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.