Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
I think they do.
At least, I would since the electric sheep my Computer displays when it is dreaming in idle are to really cool. The Screensaver, artwork and networking project from ElectricSheep.org came to my attention about a year ago. I was investigating the “Illuminates of Thanateros” (IOT) crowd and kept stumbling upon one highly creative work/page after another.
If the sheeps have actually anything to do with the IOT, I have no Idea, but who cares?
Installing the screensaver is easy and after a short download youre PC will start dreaming of electric sheep. You have the possibility to like or dislike sheep which will manipulate the gene pool. The interesting bit is this:
Electric Sheep is a collaborative abstract artwork founded by Scott Draves. It’s run by thousands of people all over the world, and can be installed on any ordinary PC or Mac. When these computers “sleep”, the Electric Sheep comes on and the computers communicate with each other by the internet to share the work of creating morphing abstract animations known as “sheep”. The result is a collective “android dream”, an homage to Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.
Anyone watching one of these computers may vote for their favorite animations using the keyboard. The more popular sheep live longer and reproduce according to a genetic algorithm with mutation and cross-over. Hence the flock evolves to please its global audience. You can also design your own sheep and submit them to the gene pool.
So with youre vote you do not change the “flock” on youre PC alone, but the world wide gene pool and thus the sheep on other PCs on this planet as well.
I find the concept of “distributed genetic” computing very interesting. The world wide web is a huge sphere of synaps like a huge big brain:
Internet Map
Computing projects like this make me feel like the whole internet becomes intelligent, a huge big “god” which allows for consciouse entitys within it.
Words Made Flesh by Ramsey Dukes
Little programs which exoplore their reality as calculated by the variouse Servers, PCs, Smart Phones, Chipcards and whatever. What if there already are little “consciousenesses” around? For further readings in this direction with a lot of whoohas for our own reality, you should really grab a copy of Ramsey Dukes “Word made flesh” … (appendix B is very interesting with regard to the above).
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Lifestyle Magick 