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.

Romance

This week we have been partially focusing on investigating romance. Over the course of this, we have asked ourselves several questions. One of the questions we asked was if a true love = a soul mate (the one and only). I argued that true love was based off a connection that is made that feels deep and unique based off of unnatural levels of understanding and common ground. It is statistically unlikely that one would find several people with these qualities, but it is also unlikely that one would only person with qualities near these. So the true love is determined between a small number of these people, one of which typically more so than the others, which would be defined as "the soul mate" making the others look still as "true loves" but not the one soul mate. So in essence I agreed with the statement. Another question that was asked was if love conquers all, which frankly if you look at completely objectively and rationally is obviously impossible in certain situations, for example, if your partner dies, it's not really an overcomable obstacle now is it? Silly questions aside, it's a fun and interesting topic that usually inspires some lively debate.

This past week we have progressed further in our inquiry project. We continued to read Kurzweil's The Singularity is Near, which proves to be be ceaselessly interesting as it presents daunting concept after another. We have also begun contacting people to interview. The people we would truly like to speak with are the authors of the books we're reading, but seeing as how this is generally unlikely, we are also attempting to contact people at local institutions who are in the same fields as the our topics of study. As far as I know, we have not successfully coordinated an interview yet, but my hopes are still high of hopefully speaking to a professor or perhaps even an author.

On a more interesting note, Adam, Sam, and I have all been attempting to improve our recollection of our dreams, and attain lucid dreaming states. While each of us seems to be getting close (note when I say close, I do mean we were nearly there, but I am not saying we could easily replicate this, or will certainly attain lucid dreaming anytime soon) in various ways, none of us have been fully successful. I do look forward to continuing our research, reading, and exploration into the dreamworld.

Inquiry Project

This week we have been working on the preliminary stages of our inquiry project. We are currently in the process of finding people to interview, and attempting to get tickets to see Ray Kurzweil speak at a premiere of his new movie 'Transcendent Man'. It's stacking up to look like it's going to be a very interesting project, studying the Singularity, reverse brain engineering, and states of lucid dreaming. As it turns out, we are reading the same book on lucid dreaming that Will Haase did when he was attempting it in college, so I feel as though we've made a good choice in that category, considering the literally dozens of books to decide between on the topic. I'm really hoping we'll be able to actually speak with Kurzweil after his movie and speech, that would just be phenomonal, and, as far fetched as it might be, we're going to make the effort to get him to come speak for Will's endersession if all goes well. Well, the next steps for us are to secure solid interviewees, and make a dent in The Singularity is Near, which on its own should be quite a feat, seeing how dense and intricate Kurzweil's theories and arguments are. All in all I'm very excited to get in over my head in this project, and hopefully be able to dig my way out.

On Consciousness

This week a lot of my attention was focused our upcoming reading project for English. In my group we will be doing a study of consciousness reading Ray Kurzweil's The Singularity is Near, Jeff Hawkin's On Intelligence, and Lucid Dreaming. We hope to gain a better understanding of how we perceive the world around us, the affects of technology on our expanding consciousness in the future, and how the brain functions from a neurological standpoint. Kurzweil's The Singularity is Near is a book about the merger between biological evolution and technological evolution, while Lucid Dreaming explores various areas of consciousness and the concept of lucid dreaming.

Also, Adam and I are both hoping to be chosen for Will's endersession on exploring consciousness, and we feel that this project will give us a good foundation going into his class. For the endersession there will be a lot of readings consciousness,and having started The Singularity I can already tell it's going to be helpful to be used to reading dense texts on the scientific aspect of neurological function. I am looking very forward to starting this project and learning about the way our brain perceives reality and the world around us, and possibly being accepted into Will's endersession on exploring consciousness.

Language

This week in English we did various readings on langauge and watched a video on the origin of English. One of the readings in particular were pretty interesting because they talked about the location shift and endangerment of various languages in the world today. Interestingly enough approximately 800 dying languages are represented within the city of New York, many of which are spoken by a higher population there, than it the languages country of origin. Another reading that I found to be particularly interesting was about how the French seem to be losing there language to various other cultures. They react to this in a very odd manner, by which I mean the react somewhat indifferently to the fact that their language is spoken by less French than other cultures, but at the same time, with contempt at other peoples attempting to adopt the language. This way of thinking is not one I am accustomed to for several reasons, the first being that in America, we are essentially a melting-pot of cultures and langauges (as NYC so aptly demonstrates). The second reason is represented abroad in Africa. I have traveled several times to the dark continent, and have gotten a few insights into various cultures there, and after seeing them, I realized that languages there seem to generously and happily shared between peoples. So with these two things defining the way I view the distribution of language between cultures, I was surprised at the French's reaction. I summation, I suppose language can be a thing of personal pride to a nation (or culture), as well as something that is designed to bring serval diverse cultures together, such as Swahili.