Mind reading Tech Exposè: cultural cognitive architecture exposition

Meanings are determined by their use (by their links to situated usage of them). Similarly identity is determined by the roles you apply that identity for. Meanings don't pre-exist their application. That's why our need of search engine is satisfied by Google. Identity don't pre-exist their social activity. That's why our social connectivity is satisfied by Facebook. Interestingly the always omnipresent efficiency of Google crashed against a wall with Buzz: it tried to treat meanings as identity. Now Facebook with the will-be omnipresent “like” is trying to treat identities like meanings.

I'm very curious because I know that Google is right about meanings: or you're Platonist. Indeed meanings mean what they mean because they have an intrinsic value (“meaning”) or because we are more likely to associate some concepts in some clouds. Moral lesson from Google semantic: no matter how you want to grasp something, the only thing you can grasp is a collective association of usages. Meanings are empty: it's just the search around that gives them a semantic gravity.

Now the like-function of Facebook is presenting a very hot dilemma: our identities are the deployment of social activity. This social structuring is a complex architecture determined by your cultural cognitive activity: your mind. Now this architecture will become public and then weighted and finally ranked.

It's not the first time we face this technological situation: in ancient Greece, reading was public. The technological way to decode signs to concept was something done only in public. Then Aristotle developed a new technique: reading with his mind. And this was his nickname: the mind.

So it's not a big deal (for our cognitive history) to have our cultural cognitive architecture exposed.The question is: will people like to have ranked their cultural cognitive architecture?

Thinking Dynamo: mind motion

Cognitive activity is located in the brain. Physically, electricity and some chemistry of your nervous system. But the multiple actions human body are capable of, lie on the complex architecture of representations. Actually, “we” are products hosted by this architecture. This architecture is neither electrical nor chemical. In another words, physical causation is trasferred through our bodies by scope of action of this representations. Your body will interact with other bodies (and ther extensions or prosthesis), because is convinced of doing something in the representational environment. This representational environment is real as is real Pinocchio and King Arthur. Before misleading: they are real.

You can imagine how Pinocchio or King Arthur will behave. You can imagine further adventures. In these new adventure, you can introduce new characters. Because we are not so platonist, adventures don't pre-exist the narrations. Therefore when we imagine new adventures, only through the narration we are able to make it real. This is the generative power of narrations: in so far you make real a new adventure with Pinocchio and a new mate, you are also introducing in the game of stories, a new narrative perspective: the author. An author is a character evoked with the purpose to tell further stories.

The mind is generated by the thinking dynamo: a reciprocal narration. Stories make spin the brain of a human being (you can say they accelerate it...). When a human brain starts to spin, it spins narratively. Your cognition is activated through narrations: you are a story. Indeed one authoral story: a story that can author further stories. The author call itself “I”, the subject, the self. It's the beginning of a new story. A mind is borne.

Semantic populism

Our ideas, channeled in meanings, represent our mindset: we live in this environment. These ideas are projections of the environment itself: we call it reality. Clearly one idea represent a perception of an environment produced by other ideas; so, where is the solid ground for our perceptions, ideas and meanings? Well, we ask ourselves and our mates. The most popular concepts win. Votes decide what is real: the more links, the more reality. Indeed when a concept or a meaning has only your own vote, your own link, it is private, and its reality fades. If you are the only one who believes something, no matter how solid, the rest of the semantic environment will deem it unreal. The semantic environment is not that homogeneous: projections are different and probably nobody lives precisely in the very same environment (in linguistic a native speaker masters is own idiolect).

Nonetheless, reality is a matter of fame. You can anchor the majority of your concepts to what you consider the most solid ground. Some of us chose religion, others logic or science; you can prefer gut instinct. Not a bad choice is love. It doesn't matter: every ground lies on the other. Our world is built on a turtle-concept, that is built on another turtle-concept. And what gives structural strength is popularity. Religions based their power precisely on this: if an idea is held as the most popular, then it must be sacred. That means: it must be true.

Of course now we are modern, so we check popularity with efficiency. The most efficient, the most real: it must be true.Positive.

But then again, efficiency is not describing what we really think, who we really are. Must be something else. And because a lot felt underneath the veil, the true essence, then, again, it must be true.

We are a conceptual dog chasing its conceptual tail. If you run alone, you will disappear: no links, no reality. If you run in pack, you will run after what the ideology will tell you. Ideology is veiling the system, but underneath the veil, there is nothing: nothing meaningful. We can think only with the means of the semantic environment, like a dove flying with the resistance of the air. The populism of our concepts is the ground of our thinking. That's it.

Finding a search: the answers graveyard

When answers feel tyred and exhausted, they know it's time. There is a day in the life of an answer, when it knows it's over. Indeed answers are produced in very generous packs. Are we human being searching? Well, yes, but with twice the energy we devolve to search, we compulsively are dedicated to find. We find because we produce our findings. We are involved in an exponential enterprise to create answers.

Our cognitive activity is scanning the semiotic environment in search; the scanning is performed through narrative sonar. When you cognitively wake up, you are woken up by narrations. And instilled in those narrations there are the semen of questioning and of searching. And also the generative capacity to produce answers.

To launch your search, you'll need to launch your narration. Very much like particles, we are bombed by stories and their impact generate a response, an inspiration: a new story. The reciprocal narrative collision generate a space time of storytelling. The semiotic environment is created.

One of the most persistent stories is the mind. It's not a surprise: you can tell a story if you're a mind and minds are telling stories. Therefore for the anthropic principle, if you're hearing a story, you're a mind. And the reverse: if you're a mind, you'll find yourself storytelling.

The collateral damage is you'll find something, because you searched it. Obviously you find something, because you put it in the first place. That's good if you are a colony of intelligence: you are digesting information and making available for the community; you don't care the meaning of your production, none of your business.

Possibly, none of your business. Indeed to some extent is the business of no one, so you can easily forget the quest. But one of the collateral damage of finding a narrative something, is that you find a someone. It doesn't matter if it's god or your the love of your life. It's a someone. That means, a mind. That also means you. To find a mind, you need to be one. It's not a crime to be a mind, so I should be less negative about it. But this condition often requires to see a world of meanings, a world of questions and the following activity of searching. It's not a bad thing to search, it's only boring when you find the mechanism for answering. It's a technique. We invent it. Because we've been invented by it. Oh, damn paradoxes.

Anyway, when you start to look at answers, their meaningfulness is fading. It's not you cease to understand them, they cease to be relevant. So when you master the art of giving answer, when you develop the technology to produce meaningful content, when you reach the black box, you discover that it's empty.