Themes:

• Paradox Project - neomonastic internship program at Arcosanti - starts in 1998
  
• Cross-disciplinary Philosophical Discourse vs. the Corporate Cyber-elite
  
• Cyberspace/Cityspace
  
• Morphogenetic origins of digital media
  
• Carbon and Silicon - evolutionary symbiosis?
  
• Electronic Media (the basic plumbing), Cyberspace (the design of the human metamind), and the Noosphere (the emergent "cosmic" holon)
  
• Hypermedia-enabled Education

Proposition:

Understanding our relationship to the planetary organism - on magnetic, ecological, biological/ chemical, and noetic levels - would seem to be essential for the fully conscious and conscientious development of a human/Gaian "metamind." The intelligent design of the cyberspace interface/ network would ideally incorporate the proven systems and techniques of the natural world, such as:

• miniaturization for increased complexity/richness
  
• distributed processing
  
• fractal memory
  
• fuzzy logic
  
• pattern recognition
  
• holonomic networks
  
• redundancy, redundancy, redundancy

The full realization of the elegant underpinnings of the metamind might not be best left solely in the hands of the existing cyber-elite - the digerati (the powerhouses of the industry and culture) and the cybernauts (the hands-on builders and early inhabitants of cyberspace). A broader vision, more encompassing dialogue and cross-disciplinary cooperation for this great evolutionary work is needed.

The steady exponential increase in microprocessor performance during the short and tumultuous history of the digital realm is astounding given the seeming influence that individuals and institutions have had over the process in the trial-and-error, survival-of-the-fittest battleground of the commercial marketplace. The almost spontaneous emergence of the hypermedia World Wide Web is an even more obvious example of something bigger at work: it is a remarkable creation that seems to transcend the individual cells - the brilliant hackers and aggressive marketers and savvy venture capitalists - who are contributing the code-genes and tech-flesh of this new organism. It would appear that the entire electro-digital media field is not so much created by us as coming through us, using us, in a morpho-genetically programmed evolution toward some greater whole that we are just beginning to perceive. Given this scenario, the fear-driven, profit-motivated, ego-competitive, cyber-elite that gave birth to the fundamental tools and systems is in need of a complementary cross-disciplinary consensus on the advanced design and development of cyberspace.

We are at a critical juncture on many fronts in the short and tumultuous history of the human species. Digital media, with the potential it offers for a quantum leap in human consciousness (through education, personal growth, new perceptual tools, and enhanced communication), could spawn a new wave of cooperative genius in our societies, bringing about the invention and vision we need to overcome the adverse affects of our primitive technologies on the Gaian ecosystem, to appropriately manage our global population, and to support a new phase of cosmic human evolution.

It is the intention of the Paradox Seminar and the Paradox Project program at Arcosanti to contribute to these developments.

---Michael Gosney, Conference Director, 4/97

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