So we stand on the cusp of the Second Enlightenment, the point in history when the technical and cognitive resources of humanity allow it to master material and biological complexities at the cellular and molecular level, at long last delivering a historically fixed human nature to the whims of human desire. The Second Enlightenment, of course, is nothing other than the Singularity, which means it also marks the collapse of our ability to predict what will happen on the basis of what has happened. This renders the question, What will the post Neo-Enlightenment world look like? religious, insofar as this world transcends our knowledge as completely as does either Heaven or Hell.
And, just as Heaven has no heaven, Hell no hell, Ex Nihilo is a Last World, humanity’s departure gate. After it, we will be extinct, either because we have committed collective suicide, or because our technologies will have transformed us into something incomprehensible. What I want to do here is gather entries for an Encyclopaedia Ex Nihilo, speculative snapshots, written in a dry, academic tone, describing some cultural movement, institution, political or cultural figure, historical event, you think our grandchildren might find in Ex Nihilo. Let’s restrict the time frame to 2044 to 2084, the year of our extinction event. As for satire, try to make it as wry and believable as you can manage.
If my gut brain likes your entry, it will add your entry to the whole. Be sure to include the name you want associated with the entry in brackets following.
U: Understanding the Motions. Seminal text by Conrad Jim, the self-professed ‘material leader’ of the famed Motionite Cult.
Mike started up a thread at the SA forum for this and there’s quite a few entries there: http://secondapocalypse.forumer.com/encyclopaedia-ex-nihilo-t1265069.html
Viralism: Philosophical position that takes all communication to be purely ‘viral,’ or biomechanical, and thus only need be spoken to hack the receiving system. This leads to the famous ‘viral bind,’ where both sender and receiver ‘go viral,’ and communication devolves into informatically void exchanges regarding sports and the weather.
Supplantive / vi club: An urban myth that the principles of viralism are not generally understood by all or that the practice of viralism somewhow attempts to undermine such understanding, for various reasons. Debunked on a number of occasions.
Enactive: A designate for reactives in regard to neurocognitive revelations regarding neurocognitive revelations, refering to an impending, compelling conclusion of the subject for acts which, subjectively, must come forth with in regard. At a neuroscience level, it’s analogised as a part which, under pressure, when breaking all it’s connections, obviously bows to that pressure and enacts in a direction (subjectively: the direction). The remnant pressure, a naive cogni form of the base human state, making the direction seem at the very heart of human acts. Which is technically correct. Evaluation of the subject in regard to redundancy structure indicates whether this involves falling back on the very last of redundancie inhibitors of the individual, or whether such redundancies were never developed in the individual, culturally. See ‘Miss slides’ for partial inhibiition redundancies in regard to enaction. Typically enaction is used to refer to subjects without inhibiition redundancies, but technically it refers to all individuals, whether constrained or not.