🚀 go-pugleaf

Very excellent points.  I hope this will be spread to as many people as 
possible, although it could be said more simply.

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"Walter Alter" <email@email.com> wrote in message 
news:Iy26e.3503$An2.2945@newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net...
> walter alter- the list of recalibrations
>
> 1.  gauge function is the highest order of cognition.  comparison is
> measurement.  why do you think we have two eyes?  corrolary: a
> non-varying field goes imperceived, yet maintains it's field effect.
> this is why "The Medium Is Not the Message", sort of.  this is why
> increased intelligence requires constant zooming in and out of category
> flux fields.  any category is a unit of measurement.
>
> 2.  the level of technological development in any given society is the
> primary measurement of the state of its intellectual and cultural
> maturity.  the result of technological advancement is axiomatically the
> production of free time, that is, time available to an expanding array of
> choices rather than to an expanding array of necessities.  freed from
> necessity, a society can invent forward, project a wide field of ideals
> determined by curiosity and exploration rather than inventing backwards
> within a narrow field determined by irritants.
>
> 3.  up to now, invention has concerned itself with the creation of
> objects in space.  in an electronic free-time society, invention will
> emphasize organizational schemata for information throughput.
> information throughput will tend to be undramatized, gradiently
> accessable and diagrammatic.  info-inventors will be busy mainly with
> creating gradient skill upgrade kits for various starting level
> demographics.  info intake skills will amplify our capacity to both
> perceive (structural) and to organize (conceptual) larger quantities of
> information.  the impetus will be to design frames of reference
> unfettered by ideology.  the virtuous application of these newly acquired
> skills will follow naturally as a result of the intrinsic nature of the
> self-amplification process.  fulfilled, creating beings are intrinsically
> virtuous.  scarcity and scarcity alone makes for social pathologies.
> scarcity and scarcity alone makes for social pathologies.  stereo.
>
> 4.  technology is inherently democratizing.  period.  technophobia is
> increasingly perceived to be against the interests of humanity.  in dense
> information fields, social uncertainty or trauma is dissipated when full
> attention can be applied to gathering information for problem solving
> applications.  technology supplies the tools for amplifying intelligence
> to every citizen.  the economics of mass production dissolves hierarchies
> of priviledged access to resources.  what were considered luxuries of the
> priviledged classes in the past- education, transportation, sanitation,
> good diet, free time, and so on, are now taken for granted by citizens in
> the industrial nations.  read McLuhan.
>
> 5.  technology, on account of its abundance producing efficiencies,
> shares created wealth, rather than concentrating exploited wealth.
> technology requires educated workers in the production end.  under
> feudalism, divisions of labor were decided upon by tradition, birthright,
> wealth, privilege, etc., and resulted in caste system boundaries that
> tended to freeze the evolution of intelligence, hence the tendency of all
> pre- capitalist societies to exploitation, self-cannibalize and
> eventually collapse.  ruling class control of technology is now an
> historic futility.  the genie is out of the bottle. human knowledge is
> approaching the threshold where it can self-amplify at a geometrically
> accelerating rate rather than at the pre-electronic, pre-TV linear rate.
>
> 6.   imaging technology is the primary organizing principle of 21st
> century social forms for two reasons: a) information density- "a picture
> is worth a thousand words" really means that a picture oriented society
> has more accuracy of detail about its status (look-down/look-forward) and
> needs and can better predict the outcome of its policy decisions.  this
> makes for stable social evolution.  image breadth also provides a basis
> for concluding that all other human beings are very much like oneself  b)
> image plasticity- a wider variety of imaginary constructs can be brought
> into mind, integrated and re-synthesized back out onto the 3-D world and
> tested for reality.  it is no accident that invention springs from an
> interplay between necessity and daydream imagination.  as necessity
> becomes less a factor, creative imagination will be the posession of
> everyone and everyone will be an artist both born and conceived.
>
> 7.  in an image rich culture, individual eidetic prototyping, ie.,
> fantasizing, becomes less bound to subjective personality loops and
> better able to engage problem-solving efficiencies within the measurable
> realm of the externally perceived universe.  over half the brain's
> neurons are used to process and understand visual input.  the human
> imagination is a perfect laboratory for the construction of reality
> models.  when deeply engaged, imagination is capable of all the
> resolution, memory referencing and tactile positioning of the dream
> state, but with analytic faculties accessable.  the biological brain's
> visual input data channel has a bandwidth estimated to be about 2
> gigabits per second.  99% of this data channel is available to the
> imagination for plastic inner construction.  consciousness is a heads up
> display, kids.
>
> 8.  an imaging screen (TV, computer monitor, flat panel display, etc.) is
> plastic within its own frame of reference and allows for multi-functions
> of the same instrument.  with the addition of touch screen, data glove or
> other "hot screen" technology, a PC computer can multi-function as memory
> storage, data computation, gauge display, media interface, and process
> controller.  this multi-function capability is a powerful form of
> throughput amplification.  any tool that can lessen boundary pile-up and
> discontinuities between phases or objects is more efficient.  that is
> what efficiency is- the reduction of boundaries around simultaneity and
> velocity shockfront boundaries, ie., societies' generational boundaries.
> the human mind is very good at alternating or simultaneous functions.  it
> can walk and chew gum; it can both perceive and conceive.  the imaging
> screen tool best reflects our capacities to both view and visualize and
> will probably be the first component of an artificial intelligence array
> that exceeds the primary limiting factor of human individual sentience-
> our built-in focus outward from a binocular being point singularity.  an
> A.I. setup with multi-points of view, many eyed, will accelerate the next
> revolution in applied knowledge.
>
> 9.   artificial intelligence efforts and their mathematical modeling
> tools to date have been flawed by the impulse to mimic human perceptual
> and cognitive abilities.  this will remain and impossible task for the
> forseeable future mainly because we are the product of a billion or so
> years of biological evolution built upon miniaturization from the
> molecular level.  attempts to reverse engineer even a fraction of what
> occurs within cellular metabolism is an absurdity.  our minds represent
> the integration of an uncountable number of experiments with the aim of
> insuring biological survival over an incredible array of hostile physical
> circumstances.  had humans evolved to fulfil functions such as one sees
> mimicked in A.I.  laboratories (a machine that can carry a pizza up a
> flight of stairs, for example), we'd probably now have the stature of a
> large spider with a brain to match.  A.I. research is finding itself
> better served by efforts concentrating on a limited range of precise,
> directed autonomous primary tasks rather than emulating broad band human
> physical or mental attributes.  spinoff from A.I.  research has been
> unfulfilling and, insofar as increasing our understanding of human mental
> function- crippling.  human cognition has nothing to do with quantaic
> digitizing or binary, on/off processing.  japanese industrial robotics
> are a samrt application of A.I. and were forward engineered for specific
> task application and the utility of that approach has not only paid their
> economies  in real terms, but is dictating the shape of current A.I.
> research globally.
>
> 10.  multi-screen image display arrays are key to solving the problem of
> information overload.  there is not too much information, there is too
> little cognitive ability to handle it.  the synthetic capabilities of the
> visual cortex (mass-free mental imaging, thought pictures, whatever you
> want to call it) coupled to the synthetic potential of our
> matter-composed universe (molecular leggo kit) provides us with a very
> large number of invention activated problem solving avenues.  actually we
> are over-engineered for survival.  meeting the necessities of biological
> survival is a piece of cake, an amoeba can do it.  but systems propelled
> by discomfort are limited in that they focus backwards upon point-causal
> determinants. (see #2)  these rearward facing systems are automatic
> (reflexive/instinctual), not autonomous.  systems attracted by pleasure
> are area-diffuse rather than point-focused.  they exercise forward acting
> (future oriented) area/multiplex-causal field apperception over a range
> of possibilities.  the implication of choice requires a modeling system
> which allows the comparative consideration of options in an autonomous
> manner.  this modeling system should borrow as much as it can from the
> "dimension of simultaneity" in order to hold several or many choices up
> against each other for comparative judgement and pattern
> synthesis/re-synthesis.  for this reason, external modeling systems which
> most closely mirror the internal one are ideally multi- screen with zoom
> in/out potential at all foci and inclusive of the peripheral (diffuse)
> field as well.
>
> 8.   various studies on the nature and effect of television upon culture
> have been made, their results and attendant opinions published.  none,
> however, have taken into account a hitherto unknown potential of the
> video medium, that of active, analytic multi-screen viewing.  when
> television is discussed it is always within the parameter of a single
> screen, much like cinema.  Marshal Mcluhan first hypothesized an
> important characteristic of technological advance- the tendency for the
> previous technology to dictate the form its subsequent evolution will
> take.  for example, the first automobiles looked like horse carriages,
> but as velocities increased, they reflected more the streamlined shape of
> their potential and the unpredicted forces at play near maximum
> efficiency performance boundaries.  this is a societal shock reducing
> mechanism which serves to validate the past in its form while
> incorporating a new utility and its consequent new IDENTITY.  so it is
> with television.  we have a medium imprisoned within the form of its
> predecessor, cinema/theater.  it has been captive to cinema's physical
> form up to this point, (a single screen) and theater content (the
> presentation of dramatic pathos).  television, however, is actually
> ideally suited to multi-screen arrays.  furthermore, being electronic and
> portable at both its point of origin and its point of reception, its
> content is ideally suited to instantaneous update and real time look-in
> on relevant events.
>
> 8a   the ability for the viewer to switch through channels, to view
> within the autonomous framework of the home environment and to utilize
> the autonomous potentials of VCR and camcorder is lessening the power of
> remote authority as well as "theatrics" in political life.  theatrics, or
> overly emphatic caricaturing, is the tyrant's first line of attack and
> can only operate in a controlled social environment characterized by the
> absence of comparisons.  it is the "dictatorship of the modality".
> however, with electronic (simultaneous-with-event) media, a comparative
> modality, or a modality of modalities, is now beginning to be felt
> politically and culturally.  the sheer density of of global electronic
> communications pretty much precludes its being "jammed" physically, and
> is making it harder to "jam" ideologically.  media monopolies are giving
> way to media autonomies, first via cable TV and soon via computer
> multi-media.
>
> 9.   multi-screen arrays imply more than one point of view which is the
> basis for the dimensionality of space, among other things.  we perceive
> time from the standpoint of a succession of temporal points of view.  we
> perceive space from a binocular point of view, the conceptual fusion of
> which gives us 3-D.  we see "behind" appearances to find true causes.
> multiple points of view is a very powerful attribute of full awareness
> and, moreover, is the primary means by which awareness amplifies itself.
> putting oneself in the other person's shoes, for example, is a key to
> successful communication and the generation of understanding.  having the
> flexibility to adopt many points of view during the analysis of a
> situation is the creative way to avoid traps in cognition.  multi-screen
> arrays are tailor made for collaborative problem solving via tele-
> conference hookups.  we can map out facets of a situation like a cubist
> painting and come upon a more complete picture.  completing our picture
> of the universe is the name of the game.
>
> 10.  problem solving is very simple given enough information.  the facts
> usually sort themselves out into necessity fields and mental effort is
> potentially freed up to pursue more and more pleasure of creativity.  the
> inability to solve a problem is invariably the result of an incomplete
> set of facts, ie., a set of blindnesses, which most characteristically
> takes the form of a mind set, an ideology.  we are going to have to learn
> how to operate anti-ideologically with freedom of choice within an
> incredibly dense global information matrix.  the densest personal info
> matrix is the visual one.  the human retina is capable of differentiating
> about 2 million color hues and intensities and probably a larger number
> of shapes, spatial attitudes, distances and motions.  we mainly use only
> a small portion of the visual field at any one time, a pencil thin cone
> of maximum attention, and we presently pretty much see as we read, in a
> scanning manner.  this leaves the peripheral visual field almost unused,
> merely a cue-up function; like hearing- an attention director.  expansion
> of peripheral apperception is desirable because it allows a wider field
> of view for the simultaneous comparative gauging of visual info which
> will, in turn, amplify that same potential within the memory and
> projective areas of the mind.  in short, we can make parallel processing
> abilities accessible to consciousness.  one can get a taste of this
> ability by setting two TV sets side by side, tuning in two different
> stations with audio up on both and concentrating on getting the gist of
> both programs simultaneously.  within ten minutes you should be catching
> on.
>
> 11.   high definition tv (HDTV) should be perceived by the media aware
> public as more than an embellishment upon the world of entertainment.
> 1,120 scan line resolution will transform our perceptual field and its
> resultant social appetites much as photo-journalism via "life" and "look"
> magazines helped to transform america from agrarianism to industrialism.
> HDTV viewed upon a living room tv set will make such superficial genre as
> game shows, soap operas, sitcoms and allied exercises in inanity naked to
> our faculties of analysis and skepticism.  nature does not represent
> itself to us in low definition.  we do that.  low definition
> communication leaves us in a state of mystery.  mystery does not fulfil,
> it leaves hunger.  HDTV fills in the blanks.  if the TV program content
> is a mismatch with the detailed configurative capability of the retina,
> the viewer will change channels to program content which does that
> capability justice.  with HDTV, video as a single-screen artifact reaches
> its maximum point of exploitation.  it is suitable for nothing less than
> a documentary approach at all times.  low definition sectarian ideology
> is incapable of instantaneous update and will be perceived as a
> retrograde, obstructing cartoon.  the viewer will be freed from any frame
> of reference which locks interpretation into pre-orchestrated categories.
> fields of knowledge will become wide angle, making apparent the
> interconnectivity of event flux and causality.  requirement will supplant
> style.  the demand for precision in all bio-necessity aspects of life
> will dictate a form-follows-function structuralist aesthetic.   HDTV is
> available now to anyone with a high resolution computer screen by the
> addition of a video signal interface card which allows broadcast or video
> tape programming to be seen at over 1,000 scan lines.  the combining of
> what has heretofore been an entertainment medium with an information
> processing device will force entertainment towards a basis in reality and
> force info processing towards a basis in fun.
>
> 12.   the compact handicam allows us to look in on areas of human
> discovery as they occur without the mitigation of commentary or editing
> or political top spin.  exploration, laboratory and field research,
> global conferences, classroom lectures, etc.  could be tuned in to for
> personal enjoyment and university credit.  the key is "real-time".  CSPAN
> is the most important network currently in existence.  emergency
> situations already benefit to a degree from this technology, particularly
> in the medical field where difficult procedures are accessible to world
> wide expertise while in progress.  the recent events in china were
> covered in large measure by students with smuggled handicams.  we are
> witness to events as they unfold.  abuses of police or government
> procedures captured by a palm-corder, cannot be denied without the peril
> of full discovery and blown cabals.  video testimony and video documents
> are being recognized as legally true.  the drama is reality itself.
>
> 13.   Mcluhan's prediction of the electronic "global village" is no joke.
> we are beginning to see into the cultural lives of our global neighbors
> on an unprecedented and intimate scale, independent from the force
> feeding of "us vs. them" stereotypes via ideological and governmental
> channels.  the most important network program to date is "America's
> Funniest Home Videos".  the most important broadcast demographic was
> eastern europe.  they cast off a doomed economic system in order to "get
> their MTV".  real life is far more transformative and entertaining than
> entertainment, touches us more deeply, and bonds us together at the level
> of reality.  truth is manifold viewpoint, manifold and cross-referenced
> verification.  the hottest new category of programming is the talk show,
> because, though superficially esploitive of human frailty, presents the
> human drama as worthy of beholding in its plain, base and democratic
> form.  essentially- art is dead.
>
> 14.   we no longer have the option to select whether or not we perceive
> an event, but only where to place it within our frame of reference- what
> causality and, hence, predictive importance to give it.  in an era of
> remote telecast, nothing remains remote, everything is right in front of
> our face.  your hand held channel selector is a marvelous anti-gravity
> device.  you don't have to get up to change the channel, consequently you
> don't tend to get trapped inside mass/inertia systems.  the tendency,
> then is to not pattern your mental life after mass/inertia systems.  the
> remote channel selector is democracy's most powerful weapon.  truth is
> never boring, particularly in large, 500 channel therapeutic quantities.
>
> 15.   digital signal processing (the quantaic sampling of video and audio
> continua) and the accessibility to professional quality multimedia gear
> will decentralize all media production and distribution networks.
> professional studio quality results will be available on consumer
> multimedia equipment.  the entertainment industry will have to cope
> with a citizenry able and content to entertain itself.  needless to say,
> the star system as a mystery religion will more and more appear to be
> composed of quaint, if not clownish, eccentrics.  computer multimedia
> capabilities will spin off to the family album level.  Andy Warhol's
> prediction of 15 minutes of fame for everyone was stingy.  we'll all be
> the stars of our own media extravaganzas until the magic wears off and
> it dawns on us that we have in our hands the most powerful tool for
> autonomous self-evolution yet devised.  in the face of abundance,
> previously scarce media commodities-of-the-mind such as "fame" wiil
> become the domain of compulsive fetish collectors.
>
> 16.   up to now, what we call communication is really sound wave
> communication carried out in our atmosphere at relatively slow speeds
> within a linear sequential framework.  light travels 100,000 times faster
> than sound.  this is the speed of vision- 5 orders of magnitude faster
> than sound.  that's a lot, but a conceivable lot.  the full visual field
> is also somewhat simultaneous.  you can recognize several objects at a
> single glance.  the advantages of incorporating a visual language into
> everyday affairs is readily apparent as a way to graphically update the
> viewer on a very broad front of world events, given the "problem" of info
> overload.  the nature of that language is totally wide open.  it could be
> any mix of graphic symbol, color cues, positional cues, motion cues, 3-d
> display, audio intermix, you name it.  fast cut advertising is the
> beginning of a visual language where situations themselves become icons,
> an advance over fixation on a content composed of object icons.  the
> trick will be to communicate bidirectionally in real time and in high
> resolution.  "lemme tell you one thing, kid.  diagrams."
>
> 17.   Nikola Tesla, in his later years, claimed to have invented a
> process whereby mental images could be transferred to an external imaging
> screen.  his absolute mastery over the theory and application of
> electro-magnetic phenomena is a matter of historic fact.  we use his
> patented AC current, polyphase motors, broadcast radio, flourescent
> illumination, transformers, trnsducers, etc.  on a daily basis.  in the
> early '70's the U.S. military took the threat of Soviet deployment of
> Tesla-physics' electro-magnetic resonance and diffraction weapons very
> seriously.  it was the impulse to develop the SDI program and that
> program's subsequent tchnological accellerations which led to the
> collapse of the Soviet Union and the current world political
> reallignment.  we should make the attempt to understand electro-magnetic
> phenomena as Tesla did, the vacuum being no vacuum at all, rather a
> seething sea of electrostatic potential, a stressed vacuum.  Tesla also
> claimed to have knowledge of a revolutionary broadcast technology wherein
> upwards of a million discrete high-bandwidth channels could be broadcast
> without interference or signal degradation resonantly through the earth,
> from anywhere, to anywhere.
>
> 18.   the leading edge of media research is currently to be found in the
> field of aircraft cockpit instrumentation display.  whenever you have two
> systems in relative motion, the requirements for rapid information
> updating rise exponentially as a function of the increase in velocity.
> necessity dictates accuracy, ie., a high volume of data, a dense data
> flux.  these lessons can be applied to everyday life where the velocity
> and instability factors are less than in-flight systems, but the
> simultaneity factors are greater.  information throughput density is
> constant in either case.  information density is conceptually akin to
> object velocity.  the more of it that pours through your visual
> perceptual field, the faster you are going, even though you may be
> physically at rest.  this is why television "couch potatoes" are actually
> rocket sled pilots travelling at warp speed.
>
> 19.   what we presently enjoy as technological progress has, up to this
> point, been essentially a spinoff from military R & D.  national
> destinies has heretofore required the motive of an external political
> threat to unify and drive science via weapons research.  with the easing
> of Cold War tensions, technology can, for the first time in human
> history, be harnessed directly to global human needs, but the motive of
> discovery must be powerful enough to supplant the motive of war threat.
> space exploration and the defense against interplanetary
> civilization-destroying chunks of rock (meteors) is vital as a
> replacement "science driver" because only in that realm is the crucial
> factors of emergency and power vs. weight, ie., miniaturization and its
> subsequent high level of production knowledge and skill, the primary
> factor.  in the wake of the comet Shoemaker/Levy impact on Jupiter, we
> become aware of our vulnerability in this corner of the Universe.  we
> have here an opportunity to employ a motive of global survival more
> powerful than the environmentalist motive.  the previous "survival of the
> folk" employed by all nations can be universalized into the issue of
> human survival capable of emploing hard core militaristic factions in
> ways that environmental emergencies cannot.  were the military/industrial
> sector of global economies to find themselves facing extinction, the
> subsequent global economic collapse would act upon society as did the
> stock market crash of 1929 upon Weimar Germany.  beware, you technophobic
> morons.
>
> 20.   tele-synthetic reality- virtual reality imaging and allied tactile-
> referent systems are intrinsically spatial/simultaneous rather than
> acoustic/sequential.  their greatest lesson is that the inner and outer
> worlds are identical in vastness.  its spinoff developments are already
> showing potential.  two forms of goggle-type display technology have
> recently been made available which will have consequences beyond their
> immediate markets. the first goggle display places heads up data
> overlayed upon the normal visual panorama.  the prototypes do not have
> head movement tracking and directional capabilities, but can superimpose
> any word or symbol code upon the real world. no reason why one couldn't
> read the paper while driving the car, for example, simply a matter of
> depth of field awareness.  the other goggle technology projects any video
> signal directly in front of the eyes, but blanks out real world image.
> this British invention is designed as a substitute for regular television
> viewing with stereo earphones and goggle display in an integral unit.
> the remarkable potential in these videophonic goggles is that they will
> effectively cause the reintegration of the imaginative processes of
> cognition away from the subjective and towards the objective, real world.
> the effect is to put  the viewer into the scene.  documentary visual
> uptake will immerse the viewer within the docu-world and further
> accelerate the citizen's potential to participate in world affairs beyond
> the mere possession of an opinion.
>
> 21.   in the recent discussions about the most strategic of our nation's
> industries, electronic design automation (EDA) has received undeserved
> neglect.  the computer design of computer components and software is an
> absolutely crucial technology.  file compression algorythms can shrink
> certain kinds of data, particularly visual, picture data, one
> hundredfold.  phone line transmission of encyclopedic quantities of info
> will lead to the computer bulletin board/Internet supplanting colleges
> and universities as centers of learning. EDA is also key to rapid and
> coordinated manufacturing of upgraded and new hard products.  the amazing
> fertility of electronic technology is constantly shrinking the "shelf
> life" of products, now down to under a year.  rapid obsolescence has
> brought EDA into its own and is currently forcing the issue of standards
> for image compression, storage and transmission types.  the implications
> of EDA, however, are far deeper.  EDA is laying the practical foundations
> for productive artificial intelligence capabilities, in particular, the
> ability of a piece of hardware or program to educate itself about a task
> and then improve its performance on that task.
>
> 22.   computer aided design, animation and engineering will integrate
> within the entertainment industry and will eventually replace sets,
> actors, locations, cameras, everything, in fact, that we call "Hollywood".
> photorealistic animation will burst out of its "special effects"
> containment to take over the entire production.  feature-length
> entertainment will be produced start to finish by a handful of men and
> women in an editing suite at a hundredth the cost.  photorealistic
> animation will be as detailed as modern cinematography with the
> advantage of absolute creative freedom.   the division between "amateur"
> and "professional", "b" grade and studio, "artistic" and "kitsch" will be
> dissolved by the power of the animation hardware and programs
> themselves.
>
> 23.   fears about digitized media's ability to be counterfeited with
> undetectable alterations are misplaced.  any hoax perpetrated on a large
> scale or on an important matter runs a very real risk of being blown, and
> once blown, will ruin any organization or agency attempting it.
> "national geographic" magazine was charcoal grilled recently for merely
> combining parts of two photographs into one on the magazine's cover.  the
> tabloids" fake alien/elvis/two headed baby photographs are believed only
> by people who would believe anything anyway- witless hysterics and bar
> stool philosophers.
>
> 24.   given proper in\out and control interface, any software program can
> be made to function in the form of electronic circuitry.  any
> digitizeable signal can be softwared through a computer to make the
> computer function in any way, as audio, video or radio gear, electronic
> testing and diagnostic gear, electronic gauge and monitoring gear.  this
> potential plasticity is analogous to the multi-functional plasticity of
> the monitor screen, itself.  the combination of the two makes digital
> computing the most powerful tool since the lever.
>
> 25.   the economics of surplus 1st generation obsolete gear removes
> overheated costs from still viable technologies and promotes vigorous
> experimentation and "re-prototyping" into new and unusual functions.
> this area should not be overlooked for its potential to provide
> breakthrough applications of off the shelf gear and conceptual leaps
> unfettered by specialist myopia.  rapid creation of surplus gear through
> design revolution and subsequent obsolescence allows low budget
> experimenters, hobbyists, tinkerers and artists to play fast and loose
> with previously expensive equipment, often minus the hindrance of the
> instruction manual, and often making discoveries far beyond the original
> design specs of the gear in question.
>
> 26.   computer modem communication has given birth to a new cultural
> phenomenon known as "virtual communities" in which the prime modality of
> personal relationship formation is the domain of the cerebral, ie.,
> shared thought rather than shared action.  the implications here are
> staggering insofar as thought is the medium of the ideal and human
> interaction is ultimately shepherded away from the banal and
> inconsequential by virtue of the nature of the technology itself.  this
> community is both global and instantaneous.  it's members are
> recognizeable to one another not by their appearance, but by their
> substance.  with land line/satellite linkage via portable laptop
> computer, no corner of the planet exists in isolation, and no private
> news network has a monopoly on perception.  furthermore, enough expertise
> is accessable on a 24 hour basis so as to consitiute a global university
> rivaling any accredited center of learning anywhere.  soon, a three year
> apprenticeship with "futurenet" and its associates will be more
> prestigious than a degree from M.I.T.  we will teach ourselves
> autonomously and hunger for knowledge like no commodity.
>
> 27.   up to this point most futurist projections have been hampered by
> either a simpleminded "gee whiz" approach or an underlying
> social/political agenda or a philosophical opposition to technology per
> se.  in absolutely no example of popularized futurology have authors
> exhibited an understanding of the process of mind that results in
> efficient, applied human invention.  the origin of human genius is made
> into a mystery, an eccentricity, a matter of luck, or, incredibly, the
> "flipside of insanity".  this outlook robs us of a great sense of
> security about the intelligence of our forebears and robs us also of a
> sense of confidence in our ability to educate ourselves out of any
> problem- eventually even that of mortality.  without an optimism based on
> the potential of a culture to create intelligent beings at an increasing
> rate, we hobble and retard human progress to a great cost of unnecessary
> misery.   it is a shame that the names and stories of the great inventors
> are not a universal part of our folk culture as are our movie stars and
> sports heros and that the power of their method does not animate the
> hopes of every citizen.
>
> 28.   "ninety-nine percent of humanity does not know that we have the
> option to "make it" on the planet and in the universe.  we do.  it can
> only be accomplished, however, through a design science initiative and
> technological revolution"  r. buckminster fuller in his 1981 book
> "critical path".
>
>
>
>
> Walter Alter
> San Francisco 1985
>
>
>
>
> ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
> walter alter    artist - wiseguy - savant
> ____________________________
> PORTFOLIO: http://infojockey.tripod.com/
> POETRY: http://infojockey.tripod.com/poetry.htm
> PSYOPS: www.fortunecity.com/victorian/mill/1189
>
>