Asides
The extension we call the net
The extension we call the net, the grid, the Infobahn, is more than the sum of its parts, it may perchance lead to an actual organizing principle of reality itself. An organizing principle somewhat akin to an operating system, yet directed, and multidimensional, interactive and intelligent.
—Wildcat: Mind Habitat, the quest for a home
Related posts:
- Social scientists have a name for this sort of incessant online contact. They call it “ambient awareness.” It is, they say, very much like being physically near someone and picking up on his mood through the little things he does — body language, sighs, stray comments — out of the corner of your eye.
Each little update — each individual bit of social information — is insignificant on its own, even supremely mundane. But taken together, over time, the little snippets coalesce into a surprisingly sophisticated portrait of your friends’ and family members’ lives, like thousands of dots making a pointillist painting. This was never before possible, because in the real world, no friend would bother to call you up and detail the sandwiches she was eating. The ambient information becomes like “a type of E.S.P.,” as Haley described it to me, an invisible dimension floating over everyday life.Source: New York Times
- Dennett argues that the 'hard problem' is a red herring - the whole question of how conscious first person experience arises from the biological function of the brain assumes that consciousness is a single thing that needs explaining. He suggests that there isn't a single thing that is consciousness, just a collection of mental components, but the fact we've named it as a single thing fools us. In his article Explaining the "Magic" of Consciousness, he gives a great analogy of how the use of the word 'the' was used in a card trick to make it seem completely mysterious even to fellow professional magicians. Article continues here. via Mind Hackers
- Our mental privacy and cognitive liberty depend first and foremost on the difference of interconnectivity. Moreover, the very concept of the individual, as currently understood, depends on the difference in interconnectivity. Once this difference changes, i.e. internal states of the nervous system are becoming increasingly accessible, our very notion of privacy, privileged access, cognitive liberty and individuality should be reassessed. Bottom line is that in the future the very definition of individuality will probably be derived not from the arbitrary conditions of one’s biological makeup, but rather how one is connected and to what. via Spaceweaver | Space Collective
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© 2008 Reckon . 
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