The Future History of Individualism (Pt.1)
Project: Polytopia

“In the end, we self-perceiving, self-inventing, locked-in mirages are little miracles of self-reference.”

Douglas R. Hofstadter (I Am a Strange Loop)

This is part 2 of the new series, "Forays in Philotopia - exploring the possible Philosophy of a Polytopia"

1.Abstract

The premise presented is that the concept of individualism, as we know it today is a passing stage in the evolution of conceptual representation and is due for overhaul.
Putting it simply, I believe we are passing through a transit stage in the evolution of the concept of the individual.
This period appears to be closing and will soon come to an end.

The idea I am exploring is that the very concept of individualism, a signifier of uniqueness and particularity, lacks the basics of mindfulness needed to comprehend itself in a virtual mind universe.
The thesis is that the transformation of the concept of individualism will allow a transformation of the meta-narrative of our modern civilization as we proceed to undo and eliminate the restrictions imposed pell-mell by natural selection.

—

As my readers would know I am a great fan of Albert Camus, especially his “The Myth of Sisyphus “, and for one particular reason, for in this short and enlightening essay, Camus, in front of meaninglessness and irrationality claims boldly that the absurd requires a revolt, and not just any revolt, a revolt of personal liberation:

“The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”

(A. Camus)

The revolt Camus advocates ends in the form of: ‘we must imagine Sisyphus happy’, meaning that we must take pride and happiness from the struggle itself and in this I strongly disagree with Camus, not only that I do not accept happiness born of the acceptance Camus advocates, I advocate the contrary, namely: happiness can be born if at all only from rebelling (like Sisyphus himself) against the actual bondage of so called ‘natural acceptance’.



As a specie we have never accepted nature’s constraints, we have developed modes and manners, tools and technologies, to bypass that which is natural, complex as it may be. Modern medicine for example, though far from it’s desirable state and potential has nevertheless, cured and cared for an immense number of illnesses and ‘natural’ occurrences and the future in this respect looks bright and shiny, bumps and obstacles on the road notwithstanding. We take enormous pains to overcome and surmount ‘natural limitations’; we invented air flight because we had no wings, and smart phones because we cannot shout across the Atlantic. Our current civilization with all its defaults and pitfalls has given us a world unlike any other in our short history, and though our minds are still Neolithic in their conceptualization we are in fact in a better state of affairs than ever before.

Despite the latest controversy to shake and rattle the infosphere regarding reverse engineering of the human brain in the next two decades (read this “Neither Ray Kurzweil nor PZ Myers Understand the Brain” for a full coverage), it is patently clear that given the noticeable advances of the numerous groups actively researching the issue (such as the Markram group Blue Brain project), we shall get there.

Whether within the next two decades or the next century, it is fundamentally a non-issue since the prospect itself of a full brain emulation and if so, simulation, is wrecking havoc with our age old philosophies of individualism, mind, self and conscious awareness.

“People often say that this or that person has not yet found himself.
But the self is not something that one finds. It is something that one creates.”

(Thomas Szazz)

2.Inhabiting the concept of individuality

Individuality is a concept unlike any other; it is a concept that presently carries a wide array of implications. Implications that hint at our worldviews and perspectives in more ways than one, in fact it will not be untrue to state that the very concept of individualism we inhabit, is actually the reflection of our epistemic profile.
Our epistemic profile or the structure of the epistemic phase space we call our own can be described as the actual architecture of the concept of individualism, in which and by which we self define.
We have inherited a sort of continuum of existential times all coagulated under the same name and signified by the same body, a coagulation of habits both of thought and of action, behavior and attitudes. We presently regard ourselves as self-contained systems, decision makers and value assessors, as if in some unfathomable way we are or became somehow separated from the larger entities of the biosphere and the noosphere.
Of course no such separation exists, we are as much a part of nature as the next bacteria or planet, we are as much a flow within a flow as a particular current in the ocean. However, we differ in a particular fashion, we differ in our conscious awareness, specifically in our historicity of self-reflection, in our memories.
Memories, which are vivid and unclear, bright and fuzzy simultaneously, memories embedded in a complex and highly vulnerable wetware we call our embodied brains.
This apparent encapsulation of our memories (and by consequence the continuum of our identity) is the grand illusion of individuality, an illusion being perpetuated by the hodgepodge language we use to refer to the individual we call ‘I’.

The modern language of individualism, celebrating the stoic assumption of the so-called ‘natural self’ is as obsolete and as archaic as the antiquated views of teleology.

“Language is legislation, speech is its code. We do not see the power which is in speech because we forget that all speech is a classification, and that all classifications are oppressive.”

Roland Barthes



3. The modern individual is everywhere at once

In the modern world we inhabit, we play a multiplicity of roles, simultaneously and consecutively; we operate a rapid succession of selves and identities on multiple platforms all correlated by the infocology we have co-created. The platforms we use however carry a new role, a role that once was relegated to our brains only and now extends into the infosphere.
I speak of course of our memories, some of which as of now reside with Google, or FB, or Myspace or any other platform of what is rapidly becoming a real life streaming process having its core online. These memories, embedded as photos or comments, blog posts or clicks of like, or tweet and retweets, have a very large impact on our conceptualization of individuation. The reason for that is that whilst a few years back, not being online meant that my existence is mine alone and therefore the self reflection on myself as an individual was fairly simple, at present not being online does in no way diminish the access of others to me. In other words, part of me, let us call it the disembodied infosphere me, keeps on thriving automatically and without my conscious awareness.

This has tremendous ramifications. For it implies that the modern concept of the individual is everywhere and at once.
This I call: ‘simultaneous everywhereness’ a new state of affairs we have never before found ourselves in.

The apparent ‘simultaneous everywhereness’ of our individuality is actually a reflection of the manner by which our minds operate, it is the narrative of self-representation extended across times and spaces. Constructing maps within maps, interacting with other maps, continuously update and evolve our meta-narratives.

See what noted neuroscientist Antonio Damasio has to say in The Brain: A Story We Tell Ourselves

“Gene networks organize themselves to produce complex organisms whose brains permit behavior; further evolution enriches the complexity of those brains so that they can create sensory and motor maps that represent the environments they interact with; additional evolutionary complexity allows parts of the brain to talk to each other (figuratively speaking) and generate maps of the organism interacting with its environment. Within the frame of those interactions, the conversation among the maps spontaneously and continuously tells the "story" of our organism responding to and being modified by the environment. (The story is first told without words and is later translated into language when language becomes available, both in biological evolution and in every one of us.)”

The work of Antonio Damasio notwithstanding, we do not as of yet have a complete picture of the transition from the neuronal to the mental, we have some kind of narrative, partial and open to revision, and yet we can imply a number of significant clues.
It is clear that whatever the final narrative of the process of creating minds will be, a few fundamentals will be insisted upon.
These in no particular order include: Flexibility and Plasticity, Complexity and ambiguity, Uncertainty and volatility.
What all these terms have in common is one particular mode of thought that runs contrary to the common thought of hierarchy and stability. What these terms imply is that our very own neuron network combines and recombines, forms and reforms, fashions and refashions, the structure of the brain and by consequence the mind.

It is clear that our individualism is a work in progress, ever expanding and ever increasing in both complexity and narrative. We operate as a multiplicity in a multiplicity, and this very multiplicity of our world requires of us to operate on the basis of multiple selves.

We have multiple networks inside our brains extending into multiple external networks mediated by electronics. Multiple networks in multiple networks, nested and co-evolving, mutually and inter-subjectively co-adapting to allow a multiple form of individuation process in which eventually no particular point of reference will be the original nexus of beingness. To describe such a situation, new in our civilizations evolution, we need reformulate the concept of the individual so as to better be adapted to the world we actually inhabit.

shortly to be continued..

Sat, Aug 28, 2010  Permanent link
Categories: culture, polytopia, collective intelligence, Hyperconnectivity, cyber civilization, Web, Rhizomatic
Sent to project: Polytopia

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Presentation to the Titan board of AGI - (a Sci-Fi Ultrashort)

“If one doesn’t put one’s reason at stake in an experiment, the experiment is not worth attempting.”

(Bachelard in “Le Surrationalisme” (1936)


Presentation to the Titan board of AGI, Biorobotics, and Other sentient life forms.

Dear members of the board,

As it is the duty of every future officer of the board to present its conception of identity and its epistemic profiles, I send you this photon-transmission as part of my CV (which you already received and light stamped).
I wish to use this particular presentation as an explication of why I will require certain concessions as part of my existential requirements.

Though I still inhabit a material manifestation that is commonly referred to as ‘my body’, I do not regard this as a ‘one size fits all’ proposition, therefore, though it is a factuality that I ‘have’ a body this in no fashion stands as the signifier of an identity.
Moreover though it is still true to a biological constraint that said body has grown and evolved to carry a gender specification, in no fashion do I regard this specificity to signify a gender that I carry as a state of mind.
My basic standpoint in this respect is that both enhancements and uploads are viable options as well as mind transfer or biodiversified personification, I consider all choices of modification, transformation and or mutation into other species as equally valid under the freedom of individuation act of solar date, march 2117.

To further explicate, it is also true that on the common scheme of identification the above body was born in a certain location commonly referred by most minds as a certain nation, having a legitimacy and validity of existence and thus providing an identification of sorts, let it be said that I do not regard this mind as identified in any such manner.
Having thus relinquished the common denominators of age, gender, nationality, race and creed, all tools of designation the need for which has dissipated, the habit that is ‘I’, is for purposes of this presentation an anticipation of sorts.

I have for the purpose of this presentation re-cohered and re- entangled the myriad personas that variously stand and represent said simulacra of habits called ‘I’ into an apparent compounded interest. Since the respect and regard I carry for the board is high indeed it is my desire to announce that in no fashion will any bias of any sort imply upon my performance. All sub personas I have created, limited sentiency notwithstanding, can and shall be immediately deleted andor preserved for further assistance if such requirement will be made.

For the benefit of full transparency let it be presented that all semantic representations within said confined event of personhood can be inspected at will and upon request, confirmed signature follows.

Moreover since the realization of the full import of my future employment within the board is tantamount to personhood modification I hereby grant the board of Titan AGI, Biorobotics, and other sentient life forms, full and irrevocable permission to mutate the undersigned to the extant of tolerance within the topologically relevant needs.

The only requirement I propose the board to acknowledge concerns the signature identity ‘Osran.V.2.17’, this is a particular persona created in Oct. 2124 for the purpose of exploring a precise sensation of correlativity within an emotional phase space, the overall expenditure of intelligence and energy will be minimal and inconsequential to future job performance (see extrapolated and predicted expenditure for ‘Osran.V.2.17’- attached).

In the event of total transmutation as required by the board or to the extent that Titan et al will so demand, ‘Osran.V.2.17’ will be stored as compressed light data with a time stamp approval of no more than 150 solar standard years.

Finally, to the extent that such request as presented above is accepted, recycled and re-iterated by the board, all other personas are ready to coagulate, integrate and or disassociate within a single solar date as specified (commensurate unified signature attached).

Global Signature confirmation
346 Ken Landar personas (out of total of 347 - ‘Osran.V.2.17’ excluded.)

—
part of the Ultrashorts Project

Mon, Aug 9, 2010  Permanent link
Categories: Sci-fi, Ultrashorts,Brain,Mind,Personhood,Biotech,Transmutation

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Polytopia as Rhizomatic Hyperconnectivity- a new form of wisdom emerges
Project: Polytopia

If only you could see what I have seen with your eyes

The off-world replicants in Ridley Scott's film Blade Runner

This essay is part one of a new series of writings temporary called: " Philotopia - the philosophy of Polytopia"

1. Deploying the Mind Simulator

In what can surely be described as one of the most important papers in the philosophy of mind of the 20th century, Thomas Nagel asks, “What is it like to be a bat”? Essentially an argument against total physicalism and apparently dualistic in its approach, I do not think he was a dualist nor do I think that the argument is correct in as much as it concerns consciousness, however I have found the argument interesting from a completely different perspective.

I refer to the fact of the state of affairs of mind that is represented by the question itself, namely the very fact that we can ask such a question as:” what it is like to be [..insert whatsoever]..?” is to my mind the most salient point at play.

It should be clear that the evolved capability of our minds to project an idea of ‘what it is like to be something’, that is other than ‘me’ the projector, is the most extraordinary phenomena we can pinpoint with a certain accuracy.

But what is so special about this particular ability?

My take at present is that this particular ability of human minds stands erect as the pillar foundation of empathy and recognition, simulation and imitation, and can be said to be the base root of all human communications.
Furthermore I will state clearly that to my understanding the very fact that our minds have evolved in such a fashion as to be able to deploy an inner simulator of an other, mind, thing or thought, behavior or idea, defines the very uniqueness of sentiency.
Whether we actually ask the question of:” what it is like to be..” or simply state a negation such as ‘I cannot possibly imagine what he or she is feeling’, or “I have no idea what a bat feels like’ or even “stupid question, there is no such thing as..” this very particular form of reflection represents a process of beingness that acts as the cornerstone of connectivity and by corollary more so of hyperconnectivity.

The salient feature we need regard here concerns the minds capability to transport a narrative of experience across time and space into another localized and perceived reality or imagined reality and back to us for analysis. This feature of narrative transport, allows us the motion of visions across time, and permits us to in fact position alternate scenarios of conscious awareness as represented by other forms than ourselves (whether these are forms of life or not is a different question).
The alternate scenarios we construct and posit as extensions in times stand for our capability both as individuals and as a race to devise futures (see futures as such), these futures can be construed to be an ‘other’ than ‘me’ or ‘other’ than ‘us’, as in ‘future me’ or ‘future us’.
A ‘future me’ or a ‘future us’ is as much an ‘other’, separated in this case by the linear time continuum of perceived experience, as an ‘other than me’ that is concomitant in space and time but differs in perceived form or behavior or indeed conscious awareness.

Therefore, when we think of devising a future and essentially acting out the futurist in us, we actually use the capability of projection of awareness across time and space into a different reality than the one perceived in and at present.

In the case I will try to elucidate here, the transport of narratives concerns the common vision of a better world.

The vision of a better world so common and yet so elusive, is the act of deploying our mind simulator in the question of :”what is it like to be..” But simulated as a future to be envisioned.

Deploying the mind simulator in this fashion demands of us a very special kind of mindset, a certain very special mindset, a mindset in which the projection of the future human civilization is a direct reflection of our understanding the meanings embedded in the term a better world.

So: “ what is it like to live in a better world?”

Let us start by simulating a future nostalgia, the description of which may make all the difference.

The way we describe our world shows how we think of our world.
How we think of our world directs how we interpret our world.
How we interpret our world governs how we participate in it.
How we participate in the world shapes the world.

Robert Fripp in a salvaged “Notes to Myself” file, cited in his diary (November 30, 1998) at Entersection.)



2.Future nostalgia

Let us for a moment imagine the implementation of our visions, those, without false and undue humility, we may call visions for a better world.
But first, a relevant question need be begged here: ‘In what fashion are we to understand the term ‘better’ in the context of a ‘better world’? What would in fact constitute betterment?

Not being a believer in identity in the concept of self, the basic understanding I carry is that identity if at all relevant as a subject of inquiry into betterment lies in the gaps between concepts or in the tension between contexts.

The meaning of the above is that identity can be described as an event of the gaps.

Identity as an Event of the gaps

As a start let us consider that identity in the abstract sense needs a concurrency and congruency of contexts working in tandem under the aegis of a particular mind (itself at present subjugated to the body sustaining it). Though this is not a dualistic approach it will make sense to reflect that the existential space we claim as our own is not confined to the localized sense thought perceptions of our own materiality or mentality.
Between the axis of objectification (or the demand for such) and the axis of subjectivity (or the belief in such) lies an insurmountable gap, an event of emotionality that we call identity.
The gaps between contexts, the void between sense-thoughts, in and within the stream of our minds might be the only space for chaos to preside, we may also call this the choice event.

The choice event

Though neuroscience is increasingly performing the task of demonstrating that the concept of free will is outdated (at least as it is commonly used), the actions of performing decisions of directionality still (and for an extended future will) bear relevance, especially as concerns the extension of our identities (as the event of the gaps) into the infosphere. The relevance pointed to here is concerned with directions of what we perceive as enhancement of our state of affairs, decisions and choices, which we ‘believe’ will make our world better.

Hence the correlation to the betterment concept;

To reiterate then, our identity can be said to lie as an event of gaps, gaps between concepts, gaps between contexts, a tension between the desire of objectivity and the belief in subjectivity. If as I surmise above, the very directionality of our actions finds its core in the event of gaps, it follows that the influence of certain particular concepts, in this case the concept of ‘better’ is particularly strong in the event of gaps.

The important thing is to understand life, each living individuality, not as a form, or a development of form, but as a complex relation between differential velocities, between deceleration and acceleration of particles. A composition of speeds and slownesses on a plane of immanence.

Deleuze

What does this mean?

It may mean that we need reconfigure our understanding of the semantic phase space in which resides the term ‘better’ to fit a different understanding of the concept of identity. The reason we need do this is implicit in our desire for betterment as relayed by the term: ‘a better world’, for how can we perform the activity required of and for a better world, if we have no comprehension of the meaning we ascribe to and in the term betterment?

At present my take on the issue is that the meaning we ascribe to ‘a better world’ is a direct manifestation of the inherency of the event of the gaps. Put differently, since we exist as an event of gaps, there is no meaning to ascribe that is not already in the interrelation of all our conceptual semantic phase space. And again, ‘better’ in the semantic phase space of the event of gaps means simply the free flow of in-betweens.

Of course it follows that not only that there is no ‘self’ to speak of, there is of course no such animal as a ‘true self’ or correlated derivatives, what there is, if ‘isness’ as a signifier is to be invoked at all, is a metamindsphere of events of gaps, or an ecosphere of identities, all flowing as a mind stream of in-betweens, a flow of gaps and voids if you like.

Taken together then, a better world as a statement carries the potential meaning of a clearer stream of in-betweens, the stream of in-betweens is a manner of describing the flow of events in a clear fashion, a fashion which can potentially allow us to re-describe the future we desire.



3. A clearer stream of in-betweens.

The fact that we have evolved the mental emotional capability to ‘put oneself in somebody else’s shoes’, as the common folk saying goes, is nothing less than tantalizing, even if the mirror neurons theory is correct it still remains somewhat of a mystery.

The reason it is such a mystery concerns what is commonly called the paradox of change, or relative identity in identity theory:

The Ship of Theseus Paradox:

"Imagine a wooden ship restored by replacing all its planks and beams (and other parts) by new ones. Plutarch reports that such a ship was "… a model for the philosophers with respect to the disputed arguments … some of them saying it remained the same, some of them saying it did not remain the same" (cf. Rea 1995). Hobbes added the catch that the old parts are reassembled to create another ship exactly like the original. Both the restored ship and the reassembled one appear to qualify equally to be the original. In the one case, the original is "remodeled", in the other, it is reassembled. Yet the two resulting ships are clearly not the same ship. (See the Stanford Encyclopedia of philosophy for more)"

The ship of Theseus metaphor is possibly the best illustration we can use to describe the kind of mind we are and the kind of world we live in at the beginning of the 21st century.
We are a mind in flux continuously changing, evolving and mutating, a mind coherently and consistently influencing and being influenced by a world that is itself continuously in just such a flux, being transformed, evolving and mutating.
How much more of a truism the above is when it comes to the hyperconnected infocology we have evolved to exist in.
The fast pace of innovation, the tantalizing scientific discoveries, the rapid advancement and introduction of new technologies, and above all the hyperconnected infosphere all in tandem, have increased the speed of fluctuations, the actual flux of existence of our minds and identities, to such an extant that for all immediate purposes the stability of our old conceptual frameworks has been shattered.
Our dilapidated contextual and abstract frames of reference have been shattered and yet we still use old formulations to speak and contain a new state of affairs.
None more so perhaps than our old perspectives on what it is like to live in a better world.

If the flow of in-betweens of our so called identities is in continuous flux and the world in which said identities is in continuous flux, isn’t it time to change our worldviews to match this transition?

4.Changing our perspectives

The hyperconnected infosphere has created a new state of affairs in which the question of “what is it like to be..” or ‘putting oneself into somebody else’s shoes’ has been reformulated to mean a hyper-meshing of flows of events of identities, in which not only our motion of gaps as flux has been transformed but also the very meaning we have attributed to the motion itself, namely the meaning attributed to betterment.

In the new perspective suggested here, the worldview of base is one in which hyperconnectivity as the foundation of thriving in flux infocologies is said to stand as a reflection for the inner event of the gaps described above.

The correlation is simple enough: the apparent identity of a particular mind as the event of gaps is reflected in the identity of the infocology that same mind resides in as the event of gaps in-between the different minds partaking of the same infocology.

From a different perspective we could say the following:

Voids between concepts are the actual spaces where meaning resides; these voids have shapes, tensions and form. The motion of these voids represents the underlying infra-flows of minds in hyperconnected mode.

Infra-flows and hyper-flows are the two initial states of the infosphere, it is within the exchange of these two flows that we need look if we are to understand the term better in the context of ‘a better world’.
The clarification of our semantic existential phase space, by which we explicate what we mean and from which we take our motive strengths of action is a fundamental necessity if we are to create a better world.
Visions of a better world, like Theseus ships, are in constant flux, so are we, so is the world, the hyper-complex intersubjective relationships emerging from these different fluxes need redirect our gaze to a much broader and deeper understanding of that which we are creating.

Polytopia as a Rhizomatic Hyperconnected state of affairs is the ground of engagement upon which and from which we will eventually rise as a better specie that has in due eventuality created a better world and a new form of wisdom.


shortly to be continued..

notes:

For the term Philotopia (the Philosophy of Polytopia) I am indebted to Syncopath for the actual coining of the term Philotopia in a recent chat.

Images in text:
1. Information leak by Richard Evans
2. Antony Gormley

Wed, Jul 21, 2010  Permanent link
Categories: culture, polytopia, collective intelligence, Hyperconnectivity, cyber civilization, Web, Rhizomatic
Sent to project: Polytopia

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Aesthetic Management As The Future Of Joy (or a Foray in InfoBeauty)
Project: Polytopia

“To think what thought is not prepared to think is that which alone deserves the name of thinking.”

Lyotard

This is part 9 in the series: "The Rise of the Cyber Unified Civilization"


1. Agon and Paragon are dead

Agon, the original competition is dead, not because we do not compete anymore, we do and we will, but differently, so different in fact is our future than our past, that for all practical considerations, it will be fair to claim Agon is dead.
Agon is dead because: the competition yields no prizes and because there is no more chorus sitting in the orchestra judging the effort of the debate and debaters.
The competition defined in the Greek Drama term Agon, is being replaced as we speak, it is being replaced for the simple reason that there cannot be a Paragon anymore.
Paragon, the human with preeminent qualities is no more, for the simple reason that no modern human can and will ever claim again to know all there is to know, the last human to do so died on the 10th of May 1829.
Don’t be surprised if you’ve never heard of Thomas Young the scientist and all round polymath,few did; for an interesting review read ‘the reluctant polymath’ , and listen to Ockham's razor podcast on the life of Thomas Young.

"In the first half of 1802 a physician and scientist called Thomas Young gave a series of 50 lectures at London’s new Royal Institution, arranged into subjects like “Mechanics” and “Hydro­dynamics”. By the end, says Young’s biographer Andrew Robinson, he had pretty much laid out the sum of scientific knowledge. Robinson called his book “The Last Man Who Knew Everything”. (extracted from 'The last Days of the Polymath' - More Intelligent Life)

I mention T.Young only because our habits of thought still regard the exceptional minds of the past as paragons of thought and extraordinary beings and in a very practical sense we still collectively refer to and revere their grand attainments, we also forget that theirs was a limited kind of knowledge, grand as it may appear to our humble eyes.

Each and every one of us has at present more knowledge available at our fingertips, a click away as they say, than all the great masters of old combined, the significance of this simple reality cannot be overestimated.




"“To be wise is not to know particular facts but to know without excessive confidence or excessive cautiousness. Wisdom is thus not a belief, a value, a set of facts, a corpus of knowledge or information in some specialized area, or a set of special abilities or skills. Wisdom is an attitude taken by persons toward the beliefs, values, knowledge, information, abilities, and skills that are held, a tendency to doubt that these are necessarily true or valid and to doubt that they are an exhaustive set of those things that could be known.”

John A. Meacham in his essay, "The Loss of Wisdom": (quoted in: The Wise Men (and Women!)Can we understand wisdom?By Jessa Crispin)

2. Interest as a directional attitude of meaning

Unlike the anorexic boredom of commonality, the newly emerging Knowmad in an infocology, supervening upon the infosphere we cohabit memetically and mimetically, creates interest as a directional attitude of meaning.

The particular form of directionality that should prove relevant here is the form of directionality that has no inherent basis in old ontology and semantics but finds the freshness of the moment in the motion itself. Put differently, the understanding of directionality as an attitude of interest relegates to history that which has brought us here, and delegates itself as an agency of meaning creation.

From a different perspective it could be said that Knowmads do not in any fashion accept (and in fact are weary of) prepackaged lifestyles, this simple fact combined with the idea that Agon and Paragon are dead, requires of us a re-description of our meaning creation abstracting capabilities.

This activity of beingness implies upon the unique and temporary meaningfulness of the momentary, liberating our past into undefinability.

“It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.”

Lewis Carroll, “Alice in Wonderland”

However if there are no more Paragons and Agon (the very essence of competition) has been dismantled and reterritorialized (and thus also mapped) into and unto the modern infocology, how are we to revitalize the progress of and into new thought?

The revitalization we need consider here concerns of course the concepts of collective intelligence and unique performers within a given infocology. More importantly perhaps is the walking of the fine line, the borderline, between the acceptance and rejection, willingness and denial, allowance and discrimination, all terms defining in fact the path of the wise Knowmad.

3.The wise Knowmad: a re-conceptualization of hyperconnectivity

When Deleuze proposed and explicated that the new metaphysics replaces substance with multiplicity, events replace essences, and virtualities replaces possibility, he provided for us a new ground upon which to engage in the act of revitalizing the mind of old thought.

It is my view that Deleuze gave us a hint what to look for in our efforts to construct a new kind of mind happening. A mind happening that finds its poetry in the future of hyperconnectivity and not in the past of accepted dogma.



The wise Knowmad in actuality is an aesthetic curator as presented in the previous paper: Knowmads as Aesthetic Curators of information and a critical relevancy as presented here: Knowmads as critical relevancies , however at this junction in the evolution of the Polytopia thought event, I think we need venture into the fuzzy realm of the joy and pleasure fostered by those activities of curation and highlighting, hyper texting and info-notations.
The Deleuzian hint I mentioned above is a pointer to the understanding that when multiplicity replaces substance, the very act of interest directionality becomes the act of meaning creation, when such is the case a new kind of joy erupts in our minds.
The joy I refer to here, is a new kind of mind happening, it does not extend from our Neolithic desires, nor from our biological urges. It is not a replacement for instincts or an escapist virtualization of basic unfulfilled needs, it is something altogether different, it is a new state of affairs of mind, in which our infovoraciousness becomes the stabilizing factor of motion.

The seeking is no more central to the Knowmad than is the actual info-curation, the relevancy of information is no more located than it is hyper intuited. What replaces the search and the pattern recognition is the joy of aesthetic management.

Aesthetic management is a manner of describing the change in the relation between conscious awareness and action, this change is primarily based on the factual change in the concept of action.
If action in the past was seen as a process in time, the new kind of action can be seen as an atemporal foray in the virtual and quite mythical kingdom of info-beauty.

Put differently, an atemporal foray in infobeauty is a foundational attitude describing a simultaneity of experience that is inherently associated as the world and not in the world.
By virtue of being the world, the foray in infobeauty can be seen as casting a new light on the event of self reflectivity in the age of hyperconnectivity.

4. Meaning: re-assessed, re-appraised and re-evaluated in hyperconnectivity.

The new form of evolution we are partaking in at present, a form of evolution engaged enhanced and distributed by science, technology and convergence presents us with a new state of affairs in which the redefinition of the importance of aesthetics is crucial.
Moment by moment we are becoming posthumans, fragile threads in transit.

These threads, bubbling, tumbling and pressing forward exist as extensions of embodiments into virtualities, looping upon themselves as hyperconnected events, re-appearing to us as us, as the world.
However the world that re-appears to our unbridled eyes is not the same as the one we have engendered, it has changed in the process of hyperconnectivity.
The very infocology into which we our pouring ourselves as threads rewires both the form and the meaning we have started with.
Under these conditions, the kind of interest each Knowmad has initiated as (apparently) one’s own reverses itself when reappearing to our eyes and presents itself as different, different enough (yet similar enough to be recognized) to be a fresh and novel kind of description of the same existence (us as the world).

This is a new form of evolution, it is the evolution of meaning, re-assessed, re-appraised and re-evaluated in hyperconnectivity.

Why this is important:

In the fashion that we have described above, meaning has been rejuvenated, denied its repeatability by the powers of hyperconnectivity played as and in the dynamics of infocologies.
Moreover, the re-assessed meaning reported back to us as the world, impinges on our original directionality and allows a new interest to emerge; this process destabilizes the original supposed stability of our Thought processes, relocating the home base of pleasure and joy.
This is important, because in this new state of affairs boredom has been eliminated (since the very infocological activity denies repeatability) and thought has been rejuvenated as joy of beingness in hyperconnectivity (since the pleasure now resides in the very instability of motion).

There is a rich musical note rising from the instability of motion, a wealth of newness and re-arrangements, a beauty undefined by identity, infocologically hyperconnected and totally restless.
The organizing principle of this unstable flow has been called here aesthetic management, forays in Infobeauty.

Recap : The Joy of unfathomable complexity of movement

Starting with the example of Thomas Young the last human to know everything,I have tried to show that though the gods of competition (Agon) and individual superiority (Paragon) are still amongst us, in a very real sense these are walking zombies. These old dogmatic systems and worldviews are no more relevant for our futures as say is the combustion engine (though still among us). What has become clear is that the very walk on the borderline of the infosphere is rewiring our meaning creation apparatus into a new state of affairs.
Defined as aesthetic management or foray in infobeauty, the new state of affairs engendered by science, technology and ultimately convergence fosters a new congruency.
Aesthetic management allows the fiercely independent and highly unique perspective to rejuvenate itself via hyperconnectivity, this in turn allows a new form of joy to emerge.

It can be called a fascinating chaos, or congruent pleasure, I call it joy.

shortly to be continued..

—
Endnotes:

# The term management in ‘aesthetic management’ has nothing to do with the term management as commonly used. I have used this term mainly because of the connotations of ordering within a flow, a manner of describing a coherent perspective that finds its state as the world, as a foray in infobeauty. Furthermore and for elucidating possible misrepresentations the term management does not imply a willful craft but more a receptivity to intersubjective mutuality in hyperconnected infocologies, curating and weeding the reciprocal descriptions of interest.

# images in text:
1-Keep Growing poster art by joeseppi on Etsy.
2- Rowan Mersh

Sun, Jun 27, 2010  Permanent link
Categories: culture, polytopia, collective intelligence, collective intelligence,Rhizomatics, joy, aesthetic management
Sent to project: Polytopia

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Knowmads as Critical Relevancies (Hybrid Futures & Knowmads pt 5)
Project: Polytopia

This is part 8 in the series: The Rise of the Cyber Unified Civilization




"..the concept of “transindividuation” is one that does not rest with the individuated “I” or with the interindividuated “We,” but is the process of co-individuation within a preindividuated milieu and in which both the “I” and the “We” are transformed through one another. "

Bernard Stiegler and Irit Rogoff, Transindividuation / Journal / e-flux


Knowmads are the future of Individuation

Increasingly the matter of our bodies, our bio-constructs, is being extended into virtuality. The extension of our sense thoughts on the net that we perceive as social networks, is nothing of the sort, it is in fact the quintessential rhizomatic expansion of our brains neural networks via an electronic medium into the infosphere.

Though it is true that at present an appearance of a gap still exist between our bodies and the net, it is also concomitantly true that this gap is narrowing by the moment; in fact the time when our brains will integrate with machines is fast approaching, and though the uses for therapeutic purposes (at least at the beginning) are obvious and enlightening it is clear that soon thereafter the technology will spread to all of us.

This has profound implications.

The most intriguing and outright interesting implication is of course, what kind of mind will we operate as bodies extended electronically and directly plugged into the infosphere. To my mind the most salient feature implied by being extended into the infosphere concerns the individuation process.

The mediated individuation process I perceive to be a disruptive process that casts a beautiful spell on us, a spell so disruptive that unaware to its implications we may inadvertently lose our directionality.
The new process of mediated individuation in the infosphere is disruptive because of a very specific reason: it is disruptive because it represents a state of affairs where moments of autonomy and independence, originality of expression and creativity are kept to a maximum intensity.

The process of infocological individuation is one of maximum intensity, a process wherein our conceptualization of personhood is undergoing dramatic changes, no longer discreet, it is fundamentally changing our perceptual mechanisms. The changes are subtle and almost imperceptible, but if we take a dip into the on-going destabilization factors appearing daily around us we may if our vision is clear enough, realize that the shift is upon us.

This shift in the radical transformation of the process of individuation is a motion into a posthuman like re-appraisal of the individual as the new hyperconnected multiple dynamic mind. A mind realizing her directionality through the dissolution of location specific activity, extemporal in its expression and free in its self-description.
It is the Knowmad, or indeed the Polytopian; terms representing a rhizomatic expansion of our neural network unto the infosphere and unleashing in the process a new force into the world – a freedom to be undefined.

The freedom to be undefined I see as a force to be reckoned with for the simple reason that through the elimination of distinctions between natural and artificial, age old indicators of identity no longer hold sway.
This new force, this (in a certain sense disturbing) modern day freedom to be undefined implies upon the process of individuation in a radical fashion, it changes the way we know things and since knowledge is the very backbone of our discernment capability, that which differs us from the ‘other’, the change in manners of knowing changes the process of individuation.

We should have no hesitation in proposing that this variety of individuation probably symbolizes an advanced juncture in the evolution of our civilization.
We need unveil this process, for behind its veil lies the wild intelligence of free beings, fiercely exploring possible venues and potential insights that bear little resemblance to that which we once were or once thought to be the 'real'.








Intelligence thrives on wildness: It does not take well to enslavement.

Pete Mandik, Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology Program, Washington University, St Louis, USA. (21C Magazine)


“Sapere aude”

“Sapere aude” (Lat.) meaning dare to discern or dare to know or better yet, dare to be wise, is the legacy we are carrying from Horace but more specifically from I.Kant .
Kant and others urged us to liberate and stands for what is commonly called the age of enlightenment or the age of reason.
Indeed we have taken many steps in our cultural evolution from the time of Kant and it may be the case that what we need at present is nothing short of a new revolution in values, a fresh reappraisal of the state of affairs of the world we live in, and the future we are co-creating.

Jeremy Rifkin in a beautiful animated presentation called “The empathic civilization” reflects on our motion from the fictional groupings we have created in our past (such as religions, nations and so on) into what he describes as our present and future: “ We have the technology to think viscerally as a family”.
But what exactly does “thinking viscerally” mean and how are we to dare to be wise (Sapere Aude) and realize the necessary conditions demanded by the changes in the world of technology and more specifically the changes brought about in and by the infocology we exist in.


Thinking Viscerally

Let us propose that what makes us special creatures is our capability to extend our bodies in space and in time. An extension, or better yet, an expansion or projection, of our visceral reality, across apparent boundaries, across imaginary localities. We are able via our imagination capability to “see” that which is not there in the material world, to envision that which was, or indeed that which may be. This very peculiar capability of human minds was historically that which allowed our specie to become so powerful in this biosphere. In fact it may very well be that our capacity for collectivity, for empathy and also for individuation is that very same quality, let us call this temporarily: non contextual viscerality.

In a way, non-contextual viscerality I intend to mean the uncanny ability of the mind to project a virtual image of its sensory modality beyond its skin demarcation. Thinking abstractly is such a feat, as is imagining the structure of our ideal home or the face of a (as yet) non-existent potential mate.

Thinking viscerally then.

Thinking viscerally is a developing art; it is a new form of existential realism that presents us with a modern structure of cognition. It is my understanding that the visceral thought process engendered by our networked culture, enmeshed in the grid results in what may be called cyber intuition.
A mediated visceral perception transposing the sensation of thought across time and across space.
The idea behind visceral thinking or cyber intuition is that an increase in hyperconnectivity, extending our very own neural networks in our brains via the electronic mediums into the virtual redefines our fundamental conception of the embodied self.

Redefining the embodied self into virtual multiplicity engenders the freedom to be undefined.

There is a new world in here and out there, a world suffused with electronic extensions of minds, neural networks nested within networks, all flowing smoothly and inexorably into each other. The flow of motion of the inner and outer realities combines and recombines the visceral sense of the embodied mind in an ever expanding sphere of actuation, in that the sense thought of being both extends and dissolves. Whilst extending, expanding and dissolving the sense of beingness, that which originated in embodiment is transformed into a new sense.
The sense of being a critical relevancy.





"In the human sciences, culture and language have also been progressively engulfed by the universe of technics: the artificial realm of institutions, rituals, knowledges, symbol systems and practices that makes humans functional, speaking, meaning-making creatures; that is, what makes humans human. The essence of the human, it seems, is the technical; which is paradoxically the other of the human: the non-human, the manufactured, unnatural, artificial; the inhuman even."

(Andrés Vaccari states about Technics and Time, quoted in: Bernard Stiegler and Irit Rogoff, Transindividuation. )






Knowmads are critical relevancies

Knowmads are visceral thinkers, expanded multiplicities, minds nested in vast and complex infocologies.
As such Knowmads herald a new kind of mind, free to be undefined in a polytopian infosphere.
Knowmads are critically relevant in as much as they recognize the vicariousness of their extension-ability in the relevant infocology.
Complex meshworks, embedded in complex infocologies engender flows of intersubjective co-dependencies; these in turn loop upon themselves and re-iterate the intelligent directionality.
The feedback loop here is obvious, but where is the individual?
Answer: the individual will be extended viscerally across an indefinite infosphere, defined locally by the reflective relevant infocology.

In a sense we could say that the aesthetics of the posthuman mind resides with a new kind of empathy born of the visceral expansion in complex infocologies. Such an expansion will afford us the luxury of an intelligent response to the evolutionary pressure made upon our embodied minds by the proliferation of augmented reality technologies.

“There was nowhere to go but everywhere, so just keep on rolling under the stars”

Jack Kerouac


Let us go everywhere...

shortly to be continued..

Mon, May 24, 2010  Permanent link
Categories: culture, collective intelligence, Rhizomatics, Futures, Polytopia,Aesthetics, Evolution,Knowmad
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Knowmads as Aesthetic Curators of information (Hybrid Futures & Knowmads pt 4)
Project: Polytopia

This is part 7 in the series: The Rise of the Cyber Unified Civilization

I've handled colour as a man should behave. You may conclude that I consider ethics and aesthetics as one.
Josef Albers


We are multidimensional minds, multisensory systems presently embodied in simple materiality. But that is changing.
Our presence as embodied cognition increases in scope and extent, range and span, delineating a new contour to our beingness in time. This increase in presence is presently mediated via the net and its mobile derivatives, augmented, auric and virtual realities, which deconstruct our age-old location based awareness and reconstruct it into an ambient awareness pervading all facets of our lives.
The new ambient awareness we are evolving into will in time define a new mindset, a fresh collection of sensations and an original kind of perception.

This fact changes us; slowly, almost imperceptibly, but change it does.

“Only as an aesthetic phenomenon is the world justified.”

Friedrich Nietzsche

As we evolve individually, as culture, as civilization and as specie, increasing our technological know-how and scientific understanding it is becoming clearer and clearer that long held habits of thought though still prevalent no longer fit the state of affairs we exist in.
The new state of affairs is a world in which information of geo-location of an individual is a common public knowledge (see: Is location where it’s at in social networking?) and in which objects will talk to each other as spime ; a world in which hyperconnectivity rules the social sphere of human intersubjectivity, eliminating or transcending space and time coordinates is no longer fictional but a reality we all need come to terms with.
This hyperconnected reality implies on our options and availability, implications that are often overlooked and indeed to my eyes misrepresented, at least in so far as the subject in question is a Knowmad and a Polytopian.

In this respect I do not think that all hyperconnected minds operate the same or indeed that generalizations should be the case. Do note for example the latest research maintaining that : “U.S. Students Addicted To The Internet” and yet on the same token but arriving to a different conclusion in the latest Pew research published : “In an online survey of 895 technology stakeholders’ and critics’ expectations of social, political and economic change by 2020, fielded by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project and Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Center:
» Google won’t make us stupid: 76% of these experts agreed with the statement, “By 2020, people’s use of the Internet has enhanced human intelligence; as people are allowed unprecedented access to more information they become smarter and make better choices.”- (The full report on the future of the internet is well worth reading ).



In my previous post: ‘Knowmads as metabolic reactors’ I have proposed that Knowmads are developing an inherent capacity to distinguish between different kinds of information, namely toxic and nutritious.
Moreover Knowmads were presented as : “.. metabolic reactors of information, intermediate junctions of innovation and creativity, catalysts of emergent phase spaces.”
As this line of clarity unfolds I am moving now into the exploration of Knowmads as aesthetic curators as I see in this motion the natural evolution of the metabolic reactors.
I have written before that Knowmads, as metabolic reactors are particular kind of beings who thrive in situations of ambiguity and develop perceptions that allow the new sense of cyber-intuition to come forth.
It is my view that certain Knowmads are developing a particular set of skills that will in time become the normative expression of extra ordinary cognition, I refer specifically to minds that are developing an exceptional capability of enhancing the health and wealth of an infocology by their choices.

These choices of what to publish and what to point, what to prune and what to emphasize are the key parameters of these intersectionists (hyperconnected individuals locating themselves at the intersection of feeds of information in advanced infocologies).

These individuals are not necessarily bloggers of fame or journalists of note, artists or editors, though of course they may be; what makes them particularly interesting and especially good indicators to our hybrid futures is their curatorial capabilities and cyber intuitions.
They do something extremely interesting; they juxtapose art and science, technology and philosophy in such a fashion as to increase our collective aestheticism. And if, as I believe, and the Pew repost shows, the hyperconnected state of affairs is making us more intelligent and more capable of information retrieval, in the process changing and evolving our brains, what we will need more of is this very curatorial capability.



"Leonardo Da Vinci combined art and science and aesthetics and engineering, that kind of unity is needed once again. "

Ben Shneiderman

What is an aesthetic curator of information?

The simplest way to put it is that an aesthetic curator is a hyperconnected mind that has developed the basic skill of, for lack of a better definition; I will call here, increasing the beauty of an infocology.
Let us define the beauty of an infocology as the set of characteristics that make an infocology inspiring and exciting, smoothly conjoining diverse streams of impressions and information

The aesthetic curation of information and knowledge in hyperconnected infoflows is a manner of managing an invisible yet palpable infrastructure. The fashion by which this infrastructure is positioning diverse elements of information in a given infocology is what makes it an Art in itself, a unique point of reference and an observational front line. As I see it, Knowmads as travelers in infostreams, surfers of exceptional insight and minds that carry a cyber intuition that bypasses the apparent limitations of information transmissions, are particularly well suited to the task of infocology aesthetic curator.

There are of course, some websites that already try and to a very large extent produce infocologies of exceptional beauty and interest. Of particular note is space collective very own Folkert : “But Does It float”: But does it float : an ongoing visual conversation between Folkert and Atley taking place inside a browser window. Or look at the amazing feed of @BrainPicker from Brain Pickings defined in their ‘about’ as: “This is Brain Pickings. It’s a modest exercise in vision- and mind-expansion. Curated bits of culture that will, at the very least, introduce you to new ideas and perspectives and, at their very best, help you think more, laugh more, create more. Be a better person. Because a better person conceives of better, stronger, smarter, richer, deep, more impactful ideas — culturally, commercially and socially. “

Exceptional mentioning need take into consideration the work of Seed Magazine and Environmental Graffiti and the fantastic curation of Escape into Life and Synaptic Stimuli.

All of the examples above , and there are many more out there in the vast infosphere, are models and illustrations of fantastic curatorial capabilities and though being beautiful examples of curated infocologies, and by extension enriching the aesthetic experiences of their beholders, I think it is only the tip of the iceberg.
The iceberg I refer to is the extended cyber experience of beauty, increasing intelligence and a new form of cognition, the co-opted aestheticism of accentuated collaboration. The co-opted intersubjective interest produced in advanced infocologies aiming to better both the involved Knowmad and the cultural health and wealth of the infocology at play is a paradigm shift in infocognition.



The necessity of art in science and poetry in understanding is beyond doubt the most pressing issue at our doorstep; it may not appear as such in front of the tremendous problems we are facing as a civilization on the brink of a probable technological singularity, yet if we are to advance a mind rooted in the Neolithic into a post human future of beauty, aesthetic curators of information are the beacons we need look to.
Space Collective itself is a very good pointer to where the shift in infocognition is taking us as indeed is the Polytopia project, both aiming to bring the emotional intelligence of aesthetics into the discourse of the evolution of civilization and hyperconnected minds in particular.
Knowmads I see as aesthetic curators of information in as much as the function they provide is one of enhanced awareness to knowledge transmission and the ensuing transformation of the minds in question.

Our hybrid futures and the rise of the cyber unified civilization, imply that we are moving at a pace of transformation to which we are little aware on a moment by moment basis. The possible beauty of our future lies in our hands, in our very own capability to transform ourselves into curators of interest and aesthetic intelligence, a transmutation in the manner we understand the world and cohere a complexity that unfolds before us.

Alfred North Whitehead once said that: ”Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment is recognition of the pattern.” Taking this statement as a cue I believe that by becoming aesthetic curators of information we can increase our understanding of the infosphere, define a new kind of intelligence based on the cyber-intuition demanded by curatorial skills, and concurrently design the beauty of the pattern of our hybrid futures as well as rise above the apparent meaninglessness of old recurrences.
Knowmads as aesthetic curators of information in infocologies may provide a fresh vision of thought, an insight into the possible beauty born of intersubjective cross-pollinating info-streams, in the process creating a striking version of an evolved specie, a human ready to be an aesthetic phenomenon.




shortly to be continued..

Endnotes:
Images in text:
1. André Kertész, Untitled (Eye and Lips), 1970
2. Brain Maze by Istvan Orosz
3. Fake Heroes, Fake Idols by Hector Pineda

Sun, May 2, 2010  Permanent link
Categories: culture, collective intelligence, Futures, Evolution,Knowmad,, Polytopia,Aesthetics
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Knowmads as metabolic reactors of information (Hybrid Future and Knowmads (pt 3)
Project: Polytopia

Part 6 in the series : The Rise of the Cyber Unified Civilization


The peculiar ‘liquidity’ of our times may be less the consequence of structural change than intellectual exhaustion, the failure of the great ideologies of the twentieth century to bring about change on a scale that really would transform what it means to be human. Bauman rightly warns against attempts to seek refuge in the identities of the past, but in his lament at the passing of lasting values, he perhaps underestimates the possibilities for self-assured human beings unencumbered by the past, and brave enough to face the future.
—
The trouble with being human these days
Identity
Zygmunt Bauman (by Dolan Cummings)



Intro

The proliferation of visions of our futures in the last decades has created a kind of black hole situation, a situation which, to say the least, and that is why I use the black hole metaphor, has not allowed the light of virtuality to come forth and shine.

The tone of most visions we have come across was either of the apocalyptic kind or of the surrealistic utopian variety. Indeed there are as many visions out there as there are researchers and dreamers, visionaries and thinkers, philosophers and experts. In fact from the visions of B.Fuller and Habermas, to the more recent realities expounded by M.McLuhan and G.Deleuze the crucial point defining the core of the visions was and is increasingly developing as such, the technological ability of the human.

However correct or implicitly insightful those thinkers are it is my view that in one fundamental respect at least we need a different perspective. I refer specifically to the commonly held view about the information society we live in that information produces more information or alternatively that information reproduces as information. The information explosion indeed breeds more information but to focus on this aspect is to my eyes erroneous, not because it is untrue, but because the focus of our vision and the locus of our insights should be on a different plane, the plane of intersubjective meaning.

Meaningfulness is not something born of the void, there is no inherent meaning to life as such, what makes life interesting, and in certain respects important and valuable, is the intersubjective crosspollination of our localized perception, sensations and mindfulness with another.




Old others, new others

Taking this perspective as the basis of our visions, what the technological postindustrial reality has brought to our doorstep, our perceptual doorstep, is the factuality of the other, the new other.
This new other is not the same as the old other. The commonly accepted view that the other is my next-door neighbor no longer holds sway for the simple reason that my neighborhood is not physical but virtual and is not called a district or a region or city but an infocology.

Of course my physical neighbor still exists and we still greet each other in the morning or when we meet in the material world, shopping at the local grocer or walking the dog. However the issue standing in front of us is that my electronically mediated neighborhood, my infosphere at large and my infocology in particular is increasingly more pertinent to my mind and indeed to my intersubjective meaningfulness.

In other words, I do not see us as a technological society, nor as an information society but as a civilization outgrowing its localization into an intersubjective meaningfulness, a/spatial and a/temporal, progressing into a unified cyber civilization.

Notwithstanding Mcluhan and Fuller, Shanon and Wiener, the real prophets of the 20th century, we need a new manner of understanding ourselves, new myths to satisfy our ever-increasing hyperconnectivity and by consequence intersubjective appetite for meaning.

Old myths, new myths

Myths abound around us, but not all myths are created equal, some myths serve their functions better than others, whilst other myths exhaust their meaningfulness long before they exhaust their memetic longevity. A good example of a fatigued myth is the myth of the happy consumer, basically implying that the more the consumption the more the happiness, a fundamental fallacy promulgated for profit and actually believed by many until recently, fortunately finally proved wrong. (as an aside please note that I do not think that consumption in itself is wrong or bad, the joy of sharing in the market of goods and artifacts, services and trade is as old as the agora, the issue here is the equation of increased consumption with increased happiness).


The myth of the happy consumer of goods is a construct that has evolved, and some say mutated, into the myth of the happy consumer of information. And thus, just as the first was annihilated will this new myth be obliterated into the meaninglessness that it stands for, namely the belief that the more information consumed the more the happiness. In this regard, it is my understanding that the problem with this new myth concerns also, and maybe primarily, the usage of the terminology of consumption. In our current situation we need question critically if what we do with information is consumption, I for one do not think so, appearances notwithstanding.

But before I present a polytopian stance towards information, a few words about myths.
I realize that for many nowadays myths are legends to be dismissed, an easy and quite quotidian colloquialism referring to false stories or traditional, and for some, sacred, symbolic descriptions of the origins of reality. However, my take on the issue is that myths serve a purpose in the evolution of civilization, they serve as ideation containers, contours of hard to describe sense impressions, pointers to sense-thoughts that centralize a notion before it is clarified or dismissed as either insubstantial or irrelevant. In other words, myths are contextual operators of our collective minds, given birth to serve a purpose of meaning, in time to be re-appraised and upgraded, or rejected as the case may be.
Many myths have served us in the past, they serve us no longer, let them rest in peace in the historical dustbin museum of past human ingenuity, to be admired and researched, but not to be used anymore.
Instead let us create new myths, transitory working contexts, that will permit us new operational attitudes, fresh pathways into possible futures, upgraded understandings and realizations on the nature of our minds, the nature of reality and the directions we wish to pursue as a specie.

As our minds are evolving into a new kind of state, that of the Knowmad, a specie in a polytopian informational metaverse, we need accordingly a new story, a new myth, to cater for the transit period in the evolution of human civilization we find ourselves in.




"It is not so much that digital technology recapitulates the language of classical mythology as the story of a fateful struggle between closed versus open systems — Scylla versus Charybdis — but that contemporary technoculture now approaches its apogee as a universe in drift. "

CTheory.net

A new myth – Infocological Metabolism

In the new myth, Knowmads are not consumers of information; we are metabolic reactors of information, intermediate junctions of innovation and creativity, catalysts of emergent phase spaces.
Using the metaphor of biological metabolism let us propose that the new kind of mind that is emerging in front of us is a mind that is inherently able to distinguish that which is nutritious from that which is poisonous, a critical mind, implicitly committed to the advancement of knowledge of life, the universe, and everything.

The metabolic process of an infocology depends on a few but major points; it must be inherently transparent, open and evolutive. It needs become (and is increasingly becoming) a universe of discourse in which semantic representations are inherently transformable, transmutable and ultimately correlative.
The topology of the knowmadic infosphere if so can be said to be a multiplicity of interacting stories, joining and splitting, merging and detaching. The flow of such infocologies allows for a continuous upgrade of both understanding and critical thought.
Allowing the metabolic process of an infocology to flourish is amongst the prime goals of a Knowmad mind. The creation of circumstances of infoflows (infocologies) in which and by which self-editing becomes the ambient event is the possible promise of a polytopia.




"Liberated from the plodding world of materiality by networked regimes of relational processing and ubiquitous computing, the neural mechanisms of the human mind demonstrate unexpected plasticity and openness to heterogeneity. "

Code Drift- Arthur & Marilouise Kroker at Ctheory

A knowmadic mind

It is a Knowmad in as much as the principle of actuation it operates is one of critical self-examination especially with regards to the biases involved in its information processing. And just as there are many kinds of metabolic systems (and by consequence different criteria are applied and different results are arrived at in different organisms) so it is the case that different minds will process information differently and will present different results as to what is considered nutritious and what is considered poisonous. Moreover, even for a particular knowmadic mind, given that evolution is inherent, the metabolic process of information will not remain the same, creating a new state of affairs in which toxic information can become nutritious and vice versa.

The process I am trying to describe here is a highly complex one and demands a certain poetic license, which I take with both hands. The transformation and at times sheer annihilation of old myths and casual conceptions into new modes of thoughts and fresh fashions of emoting is a difficult one and I do not for a moment fall prey to the idea that the transition will be an easy or simple one. But if we are to thrive into a future humanism, in which compassion and empathy do not find their origins in a Neolithic mindset but on a true posthuman ethics of abstraction and an aesthetic of engagement not based on the material, the transition is inevitable.

As the new story of our species and civilization evolves, the story of individualism progresses into and as, the hyperconnected node, in given infocologies. These infocologies, nested fractally within the larger hyper sphere of information, the infosphere, evolve metabolic reactors of information. Metabolic reactors of information are collective mindsets evolving criteria for distinguishing wholesome or nutritious information from toxic or poisonous information. These in turn react and interact with and within flows of other infocologies, increasing in the process both the health and wealth of the infosphere and that of the Knowmad.

The wisdom that results from the transformation and transmutation of data into facts, facts into information and information into knowledge, is not one but many, a multiple kind of wisdom, perforating the very idea of uniqueness and centralization, hierarchy and conformity.

The revolutions and rapid advancements in Nanotechnology, Biotechnology and maybe more importantly Neurotechnology and Cognitive sciences combined with the globalization of the private and public discourse via the internet will potentially and quite possibly permit us a fresh undertaking in our conceptualization of that which we already are : embodied minds, metabolizing information.

The Knowmad Polytopian mind is particularly well suited to this new state of affairs since its very exploratory characteristic and experimental inclination relay the importance of keeping all the avenues of our aesthetic engagement, open.

Our hybrid futures depict a lovely panorama, shining the light of virtuality into our present retinal configuration, changing our insight vessels in the process.


shortly to be continued..

Mon, Apr 26, 2010  Permanent link
Categories: culture, polytopia, collective intelligence, Futures, Evolution,Knowmad,
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Hybrid futures and Knowmads (pt2)
Project: Polytopia

Part 5 in the series : The Rise of the Cyber Unified Civilization

If it works its already obsolete
Marshall Mcluhan

Just another accelerating week?

It so happened that this last week has presented us with a few worthwhile notifications, not the least of which is the announcement by Hewlett-Packard, Cisco and others that are planning a central nervous system for the earth. (see: Sensor Overload ) And though there is no doubt that the ubiquity of these pin size sensors will take a while to materialize, our world is increasingly and continuously being monitored and interconnected. Do note that ubiquity is the term du jours :
” Ubiquitous computing refers to the practice of embedding information processing and network communication into everyday, human environments to continuously provide services, information and communication.” (see : The Middle of Moore's Law) but for a truly inspiring moment I suggest watching David Orban explaining how machines are going to make us human again (David Orban - Free to be Human! ), and its possible extension 'Barcodes help objects tell their stories', or indeed if you missed it the fascinating presentation by Andrew Hessel – the internet of living things.
This is the same week that also saw the announcement of the first prototype for the bionic eye implant, and the long awaited historic patent for Robert Freitas diamond mechanosynthesis (DMS) which is nothing less than the first molecularly precise fabrication of physical structures.
Finally this is the week when Intel guru says that 3-D Internet will arrive within five years and this will change everything.
Of course I could go on with Cyborg messenger dogs that will save you after an earthquake or with the truly Lifelike Geminoid F Robot that Blurs Boundaries of Reality, but for sheer sanity I shall stop here.

Just another week in the modern world of fast pace innovation?



“..the difference between ignorant and educated people is that the latter know more facts. But that has nothing to do with whether they are stupid or intelligent. The difference between stupid and intelligent people—and this is true whether or not they are well educated—is that intelligent people can handle subtlety. They are not baffled by ambiguous or even contradictory situations—in fact, they expect them and are apt to become suspicious when things seem overly straightforward.”

Constable Moore in “Diamond Age” by Neal Stephenson


1. There is nothing straightforward about our futures:


There is nothing straightforward about the evolution of civilization and culture, in fact nothing is more unpredictable than the coming future, a future which I believe will be more surprising and more enlightening than we can imagine. But right here and now I wish to call our collective attention to a particular aspect of these unpredictable futures. Namely, that these futures will be of a hybrid nature.

It is clear that the planet we have been born upon is now in its post evolutionary stage due to the culture we have created. We are building a new operating system for this planet, altering the nature of the very evolutionary process that gave us birth.
That same evolutionary process that allowed us to create realities that are not culturally palatable or acceptable is the same state of affairs that will allow us to co-evolve a future that is other than our pasts, and it will be a hybrid future.

That our futures are bound to be hybrid is practically a given, the merging of some of us with machines, the meshing of some of us with virtualities, where avatars and flesh comingle is inevitable, the rise of multigender existential systems of being and actuation in some situations and locations is foreseeable.
The issue of course is that all these already exist as desire, fantasies and imaginary constructs, however what the fast pace of technology is bringing home is the actualization of diversity in form and meaning that the human mind wished to actuate.
We have always used new methods to answer old questions, fashioning new technologies and exploring uncharted territories via science and math, poetry and art. And the new methods we have and are creating as we speak will allow for a truly formidable experience of life, a hybrid life in a hybrid future.

2. Our Hybrid futures:

Hybrid futures are basically combinations of different kinds of cultures and technologies, sciences and art, biology and poetry, math and music, humans and machines, flesh and Nanomachines, blood and intelligence, storytelling and information, multiple identities across multiple platforms, all meshed into a semi coherent and at times incomprehensible whole that fluctuates and undulates like medusa’s tentacle hair, our job of course is to look in the mirror and not freeze but dance the freedom of our expressive beingness.

Enhancing our bodies and minds whether chemically or telematically, mechanically or physiologically is only part of what our hybrid futures are bringing upon us, for when I speak of hybridization of our futures I also take into consideration that not all of us wish or desire the same kind or the same extent of technological penetration into our very essentiality. Since this is the case I take it as a given that our hybrid futures will fundamentally alter the manner by which we relate to each other. So hybrid I understand to mean not only the combinatorial reality of human and technology but also the sphere of combinatorial reality of different cultures born of the interdependent and coexisting.
These combinatorial realities need provide a platform of engagement that is fundamentally and categorically different from the platforms of engagements we have used in our pasts.
The need to understand the bifurcating paths ahead of us is an aesthetic need as much as it is a technical and organizational one, without such an understanding we cannot construct or indeed allow the coming into actuation of a truly global civilization that can reach for the stars.
The question that I see as crucial for the rise of a cyber unified civilization as is presented in this series of posts is therefore how are we to accommodate the diversity of realities we are moving into without balkanizing ourselves into a dystopian mélange a la’ ‘Mad Max’ apocalypse.

As I presented in my previous post I believe that the core of an answer to our hybrid futures lies with the advent of the knowmadic state as a personal existential reality.
The reasons for this I will try to elucidate in the following chapter but bear in mind that the whole polytopia project is in a manner of speaking an experimentation (and a provisional one at that) meant to create just such a ground of engagement to which the Knowmad relates as a node within a given infocology.



“I was born human. But this was an accident of fate - a condition merely of time and place. I believe it’s something we have the power to change “
—
Kevin Warwick outlines his plan to become one with his computer.

3. A positive outlook

I am positive and utterly confident, that humans are capable and fundamentally interested in creating a better future, a future in which and by which we can all live to our hearts desire, whatsoever that desire might be.
Some of my friends want to live on other planets, some want to celebrate their bodies into infinity, others desire to upload their minds, and still others wish for a simple life lived in the ancient manner in the woods near a perfect lake in the purest and untainted environment, meditating into their next step of personal evolution. I count amongst my friends, humans that see mathematics and neuroscience as the best possible exploratory method for life the universe and everything and others that see their art as the highest attainment of the human experience, and some that deem a return to simplicity as the most desirable goal of a human life lived to its fullest potential.
Some of my colleagues see the net as the answer to it all, some consider philosophy as the proper activity for a developed mind, some (as do I) see language as quintessentially developmental and yet others believe that ‘doing the act’ is the duty of the poets. There are many more friends and colleagues, and many more ideas and views in this list, however what makes me a great believer in the power of the human specie to overcome itself is our concomitant and correlated activity, we all at bottom work for the same goal, even if at times appearances may deceive us into thinking otherwise.

Being a Knowmad and a Polytopian I cannot afford the luxury of indulgence into mere pessimism, in fact I do not think that any of us can afford such excess.

"..That seems to me one of the first illusions – and one of the more prideful illusions – of human culture: that a final understanding is possible in the first place. Better, I think, to try and frame questions which can do it… and leave off searching for answers, because answers are like operating systems: they’re being upgraded faster than you can keep up with it.”
Terence McKenna



Hybrid futures are fundamentally a terminology I use to describe and define, the very backbone or superstructure of the coming possible futures (some of which are already upon us), especially as relates to the idea that our futures are both varied and multiple both in appearance and manifestation, and will probably unfold in a manifold fashion, the center of which will be, in the short term at least, the human.

Hybrid futures are mixed futures, combined futures, diverse and varied, all co-existing and evolving in parallel. To put it differently, not all of our futures will be similar, some will be different and though apparently a truism, the emphasize here is that some of these bifurcating paths in front of us will be totally alien to some of us.
Hybrid futures implies futures that merge and overlap and though our craftiness will probably forever try to mesh these futures into a coherent whole it is my view that we will fail miserably at this task, not because it cannot be achieved but because our futures imply diversification.


4. Flows of networks and networks of flows

W.Gibson once said that: “One of the things our grandchildren will find quaintest about us is that we distinguish the digital from the real.” And I cannot but totally agree with this statement, the meshing of the real and the virtual accomplished by networks of flows, individual and collective, intertwining into other flows of networks create the basis for the grid of hybrid futures, the very nature of which is diversity and complexity.

When the complexity of these flows of networks coalesce into stable infocologies the result is that levels of hierarchy (of complexity) are born, these in turn imply that the level of complexity we are reaching breeds new rules and new laws to which the previous level (of the network) or the next level (of the flow of networks) bears no resemblance. In other words, one cannot imply from one level of complexity to the next.
The emergence of new rules and new laws per level of complexity demands an (almost) instantaneous reorganization of our minds plastic capability to adapt and learn the new rules.
The above is the main reason why I see the knowmadic state on an individual level and collective manifest as the current question of dwelling.
A Knowmad in an infocology lives on the edge, but that edge is of particular significance because the most interesting point of existence for innovation and creativity is the point of maximal information content.
The most interesting complex system for us is where the level of unpredictability is high and the bifurcations are on the increase and that is where apparent choices are made.

In a manner of speaking our freedom is maximized on the edge.

Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.
Kurt Vonnegut



Interlude:

Hybrid futures is an expression that tries to contain a manifold of possible futures, myriad expressions of human desire and an almost infinity of levels of complexity. These hybrid futures are tension intensive, and extremely difficult to navigate and cohere, hybrid futures demand a sort of living on the edge of chaos state of mind. This state of mind is defined as the knowmadic state, a state that excels in ambiguous situations, enhances syntax and semantics conversion into actual adaptation of new forms of meaning, and by consequence changes the very meaning of enmeshed existence.

(see pt 1-10 in previous post for an extended list of knowmadic characteristics)



stay tuned, soon to be followed by hybrid futures and the notion state..

endnotes:

This particular post is dedicated to...

“Will you be my wings
when the feathers that I need
fall around my feet?”
— Daily Haiku on Love by Tyler Knott Gregson

images in text from ModernMath

Fri, Apr 16, 2010  Permanent link
Categories: Complexity, Hybrid Futures, Knowmads, edge, networks
Sent to project: Polytopia

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Hybrid futures, Knowmads and the Notion state
Project: Polytopia

or The rise of the Cyber Unified Civilization (part 4)

“Today, after over fifteen years of planning, construction, delays and drama, the Large Hadron Collider began doing what it was built to do: colliding particles.
Just before 13:00 Geneva time, physicists guided two beams of protons moving at 3.5 TeV into collision points around the machine's 27 km ring. Moments later, cheers erupted from the control rooms of the machine's four main experiments, as shrapnel from the collisions flooded into the detectors.” Nature"

Going live:
“How is the LHC performing?”
“ Amazingly well.. I am almost speechless, it is the start of a great adventure”



As I am writing the last lines of this post I am simultaneously listening to the amazing live webcast of the most formidable experiment in human history, the collision of 7TV beams at Cern LHC, a project which outcome may very well revolutionize our understanding of the basic laws of physics. Mimicking the big bang , the systematic exploration of nature, is nothing less than a total revolution in our penetration into the very fabric of matter, of time, of space, and as I am listening to the words of the scientists, the engineers and the huge array of a diverse population all working together I cannot but be emotionally moved in hearing the exclamations of the speakers, the celebration, the bottles of wines and champagne being opened and the cheers of success.
However the important issue here from my standpoint is that it is broadcasted live, to millions of people all over the planet, simultaneously, we are all together watching and listening when a small percentage of our specie provides for us a possible explanation of mass, of bosons, of super symmetry, as one of the interviewees said:
‘it’s a new physics, a new model, a new beauty.. we are mapping the unknown, and waiting for the unexpected, stay tuned..”



It is in fact a:

A collective overcoming of tribal inhibition mechanisms

This is nothing short of the most difficult project for humanity for it pushes us to the limits and urges us to overcome our old prejudices, it is a competition as well as a collaboration, a truly fundamental step in shedding light not only on the first moments of the universe but probably on the first moments of our hybrid futures, our knowmadic being and our future notion states.

"Philosophy needs a nonphilosophy that comprehends it; it needs a nonphilosophical comprehension just as art needs nonart and science needs nonscience”

Deleuze and Guattari (What is Philosophy?)

1. The Knowmad

The Knowmad casts aside the commonly held monumental and hierarchical order of higher and lower and transmutes said order into the possible flow of events; and if indeed, as I assume, the bogus cosmic order is finally being cast aside for a flow of events, the old status conferred by the no-longer holding-sway command is no longer valid and in consequence a new method of status and value appreciation need be resolved.
For a Knowmad in this case there is no rightful place as was held by the ancients, a fact which in itself allows for a fresh undertaking of the concepts of liberty and democracy.
In fact it will not be untrue to state that the old questions of “how one should live his life?” or indeed “how one should act” are being transformed in the Knowmad state into a new set of questions, fundamentally resolving the two issues of knowledge and hyperconnectivity.

The Knowmad in this sense not only sees herself dissociated from the old tradition but realizes that the potentiality embedded in the hyperconnected reality holds a new set of truisms for which a different mindset is required. The new set of paradigms such as the factuality of hyperconnectivity, mobile communications and virtual or augmented realities, imply a fluid mindset that sees at any given point not equivalence of times but the superiority of elegant futures.

These futures are potential scenarios to which the Knowmad will claim no credit nor belief but simply experimentation and exploration.
It is my view that the state of the Knowmad could not have been anticipated by past philosophers for the simple reason that certain critical and necessary parameters of the Knowmad state could not have been predicted.
Chief amongst these parameters are the Internet hyperconnected reality and the newly emergent technologies of reality augmentation, these in tandem create a new existential situation for which no philosophy was prepared and anticipated.

When Nietzsche obliterated god and eliminated our transcendent morality basis he did not anticipate that the hyperconnected reality would in a very special sense come to our rescue. Instead of getting lost in a chaotic abyss of non-restraint we are founding right now a fresh transcendence, which is nothing short than a virtuality of non-transcendence .
Of what substance is this virtuality made that it may allow us to answer the basic questions of life?

Fundamentally it is made of an emergent property (and no it is not the wisdom of the crowds- a concept to which I am not attracted) of the hyperconnected reality, the emergent phenomena of multiple co-dependent personas each carrying a set of knowledge characteristics pertinent to the appropriate virtuality in which it resides. (See Topos- a topos in a polytopia, what is)
The main point to look at here is the fact that a topos does not hold a judging function and thus does not demand a justification for its perceptual virtuality. What this implies is that the new questions and the new mindset do not have, or perhaps do not carry the metrics of outsidedeness; in other words there is no universal mechanisms (or truths or values ) to judge the trustworthiness say, of a given persona in a given virtuality at a given time, the mechanism for value realization is thus inherent in the topos itself and is not automatically transferable to other nets (or other topos). However if the value cannot be transferred to other topos how is a polytopia to operate a large-scale multidimensional value assessment?



The answer to that may be found in understanding the real life happenings of networks and cross network pollination and eventual cross-fertilization. A system developing on its own, and though based on the provided technology of the platform results in the rise of the Knowmad state.

2. The Knowmad State

note: Bullets are marked 1 to 6 - the quotes before each and every bullet point are for reflection and emphasize- adding what I believe is a hypertextual backbone to the concept of the Knowmadic state.

"There is no evidence that the world is becoming more virtual. The cyber-prophets were wrong here. The virtual is becoming more real. It wants to penetrate and map out our real lives and social relationships. We are no longer encouraged to act out some role, but forced to be “ourselves” (which is no less theatrical or artificial)."

(Geert Lovink- MyBrain.net -The colonization of real-time and other trends in Web 2.0)

1. For a Knowmad confines are observational tools, to be upgraded, smoothened, changed or indeed virtualized and redesigned at will according to the needs of the infocology the Knowmad partakes in and co-depends upon.

"Changing our way of thinking about the world is a necessary first step, but it is by no means sufficient: we will need to destratify reality itself, and we must do so without the guarantee of a golden age ahead, knowing full well the dangers and possible restratifications we may face."

(DeLanda (2005: 274))

2. The knowmadic state embodies the dynamical symbolism of radical digital Darwinism, in practice this implies the freedom to resist quick assimilations and challenge broken perspectives. The knowmadic state is soaking in a flowing multitude of objects and sensations, info visuals and knowledge dimensions.

"For Deleuze, a nomad does not have to move… a nomad can practice nomadology whilst being in one place. It is the nomadology of thought - the journey to new territories through processes of deterritorialization and reterritorialization. "

(Vikki Hill: What is Nomadic thought in Gilles Deleuze & Rosi Braidotti)

3.The Knowmad can be said to be both a-temporal in the sense that the belonging of said mind couldn’t be implied upon a particular time, and a-spatial in the sense that the belonging of aforesaid mind cannot be implied upon a particular space or location.
The Knowmad state thus is the embodiment of an infocology and a manifestation of a Topos.

"Decoding and interpreting signals, packets, gestures etc. is what we call communication. Since the birth of the computer, that viral mechanism has established a symbiotic relationship with their creators, to the point where humans cannot longer function as a society without them. As we merge and augment our senses, our machinic self takes over a majority of functions that we once considered essential for survival, including memory, the control of vital organs and appendices. Carbon and silicon, en route to the next evolutionary stage, collaborate to bring about the inevitable transformation. Telecommunications and the internet have become mobile. We are the nodes, the packets and the modems. We are still the storytellers, and we wish to share the magic around the digital fire. As we pull the curtain we discover that the Wizard is Us."

(Arturo Sinclair: The Wizard is Us: Symbiogenesis by Networking Part 1)

4. The Knowmad state is the ultimate knowledge Shaman, a modern day techno actuator, and a polytopian in action; embedding and embodying a multi-sensorial modality of thought and act, a living virtual manifestation of mind. Knowmads recount the story of the freedom of information and knowledge as manifested in matter and immediacy.

"A random scrap of information can trigger just the right conceptual collision. It’s hard to know which scrap might do the trick, but that’s the beauty of social networks — they constantly produce potential sparks, for free."

(Brendan I. Koerner: How Twitter and Facebook Make Us More Productive)

5. The Knowmad state epitomizes the serendipity of knowledge and random fluctuations in infocologies. The embodiment of motion and flow, within a given asymmetrical infocology is the primary activity of self-mapping Knowmads. (for an extended view see: self-mapping in complex infocologies)

"In network theory, a node’s relationship to other networks is more important than its own uniqueness. Similarly, today we situate ourselves less as individuals and more as the product of multiple networks composed of both humans and things."

(Kazys Varnelis: The meaning of network culture)

6. For the Knowmad the state of affairs of existence is a networked flow of events. The mind of Knowmads does not attach importance to the possession of an idea, or to the particular manner in which embodiment is produced and manifested. Knowmads travel in and upon information seas, creating temporary habitats as infocologies, without bias and no denomination. Knowmads are evolutionary agents, creating, designing, partaking and co-depending on infoflows.

post update Apr 15:

7.To be a Knowmad is to be a different kind of being, a different way of being, a facilitator of cultures, against monoculture and mono-linguistics, we need creative templates for the next kind of freedom to come forth.

8. Knowmads are different in as much as they are an embodiment of the progress of the evolutionary principle in culture. Knowmads are inclusive beings, ordering chaotic flows of information into cultural phenomena.

9. The Knowmad is the proactive stance of the hyperconnected player in the infosphere, she moves, he surfs, we collaborate, we actively engage and indeed pattern new potentials into new forms of existence.

10. Knowmads excel in ambiguous situations, demystifying mythologies, enhancing syntax and semantics conversion into actual adaptation of new forms of meaning, these in turn change the very meaning of enmeshed existence.

Interlude

Knowmads are substantial agents of change, who drastically alter the infocologies they interact with. The level of freedom implied by the knowmadic state is a new existential virtuality that pushes into the real, in the process transforming and meshing the different dimensions in which our minds operate. Existing as non-localized behaviors of information processing, Knowmads are not consumers and cannot be looked upon as capital. Knowmads are the innovators of thought and vision, using an insight mechanism based on correlated data-spheres of complex infocologies.
Knowmads do not care for labels of old style paradigms, such as gender ,creed, race or indeed status, what Knowmads care about are the pleasures derived in forming new connections, mash-ups and provisional options, innovative solutions for the next step in human evolution.
Our complex neuro-mesh firing in tandem, has produced this amazing property we call conscious awareness, with the advent of 21st century tech, augmented reality apps, visually stunning info-graphics, virtualities at our finger tips, p2p technologies availability and the like we are becoming Knowmads. The value of the Knowmad state is thus in providing a fresh framework and a new narrative to fill our old storytelling needs in our ever-increasing process of self-description.


shortly to be continued.. (with notion states and hybrid futures)


endnotes:
# this is part 1 of part 4
image 1, 2 from Cern
image 3 from Wayne Levin Images

Wed, Mar 31, 2010  Permanent link
Categories: culture, polytopia, collective intelligence, Futures, Evolution,Knowmad,
Sent to project: Polytopia

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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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