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June 21, 1996
Nöosphere
By Paul Hughes
Originally appeared on my website Planet P.
1996
The nöosphere has been defined as the sum total of all human knowledge and experience. This would include everything from our most private dreams to our knowledge of Universe itself. With accelerating technology as its catalyst, our nöopshere is expanding at its greatest rate in history.
According to the standard inflationary model of cosmology, the 'visible' universe mapped by our telescopes is an infinitesimally small speck in a much larger universe of at least a 1035 light-year radius. If the galactic density of our own neighborhood is typical, then our bubble-universe could contain at least another 10100 galaxies - more galaxies than atoms in our own visible universe!
Despite the possibility that life might be extremely rare, a number as large as 10100 is likely to produce an abundance of life throughout the universe. A place where countless lifeforms evolve beyond their womb planets into highly advanced space-faring civilizations. Even if somehow life only occurs once in the lifetime of a trillion galaxies, and out of those only one a trillion ever evolves out of its womb planet, in this model we're still left with an astounding 1075 advanced societies - more alien cultures than the number of atoms composing planet Earth! For some perspective on such a number, there are more atoms in a single grain of sand than there are grains of sand on the beach from which it was plucked.
Assuming life were this rare, our nearest star-hopping neighbors would probably be trillions of light-years away. Only future technologies like travel through traversable wormholes (like the hyperspace of Star Wars) might ever give us the ability to connect with these cultures. For an enlightening discussion of some possible scenarios, see Michael C. Price's Some Implications of Traversable Wormholes.
According to Price, the implications of such 'Contact' would be staggering,"The number of alien cultures would be so large, that it is unlikely anyone could ever catalog all of them, even if they did have computers the size of Jupiter! No historian could encompass the sweep of history, no biologist catalog the species. In a profound sense we'll have returned to a vast ancient world, surrounded by distant lands populated with mythical and fantastic creatures. Construction of a single universal map would be impossible. The culture shock of trying to absorb such a vast amount of new data would take close to eternity.
"If she lost her personal wormhole and forgot her
trans-species designation code (a seventy digit number!) she
would never, ever find her way home again. None of her
descriptions of where she comes from would relate to
anything anyone else knows. "
And just when you thought the universe couldn't get any bigger, along comes the idea of
other universes and infinite dimensions...
As if 1075 star cultures all interacting with one another in a universe bigger than any of them can imagine isn't enough, these may be just the civilizations that evolved in our universe. According to cosmologists like Alan Guth and Lee Smolin, our universe may be only one among an endless variety of others, resulting from a biological process of replication, natural selection and diversification. The idea being that our universe is only one among trillions of other offspring, born from the black holes of an older ancestral universe, in a chain stretching back indefinitely. Likewise our universe might be spinning off millions of baby universes through its own black holes.
According to David Bohm, the 4-dimensional universe we 'experience' (the explicate order), is just an arbitrary 4-d submanifold of an infinite dimensional multiverse (the implicate order). Everything we experience might then be just one set of arbitrary conditions among an infinite continuum of possibility.
In this context, a traversable wormhole could be seen as 5-d vector from one 4-d slice to another. A more interesting implication of traversable wormholes, is they open the possibility of engineering our own baby universes. One day we might figure out how to do this with such finesse, that we can change the universal constants, like we do our own DNA with genetic engineering. In this case we could utilize such 'universal engineering', 'cloning' and 'splicing' methods to create our own custom/mutated universes. Imagine creating an endless numbers of other universes, each increasingly tailored to our own desires; playing in dimensions so far beyond our own that familiar concepts like space, time, matter and energy have no meaning. It's possible this has already been done. Perhaps we are already living in one of these artificial universes, created and imagined by beings from a previous ancestral universe.
Originally appeared on my website Planet P.
1996
The nöosphere has been defined as the sum total of all human knowledge and experience. This would include everything from our most private dreams to our knowledge of Universe itself. With accelerating technology as its catalyst, our nöopshere is expanding at its greatest rate in history.
According to the standard inflationary model of cosmology, the 'visible' universe mapped by our telescopes is an infinitesimally small speck in a much larger universe of at least a 1035 light-year radius. If the galactic density of our own neighborhood is typical, then our bubble-universe could contain at least another 10100 galaxies - more galaxies than atoms in our own visible universe!
Despite the possibility that life might be extremely rare, a number as large as 10100 is likely to produce an abundance of life throughout the universe. A place where countless lifeforms evolve beyond their womb planets into highly advanced space-faring civilizations. Even if somehow life only occurs once in the lifetime of a trillion galaxies, and out of those only one a trillion ever evolves out of its womb planet, in this model we're still left with an astounding 1075 advanced societies - more alien cultures than the number of atoms composing planet Earth! For some perspective on such a number, there are more atoms in a single grain of sand than there are grains of sand on the beach from which it was plucked.
Assuming life were this rare, our nearest star-hopping neighbors would probably be trillions of light-years away. Only future technologies like travel through traversable wormholes (like the hyperspace of Star Wars) might ever give us the ability to connect with these cultures. For an enlightening discussion of some possible scenarios, see Michael C. Price's Some Implications of Traversable Wormholes.
According to Price, the implications of such 'Contact' would be staggering,"The number of alien cultures would be so large, that it is unlikely anyone could ever catalog all of them, even if they did have computers the size of Jupiter! No historian could encompass the sweep of history, no biologist catalog the species. In a profound sense we'll have returned to a vast ancient world, surrounded by distant lands populated with mythical and fantastic creatures. Construction of a single universal map would be impossible. The culture shock of trying to absorb such a vast amount of new data would take close to eternity.
"If she lost her personal wormhole and forgot her
trans-species designation code (a seventy digit number!) she
would never, ever find her way home again. None of her
descriptions of where she comes from would relate to
anything anyone else knows. "
And just when you thought the universe couldn't get any bigger, along comes the idea of
other universes and infinite dimensions...
As if 1075 star cultures all interacting with one another in a universe bigger than any of them can imagine isn't enough, these may be just the civilizations that evolved in our universe. According to cosmologists like Alan Guth and Lee Smolin, our universe may be only one among an endless variety of others, resulting from a biological process of replication, natural selection and diversification. The idea being that our universe is only one among trillions of other offspring, born from the black holes of an older ancestral universe, in a chain stretching back indefinitely. Likewise our universe might be spinning off millions of baby universes through its own black holes.
According to David Bohm, the 4-dimensional universe we 'experience' (the explicate order), is just an arbitrary 4-d submanifold of an infinite dimensional multiverse (the implicate order). Everything we experience might then be just one set of arbitrary conditions among an infinite continuum of possibility.
In this context, a traversable wormhole could be seen as 5-d vector from one 4-d slice to another. A more interesting implication of traversable wormholes, is they open the possibility of engineering our own baby universes. One day we might figure out how to do this with such finesse, that we can change the universal constants, like we do our own DNA with genetic engineering. In this case we could utilize such 'universal engineering', 'cloning' and 'splicing' methods to create our own custom/mutated universes. Imagine creating an endless numbers of other universes, each increasingly tailored to our own desires; playing in dimensions so far beyond our own that familiar concepts like space, time, matter and energy have no meaning. It's possible this has already been done. Perhaps we are already living in one of these artificial universes, created and imagined by beings from a previous ancestral universe.
December 21, 1986
Brain Upgrading & Consciousness Expansion Using Nanotechnology
Note: I first published this by uploading it to some Bay Area BBS while in college at the University of Arizona. I was still recovering from the shock of what nanotechnology could do after first hearing about it the month before in Omni magazine.
To start, for those of you who don't know about nanotechnology you can read all about in Eric Drexler's Engines of Creation or in Omni November, 1986.
There are angles (infinite angles!) to nano-technology that nobody has discussed yet (at least openly), and those are its implications to consciousness. I don't expect to finish discussing this very radical notion in this bulletin, so I will continue over several (whenever I can).
For those of you who have read William Gibson's 'Neuromancer' and the like, you are familiar with the concepts of Cyberspace - Cyber-telepathy, Super-virtual/non-local reality simulation/modulation and other neuro-electronic concepts. At present, these future technologies seem impossible. As it is, we barely understand the brain and its relation to conscious thought. So how could we possibly incorporate a cybernetic link to it with any sufficiency?
To begin, there are a few concepts that have to be put forward. Science has shown that 'we' are not the 'substance' but rather the 'form' that is the information transfer that is made possible through the physical substance. This has been shown using radioactive tracers. We replace all the cells in our body within a seven year period, yet 'we' still remain, we don't disappear. We are the form and not the substance. The implications to this are staggering! Immortality thus becomes a more feasible goal (although by no means an easy one).
Now, if 'we' are the information of the structure, then in order to define who 'we' are we would have to go to the deepest levels of physical reality to explore the information transfer going on.
Thus in order for us to model, to any degree of accuracy, the mind we will need to understand the brain and such all the way down past the molecular level into the quantum level and beyond. Neuroscientists are already figuring this out, and are researching molecular interactions in the neurons (i.e the thousands, perhaps millions of neurotransmitters that help define thought). But neurotransmitter are the result of a very large number of quantum interactions which define any particular molecule.
So, to finish off this first part of a series; if Cyberspace is ever going to become a reality, Nanotechnology is going to have to play a role. No other technology will be small and complex enough to recieve, integrate and transmit the billions of quantum signals that make up a single human thought.
Nano-technology (aka. Atomic Engineering) is to atoms what genetic engineering is to genes. Nano-technology is a concept that is becoming a reality. It is simply a natural progression of the chemical, biological and computer sciences. With nano-technology we will be able to engineer an atom at a time. The potential is both very promising and very threatening. This technology is inevitable, lets hope we have the wisdom to use it.
Nanotechnology and Consciousness: Beyond Drugs
The set of experiences made possible with a nanoengineered brain would be way beyond any drug. What I am about to describe could be a called a meta-drug; as nanotechnology would be to a psychedelic what a psychedelic is to water.
With nanotechnology, we will be able to make very extensive cybernetic maps of the brain and nervous system (neurologically, genetically,atomically)...LSD -- it is a simple molecule that interacts with the neurotransmitter serotonin to produce most of the effects of a 'trip' (on occasion, the effects occur on more fundamental levels). Most of what was experienced on LSD is the product of its simple molecular structure ad the accompanying neurotransmitter! This is only one of millions of possibilities!
Now comes along nanotechnology, with its ability to construct any possible atomic configuration - any chemical! Of course, most chemicals are not cybernetically suited to operate within the nervous brain, but that still leaves unlimited possibilities! Once we start making very extensive maps of the nervous system, nanotechnology will allow us to manipulate the nervous system with a million times the flexibility of any one psychedelic. Thus giving the nervous system higher and higher orders of complexity and freedom! Where other psychedelic take you on a
'trip', nanotechnology would be at your control. And that control would be nearly instantaneous, as the nano- to neuro- interfacing would be extremely efficient with the greater cybernetic mapping.
Thousands of molecular configurations would be interacting at any one instant. The interactions between these thousand would be in the millions. And the number of the possible interactions between those would be in the trillions! Why take LSD or any drug for that matter when nanotechnology allows for literally trillions of times more
possibilities. This is mind blowing! No wonder nobody has discussed this angle of nanotechnology - as it simply inconceivable.
To add to all of this, nanotechnology would operate at several orders of magnitude faster than the nervous system and have thousands of terabytes of usable memory.
To start, for those of you who don't know about nanotechnology you can read all about in Eric Drexler's Engines of Creation or in Omni November, 1986.
There are angles (infinite angles!) to nano-technology that nobody has discussed yet (at least openly), and those are its implications to consciousness. I don't expect to finish discussing this very radical notion in this bulletin, so I will continue over several (whenever I can).
For those of you who have read William Gibson's 'Neuromancer' and the like, you are familiar with the concepts of Cyberspace - Cyber-telepathy, Super-virtual/non-local reality simulation/modulation and other neuro-electronic concepts. At present, these future technologies seem impossible. As it is, we barely understand the brain and its relation to conscious thought. So how could we possibly incorporate a cybernetic link to it with any sufficiency?
To begin, there are a few concepts that have to be put forward. Science has shown that 'we' are not the 'substance' but rather the 'form' that is the information transfer that is made possible through the physical substance. This has been shown using radioactive tracers. We replace all the cells in our body within a seven year period, yet 'we' still remain, we don't disappear. We are the form and not the substance. The implications to this are staggering! Immortality thus becomes a more feasible goal (although by no means an easy one).
Now, if 'we' are the information of the structure, then in order to define who 'we' are we would have to go to the deepest levels of physical reality to explore the information transfer going on.
Thus in order for us to model, to any degree of accuracy, the mind we will need to understand the brain and such all the way down past the molecular level into the quantum level and beyond. Neuroscientists are already figuring this out, and are researching molecular interactions in the neurons (i.e the thousands, perhaps millions of neurotransmitters that help define thought). But neurotransmitter are the result of a very large number of quantum interactions which define any particular molecule.
So, to finish off this first part of a series; if Cyberspace is ever going to become a reality, Nanotechnology is going to have to play a role. No other technology will be small and complex enough to recieve, integrate and transmit the billions of quantum signals that make up a single human thought.
Nano-technology (aka. Atomic Engineering) is to atoms what genetic engineering is to genes. Nano-technology is a concept that is becoming a reality. It is simply a natural progression of the chemical, biological and computer sciences. With nano-technology we will be able to engineer an atom at a time. The potential is both very promising and very threatening. This technology is inevitable, lets hope we have the wisdom to use it.
Nanotechnology and Consciousness: Beyond Drugs
The set of experiences made possible with a nanoengineered brain would be way beyond any drug. What I am about to describe could be a called a meta-drug; as nanotechnology would be to a psychedelic what a psychedelic is to water.
With nanotechnology, we will be able to make very extensive cybernetic maps of the brain and nervous system (neurologically, genetically,atomically)...LSD -- it is a simple molecule that interacts with the neurotransmitter serotonin to produce most of the effects of a 'trip' (on occasion, the effects occur on more fundamental levels). Most of what was experienced on LSD is the product of its simple molecular structure ad the accompanying neurotransmitter! This is only one of millions of possibilities!
Now comes along nanotechnology, with its ability to construct any possible atomic configuration - any chemical! Of course, most chemicals are not cybernetically suited to operate within the nervous brain, but that still leaves unlimited possibilities! Once we start making very extensive maps of the nervous system, nanotechnology will allow us to manipulate the nervous system with a million times the flexibility of any one psychedelic. Thus giving the nervous system higher and higher orders of complexity and freedom! Where other psychedelic take you on a
'trip', nanotechnology would be at your control. And that control would be nearly instantaneous, as the nano- to neuro- interfacing would be extremely efficient with the greater cybernetic mapping.
Thousands of molecular configurations would be interacting at any one instant. The interactions between these thousand would be in the millions. And the number of the possible interactions between those would be in the trillions! Why take LSD or any drug for that matter when nanotechnology allows for literally trillions of times more
possibilities. This is mind blowing! No wonder nobody has discussed this angle of nanotechnology - as it simply inconceivable.
To add to all of this, nanotechnology would operate at several orders of magnitude faster than the nervous system and have thousands of terabytes of usable memory.
