Inquiry

Hello!

Just a quick contribution, will get back later with more links.

It is well known that many of the technological advances we have access today comes from leading edge experiments in Universities and the military industry. The internet and video games are examples of that. Based on these facts, many of the advances we are seeing today in these environments will shape our daily life in the future in terms of technological interaction and use.

I recently came in contact with a person at the USC who is leading one of their several projects related to virtual reality, including virtual worlds, avatar emotions, artificial intelligence, computer generated storyteling and narrative, interactive 360 holographic images, mixed reality, stress disorder virtual therapies, VR psyhcology and neuroscience, etc...

I invite you to take a look at that and just imagine.... all these technologies being used in the future (maybe not far!) for psychological, therapeutic and developmental means... and video games can be a great part of that.

Here is the link to all their projects: http://ict.usc.edu/projects/all/

All the best!
Moses Silbiger

www.pressplaytogrow.com

www.integraleye.com

the dire Climate Change predictions of James Lovelock will not come to pass.

alternative energy, especially solar, would be one of the most significant advancements at a macro level that will minimize our dependency on fossil fuels. along with this will come breakthroughs in batteries that will power the second coming electric cars. Tesla Roadsters will be as common as Mini Coopers.

the LHC Computing Grid will change the Internet beyond our current comprehension.

Biotechnology will continue to be a lucrative industry due to breakthroughs in genetics, this means more effective birth control methods, gene therapy, and exercise pills.

Dean Kamen's Slingshot will help people in developing nations to have potable drinking water.

Space explorations will be more affordable.

thinking about future technology makes me excited and hopeful. come to think of it, the Singularity is almost here. it just needs more tinkering and scaling :)

--

http://www.c4chaos.com

Well, to get the right answer, we have to ask the right questions.

In this case, the question about technological advancement lends itself to the usual pathology of our Orange Age:  what KW calls, "Flatland," or Objectivisim -- preoccupation with the means of manipulating external experience as an indirect way of manipulating interior experience -- technology.

Technology has its necessary place, but it can't substitute for the basic awakening and integration of innate human functions, grounded in our very biology, that correlate the capacity for perceptual and mental discrimination (UL) with sensory-motor organization (UR).  The problem with Objectivism is that it distracts/detracts from the subjective side of development and overemphasizes mental development at the expense of awakening and integration of the physical (both as seen and as felt).  So my answer to the posed question is "deeper development of Centaur Consciousness."  (See Rolfing, Integral Rolfing, and somatic education, in general.)

I listened to KW's description of the Brain-Mind Implantation Chip (for access to the Information Singularity-to-Come in 30 years or so) with some disappointment and a sense of pathos -- about the lack of recognition that knowledge and language depend for their meaning upon associated feelings and habits of action made familiar by memory.  Knowledge involves sensory-perception, motor-behavior, and memory, which are highly context dependent.  Words aren't enough; images aren't enough.  Meaning comes from the meeting of "the perceiver" (as a complex of memory patterns, subjectively experienced, conscious or subconscious) with the sensory (or virtual-sensory) stimuli of novel experiences; meaning comes from their integration, not just from their introduction.  New experiences are always incomprehensible and gain meaning in a time-bound process involving action, the sensations of actions, and memory.

By way of example, chips now exist to substitute for the retina of the eye and the cochlea of the inner ear -- for seeing and hearing.  Individuals who have never had sight or hearing who are surgically equipped with these chips find it at first  impossible to make sense of the neural information being transmitted into them; it's incomprehensible to them.  Progress in making sense of this artificial sensory input has, for such individuals, been extremely slow.  The limit is not the technology, but the organism and consciousness being called to make experiential sense of the technology.

Information has meaning only insofar as it connects with ones capacity for feeling, action, and personal memories of feelings and actions, embedded in ones present life-experience.  In other words, information can't be downloaded much  faster through a chip than it can through the eyes and ears because it's the integration of that information that takes so much time, not the seeing or hearing of the words.

If a person were somehow to download "their consciousness" (a concept I will, for the moment, refrain from examining), his or her capacity for absorbing new experience into "knowledge" would be, if not basically ended, reduced to a faint, virtual mirage.  That said, in my view, the notion of downloading consciousness into technology is, if not a dead end, a sad absurdity.

The "mind" doesn't think; the body thinks -- or more exactly, it's the body, thinking - and we think according to our capacity to organize and mobilize our subtle tension patterns (think REM or the sub-vocalization movements of reading) in more or less complex and dynamic ways, felt and experienced as thought.  If you don't quite see my point, notice that you can't count to ten any faster in your mind than you can with your lips!

So, I say that, however great the technological advance may be, it is advances in the somatic domain, the awakening and integration of ones innate functional capacities, all the way down into the biological organism, that will make the biggest difference (since that's the greatest deficiency/potential), and upon which all integration of technological advances depends.  That's development of a deeper Centaur consciousness -- mind-body integration, or somatic education.

In my view the most significant technological change we could have in the next 20 years would be the success of nuclear fusion. The sun in a flask so to speak. This would allow all the people of the world to have a decend standard of living, not just the West, without stuffing  the planet. There could be clean water, enough safe food and adequate transport for all.  Once the people of the world have the foot of dire neccessity off their  neck we could have a blossoming of mankind. The oil and coal companies would not be impressed but some may argue they have had their turn and there are other uses for coal and oil.

We are currently witnessing the collapse of the financial markets, the possiblility of a 3rd world war to offset the economy collapse and an over populated environment, with a sick surface, that potentially could wipe out a large scale of our earth's surface along with many of its inhabitants. Wow!! This sounds pretty grim doesn't it? Well yes. But lets be also light filled in this period of accelerated energy that feels like a darkened run away train we are all riding now.

Now the good news is we have a system in place to take care of those left from this place of dark insantity to create a very different kind of world. Its called Integral. And, I believe, that Integral is only in its very early stages of birth and development. An Integral world will be filled with a membership already holding a higher structure with corresponding  higher energy pulses. We won't be going back down the ladder to use old outdated technologies that got us in this dark greedy world we are all facing now. Who wants to do this again? Not me. So what got us here? I believe ignorance of who we are. Are we human ego machines or are we Souls within these body forms? And what helps our Souls liberate from all this ignorance we've danced with for so many millions of years?

My inquiry asks; does it take being at a certain energy vibration or frequency, within a higher structural stage, in order for this interior spiritual technology to emerge? Humm!! And wow, just think of the potential and possiblility of operating from an authentic Soul Self. If we think the internet is post modern  just think how post post modern advances emerging from our Soul, one with the all...emptiness.... can access the higher energies of etheric, psychic, subtle, causal,,,,whatever we want to call them now. Remember we are only in the beginning stages of Integral. Who knows what, where and how our Souls will create. But I do see this world as being less dark and becoming more filled with Souls who use internal technologies such as telepathy, subtle energy medicine in more advance forms, and healing will be more from ourselves, not needing external remedies. We will use the earth's resources in a higher and more expanded way that doesn't deplete but renews.  But most important of all, we will take care of each other.We won't operate from a level of small, self -ego greed but from a level of seeing each Soul as a brother/sister and any harm done to anyone will create a backlash of harm to all. But we will know this.....At this higher level of Soul liberation we will harness the elements for the good of all and we will know intuitively that the most important source comes from within.....it is the source harnessed from the energetic impulse called love that gives fuel to our real survival.

Now if this sounds too out there just take a look at the world today.....would you have believed just a short time ago that we would be facing the crisis and chaos we are facing today. And can you close your eyes and envision a world of liberated Souls. An Integral community.....try!!

Namaste my dear Integral friends,

Mary Linda Landauer

Personally, 20 years from now,, the advancement of technology will be the communication from different mediums that use direct satellite connectivity, the efficient and easiest way like never before. However, due to its billion users, mass connectivity and communication traffics there will be a network collapse, that may result other technology to malfunction.

wood doors

I have just read a book which was just released by Jeane Manning & Joel Garbon with the above title. In the book the authors does an historic overview of energy-related inventions which includes cold fusion, water as fuel, magnetism, Mohorn's self-running wall dryer etc. All technologies which tap into power of the universe (some names that have been used include cosmic energy, zero-point radiation, vacuum fluctuations, life energy). They also include solar, wind and biofuel in their overview. The authors also address the big hurdles that need to be overcome before these practical and useful inventions can reach a mass-market. Among many are people's belief systems, current social, economic and industrial system (ie oil, gas and coal) and power structures. Many of the above revolutionary energy inventions have been blocked before they had started on the road to the marketplace, through academic suppression, blocking of funding, blocking of patents, litigation, threats to the inventor, property destruction, framing the inventor with a crime and assasination. I believe these hurdles will be overcome by more and more people realizing that these inventions are possible. Imagine a society with energy abundance ... what would we be, feel, think and do then?

I highly recommend the book as a great balanced overview and introduction to the field. It is available at:

http://breakthroughpower.net/Home.html

Also there is an organization New Energy Movement:

http://www.newenergymovement.org/

 I am waiting for the Language-Translator-Device with which it will be possible to speek in any language you want.

If you go to China, Brazil, Mongolia or Austria you will speek and understand the local tongue.

There are already some devices like this in use in Iraq and i am sure that they will work on this more and bring it up to the public in the next 10 years or so.

The problem with it could be that you do not understand what word or phrases are coming out through the loudspeeker and so you can not say what the other person heard, but i am sure that until the commercialization the dictionaries have been improved that this issue is not so big.

Humans struggle to design, manage and develop complex systems or even worse linked system meshworks. They are fine with mono-causal, non loop or exponential if-then-else logic. But the reality of todays complex linked systems in economy, ecology, medicine, society etc. is far too complex for our brains and decision making processes, either logical-rational or intuitive.

Managers look for simple solutions, politicians do simple, big initiatives and the mass of the people search for the newspapers with the simple answers. People with snswers like: "It would mean this, but also this and that, if we do A but doing B also has several pros and some cons. Sorry, no simple answer is adequate." are not appreciated very much.

Complex video games with several, parallel action streams, loop-reconnection logic, exponential developments and a complexity, where everything is related to everything else is the ideal training ground for our developping brains and minds. If video games in addition offer action, fun and entertainment, this will be the tool of choice for coming generations to be fit for the reality of complex, fully interconnected systems in real life. And who says, that action and fun can only be achieved with shooteing and killing games? Let us just be more creative!

May be the younger generation knows that instinctively and spends more time with video games than with philosophical books. And may be the next version of Integral Life Practice will include video games for the development of our lower right quadrant thinking.