Kanook – Tlingit Nation

August 24th, 2010

Can humans manage the world with the information they’re force fed?

From the moment man wakes from a fitful slumber to the moment he lays his head once again
horizontally embracing the process of sleep, he is bombarded with information – information that
on a minute-by-minute basis is increasing on a non-linear scale. In some cases new books are
published, new designs for communication devices, and steer-by-wire autos along with devices
that allow you to access more information – allowing a quick daily fix that has become as
important as heron to a junkie in selected places across the world.
A great deal of the information runs about freely in what is known as cyberspace, a fact that by
itself is a strange concept, whereas unlike matter and energy which cannot increase, the
cyberspace content increases as if it enjoyed a life of its own, which it does but we tend to ignore
these facts and accept the invisible bits and pieces that meld into our daily existence.
Some, much more brainer that I, have attempted to analyze the evolutionary algorithms
equating the process to some far distant Darwinian process, and link some of the actions of the
users of the information employing the comparison that when humans download and duplicate
the stuff and then pass it on, in whatever form that the human race is only following and
expanding on a pattern that man has done since he struggled from the deep salty sea, way back
before Abraham left his home to begin three religious movements that are doing their level best
to drag us back into that deep salty sea.
These ahead-of-the-curve members of our society relate to the fact that in the process of one
copying information invariably they make mistakes or enhancements to the data they duplicated,
and consequently the information variant becomes a new selection, and in doing so the action
completes a common 3-step process of natural selection – producing a much higher or lower level
of information which by itself could not have happened with out copying.
 When I study this process of replication, my mind is automatically thrust back to my younger
days when I went to school and learned that imitation changes everything, and causes a sort of
new kind of evolution – and as I grow older I realize, as most others, that us humans are unique
because we are so wonderful at imitation. As a semi-student of history, I’ve read (retaining some
of the data) that when our ancestors began to imitate they created a new evolutionary process
based NOT on genes but on a second set imaginary “stuff” for lack of a better general description
that is called in the super-dooper scientific community as “memes” – it is said that “genes” and
“memes” developed to a higher state together once man started imitating, thereby creating a
smarter and more effective human, in some religious circles this is debated.
Tied to all of this, is the fact that copying can and does piggy-back on another, whereas one
piece of copied material can enhance or change either one of the separate copied material and that
this copied material now becomes a better or worse part of our evolutionary process – there is
from time-to-time when the process retains some of its lesser side with the result being politicians
and other members of our society such as lawyers and bankers. Aside from these few, our
multilayered evolution has produced some of the amazing complexity of designs such as past
pygmies changing into 7 foot members of our society playing basketball for the LA Lakers.
Today some note that we are seeing the emergence of a 3rd replicator, these “things” are noted
by some to be “temes” (or memes linked to technology), these “temes” are digital information
stored, copied, varied and selected by machines – whereas these that analyze such things note that
humans falsely believe it is they who have created and control this new selection called “temes”
when in actuality the human is just a link from one “teme” to another.
Myself, being of sound mind and full of earthly prejudices find it difficult to swallow all this
about “memes” and “temes”, it appears like a poorly written play by the great bard himself
Shakespeare or Samuel Clemons, to you of the more advanced education Mark Twain.
Selected higher ups (humans with a mixture of grey matter and knowledge) accept the idea of
“memes” but flatly reject the concept of “temes” and some the opposite, and in doing so either
accept or reject the concept that either are cultural variant producers. Really smart individuals
write volumes stating that “memes” are not discrete, and that they do not form substantiated
lineages, in other words “memes” or their evolution as such, is a process of passing on
advancement of evolution to their offspring that is sporadic at best, whereas in reproduction bits
and pieces are left by the roadside. Remember the definition of “memes” is – that which is
imitated – meaning that what is copied when people imitate each other, such as songs, stories,
habits, skills technologies, scientific theories, bogus medical treatments, financial systems and
this and that organizations – to you and I the substance of human culture.
 We find leading the list of imitators “genes” or the 1 st replicator because there may have been
many preceding “genes” from which human’s imitated or replicated as they crawled onto dry land
back in our ancient history – a fearsome thought by even myself as I have been replicated to
believe that I was created by a “superior being” on a day where it had little to do, and considered
creating a being that would eventually entertain it in their quiet but uneventful existence in here
or there. I’ve also being replicated to believe if that I hit my knees from time-to-time or stand
quietly in a one-side conversation asking it to grant some of my desires, that if I’ve been good
and put-down the other humans of our species that did not practice in the same manner that I have
been taught, it would grand my wishes in due time. My ancestors pounded into me a time or two,
that there is only one supreme being, and that it was dedicated to my well-being and not to some
other race or society living in some foreign land who did not practice my beliefs, consequently
when I happen to walk among people of a different persuasion I get a little nervous keeping one
hand on my debit card and the other on a Mexican switch blade, never leave home without it. But
I drift!
Human’s being a big higher on the evolutionary scale, than let’s say than an oak tree, a cat or
dog, which by the way are referred to as “lumbering robots” when it comes to the gene-centered
view of evolution, whereas the genetic information is faithfully copied down through the
generations – in other words the “system” copies the instructions for making a product rather than
the product itself – whereas if you’re a deeply replicated God-fearing individual it would be
satanic to believe that it was not God who slammed the door on cats, dogs or oak trees morphing
into something else other than what they are or were. For some strange reason, God okay the
process of replicators allowing the development of the creation God achieved during God’s finest
hour. And for another strange unexplainable reason this God is noted in some religious texts, in
small print, that God picked the light-skinned fair-haired race to rule the earth, lately this has
been debated within a growing number of earth’s inhabitants, although with little success as it
seems the fair-skinned leaders of the human race do not take it lightly if a different color
challenges their position – one instance being when they dropped a couple of bombs on another
civilization whose skin and eyes were a bit different in color or shape than what was accepted by
the ruling faction. Today we find these up-tight individuals wrapped so tightly in their beliefs
that if some other race even hints that they might be developing a like technology they run about
screaming and beating their chests that the world will soon end – they then depend on their
ministers of their God to call down God’s wrath and cleanse the earth of its unclean members, by
whatever means including their own. We’ve been replicated!
 One of the concepts taught to the masses today is “life was not fair”, a gross lie of the actual
true concept of living, as when you stop and consider this “fact of life”, and actually who
promotes the system, you realize it is the rich and powerful who speak from their positions of
thrones who tell the guy on the street to expect a setback from time-to-time. If life to the person
toiling everyday, was equal as it is to the well-off, then there would be no advantage to the
accumulation of wealth or upper-class fairness. I not advocating a revolt or any subversive plot,
only the fact that the greater majority of the “gene pool” has been educated in such a manner to
humbly accept that life is rift with hills and valley, albeit the hills and valleys are a little less
strenuous for the “haves”. There are some who do not accept this time-honored concept, these
who buck the system are labeled as “radicals” and in some cases “conspirators” in their quest to
access the system and make a few minor changes – they ask the simple question to who is life not
fair? The leaders of their government along with CEOs of multinational corporations, or the
person on the production line producing the immeasurable wealth for a few? Many thousands
each day are told in a thousand different ways from the day they were born until they return to the
dirt of the earth that the unbreakable law of nature is “life is not fair.”
Science and a few learned men teach us the Earth might have remained a one-replicator planet,
but it did not once gene machines that spread across creation, began to imitate or copy increasing
their skills from another, in replicating them, foregoing starting from scratch – for whatever
reason our ancestors copied different skill sets and habits from on another. They passed on fire
making, the production of stone tools, wearing animal skins and plant fibers as clothes,
combining various dyes and painting their bodies and developed the tools they past down from
their ancestors enabling them to become proficient hunters and gatherers. The “point” being that
they copied these skills, sounds and habits – a fact in itself is what makes the Homo sapiens
unique and special of all the animal species on Earth. It is true that song birds can copy some
sounds, great apes can imitate some actions, and some sea mammals can also imitate – but of all
it is only Homo sapiens where imitation is easy and maintainable, whereas it is because of this
that for the Homo sapiens imitation changed his structure enabling a new kind of evolution.
Although Homo sapiens have gone through some pretty intense changes and our medical
profession understanding some of those evolutionary events there is one part of our physiology
that remains off-limits – whereas we have no idea just how the brain actually works, in storing
memories, thoughts, information or the other millions of things it does making up our physical
presence with the rest of the world. Science tells us they have discovered the process that dictates
our aging process, but they are not sure what triggers the gene, where in some cases our cells
change in some causing explosive eruptions of cell growth called cancer, and some are able to
live longer and yet some are gifted with center abilities and others are not. They cannot explain
why in some 75-years-old’s their brain seems to reach its capacity thereby limiting the storage of
information and why in some senility sets in and the grey matter between our ears acts as if it is
purging some information and senility progresses faster and faster until the individual cannot
remember his or her name.
In argument to the gene-memes evolutionary theory, scientific minds argue that the changes
were simply a culture adaptation – while other mostly religious fanatics, tell us it is the will of
God that some are brilliant (usually the ones who don’t buy into the preachers theories) and some
are not, and others who believe that genes/memes actually keep culture on a leash. In my opinion
it is the deeply religious who provide the spearhead in separating culture and different races.
At times it might appear that I’m against this or that religion, quite the contrary I accept an
individuals “free will” to worship in any manner they chose, I don’t find any religious practice
better or any worse than the next. If in worshiping in their chosen manner they find comfort with
life and at ease with each other – what is the problem? What I do find wrong is when one
religion puts another’s religion on the dark side, whereas they criticize or damn another one for
their religious practices – what for? It comes down to the simple fact that albeit they maintain
they understand the others religion, they do not and in not knowing less condemn their fellow
man in such ways that it would embarrass the hardiest of souls wandering about – in my humble
opinion in doing so they only show their ignorance and an upcoming visit from the senility factor.
On the other side of the coin, consider racism, a condition that since the days of Abe Lincoln it
seems that United States government and its society in general fought it, whereas more
affirmative actions groups protested and gathered in gangs forcing the government to give jobs to
minorities and insure they got a chance to receive a higher-education. And then you have the
NAACP fighting tooth and nail in the prevention of discrimination of any minority. But when
you stop and consider all this, when one side is given an advantage over another side resentment
will grow, it really doesn’t matter if it is white over blacks, blacks over whites, Mexican’s over
blacks, or everybody non-white against whites – whereas society and its government calling
attention to the differenced between people perpetuates the racism.
For example shortly after America was founded Africans blacks were brought to America from
their homeland in chains, obviously institutional racism on a grand scale. This institution of
slavery remained in place for several hundred years, although economics in reality was the chain
– slaves after all were free labor. The owners of the slaves did not see this as a crime against
humanity simply because they did not see the African descendents as people, they saw them as
animals and they interpreted their religious scriptures to support their position to the rest of
society. However, over time the humans in America, through a evolution of some sort, began to
see that slavery was morally wrong, fought a civil war that in turn was basically a war fought
over economics, albeit the outcome dictated the end of slavery, sort of. The end of slavery was a
point in America’s history whereas the ruling class first employed deliberate racism. Where if at
the end of the Civil War if things would have been left alone, within a few generations although
not without a struggle, beginning at the lowest levels of society poor whites and poor blacks
would have been living together in the same neighborhoods sharing the same misery, enduring
the same lack of economic opportunity eventually developing in kinship, one that would have
eliminated any preconceived notions about each other. At the end of the day realizing that they
were all just people – but as time marched forward soon after the Civil War the land owners of
the south and the industrial corporations in the north could not let this happen, they spend time
and tremendous effort in pointing out the differences between their skin or the lack of literacy or
some other such thing that downgraded the race.
Later albeit it was too late some realized that in fact had no reason to hate each other, but as
discrimination and equal rights were pumped for the downtrodden by the ruling class through the
media and the white southern religious folks who told whoever could read or listen that the up
and coming blacks were going to take their jobs, rape the women and vote their kind into public
office, and didn’t they (the poor white folk) known that blacks were inferior to them, Now ask
yourself, who at the bottom of the food chain doesn’t like to hear that there is someone one or
two rungs on the ladder lower than them – now once the poor whites believed this balderdash that
the poor black were going to take their jobs and their women the thought burned hot in their
minds violence a natural outcome – naturally laws were passed shot-gunned through Congress
and administered by mostly white courtrooms and today we find the condition no better in some
cases than in 1864.
I guess you could say the “genes” and “memes” failed somewhere along the way, in reality they
haven’t, just slowed up a bit, case in point we find the identical conditions rolling across the
countryside brought on by 9-11, an event that rings fresh in the America society every time it is
mentioned. The strange thing is the race that is blamed for the incident, according to official
documents was never proven to be responsible – a hint was made that people from the country of
Saudi Arabia, who were noted as being born under the Islamic religion although the individuals
in question were not very faithful to the Islamic faith. Not to be deterred the majority of
American’s blame all followers of the Islamic religion as devil worshippers and the greatest
threat to the world since the Cold War, like I said evolution has been stalled. To the benefit of
the general population, it is important to remember and consider that these unconnected citizens
of society reacted on the information spoon fed to them by their leaders, who get away with just
about anything when it comes to telling the truth, especially if the “truth” means the demise of a
source of economic power or control. Whereas to 99.99% of them the “manufactured truth is
justified by what they perceive is their absolute goal.” They determine who the enemy is and
who is not, as shown when the American Congress was not allowed to authorize a declaration of
war against Iraq or Afghanistan, where in the Law of the Land it is “only” Congress that can
legally declare war on anyone.
The human race along the way has morphed into a mixed breed of animal, one that has
experienced changing “genes” and “memes”, and evolving into it present state with some twists
and turns that are tilted toward the bizarre, granted most of this caused by the adoption of this
religion or that religion. Christianity, for example, contains a number of denominations including
Mormon, Southern Baptists, Baptists, Catholics and what have you – and then to a lesser number
with the followers of Judaism and the 2nd largest religion on the Planet the Muslims. All tend to
tell each other that because they don’t follow their particular brand of worship, that they are
sinners, damned to hell where they will be thrown into a pit of eternal fire and spent the rest of
eternity asking for a cold drink. If for some reason they feel they can convert each other they
spend hours and hours along with copious amounts of cold-hard-cash in the conversions process,
of course the bottom line being at the end of the day their collection plate will accumulate more
religious dollars for their cause.
Consequently the world is slowing producing more members of its society that do not trust
organized religion, where some even maintain that the Bible and the Qur’an are illogical and are
obviously written with the concept of behavioral control, with laws that are aimed at eternal
damnation if they are not followed, strangely the eternal damnation level at the breaking of the
laws is forgiven with a handsome contribution to the organization and copious amounts of knee
time begging forgiveness – once the debt his paid and the account cleaned, one assumes that in
less time than it takes to blink an eye, the original offense can be duplicated. Karl Marx wrote
that, “Religion is the opiate of the masses.” Whereas it is designed to stop the urge to revolt
against the establishment by promising a better life after death – in other words why attempt to
change the miserable system you live under if you get paradise after you die? Unfortunately, the
Islamic religion hints about a vision of death that includes numerous virgins awaiting for you if
you give your life in a religious jihad, a vision that encourages a sacrifice of one of the Muslim
faith, whether it be in the form of a suicide bomber or leading an attack on a military or civilian
complex. It is this belief that enabled the selling of the Muslims flying 136 ton commercial
airliners into the WTC and the Pentagon on 9-11-2001. A great many of the people believe in a
higher-power, and a strong belief in Heaven and Hell –this just don’t believe in the concept of
dressing up in your Sunday-go-to-meets, hopping into your brand new automobile or mounting
your well fed donkey and going to an organized religious service one-day a week. These same
believe in an after life, but they believe that your afterlife existence will be based on the amount
of pain you did or did not inflict on your fellow human during your life in this realm, they also
believe that virtue is to be embraced and shared, and is nothing to be ashamed of and hidden.
Common sense to a great many, but as expected not to Fundamentalist Christians who do not
have a great deal of common sense in the first place.
In addition to various concepts of religious beliefs being left behind in our evolutionary march
to the stars it appears we have become lodged in a cycle that finds our society in lock-step with
the concept that it is okay that industry by industry, service by service, product by product, small
companies and/or service providers are being snatched up bit by bit, voluntarily and involuntarily
morphing into huge, multinational, obscenely rich and powerful entities, with no soul or
compassion – this gradual process is allowing these overly large and rich entities to purchase and
control the governments of the planet (remember everyone has a price). They preach the freedom
associated with capitalism while paying their workers less than minimum wage in the 3 rd world
countries, keeping their production high with out-of-date practices selling their product across the
world with huge profit margins. The banks rejoice, the distant old money members rejoice, and
the economic structure of the world is once more alive and well. Unfortunately, lately the
primary purchasing power of the United States has sagged a bit, whereas the blame is shifted
towards its government, a misguided direction in that it wasn’t this government that started the
shift, and according to some it was big business that picked the sitting administration. But who is
keeping track, certainly not the taxpayer, they’re to busy blaming this religion or that one and
keeping the evening meal on the table. “Genes” and “Memes”, one more time around the track!
You could say the incorporation of the small into the big was a natural evolution, as when the
neighborhood grocery store was bankrupted or bought out by the Safeway, and Albertson’s of the
world, who because of their bulk purchasing of goods were at first able to undersell the Mom and
Pops stores across the land – next came the hardware stores as the Home Depots sold everything
from nails to washing machines, and then the corner car dealer, which today sells automobiles
that no self respecting modern citizen will drive. “Genes” and “memes” in step with the overly
large “Genes” and “Memes” – we are no doubt in step with the master plan, and when you look at
it the general population has indeed changed, but a lingering question is “for the better?”
Gradually the individual has been exposed to a slow growing “gradualism” where his or her
rights are removed under the banner of “protectionism”, those who notice the change are labeled
complainers or conspiracy nuts whereas their neighbors shun them or look the other way when
they drive to Costco’s for their weekly shopping run and plunk down $300-$400 for merchandise
they normally wouldn’t buy.
It has been a long-while since I partook in a little of the hemp, and albeit I have been preached
at about its harmful effects and its habit forming attributes, I find the concentrated effort to delay
its legalization, with copious amounts cash being donated by the beer and timber organization
against such an legal action. We all know that marijuana is a direct competitor of beer, enough
said about that, but why the timber industry. Well if truth be known the timber industry produces
trainload after trainload of paper, paper that runs the line from toilet accessories to writing pads.
Paper products are a huge business, and marijuana in its natural form is much cheaper to grow
then trees, and a byproduct of marijuana is “hemp” a wonderful and cheap natural source for
paper, besides it would give a new value in wastebasket fires, by legalizing marijuana the timber
industry would take a huge hit to their bottom line – hence the huge contributions to the anti-
marijuana drive….this is just one small example of corporations taking control of growing
industries, whereas I won’t even touch the private automobile industries technology being
controlled by the oil companies, you might think I was some sort of conspiracy nut.
Today the 3rd element “temes” have surfaced as a critical part of our march forward, whereas
when I was a young sapling working towards adulthood in a tiny town in Southeast Alaska, with
12 miles of road one-way and 1.5 miles another on an island, with access limited to the sea and
air, boredom was not a real part of my life. I always managed, along with my friends to find
some way to entertain ourselves, in the early days it was games played in the surrounding
countryside, later sneaking behind a woodshed here and there sipping on a treasured lifted beer
bottle from our father’s stash, or the neighborhood girl who allowed a peak once in a great while
at the nether regions of her frame, naturally a reciprocal move by the male of the species. In
retrospect we always found a way, absent a few hours here and there, to ward off boredom –
today the landscape has changed, thank you very much technology.
A recent article by George Wills reminds us that humans having evolved over dangerous eons,
where are brains reacted to dangerous conditions, today in most cases (other than a drive-by
shooting) we have isolated ourselves in the relative safety of modern life – whereas to push aside
boredom the younger generation is dependent on a constant stimulation by visual and audio
entertainment.
During my trek through my younger days, his article reminded me that at any time when I was
bored it usually occupied approximately 2-3 hours of my day or week, today the young amongst
are usually bored after 30-seconds of downtime…whereas 2 or 3 hours would have an individual
setting fire to his house, driving the family car off a cliff or bombing the local electric supplier for
letting the power go down, after realizing that the latest Ever-ready battery did nothing to power
up his latest edition of a gameboy or equivalent. Another fact his article referenced to was the
lack of civility in the young, whereas in the my “dark ages” being civil was a fact of life, today
our young feel that being civil feels like submission to some force or condition they reject
outright, this especially holds true when it applies to their instructors who are supposed to
enhance their mental ability – seems being educated has become a feared thing, that is unless it
involves the latest “rap” song or a new method to illegally download the latest game off the
Internet.
As I mentioned, back in the “dark ages” when we found periods of boredom we searched for
ways to work around it, we at times, more often than not, created various methods to overcome
the constant trickle of moisture from the sky, beating each other brains to pieces for things to do.
I remember when one of us found a huge ball of twine (string tougher and thicker than normal
string), we took the large ball of twine rounded up a bunch of steel garbage cans and various
other objects that would make a lot of noise, and one night went around and tied them to some
vehicles hiding the noise making objects in nearby bushes and went home…some of us with
visions of the local gendarme pounding on our door. Waking the next day we were greeted with
stories of the owners of those vehicles cussing and stomping about telling whoever would listen
about their having to stop their cars and untie a can or two they were dragging down dirt roads…
needless to say one of our gang had the dickens beat out of him and confessed the entire crime.
We were labeled hooligans’ of the highest level and grounded for ten-years, with parole granted
after we took care of the dishes and a few other hard-luck parole chores. In other words, from
time-to-time the right side of our brain got a bit of an exercise, whereas today in the USA the
right side appears somewhat close to dormant with an exception or two on the Potomac where
dirty tricks are born out of thin air and some wise guys send a group of young people someplace
to mix-it-up with the locals in the region.
The West, in particular the powers-to-be in the USA, that is now suffering from a collapse of
their economy and their way of life because of the elites greed, mistrust, corruptions and
hypocrisy, instead of applying their available treasury to attacking their internal problems seem
bent of destroying others, in hopes that the exterior attention will drive their internal problems
back into a barrel tucked away out of sight. Learned members of their society are getting a little
afraid of latest desperate messages they are seeing, they like some on the street see these plunges
into another theater of war and the final lynch pin in democracy being pulled from the dyke
holding back the debt laden waters of America. They are more than worried by the inability of
the Congress and the national parties inability to govern together, equating it to the left and right
side of the brain locked away not communicating, whereas memories of distant events leading to
major conflicts of Earth’s history no-longer a rational thought of the leaders of the free world.
It appears, in some, that when a problem surfaces and no immediate solution is forthcoming the
right and left parts of the brain do not communicate, whereas in what is believed as a normal
process a wide, but sometimes distant, memory or information usually is made available to the
left side of the brain where it is usually scanned searching for unseen patterns, alternative
solutions and other high-level abstractions.
But through a continuous input of digital information leaving little time for the brain to relax an
important element is denied, rest. The lack of downtime is being found to limit the brains ability
to learn, remember information and create new ideas – such things as a through the park jog is
found to be better than the subject laying about listening or viewing information on one of the
numerous available devices today, including the cellphones that do all but make a fresh pot of
coffee. In other words the avalanche of constant digital information is reducing the activity of the
grey matter, cutting loose some of the information stored in it and limiting the brains ability to
analyze the very same. I know we’re not rats, but experiments lately show that when a rat has
experienced a new procedure the brain shows new patterns of activity, and it is only when they
take a break from their exploration do they began to process the new information allowing them
to create a persistent memory of the experience.
So far, as I understand the process, our brain operates faster than any digital processing unit
invented – albeit at time stumbles processing complex numbers and information from our
politicians, in a moment faster than 17 speeding bullets aimed at your body, it assembles
disparate shreds of thought and binds them into a new single idea that bullies it way into your
consciousness, now whether you accept that new idea mostly depends on your “bringing up”, for
example if your raised anywhere with 1000 miles of the “Bible Belt”, there is no way on Gods
green Earth that you will accept same sex marriages – you’re just not trained that way another
example being if you’re raised in the same area chances are you’ll vote differently than a majority
of the population. Remember I wrote “chances are”.
Regardless in a normal person, when an idea pops into your consciousness it begins to evaluate
the incoming information, where as mentioned it evaluates the idea based on your culture, your
financial position if it will dig into your pocketbook, and your ability to further assemble the parts
to bring the idea to a close. Amazingly all this takes place in less time for you to count to “1”,
now creative thinking requires a constant shifting of material, where blended pulses of numerous
concepts of both divergent thinking and convergent thoughts wrap themselves in mixtures of new
information and old information – at times throwing some older ideas on the table that you have
thought about in the past – highly creative people are super good at assembling ideas drawing
from diverse directions, they more creative the better their ability to dual-activate, in other words
jam both sides of their brain cranking out idea’s that some of us would never come up with.
Can the process be learned, the professionals tell us in a word “yes”, but like any other “sport”
there is a certain amount of born ability, but not as much as one would think – for example a 7
foot person will not be able to step onto a basketball floor and automatically be the next star of
the NBA, unless they practice – had to change “he” to “they” didn’t want to get some of the
female readers up-on-step! Granted there are some features that individuals are born with that
enhances creative thinking or divergent thinking, but convergent thinking and focused attention
are learned skills – or a further development of various “neural” gifts. And like learning to walk,
a lifetime of consistent habits gradually changes the neurological patter…one of the reasons that
Bible Belt citizens will never in their lifespan accept certain habits when it comes to matters of
sexual orientation – just ain’t gonna happen!
The technical revolution spreading across the globe and its constant digital barrage of
information from phones, computers, games and other devices has definitely changed our way of
life, some individuals becoming an addictive electronic addict. As one, the demand for
continuous stimulation becomes a normal activity, whereas “gaps” between moments of
heightened stimulation are rapidly vanishing, in other words our digital age is squeezing the
boredom out of life – for the super addictive individuals and their hyper-stimulated synaptic
mindscape of daily life, their pattern emerges with all “peaks” and no “valleys”.
It is this ever increasing population base that has some worried, where most of us realize that
real life is rift with “peaks” and “valleys”, in a sense the life of this hyper-stimulated individuals
has created a portion of our society that like the movie “Failure to Launch”, never quite make it
out of childhood having become pre-occupied with “self-amusement”, and they and those around
them struggle with the transition between childhood and adulthood.
For example when I was growing up in my small isolated community we had no local radio
station or a television station, we had 45 RPM records along with some 33 1/3 RPM platters, a
local store that sold magazines, and a well stocked library – oh yes a movie house that showed
black and white Cowboy and Indian movies, and other exciting adventures. To overcome our
boredom on raining days (and there were plenty of them) we mostly read, which stimulated our
imagination as we read adventure stories or in my case historical accounts of this and that.
Today we have television and 10 foot flat screens hanging on the wall, a super-dooper DVD
reader and more recorded movies than a sane person can count, books have gone by the way side
and the creative imagination has been replaced with 3-D action movies that might startle you and
cause you to spill your drink, but they do not stimulated the creative section of your grey matter.
As for school work no longer do students sit at a poorly lit kitchen table tongue stuck between
their lips as the write a book report or struggle with their math – they pop a disc into their laptop,
copy a few lines from an on-line source and plot a few lines of Geometry and play the latest and
greatest game loaded into their unit – and life is good.
Granted there are some who enjoy the excitement of external activities, such as jumping out of
a plane depending on a thin fabric to gently lower you to the ground after plummeting at high
speed back to Earth, and some really get a bang out of lowering the bar on a small car riding the
rails of a super-killer roller coaster, sometimes soiling their undergarments – and some strap on
bottles and dip below the surface of the ocean for allowable periods of time, climb mountains,
stroll across glaciers and rock climb with the barest necessities, and get up everyday jump into
their going-to-work machine and risk life and limb to perform an 8-5 job drinking stale store-
bought ground coffee – so I guess you can say we’re not all digital freaks.
One advance that has happened over the past couple of decades that has driven this digital
revolution is the Internet, albeit a large contributor to the isolation of some individuals it has the
power to finally disrupt the cycles of control hoisted onto society. In the West we’re in a period
where fear as an anti-societal brake - whereas fear is allowing the powers-to-be to demand
conformity based on the premise that the government is protecting the citizen, employing
excessive surveillance, strict laws and encouraging the citizens to report any infraction to the
authorities, in the East we find the conditions previously enforced being somewhat liberalized to
a point that the public, granting new freedoms of sexuality, dress and the repealing of old
dogmatic laws that suppressed the general population. At a time in the past, the cycle would
reverse itself as the pendulum swung the other direction – some societies are not changing fast
enough to accommodate the population, hence we see more and more civil disturbances, most of
these due to the access and information provided by the World Wide Web.
Some of the information available is pointing to and ripping apart the operating principles of
governments, whereas networking tools such as YouTube and other outlets are posting videos
and government documents demonstrating some pretty harsh things – it is these types of items
that will make if harder to turn the pendulum around in the next cycle and the world will
experience more and more incidents causing massive internal wars and the overthrowing of the
old way of doing business. Ohhh, we’ll see an increase of published information that calls for
the exposure of crackpots and conspiracy nuts, information that targets the on-line data and its
presenters drumming up fictitious or manufactured information. But then the massive size of the
Internet will quickly eliminate these false charges and large corporations and government will
increasingly find it difficult to throw one over on their citizens.
I often wonder if it our enhanced medical skills have led to our ability to diagnose learning and
attention deficits, as it seems our society has produced humans in great mass who seem to have
various conditions of such. Lately, learned members of our society are attributing this growth in
attention deficits to our growth with the electronic media. They maintain that the new system
allows an individual the ability to withdraw into the media permitting them to bypass the
confusion and pain associated with everyday life, creating a new realm that they embrace
avoiding the realities of dealing with the flawed, vulnerable, and actions of an ordinary human
being – the description of “ordinary” in my non-medical background is becoming clouded, but I
guess that is neither here or there. The lack of social contract in our society today, that is in the
countries that are able to provide such advancements such as digital entertainment and free and
high-speed broadband access is worrying some of the mental giants that walk amongst us, and the
religious dreadnaughts who depend on a full collection plate, albeit some make their way to the
digital media pacing back and forth on a well-lit stage preaching their fire-and-brimstone.
Others accept the condition, resigned to the fact that this attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder
is no longer considered a disorder at all – it’s just the way we have evolved. While the great
scientific minds argue the fact that the “constant” short-term stimulation of jumping to and fro
among digital information prompting can impede long-term memory on which is said important
forms of intelligence depend, others maintain that is foolish to worry and within seconds move on
to the fact that the ice is melting because too many cattle have increased their methane output. In
other words our society is adjusting to the fact that the lack of boredom is good for some of us,
where it is almost reaching the point of criminality to zone out with a good book, or set on your
front porch and stare off into the distance for more than 30-seconds at any one time.
And then we now enjoy the DARPA invention, the always-on, always-connected Internet,
where if we chose we hop onto the matrix and in more than a sense all three of the
aforementioned processes combine and we are on our way creating a new evolutionary process.
Computers today handle vast quantities of information and have an extraordinary high-fidelity
of copying and storage capacity. Although variation and selection of such information is still
done with the human element involved, who we are noting have evolved with a much higher
desire for stimulation, amusement, communications, sex and food – some note this list is
changing – in computer processing that is. There are now available programs that recombine old
texts and create new essays or poems, translating texts to create new versions selecting from vast
bins of storage text, images and various other forms of data. Our search engines have morphed
into almost live old fashion librarians scrambling between aisles of books selecting sources using
their clever algorithms combining previous searches and linking the user to advanced and
complex results.
This radical new technology has become a stable part of our evolution, albeit very different
from the way cells copy strands of DNA or the copying of human memes. The information
roaming the matrix is also different, mainly highly stable digital information stored and processed
by machines rather than living cells – hence we now see the emergence of “temes” and “teme”
machines – the 3rd replicator.
The question surfaces, albeit silently, whereas just as the human “meme” machine spread over
the planet, using up its resources and altering ecosystems to meet its required needs, so the new
“teme” machines will do the same, only faster! Our human species is willing to provide an
increasing amount of physical energy to power the matrix, and as it appears today there is no
limit to the amount of energy that will be necessary as we create sophisticated machines to create
extraordinary digital worlds, some constructed with the aid of humans and other independent of
human activity. Today we are still necessary, not at least to run the power stations, but some
peering into the future that as the “temes” proliferate using more and more energy and resources,
the human role will become less significant, albeit Homo sapiens set the entire new evolutionary
process in motion – Terminator IV becomes a reality!