Brian Moriarty The POINT Is

Jul 6, 2008 3:23 PM

The POINT ...  Spirit  ... KEEP YOUR ATTENTION on it;

I am an engineer of illusions that can be shared.

To fascinate you with possibilities.

The possibilities of the Internet and the World Wide Web

Many consumers are using service providers with out-of-date equipment or inadequate infrastructure.

This makes the torpid Web experience even more frustrating.

We know these problems will go away soon

But the Web's success isn't relying on these trends or technologies.

The Web doesn't need any new technology in order to become popular

There must be something about the Web people like.

What is it that makes people like the Web?

What is it that makes people like anything?

What is the origin and purpose of pleasure?

Biologists tell us that our brains contain faculties for creating enjoyable sensations.

They have coined a sophisticated technical term for these faculties.

They call them "pleasure centers."

Nobody knows how they really work.

But everyone knows that some behaviors feel better than others.

Behaviors like eating, gathering, talking, playing, and having sex.

Biologists explain pleasure by invoking a process they call "natural selection."

This process is said to favor the evolution of brains that give positive feedback for behaviors which provide a survival advantage.

In other words, nature rewards life-affirming behaviors with pleasure.

That's why it feels good to eat.

Nature rewards a healthy appetite.

That's why it feels good to collect things.

Nature rewards acquisitiveness.

And that is why it feels good to talk and to play.

Nature rewards communicators.

It feels good to communicate.

People like the World Wide Web because it satisfies the need to communicate.

The need to feel connected.

The need to not be alone.

People like the World Wide Web because it satisfies the need to communicate.

The need to feel connected.

The need to not be alone.

Yet today, the Web is a curiously lonely experience.

You are surrounded by millions of surfers, but you can't wave to anybody

All you get is a number at the bottom of the home page, indicating how many chances to meet someone you missed.

Happily, this is beginning to change.

Soon the Web will begin to notice you.

Soon the Web will be able to process commands faster than you can submit them, and formulate interesting responses in real time.

When that happens, the Web will become conversational.

When that happens, the Web will become interactive.

There will be two very popular uses for this new Interactive Web.

One will be conversation. The other will be multiplayer games

The designers and engineers of computer games have always known that multiplayer games would someday challenge and eventually eclipse single-player games.

The designers and engineers of computer games have been waiting for over twenty years for a chance to become the designers and engineers of shared illusions

History suggests that we will probably have to wait for the first Big Online Hit.

Sometime soon, somebody, possibly somebody in this room, is going create an online game that will capture the imagination of the world.

An online game that will become so popular the network will be threatened with collapse.

Congress will scramble to investigate it.

Wall Street and Sand Hill Road will scramble to invest in it.

the Big Online Hit will be easy to learn, but difficult to master.

It will be approachable and inviting.

It will be abstract. It will be non-violent. It will be inexpensive.

It will be everywhere.

The convenience and economics of online distribution are irresistible

We will be selling our customers the pleasure of communicating with each other.

We will be selling our customers to each other.

How can we best sell our customers to each other?

We should first recognize that we are about to enter into a profound social contract with our customers

How easy is it to arrive?

How easy is it to congregate?

How easy is it to communicate.

SPIRIT/ SOUL  as virtual reality.

Virtual reality imposes a materialistic space-time metaphor on the experience of virtual presence.

Space and time are exalted in virtual reality.

Even the word "cyber-SPACE" acknowledges their eminence.

But the space-time metaphor is not powerful enough.

Verisimilitude is not our concern. Simulation is not our business.

Communication is our business.

We are not necessarily selling our customers an alternative reality.

Isn't the thought process more interesting than collision detection

We can begin by devising ways to transcend the conventions of space and time.

Our bodies and our brains seem to be trapped in space and time.

But the Web is not an environment for the body or the brain.

The Web is an environment for the mind.

For the mind.

We've been thinking about virtual presence as if we have to send our bodies out there.

We don't.

If we could design reality for our minds, what powers would we grant ourselves?

The ability to be anywhere instantly would be a step in the right direction.

The ability to be everywhere all at once, without going mad, is the real challenge.

Why should our minds roll around like cameras, when they can zoom and focus like lenses?

Why settle for avatars, when we can be angels?

Our goal should not be virtual reality.

Our goal should be actual ubiquity.

Space and time are not intrinsic properties of virtual presence.

Space and time will not exist in virtual presence unless we bring them with us.

Space and time are boring.

So let's raise our collective attention to a higher level of Strangeness.

Keep your eyes on the point, and together we will explore Strangeness.

Archaeological and linguistic evidence suggests that ancient civilizations did not necessarily share our Western concept of the Self.

The concept that each of us is a separate, independent consciousness moving through space and time.

The basic dualism of the perceiver and the perceived.

The concept Freud called the Ego.

Most of us accept experiential dualism as a fundamental aspect of reality.

But some religious traditions maintain that Dualism and the Ego have nothing to do with reality.

These religions teach that separateness is only an illusion.

An illusion that can be dispelled by certain esoteric practices.

These religions possess Strange but demonstrably effective technologies that allow individuals to achieve states of consciousness that transcend the illusion of separateness.

And what do these transcendent individuals have to tell us?

They tell us that we all deeply connected.

Part of a network of minds. A web of souls.

An economy of presence.

Does any of this sound familiar?

And they tell us that it is space and time that prevent us from realizing our essential unity.

That space and time are precisely the illusions that keep us apart.

Scientific materialists don't like to hear this stuff.

A materialist might concede the possibility that space and time and separateness are some kind of mental illusions.

But they will expect us to postulate an evolutionary purpose for these illusions.

The doctrine of natural selection demands that our brains must have developed these basic organizing metaphors because they provide some kind of survival advantage.

What is the advantage of believing that we are all separate?

All different?

Consider that without differences, there could be no comparisons.

Without separateness, there could be no dissatisfaction.

There could be no striving or competition or progress.

Without separateness, we would never have bothered to leave the paradise of Africa.

We would never have become farmers or builders or warriors.

We would never have aspired to the Renaissance or the Industrial Revolution or, not one, but two devastating world wars.

Only arrogance and pride born of separateness could challenge space and time with railroads and airplanes and guided missiles.

Only righteous malevolence would presume to harness the Strange power of special relativity to create an atomic bomb.

Only hatred driven by the illusion of separateness could produce conflicts and weapons horrible enough to shake us all out of the collective nightmare we call history.

Only institutionalized greed could concentrate enough wealth to wire the entire planet.

We have taken the long way around, my friends.

Somehow, amazingly, perhaps undeservedly, we are about to achieve global interactive connectivity without blowing ourselves up first.

The ways of natural selection are indeed Strange.

Nature rewards life-affirming behaviors that lead to a survival advantage for the species.

The illusion of separateness may have been necessary to push us to this threshold of realization.

But before we can Realize, before we can evolve, we must discard that illusion.

We must discard it like the space shuttle discards its solid rocket boosters.

We must discard it like an inflamed appendix.

The illusion of separateness has outlived its usefulness.   KEY PARAGRAPH!!!!

It is turning against us and subverting our destiny.

It is time to outgrow it. It is killing us.

And we, in this room, are the architects of its demise.

The point is that we are beginning to remember something we have all forgotten about ourselves.

Something wonderful about ourselves.

We don't have the words in our Western languages to describe what that something might be.

But we can feel it. We can feel it.

So we're doing what anyone who is having trouble describing something does.

We are trying to draw a picture of it.

We are struggling to construct a model of it.

We have succeeded in laying the foundations of that model.

And we have given our model a name.

We call it the World Wide Web.

By using the Web, by thinking about its possibilities, and especially by helping to build the Web, you are changing the way you realize the world.

The Web isn't just something that is happening in the world.

It's something that's happening in you.

When people set up email accounts or personal Web sites or join chat rooms or create MUD personas, what are they doing, really?

They are saying to the world, I Am.

I Am.

I signify. I am part of a larger community.

I am part of something bigger than myself.

These are empowering acts.

These acts are an expression of hope.

These are spiritual acts.

Why is a game designer talking to you about spirituality?

The adjective spiritual simply refers to things which have no body, form or substance.

So spirituality is about things that are disembodied.

Things that are formless. Things that are insubstantial.  <<<wrong... they HAVE FORM... they are INFO... just NOT MATERIAL>>>

Things that are virtual.

Spiritual experiences are nothing to be ashamed about.

Spiritual experiences are, in fact, quite practical.

Spiritual experiences are, in fact, our business.

Ours will be an economy of spirits.

Some of you are now thoroughly embarrassed by my pretensions.

Some of you think that spiritual purposes are fuzzy-minded, and not respectable.

We have to build this.

We're not out of the woods yet.

We could still blow ourselves up before we build enough of this thing to recognize ourselves in it.

Everything else we have ever built will be for nothing if we fail to build this now.

Build this. Just build this.

You came to this conference because you sensed opportunity.

Your instinct was profoundly correct.

Conversation and multiplayer games are indeed the killer apps of the Internet.

The next big things. The Trojan horses.

Multiplayer games will attract scores of millions to the World Wide Web.

They're easy to understand. They're compelling.

They're lots and lots of fun.

They will be a potent catalyst for global interactive connectivity.

They will help to bring us all together, at last.

They will help to bring us all together, again.

Are you ready to be a part of something bigger than yourself?

Are you ready to suspend your skepticism and entertain possibilities?

The possibility that something Strange and wonderful is trying to happen?

The possibility that the World Wide Web may be one of its manifestations?

Are you ready for the shock of recognition?

The point is that we are instruments of something bigger than ourselves.

We don't know what this something is.

But we can feel it. We can feel it.

I call it "the point," because the point is to find out what the point is.

The point is urgently prodding us.

The point is pointing at itself.

The point is infinitely small, and mathematically perfect.

The point has no volume, but it is never silent.

The point has no radius, but it is eternally radiant.

It is the shining Void. The empty Source.

It is expanding and collapsing simultaneously.

It is all-encompassing, and coincident with every other point in the universe.

The point is that there are no coincidences.

The point is that our hand is being guided here.

The point is that our attention is being fixed.

The point of this experiment is to achieve attention. Attention.

The point is not familiar.

The point is Strange. The point is Other.

The point is not contingent upon anything. Not even itself.

It is the First Cause. The Prime Mover.

The point is emergent.

The point is an emergency.

Emergency! Attention! The point is on fire!

But the point is inextinguishable.

The point is the burning bush.

The point is the I Am.

The I Am.

The point is not good.

The point is not evil.

The point is not even indifferent.

The point simply is. The point is.

The point is not an object or a noun.

The point is an action. The point is a verb.

The verb is to be.

The point is Being. It is Being.

The point is that we are don't have to be alone anymore.

The point is that we have never been alone.

The point is that we can all be as one.

The point is that we are all one.

Fix your eyes upon the point, and together we will achieve attention.

(1996)

Brian Moriarty The POINT Is

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