FootprintsintheWind.com

I no longer have a 5 0’clock shadow
I have a 5 o’clock silver lining

:- Doug.

Beyond What does it mean to be human: What can it mean?

:- Doug.

A special subset
among the chronologically gifted
the elders
serving
growing
eyes on the futures
serenely altruistic

:- Doug.

Two joys
rise to the top
among elders
joy of learning
joy of serving

:- Doug.

To look back 300 years is to look across what appears an essentially linear landscape. To look forward 300 years is trying to see over an exponential hill: it is a much farther distance. Maybe we should look back 3,000 years, or 30,000. Humanicity is probably not a straight line.

:- Doug.

What can it mean we are about to have human-created evolution? Can we be conscious of what our created evolution is creating? Science and technology cannot help but create bigger problems: can they be our sole saviors? Are there other fundamentals?

:- Doug.

If we are expanding our thinking capacity, what happens when we exponentially connect our thinkers? Perhaps today’s divisiveness is the birth pangs of connecting. Things don’t fit at first, and they’ll never fit how we imagine. This new way of meeting is conversing to the power of conversing. CC, with an exponentially growing exponent.

:- Doug.

Might a computer or an algorithm meditate? To what advantage?

:- Doug.

Time is almost fungible. I can do this project today or tomorrow. What adds to the equation is chaos, surprise, and randomness, which may tell me “You did not do that then, and you cannot do it now.” Again we can fill the jar with rocks before we fill it with sand, but it is harder the other way around. But is time a delimited jar?

:- Doug.

The muddle, uncomfortable as it is, is a required resource for growth and order. Muddle is chaos is necessary.

:- Doug.

Is that the question we want? The question we need? The question that carries us the furthest in the right direction?

:- Doug.

We are living into the futures.

:- Doug.

Ask yourself: are stories only about the past? Are questions only about right answers? If not, what skylights does this open for the elders now and in 11 generations?

:- Doug.

Thinking needs to be now.

:- Doug.

Yes, I need to think. Will machines in the future actually think? Probably. Will we mesh with them? Probably. Will we notice? Probably not. Will I think, now? Probably, but will I want to? Hopefully just a little more than not. It will help to think together.

:- Doug.

These are progress notes: perhaps not profound, but ways to extend thinking and open some new territory.

:- Doug.

Just as time stands still and passes unnoticed when traveling at light speed, so enhanced intelligence will not seem fast nor unusual to those using it.

:- Doug.

Computers are faster than human thinking because computers (so far) are thought machines—they travel paths already trod. Humans (some days) have to actually think, which is arduous (we don’t like it) and slow (are we there yet?). Herein a dilemma of humanity.

:- Doug.

Teach the Hoosier children to count seconds “One Indiana, Two Indiana….”

:- Doug.

Whenever you envision a danger in a future, find a way to turn it to good.

:- Doug.

Maybe one future is that some of us will become altruists as our primary work.

:- Doug.

In one future education will be so important even into old age, we’ll consider the necessaries to be food, clothing, shelter, and education.

:- Doug.

In the centralized regime, the kill decision goes to the commanders. In the democracies to the individual pilot. In one future to the bots and algorithms. (Why wouldn’t we—they can assimilate more information, and decide faster.)

:- Doug.