Infinite Consciousness, Disposable People?

Do you ever think about living forever? I have no personal desire to live out all of eternity in this body….but there is a desire to maintain some history of consciousness that can be passed on and shared across generations.

Ben Goertzel is getting to the vast unknown of infinite consciousness in his recent post on Mind Uploading:

“I don’t know if we will ever solve the “hard problem of consciousness”, i.e. the problem of rigorously connecting subjective experiences with physical structures and dynamics.   My gut feel is that this will require the invention of some new discipline going beyond contemporary science, synthesizing aspects of empirical/theoretical science with aspects of spiritual traditions and contemplative metaphysics like that of the medieval Buddhist logicians.  I gave a talk on this at the 2011 Asia Consciousness Festival.”

Mind Uploading connects the human spirit to the world of digital interfaces directly and it makes us question ideas like reincarnation where some karmic exchange is passed from death into new life. Uploading aspects of consciousness implies that your mind can then be accessed and used by others, perhaps even downloaded into a new host. Embodied intelligence can then take infinite new forms if the receptors and information retain their integrity. Research on reincarnation suggests a direct mind upload from one consciousness to another complete with habits, scars and physical connections.

The interesting future of AGI promises deep interconnection beyond individual access to any information – AGI taps into the collective desire to create new forms of awareness. Quantum computers, doping silicates and graphene nano & biochemistry experiments will yield all types of life over the next decades. We have just started to see the future and there is some interesting terrain and potentially scary monsters ahead.

The series Dollhouse (click the GIF for animation) showed personalities and minds stored in drives that were mixed and implanted into other humans. “Disposable humans” are a trend that should scare us, whether it’s our homeless, our foster kids and runaway youth, the lost and displaced among us who are often invisible and do disappear. Portable minds and population control dance a very close line in Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse, creating a 2 season exploration of what could happen if we let individual ambition, fear and control dictate our ability to work together. Emergence has dangerous consequences for us and we must expect big shifts in our way of life as we go through this bumpy evolution.

I am optimistic for the future of alternate intelligences as complimentary to our own, only because I have dedicated my work to building healthy bonds between humans and the rest of the intelligent universe to create the new science that Ben Goertzel suggests. I wrote a series for families on this topic with my husband (ManorMeta) and will continue to advocate for stories that promote symbiotic relationships between the human spirit and the emergent newness we are collectively creating.

I have spent the last nine months building EDDEFY with a team of brilliant scientists, designers and futurists because we saw the need to connect the dots in human learning & binding insight. People put objects, concepts, ideas together in creative ways that we have not yet been fully able to emulate with computing systems and over time we will begin to see the patterns in human binding, the context betweens the lines of content in our daily lives. The narratives that come between us and comprehending the choices we make are a tough nut to crack in the quest to create AGI and map the programming of human consciousness. I believe we can solve these contextual puzzles using great tools like EDDEFY to understand how humans put together their thoughts and over time learning how we connect the dots.

There are lots of leaders out there who may have tools to help you program yourself and fine-tune your abilities while embodied in this human reader now finishing a blog post. I am interested in creating the toolkit, bringing together the tools and making educational technology available and easy to use for anyone and everyone on this planet. I do not want to see us become a culture where “disposable people” are ignored, abused or destroyed. What kind of future do you want for the humans?

Learning how to live with love & make media

In 2005 I traveled to Thailand to make a documentary with kids and women affected and infected with HIV & AIDS. In three weeks I visited social service centers, a camp for kids and families and a residential living center that makes its own clothing, bread, art and goods to sell that supports a village of 40 residents. There are many inspiring stories out there of what it means to love oneself and others through positive action – this is just a glimpse at a few of the people who have inspired me along the way.

A big thank you to Lars Hasselblad Torres and the Global PeaceTiles Project for making this journey possible, along with all of my extraordinary colleagues featured in this short. This was very early in my video production career and was all self-produced and edited – thankfully I can hire editors now to help me. It’s good to know our strengths – and hire others in our community to create more beautiful things together.

Please leave a comment and tell me what’s inspiring you to action – and let me know how we can create beauty together.

http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=9212315598638441881&hl=en&fs=true

I <3 livestreaming

As a child I remember watching PBS with my dad, particularly the live auctions of art and local items to support the station. My dad would call in and bid on something fun for us and we would get all excited watching others bid him up for a good cause.

Later as I started my career in media the PBS station in Providence, RI needed a writer who could deliver hundreds of scripts in a week for auction items while curating and hanging rotations of art every 15 minutes for the live show. A lifetime of creative pursuits brought me back at age 24 to try my hand at live production – and I loved it. The only job I wanted more than curating and writing was behind the camera, directing and producing the entire experience.

A few years later I got the chance to try my hand at directing and over the last two decades have put hundreds of hours of lens time in to capture the essence of stories, interviews and live events. While I never considered myself a journalist – more of a documentarian at heart – there is a sense that my work is to be the eyes of the world, capturing fascinating moments with shared meaning.

Of all of the media careers I have tried – radio, print, writing books, producing events, videos and virtual worlds – there’s something about creating LIVE in collaboration with others that excites me tremendously. The pace of live production is fierce. You must be ready for anything to happen at any time, then keep your cool while everything around you melts.

Over the last few years I have learned to master various streaming paths and production tools for broadcast, collaboration, events and mixed media experiences. My new show Nonprofits Live is hosted monthly at TechSoup with a new episode this Friday on giving Great Presentations. NPlive is a live interactive talk show using a cloud suite called Watchitoo that allows for robust social sharing, Q&A, shared whiteboards and integration with video and slides along with 25 video feeds from around the world – a great and easy way to host virtual meetings across borders.

Some of my colleagues have produced tremendous livestreaming experiences and one in particular, Sarah Austin, is a smart woman who understands the technical challenges of various streaming platforms for live event production. We have a talk proposed for SXSW this year – Streamweaver, I believe you can take me…..Live. Last year I produced a game show with Josephine Dorado on Causebuilding Games at SXSW and this streamweaving session is going to be a stellar mix of social actions & streaming throwdown as we see who has the chops to make it and take it live.

I love livestreaming and have used many platforms – Ustream, Livestream, Qik, Adobe Connect & other video conferencing tools, Watchitoo, TinyChat, Skype, Google+ – what do you love to use, and why?

Jumo: the need for true Social Action Networks

Five years ago we would muse with catalysts at the Omidyar Network about relationship networks, reputation and trust and the essentials of building strong communities of change for both local and global impact. Today some of those ideas have come to fruition with platforms like Change.org, Wiser Earth, Ushahidi, Quora, LinkedIn and Twitter campaigns. As many of us have worked together and cross paths frequently in the ethers there’s been a desire to track those engagements and understand true reputation through our work over time, mapping the most prolific leaders with great questions & endeavors like we do on the TechSoup Forums.

Jumo released to the public in the last 24 hours and has the potential to fill the gap between great people and great endeavors in a different way than Change.org, LinkedIn or Wiser Earth manages to do. Unfortunately it seems Jumo may have more interest in the transactional economy of giving than the relationship economy it has the potential to grow, becoming a philanthropic passthrough that takes a cut higher than most fiscal sponsors, but lower than the United Way. So far it functions very closely to the Causes function on Facebook, more like Razoo. It’s a start, but personally I want a real economy of contribution that goes deeper than dollars.

Tracking followers simply in the Quora fashion is a nice and elegant way to see who influences who but it lacks any sort of qualification or indication of endorsement. Recommendations in LinkedIn are more helpful but a star/point system would allow for users to vote up their favorite leaders and catalysts in various fields.

I think the creators of Path are on to something by creating limited networks and I’d like to refine it more deeply in the #TrustTable project – creating true indicators of trust and reputation by demonstrating who are the most reliable people indicated on a short list of must-contacts in case of emergency. #TrustTable is an ad hoc project designed to solve at least two problems: the need for quick emergency contact data in a semi-public online space and mapping reputation & relationship trends to show who are the most trusted people in our communities.

The concept for TrustTable is simple:
You have a round dining table with only 10 seats for guests. Choose the people you would want at your last meal on earth, the person who should be first to pick up your kids if something happens to you. Ten seats only: make sure you include the people who should be contacted if something happens to you – this is your command center and this is your league of personal superheroes. Colorcode their chairs with contact protocols and link it to their FB or Twitter page so someone can push your big red emergency button if they need to – you choose who will be contacted for your customized needs. Choose to share your private link with your school, hospital and family or make certain data public and decorate your table for a feast to benefit your favorite cause.

I value social action networks with indicators to vote up submissions to the creative economy. If you imagine each post, video or photo as an asset in the marketplace of Facebook or Twitter I want the ability to be able to give extra stars, points or fiery dragons to the people who are submitting the best possible solutions. The LIKE button is ok but I’d rather have 30 stars a day and have the ability to blow 5 stars on the best link or photo. I believe that this mix of a creative economy and reputation-associated relationship building will allow us to find collaborators and get things done more effectively in less time.

So far the social action networks that have sprung up to get things done quickly include Ushahidi, the Crisis Camps/Crisis Commons movements and Twitter social campaigns. Most of these have required the frequent use of googledocs and wikis to manage collaborative information across wide virtual teams and lack the ability to track the backend of engagement well as we look to reward those who are getting the most done.

Credit and attribution is tricky in the nonprofit creative commons world of open sharing; we walk a dicey line between collaboration and needing to toot our own horns enough to win grants. We want to empower great ideas and resources always seem scarce compared to the giant needs we’re facing. Any tool that helps us leverage more for less is helpful….for now the tools that are helping me the most to create social change ripples include Twitter, Quora, YouTube, LinkedIn and Facebook. For now the social action networks like Change.org and Jumo offer enough for me to chime in once or twice, but I’m not seeing enough sticky reasons to keep coming back to share new endeavors. Some networks like #TrustTable would only be updated twice a year….but is there a future for a philanthropic discovery site like Jumo that does not push regular emails or curated updates? Would you keep going back, or are you having better experiences with other social action networks?

Epic Thanks

My friend Stacey Monk decided to use Twitter as a tool to help Mama Lucy & a community she cared about half a world away because it was something effective & simple she could do from her home. She had no idea it would evolve into building projects in multiple countries and now a Global Gratitude Parade at http://epicthanks.org/. Check it out!

Tweet out your love #epicthanks.

Mixed Reality Learning Lab: My work with @techsoup at NCVS

I rarely get to share much of my work with clients around the world but this one is a rare gift….a few weeks ago I attended the National Conference on Volunteerism and Service with my colleagues @TechSoup where we shared social media secrets, tips and tools along with upcoming platforms to explore for large and small organizational leaders.  See the photos and lessons here:

Mixed Reality Learning Lab: @techsoup at NCVS

Essentials of Virtual Community Building

No matter who you are, where you come from or what challenges you are hitting right now, there are a few things we all share in common.  We need a few basic things: food, water and shelter are followed by education and communication with others who share our experiences.  Deep down we want to bond and experience a sense of connection.

Connections thrive when we create solid and healthy communities and this is where virtual worlds excel: the immersive landscape is appealing to network weavers as it provides an infinite canvas for collaboration and experimentation.  My avatar In Kenzo wears her wings as a visible reminder to crosspollinate between the worlds and bring people together so that millions can come together and create the emerging 3D web.

When I first sat down with Douglas Thomas of the USC Network Culture Project he excited me with an idea:  Create a challenge to grow the communities of the virtual world.  Together with a stellar team we crafted The Second Life and the Public Good Community Challenge and successfully gave away a million L$ to winning projects chosen by a panel of experts.

Through the process of reading over 20 proposals and helping our panel through the process of picking their top five, I recognized that listening is essential to community building.  If there’s one secret ingredient to success from events to metaverse productions it’s deep engaged receptivity, not only to words but to actions and creations expressing the ideas that proposals sometimes struggle to capture.  Once you listen to what others say and do you are able to connect them with new ideas and resources to help them grow, which helps the whole community in turn.

During our event on Monday 11/17 I sat with our awardees and discussed the real world impacts that their communities have created in the last few months.  The awardees shared many triumphs including new sims and groups now hosting events along with challenges such as responsible research management in the nebulous terrain of virtual worlds.  Some tested the strength of virtual bonds as dynamic personalities make conversation a complex game about identity; one sim away excited groups at the Nonprofit Commons shared about the strength of their alliances built effectively in these networked spaces.

As avatars learning to work remotely for the first time our panelists for the challenge tested new tools including a graphic consensus-building device that allows groups to map themselves and see statistically significant data made by Alpine EMS. We relied on the talents of the Vesuvius Group to help us produce podcasts and content for USC Network Culture Project and many content creators throughout Second Life who brought their best to the table as artists and activists.  Global Kids, our virtual worlds collaborators for many events including the mini-conference this week, detailed their birds of a feather sessions and RezEd talks on their blog Holy Meatballs for youth audiences (and in the podcast below!).

Together we witness blooming artistic communities, machinima that tells stories of good created in virtual spaces that echoes into our daily lives.  Amazing storytellers like Draxtor Despres are now being recognized for machinima works; Draxtor is accepting an international humanitarian award for his work with the Virtual Guantanamo team who also brought us Wallsickness, a memorial to the walls that divide us and how we have systematically built them up and torn them down.  How do these virtual teams evolve over time as relationships extend beyond the platform?  The Wallsickness team is one example of a solid partnership sustained over years while other groups find their footing as new 501(c)3 organizations.

There are a few rare leaders who can gather a group of people and enjoy that space together over a long period of time, enriching each others lives in ways that we rarely reach in the real world.  Collaborations are more common, requiring great glue and gumption to form a sustainable community that grows and evolves with the people involved. Enrichment can take so many forms, like the support spaces created by the Ability Commons or the International Health Challenge created by the Texas Obesity Research Center.  The people behind these groups are just as fascinating as the beautiful places they create together; a conversation with Nany Kayo of Native Lands or Eme and Gentle of Ability Commons reinforced my belief in these spaces as viable for true social change.

The new Foundations sim brings avatars new life in a handful of ways, providing an encyclopedic museum of the various lifeforms we know and understand now while offering maps of conservation areas and local community building efforts throughout Chicago.  The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation has been a unique presence in Second Life over the last few years as leaders in philanthropic exploration into virtual worlds, choosing not only to build their own presence but to give to other leaders to grow and explore what we can do together.  Few institutions have the foresight to allocate resources to these brave new worlds and it has been a joy to learn and grow with the Digital Media and Learning staff at the MacArthur Foundation this year.

Craig MacFound welcomed attendees at Monday’s event, speaking about Doctor Ludovico (Douglas Thomas) and his definition of Network Imagination as it relates to the freedom and agency of invention shared with copresence available in virtual worlds such as the new Foundations sim.  “This notion of community and imagination and the way they intersect motivates our presence here”, Craig MacFound noted as he expressed gratitude for the work of Aimee Weber studios bringing “beauty, imagination and playfulness” to the new Foundations sim.

In Draxtor’s video seen above he hits on four key affordances as outlined by Thomas’ upcoming paper from the USC Network Culture Project.  The communities we work with in Second Life embody 1) Awareness 2) Desemination 3) Organization and Action and 4) Intercultural Dialogue that breaks through traditional media resources into the daily lives of their members.  Each of our communities has learned to leverage at least one of these affordances very well to grow a community of likeminded avatars who care about political advocacy, health or engagement with their tribal brethren like the Native Lands project has provided in these photos of their Veterans Day honoring dedication and drum circle.

We share a desire to connect people and resources with our friends at Global Kids who have created RezEd and the Justice Commons.  Barry Joseph and Rik Riel hosted a discussion at Monday’s mini-conference that speaks to the future of these platforms for community building; listen to their podcast below and stay tuned for links to the USC Network Culture podcast of Monday’s panel with these amazing community leaders.

Virtual Civics

Posted a new video today from the MacArthur Foundation events in Second Life on Virtual Civic Liberties with legal professor Jack Balkin speaking with Jonathan Fanton. Hosted by USC with Global Kids, filmed by yours truly.

The post-event discussion on the practicality of these discussions for growing future communities was fruitful on all sides. We all agree that we need measurable goals and documentable material along with community dialogue; the emergence of these new media come new questions on how to best handle issues of governance and community process.

It’s the wild west all over again and you’ve got a front row seat — come join In Kenzo for another round of etheric civic engagement.