Categories
life

Life in Space?

Context: First evidence of cell membrane molecules in space I wonder if we might stretch the boundaries of biological diversity far beyond the limited subset of observed (terrestrial) organic self-replication to encompass the possibility of space-based life, sentience and intelligence. Given the sheer vastness of all possible configurations of matter and energy as dynamically-reflexive environmental […]

Categories
Philosophy

Technological Civilisation

Context: 94% of the universe’s galaxies are permanently beyond our reach The scale of the cosmos is astonishing. Some estimates infer 2 trillion galaxies and some variations of cosmological hyper-inflation (i.e. early expansion) require an infinite Universe. What is most astonishing of all, though and to anyone who stares into this abyss for longer than […]

Categories
technology

Technology as Displaced Entropy

Context: Australia installs first space laser optical ground station in southern hemisphere It is interesting to observe, and from a broader (integrated, technological) systems perspective, that the value acquired by iterating upon and through the technical ratchet of space-based communications solutions and innovations is a measure of displaced information (as much as material) entropy. Much […]

Categories
Philosophy

Kessler Syndrome

The Kessler Syndrome is a clear and stark reminder of just how intransigently daft the militarisation of space might eventually prove itself to be. One idiot with a missile and LEO indefinitely inaccessible for everyone. No less painful than the consequences of even a limited exchange of nuclear weapons (anywhere) but, if you noticed, the […]

Categories
Philosophy

Future of Humanity

Context: The Future of Life Institute The endemic and omnipresent enlightened self-interest of human psychology is generally such that, while we may already and for the most part possess the technical and cognitive or linguistic and technological tools necessary to architect our own freedom and a shared, peaceful and sustainable future – we are so […]

Categories
Philosophy

There is only one Problem

There is really only one problem. It is the problem of Everything, all at once. Every different problem we seem to experience, every difficulty from broken door handle to Global pandemic or from from optimal social organisation to climate change – there is only one thing that we need to understand to solve them all […]

Categories
technology

Competition and Commercialism in Near-Earth Orbit

Context: Solving the space junk problem In any conceptual domain (such as future configurations of Near Earth Orbit) where there are many degrees of lliteral-spatial, commercial, strategic or technological freedom beyond the most overt saliences of interest – the over-population mentioned in the abstract – we will probably find that ambiguities and unknowns will be […]

Categories
Alien Anthropology

Arms Race in Space: Governance of Technology or Technology of Governance?

I fear that the introduction of rules, prescriptive boundaries and frameworks will not inhibit the militarisation of this context so much as positively incentivise it, the culture and history of adversarial psychology being what it is.  A line must certainly be drawn in the sand, but it seems that most of these (kinds of) prohibitions […]

Categories
Alien Anthropology

Online Communication: Talking Underwater

All of this online communication really feels a bit like trying to talk (or shout) underwater; no one can hear us and no one is really listening or paying attention anyway.  The greatest misdirection and deception of this is that while we are (all) here pouring our hearts and minds out into this digital information […]

Categories
systems

Higher-Dimensionality, Negation, Logical Freedom

Organisational and technological systems are generally structured by linear, procedural and additive modular methods. The new degrees of freedom available at a logical level are rarely acknowledged. Unexplored, abstract logical spaces of literal higher-dimensionality also exist. Higher dimensions are not magical, metaphysical mystery tours in some “other” spatial place or additional bolt-on to reality; they […]

Categories
Alien Anthropology

Non-sense

Just what would you think if it came to pass that everything that you thought was you was not and everything else was inside out? Like that light that strikes the back of your eye, doubly inverted before it renders a representation and (dis)simulation of reality inside the effervescent neuroelectrical enigma of you – that […]

Categories
Alien Anthropology Philosophy

Playing the Long-Game of Human Civilisation

The catastrophic entropy of a currently most-probable future is not the only available solution in the possibility-space of all emergent and adaptive human planetary civilisations.