Cultural Ontology
Assemblage of Machines What is the Self? Until recently, it was presupposed that each of us had a coherent Self; something essential and permanent which made up the kernel of our Personality. It was thought that this was the True Being within us which maintained continuity throughout all the vicissitudes and impermanence of Life's evanescing changes. In modern Social Thought, such a being is largely dismissed as an ideological fiction in favor of a more Behavioral Assemblage of Complexes and Histories. So we have lost the notion of our True Self but we now project that notion upon a Coherent Continuity of Behavioral Complexes. We have become a post-modern Assemblage. Some are even referring to our Self as the Robot. And why not? If we take a look at the 72 year cycle of Fractal History, we find that the looming contemporary phase is Machine Learning; AI and the Singularity. Humanity is crowded around the smart-phone, breathlessly awaiting the announcement of Machine Intelligence. Terrifying Event Horizons What does a Behavioral Assemblage of Complexes look like when we open one up and peer inside? We would see the Neural Networks of Operant Conditioning as they have wired together in Crystallized Learning Patterns derived from the Information Saccades of our most Terrifying Event Horizons. Personally speaking, that is, for each one of us. Neurons that fire together, wire together. And especially when our objects of Interest are first-person-shooter games, feature-length Epic Adventures, and 24-hour News aggregation. These are all being compounded by the Rewards of Gamification, Socialization Media, Political Propaganda, and the fact that Fear sells. Our neurosynaptic Construction of Social Reality is precognitively Conditioned by continuous post-modern information signals. Self-Driving Autobots What are we trafficking in these days? There is a sense that in the modern world we are able to hack our own consciousness, to manifest thoughts. If the vast tangle of interconnections inherent in our neural structure resemble highway and transportation systems in the urban megalopolis, then contemporary Behavioral Conditioning has turned us into Self-Driving Cars. Read the full article
