Thursday, April 9, 2009

neuron-like nature of the internet


I experienced a tiny little dose of the divine in a coffee shop in Moab Utah.

The other night I slept out in the desert under the stars. I was a few miles outside of Moab along a lovely stretch of high-way that runs parallel to the Colorado River.

Sometimes when I sleep outside I'll experience the most vivid dreams, and recently I've tried to encourage some extra message from the great beyond as I sleep. So, as I zipped up my sleeping bag below the sandstone cliffs, I asked the universe to give me an insight, I was receptive. Alas, I woke up without any dreams.

Later that morning, I drove back into town for coffee, and I pull out my laptop. I wanted to look up MOAB for any mythic significance, so I go to Wikipedia, a resource I rarely use. I log on and the featured article of the day on was about high-way 128 in Utah, where I slept the night before.

That was odd...

Now, this coincidence is curious, true enough. It obviously made me take note. In the previous days I had been composing a blog-post in my head about on the neuron-like nature of the internet and the possibility that it might be developing it’s own self awareness. And then I get a very curious cyber-synchronicity linked to where I slept, and where I asked for an insight.

Are we witnessing the internet form a new kind of collective consciousness? There is now a global expanse of electronic brain neurons running everywhere, in the air, into space and into the psyche of individuals. It's all emerging from an unfamiliar digital zeitgeist.

Is there an evolving giant life form of synaptic fibers emerging within cyberspace? Is it a new set of neurotransmitters, allowing and encouraging an alternative web of synchronistic happenings?

I recently tried (and succeeded) to poach a wireless signal at a friends apartment in Brooklyn. I was amazed to see a ridiculously long list of available internet connections, it was bizarre.

This is a new chapter of human history, nothing like this has EVER happened before. We are surrounded by a swirling electo-magnetic soup, with wi-fi portals, cell-phone towers and satellites in space. I am somehow forced to imagine billions of devout monks all chanting together, resonating collectively.

What is unfolding?

There is a perceivable significance in a shuffled deck of Tarot cards. And the I Ching is regarded as a system of divination within a random set of set of 64 abstract line arrangements.

Why is the internet any different?

Here’s a little bit more:

Below is an excerpt from PARANORMAL MUSINGS:
This is no joke. Today Ian and I went to Forrest Lawn Cemetery to pay our respects to Forry Ackerman, who died Dec. 4.

Next we ... arrived at our hotel. When I sat down and logged into the computer, Facebook required the typical security typographical entry before letting me see my mail. To my total astonishment, the words I was prompted to type were, "Ackerman 000" I kid you not.

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Text added Sept.  2nd 2012

Just so y'know, highway 128 shows up again in a very curious set of events, described in this post HERE. The experiences described by 'Artimesia' happened just a few miles from where I slept in the post above.
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6 comments:

Atrueoriginall said...

That is some beautiful country and one of few states I have yet to visit. I was probably saving it for last.

Speaking of the Colorado River...You know the feelings that you have 'within' that appear when you think about an area you either lived in, worked at, visited or vacationed in. Of course everything we do has instilled a feeling but do you know what I mean though when that actually feeling returns to you and you're not even there? I have a lot of those feelings but one that stands superior over the others is the Colorado River at Parker.

I don't know if it was the air, the bats flying over us as we slept on the grass along the shore, the boat, the river, the smells but everything about that feeling is so splendid and over powers any others I have. It's very, very strong. I'm trying to find a single word that best describes this but I can't. I guess I'll use 'spiritual' for a better word. It's awesome.

In regard to synchronicity, I find for myself that all of my synchronistic events happened 'in front of' the actual event. A "set up" if you will.

Synchronicity abounds in my daily life and I'll give you just one small example on how I knew it was a set up.

I had just moved to Placerville, California and brought nothing but clothes and memorabilia with us. Everything else I owned I gave away.

A while later after settled in an apartment (maybe a couple of weeks) I thought about some of the things that I needed such as a microwave, 2nd television, blender and food processor. Now I know I had probably thought about those same items previously - probably on the drive to Placerville but now it's a few weeks later and I'm thinking about it again (out of a clear blue sky). Put it this way, I knew that those items were already somewhere waiting for me.

That very afternoon of my thought, My daughter had a scheduled beading class to go to. Upon driving to town to drop her off at the bead store I saw a garage sale to my right and I said to myself that I would stop there on my return trip home.

It was already 4:00pm and typically garage sales are shut down by then but that one was still active. I dropped my daughter off downtown and scurried back up the road to the garage sale (about 3 miles). I parked my Jeep in front of the tables that the woman had set up and on the table directly in front of my Jeep and all grouped together I saw a microwave, blender and food processor. Below that same table was a 25" color television set. I asked "how much"? and she said, "it's late and I don't want to take any of it back in sooooo, $42.00 for everything". Woe! I'm thinking.

You see, in my case I know the drill and I know what's going on. I know that one or more are literally walking with me in life on a daily basis. My needs are met and done so by 'thought' alone. Of course I only get what I need and never what I want or think that I need.

I just posted another synchronistic event the other day here if you want to read about it too. It had to do with the Stephen King book/movie "IT".

Quanta said...

A couple of years ago an old friend asked me if I thought there might be a connection between fractals and synchronicity. As we spoke I realised that our conversation was "fractalising," or sending out related branches of thought from which other little branches of thought sprouted, and so on.

To stay with this, please, for this moment, hold the concept that our thoughts are capable of sending out dynamic neural impulses....which, to use a pertinent simile, is like the internet in your example here, stretching out and fractalising in numerous offshooting whorls exhibiting both independence and connectivity.

Now, in order to imagine how a "thought fractal" or the organic growth of the internet could be implicated in the creation of reality - which I think synchronicity represents quite effectively - we need to imagine that thought has mass. A thought fractal - or, in your example, any information fractal created and/or maintained and/or grown via the internet - would naturally increase in area, if not so much in size, just like any fractal.

So then if thoughts have mass, a fractalising thought's gravity would increase. The more massive the thought fractal (i.e., the more complex - like an intense series of thoughts leading up to an epiphany, for instance - or the internet's ever-growing reach and effect), the greater gravity and pull it would have to draw in synchronicity, which is among reality's more enigmatic creations....

(What I've written here is a continuation of my intial response to your post, which was simply "...we seem to think so much alike it's almost like we are ONE MIND....and perhaps we are." In "growing" those few words to make sense of what I needed to express, I brought together some of my writings from March and April 2007 - so what I've posted here is not only a comment on your post, but also the beginning of a new article I'm intending to publish at IIC very soon.)

Thanks, Mike!
Stace

Quanta said...

A couple of years ago an old friend asked me if I thought there might be a connection between fractals and synchronicity. As we spoke I realised that our conversation was "fractalising," or sending out related branches of thought from which other little branches of thought sprouted, and so on.

To stay with this, please, for this moment, hold the concept that our thoughts are capable of sending out dynamic neural impulses....which, to use a pertinent simile, is like the internet in your example here, stretching out and fractalising in numerous offshooting whorls exhibiting both independence and connectivity.

Now, in order to imagine how a "thought fractal" or the organic growth of the internet could be implicated in the creation of reality - which I think synchronicity represents quite effectively - we need to imagine that thought has mass. A thought fractal - or, in your example, any information fractal created and/or maintained and/or grown via the internet - would naturally increase in area, if not so much in size, just like any fractal.

So then if thoughts have mass, a fractalising thought's gravity would increase. The more massive the thought fractal (i.e., the more complex - like an intense series of thoughts leading up to an epiphany, for instance - or the internet's ever-growing reach and effect), the greater gravity and pull it would have to draw in synchronicity, which is among reality's more enigmatic creations....

(What I've written here is a continuation of my intial response to your post, which was simply "...we seem to think so much alike it's almost like we are ONE MIND....and perhaps we are." In "growing" those few words to make sense of what I needed to express, I brought together some of my writings from March and April 2007 - so what I've posted here is not only a comment on your post, but also the beginning of a new article I'm intending to publish at IIC very soon.)

Thanks, Mike!
Stace

Michael R. MacDonald said...

Interesting, as I was reading along it made me think of my Ackerman 000 experience, and you actually posted an excerpt. I think the internet in its vast and complex interconnectedness becomes the equivalent of a web-based-style of quantum slit test. In a similar fashion I have often wondered whether systems on the edge of stability, such as an electric light bulb about to burn out, are primed for influence by entities such as ghosts, spirits, and even aliens, if they do exist in the paranormal realm as we suspect.

Red Pill Junkie said...

I think someone should do a little program that would make use of the powerful Google search engine, in order to make an 'Internet Ouija'. The idea would be to ask the program the same questions you would ask the board, and the program would give you completely random responses (with a few possible set ups like only returning english phrases or whatever).

I bet that kind of program would give very interesting results, given the increasing rate of growth of the web :)

Brizdaz (Darren) said...

In regard to Red Pill Junkie's comment above,I would say there are programs that do work like an 'Internet Ouija Board' already,like the Word Verification program on some blog site's such as;

http://www.ofscarabs.blogspot.com

Where if you comment on a post, you're asked to enter a word verification,which is already there before you write your comment...and I can vouch from personal experience that,that thing is spooky.