Ian & Stuart's Australian Mac: Not for Sale/Another.not.for.sale (Australia).iso/hold me in your arms/FINAL PROGRAM

Text File | 1994-05-25 | 12KB | 208 lines

          Tuesday, 17 May 1994 2:13:37 PM
          alt.cyberpunk Item
  From:           [e-mail] (Jester),internet
  Subject:        FINAL PROGRAM
  To:             alt.cyberpunk
FINAL PROGRAM by Adi Newton

"It is possible to stimulate selected parts of the brain sequentially to create
various states of mine. This suggest that artificial experiences might
eventually become available to the consumer. It is possible to visualize 'Dream
Machines' that would replace television and cinema. Even the average household
might one day be equipped with such a device: a small console linked to a
central computerized memory of experience bank connected to the consumers
electric terminals. Then the tuned in consumer would have only to dial the code
of the desire experience..."

The same sort of "Library of Vicarious Living Experiences" visualized for the
turn of the century has been imagined by Arthur C. Clarke at the end of his
books, "Profiles of the Future". Clarke states that;"artificial memories, if
they could be composed, taped, and then fed into the brain electronically ...
would be a form of vicarious experience far more vivid (because of its
affectation of all the sense) than anything that could be produced by the
massed resources of Hollywood. They would indeed be the ultimate form of
entertainment - a fictional experience more real that reality..."

Robert Anton Wilson notes in his article 'The Sexual Domestication of the Four
Brained Biped', that the fifth circuit of the brain defines 'Cybersomatic
Intelligence' - the capacity to expand, intergrate, rewire and hedonically
engineer all the previous imprints in terms of direct bodily sensation. The
first scientific study of this circuit 'Cosmic Consciousness' by psychiatrist
R.M. Bucke, proposed that this was a new evolutionary development, not a
pathology, and it seemed to be statistically increasing in recent centuries.

In fact, Phillip K. Dick in his short story, "We can remember it for you
Wholesale", is totally concerned with the concept of memory experience brain
implant in future societies. "A tangible reality programmed by technicians. An
economic variant for those who cannot afford the real thing." The idea of
memory stored within the brain goes back to classical times. Stimuli falling on
the sensory organs produces disturbances in the brain, which cause the
perception of the stimuli. The disturbances leave behind traces, minute changes
in the structure of the brain. As a result of these changes, brain activity
becomes more likely to follow the same paths again in a response to stimuli
that are similar, or whose traces are intermingled or "associated" with those
first stimulus.

In the 17th century, Descartes proposed a hydraulic version of his theory
based on the assumption that nerves are hollow and conduct a flow of 'animal
spirits'. Sensory nerves contain delicate threads attached to the valves within
the brain, the opening of which releases animal spirits which pass through the
nerves to the appropriate muscles. Descartes in fact invented the concept of the
reflex; animal spirits are 'reflectal' in the brain, and pass back to the
muscles. Descartes' ideas are echoed in the modern theories of Synaptic
Modification.

Pavlov's famous research in conditioned reflexes greatly strengthen the
traditional concept of 'traces'. Pavlov himself was reluctant to claim that
reflex arcs depended on specifically localized traces within the cerebral
cortex, because he found that the conditioning could survive considerable
surgical damage to the brain.

Modern theories usually rely on computer analogies, the central model of which
is coding, storage and retrieval. Karl Lashley considered the possibility that
memories might not be stored inside the brain at all. He suggested that rather
than localized traces, there must be multiple memory traces throughout the
entire functional area of the brain. He thought that this indicated that;
"...the characteristics of the nervous network are such that when it is subject
to any pattern of excitation, it may develop a pattern of activity reduplicated
through an entire functional area by the spread of excitation, such as the
surface of a liquid develops an interference pattern or spreading waves when it
is disturbed at several parts". He suggested that recall involved some sort of
resonance among a very large number of neurons. These ideas have been carried
further by his former student Karl Pribram, in his proposal that memories are
stored in a distributed manner analogous to the interference patterns in a
hologram.

Analogous experiments have shown specific memory traces cannot be localized.
This has led to the seemingly paradoxical conclusion that "memory is both
everywhere and nowhere in particular." Not only have the hypothetical memory
traces proved to be spaceiously elusive, but their physical nature has also
remained obscure.

The idea of specific RNA "memory molecules" were fashionable in the 1960's, but
have now more or less been abandoned. The theory of reverberating circuits of
reverberating electrical activity, giving a kind of "echo" may help to account
for short term memory over periods of seconds or minutes, but cannot plausibly
explain long term memory. The most popular hypothesis remains the old favorite
that memory depends on modifications of synaptic connections between nerve
connections in a manner still unknown.

The electrical evocation of memories has been conducted by Wilder Penfield.
Stimulation of the secondary visual cortex ,gave rise to complex recognizable
visual hallucinations, e.g. flowers, animals, families, people and so on, and
in epileptics when some regions of the temporal cortex were touched - some
patients recalled appropriately specific memory sequences - for example, an
evening at a concert, or a telephone conversation. The patients often alluded
to the dream-like quality of the experiences.

The electrical evocation of these memories could mean that they were stored in
the stimulated tissue as Penfield initially assumed in that it could mean that
stimulation's of that region activated other parts of the brain that were
involved in remembering the episode - but it could also mean that the
stimulation resulted in a pattern of activity that tuned into the memory by
Morphic Resonance.

Penfield, like Lashley and Pribam, ,gave up the idea of localized memory traces
within the cortex in favor of the theory that they were distributed in various
parts of the brain instead, or as well. The advantage of this hypothesis is
that it accounts for the recurrent failure of attempts to find these traces.
The disadvantage is that it is untestable in the light of formative causation.
The elusiveness of memory traces have a very simple explanation - they do not
exist. Rather, memory depends on morphic resonance from the patterns of
activity of the brain. We do not carry all our memories inside our brains. If
we are influenced by morphic resonance by particular individuals to whom we are
in some way linked or connected, then it is conceivable that we might pick up
images, thoughts, impressions of feelings from them either during waking life,
or whilest dreaming in a way that would go beyond the means of communication
recognized by contemporary science Such resonant connections would be possible
even if the people were thousands of miles apart.

Is there any evidence that such a process actually happens? Perhaps there is,
for such a process may be similar to if not identical with the mysterious
phenomenon of telepathy.

There is a wealth of anecdotal evidence for the occurrence of telepathy many
people claim to have experienced it themselves, and it has been detected in
many parapsychological experiments." This evidence of course is much disputed,
largely because from the conventional scientific point of view, telepathy, like
the other alleged phenomena of parapsychology is theoretically impossible By
contrast, in the context of the theory of morphic resonance, it is
theoretically possible

On the other hand, Carver Mead is using silicon as a medium to design
nervous systems - the networks of neurons, axons and synapses that shape sight,
hearing and touch. Silicon would come to his senses - or more precisely, the
senses would come to silicon. Traditional computer chips are not up to the
challenge of replicating the senses, which, if you think about it, only makes
sense because we do not see and hear like computers do by contrast, Mead's
chips are analogies of the real thing.  He has crafted synthetic neurons into a
silicon retina that can see, not like a movie camera, but like an eye He has
designed a silicon cochlea that hears not like a tape recorder, but like the
ear. In fact, it is now being considered for cochlea implants for the
profoundly deaf. Other neural network chips emulate memory - what is more,
these chips do not need to be programmed they can learn from experience

"We can already do some pretty amazing things": says Mead. "This gives you a
way to deal with the natural world. . "

Even today, some of these neural network chips can do things that would stump a
CRAY supercomputer. Even if digital computers will always remain the highspeed
calculator of choice, just as movies and television have become the mirrors of
culture and society, the emerging generation of neural network may become the
new mirrors of senses and of thought.

What does the future of computing look like then? The computers are based on
biological models of thought instead of computer models

These are not speculative questions - these are the questions this new design
metaphor creates.

A. Newton Anterior Research 1991

References

1 "As Man Becomes Machine" - David Rorvik: Abacus 1975 2 "Neuropolitique" -
Timothy Leary

3 "The Preserving Machine" - Philip K. Dick: Pan 1972 4 "From Darwin to
Behaviourism" R. Boakes:  Cambridge University Press 1984

7 "Languages of the Brain" - K.H. Pribram: Pretia Hall 1982 "Scientific
American" - Boycott 1965

9 "Speech and Brain Mechanisms" - W. Penfield and L. Roberts: Princeton
University Press

10 "Strategies in Studying the Cell Biology of Learning and Memory" S.P.R. Rose.
"Neuropsychology of Memory" - L.N. Squire & N. Butters: New York Guilford Press

11 "The Presence of the Past" - R. Sheldrake: Fontana 12 "Telepathic
Impressions" - Stevenson: University of Virginia Press

13 "Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research" Palmer 14
"Handbook of Parapsychology" B.B. Wolman

15 "Analog VLSl and Neural Systems" - Carver Mead

Extract of Dr. John Dees: The book of the speech of god. Also known as Liber
Logaeth and Liber Mysteriorum Setus et Sanctus. 1583 British Museum Library

Text taken from "Cybernetic Research Towards the Melding of Spirit and Machine
an Audio-Visual Prothesis" - A. Newton.
First published in Digital Dreams, ARS Electronica - Lin, Austria 1990.
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From: [e-mail] (Jester)
Subject: FINAL PROGRAM
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Date: Tue, 17 May 1994 14:13:37 GMT
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