@T: ALWAYS THE TWAIN

Apparently there are going to be experiments running on Twitter this week to test the “wisdom of crowds” theory and whether we have psychic abilities:

* http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/technology/twitter/5415852/Twitters-psychic-experiment.html

* https://twitter.com/RichardWiseman

Ordinarily, I’m disinterested in Twitter; it encourages ADHD = not mentally productive, is equivalent to scribbling graffiti whereas I like reading, cogitating and writing reams that stimulate my brain cells to discern and connect the sense from those reams, and I also don’t have the narcissism or insecurity requisite to adopt a “Please love, applaud and validate me / my ego / my id / my super-id and my 140 character updates about what I’m doing RIGHT……NOW!” and spam millions of followers with that status snippet every other minute.

It’s not only a case of “too much information and noise” but a concern about “information disjoint.” With blog posts, we can anchor our themes and then explore tangents that ultimately loop back to those themes. With tweets, there’s rapid-fire of randomness and surface links which may foster incoherent and unstructured thought paths and orientate our brains to lose its natural sense of logical deduction, cogent connectivity or reductivistic capability.

Nevertheless, this particular experiment does interest me for three reasons:

(1.) It’s in collaboration with the New Scientist and I know the online editor of New Scientist — having worked with him 12 years ago.

(2.) It’s got a PURPOSE (academic analysis on psychic interactivity) rather than asking me to be passive and consume some update about someone’s (maybe uninteresting) life and whether they fed their cat/dog this morning and ate cereal / toast / an apple for breakfast in a micro-blog “Big Brother, This Is My Life” way.

The test should produce some insights into the extensibility and applicability of Twitter other than as status update provider. It may show Twitter as an instantaneous information harvester on a substantial scale, which would be helpful for advertising / PR / marketing firms.

(3.) There are as-yet inexplicable phenomena (like premonitions, déjà vu and how different people can have the same visions of fashion trends etc., independently of each other) that are quite interesting.

I do tend to be skeptical about social media-induced tests because that’s what a natural sciences background develops in a person: if something isn’t consistently observable or conceptually provable under scientific conditions, then its existence is questionable — even if a million people say it is so and they feel it is so. A million people saying there must be aliens does not make it true….(yet).

This science training probably explains why I’m less susceptible to social hype and marketing psychology than other people. My motivations are oriented from objectivity, purpose and need to-do’s rather than the type of sheep/lemming-like mimetic desires postulated by Réne Girard:

* http://www.cottet.org/girard/desir1.en.htm

* http://french-italian.stanford.edu/opinions/girard.html

I’m also not one of those people who get all excited about Area 51, the paranormal or charlatans who charge US$30 to read your palms / the tea leaves / Tarot cards / scrunched up napkins and offer the same garble to you as everyone else: “You will meet a tall, dark, handsome stranger…………….I sense a move somewhere………..And there’s someone close to you who’s going to affect your life in a big way…..etc.”

However, I am interested in how the brain works, perception variances and simulations of collective recognition which may be anticipatory / predictive / psychic, so this Twitter experiment may contribute to discovering something new in that area:

* http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/technology/twitter/5415852/Twitters-psychic-experiment.html

* https://twitter.com/RichardWiseman

As a side note, I may also try to follow some of these 25 media folks on Twitter as recommended by Advertising Age:

· http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=136967

However, it’s unlikely I’ll become a fully-fledged Twitter convertee since it’s only a glorified real-time IM without the ability to attach documents, edit-in-place or wiki drag+drop SVG content which means that it’s not very technologically visionary or conducive to full-scale and meaningful collaboration, imo.

Incidentally, NO, even if Twitter does contribute to providing evidence of the “wisdom of crowds” this does not mean Twitter is the beginnings of the Global Brain.

Something like what QWAQ (the Squeak metaverse brainchild of Alan Kay, David Smith and co) or hybridizing Google Finance with Google Knol, Google Wave, Google Earth and Google Draw would be closer to the Global Brain. Alan Kay is a bona fide genius and so are the people behind Google, so if we were to test psychic phenomena properly (e.g., the predictive nature of technology vision) they should definitely be included!

PREMONITIONS + ME

There are well-known stories about the power of dreams and how various famous scientists were inspired in their dreams towards their discoveries — such as Mendelev and the Periodic Table:

* http://www.amazon.com/Mendeleyevs-Dream-Elements-Paul-Strathern/dp/0312262043

* http://www.springerlink.com/content/q6r2450w44632192/

In my case, I’ve had vivid, stark and near real life dreams ever since childhood. Some of those dreams might be considered “pre-cognitive” or premonitory whilst others surface whatever subconscious anxieties and aspirations I’ve accumulated during everyday existence and transposed into my sleep experiences. Notably, as adults, we’re socially conditioned to control / hone / subjugate certain aspects of our mental faculties to appear more mature, sensible, regular and responsible — which can actually result in us losing the openness, wonder, creativity and imagination that we had as children.

Personally, I believe the child and the adult mind in us can co-exist harmoniously and is a necessity for innovation and the achievement of dreams. Without intending to “freak” anyone out, I’ve seen items and existences in my dreams which I haven’t read about in books, seen in movies or been exposed to in any media.

For example, I’ve found myself in dreams walking into a stark white classroom where three teenage schoolboys I’ve never met before in real-life were showcasing some computer panels to me. These panels were sheets of Perspex that popped up from their study benches, accompanied by a keyboard which is like no keyboard I’ve ever seen in real-life. It was not QWERTY, the keys–alphanumeric arrangement was completely different and the device was shaped like a crescent moon.

What struck me within the dream was that there was not a single electricity socket anywhere in the room, no fluorescent lights up in the ceiling and no PC terminals. The Perspex sheets rose out of slots in their study benches and were charged by a power supply not reliant on wires or plugs. Holographic maps, videos and an interactive game were launched with finger motion by one of the boys. The dream was so striking that when I awoke I immediately sketched the set-up and the keyboard I’d seen. If I ever prototype it, I’ll let you know!

[Yes, I did have the dream long before witricity came onto my tech radars: http://www.witricity.com/]

In another more recent dream I saw colonies of skyscrapers sitting atop what appeared to be columns of flat-surface mountains. There’s barely any forestation and yet the colonies are clearly self-sustainable and their inhabitants healthy and happy. The construction is somewhere in Africa, but not the Africa we’re familiar with today. This is an Africa of inter-racial diversity as can be seen in the nationalities of people living and working within the skyscrapers, and the Mayor of the colony is a native African man of about six foot three, a broad face and an open smile.

The people and items I can see in my dreams are as clearly defined as the keyboard I’m typing this blog entry with.

Interestingly, the highest concentration of dreams of the nature “Maybe this is a sneak peek into the future” I’ve had revolve around my husband and my family. This will sound strange, but I know what my husband is going to sound like, his personality and what my children are going to look like and their characters.

My future (as per my dreams) seems to involve living beside a lake and being involved with a key piece of US policy on climate change.

We’re going to have to wait and see whether this becomes reality or is simply my creative imagination working over-time and spilling into my dreams — LOL.

Meanwhile, I’ll probably take part in this Twitter “wisdom of the crowds/psychic” test for some fun.