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Technology of Universal Compassion
My recent post on the “positive” side of goverbizness intrusion into individual privacy generated a pretty interesting discussion, which I’d like to push in a new direction.
And that direction is a poorly-named Microsoft research project called MyLifeBits.
MyLifeBits is a lifetime store of everything. It is the fulfillment of Vannevar Bush’s 1945 Memex vision including full-text search, text & audio annotations, and hyperlinks. There are two parts to MyLifeBits: an experiment in lifetime storage, and a software research effort.
Though this project is still in a very early stage, I tend to think that it really is inevitable. I imagine a day (10, 20 years from now?) in which everything you do or say or feel or think will not only be monitored, but recorded, indexed, cross-referenced and who-knows-what.
Imagine the following scenario happening to you nowadays:
You have a really intriguing conversation with a complete stranger, in which they tell you all kinds of strange secrets and truths, and people to talk to and books to read. You race home excited, and try to write down all the references, but by the time you do, you’ve forgotten 95% of it. Wouldn’t you want to be able to do a simple Google search through your holo-tape records, and pull up the complete transcript? Even better than that, you could have an automatically generated list of books, contact information, diagrams, flow-charts, outlines and visual representations of your conversation right at your fingertips. And you could immediately remix, share, and broadcast these documents to any and everyone you wanted.
Further, if you could re-live any moment of your life with 100% accuracy and fidelity, would you do it? What would be the benefits and drawbacks? What if you could re-live a moment from anybody’s life - from a collective pool of all recorded human experiences? In exchange of course, you’d have to share your own files as well.
Wouldn’t such a tremendous increase in technology effectively create a totally compassionate, totally inter-linked human culture? You would be able to feel the impact of your actions in the world first-hand. When you said something needlessly mean to your significant other, you would feel their pain firsthand. Government leaders who order bombings on villagers, would be able to experience what it’s like to have bombs dropped on them, and vice versa.
Besides Microsoft, if you hunt around on other big-time abstract research projects from groups like Xerox-Parc and DARPA, you’ll find other initiatives which connect the dots for this possible future.. Though their intention is certainly not to create a Technology of Universal Compassion, way down the road, it seems as though there’s a very real possibility that they might accidentally do so. And wouldn’t that be a kick in the pants if the people who seek to control and profit by surveillance and prediction accidentally triggered the final evolution of the human race!
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January 27th, 2006 at 2:31 pm
Technology of Universal Compassion is already in operation.
January 27th, 2006 at 2:37 pm
Zuh?
January 27th, 2006 at 2:55 pm
I meant, it is already in operation by you and I. There is an additional “forgetfulness” function, crucial to the system’s proper functioning, whereby an operator may temporarily suspend any memory of their previous existence. Were this functionality to be left out, the total experience of the simulated moment would be diminished.
If you did not experience the totalistic suffering of the life you were simulating, you would not be able to develop the fullest expression of compassion, which is the goal of the technology.
The only issue is then how to turn the memory-supression off, since to flip the switch, you have to first remember that there is a switch. The designers of the system have put in an ingenious feature that gives a particular “resonance” to certain simulated phenomena. This affects the operator only internally, and sub-verbally. These internal signals serve to remind the operator of the existence of the switch. Finding the memories of your real life and turning the simulation off is accomplished by “D.H.I.K.R” (as the operating manual calls it), or “remembrance of the original self.”
Also, stupid and petty things like simulated comments on simulated blogs can serve as symbolic tokens to guide the operator even while they are under the influence of the memory-suppressing function.
The simulation ends either at the death of the simulated person (after which there are of course no records) or at the completion of the total operation, i.e. Universal Compassion.
January 27th, 2006 at 3:04 pm
Thats a wonderfull thought but i should imagine all the targeted selling and tailored realities would divide people more and more untill society is totally fractured. By viewing each other by social group or product etc and not our humanity we loose track of what unites us and this gives total control to those who run the system at source. Even though i believe the human spirit will always overcome i dont want a future where my grandchildren are born and there lives and thoughts and choices are convertly controled based on a borg like extrapolation and mapping system. Assimilate or die……..
January 27th, 2006 at 3:09 pm
So that would be different from now… how?
Prunesquallori, thanks for the symbolic tokens! Those were great. Could you elaborate on how the illusion of separation enables a deeper understanding of compassion? Also, if that separation serves a purpose, then in some sense, wouldn’t goverbizness and other control systems who keep us separate ultimately be doing us a favor on some weird level?
Also thought I’d throw out a related item from PKD’s Valis Exegesis:
http://fusionanomaly.net/valis.html
January 27th, 2006 at 3:16 pm
i agree with nemesis, and would have to say that there is something worthwhile to be said about the “experience of experiencing,” in a certain sense. for example, when i was in middle school i started to learn guitar. for an absolute novice in any craft, it is easy to look at the masters and wish that somehow you could do it just like them *right this instant*. yet, in those fantasies, there was a certain drab dryness to them… somehow, even though (in the fantasy) i was a master, i didn’t feel any different. now, 10 years later and having come very far in my guitar playing, i realize i have become (to an extent) the person i wanted to be… and it is the process of getting here that was enriching.
on a similar note, this reminds me of the Matrix, where people can have books or “skills” uploaded into their minds instantly. as cool as that first seemed to all of us (i’m sure), i think it really speaks on a metaphorical level to the stores of wisdom that exist within us currently… but which we ourselves must mine out over time. even neo, being a kung fu master and all that, still had to go through “the experience” of *knowing* he was the one… that wasn’t something that could be uploaded.
January 27th, 2006 at 3:52 pm
If you were playing such a game, and still had access to memories of your real life, they would prevent you from experiencing the simulated moment as it was experienced by the simulated person. Conversely, as long as you were involved in the game, you would be unable to remember your real life. You might have flashes of it, but we can only really focus on one thing at any given time.
So, we simulate a complete human. Anything short of complete, absorbing simulation is inadequate to present the whole experience of that human.
In Job, Satan (who clearly works for God) is doing Job a favor by denuding him of all his earthly attachments. (Not a popular book, Job.)
I don’t really understand any of this, of course. I am sure there is one motive force, which is unmoved by any other force, since its power is the root of other forces. I am sure that this thing, which I have described and conceptualized as the abstract and opaque noun “force,” is not containable or representable in any form.
If there are two forms, the conflict or difference between them begins to express something of that which cannot be contained in them. Three examples of butterflies pinned in a case represent “butterfly” in the archetypal sense better than two examples would. The total set of moments in a living butterfly’s existence would express it even better, and the total set of all butterflies in history and the future, and creatures which prey on them (which are part of what defines the Gestalt of “butterfly”), and all things which resemble butterflies to some degree, and all things which do not, would express the essence even more, although by this point, our imaginations may fail. But the death and life of all butterflies is necessary for the complete expression of that which is essentially “butterfly.”
Meister Eckhart on “the prodigal son” interprets the story in a metaphysical sense. The son who was lost in worldliness and suffering is only longed for and sought after all the more. Also, remember Christ’s story of the shephard who left the 99 sheep to find the one which was lost.
These stories can be thought of on many levels, and that is why they endure. Or rather, they endure for the same reason they can be thought of on many levels.
If there had not been the loss, there would not be the joy. Severity and Mercy, two poles of one impulse. Conflict is necessary, for reasons which are LITERALLY beyond me.
Anyway, these days I think of corporations and such as colony organisms, which, while not overtly hostile to their constituent components, clearly favor the success of the whole to success for any of its parts.
If they possess any metaphysical existence, it must be inside the minds of their constituents, which is, as I understand it, the only place metaphysics takes place.
I’m going to have to think about that language quote. I keep reading stuff along the lines of “The Old Ones (Archons) live in language.” One thing about language is that it is standardized, at least to a certain extent, as in letterforms. Restriction, control, deference to precedent, to externalauthority. “Pragmatism.” The Internal Authority is what must be submitted to.
January 27th, 2006 at 4:52 pm
At the moment people and groups are mapped and targeted but i wonder if the occult as people know it also inolves at some level an understanding of the underlying emotions and motivations behind such groups. Once we become totally immersed in technology with all our different pathologies out there so to speak it becomes easier to draw a sphere around an individual and guide them without there knowledge. This can then be applied to mass control but at the moment people have that choice because there still exists a ground of understanding. Technology right now is a semi necessity but in the future in a global society it will become like the oxygen on a social+economic level. If you buy a book lets say there will be a store tailored to that individuals compullsion and whilst this may seem good if you put a child in a room with a hundred toys it will spend hours playing but if you add just 3 toys it will start making a fuss and so this road leads to paciffication which must be the first rule of subversive control, ie- the truman show.
January 27th, 2006 at 5:42 pm
We already are in some sense immersed in that “oxygen.” I think what Prunesquallori is trying to say above is that the technology we’re immersed in right now we simply refer to as “biology.” It just seems so natural to us that we don’t even notice that it is a technology with advantages and limitations.
January 27th, 2006 at 6:50 pm
Thinking about it that does make sense but i was thinking more on where its going, we choose to be immersed in the oxygen but what happens when it is no longer a choice but the foundation of youre very existence. When we look back through history we see people and nations celebrating the marvel of the civilised mind, they to thought new mediums where an asset to humanity and saw many advantages. Only later was it apparent that the thing that freed them was also the cage that bound them and by then it was to late. My point(i think) is that its meant to feel like biology but not as the butterfly more like the snake shedding its skin.
January 27th, 2006 at 9:08 pm
I have had (pre-exogenous psychedlic use) experiences that intimate to me that, at least for me, all experience can be access holographically. I know by direct experience it is possible, no one can dissuade me of this.
I might take a biological/evolotionary pseudo-science route and argue that serotonin seems to inhibit experiencing things that are present to the mind but not the sense-organs, as it does not good to run from a saber-toothed tiger everytime one imagines one… In this sense, “forgetting” serves a powerful life-sparing function.
And so I am wary of technological efforts to effect this Universal Compassion–it’s basically a Luciferean vision through machines, but in that Luciferean drive, it leads us to ignore our innate abilities… And being Luciferean, it takes on the negative aspects of that drive…
January 27th, 2006 at 9:12 pm
My other arguement is that I am part of the Pro-Multiple Personality camp. I think that in many ways, we ought to evolve towards not a temple of “self” which I see this “MyLifeBits” and MySpace and social networking and scrapbooking as aspect of, I think it counteracts our ability to make internal phase shifts… I’m wary of thie technology of “self,” it feeds the little i. At the same time, going over photographs & recordings etc to the point of psychedelica can be a potent tool, but my feeling is, that’s not what Friendster is for.
January 27th, 2006 at 10:08 pm
I agree with everything you said but cant help but think that the above statement should be the epitath of the last man killed by not running away from the sabre tooth tiger,grrrrrr.
I think i might be but not by choice, depends what mood im in when im asked?
January 27th, 2006 at 10:53 pm
Hey does anyone know if James Russell has another blogsite? I’ve been fucking around with him on his disillusionist thing and now he’s crying and stuff and turned the comments off… So now I guess he’s in hiding, I don’t know. That guy is such a piss and moaner
January 27th, 2006 at 10:59 pm
Oh yeah and James… No one ever goes to your damn friggin blogsite! It’s like a wannabee Tim Boucher thing, except you never get any comments! So even if my comments are “harassing” or whatever, get over it. Be glad at least, that SOMEONE is taking the time to leave you some kind of comment.
January 28th, 2006 at 12:46 am
As is said in some indigenous cultures, “To write down is to forget.”
If everything we did and said was recorded, and we knew that and used that fact, we would become automata.
January 28th, 2006 at 1:07 am
Biology is indeed a technology. Furthermore, it is also based on a language, the words of which are the 22 amino acids (each of which is coded by a three-letter sequence of nucleotide pairs). These words form sentences (peptide chains) and paragraphs (proteins), which become literary works (biological organisms).
Can’t speak for Prunesquallori, but separation causes suffering, the awareness of which leads to compassion. I’m not at all sure what good compassion is in absence of the separation, but since God took the time to build the Technology of Universal Compassion, it must have a purpose beyond the world of samsara.
January 28th, 2006 at 3:21 am
Slomo, ya totally agree - see how dependant I’ve become on my cel phone contact list for phone numbers - if I don’t have the phone I don’t know anyone’s phone numbers anymore….
I also imagine this holo-tape scenario where the guy looking at his holo tapes of his life ends up virtually watching himself over again watching old holo-tapes - since now that the technology is available all he ever wants to do is watch himself doing what he just did…
January 28th, 2006 at 7:50 am
I really like that and am i wrong to think dna is made of 4 amino acids? youre the scientist i recall so if im wrong let me know so i may improve myself,but
Yes he did and its called you and me, whilst you can see it in a positive light its always worth looking over youre shoulder at history. Tim wrote recently about the vangaurd of poets,writers,artists who (in my opinion) should be cultivating the ground right now and heres why. I was thinking last night of all the great changes in culture and society etc and how they started out. Like minded people would meet in communities or send letters but slowly this process would become a ground swell. The authorities didnt even know what was happening because it was occuring between people on the ground. In a future where al correspondence and community depends on this technology such cultural revolutions wiil cease because any sign of trouble and it can be halted at source or rubbished on a technological universal level. I will enjoy the freedom of the internet for now because it was never designed to stay that way in my opinion, like the drug dealer who puts his arm round you and gives you the first hits for free. Psychological,spiritual,technological or political eutopias are all very well untill you figure into that equation the one thing thay profess to be about, the human condition. I hope i am just paraniod but that can be healthy especially when you denie the dream being sold and look to objectivity based on human experience.Artists,litterary craftsman,poets and philosophers-get busy….
January 28th, 2006 at 10:31 am
Totally off-topic and technical answer to Nemesis’ question:
DNA is made up of four bases — adenine (A), guanine (G), cytosine (C) and thymine (T) — RNA is similar except that uracil (U) replaces thymine. There is also a sugar and a phosphate, to hold things together. DNA is sort of a library, and gets transcribed into RNA which you can think of as a “working copy”. RNA, a blueprint for a protein, is arranged into a sequence of codons. Each codon is itself a sequence of three base pairs (e.g. GUA or AGA), and represents an amino acid. So the amino acids are strung together in the same order they appear as codons on the RNA strand, and then the resulting chain folds into a protein.
There is a little bit of ambuiguity in the number of amino acids, but it’s between 20 and 22. (You have codons that represent “STOP”, like a period, and also some nonstandard amino acids).
What I find fascinating is that there are four traditional alchemical alements (fire, water, air, earth) and the four letters of the tetragamatron (YHVH), and 22 major arcana in the tarot, each representing a path on the Qabalistic tree-of-life. I am almost certain there is a deep connection here between the language of biology and the fundamental building blocks of the cosmos as understood by the Qabala, but I’m not smart enough to figure it out.
January 28th, 2006 at 12:59 pm
The Sacred Tetractys and the Tetragrammaton
Sacred Tetraktys and the Enneagram
Tetractys and the Tree of Life (sorry, I don’t have a better picture for this one, I just started looking into this connection.)
Tetraktys, hexagram, lapis symbol, self-similarity
QBL purports to describe what goes on inside your head. You know the “physical world” only through your senses, which are inside your head. If you study biology, whatever operations you take and whatever discoveries you make will be subject to the constraints of your own physiology and mind. This is what is meant by “metaphysics.”
For example, we know comparatively little about the coloration patterns of creatures who are colored outside our own visible spectrum. We can only get interesting details like that by constructing machines, but these machines’ designs are subject to the same internal constraints. There is no way to sidestep the constraints of our own biology and, more importantly, our own minds through which we know anything of biology at all.
Since every concept that can be formed is subject to some certain constraints, every concept we devise, including “DNA”, will necessarily fall into certain patterns implied by those constraints. All of human thought and culture is in a similar condition.
Does the cosmos also follow such patterns, i.e. do the constellations truly effect what is here on earth, as in astrology? The distinction between “star” and “sky” is conceptual, a higher order judgement abstracted from pure undifferentiated sensory information, and thus may, in principle, be “decoded” in the same way as more obviously conceptual ideas.
All esoteric inquiry (and probably all scientific inquiry) will, if carried out far enough, lead back to the self, which is a necessary component of any observation.
January 28th, 2006 at 1:58 pm
Sort of. Sort of. I recommend Orality and Literacy by Walter Ong. It’s on Doug Rushkoff’s list, too… Ong’s condensed a lot of research, and generally suggests that being taught to read and write–and thea bility to which one continues to use those skills–essentially results in the development of logical thought in individuals. E.g., when anthropologists tried asking a simple, practical question that involved basic logic to some pre-literate villagers in south east asia, “There are a million people on Malaysia. If each person has one chicken, how many chickens are there on Malaysia?” A Typical answers was “I’ve never been to Malaysia.” It really does suggest that the brain can be altered severely through media alone.
—————
I’m not feeling as averse to this technological compassion thing today, but I do think the idea of gov’t/bidness somehow making a technology that subverts gov’t–well, that’s the Faustian myth reversed, isn’t it? The psychology of enacting that seems hard to get my head around, as I can’t find any example of an accidentally-beneficial program/project, ever. If someone can point to Ramsey Dukes yet-to-manifest “technology in the hands of government is government in the hands of technology,” I’d like to see it.
January 28th, 2006 at 2:19 pm
“There are a million people on Malaysia. If each person has one chicken, how many chickens are there on Malaysia?” A Typical answers was “I’ve never been to Malaysia.”
Well, at first glance, the answer seems rather illogical. But, from my post-literate point of view, heavily trained in the dark arts of mathematics, I have to say that it’s really the most honest answer. Yeah, you can develop a quite thorough model of the Malaysian chicken population, but you don’t really know how many fucking chickens there are until you’ve actually been there.
I’ll take the liberty of speaking for a pre-literate (unless one of you can take over for me here…): in your made-up world of mathematical models, based on spurious assumptions about how many chickens are owned by whom, maybe you can be sure about how many chickens there are. But you don’t really know, do you? And if you’re really interested in the experience Malaysian chickenness, maybe you should just take a trip there?
Not harping on you, Channel-0. It’s just that there is an inherent bias in treating mathematical logic as if it were the supreme sacred art, and really, when it comes down to it, there is no there there.
As far as beneficial and benevolent government programs go, I say, follow the money. Of course, one can never account for unintended consequences, even the serendipetous good ones.
January 28th, 2006 at 3:23 pm
Im not educated in such things and thats why i asked, people seem more content with the explaination that aliens built the pyramids rather than think that our view is skewed and genius can be found in the creative function of humanity. I was pondering about what the cross could mean one night and then i watched a programme on dna and played around with ideas (as you do). Maybe our ancestors being closer to the thing itself understood alot more than we credit them. If this were true in the form of the nigredo then to mummify oneself for the afterlife is not that strange, continue that strain of craft without lost knowledge or religious persecution and you end up with genetics, cloning etc. Maybe they were meant to be brought back to life by sampling there dna, a leap of immagination i know but if you would like to discuss these things post in forum because i would love to speculate, and sorry tim for going off topic
Rev max had some intersting thoughts on information in his interview and i agree, we are totally subjective creatures so everything we absorb has an effect(even if we dont realise it). I agree that using the left hemisphere is necessary so that things can have the sun shine on them so to speak but most things that have been created started as imagination and became physical through logic, i just wonder if we forsake something by overdoing it.
January 28th, 2006 at 4:41 pm
Well, to go back to the original subject, I can’t help but think that this kind of technology would be more destructive and harmful than anything else. How many people would bother to experience life, to take risks, if everything was at their fingertips? How many people now waste away sitting at computers as opposed to going out and living? What kind of quality is there to a life like that?
Like most people, I have those moments where I wish I could remember certain things… Though there are other experiences which I’m more than happy to forget and leave behind. If we could access every experience of everyone everywhere, would we bother even creating new ones of our own? Or would we just become mere shells of humanity? I rather fear the latter.
Technology continues to have many advantages and disadvantages, and while maybe this “Universal Compassion” technology would be a great experience for some, I think it’s going way too far. Life is complicated enough, and I think it’s a blessing to not have to experience all the pain and suffering you may have caused thoughout your life or all the suffering others have experienced. While it’s good to have some awareness, I don’t know if anyone could survive such immense burdens… Also, how many people’s lives would just become utterly absorbed by such technology?
We only have a limited amount of time on this plane of existence. I think it’s far better spent living and experiencing for oneself with all its mysterious joys and sorrows than existing only through simulations of other lives and experiences.
January 28th, 2006 at 6:32 pm
I just watched a film that addressed this somewhat…”The Final Cut”, 2004, with Robin Williams and Mira Sorvino. I think it may have gone straight to video. It is not a bad movie, but it is pretty flawed. Williams is a “cutter”, a man who takes recordings from chips implanted in people’s heads and edits them into movies called “rememories” for memorial services. He specialized in cleaning up the lives of bad guys. He is opposed by a group of people whom, in part, want their privacy back, because not everyone is chipped but are recorded without permission in chipped people’s memories. Jim Caviezel (from the “Passion”) is a former “cutter” that opposes the chipping. Mira Sorvino is a love interest and extremely under-utilized in the movie. Could have been a great film with better scripting.
January 30th, 2006 at 4:28 pm
Tim, this should be appreciated. The Googleplasmate:
Add in The Simulation Argument and a bit of Utility Fog engineering and we have a nice Simulacrum for the Urgrund’s isomorphism.
June 12th, 2006 at 8:26 pm
[…] I like to imagine this scenario as applied to the Singularity by way of the fictional structure of virtual reality (and maybe I’ll write a piece on this for my new Conspiracy Fiction site). It would go something like this: humanity would experience a day of rejoicing because we’ve created a technology which allows us to feel each other from the inside, a technology of universal compassion, as it were. We all eagerly line up to be fused via the new ConsciousNet into one primordial being, an Adam Kadmon, filled with the sum total of human emotion, intelligence and experience in one body. It’s hailed as the Singularity, the Second Coming of Eden. How long does that last though before we get bored? Before Adam needs a helpmate and begins shucking out ribs to create numerous companions? Or, perhaps in another scenario humanity comes together as one mind only to finally realize that an AI has existed among us without our knowing. Maybe this AI has actually purposely engineered us into its realm of pure mind - where it reigns supreme - so as to finally control us completely. I imagine the Singularity equivalent of the Tower of Babel being the AI comes to the ConsciousNet where we are all gathering together in rejoicing and scatters us all to the wind. This time instead of just confusing our languages, it scatters us each into our own private recursive virtual reality simulation, where each of us becomes solitary lonely seeds and sovereigns of a new world order. Something tells me that isn’t so different from where we are today metaphysically. Maybe the Bible doesn’t describe just a mythical past, but the spirals of the future which we will inevitably ensnare ourselves in again and again. Read Similar Articles: […]