• short term is largely a matter of projecting ongoing trends.
• medium term involves estimating when trends will change, predicting turning points.
• long-term is more speculative, more like science fiction.

• In terms of futurist methods, the primary techniques here are visioning and scenario writing.
• Ray Kurzweil's The Age of Spiritual Machines is a currently popular long-term futurist speculation
• Kurzweil is credible because he has a very successful record as an innovator and entrepreneur
• his fundamental argument is that people will meld with machines, that our consciousness will become separate from our bodies.
• he begins with discussion of chaos theory, consciousness and many of the topics we have covered in this course
• he then discusses the exponential trends of computing power (Moore's law) and projects that a $1,000 personal computer will reach the computing power of the human brain (pp 104-105).  Supercomputers will reach this level of power by 2010.
• he also discusses speculative new technologies such as DNA computing and Quantum computing.
• he has a series of scenarios which are written as conversations with a person in the future who goes through various stages of separating from her body
• he also presents a time line, which jumps from 1999 to 2009, skipping the near and medium term future
• by the year 2099 in his timeline "there is a strong trend toward merger of human thinking with the world of machine intelligence...there is no longer any clear distinction between humans and computers...most conscious entities do not have a permanent physical presence."
• Question:  what did the "American in Paris in 2020 group" come up with?  Here is one I found, but I could not find a page linking them together.

• Bill Gates sees us at the dawn of a less PC-centric age, when people will use several different mobile devices -- like Internet-enabled cell phones and personal digital assistants -- to gain access to the Web.  "No one will dominate over  the other," he says
• certainly we will see a wider use of portable, hand-held Internet devices, combined with cellular telephones, as well as new Internet Appliances such as the i-opener, just introduced this holiday season
• we will have Internet in the car with voice control and global positioning technology
• more and more people will have cable or other high speed connections to homes, making audio and video applications more convenient
• the Internet may integrate with television and radio, all three coming in on the same devices
• more and more companies will establish customer WEB sites, and more merchandise will be sold online
• Java and html may replace Windows and other personal computer operating systems as the basic hierarchical principle tying software together
• Here is a message Stowell Fulton sent me illustrating a new email technology, as well as a follow-up message on House Resolution 906.
• Keleche Okiri, Benjamin Ferrer and Sandor Toledo, and "applejax" had also expressed an interest in making presentations.

• A number of methods of studying the future are used
• cyclical and generational analyses are used for predicting turning points in social and economic trends
• scientific and technological forecasting are used to try to anticipate developments which may lead to important technological innovations in a five to ten year period
• Economically, some people believe there are long term cycles, sometimes called Kondratieff waves after a Russian economist who first "discovered" them.  These relate to major technological innovations, such as the Information Age which Fukuyama and others discuss.  According to these analysts, we are on an upswing, the Early Advance of the Information Processing Age.  The medium term future should be positive.
• Another approach is generational analysis, such as the Strauss-Howe four generation model.  According to this model, the new generation which is emerging is an outer-driven, "civic," morally complacent generation which will institutionalize many of the ideals of the previous generations.  It should be an era of stability and growth.
• these positive trends may help to explain why help to explain why crime and welfare dependency are down, the economy is up, and the United States is the leading force in a new world order.  Certainly most prognosticators are positive, for example Wired Magazine's "Prophets of Boom".
• George Gilder:  great wealth is coming, our only problem is overcoming the temptation to hedonism
• Walter Wriston:  economy will keep booming, but the political system will not keep up
• Harry Dent:  the Dow will reach 30,000 to 40,000 in the next decade, The "Roaring 2000's," driven by a massive baby-boom generation.  The boom market will end around 2008 or 2009 when the baby boomers pass their peak spending years.  This will lead to a depressionary decade.
• What does this suggest specifically for the Internet?  According to The Economist:
• the predominance of Microsoft and of PC's will decline
• new protocols - such as the html language - will be developed to  let computers, handheld devices and mobile phones talk to each other in new ways.  Perhaps the most important will be a "wireless application protocol"
• with the new protocols and new technology, all kinds of devices will be on the Net, e.g., refrigerators
• the Internet will become easier to use, requiring less knowledge on the part of the user
• broadband technology will make it possible for people to combine voice, graphics, audio and video in conversations and working groups online
• speech may become the main mechanism of connection to the Internet
• an eXtensible Markup Language (XML) will make it clear to the browser what category a program fits in, what should be done with it
• encryption has to be improved so that net business is safe and reliable, so that companies can "sign" contracts and purchase agreements on the WEB

• the market predictor - we already talked about, we believe it will do better than others because it will analyze both textual and financial information.  Initial tests have been positive, but it needs to be tested with real money rather than in test runs on historical data
• my idea, the Webmind Sales Advisor, similar to the human one Land's End offers on its WEB site, but better because you would not feel pressured.  It should remember you, carry on a real conversation, make good suggestions.  Here's an email I sent Ben & Lisa about it.  Ben sent me back an email of ideas he and Lisa and others had thought up.  All of them involve using Webmind in the background to improve existing software, not marketing it as a product in itself.

Review Outline:

• The distinction between determinist and chaotic systems and the concepts of evolution and autopoiesis - Oct 1 notes.
• One of the characteristics of chaotic systems is that order emerges out of apparent randomness.  There is an evolution or growth.  This tends to go through regular stages, which can be captured in Peirce's concept of numerical archetypes.- Sept 24 notes    I will use the numerical archetypes as the organizing principle for this lecture.
• Naught or Nothingness.  It seems odd to talk about nothing, but this tuesday's NY Times Science Section had a headline:  Physicists Fret About Nothing  It reports that, "according to the theory of elementary particle physics, even a vacuum is filled with fields containing energy and evanescent particles that flit in and out of existence, adding heft to nothingness." Some physicists believe that this quantum vacuum is a "zero-point field" or "fifth force" which will lead to a unified theory of the universe (along with gravitational, electromagnetic and strong and weak nuclear forces).  Charles Saunders Peirce had reached much the same conclusion through metaphysical introspection into the nature of thought, saying that "even emptiness is something."  From this perspective, nothing is purely passive, there is some consciousness, some potential for action, in everything including microscopic objects.  This is a philosophy which is widely held in "primitive" cultures, and is found in many creation myths.  What does this mean for our brains?  For artificial intelligence?  The brain is composed of neurons, tiny cells which are similar to other cells in the body.  Of course, these are composed of atoms and sub-atomic particles.  None of this is inert matter, all of it has potential for energy and action.  Energy and "evanescent particles flit in an out of existence" in our brain as much as anywhere else, and the quantum indeterminacy this creates may have something to do with our consciousness.  In this sense, there is consciousness in everything.  Our brains are clearly much more conscious than a table or an amoeba - because this is elaborated in a higher pattern of organization - but they begin with the same particles as everything else.  Practices such as meditation and prayer often try to recapture this most simple level of thought.  It is difficult to capture artistically, some efforts I found on the internet include Nihilist Field Marshal Shapiro's nihilist art, Max Klinger's "Back into Nothingness" and The Really Big Button That Doesn't Do Anything. There is theoretical speculation about incorporating quantum phenomena in computers, including one on Ben's WEB site, but little has been done in practice.  There are quantum indeterminacies inherent in Internet packet processing which may introduce some degree of quantum indeterminacy into programs such as Webmind.  The interaction between the computer programs and human operators or users may also introduce quantum indeterminacy
• Firstness is the concept of raw being, of pure perception.  This, of course, is what much art tries to capture, e.g., Van Gogh's Starry Night capture a pure feeling, although it can also be interpreted on different levels.  In physics, Firstness is chance behavior, randomness, what we today call the quantum indeterminacy of particles.  It is something which emerges out of nothingness.  It is the essence of creativity, or thought or action which is not caused by some other force or variable.  How do we think creatively?  Partly be meditating, clearing our minds of elaborated thoughts, getting in touch with our "inner being" or "contemplating our bully button."  Partly by replacing established links of thought with random ones, as in "brainstorming" or "synectics" - group techniques that are used to generate new ideas.  Computers have not been particularly good at this up to now, but they will be more so as they incorporate more and more unstructured input, and as they are programmed to interact with each other in random ways.  Neural net programming is an attempt to allow the computer to come up with a new solution to a predetermined problem, by simply trying a large number of connections until it finds a pattern which works.  Ray Kurzweil's Cybernetic Poet writes poetry by "reading a selection of poems by a particular author or authors and then creating a language model of that author's work based on markov models, a mathematical cousin of neural nets." It then uses a "recursive poetry-generation algorithm" to mimic the author's style, together with "algorithms to maintain thematic consistency."  (p 163 in The Age of Spiritual Machines).  The poems are completely new, but mimic those of the author whose work was read into it.  If you want to try it, you can download a version of it for free.  In religion, monotheism is the cult of Firstness.
• Secondness is the relationship between two phenomena, two Firstnesses.  We experience secondness when our will runs smack into someone else's - as when our automobile smashes into someone else's.  Secondness is pure reflex action:  every time you apply force A you get reaction B.  Machines are examples of Secondness.   With a typewriter, for example, you push a letter and the key connected to it hits the paper.  With a mechanical calculator or a slide rule, every time you push the same keys, you get the same result.  Electric typewriters and electronic calculators are not much different.  The industrial age transformed the world with the perfection and elaboration of Secondness.  A mechanical clock is a symbol of Secondness.  A clock has many parts, of course, Secondness does not mean one can have only two objects - there can be a sequence of parts, each linked in a mechanical way.  Mathematically, arithmetic is Secondness - it tells you how numbers are related.  Artistically, Secondness is captured by literary works which focus on relationship rather than on description.  Novels are an excellent literary form for expressing Secondness, while poetry is better for expressing Firstness.  Motion pictures are Secondness - they show forces and objects impacting on each other - while still pictures are Firstness, capturing the essence of a scene.  In religion, Secondness is expressed in dualism - the belief that the world is a struggle between two forces, typically good and evil, all the more so if these are material entities - God and the Devil.  One might also see Secondness in the relationship between Father and Son in Christian theology, especially when these are viewed as historical entities rather than as symbols.  The struggles of the Greek Gods, also, are on the level of Secondness even though there were many of them - they were tangible, physical beings who fought and loved and otherwise interacted with each other and with humans.
• Thirdness is habit or pattern.  It is not tangible or material like Secondness, it is more abstract.  Mathematically, Thirdness is algebra, not arithmetic.  Thirdness does not simply mean that three things are relating instead of two, but it is often difficult to capture the relationship between three things - even three planets - without an abstract equation.
• Determinist, "linear" science is the paradigmatic example of Thirdness.  It is very powerful indeed because it reduces a great many observations down to a few formulas such as Newton's laws of motion.
• Recursive computer programs are on the level of Thirdness.  They follow strictly defined rules, and they do it over and over again - recursively - very quickly.  Logically, this is deductive analysis - given a certain body of information, a certain set of inputs, the program deduces a certain conclusion.  Computer programs using recursive logic can be very useful, because they do boring, repetitive tasks for us quickly and efficiently - e.g., word processors which rewrite and reformat text every time we insert or delete a word and spreadsheets which recalculate our columns of numbers every time we change one of them.  They are vastly better than using a typewriter, where we have to make every change ourselves.  But we cannot give these programs instructions in plain English and expect them to understand and respond. These programs may seem intelligent at first, but after awhile the repetitiveness makes them seem more like machines.  They get the same results you could get working with a typewriter or hand calculator, but they do it much more quickly and more reliably.
• Chatterbots such as Eliza are recursive, but they cleverly pretend not to be.  They minimize repetitiveness by incorporating random number generators - an element of Firstness - at certain points in their recursive logic.  Thus, you cannot predict which answer they will give, although you could predict how many times they would give each of a set of answers over a long period of time.  They also emulate Secondness by interacting with the user.  They do not go onto Fourthness, which is why they are not truly intelligent.
• Neural nets and evolutionary algorithms are also examples of Thirdness, although they are less predictable than recursive programs.  They set limits and patterns and allow the computer to vary at random within these patterns.  Like the  Chatterbots, they add a dose of Firstness to their Thirdness.  Also like the Chatterbots, they are meant to interact with a user.  The user sets the goals and tells the program how well it is doing.  This is a more complex and meaningful interaction than the discussion with a Chatterbot, and if you view the computer and the user as an interactive system, you can move on to the level of Fourthness.
• In the brain, Thirdness is the tendency to generalize.  As Peirce said, "...the one primary and fundamental law of mental action consists in a tendency to generalization.  Feeling tends to spread;  connections between feelings awaken feelings;  neighboring feelings become assimilated;  ideas are apt to reproduce themselves."
• In art, we might see Thirdness in the existence of schools of art which share a general pattern, or in a style which is characteristic of the works of a particular artist.  How do we know that a Picasso is a Picasso or a Mozart composition a Mozart?
• In theology, it is tempting to interpret the doctrine of the Trinity as Thirdness, although the belief that the three parts of the Trinity form a higher unity suggests Fourthness.  Historically, this doctrinal innovation was enormously helpful to Christianity as a religious movement, it was able to incorporate a wide variety of religious experiences and approaches.
• Fourthness is a pattern which emerges from a web of relationships which support and sustain each other so that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts - this is often referred to as synergy.  The term autopoiesisis often used to describe how a system achieves Fourthness.  Autopoiesis it is a form of system organization where the system as a whole produces and replaces its own components in an on-going structural coupling with the surrounding environment.  A key mechanism for autopoiesis is consciousness, the system's awareness of itself.  The mechanisms which produce consciousness in the human brain are as yet not fully understood, but it seems to emerge from the interaction of large numbers of neuronal groups - there is not a specific place in the brain where consciousness is located.
• in music, one could say that a single note is Firstness.  Two notes played in succession could be thought of as Secondness - they might clash or go well together.  If they go well together, one has a relatioship, a chord, which could be thought of as Thirdness.  A complex cord with three notes creates synergy, it sounds full, complete, it is more than the sum of its parts.  This is fourthness.  Symphonies and ccomplex compositions which have numerous variations on a theme are also Fourthness, they are synergies built of synergies.  Viewed theoretically, music is very complex, but people seem to understand its meaning intuitively without being able to analyze it.  Little is known about why different kinds of music appeal to different kinds of people.  You could try listening to  Autopoiesis, the rock group, and see if it gives you insight into the concept of autopoiesis.  "New Age" music is thought to be more autopoietic, perhaps because it facilitates meditation.  There is clearly some kind of symbiosis between music and our mental processes.
• in art, some theorists think that cubism is an example of Fourthness, in that it has a more complex and abstract four-dimensional structure portraying the same object simultaneously from different perspectives.
• in literature, Gertrude Stein's "If I Told Him:  A Completed Portrait of Picasso" might be taken as a quintessential example of Fourthness - the meaning is in the pattern of the words and not in their literal meaning.
• for those of you taking Methods of Social Research, we might say that Firstness is a univariate frequency distribution, Secondness is a cross-tabulation, Thirdness is a multivariate crosstabulation or multiple regression (path) analysis, while Fourthness would require a simulation where variables could interact recursively over time (the dependent variables have a lagged influence on the independent variables).
• in computer programming, the Webmind software is designed to implement Fourthness.  Its is composed of nodes, which relate to each other both hierarchically and heterarchically.  These nodes learn by assimilating information from the outside, and by interacting with each other in structured ways.  There is a Self Module which is explicitly charged with maintaining a conscious self-image of the system.  The tricky part is integrating it into a self-sustaining system.  See the lecture notes for November 5 for an outline.
• Fourthness is not a matter of having four rather than three things in a relationship;  it is a matter of completeness or wholeness, a system which is self-sustaining.  Often, these systems have three components, people seem to be naturally inclined to understand things in three terms of parts.