Down and Fast, Part 2

Now let’s talk about Time (“Let’s talk about makin’ love”)! Say, for a moment, that I had the project of making an exact replica of your brain out of silicon and fiber optics, substituting gigahertz micro-computation for neuronal activity and speed of light transmission for nerve signals. Since the rate of axon-firing in the human brain is approximately 1000 times a second and the speed of nerve transmission is approximately 100 meters per second what we would have is your brain running a MILLION times faster!! But what about your ‘mind’-- your consciousness, your feelings, your Experience? Would these be a million times faster as well?

We don’t really know the answer to that question, because we have no idea what consciousness really is. Is it some basic attribute of Nature that emerges whenever certain systems of complexity and inter-relationship are evolved? Is it everywhere, but taking different forms and focus depending on where and who is interacting with it? All worthy directions of pursuit towards a great Mystery. But let’s propose a working hypothesis for the purposes of this Graphic Novel: Consciousness adapts to whatever conditions it would be ‘relevant’ to exist in. So, if I have a ‘mind’ that operates a million subjective seconds for every ‘ordinary second’ AND, importantly, I have a ‘body’ and a ‘world’ where those thoughts can ‘act’ out a living scenario at the same speed – then consciousness takes a form in the domain of subjective time that functions effectively. What is the upper bound…can Consciousness exist a BILLION times faster (or slower, for that matter)? Can a being experience in a single ordinary decade the subjective equivalent of the entire history of the known universe? I suppose it depends on whether a ‘world’ could be built to live in - operating in this enhanced form of time – and whether that world would be primarily ‘actual’ or ‘virtual’. We may get to find out…soon.

Let me coin some more terms (sorry, but to talk about this sort of unprecedented change old vocabulary just comes up lame): a subjective time-space ‘domain’ that is ten times faster than our current ‘native’ one we will call Fast1, a hundred times faster Fast2, a million times faster Fast6, etc. It simply follows powers of ten. Now, a being whose body and environment operates at a size one tenth our regular human-realm size we will call Down1, a hundredth Down2, a millionth Down6 and so on…

So, one solution to the seemingly inevitable result of having Fast6 minds is to operate them in Down6 body/environments. After all, if I drop a rock on my foot in Down6 space, it only takes a millionth of the time to fall as it does up ‘here’ in Down0. Reality would not be so simple of course – we could ask how fast could I move a ‘limb’ to pick up that rock? Surely, a lot faster than us huge, monstrous current bodies as anyone can see who has closely observed insects. The surface-area-to-volume ratio of tiny beings guarantees that there relative strength and speed is epic; a flea can jump a subjective ‘kilometer’. But it isn’t a direct linear conversion, so some things multiply thousands while others multiply millions. However, for the beings in Skinz’n’Klowdz, this is almost a non-issue, with physically and perceptually enhanced ‘realities’ subjective perception and environmental rates can be perfectly matched.

But what does it mean personally and socially to have subjective states where on the one side is a single year and on the other is a million years? Where my second-long pause in ‘conversation’ is 11.5 days to my partner? And even more mind-boggling, where parts of my own mind span these same subjective domains?

Down and Fast, Part 1

A number of researchers and theorists lately have tried to answer the question of how densely packed calculation, and possibly intelligence and consciousness, can be in a given volume of space. The initial impetus is to determine how much more intensely useful and pleasurable our computers can get in the coming years…but the implications go far, far, far deeper than that. I will not go into the technical details in this posting, because there are so many things to consider: the nature of information at the quantum level, the requirements of intelligence, the actual complexity of natural environments, etc. So, let’s take a top level view:

Synthesizing some readings in Kurzweil and Lloyd I will throw out the following hypothesis – human intelligence is only 1 in 10^20+ space efficient. OK, in English what that might mean is that we could fit 100 billion billions of intelligent beings of roughly human capacity inside a single human body, if we pursued the maximum capacities of Nature. Holy carp Batman…if that does not blow your mind nothing will!!

If we borrow the essential point of Feynman’s famous essay ‘Plenty of Room at the Bottom’ the realization implied here gets even weirder; once intelligence starts designing and giving birth to ensuing generations of intelligence an accelerating process brings the upper end of capacity in a MUCH shorter time than expected by ‘linear’ thinking. Kurzweil is on record as saying that this incredible moment in history may occur as early as 2080, based on current technical trends.

I myself am a hesitant Singulatarian…we have been promised many things in the past that turned out to be a lot harder to implement than supposed. The gestalts of living systems are indeed a LOT more interesting than merely amped up logic can perceive. BUT! the very real possibility remains that we are entering a historical period as different from its antecedents as the Big Bang is from the vacuum. An exaggeration? I don’t think so…not any more.

Let me coin some terms: a) let us call a ‘planetane’ a space in which intelligent participants experiencing interaction with each other and their environment at the complexity level of our Earth…roughly 10 billion sentient humans on 500 million square kilometers of land with various populations of other creatures, i.e. 10 trillion fish, several quadrillion ants, etc.; b) let us call a billion to a trillion planetanes a ‘galactane’; c) let us call a billion to a trillion galactanes a ‘utane’. A utane, or utanic domain, is an environment as complex as the entire known universe, AFTER it has been inhabited completely by a space-faring ecology-building intelligence.

Now, back to the question of the ultimate ‘density’ of intelligence; the basic query to absorb here is that it appears possible that our creative progeny will be able to generate complexity at the level of inhabited Universes ON THE SURFACE OF THE EARTH IN THE RELATIVELY NEAR FUTURE!!!! Individual bodies may reach utanic complexity, and trillions of these ‘entities’ can safely and ecologically inhabit a planetary environment. Under this regime a grain of sand can contain a planetane, and you can hold multiple galactanes in your hand. Not one, but billions of universes are born the blink of an eye – maybe the Big Bang comparison is not strong enough……

Why a 'Graphic Novel'

In the last few years I have felt, inside my mind/spirit a kind of 'pressure' which appears to me to be a great need to speak, to tell of stories and visions. In a way, it is a summing up of decades of thought and experience that now seem to me to be 'of one piece'...that there is a possibility of organizing around a 'message', though not a simple one. Of course, this is to some degree an illusion, because summing up even my own life's events is clearly beyond my meager skills of expression - and if I hope to say something about Nature and my larger Society, well -- that is perhaps ludicrous!

And yet the pressure is still there, and I have at least learned over the years that such a thing is difficult and unwise to ignore. Also, I have met a great many highly intelligent younger people, who seem to be completely disaffected with the 'standard motifs' of Futurism, as presented to us by experts, authors, film-makers, etc. When I consider their complaints I see that I have some possibly useful nuggets hidden away in my consciousness, some ways out of the current malaise maze. And, if it is to them I wish to speak, than I must do so in a medium and context where that would make sense. To put it simply, young people do not read books anymore - they play video games, go to movies, watch tv and...they read manga/comic books. (Some people like to call books of narrated pictures 'graphic novels' to make them seem more 'respectable'...which is deeply weird when we review how long the Novel itself was denigrated in its early history!).

Most people who know me also know that I am a cinemaniac...I LOVE films - watching them and talking about them. But I do have some frustrations with that medium. It simply isn't as 'contemplative' as literature. It is a blazing flow of timespace dumped into your head. Some critics watch movies with their fingers on the pause button, and stop and start to see if they can achieve a deeper view, but movies were meant to happen, like music, in a fluid motion. So, if one has a big philosophical 'agenda', some form of 'literature' may be the only context for the user/reader to have the time and space to stretch out inside a world of your creation, simultaneously truly making it their own.

Now let me say this...most Graphic Novels blow...they are terribly written and they are terribly drawn. It is a new-ish medium with major growing pains! But when it works, it really works: Neil Gaiman's Sandman, Alan Moore's Promethea, Grant Morrison's Invisibles...these seem to me to be among the most important narrative achievements of the human race in the last hundred years. So, we DO have reason to believe that a truly New Literature can be born out of comics...and it is getting more easy to envision every day. The quality of self-awareness and mutual critique in the field grows by leaps and bounds. Early theoretical programs by meta-practitioners like Eisner and McCloud seem to be wearing well, and we are figuring out how to talk about the visual-textual medium in terms that sometimes borrow from other disciplines but that also create new words and ideas when required.

This is fun, and it may one day make things possible that we have not even thought of yet. Some people think that the coming rise in ubiquitous internet bandwidth will cause all literature to be drowned in an ocean of video (or, later, VR-scapes) but I don't think so. The trend toward co-development of related comic and movie 'properties' shows a couple of things: a) these two media perform different tasks; b) we are undergoing an early 'imitative' phase where comic books are trying to be more 'cinematic' which will hopefully die out. The cross-fertilization is productive, but the uniqueness of both is far more interesting in the long term. In fact, in my own approach to comics, I hope to elevate the 'page design' to a much more 'simultaneous' fusion of different time-streams than in the mainstream page and frame sequencing technique. Think of what we sometimes see in 'graphs' or in good paintings -- a kind of frozen gestalt which is stillness and yet, paradoxically, also conveys movement and relationship.

Maybe there is a reason that so many young people are switching their interests and their habits of self-education. I am in no way saying that books are obsolete...that would be a very incoherent stand on my part because I am still reading 1000 pages plus of them a week! But, to paraphrase (and extend) the thesis of the fascinating author Leonard Shlain - a medium which is verbally abstract AND visually concrete may take us farther into our left and right minds than we have ever gone before. AND that, may suit a future which literally 'goes beyond words' better than anything else we could do.

WHAT'S IN THE NAME

In S'n'K, a 'skin' is a virtual layer of perception added to 'reality' by means of a technology called the Lenz. This 'device' is really a whole range of devices and networks, but what it does is pipe light into the eyes (or nerve signals into the optic nerve), sound into the ears (or auditory nerves), etc. after receiving the incoming sensory data and filtering and/or embellishing it according to programs, designs and live artistry on the part of the perceiver and his/her collaborators. In other words: let's say I wanted to see my immediate environment 'as though it were painted by Van Gogh'. The incoming light would form the basic shapes, but the Lenz would then reinterpret these shapes by processing them with an algorithm designed to evoke the techniques of the 19th century oil painter and then transfer that information back into sensory channels so that I can have the experience of original sense perception completely transformed by my chosen imaginal theme. Of course, the Lenz-user can also choose a more 'accurate' information oriented approach:

• enhanced perceptual ranges - infra-red, ultra-violet, radio waves, contrast enhancement, telescope/microscope, etc.
• data-feeds - personal information about nearby people, camera views from distant perspectives, etc.
• private and public forms of communication/conversation, artificial telepathy, etc.

This is really an enhanced (and perhaps extreme) form of current proposals in both 'virtual reality' and 'augmented reality'. In S'n'K this is, however, not so much a 'pastime' or an 'art form', but more a fundamental issue of one's way of being and personal 'world construction'/cosmology. It also forms a context for communal mind and culture because skinz can be shared or private, which is called 'freking in' or 'freking out' with one or more partners ('frek' comes from 'frequency').

A 'klowd' is swarm of microscopic machines which is embedded in, at varying densities, the air, the water, even people's bodies (though inside the flesh it is called the 'prossie', named after the word 'prosthetic'). It can, in a short period, reformulate, reconnect and construct any design given to it. If you want to sit down you can communicate the concept 'chair' to the klowd and it will coagulate and construct a functional structure for sitting down according to any design known to the vast public libraries/databases of your World. When you are done sitting the klowd dissolves the structure and the parts are available for whatever requests occur next.

Thus, there is very little (if any) need for 'property' as we conceive of it today in S'n'K...'things' have become temporary energetic processes so ephemeral that 'ownership' has dissolved into a question of 'access'. The klowd has both private and public components, so there is a kind of 'meta-propertarian' claim, but this doesn't involve 'wealth' or 'poverty', as these assets are distributed according to complex, chaotic patterns more like the 'state of nature' than a monetary and legal system as we would think of it currently. This brings up a very sticky, and important, aspect of the central plot dynamic of the series. The public klowd, when referred to 'in toto', is called the Platform. At the deeply public level, the klowd is capable of limiting participants' behaviors. For instance, if one person reaches out to strike another person, the klowd can quickly manifest a barrier that will prevent that from happening. This proved a necessary development because the klowd is so powerful that, without rules, it could become the ultimate weapon within reach of absolutely everyone.

In order to define what the klowd can interfere (or assist) with, people (sentient actors) are organized into Sindikats, which replace what we currently call 'governments' with a set of rules for the Platform in a given location (or trans-locational, networked 'context'). There are countless Sindikats based on countless philosophies of 'governance', so this is a much more diverse universe of sentient action than we are currently accustomed to. Nonetheless, very genuine issues of freedom and responsibility are involved with defining Sindikat and Platform rules; the situation is made much more challenging by the fact that Platform computation and intelligence have become so complex that no one truly comprehends them anymore. Effecting change in the Platform has morphed from an activity of writing and advocating law into a process of expressing opinion into 'fields of polling' where actors collaborate (and compete) philosophically in real time to create coherent societies and principles.

So, on the one hand we have a totally fluid reality of perception which can make one's world into any shape desired...and on the other hand we have a kind of analogous capability that accomplishes that in the physical world. But(!): when conflicts arise, it is tempting to retreat (or demand the same of others) into one's own world and simply create a simulacrum of an ideal. But, this then creates a tension where a trend toward insular private spaces pulls away from any dream of a physical Commons and that ultimately could be deadly to any sort of coherent, unified 'actual' World.

And that, my dears, is something I find so interesting, that I cannot resist creating characters and situations that explore this 'space' from many illuminating angles!

Soo: A workflow sequence

Here is an initial pen on paper concept sketch for the main character of S'n'K, Soo.

Below is a computer graphic version of the pen-sketch, which was derived using a neo-classical technique where shading and coloring were handled on different layers, somewhat akin to the old-school oil painter portraits. Also, we see here a nice recursion image where Soo's inner cartoon, Pla2, reaches down toward her in the form of a book, within a book, within a book...

Below is a surprisingly successful transfer of the 2d workups above into a genuine animation-ready 3d model using the conversion program known as FaceGen. It 'guessed' the volumes and then offers 150 facial tuning metrics that can make the guess closer to the original vision. This only took two hours!

Below is an initial nude study with the 3d face integrated.

Below is a body-form study of Soo's wings and tentacles as well as her double-pectoral frame that supports the wings and breasts. Notice also the 6 fingered hands with two thumbs.

To see her final appearance with wings and tattoos and pointy ears and all that...you will have to get Episode Zero! ;o)

Zscape Gallery 2

Here is another little gallery of landscape studies, all using the Zbrush technology (note -- you can click on any image for an enlarged view window):

Zscape Gallery

Here is a little gallery of landscape studies, all using the Zbrush technology (note -- you can click on any image for an enlarged view window):

Landscape studies: Intro

The picture below is one of many 'landscape' studies I am doing in preparation for providing settings for the action in S'n'K. These 'studies' are done in a wonderful 3d modeling program called Z-brush (from Pixologic) which was chosen because of a special technology in the software which allows virtually infinite complexity without additional computing resources. It does this by demanding that the artist choose a singular perspective initially, and then erasing everything that is visually obscured from that viewpoint as complex layers are added...the freedom to change point of view is lost but in exchange for maximal layering depth.

This choice of technology seemed appropriate to me because S'n'K 'scapes' are essentially fractal 'cosmosii' that have detail all the way down to the molecular level. Traditional 3d would require billions of facets and mega-computer workstations to pull off this sort image.

Hello

This is the 'Pre-Blog' for the Skinz-n-Klowdz Drupal site...which is complicated and still under construction. So, needing a container to 'dump' all sorts of fun stuff in and needing also to get the conversation around Skinz'n'Klowdz started: we find ourselves here.

What it is: S'n'K is a graphic novel I am illustrating and writing that is the summation of my whole life's work in futurism -- in the technological, philosophical, and spiritual senses of that word. It is a far-future, 'speculative fiction' (SF) piece set in a world where money, work, nation states, poverty, and even death have become obsolete. Without the traditional focuses and fears of our current civilization, what are the fundamental motivators that would lie at the center of life?