Dear Buttons:

Sorry I haven’t been able to call you; I’ve been busy, overwhelmed really.

But not with work or family duties. Of course, these responsibilities occupy my time – nothing important is neglected.

But neither of these have prevented me from keeping in touch as I used to.

No, what has consumed what little spare time I have is a leitmotif triggered by a K-Punk posted article about “The Prestige“, a film I’m very eager to see.

Here’s an excerpt:

The Prestige is of course about the power of film and fiction to cast spells. Its own captivation depends upon keeping the question of its own generic status open: are we watching a simulation of 1890s narrative realism or have we – as some IMDB commenters complained without irony – been ‘conned’ into watching an SF film? The film’s final irony concerns the fact that, to function as magic, genuine science must appear as an illusion.

The full essay can be found here.

This got me thinking about science and magic or, more specifically, what might happen if our techniques became so subtle that they were, to quote Arthur C. Clarke, “…indistinguishable from magic”.

In a pop sci fi scenario, this very situation leads to an advanced species believing itself to be gods and insisting, accordingly, upon the worship of mortals.

Perhaps, in the real, this is what the powerful do to the powerless: demand not only obedience but worship.

Recently, on “60 Minutes“, Bush declared:

I think the Iraqi people owe the American people a huge debt of gratitude. … We’ve endured great sacrifice to help them. … (Americans) wonder whether or not there is a gratitude level that’s significant enough in Iraq.

Which has, I think, a certain ‘hallowed am I‘ ring to it.

Love,

d.

For many years I’ve depended upon the uber-geek site, slashdot.org for my (mostly Linux focused) information fix.

Slashdot.org accepts entries from users but there’s a strong editorial filtering process – call it a council of gurus – performing quality control.

More recently, Digg.com has made a large splash, grabbing some attention away from slashdot.org.

Digg is built upon the community participation model – the hive – for its content. A friend refers to this type of content portfolio building (which services such as YouTube also depend upon) as a bake your own bread and circuses business model.

I still see tremendous value in the hierarchical, guru approach but I wonder for how long? The hive-mind technique appears to be growing in strength with each passing day.

In the not really distant tomorrow, will even corporate-created, top-down television, movies and music be, if not replaced, heavily subsidized by the hive-mind?

How strange.

I’m tired and my eyes hurt and yet, I must, for some reason write this down.

Here’s how it happened…

Quite suddenly, I stopped doing whatever it was I was doing (I’m being unnecessarily vague, “whatever it was” was, in fact, creating SMTP relays for a data retention system). There, on the table before me was a plastic cup.

In fact, this very cup.

Here’s what I thought…

How is this cup made? What are the components of plastic? What’s the manufacturing process?

Of course, all these questions can be answered by a visit to the library or, even more conveniently geektacular, a Google search or virtual trip to Wikipedia’s article on plastic.

Information is available.

And that’s nice and good and praiseworthy and important. But consider this: in middle school, I listened to a science teacher describe the (imagined) mindset of early humans.  They saw the sun and didn’t know what it was and what made it behave this way and not that way.  Surely, considering its mysterious properties, it must be a god or otherwise super-natural.   Also, wind and rain and lightning and birth and death – all profound mysteries, all worshiped and otherwise wrapped in mythologies to provide some sort of explanation.

And now here I am, a clean shaved modern wearing partially synthetic clothes, effortlessly communicating with people on the other side of the planet, equipped with devices that extend my mind’s power and my body’s reach.

And all that’s nice and good and praiseworthy. But the level of complexity bound up in even mundane objects – such as a plastic cup – is non-trivial. In fact, it’s so great I can’t hope to really understand the workings of much (perhaps most) of my surroundings. Not just the composition of objects but the workings of the vast bureaucracies shaping my prospects. The information is available (so I don’t precisely face the early humans’ problem of how to explain) but there’s too much of it.

Perhaps this growing complexity partially explains the appeal of the simple rules and narratives of American-style evangelical Christianity. During a quiet interlude The Book of the New Sun trilogy briefly depicts a tribe of humans who have elected to undergo surgery and other treatments which regress them to an earlier cognitive moment in our species’ evolution.

They retreat from the super-complexity of stellar age humanity.

Perhaps regressive religious belief is the cognitive version of this.

How much complexity can the human mind accept and gracefully handle? How much ambiguity is possible?

Is the difference between Neanderthal and astronaut as great as we think?

What is the origin of a state of mind? For example, horniness.

But before that.

..

Today I’m thinking about fantasies.

Specifically, two different fantasies.

One fantasy is that everyday I write blog entries so precise and lovely – as well defined and perception shattering as a haiku composed by Matsuo Basho himself – that each morning brings readers a new, perfectly shaped jewel of thought.

Another fantasy involves the Pussy Cat Dolls, pictured above. Let’s spend a moment thinking about that.

A brief story.

Years ago I worked for a small bank. The work made me feel as if my mind was being crushed by extra-dimensional gravity waves so lunch time was particularly precious. One sunny day, I walked with a friend from the bank to a nearby park. A woman – wearing towering heels, a micro mini and sporting an oddly high-pitched voice, she also managed an ocean of hair – walked over and pushed fliers into our willing hands. They were advertisements for a new strip club recently opened in town.

“Wow, she’s hot.” My friend said. Then he paused and looked at the fliers. “But then again, do I really think that or am I only responding to some sort of program?” He was a thoughtful chap, not suited to endure the crushing gravitons of bank life.

In the age of advanced advertising technologies, where do fantasies come from? Are they still spontaneously generated (were they ever?), or are they largely shaped by mass communication transmitted arousal elements?

So here I am, too busy to write the post I dream of writing. It starts as light and turns to dust.

Nevertheless, something comes to mind.

The Huge Entity’s Mr. Danieru writes:

Perhaps when our computers become powerful enough to aid in their own AI design we will have truly pushed our last evolutionary snow ball. Why would a universe need an organically evolved, ancient and primitive mind such as ours when it has minds which can participate in their own evolution?

Which reminds me that there are competing visions of super cognition – artificial intelligence and enhanced brains. Consider, for example, the Mentat, described in Wikipedia:

Following the Butlerian Jihad in the Dune universe’s back story, it was forbidden to create man-like machines

“Thou Shalt not make a machine in the likeness of the human mind”

- Rayna Butler, as told to her by the spirit of saint Serena.

Thinking machines were outlawed throughout the universe, and the mentat discipline was developed as a replacement. Mentats are humans trained to be able to mimic computers: human minds developed to staggering heights of cognitive and analytical ability. Ironically, the first Mentat was selected by a thinking machine. Gilbertus Albans, selected from the Corrin slave pens about 180 B.G. by the independent robot Erasmus, displayed the first cognitive thinking and computer-like calculation capacity necessary for a Mentat. The term ‘mentat’ was coined by Erasmus, created from the words ‘mentor’ and ‘mentee’.

The name mentat is derived from mentis, meaning ‘of the mind’ in Latin.

Unlike computers, however, Mentats are not simply human calculators writ large. Instead, the exceptional cognitive abilities of memory and perception are the foundations for supra-logical hypothesizing. Mentats are able to sift large volumes of data and devise concise analyses in a process that goes far beyond logical deduction: Mentats cultivate “the naïve mind”, the mind without preconception or prejudice, that can extract the essential patterns or logic of data and deliver, with varying degrees of certainty, useful conclusions. They are not limited to formulating syllogisms; they are the supreme counselors of the Dune universe, filling roles as menial as archivists and clerks, or as grand as advisor to the Emperor.

[...]

full at Wikipedia (didn’t I tell you it was my new god? I patiently await its inevitable crucifixion and resurrection).

In the final battle between luminous machines and super charged minds, what entity will prevail?

Here’s a thought…

In America – and of course, many other places besides – religious activists are keenly concerned about the interface of entertainment – images and sounds – and minds.

A recent example is the effort directed against the movie version of the Da Vinci Code (about which, tangentially, I turn your attention to Barista’s thoughts on Dan Brown’s formula for success).

Is there any irony to be squeezed out of this? Perhaps. Let’s try. Religious and moral objectors use phrases such as ‘polluting the culture’, ‘leading youth astray’ and ‘blasphemy’ when denouncing entertainment products they dislike.

Another way of putting this might be to say they’re objecting to the evolutionary potential of entertainment – the cultural morphing possibilities (which, to give credit where it’s due, they take more seriously than neutral observers who fail to understand the mind shaping potential). Their fears of losing influence (that is, dominance of the idea pool) as a consequence of pop culture can be re-interpreted as a realistic assessment of the prospects and not, as those of us who don’t share their preoccupations so often think, merely anti-intellectual or anti-sexual expression or anti-fun paranoia.

In a way (and here, I’ll admit, comes a bit of a stretch but there’s a gossamer thematic thread linking the religious objectors to what I’m about to present) the fretful pop culture watchers are accidentally echoing a thought Gene Youngblood expressed in his book, Expanded Cinema

a work brought to my attention by DataIsNature:

The Intermedia Network as Nature

The point I wish to make here is obvious yet vital to an understanding of the function of art in the environment, even though it isconsistently ignored by the majority of film critics. It’s the idea that man is conditioned by his environment and that “enviromnent” for contemporary man is the intermedia network. We are conditioned more by cinema and television than by nature. Once we’ve agreed upon this, it
becomes immediately obvious that the structure and content of popular cinema is a matter of cardinal importance, at least as serious as most political issues, and thus calls for comment not from journalists but from those who work at the matter, artists themselves.

The cinema isn’t just something inside the environment; the intermedia network of cinema, television, radio, magazines, books, and newspapers is our environment, a service environment that carries the messages of the social organism. It establishes meaning in life, creates mediating channels between man and man, man and society. In earlier periods such traditional meaning and value communication was carried mainly in the fine and folk arts. But today these are subsumed amongst many communicating modes. The term ‘arts’ requires expansion to include those advanced technological media which are neither fine nor folk.
[...]

full at Ubu.com

The Huge Entity’s Mr. Danieru writes

I am still left wondering about true infinity, at least that which consciousness can attain. What would be the nature of a stimulus which had the capacity to assimilate an endless variety of schema? Or alternatively, is there such thing as a mental construct, a concept, which has no limit to the stimulus it can assimilate? Perhaps the mind of God is capable in its imagined brevity to perceive every objective truth from an infinity of angles. In fact, this need necessarily be the case for any infinitely capable being, such as God. To this kind of consciousness even the proverbial dog shit you carry around on your shoes has an infinite number of ways it can be perceived.

Which reminds me of the following…

Sex, it seemed, was always on my Bible teacher’s mind.

Or at least, the sex I, and my fellow teenagers, may or may not have been slurping seemed to be foremost in her troubled thoughts.

We were taught to wait until marriage to pursue the fleshy arts because God, through his divine word as recorded in the Bible, ordered sex to be contained within the marital bond, like plasma magnetically confined in a magnetic bottle.
We were also taught that God was omnipotent and omniscient – powerful without limit and simultaneously aware of everything, everywhere.

A staggering concept, to say the least.

One day it struck me as odd – quite odd indeed – that an omnipotent and omniscient entity, a creature whose consciousness was so very different from ours it could accurately be described as alien, would have as one of its chief concerns the sexual antics of a 17 year old talking monkey stuck on a planet circling a nondescript star in a galaxy of pretty common characteristics. Weren’t there pan dimensional matters to attend to? Perhaps some cosmically immense war to wage between new and old gods. Surely anything else of cosmic importance besides the details of my Saturday night date with Marietta (which went very well, my 17 year-old self is happy to report from the past).

I asked my Bible teacher about this apparent contradiction between God’s reported infinitude and his side job as sex cop on the teen interception beat. Her reply was noncommittal and crafted to turn me away from these kinds of questions and back towards the text – the infallible text.

Needless to say, in the battle between hormones and religious instruction the hormones prevailed so the effort was for naught.

Still, beyond the immediate details of that period, this idea – that there’s a tension between the Christian concept of God as infinite and God as profoundly personal – has stayed with me.

Perhaps Aquinas or some other luminary of the classical Church tackled this question and produced a cleverly devised answer to save the appearances (e.g. “it is through his infinite knowledge of every possible outcome of every decision branching that God cultivated concern for the destructive effects of wanton sexuality on his precious creation – he knows what’s good for you because he knows all…”).

For the religously faithful, what is the most compelling demonstration of commitment?

Living an exemplary life – according to the divinely designed rules of one’s religion – is certainly one way. “Bearing witness”, proselytizing to create converts and pull them into the fold is another.

By far, some of the most common manifestations of religious ardor are the loud complaint, the fiery outburst, the flame singed riot. The depth of our commitment is expressed by the will to disrupt a society’s established order.

Two scattered examples…

Having a nervous breakdown as a sign of faith: The God Warrior defends her belief system

American television viewers might be familiar with a FOX program named Trading Spouses (a concept borrowed, I’m told, from a BBC show – like so many American TV ideas). The premise is simple: two families exchange mothers for several weeks; their inevitable discomfort is filmed for our amusement.

In 2005, a Born Again woman named Margaret was temporarily swapped into a New Age home.

After a short while, her network selected family’s “pagan” habits compelled her to emotionally explode, declaring the family (perfectly nice, as far as you could tell through the fun house mirror of televised reality) to be, ominously, “not of God!”

As I watched her outburst, it seemed to me to be a defensive maneuver of sorts, meant to create a safe zone around herself that kept alien ideas at bay. She appeared to desperately need a buffer from the unfamiliar and her irrational eruption (perhaps, per R. D. Laing, a rational response to what appeared to her to be an irrational situation) was precisely the thing.

I think, as she grew closer to the non-Christian family, she sensed a weakening of her born again cognitive framework and reacted quickly and dramatically to shore it up by creating a wall.

The Dutch Newspaper Cartoon Insult to Muhammad: demonstrating seriousness of purpose through violence

Earlier this year, what the BBC quaintly called the “cartoon row” spread like a wildfire. Following the publication of editorial cartoons caricaturing the Prophet, Muslim communities across the world expressed their displeasure through both peaceful and violent means.

Flags (among other things) were burned and that ubiquitous symbol of the modern era, police in riot gear, emerged from their imposing black vans to restore order through rubber bullets, clubs, mace and other pain-tech. False tranquility was replaced by emotional excess.

In the Western media, various thinkers – shallow and deep – wondered, in ways dependent upon political leaning and world view – why the Islamic world was so allergic to freedom of the press or, alternately, so wounded and humiliated as to resort to these outbursts in defense of their faith’s honor.

What I wondered about was the human urge to display fidelity to a credo through public violence. Nonchalance is not an option when it comes to faith. In fact, a relaxed or philosophical view may be the enemy of sustained belief.

We must show, sometimes through shouting, other times through dramatic violence, that our beliefs are not to be taken lightly.

Religious belief is a part of our evolutionary heritage. And it may be that violence in defense of our beliefs is as inevitable as death, sooner or later, following birth.

Dreamers dream of some future moment when the peaceful co-existence of all faiths is achieved. Some go further and dream of a religion-less world.

Considering our cognitive equipment, as currently understood, can either of these dreams be realized?

There’s a moment in 2002’s Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla when a police officer, a few miles away from the ominously approaching atomic beast, watches in stunned wonder as the monster reduces buildings to smoking rubble with its electric blue plasma breath.

He’s simultaneously frightened and riveted by the spectacle.

In 2005’s War of the Worlds, as the alien war machines make their first appearance, Tom Cruise’s character pauses – along with others – to look at the towering instruments of the world’s impending destruction with a sort of half smile, like a child enchanted by a new toy.

During the 2003 invasion of Iraq, as “smart bombs” rained on Baghdad, a group of men and women – middle class American office workers – gathered with their lunches in an empty conference room, tuned into CNN and watched the remote controlled catastrophe on a large, flat screen television.

…

Shortly after 9/11/01, Baudrillard wrote the following about the day and its meaning:

All the speeches and commentaries betray a gigantic abreaction to the event itself and to the fascination that it exerts. Moral condemnation and the sacred union against terrorism are equal to the prodigious jubilation engendered by witnessing this global superpower being destroyed; better, by seeing it more or less self-destroying, even suiciding spectacularly. Though it is (this superpower) that has, through its unbearable power, engendered all that violence brewing around the world, and therefore this terrorist imagination which — unknowingly — inhabits us all.

That we have dreamed of this event, that everybody without exception has dreamt of it, because everybody must dream of the destruction of any power hegemonic to that degree, — this is unacceptable for Western moral conscience, but it is still a fact, and one which is justly measured by the pathetic violence of all those discourses which attempt to erase it.

It is almost they who did it, but we who wanted it. If one does not take that into account, the event lost all symbolic dimension to become a pure accident, an act purely arbitrary, the murderous fantasy of a few fanatics, who would need only to be suppressed. But we know very well that this is not so. Thus all those delirious, counter-phobic exorcisms: because evil is there, everywhere as an obscure object of desire. Without this deep complicity, the event would not have had such repercussions, and without doubt, terrorists know that in their symbolic strategy they can count on this unavowable complicity.

[...]

full here

We entertain ourselves with both imaginary and real images of massive destruction. Even as we cringe, we look on in fascination.

What element of the human psyche is revealed by investigating this element of our behavior?

A sketch of an idea…

The anime series Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex imagines a near future in which computational technology achieves its apotheosis. In many ways, the series is a pop philosophical scenario masquerading as a sci/fi action thriller.

Computers are no longer merely tools but have become a part of human bodies, woven into the physical and ethereal fabric of our minds – simultaneously enhancing and degrading our capabilities.

This new situation makes new sorts of activities possible including, of course, new methods of criminality.

The central story of “Stand Alone Complex, 1st Gig” is the saga of a terrorist whom the police call Laughing Man.

Among other exceptional skills the Laughing Man is able to hack what are called cyberbrains – a sort of cognitive co-processor attached to the natural brain. By remotely manipulating a person’s network accessible cyberbrain Laughing Man is able to achieve a variety of interesting effects such as preventing a hacked mind from processing something or someone that’s in its real-world field of view. Needless to say, this makes escape from a spectacular crime scene masses should have witnessesed (and indeed, did witness at a mechanical, that is, optical level, but could not consciously perceive) not only possible but elegantly simple.

…

In the United States, people inhabiting various enclaves of belief – including liberal, ‘paleo-conservative’, progressive and so on – hotly debate how the Bush administration and its camp followers (e.g. the religious social engineers who concern themselves with policing non-adherence to allegedly Christian ideals) have managed to attract a sizable number of followers despite quite public and bloody failures and the pursuit of policies which are not necessarily in the interest of their most ardent fans.

A popular theory, forcefully expressed by Thomas Frank in What’s the Matter with Kansas, asserts that Republicans have been able to convince people to vote against their material requirements (economic, educational and so on) by creating a powerful propaganda machine which focuses voters’ attention on so-called social or ‘culture war’ issues and away from more fundamental matters. A slight of hand, or, a brain hack. The real needs are there, right before people’s eyes but they’re hacked into believing them to be less important than conceptual flights into patriotism, idealized traditionalism and American exceptionalism.

Bush’s entire presidency can be seen as one long, uninterrupted hack in which verifiable information is incapable of penetrating a powerful perceptual wall.

Even so, Frank’s thesis has been convincingly challenged by Princeton’s Larry Bartels who argues that ‘bread and butter’ issues are not as marginalized in voters’ minds as Frank thinks.

Even if Frank’s explanation for Republican victories is flawed politics in the United States obviously moves at several levels at once: some concrete (will a new school be built in my area?) others intangible (legalized Gay marriage will mean the end of civilization).

Assuming the propaganda component of modern American politics – the brain hackable vector – is critical (and there’s very strong evidence for this – for example, the remarkable amount of time American politicians spend courting ideological blocs with unworldly, religiously inspired agendas) have we reached the moment when the only effective tool for contending with political adversaries is by creating counter hacks?

If a recitation of dry, yet vital facts is insufficient to woo public opinion, is a war of illusion against illusion required?

And if so, what would ‘our’ counter hack be?