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Edge: THE PANCAKE PEOPLE, OR, "THE GODS ARE POUNDING MY HEAD"

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Saved by 4 people (-2 private), first by anonymouse user on 2006-05-19


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But today, I see within us all (myself included) the replacement of complex inner density with a new kind of self-evolving under the pressure of information overload and the technology of the "instantly available". A new self that needs to contain less and less of an inner repertory of dense cultural inheritance—as we all become "pancake people"—spread wide and thin as we connect with that vast network of information accessed by the mere touch of a button.

Highlighted by wroush

the replacement of complex inner density with a new kind of self-evolving under the pressure of information overload and the technology of the "instantly available". A new self that needs to contain less and less of an inner repertory of dense cultural inheritance—as we all become "pancake people"—spread wide and thin as we connect with that vast network of information accessed by the mere touch of a button.

Highlighted by jimbeau

the replacement of complex inner density with a new kind of self-evolving under the pressure of information overload and the technology of the "instantly available". A new self that needs to contain less and less of an inner repertory of dense cultural inheritance—as we all become "pancake people"—spread wide and thin as we connect with that vast network of information accessed by the mere touch of a button.

Highlighted by jimbeau

the replacement of complex inner density with a new kind of self-evolving under the pressure of information overload and the technology of the "instantly available". A new self that needs to contain less and less of an inner repertory of dense cultural inheritance—as we all become "pancake people"—spread wide and thin as we connect with that vast network of information accessed by the mere touch of a button.

Highlighted by jimbeau

the replacement of complex inner density with a new kind of self-evolving under the pressure of information overload and the technology of the "instantly available". A new self that needs to contain less and less of an inner repertory of dense cultural inheritance—as we all become "pancake people"—spread wide and thin as we connect with that vast network of information accessed by the mere touch of a button.

Highlighted by jimbeau

But today, I see within us all (myself included) the replacement of complex inner density with a new kind of self-evolving under the pressure of information overload and the technology of the "instantly available".

Highlighted by jimbeau

But today, I see within us all (myself included) the replacement of complex inner density with a new kind of self-evolving under the pressure of information overload and the technology of the "instantly available

Highlighted by jimbeau

But today, I see within us all (myself included) the replacement of complex inner density with a new kind of self-evolving under the pressure of information overload and the technology of the "instantly available

Highlighted by jimbeau

But today, I see within us all (myself included) the replacement of complex inner density with a new kind of self-evolving under the pressure of information overload and the technology of the "instantly available".

Highlighted by jimbeau

a new kind of self-evolving

Highlighted by jimbeau

spread wide and thin as we connect with that vast network of information accessed by the mere touch of a button.

Highlighted by jimbeau

As Richard Foreman so beautifully describes it, we've been pounded into instantly-available pancakes, becoming the unpredictable but statistically critical synapses in the whole Gödel-to-Google net. Does the resulting mind (as Richardson would have it) belong to us? Or does it belong to something else?

Highlighted by jimbeau

becoming the unpredictable but statistically critical synapses in the whole Gödel-to-Google net

Highlighted by jimbeau

Does the resulting mind (as Richardson would have it) belong to us? Or does it belong to something else?

Highlighted by jimbeau

Does the resulting mind (as Richardson would have it) belong to us? Or does it belong to something else?

Highlighted by jimbeau

mind

Highlighted by jimbeau

Does the resulting mind (as Richardson would have it) belong to us? Or does it belong to something else?

Highlighted by jimbeau

Does the resulting mind (as Richardson would have it) belong to us? Or does it belong to something else?

Highlighted by jimbeau

Does the resulting mind (as Richardson would have it) belong to us? Or does it belong to something else?

Highlighted by jimbeau

I come from a tradition of Western culture in which the ideal (my ideal) was the complex, dense and "cathedral-like" structure of the highly educated and articulate personality—a man or woman who carried inside themselves a personally constructed and unique version of the entire heritage of the West.

Highlighted by jimbeau

on 2008-10-11 by jimbeau

a rich Interior life as the touchstone of civilization.

Can computers achieve everything the human mind can achieve

Highlighted by jimbeau

on 2008-11-13 by jimbeau

Pancake people, while giving up, the dense cathedral, are gaining the computer/ Internet. Thus the relavence of the question.The cathedral can be seen as a computer forefather, as another repository of knowledge. Also: the use of the 'memory palace': but these were things human's internalized; this is the way the 'mind' made use of them. The question then becomes how do humans make use (or how should they make use) of the computer/ internet?

the mistake itself becoming the basis of a whole new world of insights and procedures

Highlighted by jimbeau

random number

Highlighted by jimbeau

on 2008-11-13 by jimbeau

do random numbers equate to making mistakes? Is that what a mistake is, acting randomly? This surely is not the thust of Foreman's question, and would not be creative in the way Foreman suggests.

The Internet is nothing more (and nothing less) than a set of protocols for extending the von Neumann address matrix across multiple host machines

Highlighted by jimbeau

template-based addressing

Highlighted by jimbeau

far more robust

Highlighted by jimbeau

on 2008-11-13 by jimbeau

And is 'creative' over a long period of time.

The other limitation of which von Neumann was acutely aware was the language limitation, that a formal language based on precise logic can only go so far amidst real-world noise

Highlighted by jimbeau

Although Google runs on a nutrient medium of von Neumann processors, with multiple layers of formal logic as a base, the higher-level meaning is essentially statistical in character. What connects where, and how frequently, is more important than the underlying code that the connections convey.

Highlighted by jimbeau

Most of real life, however, inhabits the third sector of the computational universe: where finding an answer is easier than defining the question. Answers are, in principle, computable, but, in practice, we are unable to ask the questions in unambiguous language that a computer can understand

Highlighted by jimbeau

A solution finds the problem, not the other way around.

Highlighted by jimbeau

Random networks (of genes, of computers, of people) contain solutions, waiting to be discovered, to problems that need not be explicitly defined. Google has answers to questions no human being may ever be able to ask.

Highlighted by jimbeau

on 2008-11-16 by jimbeau

Is this a viable analysis of Foreman's question? Does it really show that the essence of creativity is in the mistake? And: I think there are mistakes and there are mistakes: the idea of the 'creativve accident' might be a better way of putting this.

More importantly, it allows answers to find questions. From the point of view of the network, that's what counts.

Highlighted by jimbeau

DevonThink

Highlighted by jimbeau