The Vehicle

Our primary vehicle for this journey has been our consciousness. The secondary vehicle has been the body that carries the first around. They both follow pathways to destinations, but in different landscapes. The body can only move in physical space, limited by physical laws. Consciousness can go anywhere, without regard to time and space. That’s the vehicle we want, one that is unfettered, free to discover new pathways or revive old ones.

They make a good team, the body and mind. Together they are capable of great feats of navigation and discovery. One of their great assets is the ability to be in two places at once. The body can be sitting in a chair, while the mind travels to distant lands. Or the mind can link up with other minds, so they can go someplace together, while their bodies remain in separate places around the globe. So, we have a “real” landscape that our body traverses and a virtual one, in which, our mind is free to roam.

When you and i travel together in our virtual world, we try to share landscapes, but they are never the same. We have each built our own virtual landscape on top of the one we inherited from our ancestors. Although we are using the same environmental input to create our own version of the landscape, we assign different values to objects and events according to our cultural and peer relationships.

One way we can compare our different landscapes is to look for the structural similarities. How have we built our virtual world? It is a world of pure information, existing only in imagination, but constructed as a model of the “real” thing. So, we set out on an imaginary journey, each exploring our own virtual world, looking for cycles and patterns that repeat, structural underpinnings and connections that enable the high level of information processing these vehicles possess. This is a road test for our imagination.

Setting Our Goals

Our Mission

 

Once you start to look at biological systems as being information processing systems first, with protein production being secondary output, a very different picture emerges of their structure and organization.

It is our mission to explore that structure and discover its rules of organization.

Alternative View

 

What i am proposing is a clear alternative to the models of reality given us by religion, science and the occult. It is the systems approach to understanding the reality underlying all world views.

One of the things that makes computer programs so powerful is that they allow us to look at things in different ways. It is the ability to take many different views of the same data. In animation and 3D programs, the artist can view his work from many different angles and well as in different modes. The power of spread sheets is the many ways one can look at the information. Computer models used in predicting weather are a good example of programs with the ability to look at data in different ways.

LifeOS is just another view we can use to look at biological systems. It can compliment the many other views currently in use.

Advantages of the Model

This model has been constructed by the computer science community, using the behavior of biological systems as a starting point(Information Theory and cybernetics), but independent of the constraints of growth and reproduction. Its sole criteria was the ability to function as an information processing system, whose output is simply data, rather than living tissue.

In other words, the information processing system developed by the field of Information Technologies was developed solely for its functionality and not in any attempt to mirror biological systems. However, biological information processing systems evolved to the same criteria, functionality. So it should be no surprise that the systems are so similar.

This model of network functionality is universally accepted across language and cultural barriers, everywhere computer networks exist. So, the concepts necessary to understand LifeOS are well established in our world culture. Consequently, there is lots of agreement on what it takes to make such a network operate.

Just how well does this model really fit with biological reality? Of course, this is yet to be established. That’s what we are doing here.

The Journey

 

At first glance this may seem like a simple task, to explore the similarities between biological and computer systems, but it involves passage through some potentially dangerous territory. The ground we must cover is rife with barriers and pitfalls.

Of those obstacles, the most formidable might be our own ego. Current models of reality used by both religion and science place human beings very high in the hierarchy of animal species. Religion places mankind directly descendent from god, well above all other creatures, while science does away with god altogether and places mankind squarely in the top spot.

Unfortunately, this new model has no top spot at all. There is no superior position for human beings. The ego might not be content with the loss of status.

A related obstacle we face is the entrenched dogma and superstition that will try to divert our attention from our goal. We find these two pitfalls no matter what the territory, religious or scientific. Our beliefs are built from a combination of sources and don’t necessarily fit into a comprehensive whole. By looking at the whole, we will be able to spot those flaws in our model. That can be another hit for the ego.

Then there is the fact that computer systems are intimidating to some people and the mere suggestion that we are anything like computers is summarily rejected.

However, discovery is our goal, and we will overcome all obstacles to attain it, including our own trepidation.

Cheers,

jim