Getting "up to snuff on all this "cybernetic stuff" you feel ignorant
about is a very insightful comment to yourself that help you avoid arguments
with your list-neighbors and begin adding to the great CyberQuest we are
all on, with the great support resources from PCP and Heylighen,rchin
aJoslyn.
I guess I owe you and Jeff a belated apology regarding a previous
posting in which I had been a little too aggressive in defending my
idea of using cybernetics and cyberspace theory in some real-world
political applications --- i.e., helping to elect a new Mayor in
my hometown of Miami Beach.
Ashby's "Intro to Cybernetics" is seminad should be one
of the first books a cyberquestor reads, after Wieners "Cybernetics
and Societ: The Human Use of Human Beings."
But getting back to this PCP and PRNCYB list --- and using
cybernetics and cyberspace as a philosophical framework for evolutionary
change for Man and Finding Solutions for a Small Planet --- I have been
reading a book by John Pfeiffer called "The Emergence of Man." His
final chapter deals with the synbiosis that is developing between man
and computer (and computer-communications networks), and how we need
to take some fresh looks at Man With His Still Primitive Instinctive
Hunting and Violence Behavioral Patterns in an age where the Hunter
is no longer needed. I am developing an article and book-idea I
with the Cyberman representing a modern-day version of Nietzsche's
"Superman," or Overman aor Ubermensch.
In a strange way, all men and women need to be re-oriented in
this new Age of Cyberspace, and all societies and civilizations that
exist today --- especially those 180 odd nation-states that are gathering
in New York to celebrate the 50th birth day of the United Nations.
Medical science has developed a kind of taxonomy for a hierarchy
of metnal states a human can be in ranging from #1. Alert and oriented
as to person, time and space down to #7. Comatose. It also has a rating
level of functionality, ranging from a highlevel capability of being
able to perform all neceessary daily activities without assistance, down
to lower levels where one needs a device and/or the assistance of others.
Our whole world needs the assistance of a "new device," perhaps
a cybernetically designed cyberspace device system or network, that
can
provide all individuals, city-regions, nation-states, and societies
and civilizations to jointly embark on the Metasystem Transition to
the next stage in mankind's evolution to the Cyberman --- where we
may become More Than Human. (I borrowed that last phrase from Aleister
Crowley, who described the mission of his Golden Dawn esoteric group
to be the Great Work (Grosse Arbeit): To become more than human.
I have come across some intersting ideas about cyberspace being
a kind of Hean Hessian "magic theatre," as in "Steppenwolf,"
where all knowledge can be accessed and shared and wondrous connections
made between man and man, man and machine, and machine and machine.
I would like to share them with the PRNCYB and PCP groups in a more
structured way, perhaps by creating a Web site of my own Called
CyberQuest, and linking some of its nodes to PCP. I would like some
help and guidance in doing this from you folks, and am following
Francis's suggestion that I mellow out in my interactions with
Prideaux and Mikulecky. I myself should probably come up tp snuff
and reduce my own ignorance about Rosen. What should I read first guys?
And could I get some feedback (to use a word I stole from Umpleby's
dictionary) to begin heading for Ashby's state of ultrastability?
Yours in cybernetic-computer-communication,
The Emerging Cyberman,
Marty