Suppose we are in a once every few hundred years massive societal change driven by information technology. We have been thinking this for at least the last 20 years or so. We have already seen a few waves of job transfers from manual to knowledge workers and of white collar repetitive jobs becoming automated.
Are the latest waves of financial crises exacerbated by the speed of information travel? What will that mean as the speed of information travel continues to go faster and include more dimensions? The stock market graphs of the last 10 years look remarkably different than all that came before with huge, spikey mountains and valleys. Seems that someone says something on one side of the world and a stock market on the other side of the world reacts within minutes... or seconds.
And have a somewhat permanent 10% of the US work force been cut. "Permanent" at least in the sense of until enough time passes for lots of re-training and re-education. Is the volatility of world financial markets another symptom of the kind of stress seen around major societal shifts?
If we are in fact accelerating our progression toward a time where everything that an be automated will be automated and our value is much more determined by how creative we are rather than how much quantity of work we can do, what does that mean for most of today's current work force?
Will we evolve into a more highly conscious, creative species overall? Will there be more separation between the haves and have nots, where the haves are represented by those who learn to be artists?
Fast forward 50, 100 years and how will we expect the societal landscape to change analagous to the changes we saw over 200 years ago from a monarchical, agricultural, rural society into a relatively democratic, industrial and urban society? What are the parallels and differences both in how we live physically, how we think and how we behave?
Showing posts with label information. Show all posts
Showing posts with label information. Show all posts
Friday, September 30, 2011
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Information, Spiritual Universe, Science of Mind and a dash of Jung
I only have a few minutes, but the connections between these 4 conceptual frameworks has been erupting in my mind over the last couple of days and I need to get some ideas down on paper before they disappear.
I have summarized the concepts in The Spiritual Universe in another blog. Information as it relates to the Universe is touched on in another blog as well. I believe the fundamental concept that underlies all these frameworks is the notion that everything is connected. There is one It, The Thing Itself (which is a term originally coined by Kant if I am not mistaken). God is the traditional name, but we get into trouble if we view God as something separate from the Universe or ourselves.
The Thing Itself is not physical in the sense that we traditionally think of physicality. Science of Mind follows from the long philosophical tradition from ancient Eastern religion, Plato, early Christian philosophers such as Plotinus, through Spinoza, some of Kant, Hegel etc. This strain of thought views the Universe as spiritual, not physical. Ultimate reality is not physical, but something else. We perceive the physical and use physical laws, but the underlying Reality of everything is "spiritual".
The Spiritual Universe views this ultimate reality as "physical" from the perspective of modern physics. That is, modern physics tells us that there is no "there" there. Everything is energy and relationships. Information and emergence talks about information being the ultimate "stuff" of Reality. Jung proposes the "Collective Unconscious" , another way that all is connected.
One division between these lines of thoughts is that the more secular strains (Spiritual Universe and Information) take a fairly agnostic and reactionary use of the stuff. Science of Mind proposes a constant interaction with Mind, the Universal Intelligence. Jung speaks of interaction to some degree, but mostly through archetypes that come to us through the Unconscious. Science of Mind definitely recognizes the importance of the subconcious in gaining proficiency in two-way interaction with the One.
That's all I have time for right now, but I just thought it interesting the way religion, philosophy, science and psychology are more connected and relevant to each other now more than ever. The more we learn about how little we really know about ultimate "physical" reality the more we understand that Ultimate Reality must run on higher laws and what we see is not what is really there.
Science of Mind is the one discipline that tries to tie all this eclectic thought together into a cohesive set of practices to maximize the usage of the power of getting out of the way of the Universal Intelligence and letting The Thing Itself express through the individual.
More later on this topic after my thoughts bake a little more.
I have summarized the concepts in The Spiritual Universe in another blog. Information as it relates to the Universe is touched on in another blog as well. I believe the fundamental concept that underlies all these frameworks is the notion that everything is connected. There is one It, The Thing Itself (which is a term originally coined by Kant if I am not mistaken). God is the traditional name, but we get into trouble if we view God as something separate from the Universe or ourselves.
The Thing Itself is not physical in the sense that we traditionally think of physicality. Science of Mind follows from the long philosophical tradition from ancient Eastern religion, Plato, early Christian philosophers such as Plotinus, through Spinoza, some of Kant, Hegel etc. This strain of thought views the Universe as spiritual, not physical. Ultimate reality is not physical, but something else. We perceive the physical and use physical laws, but the underlying Reality of everything is "spiritual".
The Spiritual Universe views this ultimate reality as "physical" from the perspective of modern physics. That is, modern physics tells us that there is no "there" there. Everything is energy and relationships. Information and emergence talks about information being the ultimate "stuff" of Reality. Jung proposes the "Collective Unconscious" , another way that all is connected.
One division between these lines of thoughts is that the more secular strains (Spiritual Universe and Information) take a fairly agnostic and reactionary use of the stuff. Science of Mind proposes a constant interaction with Mind, the Universal Intelligence. Jung speaks of interaction to some degree, but mostly through archetypes that come to us through the Unconscious. Science of Mind definitely recognizes the importance of the subconcious in gaining proficiency in two-way interaction with the One.
That's all I have time for right now, but I just thought it interesting the way religion, philosophy, science and psychology are more connected and relevant to each other now more than ever. The more we learn about how little we really know about ultimate "physical" reality the more we understand that Ultimate Reality must run on higher laws and what we see is not what is really there.
Science of Mind is the one discipline that tries to tie all this eclectic thought together into a cohesive set of practices to maximize the usage of the power of getting out of the way of the Universal Intelligence and letting The Thing Itself express through the individual.
More later on this topic after my thoughts bake a little more.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Information, Organization and Emergence
Originally posted in my old blog in September 2008.
One of the most interesting ideas to come out of 20th century science is the possibility that the Universe is information. Information organized into a particular format results in the emergence of a yet higher form of information and reality. Changing something about the fundamental organization of the information at a particular level of reality can destroy or change drastically the higher levels of reality built upon it. For example, imagine tweaking one of the 6 constant numbers responsible for the organization of our Universe. Reality as we know it would cease to exist.
Much of the important technology in the 21st century is information technology. This kind of technology is pure organization of information. Web technologies that did not exist 20 years ago are higher levels of information organization. New techniques for creating online applications are different ways of organizing information than those of creating desktop applications. The fundamental unit of currency is information.
Financial reality in the modern sense is all about information organization. I never see the millions of dollars I will make in my lifetime for the most part. It exists as an idea that is made concrete on a computer screen. Because of the numbers I may see in a particular organization on a web site (itself built by chains and levels of information organization) I may feel happy or sad, confident or insecure.
I may go to work and spend my days organizing information, creating new ways to organize information. At the end of the pay period other numbers are organized into a particular format of wages, tax deductions, retirement plans and health benefits. I organize information and I am paid by the organization of other information. I can eat because of these abstract ways of information organization that have emerged from lower level ways of concrete organization found in earlier economic systems that included bartering and exchange of gold.
Regarding emergence.
The spiritual emerges from the psychological which emerges from the physical organism which emerges from the laws of biology which emerge from the laws of chemistry which emerge from the laws of physics.
My blog emerged from web technologies which emerged from software technologies which emerged from hardware technologies which emerged from quantum physics which ultimately emerged from lower levels of information which constitute the fundamental fabric of the Universe.
One of the most interesting ideas to come out of 20th century science is the possibility that the Universe is information. Information organized into a particular format results in the emergence of a yet higher form of information and reality. Changing something about the fundamental organization of the information at a particular level of reality can destroy or change drastically the higher levels of reality built upon it. For example, imagine tweaking one of the 6 constant numbers responsible for the organization of our Universe. Reality as we know it would cease to exist.
Much of the important technology in the 21st century is information technology. This kind of technology is pure organization of information. Web technologies that did not exist 20 years ago are higher levels of information organization. New techniques for creating online applications are different ways of organizing information than those of creating desktop applications. The fundamental unit of currency is information.
Financial reality in the modern sense is all about information organization. I never see the millions of dollars I will make in my lifetime for the most part. It exists as an idea that is made concrete on a computer screen. Because of the numbers I may see in a particular organization on a web site (itself built by chains and levels of information organization) I may feel happy or sad, confident or insecure.
I may go to work and spend my days organizing information, creating new ways to organize information. At the end of the pay period other numbers are organized into a particular format of wages, tax deductions, retirement plans and health benefits. I organize information and I am paid by the organization of other information. I can eat because of these abstract ways of information organization that have emerged from lower level ways of concrete organization found in earlier economic systems that included bartering and exchange of gold.
Regarding emergence.
The spiritual emerges from the psychological which emerges from the physical organism which emerges from the laws of biology which emerge from the laws of chemistry which emerge from the laws of physics.
My blog emerged from web technologies which emerged from software technologies which emerged from hardware technologies which emerged from quantum physics which ultimately emerged from lower levels of information which constitute the fundamental fabric of the Universe.
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