You know, Bri made a comment about that last bit Peter….that maybe, things like Math…or really, just things in general…we don’t and didn’t “invent” thing but perhaps simply “discovered” them….that even if the chain-of-events happened differently, the creation of many things would have inevitably happened and wasn’t purely the result of the driven creator(s).

If the universe is set up in such a way that it was inevitable for a certain paradigm to take place, can we really take credit for it? I’ve heard the argument that this makes us come off as “arrogant and anthropocentric”….My argument back, was that it’s not arrogant to claim “creation-rights” because it’s still nevertheless an accomplishment that we did and we have ever right to celebrate it as such.

Retro-actively, you could look at everything as an inevitability and that things were going to end up the way they did regardless of choice, options or whatever and that simply don’t see it that way in the present….I feel however that, while this could have truth to it, that it’s still wrong and robs too much rightful joy and celebration that we should have simply because hindsight is 20/20….that progress was actually autonomous, everything is already set up for us and we didn’t actually “do” anything, or at least as much as we think we did.

I feel a middle-road is the right way of looking at things with this sort of issue….if you choose to look at life in the sense that everything is prepackaged for you, waiting to be unlocked and that we don’t actually create so much as we discover, then that’s up to you….however, even so, it’s wrong to say we still shouldn’t look at such discoveries as anthropocentric because, in the end, we are humans….we are human beings trying to master as much as we possibly could, and even if something (the end-result) was intended to happen regardless of time or “how” or whatever….it still doesn’t hide the point that it has and did happen…even if Einstein didn’t create/discover relativity and someone else did, it doesn’t dampen or make it any less wonderful to us…you could argue that it was going to happen somewhere down the line anyway, but even if that has true, it doesn’t make such creations/discoveries any less special….they were driven by our needs, our anthropocentric needs, and we always benefit from such wonders, whether or not they came out of inevitable accident or deliberate intention.

You can say it’s arrogant and anthropocentric for people to actually take credit for anything that actually happens, but I could argue that it’s equally masochistic and self-defeating to argue otherwise…if you want to have this mentality on things, I say a middle-road is the right choice. I don’t believe in looking at things in the sense that humanity must “beware” and “remember it’s proper place”….that’s just stupid, and yet people seem to unconsciously have that adamant way of thinking as if we weren’t all the same….we may not have centrality in the grand scheme of things, but we certainly do to ourselves and in our own lives, and who knows….

who’s to say we really won’t get the universal centrality we once thought we were already born with….call it accidental or intention, but it seems to be what we’re aiming for, and I personally wouldn’t have it any other way.

The evolution of technology is an autonomous process that occurs within the collective imagination of our species. The development of its most significant current manifestation, the Internet, proceeds not as the result of deliberate design but by the myriad “selfish” desires of users. Whether for research, telemetering, gaming, tweeting, porn, artistry, commerce, terrorism or a host of other human requirements, good or bad.
An analogy can be drawn with the role of the “selfish” gene in biological evolution.
Contrary to the claims of many, nobody designed the Internet.

The anthropocentric world-view that we inherit both genetically and from our culture leads concept of “designers”. We intuitively assume that individuals of our race “design” things. But only in a very trivial everyday sense is this seemingly obvious notion valid.

It can be argued, with strong evidential support, that we do not, invent or create artifacts or systems but that , rather, these are more properly viewed as having evolved within the collective imagination of our species.

To quickly put this counter-intuitive view into focus, would you not agree that the following statement has a sound basis?

We would have geometry without Euclid, calculus without Newton or Liebnitz, the camera without Johann Zahn, the cathode ray tube without JJ Thomson, relativity (and quantum mechanics) without Einstein, the digital computer without Turin, the Internet without Vinton Cerf.

The list can. of course be extended indefinitely.

http://www.ted.com/talks/john_wilbanks_let_s_pool_our_medical_data.html

“I think this is an important step towards the world wide web becoming sentient”

He is among the groundswell of folk finally waking up to the realization that all such inevitable developments represent part of the gestation of a new predominant cognitive entity on this planet.

The construction of a “brain” that will soon equal and then surpass that typical of our species has for long been a work in progress. Not as a result of any deliberate human “design” but rather as the result of an autonomous evolutionary process that can be seen to have run its exponential course since humankind acquired the ability to share imagination, a function which we know as language.

Very real evidence indicates the rather imminent implementation of the next, (non-biological) phase of the on-going evolutionary “life” process from what we at present call the Internet.It is effectively evolving by a process of self-assembly. You may have noticed that we are increasingly, in a sense, “enslaved” by our PCs, mobile phones, their apps and many other trappings of the net.

We are already largely dependent upon it for our commerce and industry and there is no turning back. What we perceive as a tool is well on its way to becoming an agent.

Consider this:

There are at present an estimated 2 Billion Internet users. There are an estimated 13 Billion neurons in the human brain. On this basis for approximation the Internet is even now only one order of magnitude below the human brain and its growth is exponential.
That is a simplification, of course. For example: Not all users have their own computer. So perhaps we could reduce that, say, tenfold. The number of switching units, transistors, if you wish, contained by all the computers connecting to the Internet and which are more analogous to individual neurons is many orders of magnitude greater than 2 Billion. Then again, this is compensated for to some extent by the fact that neurons do not appear to be binary switching devices but can adopt multiple states.

Without even crunching the numbers, we see that we must take seriously the possibility that even the present Internet may well be comparable to a human brain in processing power.
And, of course, the degree of interconnection and cross-linking of networks within networks is also growing rapidly.The culmination of this exponential growth corresponds to the event that transhumanists inappropriately call “The Singularity” but is more properly regarded as a phase transition of the on-going “life” process.
An evolutionary continuum that can be traced back at least as far as the formation of the chemical elements in stars.

The broad evolutionary model that supports this contention is outlined very informally in “The Goldilocks Effect: What Has Serendipity Ever Done For Us?” , a free download in e-book formats from the “Unusual Perspectives” website

I hope you can create a system where good ideas win and keep the focus on the end goals. Keep it transparent so there is no “black box” to how it works or how to improve it over time. Just maybe a system that is allowed to fail and then fix it and improve is part of being “perfect” the first time.