Be Well.
David
Singularity Now: Is “Daydream Learning” Possible?
September 30, 2012 in Laura Magdalene Eisenhower, Linda Moulton Howe, Michio Kaku, New Age Science, Nick Pope, Oprah, TED, Uncategorized, Uri Geller by theadmin
Sleep-learning,
or presenting information to a sleeping person by playing a sound
recording has not been very useful. Researchers have determined that
learning during sleep is “impractical and probably impossible.” But what
about daydream learning?
Subliminal learning is the concept of indirect learning by subliminal messages. James Vicary
pioneered subliminal learning in 1957 when he planted messages in a
movie shown in New Jersey. The messages flashed for a split second and
told the audience to drink Coca-Cola and eat popcorn.
A recent study published in the journal Neuron used sophisticated
perceptual masking, computational modeling, and neuroimaging to show
that instrumental learning can occur in the human brain without
conscious processing of contextual cues. Dr. Mathias Pessiglione from
the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging
at the University College London reported: “We conclude that, even
without conscious processing of contextual cues, our brain can learn
their reward value and use them to provide a bias on decision making.”
(“Subliminal Learning Demonstrated In Human Brain,” ScienceDaily, Aug. 28, 2008)
“By restricting the amount of time that the clues were displayed to
study participants, they ensured that the brain’s conscious vision
system could not process the information. Indeed, when shown the cues
after the study, participants did not recall having seen any of them
before. Brain scans of participants showed that the cues did not
activate the brain’s main processing centers, but rather the striatum,
which is presumed to employ machine-learning algorithms to solve
problems.”
“When you become aware of the associations between the cues and the
outcomes, you amplify the phenomenon,” Pessiglione said. “You make
better choices.” (Alexis Madrigal, “Humans Can Learn from Subliminal
Cues Alone,” Wired, August 27, 2008)
What better place for daydream learning than the Cloud? Cloud
computing refers to resources and applications that are available from
any Internet connected device.
The Cloud is also collectively associated with the “technological singularity” (popularized by science fiction writer Vernor Vinge)
or the future appearance of greater-than-human super intelligence
through technology. The singularity will surpass the human mind, be
unstoppable, and increase human awareness.
“Could the Internet ‘wake up’? And if so, what sorts of thoughts would it think? And would it be friend or foe?
“Neuroscientist Christof Koch believes we may soon find out — indeed,
the complexity of the Web may have already surpassed that of the human
brain. In his book ‘Consciousness: Confessions of a Romantic
Reductionist,’ published earlier this year, he makes a rough
calculation: Take the number of computers on the planet — several
billion — and multiply by the number of transistors in each machine —
hundreds of millions — and you get about a billion billion, written more
elegantly as 10^18. That’s a thousand times larger than the number of
synapses in the human brain (about 10^15).”
In an interview, Koch, who taught at Caltech and is now chief scientific officer at the Allen Institute for Brain Science
in Seattle, noted that the kinds of connections that wire together the
Internet — its “architecture” — are very different from the synaptic
connections in our brains, “but certainly by any measure it’s a very,
very complex system. Could it be conscious? In principle, yes it can.”
(Dan Falk, “Could the Internet Ever ‘Wake Up’? And would that be such a
bad thing?” Slate, Sept. 20, 2012)
There has been some speculation about what it would take to bring down the Internet. According to most authorities, there is no Internet kill switch,
regardless of what some organizations may claim. Parts of the net do go
down from time-to-time, making it inaccessible for some — albeit
temporarily. “Eventually the information will route around the dead
spots and bring you back in,” said IT expert Dewayne Hendricks.
“The Internet works like the Borg Collective of Star Trek — it’s
basically a kind of hive mind,” he adds. Essentially, because it’s in
everybody’s best interest to keep the Internet up and running, there’s a
constant effort to patch and repair any problems. “It’s like trying to
defeat the Borg — a system that’s massively distributed, decentralized,
and redundant.”
“Pausing for a moment to reflect, Hendricks closed our conversation
by saying, ‘The only way to bring down the Internet is to get rid of all
the people.’” (George Dvorsky, “Could someone really destroy the whole
Internet?” io9.com, Sep 19, 2012)
The Cloud has outwardly surpassed the human mind and is unstoppable.
But can it boost human responsiveness? The Vertical Browser Autosurfing
Player is the result of over 5 years of research in daydream learning.
It employs a large screen monitor to absolutely flood a participant with
subliminal learning events from the Internet.
(The Autosurfing try-out is at http://www.verticalbrowser.com)
Participants pre-select the subject matter they wish to be exposed to
and can be working or resting during the non-stop experience.
Never before has information been available in such large capacity
and at such high speeds. What once took weeks of library research can
today be accomplished in a matter of minutes. But how much captured data
is actually being used?
“While companies are gathering all manner and volume of data —
structured and unstructured, terabytes and petabytes — when it comes to
getting insights from that data to the frontlines, where insights really
matter, many organizations are losing their way.
“Having insights flow to the front-line is more about having a
data-aligned culture than overcoming some sort of technology barrier —
it requires an organizational mindset that can nurture data’s
metamorphosis from insight to value.” (Renee Boucher Ferguson, “Data
Analytics and the Information Transfer Gap,” MIT Sloan Management Review, Sept 21, 2012)
Autosurfing is an innovative way of bringing information to the front
line. By using “daydream learning” to disseminate information and make
better choices, the Cloud may in fact boost a participant’s rate of
learning.
By Peter Fotis Kapnistos
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