Even in this Apple-esque, highly-dramatic presentation of Canada’s new anti-counterfeiting technology can we see the unfolding of the evolution of technology, what I like to call extropy: It is seen in the accumulation of techniques and tools used to create novel products and services, to build something new and improved.

Even in these plastic bills can we see the increasing complexity of technological life, greater levels of complexity and information density. How many different safeguards do these new bills include? How many times is the number 100 written, in how many different fonts and directions?

I am not one to say what the future holds, but could future versions be made of carbon nanotubes, indestructible, spliced with some wild combination of maple-leaf DNA to lend it a deeper, more natural red color, or maybe a unique new leafy texture? Who knows? The specifics are yet to be determined, but the point is that the driving force for change and innovation is there, now built into our society. As an example, compare this new bill with Canada’s first few iterations to taste the unrelenting push of progress, the inertia of extropy (after the jump)…

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Key Ideas from This Talk:

• No man is an island; we’re all ‘born in funk’ and we all will ‘die in the funk’.
• Denial, dodging, and dismissal of death, maximum distraction and “deodorized” discourse.
• Learning to die, through/with Philosophy, as a means to real growth.
• A more just society requires more critical, courageous thinkers that can even give up their dogmas when necessary.
• Holding opposing ideas simultaneously in our head, and yet still continuing to function, e.g. the U.S. as both a Noble Experiment in Democracy and an Ignoble Experiment in Empire.

If only I could type it in a crisper way than this
to spell out why I try and play
a buffer-role and sit
guessing at the aspirations,
how to curb chance-machinations
of our absurd, undeterred techno-globalization.

This age for cheap is offering
to keep open the gate
the flood of infotainment
acting less like food than bait
only certain spaces in which we can feed and wait.

A storm gathers just off horizon
its soundless thunder rumbles
its dark clouds heavy glint of gold,
but what rocks it holds would care
to serenely come and tumble down
on heads that do not glance around?
From this we will need shelter or at least a wary mind…

So it is that I and accompanying allies strain and scrutinize,
future-wise puzzle-piecing new maps to help us navigate a world
brimming full of bullshit and apparently-free crap.
A legacy we hope to leave
(my part albeit incomplete)
to guide those unborn future flocks of man and
the info-shocked, sadly-vision-blocked souls living
who may yet know to use discretion sometimes
in keeping open for too long their minds for just a dime.

All of us, don’t we need sound notification on the nature of
our own bloating meta-predatorary creation?
It seems something is waiting to snatch up idle ripe minds
to be its bio-platforms, do its ghostly calculations,
become its meme-arrays and unknowing-slaves…
The risk is if we end up biting every byte we see
(we think this data-lunch is free)
effectively lambs feeding from its trap we will be!

Digitally-versed, the buffers’ and shepherds’ work
is to clear a path wide enough for sheep to skirt temptation,
to keep them away from the ever-swelling impulse-inertia,
their desire for satiation
that leads them to trough in underheated isolated chambers
from which all but pre-made thought can escape un-rearranged.

Beware these rains inside will fall
black stones straight through the roof,
and the sheep who do not hear the call,
those too media-jacked-in and enthralled,
will be submerged and drown aloof.

Tel-Aviv University
www.quantumlevitation.com/levitation/The_physics.html