Perception

This week we have been focusing on coming into the third and final phase of our inquiry project. My final book that I am reading is called Lucid Dreaming by Stephan LaBerge, Ph.D. I have only just begun reading it, but already the book seems very interesting, informative, and dare I say innovative in its insights into the world of lucid dreaming. This is a very welcome change from my previous book, On Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins, which quite frankly, was written as if it was intended to be read by a 4 year old. On a minor tangent, I was actually supposed to read The Lucid Dreamer by Malcolm Godwin, which I have heard very good things about and most definitely still plan on reading later on when I have the funds (the book is out of print and has become very expensive), but until then, I am content to wrap up my study of consciousness and perception with Steven LaBerge's analyzation the concept of lucid dreaming.

To speak more specifically, there are several things in particular I already enjoy about this book: the scientific grounding of ideas and claims in factual evidence and studies, the mature language and writing style, the external cd that comes with it (containing tracks that build upon themes in the book as well as guided techniques for lucid dreaming), and the concise nature of the author (at no point does he speak in excess or repetition, thus far at least). Anyway, I look forward to diving deeper into this book as we finish up our study on perception.

Wrapping up Tragedy and Comedy

This week as came back from break things have been really pretty mellow, the only thing we really worked on was closing up our Tragedy and Comedy project by producing our final tribute/re-enactment. Jason and I chose to do a voice-over recording of the second scene of act four, which is the scene where Feste is toying with Malvolio's head during his imprisonment. Below is our artist statement and link to our recording.

Taunt of Malvolio

Artist Statement:

We chose to re-enact scene where Feste is messing with Malvolio during his imprisonment. For two reasons, we chose to do so in the form of a voice-over. The first and foremost reason for this was that Shakespeare’s plays were written with the lines to dictate the nature of the speech, and we thought we could most clearly, and directly attempt this through a voice-over reading of the scene. The second reason was that we thought doing purely a voice-over reading of the scene would exemplify Feste’s impersonation of one Sir Topas, and his dialogue as both characters with Malvolio. We should like our audience to consider how Feste is clearing toying with Malvolio’s fragile state as he plays back and forth between the Fool and Sir Topas.

Inquiry Study

This week we basically just wrapped up our 2nd third of the Inquiry project, and to do so, we had to write an essay on the second book we read and how it related to our driving question. Below are two excerpts from my essay that I believe summarize my new perspective based off my second book (Jeff Hawkins' On Intelligence) and our driving question.

Recently I read Jeff Hawkins’ On Intelligence with the intention of answering the driving question: “How does consciousness define the way we perceive the world, and how will this change as our technology advances and we explore alternate states of consciousness?” I chose to study this particular question because personally I am very interested in how the human mind functions, and after hearing about Dr. Kurzweil’s theories on the future merger between biological and technological evolution, I wanted to learn for myself and form my own opinions on what consciousness truly is and how it may be altered by future advancements.

...I have extrapolated that the advance of reverse brain-engineering will not alter our consciousness, but how we perceive the world by allowing us to maximize the potential of our mental capacity, the specifics of which will unfold as the advance comes to fruition. And, in essence, if we are to be able to reconstruct the human brain and maximize its potential we must do so with the guiding concept of using inductive thought as a foundation, rather than computational sequences. As for my perspective on my driving question, I do believe that Consciousness is and will always remain as that which experiences the world, through emotions, experiences, and impressions made upon it. However, as we move toward the point where our perception of reality is drastically enhanced, I do believe that we may be able experience consciousness in a more pure manner that we are not yet able to comprehend, without the constant impressions of the outside world.

Wheels Keep Turning

This week, as you may have guessed, we continued to study Twelfth Night, which was again, fun interesting, and slightly repetitive. I am looking forward though to making a voice acted play version of a scene from twelfth night, I think it'd be really fun to have to portray that much character through only voices. I've also been reading more of Jeff Hawkin's On Intelligence, and to be honest, I'm really enjoying his extreme lack of formality, but I am getting excited for his thoughts to play out as he delineates the core structure of the book.

I feel like second semester senior year is honestly slowing down to a crawl in all our classes, except for calculus. I find it almost fatiguing to endure endless hours of Twelfth Night, not say I don't like the underlying reason we're studying, its just the lack of productivity that leaves me feeling, lack luster I suppose.

Love & Neuroscience

This week all we did was act out scenes from Twelfth Night. I suppose we're learning about love, and different perspectives on it across time and gender. I enjoy what we're learning, but frankly, the play, and having to read and act it out everyday is getting a bit old. I don't have a whole lot to say about it, but, I finally got On Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins (my second book, about reverse brain engineering), and I'm very excited to start it. It should be an interesting exploration into how the human brain differs from our computers today, and how we are trying to create artificial thought.

The Singularity is Near

Ths week we had to write an abstract of our last book we read, mine was The Singularity is Near by Ray Kurzweil. Though the topic is excessively complex, this is what I managed to come up with:

The Singularity is Near by Ray Kurzweil is a book about the implications of the rapid exponential growth of technology, and the point when technological evolution merges with biological evolution. Kurzweil’s book delineates the past, present, and future course of the exponential growth of technology creating an excellently well articulated, thoroughly supported and cited explanation of his ideas of the evolution of technology. The Singularity is an era that incorporates artificial intelligence gaining the ability to access its source code and become infinitely more intelligent, our merger with that technology to allow us to become infinitely more intelligent (and become resistant to disease and other inherent vulnerabilities in our biological structure), living forever as the life expectancy per year increases more than a year per year, a revolution in genetics where we can alter to genetic structure as biological beings without limit, living partially in virtual reality that we create for ourselves, augmenting reality as we perceive it, expanding our intelligence throughout the universe, waking up the universe with intelligent nano-technology to bring in into a sentient consciousness saturated with intelligence.

Ray Kurzweil Transcendent Man Premiere!

This week I was fortunate enough to get to travel up to LA to see the premiere of the movie 'Transcendent Man' which was a documentary about the life and ideas of Ray Kurzweil. The premiere consisted of Kurzweil introducing his ideas and the film, and then of course, next was the screening. The movie offered a really cool insight into actually seeing the human side of Kurzweil (hah), and see a thorough documentary about his ideas, the implications (be them positive, or negative), the opinions of many top scientists who both agree and disagree with Kurzweil, and the innovations actually being made in the field of technology. And, as if the movie itself wasn't great enough on it's own, I actually got meet and speak with Kurzweil after the premiere! It was such an incredible experience, I can't believe I got the opportunity.

On a related note, as I become more and more of a Singulartarian (someone who embraces the implications of The Singularity), I've been informing more and more people of it. Actually as I'm writing this I'm having a lively debate with five friends of mine, answering questions, and watching speeches by Kurzweil, to help inform them about The Singularity. It's always a blast informing (and trying to convince) someone new about the profound implications about the rapid exponential growth of technology, and the profound implications of The Singularity as it first, offends them, then terrifies them, as they try to resist it's concepts, and eventually start to embrace the it's logic, then begin to fearfully explore it's implications and become excited.