrade of humanity.
Let us tolerate our digital fidgeting and create the Polytopia.

Project proposal

Polytopia , Our Mind Habitat in the Infoverse


—
“Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round heads in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules and they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify them, or vilify them. But the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”
Jack Kerouac*


—
And on a more personal note, while writing these words I am listening to good old Pink Floyd, Shine on you Crazy Diamond:
Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Part 6-9)

Nobody knows where you are,
How near or how far.
Shine On You Crazy Diamond.
Pile on many more layers
And I’ll be joining you there.
Shine On You Crazy Diamond.
And we’ll bask in the shadow
Of yesterday’s triumph,
And sail on the steel breeze.
Come on you boy child,
You winner and loser,
Come on you miner for truth and delusion, and shine!
—
*many thanks to fellow Polytopian Djiezes for pointing me to this fabulous Jack Kerouac quote.

Sun, Sep 14, 2008  Permanent link
Categories: polytopia, Project Proposal
Sent to project: Polytopia

Using Biomedicine To Enhance Ourselves
Project: The great enhancement debate

A necessary watch

Fri, Sep 12, 2008  Permanent link
Categories: future, singularity, Ethics, life extension
Sent to project: The great enhancement debate