The obelisk is an iPhone
A conversation about whether evolution has a ‘mind’
I conversed with my 10 yo about the idea that evolution might have a mind. I believe that it does. It is not a physical mind in the sense that we think of the chemical/physiological extension of a brain. More like the chemical extension of trees.
Intelligence as evolutionary preference
We choose to be more or less intelligent. In degrees. We choose to have more or less information, process it, and make use of it. What would happen, (what if, if you will,) if we decided to be less intelligent, to work against our progress? Perhaps this exists already, in the interest of regression to a simpler time, maybe. What benefits exist, if any, in organized ignorance? This idea, as I write it, seems sacrilegious to progress. But what if it is the progressive path?
Data as prespectrometry chaos
We have limitless data coming at us all the time, in the form of visual information, light, smells, GPS coordinates, and so on. How do we interpret it? It is a fire-hose and we are looking for a water fountain. Filtering becomes necessary.
Hidden senses such as the limits of the eye to see the entire spectrum
We show the chemical makeup of suns as we look at them through a prism and telescope. What will the data driven sensor based data interpretation do for us, socially, and ideologically?
“Interfacing ion mobility spectrometry to mass spectrometry (IMS–MS) has enabled mass spectrometric analyses to extend into an extra dimension, providing unrivalled separation and structural characterization of lowly populated species in heterogeneous mixtures. One biological system that has benefitted significantly from such advances is that of amyloid formation. Using IMS–MS, progress has been made into identifying transiently populated monomeric and oligomeric species for a number of different amyloid systems and has led to an enhanced understanding of the mechanism by which small molecules modulate amyloid formation.” – http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3787735/
GPS as sense of direction
I have a ridiculously poor sense of direction, and yet, with my phone, I will never get lost ever again. Ever. In a world where getting lost is impossible, will we work to lose ourselves? will it be a game? A lesson?
“Cooper switched on her GPS in the hopes that ‘Nell’ would bring them home, but in a 121 degree-weather, the confused device ended up taking the trio of day trippers further into the desert. After about 100 miles, the women were completely lost. To make matters worse, their car ran out of gas and they no longer had cell phone service to call for help.” – http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2293713/Three-women-recount-lost-Death-Valley-THREE-DAYS-GPS-error.html
Camera as time machine
All of my memories are available, chronologically ordered, tagged and organized. I do not need to remember in my brain, because the evidence of my existence exists in other ways.
Step counter as caloric expenditure
“Amazing Product! It motivates me to reach my goals!. This device is very accurate in my experience, and more importantly it motivates you to reach the goals you set. Excellent job Fitbit!” –
Technology is a solution for our human shortcomings.
I believe that we are years deep into a human evolution based on technology that will extend what we think of as sense, and will change how we emote
I get frustrated when people complain about technology, because of its potential
Technology is not at fault, any more than a fire is at fault in the destruction of a home, it could have just as easily been used to make dinner. Guns don’t kill people, sociopaths kill people. Phones don’t make people antisocial, the phone/tablet is just a tool for those who want to do that.
My belief
I think that we are in the midst of a relatively quick evolutionary change due to the quickly accelerating use and portability of technology. I would argue that we are human-robot hybrids now, because we benefit from all the sensors and extended senses of the devices we carry, even if they are not literally and directly connected to us, as science fiction often predicts. This is similar to the idea that people are waiting for the future to come where flying cars exist. They exist now, we call them planes. Smartphones are adapters that allow us to have time travel, audio capability over long distances, an amazing global sense of direction, the ability to know what thousands of people are talking about at once. We are becoming a kind of god, knowing all of what is going on all at once, a few typed keys away from knowing the answer to anything that is known and shared openly.
In a single device. we can publish globally in a second, a dream never imagined by Gutenberg. We are our own television and radio stations, media creators who have a global audience waiting. We can send a thought out in text, audio, video, image, photograph, and endless mixtures of all of them. Everything is recorded, and readily retrievable, to boot.
I am able to watch any movie ever published, listen to any song, listen to any recorded speech in history, look at any photo. More personally, my entire recorded history in text, photography, music, video, and everything else digital is available to me, now, from any internet connected device, including one that I’ve never touched before. We live in an amazing time. What will happen next is a more streamlined connection between us and devices. For example, wearable technology is emerging, a further alignment between our flesh and these devices. Google Glass, Android wear, and Fitbit all point to devices that might one day simply be embedded in us, but for now, they are just very close to our bodies.
“Let’s talk about magnet implants. I don’t really bring it up much, but I have a small rare earth magnet implanted in the pinkie finger on my right hand. I’ve had it for around three years now.” – http://gizmodo.com/5895555/i-have-a-magnet-implant-in-my-finger
On the death of privacy
“Google knows what you’re looking for. Facebook knows what you like. Sharing is the norm, and secrecy is out. But what is the psychological and cultural fallout from the end of privacy?” – http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/03/internet-death-privacy-google-facebook-alex-preston
“In Jewish tradition, the Tree of Knowledge and the eating of its fruit represents the beginning of the mixture of good and evil together. Before that time, the two were separate, and evil had only a nebulous existence in potentia. While free choice did exist before eating the fruit, evil existed as an entity separate from the human psyche, and it was not in human nature to desire it. Eating and internalizing the forbidden fruit changed this and thus was born the yeitzer hara, the Evil Inclination.[6][7] In Rashi’s notes on Genesis 3:3, the first sin came about because Eve added an additional clause to the Divine command: Neither shall you touch it. By saying this, Eve added to YHWH’s command and thereby came to detract from it, as it is written: Do not add to His Words (Proverbs 30:6).” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_of_the_knowledge_of_good_and_evil
“All things are wearisome; Man is not able to tell it. The eye is not satisfied with seeing, Nor is the ear filled with hearing. That which has been is that which will be, And that which has been done is that which will be done. So there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one might say, “See this, it is new “? Already it has existed for ages Which were before us.…” – http://biblehub.com/ecclesiastes/1-9.htm
On Application Permissions
“Much of the problem, Facebook says, is due to Android’s rigid policy on permissions. Facebook says it doesn’t get to write its own, and instead must use generic language provided to them by Android. The language in the permissions “doesn’t necessarily reflect the way the Messenger app and other apps use them,” Facebook wrote in a Help Center article designed to address what it calls misinformation on the topic.” – http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/08/08/facebook-messenger-privacy-fears-heres-what-you-need-to-know/
In short
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