joe
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Joseph Kaufman
Los Angeles, US
Immortal since Jan 23, 2007
Uplinks: 0, Generation 1
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    • Now playing SpaceCollective
    Where forward thinking terrestrials share ideas and information about the state of the species, their planet and the universe, living the lives of science fiction. Introduction
    Featuring Powers of Ten by Charles and Ray Eames, based on an idea by Kees Boeke.
    From joe's personal cargo

    The Revolutionary Collapse of Space and Time
    Many people have lived long enough on this planet to notice a distinct change in the nature of human consciousness since they were born and now. What is the change, how has this taken place, and what might we speculate about the implications in consciousness change for the future?

    The distance in time between the day a typical Baby Boomer was born and now is more or less equivalent to the distance between the day the Boomer was born and Nikola Tesla’s invention of the AC motor and transformer. Also the introduction of the automobile run by internal combustion, the zipper, the roller coaster and rubber soles for shoes.

    So much can change within even a partial span of a human life.

    How then has consciousness changed? A certain area of the brain that is non-linear is in general use now that wasn’t in the 1943 to 1964 era when the Boomers were born.

    Certainly brains worked in a non-linear way before, but now the “out of space, out of time” quality of non-linearity has assumed a central role it never had before.

    The direct connection between technology and this change in consciousness is in the now-common household object, the personal computer. Young adults now in their early twenties have grown up with the computer always in their lives; for the generations before them it was a matter of mental adjustment to something really new. Most haven’t done so badly, really.

    The computer and its child, the Internet have an essential non-linear nature whereby neither distance nor time have quite the sway and hold over our psyches they did before.

    This has been a gradual process. The first invention to collapse space so that one could communicate beyond what signals could be seen by sight (reported to be 20 miles at most, in the form of signals by mirror, semaphore flag, or smoke) was the telegraph. In 1844 Samuel Morse sent the message “What hath God wrought?” from Washington to Baltimore. In 1866 a transatlantic telegraph cable was laid. All this allowed a revolutionary collapsing of space, in which communication could take place virtually simultaneously over great distances.
    Image: The machine that collapsed space.

    The telephone, radio and television were extensions of this revolutionary breakthrough, which, we can surmise, altered in some essential way the consciousness of people living in those times.

    However all this required that someone be there to hear it as the signal went by, so the timeless quality was yet lacking. That has been answered by the database-nature of the Internet, as well as digital recording and playback devices like DVDs and DVRs, which allow near immediate playback of any piece of information or entertainment one requires. This is a major alteration in the hold time has over us – time is much more “at it’s own pace” now than before.

    This follows the change from Newtonian physics to Einsteinian, from a clockwork universe to a relative one. It took us a while to catch up to Einstein, but that catch-up is now firmly in place in the psyches and consciousness of humans.

    Which suggests that the next major advance in science (likely an overturning of something elemental in our current notions) will lead to yet another alteration, or even a mutation of our human consciousness in a manner we cannot predict. However it is just about certain that the brain is prewired for this “new feature” to be turned on when the moment arises.

    (Difference Engine photograph by Andrew Dunn)

    Fri, Jan 26, 2007  Permanent link
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    eyeclipse     Fri, Dec 21, 2007  Permanent link
    I read that the brain is constantly growing :)
    That's a good think.

    On a other side, the way how we interact with machines actually, is a way that promote an abstract thinking, and all the abstract taht you can think is made first of all inside our minds (this is exercice).

    Like all we must know, abstract thinking is very near of dreaming, and without dreaming don't be progress.

    To sump up, I think that humans adapts his evolution by the way that his brain knew it before.
    Spaceweaver     Fri, Dec 21, 2007  Permanent link

    The best is yet to come, when we will have fully immersive virtual reality.
    It will not be only a collapse in space time but also in the stability of forms.
    Wildcat     Fri, Dec 21, 2007  Permanent link
    Spaceweaver, can you elaborate on the meaning of " collapse of the stability of forms"
    FrankLloydWrong     Fri, Dec 21, 2007  Permanent link
    I interpreted spaceweaver's comment to mean that the limitations we experience in our perceived interactions with the forms around us will no longer apply.
    To me, this is especially cool considering the ability we'll have to manipulate our own identity. It seems to me that, as a species, our ability to improve on ourselves is increasingly our defining feature. Technology is becoming more indistinguishable from biology, and will soon reach a point where it's so integrated and compatible with what nature has created so far that it will be like evolution waking up and becoming a conscious director of itself. It's as though the evolution of all life is a randomly drifting boat, and we're approaching the helm.
    chr15     Fri, Dec 21, 2007  Permanent link
    interesting stuff, i would add that revolutions in imaging technology are equally important to our shift in consciousness and the practical collapse of space-time in thought. The photograph (invented in the 1840's along side the telegraph?) made distant objects immediately viewable, and understandable. Film (invented in 1895) gave humans control over the presentation of time. Now simulation (with its pinnacle in VR) encompasses not just human mastery of space and time but of objects themselves.

    I believe both simulation and mastery are key terms here to understanding the current vectors of human consciousness. Consciousness is no longer an internal whole within the individual mind. Instead consciousness is a simulation of ourselves in regards to the world. Since much of the world takes the form of simulation (from disneyland to VR to military engagement), one could say that consciousness is a simulation of a simulation, it is simulacrum. This posits both benefits and pitfalls for human agency (a crucial correlary to consciousness). Within the simulacra one can float between "realities," build and shift between new identities and find the best position from which to engage the world. At the same time the simulacra threatens to alienate us from our pears and real human engagement by fooling us into false consciousness of a perfect society that is not in dire need of action and social change, in other words consumer society (Hollywood and Madison Ave constantly deploy simulation and the spectacular to lure us into false consciousness).

    Mastery is important as well. By allowing us to see, imaging technology allows us to master space, time and objects in the world (currently bio-medical vision technology, such as the human genome project, is leading us to mastery over the body). Also, both the photographic image and simulation have been advanced to its furthest potential by the military apparatus to increase its mastery over the world. When capitalism deploys the image and the simulation for consumption we are lured into another false consciousness of sharing in that mastery (when real mastery is still, of course, squarely in the hands of military, capitalist and bio-medical elites). My hopes would be to replace the false consciousness of mastery with one of connection and solidarity. So instead of the ancient consciousness of sight, I Came, I Saw, I Conquered (where coming has been made obsolete by the above posts assertion of a collapse in space-time) we might have, I Came, I Saw, I Shared.

    I guess an overarching point and counterpoint here to Joe's post is new technology is not only creating new ways of consciousness but also false-consciousness. It is not neccesarily liberating. Liberation will come when take back technology and and the image machine from those who would lure us into false-consciousness of militarism, consumerism and the emerging bio medical perfection (eugenics consciousness).
    eyeclipse     Sat, Dec 22, 2007  Permanent link
    To spaceweaver: take care with your desires :)

    Chr15 says:
    At the same time the simulacra threatens to alienate us from our pears and real human engagement by fooling us into false consciousness of a perfect society that is not in dire need of action and social change, in other words consumer society


    This is the best dangerous way, of all the ways :)

    Chr15 says:
    "My hopes would be to replace the false consciousness of mastery with one of connection and solidarity"


    I'm working since 2 years on a project with these premises. I hope soon we can show it to the collective :)
    Spaceweaver     Sat, Dec 22, 2007  Permanent link
    To wildcat: My meaning was simply indicating that immersive VR environments, will allow us to change embodiments as easily as we change clothes. For example, today we have a general idea how a human looks, how a human body operates in space etc. In VR these limitations will disappear. I have read already (do not remember the source) on experiments in virtual reality where participants are learning to operate 4 hands instead of 2, surprisingly the brain adapts to it quite quickly. There is little understanding on the extent of adaptability our nervous system is capable of in manipulating steams of sensory motor information. It seems to me that not only we may have different forms in VR, but shape shifting may become part of our immediate expression and communication.

    To eyeclipse: Indeed I take care of desires and let my desires to take care of me :-)

    To ch15: I agree that there is a profound connection between embodiment, identity and consciousness. I think this is little understood connection, and a fascinating field for exploration. This is why I think that fully immersive VR, will open unimaginable horizons for the transformation of identity and consciousness. I am less worried about false consciousness, because its impotence cannot be hidden for too long.
    Wildcat     Sat, Dec 22, 2007  Permanent link
    Spaceweaver, I think I can agree to that, the brain’s plasticity in dealing with its own image is a matter of record (see phantom limbs and similar phenomena).

    However my line of thought took me to the much more difficult (to my eyes) collapse of forms taken in the mind by concepts.

    A mind concept has a form, though it is neither material nor physical in any fashion. Take the concept of language for instance, this is the kind of concept that can under certain circumstances, block an active perception of self-reference. (for example when I refer to “my body” as “mine” as was mentioned in another post).

    If, as you mention, forms in the physical sense perception meaning of the word, will collapse due to total immersion systems such as VR, what will be the equivalent technology to collapse mind forms such as language, images, sensations and so on?
    I must say that I am quite frustrated by the prevalent fashion in the Sci-Fi literature to increase technology and allow amazing feats of technological wizardry without the accompanying liberation from historical concepts.
    Spaceweaver     Sat, Dec 22, 2007  Permanent link
    Wildcat, I share your frustration :-) Science fiction, most often than not, projects our current conceptual framework into some futuristic or fantastic scenario. Nothing changes in the essence of us. This is why it is science fiction and not reality. Concepts are derived from the so called reality, and reality I mean here is the reality of mind as it is now. We use language as the vehicle of our interactions in various mental spaces accesible to us now. This is where the shape of language comes from.

    Nevertheless, I do not underestimate the influence technology might have on our state of mind and eventually on our language, conceptual framework, and self description. I emphasized fully immersive VR exactly because it will rival the hegemony of physical space from which we draw so much. I think we largely underestimate how much of our identity is based on our physical forms and our interactions in physical space. Even the Buddha already noticed that 2500 years ago, and probably he was not the first. It seems that very soon this is going to change. We will have to find other anchors to our identity. These anchors will be conceptual embodiments rather than physical embodiments. But first we must get free from our so called physicality.
     
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