Bruce Eisner's Vision Thing

Vencice West Beat Photo Collection

I discovered a collection of photos titled "Venice West Picture Essay a photo chronicle of the beat generation in Venice west, California circa 1958… from the out-of-print the holy barbarians by Lawrence Lipton" while checking on the Island Web listing on DMOZ. We are listed as Society > Subcultures > Hippie which never fails to make me smile but I suppose is at least partly correct.

The black and white photographs in this collection are awesome, a time tunnel back half a century into beat Venice, California.

Psyche's Links: Weblogs

I've seen "Psyche"s Links: Esoteric Subjects on the Web" before in my net wanderings, I found the site again and it has added a section: "Psyche's Links: Weblogs/Blogs."

So I began exploring the links. Here is the challenge to my readers. Explain why these particular links are "esoteric." The rest of the site excels at esoterica but ... why these links?

Transtopia seeking the place beyond

 

I've talked about Transtopia before. I don't know quite what to make of it. There seems to be some synchronicities between Island Foundation and the Transtopians., especially with the embrace of new ideas with the hope of creating a better culture and the idea of developing an experimental culture on an island micronation. What is "transtopian." Here is how they define the term:

Trans: 1.Across; on the other side; beyond (2.Through. 3.Change; transfer ). Topia: from the Greek word "topos", meaning "place". Hence, Transtopia is the "place beyond" (or "beyondplace"); the realm of the Posthumans. Of course, Transtopia can also be seen as a contraction of Transhuman(ism) and Utopia. In either case it refers to a state or place which is (near-)perfect; a technological, virtual paradise where we ourselves are the gods. Transtopia represents literally unimaginable knowledge, power, and pleasure -- infinite existence under the best possible conditions. It is the ancient dream of heaven and immortality, which, thanks to accelerating scientific and technological progress, may finally be within our reach.

In a more mundane sense, "Transtopia" is/will be the name of the autonomous island/ship-based Transhumanist community which might be set up as an intermediate step towards technological ascension. Last but not least it is the name of this website (transtopia.org), and it is in this context that it's most widely used.

The site has been revised and updated a bit. I'll dig a little deeper and I know some of the readers of this blog might want to explore it more as well.

Immortality in Twenty Years?

Future Hi's post Immortality in 20 Years has sparked a lively debate. It is about a new book, Fantastic Voyage:  Live Long Enough to Live Forever

Future Hi says about the book, "It explains how advances in genomics, biotechnology, and nanotechnology have brought the possibility of immortality within our grasp.." The post also points to the two authors, Ray Kurzweil and Terry Grossman MD Fantastic Voyage website

As I said at the beginning, the post has seen a back-and-forth between pro and anti longevity readers of Future Hi and makes an interesting read.

Mambo Means Content Managment Open Source Style

According the MamboServer.Com website, Mambo is: " ... one of the most powerful Open Source Content Management Systems on the planet. It is used all over the world for everything from simple websites to complex corporate applications. Mambo is easy to install, simple to manage, and reliable. "

I tried out the admin system on their demo site and was very impressed. The most interesting feature is the ability to add RSS streams right onto your website.

The Consuming Experience features a complete guide to Technorati Tags

The Consuming Experience features a complete guide to Technorati Tags called "Technorati tags: an introduction." This is well worth a visit.

"Psychedelic medicine: Mind bending, health giving" in The New Scientist

The February 26th (my birthday) issue of the New Scientist features  "Psychedelic medicine: Mind bending, health giving" by John Hogan. Here is an expert from the beginning of the article:

JOHN HALPERN clearly remembers what made him change his mind about psychedelic drugs. It was the early 1990s and the young medical student at a hospital in Brooklyn, New York, was getting frustrated that he could not do more to help the alcoholics and addicts in his care. He sounded off to an older psychiatrist, who mentioned that LSD and related drugs had once been considered promising treatments for addiction. "I was so fascinated that I did all this research," Halpern recalls. "I was reading all these papers from the 60s and going, whoa, wait a minute! How come nobodies talking about this?"

More than a decade later, Halpern is now an associate director of substance abuse research at Harvard University's McLean Hospital and is at the forefront of a revival of research into psychedelic medicine. He recently received approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to give late-stage cancer patients the psychedelic drug MDMA, also known as ecstasy. He is also laying the groundwork for testing LSD as a treatment for dreaded super-migraines known as cluster headaches. Read the rest.

This comes by way of MC who does the Ivory Lab blog.

Boozy Suzy's Art

I have not had a chance to post much lately so here is a bit of art from Bristol, England by a young woman named Boozy Suzy. She wrote in an email to me:

"I saw you wanted to know what psychedelic experience mean to us last night in Bath in Mac Donald's. This is an attempt "Breadheads" at blotter art I have nine others. The big issue picture is from a line drawing in the big issue homeless newspaper Looks like a modern local lad. Both paintings are 80cms by 100cms. I am an artist with another onehundred and fifty pics most on this theme and Stonehenge. Many this size, many from imagination like "breadheads". Thanks for your web site it is my favorite site on the web. I live in Bristol England near Glastonbury and have had a comment posted on Erowid Vaults."

There were two images with the email. I was a bit nervous about opening them but after a quick virus scan proved that to be a bit of paranoia, I liked the art. I am posting one of the two which is titled "breadheads."

Who Turned On Whom In The High Times Reader

Back in October 1977, Peter Stafford and I published an article in a new magazine which had grown to a half-million circulation within two years of the publication of its first issue. The magazine was called High Times and the piece titled "Who Turned on Whom: From Albert Hofmann to You -- How Western Culture Turned on, One Head at a Time." If you think the title is a bit wordy, try biting into the first densely written paragraph:

"LSD creates in its takers a sort of instant messianism, an urge to turn on friends, relatives, acquaintance and even perfect strangers. Marijuana too is a sort of friendship ambassador from the vegetable kingdom, suggesting to us that we declare peace on the world. And during the Forties and Fifties, as acid and grass slowly spread from among an enlightened few to an electrified many, the genealogy of turn ons began to read like a Who's Who in the scientific, political and cultural worlds. There were artists and writers like Aldous Huxley, Jack Kerouac, Ken Kesey, Salvador Dali and R. Crumb, actors like Robert Mitchum, James Coburn, Cary Grant, Peter Fonda and James Caradine, scientists such as Stanislov Grof, John Lilly, Claudio Naranjo and Albert Hofmann, Media moguls Walt Disney and Henry Luce, top political figures John and Robert Kennedy. All took the magical mystery tour and returned to pick up their friends."

HIgh Times has just published The High Times Reader an anthology of the best  writing from it's first 30 years --  (has it been that long) 
and they picked the article for publication. Peter and I are in good company as the book features Terry Southern, William Burroughs Timothy Leary, Norman Mailer, Andy Warhol, Hunter Thomson and more. I must be ready to be stuffed and put in a museum.

Anyway, you can buy the book and read the article here.

At OpenWares.Org Software Is Free

A young enterprising software developer can break into the big-time at OpenWares.Org. They offer free hosting and email as well as listing on CNet.Com downloads for any programmers project as long as it is provided for free and has a useful public purpose. There is not much free software up there yet but with a deal like that, I expect to see a lot before long.

Ecstasy trials for combat stress

In the Guardian, Ecstasy trials for combat stress by David Adam, science correspondent. Here is an excerpt:

American soldiers traumatized by fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan are to be offered the drug ecstasy to help free them of flashbacks and recurring nightmares

The US food and drug administration has given the go-ahead for the soldiers to be included in an experiment to see if MDMA, the active ingredient in ecstasy, can treat post-traumatic stress disorder. Scientists behind the trial in South Carolina think the feelings of emotional closeness reported by those taking the drug could help the soldiers talk about their experiences to therapists. Several victims of rape and sexual abuse with post-traumatic stress disorder, for whom existing treatments are ineffective, have been given MDMA since the research began last year.

Michael Mithoefer, the psychiatrist leading the trial, said: "It's looking very promising. It's too early to draw any conclusions but in these treatment-resistant people so far the results are encouraging. People are able to connect more deeply on an emotional level with the fact they are safe now. Read more

I always knew that stuff was good for something. This by way of FutureHi.

Transgenic Bunny Rabbit of the Universal Mind by RU Sirius on the New Neofiles

"Transgenic Bunny Rabbit of the Universal Mind" is the latest missive on Neofiles from Ken Goffman aka RU Sirius. Here is an excerpt from the introduction:

"Start the universe with a few rules. Watch it iterate and accumulate complexity over billions of years. Add in some nanotechnology, robotics, and super-chemistry. Now, take the transgenic bunny rabbit and put it in Professor Schrödinger’s box. Wait several decades … stirring frequently. If things work out, you will have a perfectly divine singularity … to serve up to family and guests. If not, you will have an entertaining read, to be savored until we issue again."

With writing like that, Ken is sure to win some kind of prize. Fortunately he saves the day with an excellent interview with Global Brain author Howard Bloom "No Gene is an Island." Of course some of the members of Island Foundation might disagree with that.

When I Die, I Want To Go Up To That Google in the Sky

In Wired this morning, I read the piece "Immortality Through Google" which is a little less far-out than it sounds. The article is mainly about artists designing their own burial urns and a kind of "artistic" website called "The Ego Machine."

But the title stimulated the memory of an afternoon fifteen years ago. Timothy Leary called me from Los Angeles (I lived in Santa Cruz, California at the time). He had just read a piece in the New Yorker about about a scientist named Hans Morovac. "No Loyalty to DNA" by Brad Letha's. Mora vac was publicizing his new (at that time) book Mind Children. Timothy was excited about the piece because Morovac, an MIT scientist introduced a new concept which came to be called "mind uploading." Here is an excerpt from the New Yorker article:

Isn't it only a matter of time, Moravec asks, before we can transfer, or "download," our minds into computers? Copies could then be made of copies and stored in separate, secure places, not all of them on the earth -- a procedure that would virtually insure our immortality. He foresees a number of ways in which downloading might take place. A person could wear each day a miniaturized observational device, whose data, compiled over years and years, would serve as the memory bank of a new intellect. Or you might enter the hospital for brain surgery to be performed by a robot whose hands are microscopically precise and whose command of speech allows the two of you to proceed collaboratively. Since the brain registers no pain when it is subjected to incision, you could be fully conscious during the entire operation. Equipped with an encyclopedic understanding of human neural architecture, and proceeding millimeter by millimeter, the robot surgeon would develop a program that would model the behavior of a discrete layer of brain tissue. This program would produce signals equivalent to those flashing among the neurons in the area under scrutiny, and a series of cables would allow the robot to create "simulations," in which the program is substituted for the layer of brain tissue. The simulation process would be analogous to what's now available in sophisticated audio shops, where a customer can test and compare components at the push of a button and without breaking the flow of the music.

In the book, Morovac explains that the best kind of robot to do this kind of brain-picking would be one with thousands of arms, each one perhaps plucking the information in a single neuron.

The idea of "spidering" the brain has at least a semantic resemblance to the Google "spidering" the web.

From the early days of the web, there has been a page a Mind Uploading Page Since that time, others have picked up on the theme with one of the best on Foresight Institute site, "Mind Uploading
compiled by Robert A. Freitas Jr."

The idea of achieving some kind of immortality beyond this body sounds like a good idea but having my brain plucked apart by a robot spider has always left me somewhat ambivalent. My feelings about these prospects could be summed up by a well-known remark made by comic Woody Allen.

Allen reflecing on one of his two favorite topics said: "I am not afraid of death, I just don't want to be there when it happens."

Can This Black Box See Into the Future?

 

"Can This Black Box See Into the Future?" on RedNova.Com is a story that has been at the top of the blog charts the last day or so.  The story is about an accentual discovery while studying whether the collective vibes of people can influence random number generators. Groups of mediaters influenced the sequence of numbers from the generator to produce unusual patterns.

But the story does not end there. The accidental discovery was that just before significant world-wide events ... but I won't give the story away. You can read it here. Afterwards you can visit the Global Consciousness Project and learn about the people behind the black box.

BloggingDemo.Com News Feed from Demo 15 Cuting Edge Technology Conference

BloggingDemo.com features all the news from the Demo 15 Conference. This  came by way of the Socialsoftwareweblog.

PC Magazine also has extensive coverage of the event.

Listen to Your Favorite Blogs on Your iPod with Free iPodder Software

The iPodder pictured above allows you to find and add subscriptions for weblogs that have streaming audio content feeds. It also downloads them as MP3s on your PC or Mac. You can even put them in your iPod and take your favorite streaming content on the road. And the price is right, its free!

Now if only I had streaming on Vision Thing. Hmmm ...

This came by way of a positive review of the software in PC Magazine, "iPodder 1.1" by By Troy Dreier.

Remembering Brion Gysin

According to Fusion Anomaly --  Brion Gysin:

Brion Gysin is regarded as one of the most influential and visionary of living poets and painters. In 1958, a chance encounter with William Burroughs on the Place St. Michel in Paris resulted in him moving into the famous Beat Hotel at no. 9 rue Git le Coeur in the Latin Quarter. He confided to Burroughs his inventions, the Cut-ups and Permutations, and thus began the most important collaboration in modern literature.

Gyson also made something called the dream machine , its use discussed on New World Disorder  by Jan Braun. There is a tribute site where you can find out more about this fascinating man.

 

Chris Hume "Red State Road Trip" On Truthout

Note: All of the links on this post have changed. It is extremely popular. You can visit the Red State Road Trip at this link

Bill Rose from Toronto called tonight to tell me about a ten part streaming video series on Truthout.Org called Chris Hume "Red State Road Trip."You can view the video here (be sure to go to the bottom of the screen and click on number one to start the first of the ten short clips. To preview them without going to truthout here is quicktime no 1  or windows media no 1.

Paul Krassner on the 1994 Pentagon Program to Develop Aphrodisiac "Sex Bombs"

Paul Krassner, the "Zen Bastard" of Alternative Journalism writes on "Sex Bombs." in the New York Press newspaperr. Here an expert from the beginning of the article:

Declassified documents reveal that the Pentagon spent six years and $11 million to develop an aphrodisiac chemical weapon in 1994. This "sex bomb" would make enemy soldiers irresistible to each other. The weapon's developers said that widespread homosexual behavior among troops would deal a "distasteful but completely non-lethal" blow to morale.

From there, the tale gets even taller!

PaidContent.org on the economics of the web

PaidContent.Org is a news site covering the business of digital media and content.

Introducing The Hot New Cell Processor from IBM, Sony and Toshiba

Introducing the IBM/Sony/Toshiba Cell Processo by Jon "Hannibal" Stokes on ARSTechnica.Com  introduces a hot  "the Cell" a hot new processor from the IBM. The article describes what is not just a computer on a chip but rather a network on a chip. There is some ponderings about whether Apple will use the chip, with Stokes concluding probably not.

Life With Alacrity: Dunbar Triage: Too Many Connections

I read "Life With Alacrity: Dunbar Triage: Too Many Connections" a couple of days ago and then today, someone who I had asked to be a friend on MySpace emailed me and asked me how I was doing. My instant response was to ask him if we had ever met.  He said no. He pointed out that I had asked him to be friends rather than the other

way around. I suppose I asked him that because I was used to adding people or people adding me, maybe having on exchange of emails and then seeing their face among a sea of people, most of them who I have never met and most likely never will.

Social Networks as a new phenomenon a couple of years ago lead many people including myself to compulsively add friends without thinking if we could handle contact with that many people.

The bottom line on all this of course is that if you make one good friend off the net, then it makes it all worthwhile.

Really Leary? Why Not!

My friend Will Penna sent me a link this morning a to Really Leary. Just seeing the Leary name put a smile on my face over seven years after his passing. According to the play, we have a second act to look forward to. Here is an exerpt from a message from the play's producer that came in the email (first posted on Tribe.Net's Psychonaut Group:

Greetings. I am the guy that wrote Really Leary. We just finished our debut run here in Gainesville, Florida. It was an incredible success. Sold out shows, standing ovations and the most fun I have ever had (I was also playing guitar in the band). RL is a completely ridiculous plot with broad caricature characters, including, of course, the head of Timothy Leary and the recently thawed cryo-corpse of Walt Disney. As the final (for now) development in the charmed life of this play, Tim Leary's grandson attended the closing (and best) show. On Tuesday, Feb 15, we've been invited to do a reading of the play off-Broadway, at the York Theatre Company at St. Peter's in NYC (Lexington and 54th). Bob McPeek

I hope they do the play. The site is pretty funny.

Bt bot-- The Torrent Search Engine

Btbot: The Bittorrent Search Engine is one of the most popular links on del.icio.us. If found out why when I did some searches with it.

New Brainvoyager Software Let's You See What's Going on in Your Head

It used to be that the only way you could get even a remote idea about activities inside our heads was though brainwave biofeedback. Here is what a new company, Brain Innovatoins BV says about its new Brainvoyager brain imaging software for the PC or Mac:

Brain Innovation B.V. is developing scientific software in the field of human and animal brain imaging, neural network simulation and computer-based experimental control software. Our current major product, BrainVoyager 2000, is a commercially available neuroimaging tool, which is used in hundreds of labs across the planet. BrainVoyager QX is an upcoming cross-platform solution running on all major operating systems including Windows, Linux/Unix and Mac OS X. Turbo-BrainVoyager is an easy to use program for real-time data analysis, which allows to observe a subject's or patient's brain activity during a functional MRI scanning session. We also provide free software products for learning about brain areas as well as for inspecting neuroimaging data files. If you are interested in our neural network simulator " Neurolator ", please send us an email. The powerful stimulation software " StimulDX " is based on Microsofts DirectX API and will be available for free (open source) in the near future. For more information about our products, please follow the links below.

Maybe the company will give me some of their software to try out for my Ph.D. dissertation. Hey that's an idea!

Dialog with Ken Goffman & Tom Frank about Counterculture on RAWStory

RAWStory features a dialog between Ken Goffman (AKA RU Sirius) who just released a new book, Counterculture Through the Ages  and Tom Frank, author of What’s the Matter with Kansas? Gofmann emailed me today and told me that "Tom Frank in Conversation with Ken Goffman aka RU Sirius", for Raw Story is the first in a series of conversations on counterculture, commodification and social change scheduled for publication on "the new liberal website" RAWStory today. This one is with Tom Frank, author of “What’s the Matter with Kansas” and “The Conquest of Cool.” Next week will feature a conversation with Joseph Heath, author of “Nation of Rebels: How Counterculture Became Commodity Culture” and the final one will be with Douglas Rushkoff. Here is a brief excerpt from the article:

Frank’s critique (in What's the Matter with Kansas) of countercultural rebellion as a phenomenon easily transformed into a titillating, attractive, libertine whore for big business traces back, at least, to an earlier book, The Conquest of Cool in which Frank argues that American businesses felt stultified by the conformism of the American fifties. He argued that they needed a more expansive, experimental, individualistic consumer base that would be motivated by the frequent changes in what’s hip and who would desire a wider variety of products. Through advertising and mainstream media, the business world amplified the rebellious message of sixties youth counterculture, encouraging consumers to “join the Dodge rebellion” and “live for today.” Interestingly, while I interpreted Frank’s stance as counterculture-negative, he exhibits a more nuanced view in this conversation.

In the recent non-fiction book Counterculture Through the Ages: From Abraham to Acid House, Dan Joy and I reinterpreted counterculture as a perennial historical phenomenon that has powerfully influenced human culture. The book traces the counterculture spirit back, in historical time, to the Socratics in the West and the Taoists in the East.

Our book values authentic non-conformism, dissent, freethinking, and those who have upset traditional values throughout human history. We see most human progress, invention, creativity, and pleasure coming from general countercultural principles that are traceable throughout recorded history. How these qualities play out in the worlds of business and politics is, in some ways, beside the point, at least so far as this particular book is concerned. Read More

I'm enjoying reading Gofmann's new book (I read slowly when type is NOT on the screen with my middle age eyes) and will have some comments on all this when I finish it. (The graphic for this post is courtesy of Tripzine.Com)

Future Hi Features Audio Presentations by Albert Hofmann, Huston Smith, Joesph Campbell, Terence Kenna, Marilyn Ferguson and More

Future Hi's Paul Huges emailed me yesterday to tell me that his site is now featuring a set of new audio presentations Albert Hoffman, Houston Smith, Joseph Campbell, Marilyn Ferguson,and Terrence Mckenna. There wee made mostly during the 1980's (with a few from the 1970's) and come by way of the Ojai Foundation, and its ex-program director Stephen Aichele.

As it always seems to do, Future Hi is keeping psychedelic futurism alive during these days at the dark dawn of the Third Millennium.

UCLA Bruin Features MDMA Research of Dr. Charles Groeb

The Daily Bruin features a story 'Psychedelic research: UCLA doctor studies drug’s potential ability to ease anxiety in terminally ill patients" by Menaka Fernando. According to the story, Grobis currently conducting a study of the effects of psilocybin (the chemical found in "magic mushrooms") on terminally ill cancer patients.

Online Social Networks 2005 Conference Set to Be Held in Cyberspace

Like the online social networks which are its focus, the OSN 2005 conference eschews brick and mortar conference halls for less expensive virtual digs. So in order to attend, you simply log in. You can even enjoy a virtual expresso with social network butterflies such as Joi Ito and conference keynoter Howard Reingold.

Entheogen Enthusiasts Mind States Conference Moves to San Fransisco

The Mind States Conference has finally moved out of its cramped quarters at in Berkeley to the Palace of Fine Arts in San Fransisco. Among those presenting during the event to be held May 27-29 include Rick Doblin, Charles S. Grob, Mark Peace, Susan Blackmoore, Sylvia Thyssen, Paul Stammets, Charles Hayes and many more.

Looks like a fun event!

Make Way Kinsey -- It's The Global Sex Survey!

The Durex Global Sex Survey continues the tradition of Kinsey. One thing that the poll makes clear to me is that almost everyone is having sex more than I am. One blogger has conducted their own poll they call the LJ Sex Survey Meme 2005. Both of these by way of BlogPulse Top Links.

Thinking About Thought: Consciousness, Life and Meaning

I've been reading about Socrates in Counterculture Through The Ages by Sirius and Joy. It was obviously influenced by Timothy Leary and his saying, Think for Yourself, Question Authority.

There is quite a bit to the idea of thinking for yourself and questioning things. Most people don't do it. So it was refreshing to see some thinking on the subject of consciousness titled "Consciousness: The Factory Of Illusions" by Pero Scaruffi.

Here is an excerpt which asks some important questions:

What is consciousness? What is it to be aware? The more we think, the less we can define it. How does it happen? How does something in the brain (it is in the brain, isn't it?) lead to our emotions, feelings and thoughts? And why does it happen? Why were humans (and presumably to some extent many animals) endowed with consciousness, with the ability to know that they exist, that they live, that other people live, that they are part of this universe and that they will die? read more

This comes by way of bird on the moon who usually has some good stuff.

Higher being: Can legalizing drugs bring us closer to God?

While going through my bookmark collection for del.icio.us filing, I found an four year old essay titled "Higher Being: Can legalizing drugs bring us closer to God?" By Katharine Mieszkowski. The subject  of the essay is Huston Smith who has written extensively on the psychology of religion. Recently, he has returned to a topic near and dear to his heart, the psychedelics. Here is a selection of books Huston Smith has written.

UIWeb.Com offers essays on web design interaction usability experience architecture and more

UIWeb.Com offers essays on web design interaction usability experience architecture and more. Lots of ideas for people involved with the web and software development.

Language is a Virus at Viral-Meme.Info

William Burroughs said that "Language is a Virus" and at Viral-Meme.Info, he is probably right. This morning while examining the results of a query "link:bruceeisner.com" on the freshly launched MSN Search, I found a link (among the over 500 incoming to this site) titled "Tagged: Memetics | viral-meme.info" and subtitled "... http://del.icio.us/tag/memetics" with a whole lot more I'm leaving out.

I've been positing a lot to del.icio.us because I have a collection of web links that spans my ten years on the Web and want to put them somewhere where they will not get lost. So that explains some of the this.

The page referenced is a "news aggregator" page on Viral-Meme.Info that apparently uses tags somehow in its aggregating. It somehow managed to translate my "memes and media" category to memetics. Someone needs to explain all of this to me. It must have posted to the aggregator during the last post I made which was to Memes.Org. Somehow there is also a connection between Viral-Meme.Info and Memes.Org I think. Anyone know?

Get a great deal on a new or used meme

Memes.org :: Memes are Mind Viruses. presents us with a good selection of memes, past present and even some possibly in the future.