George Dvorsky writes about how he has combined Buddhism and Futurism as a transhumanist. He describes his bufu practice in his blog entry found here.
After a recent Thursday Thirsters meeting in Portland, OR, Art Harkins wrote the following email to Robert Textor and others:
The idea germinating in my mind is based on the Thirsters' respect for individual thought and expression for the benefit of all. Years ago I came up with the concept of personal culture. I haven't done much with it except in a few papers. Personal culture is the individualized expression of collective culture(s) that have been part of the individual's en/acculturation experiences, as well as the result of singular personal experiences and their individualized interpretations. Personal culture is the wellspring of personal capital, or the operationable features of personal culture. Operational features can change according to context, mood, mindset, etc.
My sense is that the long-range future of humanity depends upon personal culture as much as collective culture. Now, some may say that this observation is specious in that personal/collective cultures are essentially inseparable and probably virtually identical. I don't think so. On the contrary, I think most personal cultures are tacit, waiting in the wings much like unexpressed genes. My interest: finding ways to express personal cultures within virtual/projected/imagined/anticipated/envisioned contexts that can lead to new futures and altered immediate realities. In other words, I'm pragmatically interested in the existential impacts of personalized futures: the selective expression of these futures within the life of an individual and the lives of associates and collectives through the impacts of expressed personal capital.
I think the Thirsters, or more probably a spinoff involving selected Thirsters and others, can become the birthplace for an anthropology of the teleological, culture-and-capital-creating/innovating individual. [Robert Textor] would be the leader of this development (Arthur Harkins, 8/7/2004).
Buddhists and Futurists both can work to make explicit the tacit expression of an individual's personal cultures (paradigmatic, intercontextual selves). The collaborative work of Buddhists and Futurists will be to work with individuals to design contexts in which these multiplistic selves can be expressed and utilized effectively to develop one's personal capital effectively. This is the key work of Buddhists and Futurists in anticipating The Singularity.
I''ve been thinking some about how Vinge and others can't say for sure that The Singularity, as they have defined it, will happen. Vinge and his colleagues suggest possible scenarios in which the Singularity won't happen: Earth is destroyed by a meteorite, for example; war, or some other human intervention, slows down or halts the development of technology.
But, we can already say that we feel the effects of The Singularity. We are already aware that knowledge production is outpacing our ability to keep up. Old modes of doing things are already outdated.
There once was a time when it was possible, or near possible, to know everything there was to know: such a person we call a Renaissance individual. These days, it's not possible for one person to have all the knowledge we have swirling around us (which is really information anyway, but that's another entry). We need to learn to be better managers of information and knowledge production. We need to innovate, and in order to do that, we need to creatively design our own contexts of use: personal and professional contexts that allow us to apply our knowledge and innovation.
Buddhism comes into play in multiple ways (see below). Meditation, a cornerstone of Buddhism, is one tool to cope with information and knowledge overload. More than just a "mystical retreat from mental and emotional experience" (Epstein, p. 3) meditation can be the starting point for innovation.
Ah, the nuances of language! I suppose "inter-" tends to mean "between" or "among" contexts (in this case), whereas "trans-" implies some sense of motion passing between/among contexts. Does it matter?
It does in terms of what's out there alreay. While intercontextual may not have already been put into use, there's a great article on Constructing Social Systems Through Computer Mediated Communication by Barbara Becker and Gloria Mark.
Part of their findings are that internet-mediated communication has created its own system, and that people are able to interact in this technologically-created system even when social structures in the so-called real world may prevent communication (i.e. different social milieus).
The implications for Buddhists and Futurists are that technologically mediated communication, such as the Internet, can be a fantastic resource for the development of new selves because social conventions, "if they exist at all [online]" are more fluid and thereby allow for the play necessary to explore intercontextual, transcontextual, and paradigmatic selves.
Transhuman Horizons is a website devoted to science, technology and futursim. In an online forum discussion among members of the Extropian Institute, the topic of the singularity is discussed. In this discussion, Buddhism is described as a value system most likely able to cope with the singularity because one principle of Buddhism is that change is inevitable.
I think Vernor Vinge is probably credited as the originator of the concept of The Singularity. Since I've put a link to his paper here, I don't think I need to paraphrase his definition of the singularity itself. A few thoughts on the implications, though....
Although the singularity is usually equated with artificial intelligence, I think that's only one aspect of what's in store when the quantity of knowledge being produced around us is more than we can begin to fathom. We definitely see the workings of this already, and as I have been out here in Portland, I've really felt the reality of this "knowledge overload." As technology continues to outpace us, how can we keep up?
The implications for Buddhism and Futurism are that how we define the self now will be obsolete. Vinge says that the singularity "is a point where our old models must be discarded and a new reality rules." The model for "the self" will be one of these models that will need to go (if it hasn't already). The singularity may be the point when the postmodern, fragmented self must be contended with, if it hasn't been already. (Except that, the postmodern self is still "a self" even if it has been fragmented.) In the singularity, we'll experience a stronger connection to the notion that we have multiple selves that can be, to some degree, at odds with each other (thus, paradigmatic).
I've been reading this book called Thoughts Without a Thinker: Psychotherapy from a Buddhist Perspective by Mark Epstein. While the book focuses pretty tightly around how psychotherapy can be enhanced by adding a Buddhist perspective, I think there's applicability to the more general understanding of the self here, too. Epstein gives a fine introduction to Buddhism for the uninitiated, and he uses plenty of concrete examples. I'm not finished with the book, but my sense is that Epstein argues that psychotherapy is an external form of seeking while Buddhism is more internal. The solution offered by Buddhism and Epstein is meditation.
How meditation connects to futurism and the singularity at this point, I'm not sure. But, I'm not done thinking about this yet.