A Cyber Soaring Humanity
Project: Polytopia

or The rise of the Cyber Unified Civilization

“The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out the conservative adopts them.”
Mark Twain, Notebook, 1935

When I started writing this essay I thought to summarize my views of hyperconnectivity as they coalesced in the past year, in relation to the emergence of the polytopia project, however as my writing progressed, it appeared that the area that I wished to cover was getting wider and broader, deeper and larger than I had anticipated. I therefore decided to divide the paper into a number (unknown at present) of consecutive essays under the collective title of: the rise of the Cyber Unified Civilization. (please bear with me as I try to disentangle and re-entangle my thoughts on this fascinating topic.)

An old problem in Buddhism variously referred to as the Gradual vs. Sudden enlightenment problem has recently come to my attention. What does an 8th century problem (see The Northern Ch'an School And Sudden Versus Gradual Enlightenment
Debates In China And Tibet ) have to do with the cyber future of humanity?

The issue of the posed question, the notion of processes versus attainments, of long-term actuations versus immediate realization has very much to do with our current situation, for though our issue here is not enlightenment but the future (cyber) evolution of humanity, the deep resonances are clear. We can in no fashion today apply the distinctions of gradual or sudden evolution of cyber humanity any longer, for the simple reason that our current and hasty hyperflow results in both sudden and gradual shifts, shifts that are as simultaneous as they are all pervasive, motions that are as regular and continuous as the ocean waves and as abrupt and unexpected as the wildest of all tempests.
Be it mobile AR revolutions (Augmented Reality Year in Review – 2009) or the steady growth of social networking (Explosive Growth Predicted for Mobile Social Networks), the ubiquity of embedded connectivity (Increasing Ubiquity) or indeed the latest in neurocomputation and the rise of Artificial Neural Networks .

Shifts in thought, shifts in perception, shifts in paradigms, all shifts happen simultaneously and concomitantly, some we see and some we don’t, some of these shifts are gradual and some of these shifts are sudden. Our task here then is to contain both kinds, to uphold a view that is floating above the fray and yet intertwines with the fleeting moment of eternality we call now. The shifts that are coming upon us are disrupting the ways of old in the most positive way possible; they are finally rearranging our modes of thought and basic worldviews.

We are entering a new and distinct period in history, the era of the Cyber Soaring Humanity.


"..not to reproduce what we can already see, but to make visible what we cannot..."
Paul Klee



Little did Norbert Wiener know of our hyperconnected, increasingly inflating, infoflow when he coined the term: “Cybernetics”. In fact, it may very well be that in the networked sense, a cyber civilization is just now, right this moment, coming into being, notwithstanding the predictions of William Gibson coining of the term Cyberspace, to which we need give homage and respect.
The emergence of the networked culture, is a feat of human ingenuity the like of which we may not have witnessed before, and cannot be compared to any other revolution of the past, be it the industrial revolution or indeed the Neolithic one.
The main reasons the cyber-culture revolution, taking place is so different than any other are twofold:
First it is incremental and in that is almost invisible to the naked eye and second it is happening at a speed for which the dilapidated conceptual worldview of old is less than adequate.
But these two reasons are embedded in a larger context, that of the infosphere ecology, or infocologies (the ecology of immersive, real time, on the fly information).

Few years ago the concepts of parallel evolution, mutual co-adaptation and free form co-description as fundamentals of human culture would have been unthinkable, as of now terms like: ubiquitous semantic engines, socially aware software-machines, or indeed mobile dating, augmented reality engines, playful engagement in societal networks and the like have become the ‘terms du jour’.

“..Technology might be seen not just as a channel for communication and performance, but more radically as the environment in which subjects serve as conduits for experience.”
Heather Raikes

One: Redefining the meaning of value

The very meaning of value is being re-described as I type these words; the meaning of value in the old sense was based on the idea of scarcity, of lack of resources, of volatile finances and market variations, ideas of purchase prices and economics of luxury were considered the very meaning of value.
But,
In the new hyperconnected infosphere, the infocologies we are moving slowly-rapidly into, the meaning of value has changed and is changing radically and rapidly. Value is moving into the hands of the netizen, the socially hyperconnected, and ultra sensitive 21st century cyber human.
Not a cyborg, no (not yet at least) but a networked, electronically enhanced by social networks human mind, a cybermind that knows that all information is available at her fingertips (and soon enough in her brain (link-google in your brain)). The hyperconnected human in this respect is the first and most critical component to relate to when re-describing the meaning of value.
A hyperconnected person is the very embodiment of self-mapping, by continuously being at the forefront of the incoming info-waves whether via twitter, friendfeed, google wave or simply by incorporating into his own mind stream the practically infinite rss feeds he or she is subscribed to.

“As social networks proliferate, they are changing the way people think about the Internet, from a tool used in solitary anonymity to a medium that touches on questions about human nature and identity.”
Sci-Am

Self-mapping or the hyperconnected alignment of oneself into and unto the infocology one co-opts, can be said to be the modern identifying characteristic of the value creating cybermind. In other words, describe to me (via the tweets you tweet and the feeds you read and the pictures you post and so on) the infocology you exist in and your alignment to same ecology and I’ll know who you are.

Where is the value in that you may ask, and to that we may respond: the value of the hyperconnected mind represents the shift from an economy of exclusivity to an ecosphere of mutual co-dependency. The value in short is to be found in the co-dependence of the network-correlated activity. Self-mapping in this respect stands for the knowledge one has about one self in an infosphere ecology.
Value in the sense exposed above is not in the domain of economists or ethicists it is shifting into an all-new domain, the Meta-domain of meaning creation. In this new domain the meaning of value is more complex and less clear, but no less beneficial or advantageous for that. The meta-domain of meaning creation is the domain where value is perceived via hyperconnectivity and meaning re-description. Who I am and what I am is no longer an issue that can solely be perceived by the old indicators of social constructs but is being reformulated into an infocological reflection.

The reflectivity embedded is one of alignments or lack thereof as perceived in one’s self mapping.
In other words: value in the hyperconnected infoflow is in the hands of the socially aware-networked mind, freedom to give value as one desires and realizes is the new form of priority management. That is the gist of the how and the why we converse and converge in the cyberworld we now inhabit.
In hyperconnectivity, conversations and polylogues are potential-possible value creating, creativity inducing events.



Two: Self-mapping

Self-mapping I describe as the conscious activity of the engaged hyperconnected mind when reflecting about her intelligence.
Consider that: (as was presented here- polytopia the notes)

“Intelligence can be said to be a process then, a continuous process of orientation and re-orientation, an iterative, recursive, restructuring of the very meaning it is applied to. Put differently, intelligence is the term applied to the reading of coordinates of implications when applied to a particular context. Moreover since intelligence is always in motion, by definition it will disturb the silhouette of the context in which and to which it is applied. That in fact is the meaning of open ended (ness), for by eliminating the conceptual rigidity of the context, intelligence (by its very motion), opens, as it were, the context to fresh paths of potentialities. “

And (from the same paper):

“Intelligence is the active ingredient in innovation and creativity, in whatever field of human endeavor it is applied.”

Self-mapping then is the virtual (and possibly visual) act of describing the set of characteristics and alignments that define my infocology existence. By delineating the contours of my interests and my feeds, my messages to twitter and my blog posts I actually define the map of my infosphere domain, in other words I carve my address in the global mind.

The carving of spaces in infocologies is an emotional as well as an intellectual pursuit; it is an art as much as it is a necessary condition of our converging cyber civilization. We are at present in the process of re-inventing forms of empathy, and methods of organizational structures, new modes of appreciation and fresh manners of knowing. As far as it goes we are in fact bootstrapping ourselves into a new kind of human, a self mapping hyperconnected human which in turn leads to new forms of engagement, modern varieties of self governance and fresh motions of economies.

Three: Self-mapping is a form of self governance

The idea that we are in the process of bootstrapping ourselves into a new form of mind is maybe not new to some. However the point at present is that by the sole act of self-mapping we are also carving a new form of self-governance.
The modern hyperconnected mind, by the sheer velocity of the rush of information being absorbed and digested, is in the process of transformation. This is not a regular transformation but a transit of boundaries of perceptions and sensations which when taken together allow a fresh kind of sight to emerge. The contemporary infocology of the hyperflowing-hyperconnected mind no-longer is subject to boundary projections based on her localized physical phenomenon. The fact that a person is resident of this or that country and identifies with this or that locality has no bearing on the transcendent nature of the ideas he is connected and correlated with and since in hyperconnectivity the relational subjective feeling of presence is directly correlated to areas of interests from which stems the very infocology he is part of, the notion of boundaries expands to encompass the whole and the other.
When in hyperconnectivity if so the governance that matters is the governance of ideas, of concepts, of issues of care, of emotions that transcend the local and fly above the relational notion of ‘I am this or that’ to land softly into “we are part of this and this is part of me”.
That which we care about most, the very freedom we carry within us as the flourishing of the infoflow becomes manifest as the authority we carry, implied by the pointers we direct our gaze to and not by the geography we happen to be physically residing in.

“If the “postmodern sublime” is characterized by the simultaneous apprehension of ecstasy and dread, I think we’re most likely to apprehend it on CNN. The up side of this lies in ubiquitous personal computation and the death of geography. The end of nation-states. The end of borders. I eagerly await intelligent simultaneous online translation, which will be Babel-in-reverse.”
William Gibson April 1995
(Note to Gibson, the above has already happened -> Google Translator Kit: Automated Translation Meets Crowdsourcing

Four: “I” am no longer “I”

If as famously Samuel Beckett said: “ To find a form that accommodates the mess, that is the task of the artist now. “ The task of the hyperconnected self mapping mind is to allow a form that does not constrain chaos but channels it into innovative approaches to self description. This form called here an infocology can be described as the ambient ecology of minds in a hyperconnected situation.
In hyperconnected realities, manifested at present via the grid (both static and mobile) infocologies arise in an emergent manner. The emergence of infocologies heralds the new state of affairs of minds in the hyperconnected infoflow.

Few aspects of infocologies then:

# Infocologies are not opinion or knowledge umbrellas made to shelter us from chaos, but on the contrary, they are mind habitats, operating in a highly sophisticated information environments, allowing us the dealing with the chaotic in a manner that is both indefinite and thus smoothening the contours of our existence, and precise, and thus increasing our capability for discrimination and distinct correlarity .
# Infocologies permit a different kind of multiple realities to co-habit the normalization of our thought streams.
# Multiplicities are the hallmark of a metastable infocology that licenses itself to variations, variability and variety.
# Infocologies are particular kinds (or cases) of Cas (complex adaptive systems) and lend themselves to evolution into Topos (see- A Topos in a Polytopia- what is)
# Infocologies can be said to belong to second order cybernetics, particularly because an infocology described by its constituents (the infonauts or Polytopians) changes and evolves by the very act of self-description.

In fact as the system we are describing (the infocology we are part of) includes us (our minds as infosystems) the intersubjective relationship emerging between our minds and the net results in a new entity, the Cybercivilization, Cyberculture, or indeed a Polytopia.
By describing ourselves as Polytopians we in fact take responsibility for the very infocology we are creating. Being consciously aware to this minute yet crucial point, allows us to become masters of our destiny. A destiny unknown, unfolding by the process of our intersubjective infocological activity.



There is a profound and unanswerable question about the nature of those ‘at least two’ things that between them generate the difference which becomes information by making a difference. Clearly each alone is - for the mind and perception - a non-entity, a non-being. Not different from being, and not different from non-being. An unknowable, a Ding an sich, a sound of one hand clapping.”

Gregory Bateson : Mind And Nature (1979) Thx to James Reilly for this quote


Summary of part 1 :

The main issues covered in the above first part of the series “ The rise of the Cyber Unified Civilization” is to show and tell that:

The paradigmatic shift we are experiencing is both gradual and sudden, and that the shift happens as the influence we exert on our cyber infocologies in turn changes us. The mutuality of re-enforcing intersubjective co-dependence between our minds and the system we describe, between our extended selves and the mind habitats we are creating makes available to our beholding the emergence of the cyber unified civilization.
Self-mapping in infocologies are presented as the main tools by which our intelligence re-orients itself to manifest the creative impulse and multiple dimensions of our value creating activities.

Embracing the beauty of multiple thoughts, the fascinations with manifold forms of existence, espousing the difference, we are at present truly becoming “A Cyber Soaring Humanity”.

Thank you for listening,
Shall be continued shortly







End notes (pt.1):

1. It is becoming clearer and more comprehensible to some of us, who observe carefully the reach of the flowering hyperconnected mind that the mode of analysis used in many cases is out of contact with the immediacy of hyperconnectivity.
Specifically it is my view that the fundamental approach to functionality and efficiency should change standpoint or more accurately, we need upgrade our vantage point to a higher plane of observation, where functionality and efficiency take on a new meaning.

Primarily, if we really desire to see a change in the world, we need relinquish the idea that changes come from actions, changes come from realizing differences in perceptual habits, especially as relates to our mental biases.
If we are to engage the hyperstream of the connected infosphere, we need forsake certain so called ‘obvious’ paradigms, which, true to the point, in the past did help us understand, but at present hinder our comprehension.

2. Let us be clear here, I prefer Marcel Proust saying:” If a little dreaming is dangerous, the cure for it is not to dream less but to dream more, to dream all the time.”
Than Jean Paul Sartre saying: “Like all dreamers I confuse disenchantment with truth.”
In fact, my own little adage is: “ As long as you dream, dream big, and dream recursively, insistently, coherently, continuously, hyperconnected-ly ”

Fri, Jan 1, 2010  Permanent link
Categories: culture, polytopia, collective intelligence, Hyperconnectivity, cyber civilization, Web
Sent to project: Polytopia

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