At the beginning of the 21st Century, we have moved
from the Digital Revolution to the Digital Age. That is, the digitalization of
our environment is now part of the everyday chatter of common folk and has its
spot on the Six O'Clock News. But if nanotechologists are to be believed, we
ain't seen nuthin' yet and molecular engineering will allow us to dream in a
world connected by digital soup, interfacing with beings that have transcended
DNA and are in contact with one another through multi-dimensional channels of
sensitivity and interconnectedness that will make the occult notions of
telepathy seems like child's play.
Nanotechnology is about creating self-replicating structures measured very
small sizes. DNA, for example, is less than two and a half nanometers across.
That is, a nanometer is about 50 atoms wide. Imagine the fastest, largest
computer we have now the size of a few nanometers. Now imagine that this
structure can replicate itself and become an undetectable film on any, and all
surfaces, including the blood steam. This will give humankind the chance to
progress past the structures that offered by DNA, and at an accelerated rate.
Evolution that used to occur over millions of years will be able to occur over
millions of seconds.
This brings us to dreams and dreaming. At this time, dreams (at least the
ones we recall) are pretty much limited to the sleep cycle and brain
biophysiology. Lose a little bit of your brain in a car accident or by lobotomy
and your dream recall drops to nix.
I realize the horror some people will feel reading this. The nightmare of
technological pride which brought about the horrors of the 20th Century, such as
world wars and the atomic power disasters, the continual push towards the
manipulation of the environment leading to ecological chaos and ruin, and the
general attitude that controlling things is the way to go has given many cause
to ponder whether we has perhaps gone too far already technologically. But I
would like to suggest that it is not the unnatural and technological per se that
is the problem, but the relationship with have with it.
After all, our jaws and our eyes are technology designed to control the
environment. Why is DNA so precious and have priority over other forms of
technology?
And the Nature-Nurture issue gets out of hand as well. We like to talk about
being natural, living naturally, eating naturally and so on. But in fact,
mankind gave up being natural a long time ago. Language and arts and crafts are
all culturally developed. This development has led to a larger brain capacity.
Its so large that we now have to give birth to our young way before they can
take care of themselves in anyway. Other animals and life start out in life with
instincts that function to allow them to survive. Our children are immediately
dependent upon culture, a culture that has increased their cranial capacity to
such an extent that they aren't even born naturally.
Nanotechnology offers humans the chance to develop the capacities they
already have and even to add new fabulous new capacities. In dreams and
dreaming, we have some very subtle possibilities open. The connection between
DNA, the brain and dream telepathy is unclear, but occurs just enough to keep
people interested. With nanotechnology we can amplify the physical and social
structures that support subtle energies. The sleeping mind will be able to
connect with streams of feedback on a cosmic scale. At this time, we learn
though a very slow feedback system. We try something and someone rewards us for
getting it right, or doesn't. Imagine cutting this feedback time down. Way down.
Instead of feedback once a day, or even once a second, that we can process
feedback in loops calculated in millionths of a second. The point is not that
multiplying what we do will innately make life better, but that it will allow us
to move so fast that we are moving at the same rate as subtle energy. We dance
with it rather than getting an encrypted letter once a day.
Also, imagine being able to have your ten most favorite dreams going at the
same time. Within each of these dreams, or some of them, there are interfaces to
dreams that other people are having at the same time. Instead of being
overwhelmed by the impact of too much data, a consciousness supported by the
liquid sea of nanotechnology will regulate the amounts of satisfaction needed
for personal coherency. Some will even choose unconsciousness. But probably for
pre-determined times. That is, I will enter one of my dreams with the agreement
with myself that for an hour I won't realize this is a dream. Those who have
even better relationships of trust with their unconscious will be able to
completely turn themselves over to the unconscious for unspecified amounts of
time.
Of course, this is a view from an early 21st Century perspective. When the
cosmos fills with nanotechnological fluid, the concept of identity and what I
will dream and who is dreaming will shift dramatically. Just for fun, imagine
that the part of your brain involved in dreaming and time/space, the PTO
junction, or Parietal/Temporal/Occipital junction is connected via a streaming
flow to a low level satellite that is recording a solar eclipse and transmitting
this event to a larger stadium of people who are in various states of being
overwhelmed by this event. Their feelings are available for connection and
travel through layer 840M of the west coast nanofluidic stream, which is being
accessed by the Rim Art Group who are studying the effects of dream mediated
eclipse events and producing nanopools of erogenous planetary movements.
Let us not be any more afraid of nanotechnology mediating our dreams than of
jawbones mediating our speech, or eyes mediating the look on our lover's face.
For more on nanotechnology see
Ralph Merkle's Nanotechnology Page
http://www.zyvex.com/nano/
RCW
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