By the Late John Brockman

By the Late John Brockman Read Free

Book: By the Late John Brockman Read Free
Author: John Brockman
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man
     was able to exist. Man, a relic of the instantaneous past. Man, an instant too old
     to exist. Things not existent should be of no interest to us. All those things rendered
     unto man are based on a system that deals with illusion. The interpretation of the
     ordering of the brain takes place while new ordering is continually happening. It
     is almost as though there were two parallel planes.

     
    Almost. We might even assume there was a choice between living in one plane or another.
     Actually, there is no choice. There is no choice. There is only the ordering and arrangement,
     the here-and-now. Some of us, most of us, cannot recognize this level and continue
     by blindness, by inertia, by pretension, the delusion that we are men. It’s a mistake.
     Man is dead. Man never existed at all. Our awareness as experience is past experience.
     Dreaming.

     
    Man is dead. It’s a world of information. Information in this context refers to regulation
     and control and has nothing to do with meaning, ideas, or data. “Any system is said
     to be able to receive information if when a change occurs the system is capable of
     reactions in such a way as to maintain its own stability.” 4 Information is nothing but an abstraction. As an abstraction it will allow for new
     observations and associations, for discernment of patterns and organization. Note
     that the reference is to a reaction to change. The concern here is only with the reaction,
     the effect. Information is a measure of the effect. This refers to how the control
     center of the organism, the brain, reacts to change in order to maintain continuity.

     
    We are dealing with activity integrated on the neural, the brain level, i.e ., the present. Thus, when discussing information, we are talking about the brain’s
     response in terms of present, direct experience. This response is always effected
     without consent or awareness. There is no choice. There is no information unless there
     is a change. “Information does not exist as information until it is within the higher
     levels of abstraction of each of the minds and computed as such. Up to the point at
     which it becomes perceived as information, it is signals. These signals travel through
     the external reality between the two bodies, and travel as signals within the brain
     substances themselves. Till the complex patterns of traveling neuronal impulses in
     the brain are computed as information within the cerebral cortex, they are not yet
     information. Information is the result of a long series of computations based on data
     signal inputs, data signal transmissions to the brain substance, and recomputations
     of these data.” 5 Information is an abstraction to be used for measuring the communication of pattern,
     order, and neural inhibition.

     
    What is the information from an electric light bulb? No information. What is the information
     from a book? No information. “To speak of a change as giving information implies that
     there is somewhere a receiver able to react appropriately to the change.” 6 Be concerned only with the changes in the operations of the receiver, the brain,
     in terms of the transactional present. Do not confuse information with signals or
     the source of signals. “The mind of the observer-participant is where the information
     is constructed, by and through his own programs, his own rules of perception, his
     own cognitive and logical processes, his own metaprogram of priorities among programs.
     His own vast internal computer constructs information from signals and stored bits
     of signals.” 7 Information is a process. There are no sources of information; there are no linear
     movements of information to the brain.

     
    Information is an abstraction. Information is a measure of effect. Information is
     a concept that allows for relationships not previously possible. Effect deals with
     the construction of information from both incoming signals and bits of signals stored
    

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