The Great Geek Manual

It’s becoming increasingly apparent that the future will not be a monopoly of the current superpowers, but lies in the hands of tech-savvy youth from around the world, trying desperately to survive at all costs in an increasingly asymmetrical world. Youths from Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, and Sub-Saharan Africa represent the single largest subgroup of the human population, and with the aid of advanced technology they will go on to shape the geopolitical destiny of our civilization. Science fiction has a lot of catching up to do in order to chronicle this new frontier in which the developing world plays a defining role; a frontier that has been neglected by mainstream science fiction for just about long enough.

- “Developing World: Beyond the Frontiers of Science Fiction” by Jonathan Dotse, February 11, 2012.

Children are born true scientists. They spontaneously experiment and experience and reexperience again. They select, combine, and test, seeking to find order in their experiences – “which is the mostest? which is the leastest?” They smell, taste, bite, and touch-test for hardness, softness, springiness, roughness, smoothness, coldness, warmness: they heft, shake, punch, squeeze, push, crush, rub, and try to pull things apart.

- “Childred Are Born True Scientists” by R. Buckminster Fuller, 1978.

My hypothesis is this: The rapidly increasing sum of all computational devices in the world connected online, including wirelessly, forms a superorganism of computation with its own emergent behaviors. Superorganisms are a different type of organism. Large things are made from smaller things. Big machines are made from small parts, and visible living organisms from invisible cells. But these parts don’t usually stand on their own. In a slightly fractal recursion, the parts of a superorganism lead fairly autonomous existences on their own. A superorganism such as an insect or mole rat colony contains many sub-individuals. These individual organisms eat, move about, get things done on their own. From most perspectives they appear complete. But in the case of the social insects and the naked mole rat these autonomous sub individuals need the super colony to reproduce themselves. In this way reproduction is a phenomenon that occurs at the level of the superorganism.

- “Evidence of a Global SuperOrganism” Kevin Kelly, October 24, 2008.

There are only patterns, patterns on top of patterns, patterns that affect other patterns. Patterns hidden by patterns. Patterns within patterns.

If you watch close, history does nothing but repeat itself.

What we call chaos is just patterns we haven’t recognized. What we call random is just patterns we can’t decipher. What we can’t understand we call nonsense. What we can’t read we call gibberish.

- Survivor by Chuck Palahniuk, 1999.

I’ve made the most important discovery of my life. It’s only in the mysterious equation of love that any logical reasons can be found.

- A Beautiful Mind, 2001.
Character: John Nash, portrayed by Russell Crowe

The list of design flaws in human beings is pretty long, as it is in other organisms, and so to think that somehow we’re at the summit of perfection and that we’re stable is to have the wrong idea of human nature. The misleading assumption is that if we don’t interfere, we’re going to continue the way we are, and of course that goes completely contrary to everything we know about evolution. In fact it might turn out that the only way to prevent us from going extinct, or to prevent some great worsening of our condition, is to enhance some of our capacities.

…

You also have to consider the possibility that cognitive enhancements may go hand in hand with moral enhancements. There’s a great debate as to what extent bad behavior results in part from flawed cognitive processes, but even if improving our intelligence is not by itself is not likely to make us behave better, it may turn out that some of the same knowledge we’re using to make cognitive enhancements—knowledge about the relationship between our brains and behavior— may allow us to develop what some people have called “moral enhancements.” And if that happens, that may be something that will at least reduce the kind of risk that you’re talking about, because you’re right that people who have a super-developed intelligence along with a moral sensibility that’s dwarfed in comparison could be a real problem.

- Allen Buchanan, bioethicist and Professor of Philosophy at Duke University
Quoted in “Why Cognitive Enhancement Is in Your Future (and Your Past)” by Ross Andersen, February 6, 2012.
First posted to The Atlantic.

In the case of computing technology, we are utilizing tools that allow us to quickly reference information that isn’t present in our brains. We can tap into new skills and knowledge without having to acquire it through experience or mentoring alone. Therefore, the more adept we become at exploiting such technology, then the more we may gain a decided advantage over those that fail to. We already have numerous examples demonstrating how our access to information influences our belief systems, reinforcing previously held ideas or forming new ones. If the development of culture has shaped the evolutionary path of human development, then it follows that our technology even more influential because it is shaping the future direction our culture takes.

“Technological Symbiosis” by Gerhard Adam, February 5th 2012.
Originally posted to Technological Symbiosis.

Book collecting is an obsession, an occupation, a disease, an addiction, a fascination, an absurdity, a fate. It is not a hobby. Those who do it must do it. Those who do not do it, think of it as a cousin of stamp collecting, a sister of the trophy cabinet, bastard of a sound bank account and a weak mind.

- Jeanette Winterson