There's this great segment of SEED magazine called Revolutionary Minds, broken down into four categories: The Interpreters, The Game Changers, The Re-envisionaries, and Design & Architecture. I haven't had a chance to look through much of it yet but figured it was worth a share. The below video is from the Interpreters set and features the work of animator and cellular biologist Drew Berry.

Kurzweil @ Coolidge Corner

From the Coolidge Corner Theater website:

We wrap the 2008-09 season of Science on Screen with a special program, An Evening with Ray Kurzweil. The celebrated futurist, inventor and entrepreneur will give a multi-media presentation based on his best-selling book The Singularity is Near and show a trailer of the upcoming film of the same name. Audience members will also be treated to a sneak peak of director Barry Ptolemy’s Transcendent Man, a documentary charting Kurzweil’s journey to bring the ideas from The Singularity is Near to a world audience. A question-and-answer session with Kurzweil will follow the program.

According to Kurzweil, the onset of the 21st century ushers in an era in which the very nature of what it means to be human will be both enriched and challenged as our species breaks the shackles of its genetic legacy and achieves inconceivable heights of intelligence, material progress, and longevity. While the social and philosophical ramifications of these changes will be profound, and the threats they pose considerable, Kurzweil will present an inspiring vision of our ultimate destiny in which we will merge with our machines, can live forever, and are a billion times more intelligent...all within the next three to four decades.

Jill Bolte Taylor's Stroke of Insight...

Center for PostNatural History

From the site:

The Center for PostNatural History is dedicated to the advancement of knowledge relating to the complex interplay between culture, nature and biotechnology. The PostNatural refers to living organisms that have been altered through processes such as selective breeding or genetic engineering to meet human desires. The mission of the Center for PostNatural History is to acquire, interpret and provide access to a collection of living, preserved and documented organisms of postnatural origin.

The Center for PostNatural History addresses this goal through three primary initiatives:

• The maintenance of a unique catalog of living, preserved and documented specimens of postnatural origin.
• The production of traveling exhibitions that address the PostNatural through thematic and regional perspectives.
• The establishment of a permanent exhibition and research facility for PostNatural studies.

H+

I just stumbled on a very cool new magazine which is available for free digitally or they will send you a copy in the mail...

From the site:

h+ covers technological, scientific, and cultural trends that are changing — and will change — human beings in fundamental ways. We will be following developments in areas like NBIC (nano-bio-info-cog), longevity, performance enhancement and self-modification, Virtual Reality, "The Singularity," and other areas that both promise and threaten to radically alter our lives and our view of the world and ourselves.

More than that, h+ aims to reflect this newest edge culture by featuring creative expressions of humanity on a razor's edge where daily life and science fiction seem to be merging.

Darwin's Gaze...

First of all there's this:

Echo vision: The man who sees with sound

And this piece will be shown at the MIT Museum in conjunction with the CyberArts festival from April 24 - May 10th.

From the website:

Evolving Darwin's Gaze is an installation of generative abstract paintings that embody a cognitive approach to modeling portraiture. This year the installation will be exhibited at Cambridge University’s King's College Art Centre, UK and MIT Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.

The exhibition theme asks the question - can you bring the ghost (creativity) out of the machine? Artist Steve DiPaola attempts to define the answer by applying Darwinian evolutionary techniques (genetic crossover, mutation and survival) to the architecture of a computer program that generates unique expressions of the gaze of Darwin’s face in John Collier’s 1883 portrait. The ever evolving families of related generative portraits strive to resemble the original, while at the same time are infused with computational interpretations of human creativity. The artwork speaks to the nature of things human; tries to unravel concepts of creativity; and evolution itself. The challenge for the artist is not in the making of a portrait, it is in creating an intelligent program that can run on a computer to generate evolving portraits.

DiPaola uses Genetic Programming to build his Evolving Darwin’s Gaze computer environment. Within this creative evolutionary system, a gene set of program code is evolved creating portrait images that blindly strive to evolve towards the original portrait. The code is designed to act like human creativity and is capable of abandoning a focused goal like resemblance, in favor of wider creative pursuits associated with art making (composition, color theory over resemblance), which paradoxically often allows the focused goal to be better achieved. This flexibility results with the program’s ability to change focus and discover new paths of interpretation. In DiPaola’s work, achieving Darwin’s exact resemblance is not the goal, rather, exploring concepts of a living creative process in an artwork by using Darwin’s gaze (his portrait facade) and his thinking process (the concepts of evolution) as a spark at evolved computer creativity in an attempt to bring the ghost out of the machine. See Concepts section for technical and conceptual underpinnings of the work.

Imprinting (Week 8)

There is evidence that the human
species has evolved from the oceans.
Our veins are filled with salt-water.
Our lungs appear to be formed
from a system of gill-like slits.

Slowly, over a long period of time,
our mammalian ancestors emerged
from the oceans to populate the land.

Some mammals, such as whales,
were forced to return to the ocean,
presumably because of their great size
which ultimately became more of a liability
on land than in the buoyancy of the sea.

Many species of fish eventually return
to the streams where they were born.
Some fish, such as salmon,
after swimming thousands
of miles over a virtual lifetime,
return to the exact spot
where there eggs were deposited and hatched.

Humans have remained on land, and have
roamed the oceans only with the assistance
of hydro-navigational equipment.

In all races and cultures, humans find the need
to return to their place of birth, to where they
grew up as a child, where they spent their
formative years.

This tendency gets stronger with age, and
probably represents the origins of what is
commonly referred to as nostalgia.

It is quite possible that the sensations and
feelings associated with nostalgia are a
by-product, or side-effect of this most
basic instinct, an inherent tendency
to return to our beginnings, directly
traceable to the millions of years which
we spent as creatures of the oceans.

J. H.

Epochs of Consciousness (Week 8)

1.

Preconsciousness is the ability to respond to environmental stimuli.

Preconsciousness originated in self-replicating organisms about 3.5 billion years ago.

Archea, bacteria (prokaryotes, eukaryotes), fungi, and plants are organisms which are preconscious.

Preconsciousness includes:

sensitivity to change (detection)
response to change (behavior)
adaptation by means of genetic mutation

2.

Consciousness is the ability to receive and store environmental stimuli, and to perform an intentional action based on the data.

Consciousness involves learning, which is the ability to save and recall information, and to develop new behavior in response to environmental change.

Consciousness occurred in animals around 600 million years ago. Animals were the first creatures to transduce stimuli by means of nerve cells.

Most animals are conscious.

Consciousness is defined by a variety of characteristics, including:

nerve cells
emotional states (fight or flight, fear, courage, timidity, vengeance)
sensory tracking
memory
attention
synchronous brain timing
perceptual integration
REM sleep
intentionality (an emotion that drives a voluntary action)
pattern recognition
learning
error correction
exploration
signaling
mimicry
courtship
grouping (schools, swarms, flocks, herds, packs, communities)
synchronous behavior
social exchange (alliances, rituals, contracts)

3.

Primate consciousness forms a bridge between consciousness and self-consciousness. Apes and early hominids were generalists able to adapt to a wide variety of specialized niches. With the evolution of bipedal locomotion and opposable thumbs, primates developed long-range mobility, local flexibility, and the use of tools. These characteristics, along with the close association of kin, and a mixture of aggressive and cooperative behavior led to a more social form of consciousness.

Primate consciousness originated with the appearance of early hominids about 4.4 million years ago.

Primates have evolved many of the same characteristics of self-consciousness as humans, with the exception of symbolic representation and syntactical language.

Primate consciousness includes all aspects of consciousness with the addition of:

self-recognition
sign language
symbol manipulation
expanded memory
curiosity (the desire to know or learn)

Many of the same characteristics that apply to primates may also apply to dolphins, or to other complex mammals.

4.

Late hominid consciousness is an extension of primate consciousness. Late hominid consciousness evolved in Homo habilis about 2.4 million years ago, and in Homo erectus 1.8 million years ago. Late hominid consciousness lasted until 300 thousand years ago with the descent of archaic Homo sapiens.

The brain capacity of Homo habilis was larger than that of earlier hominids. In Homo habilis, the coevolution of brain and dexterous hand led to primitive tool making, hunting and gathering, and division of labor. Habiline consciousness included mental sequencing of events and perhaps primitive use of language in the form of individual sound and symbol sequencing.

Homo erectus was the first hominid to appear in different parts of the world, specifically in Africa, Europe, Asia and the Middle East. With another increase in brain size came sophisticated tool making and intricate social relationships.

Homo erectus descended to archaic Homo sapiens 300 thousand years ago and to modern Homo sapiens about 100 thousand years ago. During this period, Homo sapiens evolved increased brain size, a variety of stone tool making and use, a growing capacity for language, and complexity in the rules of kinship, taboo, obligation, and social standing.

5.

Self-consciousness is the ability to symbolically represent the environment, and oneself. It is the ability to think, predict and invent.

Self-consciousness requires a priori functions of symbolic representation, syntactical language, and expanded long-term memory.

Self-consciousness originated in Homo sapiens sapiens about 50 thousand years ago.

Homo sapiens sapiens is the only known species which is
self-conscious.

Self-consciousness includes:

symbolic representation
syntactical language
expanded long-term memory
complex emotional states
reasoning and logic
metaphor and analogy
symmetrical thinking (functional opposites, dichotomies)
inquiry
the capacity for spirituality
formation of new ideas
complex problem resolution (insight)
long-term planning (creating alternative future scenarios, a
complex form of intentionality)
intelligence (generalizing, categorization, aptitudes for specialized learning)
creativity (integrated thinking, context shifts, imagination)
prediction
personal exchange (conversation, gestures, cues)
high levels of cooperation and altruism
morality
empathy
elaborate forms of reciprocity (gift-giving)
cultural exchange (myth and ritual including religion, history and
humanities including the arts, science and technology)
distal storage (visual and time-based art, books, recorded music,
computer network, CD ROM)

6.

Communal consciousness is group identity and awareness, which is characterized by a shared purpose.

Specific elements of communal consciousness include: signaling, mimicry, courtship, grouping, synchronous behavior, social exchange, cooperation, altruism, empathy, reciprocity, cultural exchange, and distal storage.

Communal consciousness applies to all other categories of consciousness.

7.

Superconsciousness is consciousness of the future.

Superconsciousness may result from the evolution of
self-consciousness, including the transfer of self-consciousness from human beings to human-made systems.

The evolution of self-consciousness to superconsciousness may lead to the creation of a new species.

A new species which is superconscious may evolve from:

the genetic modification of an existing brain/mind (leading to a
more complex self-consciousness)
a first-generation genetically engineered brain/mind
a machine intelligent brain/mind (robot or supercomputer)
a symbiotic relationship between human and machine

In addition, large interactive systems on the scale of planets, stars or galaxies may evolve, or may have evolved, a form of communal superconsciousness characterized by a grand network of symbiotic interconnections on a scale too sizeable for humans to apprehend.

John Holland and Amy Robinson

Language, it's coming....

A few resources to get primed for talking about talking....
Here's a TED talk by Steven Pinker about language and grammar.

Another fascinating Long Now lecture by Daniel Everett, a linguist and former missionary who has been studying the language and culture of an isolated Amazonian tribe for the past thirty years.

Finnegan's Wake by James Joyce is one of the ultimate expressions of mutation in our written language. It contains more than 63,000 unique words, many of which were created by Joyce as he developed the unique vernacular the book is written in. What I find most interesting about Finnegan's Wake is that for me it's virtually incomprehensible as a written work but when it's read aloud it starts to make more sense. Here is a lecture by Terrence Mckenna going into some of the content and historical context of Finnegan's Wake. Halfway through he switches to talking about Marshall Mcluhan and has some interesting points about the impacts of print on verbal culture.

The Asymmetry of Addiction (Week 7)

Step 1: Involuntary Repetition (internal cycles and rhythms)

Step 2: Voluntary Repetition (behavioral cycles, cultural rhythms)

Step 3: Habituation (repeated patterns of voluntary behavior over long periods of time)

Step 4: Compulsion (compelled toward something, or someone)

Step 5: Obsession (powerful urge to engage in habitual behavior)

Step 6: Addiction (uncontrollable habituation; dependence)

The path to addiction is a one-step-at-a-time advance.
It is an effortless step from one stage to the next.

Addiction can occur either by ingesting chemicals,
such as alcohol or tobacco,
or by external behavior, such as sex or gambling.
Both elevate levels of dopamine, which, if unchecked
can lead to addiction.

The attempt to retreat from addiction is excruciating,
uncompromising, and often ineffective.

Having arrived at the mountain of desire, there is no going back.

Similar to a lobster trap, or marriage contract,
it is easy to get in, painfully difficult to get out.

What is it about the nature and chemistry
of the human brain, the nervous system,
that makes addiction inviting on the one hand,
and so debilitating on the other?

From the point of view of evolution,
it makes little sense that the brain would cooperate
so completely with its own downfall.

J. H.