Big Transition

 The biggest transition since…

by Prometheus

I was reading an old article in Time magazine about the singularity and the author made the bold claim that the singularity is the biggest transition in human history since the invention of language.  I thought this was kind of a funny thing to say, especially since language has no real beginning point, all life communicates (and I’m sure similar sliding scale arguments can be applied to the singularity).

So, what transition is as big a deal as the singularity? industrialism? agriculture? no, nothing that small. The singularity is a broader event even than human history. it belongs perhaps to a higher class of transitions, such as the transition from simple to complex cells, or cells to multicellular life. I would say it’s even more significant, on par with the beginning of life on this planet, or the beginning of the universe. Is that too far you think?

I’m reminded of the Low Energy Nuclear Reaction technology I talked a bit about. A few people complared such a discovery to the discovery of fire, saying it would bring about explosive possibilities (pun). Seemingly free limitless energy on a small cheap scale, massive amounts of intelligence to create and harness that energy, This situation is far beyond the way that life has worked on this planet for the last 4 billion years.

Window to the soulThere is significance here far beyond life on our planet. This is an event of universal significance, this is the time that the universe begins to recognize itself as the universe. Our sense of individuality, our separateness from each other, is completely threatened by our urge to build intelligence and deconstruct our minds into basic replicatable parts, our incessant drive to share our thoughts, feelings, memories, and opinions. when we no longer own all of this information in our brains, when that information is free, your “self” can be distributed everywhere. Any matter can be turned into intelligence and perception, the entire universe is soil for the growth of intelligence. This is why I say this is the time of the universe recognizing itself as the universe. We are the universe, erupting exponentially with intelligence and consciousness, this is the transition toward that realization.

-Prometheus

psychesingularity

Big Brother

From BigBrotherWatch

Some time ago, Big Brother Watch was contacted by a person who had just been visited by the police. Not because he was suspected of a crime or involved in one. The Police wanted to know what he was planning when the Olympic Torch Relay came to town. We’re told an 80 year old man was also visited.

This wasn’t based on any evidence something was being planned, nor had the individual been involved in anti-Olympic protests at other points on the torch relay. So we decided to find out how many others had been visited.

It turned out Devon and Cornwall Constabulary visited 18 people, which seemed a surprisingly high number. So we decided to ask every other force in the country if they’d done the same.

On Monday this week we receieved six responses. Since then we’ve had a further ten. All the responses, with one exception, are  identical. We can only assume someone, somewhere has supplied the forces with the template response to our request, but the detail is quite remarkable for it’s tone and severity.

The forces claim that “Disclosure of the information requested would cause operational harm to [insert force name] and affect the force’s ability to fulfil the core function of law enforcement in the future”

Apparently it’s a secret that the police talk to people.

It goes on: “The release of information identifying the focus of policing activity in safeguarding public order and the prevention of terrorism could be used to the advantage of terrorists or criminal organisations.”

So anyone planning to protest during the Olympic torch relay is a terrorist now?

 “To disclose intelligence, tactics and methods used to ensure the safety and security of the Olympic Torch Relay may make them ineffectual for future similar events and future Olympic Torch Relays which may pass through the United Kingdom.”

You’d be forgiven for thinking we’re making this up, but alas no.

The fact that police forces are devoting resources to pre-crime investigations about they Olympic torch relay demonstrates how utterly out of proportion the Olympic security operation has become. Rather than investigating crimes that have actually happened, the police are wasting their time questioning people about a potential protest, something that is neither a crime nor a security risk.

After the Future

The following is excerpted from The Open-Source Everything Manifesto: Transparency, Truth, & Trust published by Evolver Editions, an imprint of North Atlantic Books.

 The circumstances underlying this manifesto are stark and compelling: We are at the end of a five-thousand-year-plus historical process during which human society grew in scale while it abandoned the early indigenous wisdom councils and communal decision-making. Power was centralized in the hands of increasingly specialized "elites" and "experts" who not only failed to achieve all they promised but used secrecy and the control of information to deceive the public into allowing them to retain power over community resources that they ultimately looted.

In the beginning, there was the commons. Over vast stretches of prehistoric time, tribal cultures evolved in tandem with the natural environment. They did this without creating private property or hierarchical relationships of control and dominance that led to consumption of nature as a resource. Open-source culture provided for community sharing and community development. With the rise of patriarchy, empire, and systems of egoic control and empowerment, this open-source approach to community was destroyed. Over the course of the last centuries, the commons was fenced, and everything from agriculture to water was commoditized without regard to the true cost in non-renewable resources. Human beings, who had spent centuries evolving away from slavery, were re-commoditized by the Industrial Era.

The corruption of the commons led to the loss of integrity between and among individuals, organizations, and community. Artificial paradises made up of objects and possessions were substituted for true community based on authentic heart-to-heart relationships. Secular corruption is made possible by information asymmetries between those in power and the public. In the absence of transparency, truth, and trust, wealth is concentrated and waste is rampant.

We, Homo sapiens, were in harmony with the Cosmos and the Earth during earlier centuries when indigenous wisdom prevailed. The evolution of social forms and technology toward ever-greater levels of complexity is part of our human development toward deeper consciousness and self-awareness. The technosphere, as José Argüelles and others have realized, is the necessary detour that takes us from the pristine biosphere to the psychically collectivized state of the noosphere.

Reality Disproved

Eventually, in a narrative of the artificial intelligence singularity, computers become so advanced that desktop PCs are able to process with incredible speed beyond the collective brain-power of every man, woman, and child who ever lived.  And if this were the case, a proposal known as "simulation theory" suggests that the chances of being a product of one of these simulations is almost guaranteed.  So how did one Oxford University Professor call everything in reality into question?

The paper at the centre of the controversy is titled "Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?"  Nick Bostrom, award winning Swedish Philosopher and professor may have come dangerously close to disproving reality as we know it.  Circulated in 2003, the paper goes down the rabbit hole to suggest that we are not, as many have taken for granted, in a physical world governed by immutable laws that transcend the fabric of the universe dictated by forces unknown at its periphery. 

Instead, it puts forward the following three possible scenarios given today's already emerging technological trends.  First, it says it is quite possible that the human race will inevitably go extinct before it achieves a "posthuman" stage where artificial intelligence is able to improve upon itself in a Ray Kurzweil style AI singularity.  If that is not the case, it suggests the idea that some factor in the human race's future will prevent more than a handful of advanced computer simulations of its own past from being built.  And the final scenario it puts forward is the most shocking of all - that we are currently living in an environment generated entirely by a computer.  And that's not all.  According to the paper, even our very minds may be simply byproducts of the computer simulation.  It states that rather than a mere possibility, the likelihood of our being made from information is surprisingly high.