Shooting stardust at the moon : time and space died yesterday : prepare for takeoff
Lift up your heads! Erect on the summit of the world, once again we hurl defiance to the stars!....Why should we look back, when what we want is to break down the mysterious doors of the Impossible? Time and Space died yesterday. We already live in the absolute, because we have created eternal, omnipresent speed! ~ The Futurist Manifesto, circa 1909
There’s a quiet revolution happening right now that's about to explode in epically mind-melting proportions. You might have already caught the echoes reverberating back from the future.
The first naked truth about all this I've come to realize: It's not that time speeds up as you get older, it's that time is speeding up exponentially with the expansion of the universe. The expansion of the universe has been scientifically proven, although we don't know how it works or why. How this affects the passage of time, Einstein's mates might help clarify. Suffice it to say the hot blood of evolution courses through our veins....* (more notes below)
The second naked truth: If you look at us from the perspective of that butterfly nebula, we look pretty ridiculous with all our worldly fears and concerns, hurtling through space on this tiny little planet of ours at 86,660 miles per hour in our orbit around the sun.
It's hard to comprehend really. That's why luminous warriors like Gwen Bell, Danielle LaPorte and Ev Bogue exist - to awaken and expand our vision of who we are and where we're going in the world -- to guide us like skillful cosmonauts to the farthest reaches of our potential existence, and back home in time for dinner and a bubble bath.
Today is a big day for the future of us all. And when I say "us" I mean not only our little ever-expanding family of cosmonautic online voyagers -- testing the limits of space and time, pushing the boundaries of the impossible in our own lives, throwing caution to the wind and stardust at the moon. Secretly quickening the evolution of humanity by the skin of our teeth.
In case you missed it, 100 years after the launch of the original futurist movement, two of our shooting stars just annihilated the passage of time and launched into eternity as far as I can see:
Ev Bogue with Augmented Humanity and Gwen Bell with Digital Warriorship
To me the greatest rush of life comes when I'm able to unleash the creative essence of my spirit through writing, art, dancing, creating, entrepreneuring... in that flow the immortal truth gives you wings to fly through time and space and leave your imprint for eternity. We are granted immortality (if only for an indefinable period of time).
If you're at all interested in dance on the edge of existence, attaining immortality and creating an online self that supports your human form, you should probably not go another day without reading either of these books...
Whether you understand why or not at this point I can tell you: I had the honor of reading advance copies of both, and I can clearly say that to my knowledge, without a doubt--
There have not been two more important books released on self-mastery and the interface of human and technological evolution before this moment.
There’s only one condition to my statement, and it’s a little weird, but if you’re considering buying either of these books the experience would not be complete unless you were to have them both, and read them together. Reading one without the other would be like having a martini without the olives, a bed with no sheets, or sex without a partner if that makes any sense...
Gwen and Ev have a strange sort of cyber synergy -- consider them cybernautic twins separated at birth -- the internet brought them back together, as it brought you here now, and the rest is history.
In their cyber-synergy Ev's role is to bring us to the edge of the space-time continuum, seeding direct transferences of cybernetic knowledge into our brains and leading the charge forward, while Gwen rings the bell to bring us back, ground and process the knowledge we've gained through our cosmonautic voyages. The tension between these two opposing and complementary forces can be breathtaking.
Witness, from a piece of Augmented Humanity...
Counterpoint: Gwen from Digital Warriorship...
Bearing witness to your house burning down is not what most of us would choose to bring us back to the present moment. But here's what it does. It asks you to evaluate in an instant: what matters?
What matters? The fire marshall asks it differently: if you're permitted to go back in there, and you may not be, make a list of what you'd want to get out.
High on my list? My Mac. In fact, I yelled to one of my housemates to get the Macs and get out. (I hadn't backed up my computer in a while. But even if I had backed it up, my hard drive was in there, too. Lesson learned.)
Five out of the six laptops made it out. The sixth looked like a burnt apple pie. (Remarkably, they saved everything from the hard drive.)
We realize something when nothing's left of what we own.
We see we’re fully equipped with all that we need now, in the present moment. This very body. This very breath. We’ve got that.
We have friendships and a whole host of intangibles, too. But when you're taking stock of what's left after a plunge experience, what we really sense is how alive the body is. How each breath breathes us. In deep sadness and loss, we witness delight.
We are alive.
Technology, being plugged in each day, can take that what matters edge off. When we sit crunched up on our laptops we close off our diaphragm, decreasing our lung capacity. When we're hunched over our devices we shorten the muscles in our back bodies.
Rather than being breathed, we have to remind ourselves to breathe.
I found Digital Warriorship to be a voyage of transcendant insights into the nature of virtual existence, paired with the humanist, sober guidance of a living zen master...a call to awakened action reverberating back to us from the future evolution of the social web.
Luckily, you don't have to decide which one to buy, since Colin and Justin of the newly re-launched ebookling.com smartly just put together a discounted package combining the two (I won't take the credit for that one, though I might have had some influence... :)). 100% badass. Now go forth and conquer. Mindfully, Artfully, Cosmonautically, Eternally.
Prepare for liftoff...
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Further Reading:
*If my intro statements sounded at all like the ridiculous ravings of an early 20th century futurist...
Technology is accelerating at an exponential rate, along with us humans and the universe itself. Just as dark matter and dark energy are driving the expansion of the universe, I believe it’s also driving the expansion of our minds to build better machines, and the ability for our machines to become smart enough to build even better and more advanced machines.
The evolution of technology is quickening to the point where we will reach an artifial intelligence explosion of sorts, and computers will become smarter than us -- computers of superhuman artificial intelligence. Also known as “the singularity.” Conservative estimates based on the rate of computer technology development put this at mid century or sooner, but only time will tell.
The Singularity: A Philosophical Analysis (Full PDF) - Brilliant and thorough article as published in a peer-reviewed philosophy journal: Chalmers, D. (2010). "The Singularity: A Philosophical Analysis." Journal of Consciousness Studies 17:7-65.
2045: The Year man Becomes Immortal (When Humans, Machines Merge) | TIME (Recent profile on the controversial leader of the Singularity movement, Raymond Kurzweil)
Eyes in space unraveling the mysteries of the heavens -- By ERIC BERGER | HOUSTON CHRONICLE (Fascinating piece on advancements of space monitoring technology and the Accelerating Universe).