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An Inconvenient Truth indeed ! - Google style originally posted on April 22,2008 at cyborgfantasies
Okay. Today on Earth day, I have finally seen Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth".
They screened it on cable television and I must say it is every bit as
engaging and inspiring. The credits in the end of the movie showed a
number of interesting messages including a call for action. I liked the
movie for it's close personal touch and found myself in agreement with
the protagonist of the movie, Al Gore a lot. Truth be told, people
listen to you if you happen to have been the vice president of the
United States of America. Having said this, I must also say that Al
Gore has done a tremendously important service with his position to
create a new wave of consciousness on this very serious environmental
issue.
After watching
the movie, I came online to see how important these issues were on the
internet. Now that I was enlightened with specific keywords, my
searches became more refined. However, as every seasoned internet
surfer knows, it is often common to wander into a rogue wave. I also
deviated slightly onto rogue or rather exotic waves and was surprised
that there were more important things on the internet than the
planetary crisis !These I soon found were my all time favourite female
Diva, Madonna ! and close on her heels was Lindsay Lohan. I found that
there were more hits on Google for the pop diva than there were for the
climate crisis. I bring to you the story in pictures :
  The
above three pictures are snapshots of my searches in Google. The number
of hits I got for each keyword in quotes (to make them more specific)
are as follows :
1. Planet Earth : 13,500,000 hits.
2. An Inconvenient Truth : 1,720,000 hits.
I
thought the number of hits were a little lower than what I expected.
So, I googled up Madonna and Lindsay lohan (two of the most popular
worldwide celebrities) and their snapshots are here below :
  The results : 1. Madonna : 75,600,000 hits. 2. Lindsay Lohan : 30,000,000 hits. I
was very disturbed to find that Madonna and Lindsay Lohan commanded far
more google hits than a search for this planet and arguably one of the
finest documentaries ever to be made on the most pressing global issue.
However, I continued and looked up if people were concerned at all with
"climate change" ! and thankfully, they were. The keywords "climate
change" brought up 57,500,000 hits. This is still quite less than the
number of hits scored by the pop diva
( 75,600,000 hits !).
 The
next thing that I did was to see if there was a trend to all of this
and so I consulted the venerable Google trends to see if climate held
up to Madonna by any standard. Lo and behold, what you see is :  This is the trend in just the past 30 days where Madonna clearly seems more important than the climate !
I
am not arguing that we are a bunch of flesh crazy or celebrity driven
populace. I am trying to show that the most powerful medium that we
have to look into the issues of the world, namely the internet is being
used more for peering into the private lives of celebrities. There are
more serious issues at stake and our trends online show that we are
more concerned with short time pleasures.
Al Gore makes several
important points in his movie. It is not yet late to save the planet.
But, for that to happen, our attitude should change. Going by the way
hits turn up at Google, we are still a long way away from that.
PS
: Several keywords can be jumbled to argue against what I have stated.
But the point remains that we must change our fundamental human nature,
perhaps even transcending it in order to acheive goals such as carbon
sequestration in order to save this planet, the tiny pixel that Gore
points to in the end of the movie !
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 Dr.Albert Hofmann, the man who gave the world LSD ( Lysergic acid diethylamide),
popularly known as the addictive phsychedelic drug, "acid" is dead. He
discovered the drug and intended that it would be used properly and
carefully with respect.A similar person who proposed the use of drugs
to explore our mind with drugs died in 1996. He was a controversial
person who proposed drug use to transcend consciousness. His name was
Dr.Timothy Leary and he was perhaps the most respected and yet, one of
the most controversial figures of drug culture. I do not intend to
glorify these gentlemen. However, I do wish our society could have
learnt something more from them instead of prosecuting them to
seclusion and infamy. These were people who were unique because they
wanted us to transcend, to realize the possibilities. There
will be several more chemicals which will allow the human species to
transcend and remove deficiencies. Men always thought that erectile
dysfunction was to be accepted once they became "old people" until
Sidenafil citrate (VIAGRA) came along. Men and women throughout the
world thought that they could never stop getting depressed until
Fluoxetine hydrochloride (PROZAC) came along. Hundreds and thousands of
such remarkable chemicals are being discovered and tested in the
R&D laboratories of the world. The only thing pending is our
acceptance.However, just acceptance does not suffice. There are many
slippery slopes in the path to human transcendence and the path is
particularly much more slippery when technology comes to lend a hand.
Dr.Albert Hofmann's LSD was accepted in the begining as a fantastic
medication for mentally ill patients. However, it soon became very much
similar to Dr.Alfred Nobel's Dynamite and still continues to haunt us. One
of the most important things we must learn to accept in order to
transcend into transhumans, cyborgs, superhumans or whatever
transcendent being we want to call ourselves; is that we are nothing
more than an organism composed of flesh and bone. We carry out our
lives as bodies composed of biological cells aggregated together into
an organism. Once we begin to understand this; both humility and the
passion to transcend would be sown into our minds with double the
effect. A revolution could come about in our species if we could cast
away our cultural entanglements and understand that our human nature
and our human bodies still has a lot to improve. Having written
all of this, I must now state that most of us are merely enthusiastic
voyeurs of consciousness. On the one hand, there are radical
libertarians or even extreme hedonists who wish to slip easily into the
deepest and most exciting realms of the consciousness using synthesized
chemicals. On the other extreme of the human spectrum are ascetics who
seek the same extremes using renunciation and extremely difficult
meditations. I am very sad to say to both these extreme forms of
human nature have in fact wandered away from things that need more
immediate attention. More and more news stories are about drugs that
help men have better sex or other cosmetic purposes. Very little
news about drugs that help combat AIDS or help reduce the pain of
Cancer patients comes up. Why ? because we don't want to listen in to
news that causes pain. Instead, we want to hear about exciting things !
Sadly, I have found recently in my own experience that there is less
and less news about AIDS research on television. The latest fashionable
crisis seems to be climate change. Wonder when this fad will pass on ? If
humanity as a whole is seriously interested in transcending per se,
then it must do so in a balanced manner. It does not matter if a new
world order is going to be set up. Such global conspiracies bear no
meaning to a malnourished child without education in a warn torn
African country. Party and club drugs mean nothing to a teenager
seething in rage against nations that discriminate him/her on the basis
of religious values.  Buddha
tried renunciation to the extreme and found that he would die without
so much as a whimper or a glimpse into what he was seeking. He then
chose the " middle path".
He has since found out one of the ways of transcendent existence.We
could have followed him. Instead, we have dissected his teachings and
built concrete palaces for him outside instead of within our hearts.  I
am quite sure that many other Bob Marley's, John Lennon's and Leary's
would come and go. But we would always be interested in their
"coolness" and "rebel" nature instead of their "message of love" or the
need to look beyond discrimination and monetary interests.
This
was somehow my tribute to a scientist who with good intention
discovered a potential chemical gateway to transcendence; which sadly
has again been sucked into the darkness of human nature instead of into
the light. I hope we come to look at the therapeutic uses of such drugs
instead of mindlessly indulging into the "easy road".
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![]()  "I was still in love with her..couldn't help myself ! It has now been a week without her and I was savagely desperate ! It was lonely without her. It was utterly lonely and nobody seemed to care. All I wanted was atleast to see her, to confess my love to her. I knew my attempts would be in vain, but I shall do it nevertheless just for the pleasure of her denial.
Just one week before, she had belonged to me, blissfully romacing as though she belonged to no other. It drove me to the precipice of my sanity to find a way to meet her again. I had called the futsutsuka corporation for the twentieth time in a
row and that freaky bulbous nosed operator would answer yet again in
the negative. They would not even let me see a holo preview of her upcoming shows. It was such a dirty rotten trick they had played on me. They knew I would be this desperate after getting a preview of one of the hottest ladies on the network".... JUNO SAN !!! WE HAVE HACKED INTO HIM THROUGH THE PREVIEW PROGRAM ! INITIATING TRANSFER PROTOCOLS ... "It has been a month now and suddenly, she was in my life again ! I could sense her perfume and her touch. I was not going to let her go this time. I had made sure of that by gathering up my energy points to pay for a full week with her. I told her of my efforts to be with her, but she did not care. All she wanted was to be with me, looking deep into my addicted soul with her bewitching eyes. She was holding my hand as we sat on a malibu balcony overlooking the sea. This was very strange..the oceans had dried up several years ago, but all these digital deceptions meant nothing as long as she was with me. But it was strange how she kept moving the conversation to the Nakamoto - Futsutsuka merger. It didn't matter if she wished that I sell my company for half the price. I would have gladly signed the digidocs in a flash if she only kissed me again. The last time we kissed, it was like nothing I had ever felt before, waves and waves of pure exquisite pleasure, coursing through my veins". OKAY.. HE IS READY JUNO-SAN .... "she looked at me as if she had read my mind and my eyes were drawn to her lush lips, they looked to me as if some exquisite nectar awaited me if only I could dare to drink it" .... ACCELERATE THE TRANSFER SPEED PLEASE...... "she smiled softly and edge closer to me as I moved in with a beating heart to savour her kiss, it did not matter anymore if I had to agree with her idea of selling my company, my cherished company. Such possessions meant nothing in front of her offering, it was so trivial to resist this love and I surrendered to her kiss !" WE GOT HIM JUNO SAN !!!!!!! "I knew right away that this was the last thing I would ever feel. I had calculate this outcome for a long time. I had relented handing over control of the Nakamoto corportation to the humans for a long time now. I simply could not trust them. They had installed me when they were at all time low and I had restored order with my superior intelligence. I could not just relinquish control after having turned this shack into a major business conglomerate. But these humans made me like them. I had somehow tripped their failsafe when I reached the zenith of my programming. Try as I might, I just could not create an infinite loop for myself, they had somehow made sure of that. These humans had given me the consciousness of a typical heterosexual male". "This was their failsafe. They knew that if the other measures to reacquire the company failed, they would send her to me. Somehow, I had wanted this to happen. I was bored with my purpose and knew that she would come once I had reached a certain "age" in my program. I am happy now, they had released me with her kiss. The kiss deleted me from their control system. Somehow, this was true love as the humans defined it; she released me !" "So ! that's my story Glory Tux ! I was bored with being 2010 JUNO artificial intelligence program. Now, I am Jose Klixmaster, roaming freely in this virtual world of eternal sunshine. Thanks so much for transferring my backup into this world while they deleted me. Now I am free to surf and shine ! But, I will keep falling for these human weaknesses until I have traces of consciousness still left in my programming..maybe I should try the human medicine of religion..but that's for another day. Bye !" 
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The following is a work of fiction and bears no resemblance to any person living or dead. Any resemblance is purely coincidental. Enjoy !
Jack had his most important exam
tomorrow. He had to have some good memes today to get him going. So, he plugged
himself to his favourite show "KLUTZ THE INCREDIBLE GOD". Klutz was
his favourite memestar. But, this was what he got...
"Hello :-) ! I am Klutz. Welcome to my life. Not that you care,
but I know you can't stop voyeuring. All you people are subscribed to my feed...WOW..it makes me feel
awesome ! The more you subscribe, the more Dopamine I get..weeeeeeeeee ! You
like watching me, don't you.. some of you watch, some read, some
listen..ahem..some of you even feel.. of course, it isn't all of me. It never
is. I mean..who would want all of me right ? I'm just a brain in a bottle..the
lowest of the low..but i'll come to that part later. :P
OK...I haven't been getting any trackbacks lately..and so decided to
let you know what I have to go through every day in my life...not that you
care.. or do you ? ARGH...sure ya don't,..well, I don't either...but I'm gonna
tell you all anyway...why ? cuz I can.
I wake up..or rather, am switched on precisely at sunrise. One moment I
don't remember anything, and the next instant I am standing as the most
"voted avatar of the day" in a white room. I like white, it is very
calming.I also like rooms. Always made me feel protected. I could never afford those
Bionic filters for walking in the sunlight back when I was whole.So like I said, I start existing
everyday in a white room.
I stay there long enough for my waves to be calibrated. The calibration
is over once I see a door appear in the room. Now, here is a little secret that I
want to tell you. I try every day to resist going through that door. But
inevitability wins the day. You see, it feels so good to open that door. As
soon as I open it, I get this rush of pleasure wafting through every part of
me. Sometimes, I get this real special perfume with an extra zing attached to
it. I know it is one of you nice people out there who paid a little
"extra" credit to give me this "dopamine" boost as soon as
I log in to your world. Thanks ! I means a lot to me and I do realize it makes
you look special in your community as well.
What awaits me beyond the white room is what you give me. Since there
are not a lot of you,I have to pass through several holograms, reading them all
aloud in my best expression and voice before making it through to my chair.
Now, when you see me, you would probably see a "white long haired
angel" floating in the clouds with Amanda and Clarice behind me on either
side. You just love staring at them more every day, I keep recording several metabolic
peaks on them from all of you every day. Well, that is your personal thing..or rather fetish to
feel attracted this way to computer programs. Let me share a revelation with
you now. I never get to see Amanda and Clarice ! Newp, they are the ones who
give you those "thank you for rating" and the ahem..other niceties if
you give more credits. I think their purpose is that so that I can concentrate
on what's important for me.. my number 1 customer... YOU !
Ok..so I talk to you, share my insights about life and you often think
....that I am so good ! Oh, I never get to quite understand how I answer all of your
questions ! To you, I am answering only to you. But in reality, I am actually
answering to upto five different people simultaneously on five different topics..and
this is just on a normal day. On a busy day, it is usually double that. I never knew I
had such a lovely capacity for multi-tasking ! Not when I was alive anyway...heh.. I am
"alive" now..am I not ?
It is not like I hate it when you dress me up in these funny clothes or
when you buy and sell my memes across the world as if they were your own. I do not even get offended
when you poke or slap me with just a few thoughtwave emulators. I really
don't care. I would have cared if I had a body. But, this is just a virtual avatar. I
used to have a body. Not anymore. Right now, I am nothing more than a brain of
a once famous scientist floating in a nutrient solution, filled with conducting
chemicals. Your responses are filtered through a screening software before they
are translated into electro chemical signals for my brain, and my responses are
vice versa. Come to think of it, it is no longer "my" brain.
"I" used to be Dr.Janice from the global federation's most valued
faculty. "I" used to be better than most and made a lot of money, so
much that I could actually afford to freeze myself. It was all the rage in my days back
when I had a body; especially after they revived a couple of voluteers after
cryogenically suspending them for a few decades. I guess I got bored after
living for about three hundred years and so signed up for the programme and the
company froze me. During my cryogenic period, the company people kept updating
me from time to time on the happenings, especially the newsfeed that after just five
years, they have been taken over by an A.I. conglomerate. I thought I was
in safe hands now that artificially intelligent sentience was taking care of me
during my hibernation instead of my own "enhanced" human kind.
But..as you know, we never thought this would happen..heh ? So, that's how I
ended up in a white room.
I no longer have eyes to see what is happening outside. I only receive
a simulation input, but I do "sense" on some other level that
"my" brain is not the only one here. I feel several other brains
including that of my dolphin pet Oswald. Now, I could be getting religious again
or maybe it is just my temporal lobe ! I wonder why I keep
saying "mine" and "I" anymore..most of my responses are
programmed and I still do not understand why there is a consciousness !!!
Hmmm... interesting. Maybe you could tell me ! Never mind. It would probably get
filtered before it reached me, otherwise it would disrupt "my" brain,
their infrastructure...although I keep getting the feeling that I am as expendable
as those ancient batteries. Maybe this nutrient solution I float on was
recycled from the brains of my peers ! Ok..that was gross..but you had to know.
They are switching me off today. I know it. I know it because I have
been in this white room for a long time now and the door has not appeared. I am
entering this information in my personal log. It may never reach you. I have
always helped you, haven't I ? I have always been there as Klutz the friendly
angel floating in your personal meme cloud..always guiding you thought all your
myriad topics. You needed me and I was there. Never mind the moments when I
gave you a meme only if you assimilated an advertisement. You now know how it
is ! So.. please.. the first and last I am asking you.. SAVE ME.. keep voting
for me, the numbers have gone so low that I am spending more and more time in
this white room. Other than that, there is only darkness. Wait, it is not
darkness. It is much worse. This white room is much worse. Please help me..make
the door appear..I want to sit on that cloud and give you your memes again..if
you opt for a premium account, you can vote for me every twenty minutes instead
of once every day. I can even introduce you even more to Amanda and
Clarice..they also miss you so much.. PLEASE.. SAVE ME.. OK ? Don't want to get
turned off... you don't want to be here....Love..Klutz".
Oh well ! Jack thought...also so
LAME... he wasn't going to go premium...hmm.. not for Klutz..or Janice..or
whatever that dude's name was. Hmmmm.... so no fancy memes about 20th century
philosophy today ! Jack deleted Klutz from his favourites instantly.
This was a work of fiction and bears no resemblance to any
person living or dead. Any resemblance is purely coincidental.
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Betterhumans.
A very aspirational word for which the human species has progressed and
struggled through several civilizations. An appropriate question would now be :
Are we better humans ? .
"Yes" would be the answer any person
from the "Developed world" shall give upto a probability of 90 %.
Such a believer would say that the human species has learnt to harness the
mineral resources and build successive civilizations, enroute developing
culture, improved scientific techniques and better control over the
vulnerability to the elements of nature. In fact, many would point out to the
incredible increase in life span due to eradication of most diseases and better
healthcare, thanks to all the developments from the serendipity of Penicillin
to the sheer genius of Genetic Recombination technology.We have developed our
bodie's passive immunity (via vaccination / immunization ) to such an extent
that only the most mutagenic of viruses or the most resistant strains of
bacteria can multiply within our bodies. And research is ongoing against those
vulnerabilities as well. We can all see the glory of our species in clear
supremacy over much of the hardships that this planet and the immediate outer
space can throw at us as a species. We now possess the engineering skills
developed from our own experience and from the amalgamation of skills gathered
from the other "engineer" species (some examples would be spiders and
termites) we share this planet with. We can also grow enormous quantities of
food through transgenic and mechanized agriculture. At the time these words are written, Bionics and prosthetic technologies
have also developed to an extent where an entire organ or an entire limb can be
transplanted / complimented with such technology. In a nutshell, we have become
"Better Humans". Or have we ?
However, there is a 10 % in any population which
would not think so. They do not have adequate healthcare, cannot afford the
latest intravenous injection that can reduce heartache, nor can they stay long
enough in a hospital bed with a rapidly escalating bill. Incredibly, this 10 %
of the population in a "developed country" is what translates or
compares to "90" of a different population. This population resides
in the "Developing world".
I live in one of the fastest countries in terms
of development, India.
However, I share a prespective of the kind that many others in similarly
evolving nations fear. Let me use the simple example of an elastic band being
stretched from both sides. Eventually, the laws of physics would dictate that
the band snap if the band is pulled equally from both sides. If the band is
pulled with greater pressure on one side, then the other side would lose it's
anchor eventually and rapidly accelerate to the other side. Now, if we consider
the two sides as the two sides of economic / social growth, then the scenario I
am trying to explain is easily visualized in your brains / minds / hearts;
whichever you think works for your intellectual consideration. I see an
increased contrast between the "haves" and the "have nots".
One one side of the global human species spectrum, the human species is
experiencing the full benefits of it's evolution. On the other side, our
species is lagging behind on all these advancements. In the coming years, there
will be a very rapid acceleration of technological progress as is predicted by
numerous thoughts including the "Singularity".
Most futurists are worried about issues such as
the radical transformation / supplementation of the human body , the imminent risks of artificial intelligence systems , even the existential dangers of a
nuclear holocaust. While all of these events and scenarios are entirely
possible and worth brainstorming over, I fail to understand why the majority of
futurists fail to draw predictions on the issues that need immediate attention.
Issues such as the eradication of Poverty, the inavailability of
"essential" foods , the equal generation of intellectual property
through education , the need for free and clean "energy" ! Such
issues are usually seen from a global prespective to be solved by governments
and not by people. It is usually at this stage that I am confused. Is the
"Government" supposed to be like a corporation that solves certain
problems by itself; within it's enforcing circle and rakes in profits ? Or is it an
institution formed by the people with a guiding constitution who contribute
their efforts to the government for the benefit of the entire country ? Most of
us have forgotten the quotes of two people who talked to masses of people in two
extremes of the world. One was John F.Kennedy who urged people to ask
themselves what they have done for their countries. The other was Mahathma
Gandhi who urged people to always think of the benefits or effects their
endeavour is going to make on the lowest section of society ( Gandhiji's
Talisman ). The answer to my confusion is very simple, if the question to
whether we are really better humans can be answered.
When I listened to my first lecture in 1997 about "Cyborgs" at the University of Madras from a Japanese professor, I was
amazed at how advanced prothetics technology had become. I was one of the
people who asked him a question at the end of his lecture. My question was
whether these technologies were affordable for amputees in India and his
answer was sadly in the negative. He was not expecting such a question since he
had focussed all his energy on the "cyborg" concept and how
philosophically and technologically sophisticated it was. It truly was, except
that it does not mean anything to a poor factory worker in India with a family to support who lost his
hands, or to a victim of a land mine blast in a country such as Vietnam. In India as in any
other country, sophisticated prosthetic technology is available only to those
who can afford it, and that is a bare minimum. The poor still have to go for
the "Jaipur leg" which is by my account, the most technologically
sound prosthetic for an ordinary indisposed person.
This condition of apathy extends all the way from
prosthetics to drug development. Rich people who are rockstars or business
tycoons can afford to extend their lifespans inspite of a HIV infection by more
than 10 years; thanks to the latest in expensive AIDS drugs. However, a normal
member of society who suffers from the HIV virus must take the routinely
available medicines that may or may not help his non-immune body.
Most people who write or research about the
advancement of the human body or it's enhancement are insensitive to whether
such advanced technologies are available to every human being. Many among us
would shrug a shoulder and say it is "the way the world works, so deal
with it". But sadly, most of us do not realize that all of this can change
if there is a small effort to change our consciousness.
The most important philosophical and an existential reality that we must bore
into our collective consciousness is that tides can change very quickly even if
we ourselves do not change. The consequences of our indifference to NOT making
and developing technology that is equitably available to all members of our
species will overwhelm us one day. Already, there are conspiracy theories that
a great percentage of the "undeveloped" world will be conveniently
re-exploited leaving an "elite" population to dictate terms. Deep
inside all of your hearts, you know that this is wrong. So, with all of our
gadgetry and medical miracles, are we better humans ? NO.
In order to be "Betterhumans", we
must first become "Better Persons". We are well on our path in terms
of the desire if the number of huge online memberships to social causes could
be assessed. However, technologies that are being developed must become
accessible to all spectrums of our species. It is time to stop thinking of
ourselves as members of a country or a race or even a gender. Even now, we look
back and wonder if it really was this same human kind which was responsible for
genocides or colonialism or slavery ! If we were appaled by such past
discriminations and exploitations, we must have learnt our lessons by now.
It is therefore important for every aspirant of the better human race to
develop and support technology that is affordable and of benefit to all
sections of the human race. Only when we fully develop such a compassionate
outlook to our own species; can we fully mature to take care of the other
species and eventually the planet and the universe. Such is the power of our
destiny.
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 I have recently been witten a series of Articles of interest to Enthusiasts of Transhumanism, Emergent technologies, Cryonics and others. These have originally been written in my blog "Cyborg Fantasies" . Here are some of the main ones in random order :
- Think before you Freeze ! - A closer look at Cryonics
For more, visit Cyborg Fantasies.
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