How might the thoughts expressed here play out in OHS-think?
>From: "Kim Cosmos" <kimcosmos@yahoo.com>
>To: <gbrain@listserv.vub.ac.be>
>
>Just a quick reply
>Habermas describes in his classic "A theory of communicative action" how our
>shared life world has been colonised. He was talking about how our common
>understandings are hugely moderated by mass media and acceptable "expert
>opinion". This also relates to the idea of memes where as Lori Anderson said
>Language is a virus. This is agravated by being pack animals (with the
>public tendencies of chimps and private tendencies of bonobos). Consequently
>if you are a high status opinion leader eg US media you can declare world
>war on one country when 6000 die but withdraw 400 peacekeepers when 100,000
>rwandans are being killed and have people think that is reasonable global
>behaviour. The big difference is the net is developing opinion leading -
>based on respect rather than presentation, freqency and volume. Take googles
>ranking by community cross reference for example.
>There is an old SF story called "The machine stops" like you describe the
>hive by E.M. Forster, probably out of copyright.
>Freedom is a matter of power to creatively actualise our desires. "Power
>to", subsumes "power over" or "power with".
>Slavery then is a matter of class. Todays wage slaves and greek slaves had
>similar rights. Modern slavery was the barbaric exception. People trade off
>independance/self sufficiency for power to create. Of course we want equal
>opportunity and that is what we are rapidly losing. My concern is that the
>global brain will be built by executives with AI executive agents. They will
>move their competition into the new communication mechanism. The ruling
>class will still have the nepotism/meritocracy struggle but when you can buy
>intelligence alliances are more important than ability. We won't be entering
>eden as equals, I hope it aint worse.
>The past is determined, the present uncertain but the future is free (if
>somewhat limited).
>BTW I am in Melbourne -kimcosmos@yahoo.com
>-----Original Message-----
>From: owner-gbrain@listserv.vub.ac.be
>[mailto:owner-gbrain@listserv.vub.ac.be]On Behalf Of Francis Heylighen
>Sent: Tuesday, 2 October 2001 8:17 PM
>To: Global Brain Discussion
>Subject: New Subscriber: Tony Thomas
>In this analogy, the monads, or human brains, are acting without much
>communication, but discussion of last nights television viewing is an
>example of local interchange and processing
>of commonly acquired information. All this is hardly different from village
>gossip about shared local events.
>
>What, then, is new about linking millions of human brains in the global
>network of the Internet?
>
>How small a step it would be to give ourselves up to dependence on the
>inevitable superorganism.
>Resistance is useless, as the determinit well knows. The only hope for
>freedom in the future is
>by the grace of accident or systemic failure of future super organic beings.
>
>It seems incongruous that only one great cyberorganism should arise. Is it
>not more likely that there will be a phase of many such organisms, competing
>as species and nation states have done before? This depends on the ability
>of large systems to obtain the necessary stabilty for their long term
>survival.
>
>The issues for future humanity are great indeed.
>The solution is the demise of humanity as we know it.
>
>Regards
>
>Verdigris
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