The Great Geek Manual

I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you might nudge the world a little or make a poem that children will speak for you when you are dead.

- The Real Thing by Tom Stoppard, 1982.
Act II, Scene V
Character: Henry

Computation is miniaturizing, distributing, and becoming more powerful & efficient. It’s moving closer & closer to our bodies while ubiquitizing & dematerializing all around us. The cybernetic process has refined this most adaptive capacity in little more than 50 years to be right at hand, with us constantly, connected to a global web of people, places, things, information, and knowledge. We are co-evolving with our tools, or what Kevin Kelly refers to as the Technium – the seemingly-intentional kingdom of technology. As Terence McKenna suggested, we are like coral animals embedded in a technological reef of extruded psychic objects. By directly illustrating how our own fitness & bio-survival becomes bound to the survival of our technology, the cyborg is a fitting icon for this relationship.

- “The Cybernetic Self” by Chris Arkenberg, September 23, 2010.
Originally posted to Arkenberg’s blog, “Personal Cargo.”

If the term ‘knowledge’ is used excessively and indiscriminately when the term ‘information’ would do just as well nevertheless, some useful distinctions between the terms can be drawn. One distinction says that ‘knowledge’ is what is in a person’s head or what is embedded in a tool or a system. Knowledge is integrated and distributed. Knowledge is implicit, and difficult to articulate. It cannot be seen, ‘touched’ or directly manipulated.

- “No knowledge but through information” by William Jones, September 6, 2010.
Originally posted to First Monday

I think it very likely – in fact inevitable – that biological intelligence is only a transitory phenomenon, a fleeting phase in the evolution of the universe. If we ever encounter extraterrestrial intelligence, I believe it is overwhelmingly likely to be post-biological in nature.

- The Eerie Silence by Paul Davies, April 13, 2010.

Life is not going to be easy in the 21st century for people who insist on black-and-white descriptions of reality. The shape of the truth isn’t static; it shifts depending on where one stands. Bottomless truth lies in the gray.

- “Conspiracy of Heretics” by Joel Garreau, November 1994.
Originally published in Wired magazine.

We need to let more information in, but we also need to be ruthless about throwing out the useless stuff. … Think of the internet like an epic cocktail party, filled with chattering 24/7 conversations. Our goal shouldn’t be to ignore everything beyond earshot – that would inhibit our creativity, and keep us trapped in a very narrow world. Instead, we should keep on searching for those smart voices, so that we can remix the right data inside our head.

- “Are Distractible People More Creative?” by Jonah Lehrer, September 14, 2010.
Originally published on Wired Science’s The Frontal Cortex blog.

The Internet is a curiosity machine. Like the most knowledgeable and patient parent, it’ll indulge your questions for as long as you can muster them, letting you exercise your interests. As you do, you’ll ask harder and harder ones, until you reach the point where the answer isn’t easily available anywhere. And your real work will begin.

- “The Internet as Curiosity Machine” by Tim Maly, September 23, 2010.
First published by The Atlantic.

Technology is more than just a barometer of human collaboration. It is the embodiment of human collective intelligence. Most of the technologies we use, as the economist Friedrich Hayek first observed, are things that nobody knows how to make from scratch. Humans have transcended the limits of their own brain power by combining their brains into networks.

- “Why Some Islanders Build Better Crab Traps” by Matt Ridley.
Originally published by The Wall Street Journal, October 2, 2010.