A bit of shameless self promotion: my new eBook on creating your own social network is avalable on my web site. Or click the widget in the right panel.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Monday, March 16, 2009
How is Computer Programming the Same as the Genome—And What Does It Mean?
From my first blog on the topic of genetics, based on an amazing video on TED by Juan Enriquez, I speculated that the presence of programming as an underlying feature of Life means that an intelligence is ultimately the source of all being.
In the video, Enriquez uses the analogy of an apple, which executes code (DNA) when it receives enough energy from the sun, and drops from the tree. He adds that by modifying the code we can change the nature of the apple, or any organic life form.
The genetic code itself is being sequenced (decoded) according to the patterns of four letters, AGTC—which represent the names of the nucleotide bases, adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine, in a molecule of DNA. (Wikipedia).
As Gina Smith explains in her book, The Genomic Age, “Scientists figured out, in 1967, how DNA specifies the building of protein... Recall that in every life-form, the letters A, C, T, and G (i.e., the bases) perform the same function. They build proteins by instructing another chemical, called RNA, to put the proteins together one building block after another… The building blocks are called amino acids, and there are precisely twenty of them.”
So there is a code that gets executed that can be represented symbolically that underlies all of our life functions—physiologically and presumably also psychologically.
More recently there have been advances in the field of epigenetics, which is the study of the chemical reactions that turn the genes on and off, and do so apparently on the basis of complex interactions with the environment.
Now bear in mind that Enriquez merely doesn’t use the apple as an analogy—he states literally that the code in the apple is the same as in files or programs you can move on a flash drive.
But even if you are viewing this blog in a web browser, you may not be aware of what code or programming really represent.
For example, if you click on the setting in your browser that lets you “View Source”, under Page in Internet Explorer, you see a symbolic representation of this blog page that informs the browser on how to display it.
It’s pretty obvious that a conscious mind had to create the program that does this, at least to me.
A billion monkeys, even if they had a Windows PC each, would not produce the code or the program that could enable this to happen in a trillion years.
Let’s look at one more example—a macro in Microsoft Word. This macro runs the commands upon the click of a mouse that creates a red rectangle in a document.
Notice in this macro that if you change the language by changing the numbers representing the RGB (color) values, you change the nature of the rectangle—it changes color.
This is precisely like the Enriquez example—if you change the genetic structure (code) of its DNA, its nature is changed.
(In that sense, prayer or meditation might literally be "logging in...")
Now that's a program I'd like to download.
In the video, Enriquez uses the analogy of an apple, which executes code (DNA) when it receives enough energy from the sun, and drops from the tree. He adds that by modifying the code we can change the nature of the apple, or any organic life form.
The genetic code itself is being sequenced (decoded) according to the patterns of four letters, AGTC—which represent the names of the nucleotide bases, adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine, in a molecule of DNA. (Wikipedia).
As Gina Smith explains in her book, The Genomic Age, “Scientists figured out, in 1967, how DNA specifies the building of protein... Recall that in every life-form, the letters A, C, T, and G (i.e., the bases) perform the same function. They build proteins by instructing another chemical, called RNA, to put the proteins together one building block after another… The building blocks are called amino acids, and there are precisely twenty of them.”
So there is a code that gets executed that can be represented symbolically that underlies all of our life functions—physiologically and presumably also psychologically.
More recently there have been advances in the field of epigenetics, which is the study of the chemical reactions that turn the genes on and off, and do so apparently on the basis of complex interactions with the environment.
Now bear in mind that Enriquez merely doesn’t use the apple as an analogy—he states literally that the code in the apple is the same as in files or programs you can move on a flash drive.
But even if you are viewing this blog in a web browser, you may not be aware of what code or programming really represent.
For example, if you click on the setting in your browser that lets you “View Source”, under Page in Internet Explorer, you see a symbolic representation of this blog page that informs the browser on how to display it.
It’s pretty obvious that a conscious mind had to create the program that does this, at least to me.
A billion monkeys, even if they had a Windows PC each, would not produce the code or the program that could enable this to happen in a trillion years.
Let’s look at one more example—a macro in Microsoft Word. This macro runs the commands upon the click of a mouse that creates a red rectangle in a document.
Notice in this macro that if you change the language by changing the numbers representing the RGB (color) values, you change the nature of the rectangle—it changes color.
This is precisely like the Enriquez example—if you change the genetic structure (code) of its DNA, its nature is changed.
In programming this is called the object’s properties. In life it might be called the qualities of the life-form. What it is capable of doing is called its method in programming; again in life it may be called its being or nature.
So what does this mean?
Well for one thing, it means that we created computer software "in our own image"—consciously writing its code according to various intentions we had predetermined as meaningful and significant (displaying a web page, writing and editing a document, running a macro).
The internal logic of both the genetic code and our computer code is precise; if I change the code of the macro I change the rectangle, or if I screw up, I put a bug in the program and the result is an aborted macro and an error message.
In life, this might be deemed a mutation, or in the case of cells that don’t know what they should be doing, or do the wrong thing, cancer.
But we know how the computer and software “evolved”—it was no accident. No lightning bolt hit a bog or pile of primordial sludge and shot it awake like Frankenstein. Many brilliant scientists created increasingly sophisticated ways of switching on and off (zeroes and ones) various devices to make calculations and run programs, and increasingly sophisticated programs (instructions) were consciously created to run on these hardware devices, after being translated (compiled) from symbolic (English) language into machine language.
So based on the evidence, how and why do any of us presume that life is any different?
Increasingly all branches of science are coming up against the barrier that what is knowable must account for the presence of us—that the observer or consciousness is intimately involved in not only our perceptions of reality, but literally in what reality is. From quantum physics, to bio-physics, to particle physics, there is nothing (literally) that does not ultimately come up against the reality of consciousness.
Increasingly all branches of science are coming up against the barrier that what is knowable must account for the presence of us—that the observer or consciousness is intimately involved in not only our perceptions of reality, but literally in what reality is. From quantum physics, to bio-physics, to particle physics, there is nothing (literally) that does not ultimately come up against the reality of consciousness.
But what is consciousness? We know it as we experience it—it courses through our brains or more likely through our entire mind/bodies—and informs our perceptions and as biology has recently found, our thoughts and our health.
But suppose that the meaning of our science (and computers are our signpost or living metaphor) is that our deeper consciousness may literally connect us to whatever may be our programmer.
If we call the programmer God, it doesn’t explain anything—in the parlance of computer programming God is simply a variable for an unknown value—a mystery or a container for a value that is manifest through our existence.
But if we put aside our theories about God, or the programmer, what we can still say is that there are two ways for our program to run—programmed externally according to principles we barely understand, or possibly programmed by our “Self”.
But what is our Self?
If we meditate or self observe, we might reach the conclusion that it is not the bundle of thoughts that comprise our ego.
Rather, our true Self, at least in my humble opinion, is that part of us which is increasingly conscious of our connection to whatever (or whoever) is our programmer. While that connection is difficult if not impossible to define in words we can and do try (remember what there was “In the beginning”--the Word), but to the extent that we recognize that we are not in charge (our own programmer) and align ourselves with Life, Being, God, Higher Intelligence, Energy or whatever we might call it, we can manifest Its intentional higher consciousness through us.
This then would point to a split in what we do. If we act in alignment with what our higher intelligence suggests is true, we do good. If we remain oblivious to and disconnected from higher intelligence, and act unconsciously, that may be a pretty decent definition of evil.
And when we try to judge one or the other logically, with our left brain, we are caught up in paradoxical loops. The only way to truly know is through a higher center, probably in the right brain, that connects us with a higher logic—to our essential program and its Creator.
(In that sense, prayer or meditation might literally be "logging in...")
I remember when I first came to L.A. and needed a job, I worked at night at a law firm where an IBM word processing machine literally “trained me” in its internal logic, by going through a series of disks. Not surprisingly there was a bug in the program, and I needed to supersede it in order to get from disk 5 to disk 6. I got angry at the fallibility of the programmer, and yet I was in awe of the “mind in the machine.”
A similar insight can happen when you get pissed off at Windows. You can’t figure out why it’s doing what it’s doing—or what you’re doing “wrong.” Then through tech support, a friend, or by a miracle, you see the answer—and what’s clear is that by its internal logic—its “meaning”—the program is doing exactly the right thing. Now that you “get it”—you recognize the logic. But the intelligence behind it, until you got it, was literally “alien.”
We as a species are clearly at a crossroads. We can stay disconnected to the apparent higher source of our consciousness (unconscious) and become increasingly automated and mechanistic. As a recently heard, when Treasury Secretary Paulsen asked for the first TARP appropriation, and he was asked how he knew it was necessary, he replied, “the computers said so” [that without the funds the economy would collapse.]
Or through our science, technology and realization of the link between our creation (computers) and ultimate creation there is a higher intelligence (true consciousness) which we can connect with through our entire being (mind-body), and that by aligning ourselves with its truths (instead of our own imagined inferior (logical/ego) truths, we can not only survive, but truly evolve.
Now that's a program I'd like to download.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
New Thoughts on Intelligent Life
It's now been nearly three months since my last post. Those have not been easy months for many people, and I combined the stress from the business pages with some personal issues to fall into a deep hole of my own.
At this point I see myself climbing out of my hole but only perhaps having reached eye level. I still need to get out completely, see the hole for what it was, fill it up with love, and plant a tree.
Friends have told me that my low period (that’s actually an understatement) will result in a new approach to life, and I am finally at a point where I can accept and embrace that possibility and view it as inevitable.
Continuing this blog is now part of that process.
In my previous post about Epigenetics, I addressed the apparent presence of “software” in our bodies that interprets environmental factors and switches our genes on and off.
This process, as it turns out, is explained and extrapolated in a fascinating book by Bruce Lipton, “The Biology of Belief”. In it he identifies the cell membrane as the “computer chip” that literally processes the information from the environment and comprises a conduit for the subconscious or automatic (autonomic) functions in our bodies – mainly functions like breathing, sensing and other parts of the so-called parasympathetic nervous system (right brain) that we literally don’t think about.
According to Lipton and many developments in biology and neuroscience, we are not the determined result of our genetic makeup but rather an evolving organism continually replacing our cells and interacting with an environment that switches our genes on and off and affects our inner process through our parasympathetic nervous system.
Beyond the identification of the process as literally data processing like a computer chip, Lipton goes on to state that this subconscious part of our existence, which processes information at an exponentially faster rate than our conscious mind – consider how quickly you blink if an object is thrown at your eye – is also the storage area for our assumptions about the environment - programmed into us by our parents and peers at an early age (and even before birth itself – in the womb).
The book ends with an Addendum on one technique for reprogramming these assumptions in a way that reduces automatic fear (in my case unquestionably a big factor in the intensity of my “low period”) and suggests that a more positive set of assumptions can be adopted that will have beneficial impact throughout the body, based on seeing the environment as not hostile, but rather essentially neutral, and infusing an attitude of self-acceptance and love into one’s subconscious thoughts.
Neuroscience and psychology have come together in a number of new developments to embrace mindfulness (focused attention on the body) as a practice (meditation) that literally reprograms the prefrontal lobe of the brain to effectively integrate the right and left – so that past grief and negative “programs” can be overridden with a corresponding physical re-energizing of the body and in effect, spirit.
Spirit as an element of biology, psychology or indeed neuroscience. Who would have thought?
As Lipton suggests, it happened with quantum physics and it’s inevitable in biology, psychology and neuroscience.
It was about a year ago when my own discovery of the science of programmability of the genome of all life – with its analogous implications in terms of how human software is created (with a conscious intention) suggested to me that life was by no means a random occurrence, but was in fact a reflection of a much higher mental energy or entity, indeed that the universe was conscious.
I suggested that just as Microsoft Word could not have accidentally “evolved”, but rather came about through the conscious efforts of humans, it now seemed that even the complexity of a single celled organism (with a genome not much smaller than that of humans) -- which is controlled by a set of software instructions from the environment (now identified as epigenetics) -- must be the result of not random occurrence but rather intentional intelligence.
While some would make the immediate leap to intelligent design – I don’t – cognizant that our intellectual capacities and very being might be inadequate to truly comprehend the magnitude of such an intelligence and label it in any meaningful way.
In fact, the mystical experiences that assert a connection to such an intelligence inevitably suggest that it is beyond language or our ability to verbally or intellectually describe or identify it.
To me, this confirms the reality that an idea (Plato’s forms would be my humble analogy) exists just as material exists – and indeed Lipton and neuroscientific work in psychology has confirmed that our thoughts are part of an environmental system that affect our very being. Unfortunately again, our conscious intellectual thoughts are inadequate to compete with the subconscious (with its superior processing power) to effect change.
Lipton says that “positive thinking” is insufficient. We need to reprogram our subconscious or at a minimum observe its effects through our body and sensation – the practice often referred to as mindfulness and sometimes called meditation.
We need to either learn experiential processes that allow us to communicate and reprogram the subconscious to change our own nature – or at a minimum begin to observe (rather than react automatically) to the input of our environment and our own negative conditioning, and reintegrate our connection between our right and left brains (notice our automatism and by observing it, slow down and reduce its negative aspects).
Remember that it is the automatic part of the brain that connects through our entire bodies with the environment using the cell membrane to process the information, and it apparently cannot be consciously controlled by our “intelligence”. It literally takes place on the level of software and data processing.
There is another interesting concept in Lipton’s work that I can connect with computers in a literal way.
He says that humans are a community of cells, and suggests that human evolution, now at a crossroads between transformation and extinction, must lead to seeing humanity as a community in harmony with an intelligent environment rather than trying to impose control.
One could make a case that the Internet is evolving as the nervous system of such a community of human cells living in cooperation rather than competition, and that perhaps even social networks (even the annoying ones like Twitter or those that keep pestering you with new connections and friends) are part of this evolution.
As this evolution proceeds, according to Lipton and many others, humanity must drop its own subconscious programming of the primacy of competition and perhaps even rethink our concept of individuality – not as a single cell in a hostile environment but as part of an organic intelligent whole with which we can connect in a loving and cooperative way.
And getting back to my low period, the key understanding that I need to organically embrace (and not just intellectually think I understand) is that as an individual I need to give up the illusion of control over my environment on a deep and fundamental level.
While my conscious mind has been able to think through many problems and create a reasonably comfortable existence, this existence has never been guaranteed, and at bottom, we all are subject to the vagaries of an environment that is likely neutral as far as individual humans are concerned, and possibly intelligently loving and benign with respect to our species itself, particularly if humanity can evolve to respect the environment and ultimately live in harmony (and not opposition or control) of it.
The inevitable results of our struggle for control are becoming readily apparent – both on a global and in my case on a personal scale. While this blog is an intellectual endeavor, hopefully my inner processes are also changing organically to reduce the need for a sense of control and I can effect a reintegration of my conscious thoughts and subconscious programming.
We’ll see.
At this point I see myself climbing out of my hole but only perhaps having reached eye level. I still need to get out completely, see the hole for what it was, fill it up with love, and plant a tree.
Friends have told me that my low period (that’s actually an understatement) will result in a new approach to life, and I am finally at a point where I can accept and embrace that possibility and view it as inevitable.
Continuing this blog is now part of that process.
In my previous post about Epigenetics, I addressed the apparent presence of “software” in our bodies that interprets environmental factors and switches our genes on and off.
This process, as it turns out, is explained and extrapolated in a fascinating book by Bruce Lipton, “The Biology of Belief”. In it he identifies the cell membrane as the “computer chip” that literally processes the information from the environment and comprises a conduit for the subconscious or automatic (autonomic) functions in our bodies – mainly functions like breathing, sensing and other parts of the so-called parasympathetic nervous system (right brain) that we literally don’t think about.
According to Lipton and many developments in biology and neuroscience, we are not the determined result of our genetic makeup but rather an evolving organism continually replacing our cells and interacting with an environment that switches our genes on and off and affects our inner process through our parasympathetic nervous system.
Beyond the identification of the process as literally data processing like a computer chip, Lipton goes on to state that this subconscious part of our existence, which processes information at an exponentially faster rate than our conscious mind – consider how quickly you blink if an object is thrown at your eye – is also the storage area for our assumptions about the environment - programmed into us by our parents and peers at an early age (and even before birth itself – in the womb).
The book ends with an Addendum on one technique for reprogramming these assumptions in a way that reduces automatic fear (in my case unquestionably a big factor in the intensity of my “low period”) and suggests that a more positive set of assumptions can be adopted that will have beneficial impact throughout the body, based on seeing the environment as not hostile, but rather essentially neutral, and infusing an attitude of self-acceptance and love into one’s subconscious thoughts.
Neuroscience and psychology have come together in a number of new developments to embrace mindfulness (focused attention on the body) as a practice (meditation) that literally reprograms the prefrontal lobe of the brain to effectively integrate the right and left – so that past grief and negative “programs” can be overridden with a corresponding physical re-energizing of the body and in effect, spirit.
Spirit as an element of biology, psychology or indeed neuroscience. Who would have thought?
As Lipton suggests, it happened with quantum physics and it’s inevitable in biology, psychology and neuroscience.
It was about a year ago when my own discovery of the science of programmability of the genome of all life – with its analogous implications in terms of how human software is created (with a conscious intention) suggested to me that life was by no means a random occurrence, but was in fact a reflection of a much higher mental energy or entity, indeed that the universe was conscious.
I suggested that just as Microsoft Word could not have accidentally “evolved”, but rather came about through the conscious efforts of humans, it now seemed that even the complexity of a single celled organism (with a genome not much smaller than that of humans) -- which is controlled by a set of software instructions from the environment (now identified as epigenetics) -- must be the result of not random occurrence but rather intentional intelligence.
While some would make the immediate leap to intelligent design – I don’t – cognizant that our intellectual capacities and very being might be inadequate to truly comprehend the magnitude of such an intelligence and label it in any meaningful way.
In fact, the mystical experiences that assert a connection to such an intelligence inevitably suggest that it is beyond language or our ability to verbally or intellectually describe or identify it.
To me, this confirms the reality that an idea (Plato’s forms would be my humble analogy) exists just as material exists – and indeed Lipton and neuroscientific work in psychology has confirmed that our thoughts are part of an environmental system that affect our very being. Unfortunately again, our conscious intellectual thoughts are inadequate to compete with the subconscious (with its superior processing power) to effect change.
Lipton says that “positive thinking” is insufficient. We need to reprogram our subconscious or at a minimum observe its effects through our body and sensation – the practice often referred to as mindfulness and sometimes called meditation.
We need to either learn experiential processes that allow us to communicate and reprogram the subconscious to change our own nature – or at a minimum begin to observe (rather than react automatically) to the input of our environment and our own negative conditioning, and reintegrate our connection between our right and left brains (notice our automatism and by observing it, slow down and reduce its negative aspects).
Remember that it is the automatic part of the brain that connects through our entire bodies with the environment using the cell membrane to process the information, and it apparently cannot be consciously controlled by our “intelligence”. It literally takes place on the level of software and data processing.
There is another interesting concept in Lipton’s work that I can connect with computers in a literal way.
He says that humans are a community of cells, and suggests that human evolution, now at a crossroads between transformation and extinction, must lead to seeing humanity as a community in harmony with an intelligent environment rather than trying to impose control.
One could make a case that the Internet is evolving as the nervous system of such a community of human cells living in cooperation rather than competition, and that perhaps even social networks (even the annoying ones like Twitter or those that keep pestering you with new connections and friends) are part of this evolution.
As this evolution proceeds, according to Lipton and many others, humanity must drop its own subconscious programming of the primacy of competition and perhaps even rethink our concept of individuality – not as a single cell in a hostile environment but as part of an organic intelligent whole with which we can connect in a loving and cooperative way.
And getting back to my low period, the key understanding that I need to organically embrace (and not just intellectually think I understand) is that as an individual I need to give up the illusion of control over my environment on a deep and fundamental level.
While my conscious mind has been able to think through many problems and create a reasonably comfortable existence, this existence has never been guaranteed, and at bottom, we all are subject to the vagaries of an environment that is likely neutral as far as individual humans are concerned, and possibly intelligently loving and benign with respect to our species itself, particularly if humanity can evolve to respect the environment and ultimately live in harmony (and not opposition or control) of it.
The inevitable results of our struggle for control are becoming readily apparent – both on a global and in my case on a personal scale. While this blog is an intellectual endeavor, hopefully my inner processes are also changing organically to reduce the need for a sense of control and I can effect a reintegration of my conscious thoughts and subconscious programming.
We’ll see.
Friday, September 19, 2008
Genetic Software Identified
In a recent blog posts(please see "Humanity 2.0 – It’s the Software, Stupid "), I speculated about how "decoding the genome" may inevitably lead to the widespread realization of how we literally function with an "operating system" and "software" - and if this is indeed the case, I wonder whether that does not inevitably lead to a sense of an intelligent intention to our very being. We need not argue about a "Creative Designer" but perhaps begin to suspect that beyond ourselves as the so-called "dominant species" at the apex of creation, that there certainly exists a higher mind behind our existence and purpose.
If we contemplate that we are essentially software manifest organically, we might wonder whether a program like Microsoft Word would exist without humans (who created it in our image) - and who had fulfilled an intention to do word processing?
In a recent article in the Philadelphia Inquirer (May 2008) titled "A Paradigm Shift in Genetics", the focus was on the so-called epigenome - a system of inner functions referred to as a "chemical switchboard", responsive to the environment (input), which turns our genes on and off.
Here are two relevant paragraphs:
"Ehrlich is referring to the emerging field known as epigenetics. The epigenome is the elaborate chemical switchboard that can turn genes on and off like flipping a light switch. Our genes encode instructions for the building of proteins. On its own, DNA is nothing but an inert biological handbook, but chemicals in each cell actively read and transcribe the instructions, then use them to build our bodies cell by cell. Every cell in your body contains an identical genome, and yet a brain cell is quite different from a skin cell.
"How do the differences arise? Because different genes are expressed from one cell to the next. How does a cell know which genes to implement and which to ignore? That set of instructions is contained in the cell's epigenome. Whereas the genome is static - its sequence of base pairs unchanging except in the rare and often detrimental case of a mutation - the epigenome is dynamic, busily deciding which genetic instructions should be put into action and which should be chemically strangled into silence."
In other words this is a dynamic set of instructions carried out in response to stimuli from the physical environment and other (possibly as yet unknown) influences. According to these inputs a series of responses or instructions are carried out.
Are these random events? That can certainly be argued in terms of who or what determines the influences - but they occur according to a set of cause and effect materially determined laws - not by chance.
To me, this is another powerful indicator that life itself (for which this is indeed the "software") did not evolve from a random event, but is also a result or effect of some cause - and beyond the apparent complexity of the epigenome and the genome - its obvious purpose and intentionality - points a supremely higher mental process behind Life (as there is behind all human-created software).
If we contemplate that we are essentially software manifest organically, we might wonder whether a program like Microsoft Word would exist without humans (who created it in our image) - and who had fulfilled an intention to do word processing?
In a recent article in the Philadelphia Inquirer (May 2008) titled "A Paradigm Shift in Genetics", the focus was on the so-called epigenome - a system of inner functions referred to as a "chemical switchboard", responsive to the environment (input), which turns our genes on and off.
Here are two relevant paragraphs:
"Ehrlich is referring to the emerging field known as epigenetics. The epigenome is the elaborate chemical switchboard that can turn genes on and off like flipping a light switch. Our genes encode instructions for the building of proteins. On its own, DNA is nothing but an inert biological handbook, but chemicals in each cell actively read and transcribe the instructions, then use them to build our bodies cell by cell. Every cell in your body contains an identical genome, and yet a brain cell is quite different from a skin cell.
"How do the differences arise? Because different genes are expressed from one cell to the next. How does a cell know which genes to implement and which to ignore? That set of instructions is contained in the cell's epigenome. Whereas the genome is static - its sequence of base pairs unchanging except in the rare and often detrimental case of a mutation - the epigenome is dynamic, busily deciding which genetic instructions should be put into action and which should be chemically strangled into silence."
In other words this is a dynamic set of instructions carried out in response to stimuli from the physical environment and other (possibly as yet unknown) influences. According to these inputs a series of responses or instructions are carried out.
Are these random events? That can certainly be argued in terms of who or what determines the influences - but they occur according to a set of cause and effect materially determined laws - not by chance.
To me, this is another powerful indicator that life itself (for which this is indeed the "software") did not evolve from a random event, but is also a result or effect of some cause - and beyond the apparent complexity of the epigenome and the genome - its obvious purpose and intentionality - points a supremely higher mental process behind Life (as there is behind all human-created software).
Monday, August 4, 2008
Humanity 2.0 – It’s the Software, Stupid
A truly thought provoking video on TED is headlined: Kwabena Boahen: Making a computer that works like the brain. Boahen is a computer scientist who actually grew up Ghana, where he was fortunate enough to get a computer as a child; in the video he quotes a fellow researcher Brian Eno who said in 1995, “The problem with computers is that there is not enough Africa in them.”
Boahen takes that to mean more creative conception of computer hardware, and proposes a restructuring of the CPU along the lines of neural networks to permit more efficient processing of information.
What I find incredible is that neither Boahen, with his fresh viewpoint on computer science from his unique perspective, nor seemingly any of the speakers at TED (with the possible exception of Jill Bolte Taylor’s “My stroke of insight” – a phenomenal investigation of neuroscience of mystical proportions) make any attempt to truly grasp the significance of the analogies between advances in computing and the human brain.
More specifically, if we can use Biblical language allegorically, it seems clear that consciously, subconsciously or indeed completely unconsciously we’ve created computers in our own image.
In my humble opinion, there is deep meaning to this, and indeed the birth of the computer and with it the Internet are major potential milestones in the evolution of our species – perhaps to a Humanity 2.0 – but only if we grasp their essential meaning.
What do I mean?
To my mind the missing dimension to all comparisons between the human brain, neuroscience and the computer is the incredible avoidance of these endeavors to acknowledge the key component of all computers – namely software.
From the amazing description of an apple as an application that can be genetically reprogrammed by Juan Enriquez (again on TED) to Boahen’s concept of a chip based on neural networks no scientist seems comfortable venturing into the area that is the very key to understanding any computer system: what program is running and where did it come from?
In the scientific community this is relegated to “soft” sciences – psychology, sociology and perhaps philosophy – but it is remarkably absent, or so it seems to me, as a matter of serious inquiry, in the fields of genetics or neuroscience.
Evolution is the obvious "scientific" answer to such questions – and that’s fine – but we need to recognize that if we exist in a universe of cause and effect laws, the process that we term evolution is very unlikely to be the result of haphazard chance or accident. It is too well programmed for that.
Clearly, if the brain is the basis for our development of the computer and then the Internet -- the issue of what may be the “operating system” and what sorts of software it is running are probably the most significant issues facing us if we are to understand its true functions.
From the first personal computer I ever purchased, this was the key point: what was I going to use it for (its purpose) and then, which programs did I expect to run. In my case I would never have bought my first Eagle if I could not run a program called WordStar and write screenplays of questionable quality.
And even now I would never invest in a new computer, or load a new operating system (sorry Vista) unless I was confident that the tasks I intended to perform could be effectively completed by the software I intended to run.
The problem, of course, is that as soon as you begin to speculate on software in the brain you come across two potentially troublesome terms – either “Mind” or “Consciousness” become unavoidable factors.
Science refuses to seriously address these two concepts (except in the “soft” sciences) because they do not easily yield solely (or soul-ly) to data analysis and require deeper investigation and thought.
Indeed in the realm of quantum mechanics, the key component of the observer as a critical aspect of any phenomena that can be investigated on the subatomic level has already presented this same barrier – the presence of an embodied mind or consciousness it seems effectively determines the observable data and without an observer the result either doesn’t exist or as Heisenberg suggested, it is in reality uncertain. To our materialistically oriented mentality uncertain data doesn’t really qualify as data at all.
But I digress. When as I wrote before, Juan Enriquez describes both the computing power necessary to decode (sequence) the genome, and the ability of our geneticists to reprogram what has been discovered (and yet not create it out of nothing), this begs the question: Where did the program come from and what about the immense scale of its apparent complexity?
If you consider the brain or genetic material hardware only – as seemingly inanimate things – then certainly it could have evolved over eons from other inanimate things – perhaps stimulated by electrical energy when it is perceived as yet another inanimate thing.
But if you remain true to the computer model then there has to be an investigation of the true nature of software, both as we know it and as it has apparently come to exist in nature itself.
Taking the analogy a bit further, perhaps simplistically, but truly sincerely, we can see that for example, Microsoft Word, the evolutionary offspring of WordStar, the software for which I purchased my original Eagle, is the result of only one thing – human ingenuity and a meeting of thousands of Minds.
It could not exist otherwise.
The zeroes and ones that constitute the program that is Word or was WordStar were created by human minds with a purpose: to communicate more efficiently and connect human minds through language, sound and images.
The Internet evolved similarly, out of a human capacity for creating a system of programs that could connect us electronically – but the Internet too would never exist just to constitute a network of cables or wireless connections.
The Internet as hardware would never have evolved.
It exists only to move messages and meaning.
So again, working backwards, if the model for all of this is our own brain, and by extension, our nervous system and even our more automatic or autonomic physiology that is programmed genetically – we probably need to ask – what’s the software?
Unfortunately if we ask this question sincerely, answers do not come easily, and they are open to much debate, but at least they are the result of serious questions and not the obvious and deliberate avoidance of deeper issues.
My own suggestion would only be a self conscious pointer in two possible directions where we might look for more answers.
First inside ourselves, because deep self examination of one’s own programming is the only real access we currently have to our software. Observing others is possible at this point only in terms of their outward manifestations, verbal descriptions, and the data of brainwaves which is at present inconclusive in terms of that troublesome concept: meaning.
The second direction might be the same road some aspects of quantum physics have taken – namely East. The descriptions of meditative states and the reality of consciousness described by Eastern thought seems to dovetail nicely with the observations or “data” of quantum physicists, to their everlasting dismay.
The apparently dualistic state of light as simultaneously both wave and particle phenomena is a real paradox, just as we might argue about the “cause” or primogenitor of evolution.
It is quite possible that both neuroscience, and very likely astrophysics and astronomy, will have to be led kicking and screaming into both of these new directions – directing their investigations inside ourselves as organisms comprised of hardware (physiology) and software (essence, spirit, soul or mind) -- with a perspective broadened by the meditative practices of the East.
Only then will we perhaps be receptive to a download from somewhere or an upgrade of something that we ultimately evolve into Humanity 2.0, or failing to connect successfully and log in to something higher -- our species may degenerate into a lower life form, or become extinct, like WordStar and the Eagle computer.
Boahen takes that to mean more creative conception of computer hardware, and proposes a restructuring of the CPU along the lines of neural networks to permit more efficient processing of information.
What I find incredible is that neither Boahen, with his fresh viewpoint on computer science from his unique perspective, nor seemingly any of the speakers at TED (with the possible exception of Jill Bolte Taylor’s “My stroke of insight” – a phenomenal investigation of neuroscience of mystical proportions) make any attempt to truly grasp the significance of the analogies between advances in computing and the human brain.
More specifically, if we can use Biblical language allegorically, it seems clear that consciously, subconsciously or indeed completely unconsciously we’ve created computers in our own image.
In my humble opinion, there is deep meaning to this, and indeed the birth of the computer and with it the Internet are major potential milestones in the evolution of our species – perhaps to a Humanity 2.0 – but only if we grasp their essential meaning.
What do I mean?
To my mind the missing dimension to all comparisons between the human brain, neuroscience and the computer is the incredible avoidance of these endeavors to acknowledge the key component of all computers – namely software.
From the amazing description of an apple as an application that can be genetically reprogrammed by Juan Enriquez (again on TED) to Boahen’s concept of a chip based on neural networks no scientist seems comfortable venturing into the area that is the very key to understanding any computer system: what program is running and where did it come from?
In the scientific community this is relegated to “soft” sciences – psychology, sociology and perhaps philosophy – but it is remarkably absent, or so it seems to me, as a matter of serious inquiry, in the fields of genetics or neuroscience.
Evolution is the obvious "scientific" answer to such questions – and that’s fine – but we need to recognize that if we exist in a universe of cause and effect laws, the process that we term evolution is very unlikely to be the result of haphazard chance or accident. It is too well programmed for that.
Clearly, if the brain is the basis for our development of the computer and then the Internet -- the issue of what may be the “operating system” and what sorts of software it is running are probably the most significant issues facing us if we are to understand its true functions.
From the first personal computer I ever purchased, this was the key point: what was I going to use it for (its purpose) and then, which programs did I expect to run. In my case I would never have bought my first Eagle if I could not run a program called WordStar and write screenplays of questionable quality.
And even now I would never invest in a new computer, or load a new operating system (sorry Vista) unless I was confident that the tasks I intended to perform could be effectively completed by the software I intended to run.
The problem, of course, is that as soon as you begin to speculate on software in the brain you come across two potentially troublesome terms – either “Mind” or “Consciousness” become unavoidable factors.
Science refuses to seriously address these two concepts (except in the “soft” sciences) because they do not easily yield solely (or soul-ly) to data analysis and require deeper investigation and thought.
Indeed in the realm of quantum mechanics, the key component of the observer as a critical aspect of any phenomena that can be investigated on the subatomic level has already presented this same barrier – the presence of an embodied mind or consciousness it seems effectively determines the observable data and without an observer the result either doesn’t exist or as Heisenberg suggested, it is in reality uncertain. To our materialistically oriented mentality uncertain data doesn’t really qualify as data at all.
But I digress. When as I wrote before, Juan Enriquez describes both the computing power necessary to decode (sequence) the genome, and the ability of our geneticists to reprogram what has been discovered (and yet not create it out of nothing), this begs the question: Where did the program come from and what about the immense scale of its apparent complexity?
If you consider the brain or genetic material hardware only – as seemingly inanimate things – then certainly it could have evolved over eons from other inanimate things – perhaps stimulated by electrical energy when it is perceived as yet another inanimate thing.
But if you remain true to the computer model then there has to be an investigation of the true nature of software, both as we know it and as it has apparently come to exist in nature itself.
Taking the analogy a bit further, perhaps simplistically, but truly sincerely, we can see that for example, Microsoft Word, the evolutionary offspring of WordStar, the software for which I purchased my original Eagle, is the result of only one thing – human ingenuity and a meeting of thousands of Minds.
It could not exist otherwise.
The zeroes and ones that constitute the program that is Word or was WordStar were created by human minds with a purpose: to communicate more efficiently and connect human minds through language, sound and images.
The Internet evolved similarly, out of a human capacity for creating a system of programs that could connect us electronically – but the Internet too would never exist just to constitute a network of cables or wireless connections.
The Internet as hardware would never have evolved.
It exists only to move messages and meaning.
So again, working backwards, if the model for all of this is our own brain, and by extension, our nervous system and even our more automatic or autonomic physiology that is programmed genetically – we probably need to ask – what’s the software?
Unfortunately if we ask this question sincerely, answers do not come easily, and they are open to much debate, but at least they are the result of serious questions and not the obvious and deliberate avoidance of deeper issues.
My own suggestion would only be a self conscious pointer in two possible directions where we might look for more answers.
First inside ourselves, because deep self examination of one’s own programming is the only real access we currently have to our software. Observing others is possible at this point only in terms of their outward manifestations, verbal descriptions, and the data of brainwaves which is at present inconclusive in terms of that troublesome concept: meaning.
The second direction might be the same road some aspects of quantum physics have taken – namely East. The descriptions of meditative states and the reality of consciousness described by Eastern thought seems to dovetail nicely with the observations or “data” of quantum physicists, to their everlasting dismay.
The apparently dualistic state of light as simultaneously both wave and particle phenomena is a real paradox, just as we might argue about the “cause” or primogenitor of evolution.
It is quite possible that both neuroscience, and very likely astrophysics and astronomy, will have to be led kicking and screaming into both of these new directions – directing their investigations inside ourselves as organisms comprised of hardware (physiology) and software (essence, spirit, soul or mind) -- with a perspective broadened by the meditative practices of the East.
Only then will we perhaps be receptive to a download from somewhere or an upgrade of something that we ultimately evolve into Humanity 2.0, or failing to connect successfully and log in to something higher -- our species may degenerate into a lower life form, or become extinct, like WordStar and the Eagle computer.
Friday, August 1, 2008
Whose PC Is It Anyway?
Has this happened to you? You return to your Vista PC and find that either the screensaver is running or you have the log on screen on your monitor, and you realize that the computer has rebooted in your absence?
If all you have to do is log back in, it’s a mild inconvenience but it’s still a bit creepy…
But if after you log in, your entire desktop is GONE? That happened to me recently. Being fairly experienced, I located the actual files in my Desktop folder under my user name, so I knew the data was safe. But suddenly Vista had given me a whole new blank desktop with the default wallpaper.
And, for good measure, when I opened my browser, I found that my start page was back on MSN and my history was gone. Cool, huh?
Obviously this was the result of an update, necessitated by Microsoft’s well founded security concerns.
But it’s a lot like the manager of my building coming into my apartment and rearranging the furniture while I’m gone – or locking the doors and windows.
I don’t like it, and combined with the other inconveniences of Vista, I’m sure lots of other people don’t like it either.
What are those other inconveniences? They are too numerous to mention but how about incompatible hardware and software, new CD and DVD formats that don’t work, and interminable file transfer times?
What makes it worse is that as always, there are no solutions. I recently had a data dump, otherwise known as the blue screen of death, and when Windows returned I was told it had recovered from a serious error (it had used System Restore – the same way I got my desktop back from the other incident) and did I want to know more details…
Sure I clicked Yes, figuring I’d get the usual inscrutable information that told me nothing but this time NOTHING is exactly what I got. Nada. Zilch. No explanation whatsoever is available for a “serious error.”
How long has Windows had a blue screen problem – how about EVERY INCARNATION? Maybe it’s impossible to correct given the disparate hardware on which the platform is located, but how about providing a clear and understandable EXPLANATION of how it happens and what you can do to recover?
Here is what I mean by clear and understandable. NOT “you had a fatal error or system exception at memory base 4M60XQIC0M;’T.XOM.”
No – here is what I mean: the last program you used was _____________________________.
When you clicked ___________________________ it conflicted with ______________________.
To prevent this from happening you should uninstall ______________________________ or reconfigure ______________________________.
Alternatively you could delete _________________________ from StartUp under MSConfig.
System Restore is nice but scary. It’s like you’re waiting for the patient to come out of the ER. And there is no chance to talk to the surgeon afterwards – “Oh, we took out some malware and now the system is fine.”
I would feel a whole lot better with a clear and concise explanation of using System Recovery and Safe Mode – I know they exist but they are documented only for IT professionals. When a “normal” user crashes he may as well invoke a voodoo chant to get his system back.
It is wholly inexcusable for Vista to reboot and destroy your desktop on the one hand, requiring System Recovery, and provide no clearly understandable information on how to protect your system or bring it back from a data dump.
"Windows 7" promises a whole host of new features, including a touch screen "coffee table" interface -- I have a better idea, how about an understandable, reliable system that just works consistently?
If all you have to do is log back in, it’s a mild inconvenience but it’s still a bit creepy…
But if after you log in, your entire desktop is GONE? That happened to me recently. Being fairly experienced, I located the actual files in my Desktop folder under my user name, so I knew the data was safe. But suddenly Vista had given me a whole new blank desktop with the default wallpaper.
And, for good measure, when I opened my browser, I found that my start page was back on MSN and my history was gone. Cool, huh?
Obviously this was the result of an update, necessitated by Microsoft’s well founded security concerns.
But it’s a lot like the manager of my building coming into my apartment and rearranging the furniture while I’m gone – or locking the doors and windows.
I don’t like it, and combined with the other inconveniences of Vista, I’m sure lots of other people don’t like it either.
What are those other inconveniences? They are too numerous to mention but how about incompatible hardware and software, new CD and DVD formats that don’t work, and interminable file transfer times?
What makes it worse is that as always, there are no solutions. I recently had a data dump, otherwise known as the blue screen of death, and when Windows returned I was told it had recovered from a serious error (it had used System Restore – the same way I got my desktop back from the other incident) and did I want to know more details…
Sure I clicked Yes, figuring I’d get the usual inscrutable information that told me nothing but this time NOTHING is exactly what I got. Nada. Zilch. No explanation whatsoever is available for a “serious error.”
How long has Windows had a blue screen problem – how about EVERY INCARNATION? Maybe it’s impossible to correct given the disparate hardware on which the platform is located, but how about providing a clear and understandable EXPLANATION of how it happens and what you can do to recover?
Here is what I mean by clear and understandable. NOT “you had a fatal error or system exception at memory base 4M60XQIC0M;’T.XOM.”
No – here is what I mean: the last program you used was _____________________________.
When you clicked ___________________________ it conflicted with ______________________.
To prevent this from happening you should uninstall ______________________________ or reconfigure ______________________________.
Alternatively you could delete _________________________ from StartUp under MSConfig.
System Restore is nice but scary. It’s like you’re waiting for the patient to come out of the ER. And there is no chance to talk to the surgeon afterwards – “Oh, we took out some malware and now the system is fine.”
I would feel a whole lot better with a clear and concise explanation of using System Recovery and Safe Mode – I know they exist but they are documented only for IT professionals. When a “normal” user crashes he may as well invoke a voodoo chant to get his system back.
It is wholly inexcusable for Vista to reboot and destroy your desktop on the one hand, requiring System Recovery, and provide no clearly understandable information on how to protect your system or bring it back from a data dump.
"Windows 7" promises a whole host of new features, including a touch screen "coffee table" interface -- I have a better idea, how about an understandable, reliable system that just works consistently?
Friday, July 25, 2008
Our New and Improved (?) Digital Washer/Dryer
Several weeks ago I left my apartment only to discover that our building had replaced our perfectly functional “analog” washer/dryers with new digital models. What sets these apart are black LCD screens with digital read-outs that show the exact length, in minutes, of the remaining wash or dry cycle.
The display also goads you into forking up an extra quarter for a “bonus” rinse cycle, but it’s optional. The only thing it doesn’t do is send a message saying, “hey– take out your clothes, another tenant needs the dryer!”, or tell you to have a nice day.
Is there a message here – besides the digital read-out? Well the old washers worked pretty well as I recall, although the lint screen on the new one is a lot nicer – but that’s because it’s new. A lint screen alone might have cost what, two bucks?
It is nice to know exactly how much time is left in a cycle, but if you’ll pardon the pun, it’s fluff.
It’s excess for its own sake. Like the SUVs and mini-vans that are now extinct, it speaks to an insatiable need, now completely programmed into our brains, to see lack where there might be satisfaction.
It also makes one think of the perfectly functional and beautiful homes that get knocked down for newer, bigger mansions, whose owners might have made do with what they had.
And it speaks to the message of the Dalai Lama, on the east coast this week and probably being largely ignored, who chastises us for always wanting more, more and more.
As you may know, his country, Tibet, is being mauled by the country that is emulating us in the more, more and more sweepstakes – China, along with also fast growing India. But both of these countries are raising extremely low standards of living a bit higher, while we are generally raising generally very high standards of living (by global comparison) higher and higher.
But the problem really isn’t us, is it? The company that built the new and improved digital washer/dryer is considered innovative, and is manned by a marketing team hell bent on convincing the world that knowing the exact length of the rinse and dry cycle is critical.
That need has flowed down the electronic synapses and dendrites of our society to the point where we need to check our email every hour, or more, and keep up with the news, while being programmed to buy more digital washer/dryers.
There may have been a lesson to be learned from the older analog washer/dryers – from that inexact interval between the end of the cycle and the time you actually remember to take out your clothes.
In that ten or fifteen extra minutes, if you aren’t checking your email or scheduling your next appointment, you might actually sit back and reflect (as the Dalai Lama might) on what the heck you’re doing anyway?
Instead of checking your email, check your reality.
In case you missed it, CNN ran a story the other day with the headline: Scientists: Humans and machines will merge in future.
No, they weren’t talking about a Yahoo-Microsoft type of merger. They were suggesting that you and I might be made new and improved with digital read-outs. Optimally, email might be downloaded directly into our brains, bypassing the laptop or iPhone entirely. According to the piece:
“Transhumanists… anticipate an era in which biotechnology, molecular nanotechnologies, artificial intelligence and other new types of cognitive tools will be used to amplify our intellectual capacity, improve our physical capabilities and even enhance our emotional well-being.”
And the proponents weren’t worried about this scenario, they seemed to welcome it as an inevitable improvement in human “efficiency” (my interpretation).
When I think about how entities like credit card companies, utilities, software manufacturers and others take advantage of new technology to pad my bill and increase my customer dissatisfaction, I have to wonder about the ultimate advantage of becoming “transhuman.”
Most of the people I see walking around shouting into their cellphones barely qualify as human.
I’d hate to reach the voicemail system of a “transcorporate customer” support center. I am sure they’d have a sensational mission statement, but the underlying reality would be far less benign.
And I’m not sure that a new and improved version of my brain or my body, complete with digital read-outs and a wireless connection to an ATM, would improve my life very much.
When I look at the other “transhuman” byproducts of a digitally improved emerging Humanity 2.0 I also have to wonder: dead birds, dying bees, beached whales and dolphins, poisoned oceans, unbreathable air at the Olympics – perhaps what we’ll be digitally replacing won’t be our brains but our lungs.
Maybe I’m making too much of the digital washer/dryer – after all, I haven’t had to wait for the dryer since they installed it. And the lint screen is impeccable. But for some reason I can’t quite fathom, I find myself checking my email more and more frequently. I think I’m becoming – transhuman.
The display also goads you into forking up an extra quarter for a “bonus” rinse cycle, but it’s optional. The only thing it doesn’t do is send a message saying, “hey– take out your clothes, another tenant needs the dryer!”, or tell you to have a nice day.
Is there a message here – besides the digital read-out? Well the old washers worked pretty well as I recall, although the lint screen on the new one is a lot nicer – but that’s because it’s new. A lint screen alone might have cost what, two bucks?
It is nice to know exactly how much time is left in a cycle, but if you’ll pardon the pun, it’s fluff.
It’s excess for its own sake. Like the SUVs and mini-vans that are now extinct, it speaks to an insatiable need, now completely programmed into our brains, to see lack where there might be satisfaction.
It also makes one think of the perfectly functional and beautiful homes that get knocked down for newer, bigger mansions, whose owners might have made do with what they had.
And it speaks to the message of the Dalai Lama, on the east coast this week and probably being largely ignored, who chastises us for always wanting more, more and more.
As you may know, his country, Tibet, is being mauled by the country that is emulating us in the more, more and more sweepstakes – China, along with also fast growing India. But both of these countries are raising extremely low standards of living a bit higher, while we are generally raising generally very high standards of living (by global comparison) higher and higher.
But the problem really isn’t us, is it? The company that built the new and improved digital washer/dryer is considered innovative, and is manned by a marketing team hell bent on convincing the world that knowing the exact length of the rinse and dry cycle is critical.
That need has flowed down the electronic synapses and dendrites of our society to the point where we need to check our email every hour, or more, and keep up with the news, while being programmed to buy more digital washer/dryers.
There may have been a lesson to be learned from the older analog washer/dryers – from that inexact interval between the end of the cycle and the time you actually remember to take out your clothes.
In that ten or fifteen extra minutes, if you aren’t checking your email or scheduling your next appointment, you might actually sit back and reflect (as the Dalai Lama might) on what the heck you’re doing anyway?
Instead of checking your email, check your reality.
In case you missed it, CNN ran a story the other day with the headline: Scientists: Humans and machines will merge in future.
No, they weren’t talking about a Yahoo-Microsoft type of merger. They were suggesting that you and I might be made new and improved with digital read-outs. Optimally, email might be downloaded directly into our brains, bypassing the laptop or iPhone entirely. According to the piece:
“Transhumanists… anticipate an era in which biotechnology, molecular nanotechnologies, artificial intelligence and other new types of cognitive tools will be used to amplify our intellectual capacity, improve our physical capabilities and even enhance our emotional well-being.”
And the proponents weren’t worried about this scenario, they seemed to welcome it as an inevitable improvement in human “efficiency” (my interpretation).
When I think about how entities like credit card companies, utilities, software manufacturers and others take advantage of new technology to pad my bill and increase my customer dissatisfaction, I have to wonder about the ultimate advantage of becoming “transhuman.”
Most of the people I see walking around shouting into their cellphones barely qualify as human.
I’d hate to reach the voicemail system of a “transcorporate customer” support center. I am sure they’d have a sensational mission statement, but the underlying reality would be far less benign.
And I’m not sure that a new and improved version of my brain or my body, complete with digital read-outs and a wireless connection to an ATM, would improve my life very much.
When I look at the other “transhuman” byproducts of a digitally improved emerging Humanity 2.0 I also have to wonder: dead birds, dying bees, beached whales and dolphins, poisoned oceans, unbreathable air at the Olympics – perhaps what we’ll be digitally replacing won’t be our brains but our lungs.
Maybe I’m making too much of the digital washer/dryer – after all, I haven’t had to wait for the dryer since they installed it. And the lint screen is impeccable. But for some reason I can’t quite fathom, I find myself checking my email more and more frequently. I think I’m becoming – transhuman.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
