Neurosphere

I love the fact that there is now such a thing as “Christian content partners”. Praise Jesus, babe.

“FaithMobile, a cellular service for Christians in the US and the UK, has been launched by Good News Holdings LLC and The Barna Group. The service provides faith-based content created specifically for cellular phones including Bible verses, ringtones, and inspirational audio and video mobisodes.”

http://media.prnewswire.com/en/jsp/myPRNJ.jsp?profileid=1125625&resourceid=3109510

I guess I’m getting philosophical at this time of year. Here’s a recent speech by the Dalai Lama to the Society of Neuroscience. Buddhism is one of the models of wholeness that I point to in my book, and for which I’m seeking empirical evidence in the world of technology.

“…in the Buddhist investigation of reality, at least in principle, empirical evidence should triumph over scriptural authority, no matter how deeply venerated a scripture may be…Since the primary motive underlying the Buddhist investigation of reality is the fundamental quest for overcoming suffering and perfecting the human condition, the primary orientation of the Buddhist investigative tradition has been toward understanding the human mind and its various functions.

… Whatever the truth about the final nature of consciousness – whether or not it is ultimately reducible to physical processes – I believe there can be shared understanding of the experiential facts of the various aspects of our perceptions, thoughts and emotions.

…If it turns out, as the Buddhist tradition implies, that mental practice can effect observable synaptic and neural changes in the brain, this could have far-reaching implications. The repercussions of such research will not be confined simply to expanding our knowledge of the human mind; but, perhaps more importantly, they could have great significance for our understanding of education and mental health. Similarly, if, as the Buddhist tradition claims, the deliberate cultivation of compassion can lead to a radical shift in the individual’s outlook, leading to greater empathy toward others, this could have far-reaching implications for society at large.

…Rather, I am speaking of what I call “secular ethics” that embrace the key ethical principles, such as compassion, tolerance, a sense of caring, consideration of others, and the responsible use of knowledge and power – principles that transcend the barriers between religious believers and non-believers, and followers of this religion or that religion. I personally like to imagine all human activities, including science, as individual fingers of a palm. So long as each of these fingers is connected with the palm of basic human empathy and altruism, they will continue to serve the well-being of humanity. We are living in truly one world.”

http://www.mindandlife.org/dalai.lama.sfndc.html

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Here’s another effort toward building a Neurosphere without benefit of wires. These are wonderful thoughts, but I’m trying to track in this web site trends that are a little more, uh, concrete. But maybe I’m just not sensitive enough – just because I can’t perceive it doesn’t mean it’s not there.

“Dear Don, Thank you for taking part in the IONS Monthly Intention Program. You make a difference by setting these intentions for world change on the first of each month. By being a part of this program, you are connecting with a group of powerful people who are all generating strong intentions.

December Inspiration: In many traditions and cultures, the darkest time of year is the time for drawing inward towards family and celebrating the light in its many manifestations –with decorative lights, fires, and celebrations of holy days. Light is often used as a metaphor for consciousness itself. So one way to approach December (at least in the northern hemisphere) is as a time to re-ignite our own consciousness and reconnect with whatever we hold sacred. This re-connection with light runs throughout much of the fanfare, ritual, parties, and present-giving of this time of year. All can be seen as ways to re-activate our conscious nature, celebrate our connection with others, and revitalize our being after an active year of work in the world.”

http://www.noetic.org/membership/intention.cfm

Some of course, believe that an interconnection of human minds through the ether is not such a good thing. It’s good that scientific research is proceeding in this, ah, sensitive area.

Abstract – Among a fringe community of paranoids, aluminum helmets serve as

the protective measure of choice against invasive radio signals. We investigate the efficacy of three aluminum helmet designs on a sample group of four individuals. Using a $250,000 network analyser, we find that although on average all helmets attenuate invasive radio frequencies in either directions (either emanating from an outside source, or emanating from the cranium of the subject), certain frequencies are in fact greatly amplified.

http://people.csail.mit.edu/rahimi/helmet/

This web site attempts to track, among other things, technology as a mechanism for collective consciousness. My book surveyed other mechanisms identified in the ongoing investigation of the nature of consciousness, and here’s an older paper I missed in that vein.

“Evidences are presented that electromagnetic potential fields mediate the collective field of consciousness. This result offers for the first time experimental access to the study of collective consciousness by measuring the field-related information-carrying potentials and their derivatives, the electric and magnetic fields between different individuals.”

http://www.meta-religion.com/Physics/Consciousness/physics_of_collective_consciousness.htm

Here’s those darn Google guys again, this time teaming up to form a noospheric institution. Twenty years ago, I worked at the Library of Congress, in the Congressional Research Service. We wrote technical reports, based on Library collections and other sources, for the benefit of members of Congress in their deliberations on public policy. I always thought it was a no-brainer to make them available to individual taxpayers. When Billington came in at the end of my tenure, he proposed that. It only took about 15 years for the bureacracy to be overcome, and now some of my reports on energy policy are available if you google my name. Some institutions evolve faster than others.

“Librarian of Congress James H. Billington and Google Co-Founder Sergey Brin announced today that Google is the first private-sector company to contribute to the Library’s initiative to develop a plan to begin building a World Digital Library (WDL) for use by other libraries around the globe. The effort would be supported by funds from nonexclusive, public and private partnerships, of which Google is the first.”

http://www.loc.gov/today/pr/2005/05-250.html

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