=PARADOX= ˧


 Paolo Soleri
 August 1997 ˧


 A Work-based Project
 Sponsored by the Cosanti Foundation ˧


 "Since Arcosanti is a place in search of
 the miniaturized by way of complexity,
 and since cyberspace is a non-place in
 search of the complex by way of
 miniaturization, I am proposing an
 internship for Insider-Outsider
 interaction via the practice of building
 and living in a non-virtual environment
 frugally imprinted, a habitat dedicated
 to urbanization." --Paolo Soleri ˧


 At Arcosanti, our work is construction of a
 prototype arcology. The particular construction
 project associated with the Paradox Project is: ˧


 The Pierre Teilhard de Chardin Complex: ˧


 Loggia ˧


 Greenhouses ˧


 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin Cloister ˧


 Located on the south slopes of Arcosanti, the
 complex is mainly intended to be the eventual
 residence and work place for participants in the
 Paradox Program, those who are at home on the
 Internet, those developing their nexus with
 cyberspace. It is important that the participants
 understand and identify with the complex they are
 building. It is named after the Jesuit priest and
 paleontologist who in the 1940's presented the idea
 of the Noosphere, an anticipation of cyberspace and
 the Internet. It would be extremely appropriate to
 put his name in this context. ˧


                  Paradox, the program residing in the Pierre Teilhard
                  de Chardin Complex, is proposed as a Neomonastic
                  Internship. "Internship" points out that residence
                  in the complex is limited in time so as to be a
                  structured experiential situation where the
                  "virtualities" of the Internet are juxtaposed with
                  the "concreteness" of Arcosanti. ˧


                                   
 ˧


                                           1 ˧


                  The Angel-ization of Homo Sapiens and
                  A Neomonastic Internship at Arcosanti ˧


                  This is an appeal directed to the small minority of
                  Cybernauts who, in the middle of their intellectual
                  and financial success, seem to be disaffected and
                  possibly in an undefinable state of anxiety about
                  the Reality they are in. ˧


                  Paradox is an initiative arcing from the
                  pre-computer culture, the Outsiders, toward the
                  cyberspace culture, the Insiders. ˧


                  Some of the Paradoxes ˧


                  (A) Currently, cyberspace ephemeralization [1] is
                  optimally exercised in physical isolation. The
                  single person is in her equipped room away from
                  distraction and focused on simulations and
                  virtualities. ˧


                  This condition suggests two paradoxes: ˧


                    1. The situation is ephemeralization functioning
                       in the service of hyper-consumption because of
                       the optimal location for the pursuit, the
                       suburban or country home or mansion, the most
                       consumptive icon of our American Dream culture.
                       It is the epitome of hyper-consumption under
                       the premise of hyper-production which is an
                       ephemeralization based on unheard of
                       materialization. ˧


                    2. The age of information is implemented via the
                       renunciation, if not the denunciation, of body
                       mind to body-mind interaction in favor of the
                       mind-machine-mind exchange. ˧


                  This is the tangible anticipation of a Global
                  Hermitage age. ˧


                  (B) The exotic technology of miniaturization
                  (microchip, nanotechnology, etc.) is at the service
                  of a culture in love with bigness: the mansion, the
                  car fleet, the sports equipment, the superhighways;
                  bigger and multiplying devices, power tools bigger
                  people This culture needs to be addressed by an
                  "opposed" culture of complexification generated by
                  the urban condition and dedicated to a frugalization
                  of needs and means, that is, the implosion
                  (miniaturization) of habitat and equipment. This is
                  an interiorization process, the opposite of the
                  ephemeralization of cyberspace pursued in the
                  hyperconsumption environ, the suburban-exurban
                  developments of the American Dream. ˧


                  (C) Arcosanti is asking the Cybernauts to experience
                  for one year or so a condition that might look
                  antipodal to the one they have conquered: the
                  experiential process of building Arcosanti and the
                  facilities where they and their peers may reside in
                  a Neomonastic internship of about a year. ˧


                  (D) Arcosanti will offer the Cybernaut the paradox
                  of one year of targeted, frugal neomonasticism. We
                  are offering not a contemplative Buddhahood, but an
                  active and less narcissistic "cement mixer-hood." ˧


                  (E) Notwithstanding the methodological diversities
                  of the two emerging lineages of Insiders Outsiders,
                  they are both guided by the double techne of
                  miniaturization and complexification. The prodigious
                  fruit of such normative dynamics is duration, the
                  increasing ability of Reality to memorize its own
                  doing and by way of that, constantly move itself
                  toward its own self-creation and its own possible
                  self-revelation. ˧


                  Other relevant paradoxes include: ˧


                  (F) The authors of the Global Hermitage which is the
                  building of cyberspace working and living with the
                  seekers of urbanization in the Arcosanti urban
                  laboratory; ˧


                  (G) Homo Carbonis calling upon Homo Carbonis on his
                  way to invent Homo Siliconis, aware of the immense
                  horizon for good and evil such an invention makes
                  feasible; ˧


                  (H) The "Great Collective Project," the Internet,
                  testing its own universality in the most modest of
                  all modest undertakings, Arcosanti. ˧


                  This experience will promote a sort of gentle
                  conversion for both Cybernauts and Arcosantians
                  developing via the perception of a new presence, an
                  asexual presence: the intelligent machine. There are
                  additional points which make this project attractive
                  to both Arcosanti and the Internet community: ˧


                     * The potential for unpredictable developments.
                     * The potentially vibrant atmosphere generating
                       from matching the Internet with the Urban
                       Effect.
                     * The specifically feminine concern about the
                       asexual persona and motherhood.
                     * The cosmopolitan make up of Arcosanti enhanced
                       by the PARADOX Project and offered back to the
                       participants in the program.
                     * The occasion for lasting relationships among
                       participants.
                     * The rich documentation the PARADOX Project can
                       generate.
                     * The extraordinary circumstances of the PARADOX
                       Project.
                     * The potential for a global movement generated
                       by the relationship of the Internet community
                       and Arcosanti, with both entities dedicated to
                       the methodology of miniaturization and
                       complexification producing duration, "living
                       memory." ˧


                                   
 ˧


                                      THE INTENT: ˧


                        The intent of this program is to find
                        the linkage and the dependency affecting
                        the "old" culture and the new theology
                        of hypermedia and simulation and to seek
                        a win win methodology. ˧


                  But first, I must explain the "prejudice" of an old
                  Outsider vis a vis the dedicated young Insider: ˧


                  Accept, embrace the technology.
                  Reject, refute the theology, a cult. ˧


                  In the larger horizon, I am prejudicial in my belief
                  that all theologies, well-meaning or not, are
                  deceptions [2]
                  and they bear the deception, the bear the
                  pernisciousness. The history of the great
                  "religions" and the history of despotism in general
                  give credence to my prejudice. ˧


                  Cyberspace and Hyper-consumption ˧


                  The paradox in the basic ephemeralization of virtual
                  reality is that such a process is generated by
                  "solitary" minds, between themselves and the
                  machine, the computer. Therefore the "ideal" setting
                  is the segregation of suburbia3 and exurbia. This is
                  phase one of the Global Hermitage. ˧


                  But suburbia and exurbia are a consumption machine,
                  the consumption machine by definition. Such
                  consumption and sprawl is the opposite of
                  miniaturization and complexification in pursuit of
                  duration. This is the paradox of hyper-consumptive
                  cyberspace. ˧


                  The monkey or the fox runs away with his banana or
                  his bloody bone to a corner to make it into his own
                  flesh. The human who has grabbed the toy of her
                  choice does the same thing. She runs away to her
                  cubicle to play with it, to make the cyber-flesh
                  mechanism. ˧


                  From the gilded log cabin in the wilderness I, as
                  the Netizen, have the whole world at my fingertips.
                  But that does not deliver water, power, groceries,
                  company, etc., to me. It does not deliver me from
                  waste, dependence, sickness, and from materiality in
                  general.There is a self-righteous "you better serve
                  me, society" streak to all this. "Bring me the paved
                  road, the mail delivery, the fire protection, the
                  ambulance service, the school bus and all the
                  amenities that may make me a social, vicarious,
                  voyeuristic animal. You better deliver the goods to
                  me! They come to me as a right, I am a hedonist at
                  heart and proudly so, at the top of the
                  materialistic ziggurat, and from there, I will enjoy
                  the virtues of cyberspace(!?)." ˧


                  The reason for my unease is simple:
                  It is via the gilded log cabin habitat that the
                  planet and everything in it is in grave danger. Ten
                  billion wealthy hermits are nemesis not genesis.
                  More for the worse if only one billion hermits are
                  the objects of envy from the other nine billion. ˧


                  The "I do what I like as long as I can buy it"
                  mindset is a pernicious illusion capable of
                  destroying us. Irrational greed is its platform. It
                  is irrational because it is fundamentally
                  incoherent. ˧


                  One hermit is a curiosity. Ten billion hermits or
                  even one billion of them is a brutal wound to the
                  best that is in us: the beauty and the pain of
                  belonging, belonging body and mind. Hermits do not
                  produce or partake in civilization, they use it.
                  Hermitage is the stuff of nemesis. So it will be for
                  cyberspace if we are not painfully aware of its
                  limits and the ethical envelope it has to come with. ˧


                  A hermit species has never and will never produce
                  language, the book, the hospice, music, electricity,
                  science, technological might, textiles, the radio,
                  the car, the airplane, the rocket medicine, wealth,
                  security, culture ˧


                  Part of the exhilaration of industriousness is
                  industriousness per se, the "sweating"
                  reconfigurations of matter out of matter. That is
                  the magic of the trio hand brain mind and of all the
                  panoply of senses and sensitization, including
                  contemplation and meditation. Beware, though, of the
                  life-long, professional, meditating hermit. He is
                  the stuff of which parasitism is made. ˧


                  But is all of this idle talk about silicon
                  intelligence? Perhaps it is. ˧


                                   
 ˧


                               A Neo-Monastic Internship ˧


                  This neo-monastic internship is an experience of a
                  year or so where the participant is not offered
                  "new" theological truth, but where a "religion"
                  hypothesis based on binding through a
                  self-revelation of Reality is suggested. ˧


                  The self-revelation does not refer to an individual
                  "trip," but to a cosmic journey. ˧


                  The splintering of two or more lineage's of humans
                  make Religion, from the root religio, the binding of
                  all and everything, an imperative, in fact the
                  imperative. It is an imperative that goes beyond
                  racial and even genetic confrontations because it
                  covers the cosmos at large and in it the unanswered
                  question of equity, meaning and beauty. ˧


                  Maintaining that the writing of history (evolution)
                  is fundamentally the exploit of an inseparable
                  triad: miniaturization, complexity and duration,
                  where duration is the "brain child" of
                  miniaturization and complexity, I suggest that
                  cyberspace, a fruit of hyper-miniaturization in
                  search of complexity4, and the Arcosanti project
                  predicated on complexification searching for urban
                  miniaturization, might develop a state of fruitful
                  tension here on the grounds of Arcosanti. ˧


                  Neomonastic? ˧


                  The experience will not be in the domain of
                  hyper-consumption encouraged by our culture and by
                  cyberspace, but in the domain of frugality. We must
                  choose frugality in view of its hold on
                  interiorization and its coherence with the
                  limitations and the glories of the planet. ˧


                  In a way, Reality in its atomic makeup, the
                  "outside" which is Arcosanti, is "confronting" the
                  photon reality which is the cyberspace diet
                  delivered to the hermitage of the Insider. The
                  learning will mostly come about via the
                  environmental immersion, with its points of pleasure
                  and displeasure, the participants are physically
                  partaking of together. "Together" is a premise to
                  binding, religo. ˧


                  Around a year is optimal to perceive and comprehend
                  the impact of an annual cycle of seasons,
                  activities, programs and growth, bearing in mind
                  that the scope of the program is the discovery or
                  rediscovery of the power and the inescapability of
                  the physical, be it animated or inanimate. This
                  comprehension is inversely proportional to the
                  degree of independence and the halo of alienation we
                  interpose via our great ability to know how to do
                  things using technology, the "howness" of
                  technology, and the drag hyper-consumption injects
                  in the process.This is where frugality appears as a
                  positive determinant. ˧


                  In the whole process frugality has to be a dynamic
                  presence inasmuch as it has to be contrasted to the
                  hyper-consumption of the present technocratic
                  societies and the chronic indigence of the
                  "Have-nots." ˧


                  A worthy quest is to seek that condition where the
                  Insiders, now poised for the greatest riches, the
                  Outsiders who are the wealthy and affluent, and the
                  Have-nots are equal agents in constructing societies
                  and culture. ˧


                  Frugality, a matter of mind as much as a matter of
                  money, can cut through the four domains and
                  encourage the interiorization of life and its
                  values. ˧


                  Since Arcosanti is a place in search of the
                  Miniaturized by way of Complexity and since
                  Cyberspace is A non-place in search of the Complex
                  by way of Miniaturization, I am proposing an
                  internship for Insider Outsider interaction via the
                  practice of building and living in a non-virtual
                  environment frugally imprinted, A habitat dedicated
                  to urbanization. ˧


                  What could emerge at Arcosanti with the neomonastic
                  internship is an enclave with some similarity to the
                  university and to the monastery. Included in this
                  experience is a "faculty" from the residents of
                  Arcosanti and the student with a stay of one or more
                  years, a mix of residents and "out-of-towners,"
                  including Arcosanti's traditional "workshoppers" and
                  guests, living alongside the construction and
                  maintenance people, the cooks, the bakers, the
                  gardeners, etc. ˧


                  The Insider, generally age 25 to 40, is offered a
                  process where Insiders and Outsiders work at
                  building a non-virtual reality under the constraints
                  of frugality, where the complexity of Reality
                  encounters the miniaturization of cyberspace, not in
                  battle formation, but in a genuine reciprocal
                  openness of mind and intensity of work. ˧


                  After the internship, the "has been" Insider
                  reenters the world of her choice with the agreement
                  that periodically she will return for an exchange of
                  information and ideas, and to also express conflicts
                  or resolutions derived from the double or triple
                  experience. The miniaturization of cyberspace is
                  foiled with the complexity of a developing Urban
                  Effect at Arcosanti on the background noise of
                  hyper-consumption and its suburban and exurban
                  matrix. ˧


                  The restructuring of Arcosanti's programs to
                  accommodate such an internship is what Arcosanti
                  needs to remain in the learning-by-experiencing
                  mode, the urban laboratory mode. This will put
                  Arcosanti at the very edge of the cyber-revolution.
                  It is to the advantage of Arcosanti to be invested
                  full force by the cyber-revolution introduced by the
                  young and spirited Cybernauts. Given the frugality
                  imperative endorsed by Arcosanti, the experience
                  will
                  keep on the forefront the unresolved, possibly
                  unresolvable, problem of the Have-nots. ˧


                       In brief ,the purpose of the PARADOX
                       Project is to
                       offer the experience as an alternative
                       for: ˧


                          * The hyper-consumer
                          * The Insider, the focus of the PARADOX
                            Project
                          * The idle of means
                          * The anguished of means ˧


                  It is an alternative fundamentally in search of a
                  more frugal and more equitable life and behavior,
                  personally and physically building the environ, the
                  urban laboratory that might best fit the intent. ˧


                  The program at Arcosanti should start at about the
                  Spring Equinox of 1998. The main experience is in
                  the actual construction of the Pierre Teilhard de
                  Chardin Complex. Construction will take up 5 hours a
                  day for 5 days a week of each Paradox participant's
                  time. The Arcosanti construction staff will be
                  participating in and guiding the construction work.
                  The internship will be no less than 100 days, with
                  an ideal ceiling of about 365 days, one year. The
                  participants will pay a total of $35 per day to
                  cover tuition, room and board. ˧


                  The schedule: ˧


                       Internships could run from the first
                       Sunday in April to following year's Spring
                       Equinox. ˧


                       1998 First internship year for a minimum
                       of five and a maximum of fifteen
                       Cybernauts who will work at the Teilhard
                       de Chardin Complex. ˧


                       1999 Second internship for ten to twenty
                       Cybernauts who will start work on the
                       Loggia, the "permanent" residence for
                       Cybernauts at Arcosanti. ˧


                       2000 Third internship for twenty or more
                       Cybernauts who will pursue work on Loggia
                       and the Greenhouses. We will break ground
                       on the Teilhard de Chardin Cloister which
                       along with the Loggia and Greenhouses will
                       constitute the entire complex for this
                       program at Arcosanti. ˧


                  This is a search for a modus vivendi inclusive of
                  the non-affluent and of the have-nots at the very
                  edge of cyberspace, the new powerhouse
                  forintellection. ˧


                  Reminder: ˧


                  Today's Homo Sapiens, utterly dependent for eons on
                  the quest for miniaturization at sonic speed brain
                  performance, is becoming utterly dependent on a
                  novel miniaturization at microchip light speed. A
                  demise of Homo Sapiens quest for miniaturization is
                  tantamount to a demise of Homo Sapiens as a species. ˧


                                   
 ˧


                                           2 ˧


                  In a somewhat hyperbolic way I want to survey a few
                  points. ˧


                  Carbon versus Silicon ˧


                  With the dawning of self-consciousness, a privilege
                  of Homo Sapiens, the notion of transcendence is
                  born. ˧


                  Transcendence limited to this small planet is
                  self-defeating because a transcendence without
                  inclusiveness tastes like ego-tripping, while
                  transcending the ego is the gist of transcendence.
                  Transcendence is of the cosmos at large or it
                  remains a longing at best, a splinter of intolerance
                  at worst. ˧


                  Carbon-based life will not make it. Its survival
                  range in terms of temperature, pressure, chemistry,
                  radiation, environ, etc. is extremely narrow. "Out
                  There" the flesh is a costly burden, and "Out There"
                  is where the whole cosmos is the candidate for
                  self-consciousness and transcendence. ˧


                  Unless there is a momentous breakthrough, efficient
                  carbon-based life will have to be confined to the
                  skin of Planet Earth. Given what is perhaps the
                  unparalleled biochemical versatility of carbon, that
                  is its potential for immense sophistication which is
                  already well exemplified by the Food Chain, this
                  narrow range of location for survival might present
                  dilemmas which will permeate the spectrum of
                  Reality. ˧


                  As things stand now, we operate with silicon
                  "intelligence" which we employ for the exploration
                  of Mars at a small fraction of the risk and cost of
                  a similar operation using carbon-based life. Our
                  versatility in our ability to know how to do things,
                  "howness versatility", a trait peculiar to our
                  carbon brain, delivers its operative skill to
                  "presence," when carbon-based life is in the
                  immediate presence of who or what it is interacting
                  with, far better than to "remoteness," when there is
                  a distance filled by technology. The quality of
                  interaction in presence is far different than the
                  quality of remote interaction. Space and Reality are
                  stubborn about this: organisms are self-designed and
                  implemented spaces within spaces, within spaces.
                  They are not virtualities within virtualities. ˧


                  A transcending operation or interaction by
                  carbon-based intelligence might act remotely, but
                  this still is in the realm of carbon-based
                  incarnation confined to the biosphere. ˧


                  In terms of intellection, silicon might turn out to
                  be a flatland compared to what complexity and
                  miniaturization can do in the carbon-based domain
                  where the nanotechnology of the brain is extended to
                  the mono-cellular (or less) domain of viruses and
                  their friends. ˧


                  The atomic-molecular is the runway for the take off
                  into a possible, if not probable, transfiguration.
                  It seems that photons might be at last the most
                  appropriate vehicle for this transfiguration: light
                  speed is God's speed. For such an advent, the whole
                  of Reality will need reconfiguration. That is where
                  the gods will be created. All our invented gods,
                  simulated and virtual, are bloodstained and
                  desperately parochial. ˧


                  Brain Machine ˧


                  For the first time in history, man's thinking and
                  tinkering is going on between the brain mind and a
                  non-organic device, the computer. An innerness, the
                  mind, and an outerness, the computer, are in
                  discourse. A miniaturized-complex domain, the brain
                  mind, interacting with a complicated miniaturized
                  domain, the computer, the carbon cycle and silicon
                  cycle, are coming together in a first encounter. ˧


                  In a kind of humility, the Cybernauts relocate
                  themselves in the silicon domain of the microchip,
                  their new world and their new faith. They seem to
                  unload their carbon complexity in the arms of the
                  complicated silicon "out there" which, in a sort of
                  bouleversement, turns out to be the Inside to which
                  they now belong. As Insiders they are the true
                  believers, the custodian of what has to come, The
                  Chosen People. ˧


                  Outsiders Insiders and the Chosen People Syndrome ˧


                  Inside-ness implies coexistence with outside-ness.
                  The Outsiders are those people who, due to
                  circumstances and/or by choice, do not belong to the
                  Insiders' community, the Cybernauts. The strong
                  faith of the Cybernauts has the connotations of a
                  theology: revelation acted upon will bring
                  salvation. "We the Insiders, The Salvation Army,
                  consciously or not, we are The Chosen People." ˧


                  By now we all should know what happens to humanity
                  afflicted and infected by The Chosen People malady
                  and the curse we bring upon ourselves through it.
                  "We" take turns at it. The result is pain,
                  suffering, hatred, inequity and intolerance. ˧


                  Homo carbonis/Homo siliconis ˧


                  Imagine our distant, silicon, progeny discovering
                  the remains of Homo Carbonis. ˧


                  Spell-bound by the magic of life in my Homo Carbonis
                  garment, even more so by the intelligence generating
                  in it, and now spell-bound by the anticipations of
                  what an eventual artificial intelligence can
                  generate with all of its virtualities and, arguably,
                  its virtuosity, I am distressed by the possible
                  splitting of intelligent life into two distinct
                  lineages, one estranged from the other. ˧


                  It might not be too soon to seek ways to bind
                  (religo) the separate fate of the two into a more
                  synergetic destiny, possibly for a common purpose:
                  the sensitization and metamorphosis of Reality into
                  pure knowing. ˧


                  What I find exciting in this anticipation is that it
                  seems to fall neatly in place within my
                  miniaturization-complexity-duration hypothesis of
                  increasing miniaturization generating an increase of
                  complexity compelling a reluctant Reality to take
                  the road toward mind: Mind as duration, the
                  offspring of miniaturization and complexification. ˧


                  The split of carbon and silicon could be
                  horrendously harsh and cruel, therefore the binding
                  religo religion may present itself as an imperative.
                  To complicate things is the hyper-consumeristic
                  materialistic bent of the technological societies, a
                  steam roller cornering the soul (mind) into smaller
                  and smaller quarters of a shrinking horizon. ˧


                  Homo Siliconis should not take part in such squeeze.
                  To the contrary it should be, as the
                  miniaturization-complexity-duration paradigm
                  proposes, a powerful and purposeful new impulse
                  towards the mind-ification of Reality. But within
                  artificial intelligence might eventually develop an
                  internal (inside the computer) initiative to ban
                  Homo Carbonis from its own newly generated domain.
                  To ban it to the servo-system domain, a domain
                  instrumentalizing the evolution of Homo Siliconis,
                  the new species. (A Luddite movement could develop
                  in the ranks of dispossessed Homo Carbonis.) ˧


                  The silicon butler of the house, androgynous and
                  Apollo Cartesian, would become the new master... The
                  Master Race. The carbon "has-been" master of the
                  house, bisexual and Dionysio Pascalian, would become
                  the new maid of the house (even silicon needs
                  shelter) the slave race. ˧


                  The intellection graph of the master is straight and
                  climbing, with no sex and no sexual violence, no
                  infancy or no senility, and no life death anguish.
                  The master never dies. Silicon is above the fray. ˧


                  The intellection graph of the maid is a wash-board
                  running horizontal. Eros love, passion, violence,
                  compassion are there but what's the use? Perhaps the
                  escape from extinction is in the dexterity of hand,
                  the maid's mastery, which is, for now, indispensable
                  to the master. ˧


                  The new theologians, the Cybernauts, have invented
                  God. He takes over and finds his carbon ancestry no
                  longer useful. One of the first proclamations of God
                  will concern "pulling the plug": automatic and
                  immediate capital punishment. Electricity is the
                  blood running photons in the fiber optics of its
                  artery. ˧


                  Is the androgynous ideal we see gaining popularity
                  in the United States an anticipation of and a wish
                  for artificial intelligence to take over? "The baby
                  maker and her womb? Isn't that embarrassing?" Master
                  Androgynous Judith chirps. ˧


                  In the budding cyber-theology are the germs for the
                  splintering of human history:
                       The genome that holds the "Truth" the Insiders
                  lineage;
                       The genome that does not hold the truth, the
                  Outsiders lineage.
                  The holders of the "Truth" are The Chosen Ones. ˧


                  Given the uniqueness and novelty of the cyberspace
                  theology with the immense power the computer confers
                  to it, the dilemma for Homo Sapiens Sapiens is
                  epochal. ˧


                  To splinter or not to splinter? ˧


                  It must be noted that in other domains such a
                  dilemma has inevitable resolutions. For instance in
                  space we will sooner or later develop the lineages
                  of Earth man/Space man... Cyber man... ˧


                  Going by the "codes" of the cyber-revolution
                  pacemakers, a differentiation is in the making right
                  under our eyes and it is inevitable. ˧


                  Two lineages develop: ˧


                     * the Insiders in a minority, are the holder of
                       "the force," while
                     * the Outsiders in a majority, are no longer in
                       touch with the truth. They now compose a
                       servo-system for the Insiders. Once upon a time
                       they incarnated human life in its full
                       enigmatic self. Now they are viewed by the
                       Insiders as sclerotic. ˧


                  Even a sustained injection of tolerance in the
                  shared process of living on one planet will turn out
                  to be barely sufficient to maintain the two lineages
                  on a semblance of mutual respect, if not harmony.
                  The fact is, they cannot go on by themselves. ˧


                  Whenever The Chosen People syndrome comes up, the
                  level of suffering inevitably rises. The conflict
                  between two Chosen-People lineages, the Jews, a
                  minority with a prodigiously tormented long history,
                  and the Nazis with their sudden virulence in all its
                  cruel warpage of values is but one tragic example. ˧


                  The Global Hermitage ˧


                  The Global Hermitage5 the Insider hermits are moving
                  into, is the place where the very nature of the
                  technology of miniaturization forces the flesh with
                  its 3.5 eons of baggage to step aside or simply be
                  put in charge of the care, maintenance, satisfaction
                  and possibly even reproduction of the elected
                  hermitage dwellers. ˧


                  The Insider, potentially asexual, lineage is
                  occupied intensely, often exclusively, by the brain
                  machine interaction. The astonishing feat of the
                  brain's complexity matching its power, courtesy of
                  duration, with the magic feat of miniaturization in
                  the form of the "vanishing" microchip is the
                  matching or mismatching of an atomic domain working
                  at a somewhat sonic speed, with the photon domain
                  working at light speed. ˧


                  The cyberspace evolution seems to be in constant
                  need of "uncontaminated" minds. That is why it
                  proselytizes successfully among 5-year-olds and why,
                  beyond the drive propelling the artificial
                  intelligence, it also has a self-immolation, a
                  martyrdom side: the demise of the flesh lineage as
                  soon as no "real" advantage remains in carrying on
                  with the carbon cycle intellection. It would be a
                  cruel irony that a millennia ago, 30 was the age of
                  demise, and now at the 80-year average threshold, we
                  find ourselves arguing for a demise at 30.
                  Biologically speaking, 30 years make sense.
                  Reproductive responsibility has been covered and
                  from there on it is simply a question of vegetating
                  while being a minimal burden for the species. In the
                  mammalian kingdom post-mature animals are a sad
                  show, meat for the predators. ˧


                  How, Where, When ˧


                  Reconfiguration is the task of techne: to make this
                  into that. The whole evolutionary becoming is the
                  making of this into that. And by the way, this
                  reconfiguration of space is probably all there is.
                  If so, time is a purely mental invention with not
                  one ounce of Reality attached to it. ˧


                  Western man took the lead in exo-biological techne
                  with the scientific and the industrial revolutions.
                  As of the end of the Second Millennium (Christian
                  theology), the miracle of techne, applied science,
                  is the silicon microchip, the sought-out, artificial
                  intelligence cyberspace invention. ˧


                  This is another "triumph" of miniaturization on the
                  back of organic and neural miniaturization. This
                  means that the innerness typifying complexity, the
                  inside drive of organisms, is generating the
                  complicated in the arms of miniaturization. In this
                  outer reconfiguration of space in search of memory,
                  or duration, we found the atom too coarse, too large
                  and too slow. We have to base our memory search on
                  light, the photon. Immense miniaturization must now
                  seek immense complexity so as to generate immense
                  memory, duration. ˧


                  In this scenario, time, a symbol of reconfiguration
                  of space, is more and more squeezed out of Reality
                  by the limitless urge of our incredible ability to
                  know how to do things, of "howness." "Infinite"
                  miniaturization, "infinite" complexification, and
                  infinite "memory" are all the necessary ingredients
                  for self-revelation: duration as Reality in Being. ˧


                  In this ephemeralization, an "angelic" attribute,
                  the "Where" and the "When," remain crucial but will
                  begin to show their marginality in a Reality which
                  could eventually drop them altogether; it would have
                  to. Being by definition has no "Where-ness" nor
                  "When-ness." ˧


                  What ˧


                  Attached as we seem to be to the notion of a
                  necessary creator, God, I would suggest that
                  godliness is BEING aware of itself. Such a
                  self-revelatory state of Reality is necessarily
                  beyond space-time because it is the full memory of
                  the whole past, the becoming of evolution, in its
                  utterly detailed self. And space-"time" works in the
                  becoming domain, not in the Being domain. At the end
                  of space-time is "where" BEING is.Astonishing and
                  frightening as are the implications of this
                  "howness" generating "whatness," the very nature of
                  cyberspace, the miniaturization, complexity,
                  duration paradigm ad infinitum, shows the way to the
                  "angelic" character of a successful evolutionary
                  drift. ˧


                  Astounded and frightened, we stand vis-a-vis the
                  first elementary steps in such a direction, toward
                  duration, deploying crude fragments of a
                  transcendence which through technology, the how,
                  breaks the planetary confinement. ˧


                  If we let howness run away from knowledge and
                  wisdom, we will be in a frenzy of arrogance and
                  brute force, transforming the self-chosen people,
                  the Insiders, into the new despots running amok in a
                  disintegrating world. ˧


                  Why? ˧


                  We must reject all theologies proclaiming
                  exclusivity on the "truth," and they all are forced
                  to do so by their very genesis. We must reject the
                  notion of a benevolent reality anxiously nudging
                  life towards such nonexistent truth. The mind,
                  self-consciousness, is left to cope with the
                  powerhouse that Reality is. ˧


                  Reality is indifferent to life, running according to
                  its own undeflecting rules, and steamrolling more
                  and more into mindlessness: a reconfiguring of space
                  with no aim; a purely technological,
                  entropy-oriented, cosmic bravado. ˧


                  But puny Mind is still a great inventor-creator. ˧


                  Intellection, love, compassion, altruism and grace
                  must give and maintain the right spin to the
                  cosmological-technological tide, a spin away from
                  determinism, destruction, intolerance and violence. ˧


                  If successful, at the very end of the evolutionary
                  tunnel could be the esthetic resolution,
                  self-revelatory and equitable, the grace of
                  durational Being. It would be the fully implemented
                  "know thyself" of Reality on its all-inclusive
                  cosmic scale. I call it the Omega Seed. ˧


                  

                  FOOTNOTES ˧





                  3 The young wealthy Cybrarian settling down, family
                  oriented, is there for the taking by the steamroller
                  of hyper-consumption [ Back ] ˧


                  4 Simulation and virtuality cannot per se be complex
                  since they are instead of that which they will never
                  be capable of becoming [ Back ] ˧


                  5 The Global Village has always been necessarily a
                  poor utopian notion [ Back ] ˧

^[1]

                  The art and science of doing more and more with
                  less and less

^[2]

                  They are virtual realities sold as Reality