"The drugs of the future will be more like computers and computers of the future will be more like drugs.”
Terence McKenna in 1990
For those of you that never heard of McKenna, let me try to describe him in one sentence - which is a maddening task, for he certainly requires more, but we don’t want to digress here.
Ethnobotanist, mystic, lecturer, author and caretaker of the light in all of us - spearheading and advocating the responsible use of hallucinogenics for therapeutic healing and individual growth since the 60’s — left this plane of existence in the year 2000.
Himself being an early adopter, the confrontation with the internet before mainstream acceptance was inevitable. Following the exposure to the first crude virtual reality projects, combined with his biology background and finally blended into his affinity to technology and the hunt for “the peculiar” . It was only a matter of, a very tiny amount of time, until ideas of biotech implants, genetic modification and meta programming unraveled themselves to him. Implementing them and applying them to his direct experience, induced by hallucinogenics, he encountered first hand the flexibility of the mind and the first Hermetic Principle: how content perceived “outside” the mind or “inside” the mind is processed & interpreted the same way.
The 1st Hermetic Principle of Mentalism:
“The All is mind. The Universe is mental” — The Kybalion
“Squaring the Circle” alchemical symbol for creation of the philosophers stone
McKenna’s idea was that the universe is an engine designed for the production and conservation of novelty and that as novelty > increases, so does complexity. With each level of complexity achieved becoming the platform for a further ascent into
complexity. — Wikipedia
Following the theory of ever increasing complexity of life and everything it generates, he envisioned altered states of consciousness induced by technology.
A vision of the future with humans living in balance with nature, peaceful go about their business. Passion, desires and other unquenchable urges that occasionally arise, are simply treated by ingesting a small pill containing a nano computer. Electrical stimuli applied with highest precision activate the users full brain potential. Essentially giving each individual full control of their own brain capacity. Ultimately this leads to, in McKenna’s vision, the possibility to live inside ones own virtual universe. Perceiving it as real as something that is “outside” your mind.
Essentially a pill with a Holodeck inside.
Can this be achieved or is it just science fiction? If you tend to the latter, think yourself into this scenario: you are having a drink in a bar 100 years ago and some seemingly drunk fellow comes up and tells you about a small hand held device that connects peoples from all over the world to chat and create and share moving pictures with anyone, instantly.
Fiction becomes fact with the help of science.
Imagine the day technology creates, fundamentally a philosophers stone, that is accessible to everyone.
This would invalidate any excuse to take anything out on someone else in the agreed upon reality, the one where all possibilities collapse into one.
I MUST BE MAD?!
How on god’s earth this may be achieved you stop to wonder.
Well first we have to start creating computers that “see” the world like we do in order to research what (electro-magnetic) stimuli produces what effect in which brain-consciousness-complex.
The guys over at IBM have a new pet project, aptly named Watson to supercharge Artificial Intelligence research and development on corporate level. Just recently they announced working together with the FDA.
IBM Watson Health and the FDA will explore the exchange of patient-level data from several sources, including electronic
medical records (EMRs), clinical trials, genomic data, and health data from mobile devices, wearables and the "Internet of
Things." The initial focus will be on oncology-related information.
— computerworld.com
Research like this is paving the way for machine learning and AI in general.
Usually enormous amounts of data is processed at very high speed to make computer algorithms “learn” how to improve their performance with certain tasks, nowadays often image recognition or 2D to 3D abstractions. Employing it for simple things like making a machine actually recognize different trees in a picture of a forest.
As before mentioned machine learning and AI development require huge amounts of data being stored & processed. The next big thing in huge data storage is blockchain, obvious also to Trent McConaghy in his recent Medium post, that AI is starting to give blockchain databases “that look” and it is only a matter of short time before the process of falling in love commences.
However right now AI feels it just wouldn’t work out, since blockchain is still in puberty and has some issues that remain to be resolved. For example the processing performance and throughput of data is far from that of the older centralized and cloud databases. The other thing keeping the two from, at least going for a drink is: the inter machine communication skills of the most blockchains are non existent, unable to process information from legacy systems and different blockchains.
Alas help is on it’s way, in the form of decentralized oracles. Empowering blockchains with essentially a sensual faculty, the ability to “see” outside their own database. Read a different article for a change if you like to verify facts on your own from the source.
A handful of projects are currently implementing or planning to use, in the near future, decentralized Oracles:
æternity: Oracles for prediction markets in state channels
Augur: Oracles for prediction market with focus on reputation
Gnosis: Oracles for prediction market with focus on expert opinion
Furthermore the blockchain community offers middleware solutions from 3rd parties like Reality Keys.
To cramp it in a nutshell, the problem is being tackled and who knows, maybe we see blockchain slip into adolescence this year?
Once AI and Blockchain finally start touching each other, we will see an enormous acceleration of AI novelties. Following down this path the next logical step would be to map the neurological pathways of the human brain and to finally be a huge step closer to answers for begging questions like:
What is consciousness? When and how does it come to being?
And:
What stimuli produces what effect in which brain-consciousness-complex?
The answer to the latter might permit us to build nano bots that use electro-magnetic signals to create a specific set of desired effects in a full sensory experience. Somewhat similar to the nano robots this Steemit Post talks about!
All in the mind of the user controlling it.
Mind controlling matter. An alchemist’s wet dream, Lapis Philosophorum.
A Psycholodeck Pill.
Wow, thanks for all the votes from all you good souls!