Digital consciousness: Emergence of new state of mind

Consciousness is an expression of experience, an expression of your higher grasping and control over life and reality. We say that someone is unconscious in their actions or thoughts, when we cannot find a rational or unreal reference to some of their expressions or natural responses. It can be termed as a complex result derived from the history of experiences, neural behaviors of memory and deep rooted social symbols from racial memory. 

Without a real reason or material connection, new forms of consciousness or unconscious will emerge in the society or individuals. Hence the collection of imprints of digital technology and modes of commodity production are very much reasons for this new forms of consciousness. Consciousness is never complete in a single human being. It is in between people and their social reflections. I am conscious about what people think about myself equally as what I think of myself. Thus our thought processes meet inside each one of us. Will this happen in digital experience as well?

Creative Commons: Fotopedia -  Making of Harry Porter

Digital consciousness is a nice term for this age of digital devices and digitization of experiences. Before you are digitally consciousness, you are naturally digitally unconscious. You will be exhibiting certain unique unconscious responses to digital surroundings and ecosystem. Like any ecosystem, digital realm also will have layers of experiences. digital art, digital signs, digital science, digital philosophy, digital religions, digital fetishism, digital ideology, digital pathology all will be part of this way of life that reflects in this new way of thinking. How is digitization coming to our life in such a big way? It is part of our professional and personal life alike. Workplace intimacy and expertise with digital technologies follow at home. The more we use them in our economic transactions and money making moments, it becomes closer to us. This is quite natural.

Digitization introduces a lot of layers and hierarchies of experiences. We bank on technology to pierce through these layers to reach out to more people virtually. Then these layers will become natural parts of our digital persona and virtual life. These virtual networks offer huge amount of 'life casting' to attract our interests. Digitization has huge capability to create a virtual layer that imitates you and amplify your like and dislikes. This reflexive capacity of digital medium can induces a hyper level of narcissism in our ego. It can override your balanced state of mind in great scales. 

CreativeCommons: Fotopedia: MessagePad

When we deal with digital experience, their is a certain amount of abstraction and condensation in this mode as opposed to analog expediences. It is always in beta. Data is never in final form. It continuously evolves with the digital interfaces. Thus human mind fails to a certain extent to generate a final reasoning or conclusion about digital moments. When we experience anything our mind works on both reality principle and pleasure principle. Digital experiences provides a digital layer that directly interact with human to create a satisfaction in both real terms and pleasure. Thus human mind continues to explore digital experience. 

When we take mind and body together and weigh the influence of digitization, it may seem that the mind is the most affected by it. Though mind may be the larger part of this engagement, our senses and active body organs also are part of this experience. When digitization enriches mobile technology, it becomes part of every moment of our conscious life as well. 

When you become digitally conscious, you affinity to devices and miniature details of life continues to increase and your mind will struggle with meta-narratives in every kinds of experience, be it politics or poetic, be it love or distastes. We are getting more details than we can comprehend in the capacity of human cognition for a moment of experience. It also alters the scales of space and time in the digital information communication and experiences. Thus building a perspective in digital experience becomes increasingly difficult. The moment our mind realizes this, it may either go into addiction or aggression. 

If we can treat digital experience as normal as real experience, this layer of hyper reaction and ideological affinity can be controlled. As we know, a mirror is always a mirror, irrespective of how much you like your reflections !

When humans dream of Algebra, nature crafts our Geometry!

A Collection of thoughts on Mathematical Languages:

Natural Reflections on Algebra & Geometry

This post is inspired by an intriguing thought that disturbs me often when I try to relate the beauty of algebraic notions and their syntactical complexities with the physical dimensions and measures of geometric nature. Geometrical shapes of vivid complexity is all over us. Algebraic knowledge becomes richer and deeper day by day. 

At the outset, algebra appears to me as the attempts of human mind to find an order within the physical and its own humane cognitive nature. Hence at times algebra becomes associative and at times abstract. Geometry is mostly occupied with unique physical operators for measuring nature and natural objects. As human mind and its boundless imagination works in both the streams of knowledge, they always explore anew territories and often produce complex functions and abstractions. Humankind crafts nature in their own reflection. 

As we know, our innate tendency to imitate nature has been one of the fundamental driving force in all our scientific, artistic and engineering initiatives. This tendency gets transformed into further advanced forms of knowledge as we apply our reflections of nature into our labor process. This tendency can be seen in the mathematical languages as well. Our mathematical observations about geometry has helped our investigations to find patterns in the field of numbers and algebraic symbols. Is there a difference in the nature of measurement in Algebra and Geometry? Though the approach remains the same the challenges differ widely.

Some metric level contradictions in the nature of Algebra and Geometry

I was always perplexed about the physical differences between various elementary mathematical operators like addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. When I add entities of different properties, the sum never accumulates in nature. It occupies a physical space less than or equal to the nature of individual entities. 

Taking an example, if we add one mango and an orange in a physical box they take space as equal to their physical dimensions. In the representational mathematical space also they occupy distinct locations. When we take two mangoes here they occupy same space in the physical box whereas they add on to the same quantity in the representational space. 

The question is whether the mathematical symbolic space is as accurate as the physical geometrical space. For convenience we may denote this representational space as algebraic. The algebraic space is often limited by the limits of our abstractions and the capacity to associate them whereas the geometric space is challenged by the scope of observation and the limits on the minutest quantum that we can reach. 

Numbers are the base constructs of the symbolic space. They become complex when the physical world in the scope becomes wider and deeper. We think of complex numbers and complex plane when we reach a limit to measuring the diagonal of a triangle made of single unit edges. Then the new symbol enters our mathematical vocabulary. This is just an example. Similarly when we think of trigonometric measurements, we find new sinusoidal and cosine patterns emerging in symbolic space. It is a new synthesis of physical and symbolic space.

Next question is can symbolic space travel ahead of the physical space. In other words, can we dream a physical entity before experiencing its real physical nature. I must say that at times yes. It is not magic or miracle. It is because of the intellectual capacities of human cognition and the power of knowledge to expand the horizons of our recognition. Each strides in the cognitive skills of human mind and our social experiences enrich our mathematical languages, whether they reflect our knowledge about symbolic space or physical space. 

Nature of Evolution : A Note on the boundaries of Darwinism

Self Similarity of Cognition

Self Similarity of Cognition

Do we perceive the grand nature as a reflection of our innate self? This question may sound philosophical at large. To make it clear, let me frame the question as: how do I conclude that the society is evolving? Are we comparing the history of life with our present achievements? When we examine the organs, bones, muscles, movement patterns, anatomy, cell structures in context of evolution, we tend to compare them with human specific configurations. Is this model quite subjective? May be it is true that this reflexive element is an inevitable aspect of experiments. My point of view is not towards attributing subjectivity to the methodology of observation-ism in scientific experiments. 

Rather, I see an aspect and a drive for self-similarity in many of the human cognitive activities. Going further, this self-similarity seems to be driven from an innate instinct of nature itself. Our cognitive mind is essentially seeking self-similarity in all the material objects of life. Even its cognitive processes are affected / influenced by this instinct. Our art works, aesthetics, and our artistic creations are many at times influenced by nature. We see mimicking nature a prelude to many original creations. Even highly original engineering and aesthetic works are inspired and driven by nature. This all suggest an inclination towards self similarity in our cognitive mind. This self similarity at times makes measurement of our experiences highly subjective. Thus a metric for self similarity is worth a mathematical pursuit.

+Gokul Alex