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This is to certify that the

thesis entitled

LIVING REAL EXPERIENCE IN VIRTUAL
NETWORK ENVIRONMENTS IN PIERRE
TEILHARD DE CHARDIN

presented by
GILDASIO MENDES DOS SANTOS

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for

MASTER degreein DIGITAL MEDIA ARTS

 

 

 

Major professor

 

0-7639 MS U is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Institution

 

 

EIBRARY
MIchIgan State
Universlty

 

 

 

PLACE IN RETURN BOX to remove this checkout from your record.
TO AVOID FINES return on or before date due.
MAY BE RECALLED with earlier due date if requested.

 

DATE DUE DATE DUE DATE DUE

 

4L

SEP 90:3 2002

 

J. {‘3

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

11/00 chlFIC/DateDuopSS-p.“

LIVING REAL EXPERIENCE IN VIRTUAL NETWORK
ENVIRONMENTS IN PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN

By

Gildasio Mendes dos Santos

A THESIS
Submitted to
IMichigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
MASTER OF ARTS

Department of Telecommunication

2000

ABSTRACT

LIVING REAL EXPERIENCE IN VIRTUAL NETWORK
ENVIRONMENT IN PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN

By
Gildasio Mendes dos Santos

As people the world over begin to express an
increasing interest in navigating in virtual spaces, we
must have a foundation that considers the physical and
psychological aspects of humans exploring this new
experience of time and space.

This thesis will explore scientist Pierre Teilhard de
Chardin’s concept of the evolution of the human brain
(‘noosphere”), the expansion of technology for the
development of people and nations (global village), the
development of computers as an extension of the human mind
and body (‘electronic machines”), and lastly, the internet
as the vehicle that will unite people around the globe
(convergence). This thesis is fundamentally based upon the
studies of Teilhard de Chardin, but includes literature and
research by authors influenced by his vision, and recent
studies relating to the human brain, Artificial
Intelligence, virtualization of economy and culture,

computers, the internet and cyberspace.

Vv

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Copyright by
GILDASIO MENDES DOS SANTOS
2000

For

My mother, Edith, with love
St. John Bosco, with gratitude

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to express my gratitude to the many persons
who have provided inspiration, patience, ideas, criticism,
faith, passion, and all manner of assistance for helping me
accomplish my studies. This work gained enormously from
their support. In particular, I would like to thank:

0 My parents, for their loving patience and support
throughout these six years I have been living between
Europe and the United States.

‘9 Dr. Thomas Muth, mentor, colleague, and dear friend, for
his wise guidance, energy, and constant dedication. From
the very beginning, he encouraged me to follow my
inspirations and trust myself to enter the world of
virtual reality technologies.

'6 Dr. Frank Biocca, for his wonderfully capable research
and creativity in Virtual Reality. He introduced me to
the finer points of computer-mediated communications,
encouraged me, pushed me, trusted me.

0 Fr. Afonso de Castro, for his encouragement and

invaluable advice.

 

 

 

Dr. Duncan Rowland (Manager, Media Interface and Network
Design LAB — MSU) and colleagues for turning ideas into
beautiful visuals.

Fr. Joseph Winkler (Provincial of the Salesian Province -
Campo Grande — Brazil) and Fr. Joseph Marinoni (Rector of
UCDB, Salesian University) for their support.

Debbie Johnson (Secretary of the Department of
Telecommunication — Michigan State University) and Rachel
Miller (Secretary of the Media Interface and Network
Design Lab — Michigan State University) for their
kindness and gentle guidance.

Fr. Francis Preston (Provincial of the Great Britain
Salesian Province) and Fr. Nicholas Reina (Provincial of
the Salesian Province — California - USA) for their
friendly support.

Fr. Fabio Pasqualetti (Professor of UPS — Salesian
University - Rome — Italy) for his insights and strength.
Dr. Jerry Mattson, Lisa Briggs, and Melissa Burrier for
their valuable suggestions.

Bishop Carl Mengeling (Diocese of Lansing, Michigan),
Monsignor Michael Murphy (Moderator of the Curia),
Monsignor David Stotenbur (Pastor of the St. Thomas

Aquinas parish), Fr. Carl Pung (Vicar), and Fr. John

vi

,2

 

 

Byers (Pastor of the Immaculate Heart of Mary parish) for
their encouragement and friendship.

Finally, all the professors and colleagues at the
Department of Telecommunications at Michigan State
University, who are working with competence and
dedication for offering to the people of this millennium

the possibility for living real experience in virtual

network environments.

vfi

 

CHAP'I

 

 

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1 - THE PHENOMENON OF COMMUNICATION .......... 1
Evolution ............................................ 2
Noosphere ............................................ 7
Electronic Machines ................................. 10

CHAPTER 2 - THE GENESIS OF VIRTUAL COMMUNICATION.... 13

A New Concept of Communication ...................... 15
The Concept of Real ................................. 16
Searching for a Virtual Meaning ..................... 17
‘Within’ — The Egg of The Virtual ................... 24
Virtual Time and Space .............................. 29
The Body in Virtual Time and Virtual Space .......... 32
Identity ............................................ 34
Virtual Ethos ....................................... 38
CHAPTER 3 — VIRTUAL MACHINES IN A.VIRTUAL WORLD ..... 44
The Evolution of Computers .......................... 45
Network of Neurons .................................. 53
Neural Network and Artificial Intelligence .......... 55
Convergence and Internet ............................ 58
Cyberspace .......................................... 60
Virtual Education ................................... 65
Physical and Cognitive Emotions ................... l. 67
Affective Computing ................................. 71
CHAPTER 4 - TOWARD A VIRTUAL WORLD .................. 76
The Conflict Between Real and Virtual in Technology 77
The Computer as a Simple Tool ....................... 79
The Internet ........................................ 80
Policy Issues ....................................... 83
International Challenges ............................ 84

CHAPTER FIVE - A.NEW SCENARIO OF TECHNOLOGY AND

‘VIRTUALIZATION ...................................... 87
The Vision of Virtual as the Potential of the Real.. 87
The Convergence of Technologies ..................... 88
A Human Basis for Technology ........................ 91
Virtual Aesthetics .................................. 92
Virtual Mind and Machine ............................ 93
Virtual Spirituality ................................ 95
Conclusion .......................................... 96
Endnotes ............................................ 98
Bibliography ....................................... 101

vfii

CHAPTER I -THE PHENOMENON OF COMMUNICATION

Television was still in its infancy when the famous
scientist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin died on Easter Sunday
in April 1955. Not so long ago, a world existed in which
television was considered only for the “elite.” Compare
that perception to today’s average household, which
contains a minimum of two television sets! Technology has
literally transformed our world into a new dimension.

In the past one hundred years, our world has endured
two World Wars and many changes in our political system.
New media-coverage techniques have evolved, and new
theories on thinking and thoughts are continually
developing. However, all of this progress does not-occur
without causing any division or insecurity. Authoritarian
political systems generated a tight and narrow cycle of new
thoughts and ideas.

Teilhard developed his whole vision of man in a
context characterized by a cartesian dualism between body
and mind and a platonic View based on the separation
between body and spirit. In the 405, the idea of evolution
was not well accepted in scientific circles. The religious
denomination he belonged to viewed the theory of evolution

as in opposition to the traditional concept of creation.

 

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The world was divided by many ideologies. During this time,
Teilhard, a priest and scientist, lived in China and
conducted the majority of his scientific research in
paleontology.

After many years of study, Teilhard explained his
theory and visions by proposing that human beings are
living in a “global village.” Just as the human brain
contains the configuration of billions of neurons needed to
function, the world of computers and modern technology
operates as a genesis for the development of globally
connected thoughts and networks. These environments are
constantly being generated and are ever evolving. Take for
example the physical aspect of the world’s network - which
includes antennas, satellites, wires, cellular phones,
radio, television, and computers - that form a planetary
convergent and democratic culture of communication around
the globe. Some of Teilhard’s most famous work describes
his perspective on the most fundamental concept of his

vision: evolution.

The Evolution

Evolution1 is the central point of Teilhard's vision.

He brought forth a new explanation of how life develops

 

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into higher forms. According to his theory, human beings
have evolved from elementary particles, and are
increasingly “complex” creatures with advancing levels of
consciousness. Teilhard called these levels of
consciousness the Law of Consciousness2 and Complexity3,
which he considered to be the most fundamental aspect of
the universe. He widens his scope on this theory by
introducing the Law of Consciousness and Complexity as
related to the concept of energy.

In his famous book The Phenomenon of.Man (1947), some
of his most relevant work was accomplished when he codified
the force present throughout the evolutionary process into
two distinct types of energy, “radial” energy and
‘tangential” energy“. Teilhard's early work involved the
assumption that essentially all energy has a physical and,
in some sense, spiritual nature, with two different
component faces, that of tangential and radial.

He divided each particular element into two separate
components. The first is the force, “tangential energy,”
and he links the element with all others of the same
complexity as itself in the universe. The second component
is “radial energy,” drawing the element forward towards an
ever greater complexity and centricity and ever more

directed towards the future.

‘It is the radial energy component that develops ever
greater clarity of interiority and higher forms of psychic
spirituality as one goes up the scale of beings,”
elaborates Grau (p. 124).

In order for human energy5 to have full harmony from
which to create a more complex design, it must include both
tangential and radial energy. The accumulated energy is
instrumental in the growth of something, especially in its
early stages. The ability for the new creation to go beyond
its earliest form and to acquire a higher level of
consciousness implies that it is crucial for an inner force
to exist.

In his research, Teilhard discovered that those
organisms in which the tangential energy was significant
and present (known as “life within”), a consciousness was
generated. In inanimate objects he called tangential
energy (known as ‘pre-life”) the first period in the
development of life, such as the elementary particles
(atoms, protons to galaxies). In the second period (known
as ‘life”), he determined that beings are not
self-reflective. It is during the third period (known as
‘thought”) that humans emerge with the capacity of self—

reflective thinking.

 

 

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Through his stunning work in defining the concept of
tangential and radial energy, Teilhard broadened his theory
by explaining the Process of Complexification and
Consciousness. He views this process as the fundamental law
of evolution.

Once the process of complexification is established,
the process of transformation is added. This process allows
the potential of the energy to evolve from the level of
electrons to that of atoms, from atoms to molecules, from a
single molecule to vastly more complicated ones.

What generates the process of complexification and
transformation according to Chardin, is the energy of the
‘within.” Each small particle carries an inner force
“within.” This force “within” seeks its own development,
perfection and destiny.

Throughout The Phenomenon of.Man, Teilhard emphasized
that the elements of the world are actually able to
influence and mutually penetrate each other by reason of
their ‘force of within”. This mutual penetration grows and
becomes increasingly perceptible in the case of organized
beings (for example, from ape primates to man), and finally
in man it reaches a maximum degree of consciousness. The
inner essence of the mind gradually became human and self-

reflective, and now that it is mutually stimulated by

 

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proximity, it is as though a movement of ripples or waves
has been created and continues to expand over the surface
of the globe by infiltrating more and more into each other
as they are generating a network of thoughts, feelings, and
expanding globally.

Quite poetically, Teilhard expresses how the evolution
of man and the universe has a purpose. He was deeply
convinced that ‘there is an absolute direction of growth,
to which both our duty and our happiness demand that we
should conform. It is the human function to complete cosmic
evolution” (p. 132). The billions of humans in the universe
have a purpose and direction. The purpose of human beings
on this planet is to “leave the state of isolation and
begin to discover in each other not merely the elements of
one and the same thing, but of single Spirit in search of
Itself”(p. 132).

As our community shifts toward a new frontier of
technology, our humanity has the ability to metamorphosize
into becoming something it has never been before —
completely and globally united as one mankind. Teilhard
created the term “noosphere” to describe this new space
being organized and increased through the advancement of

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Noosphere

In his remarkable work The Phenomenon of Man, Teilhard
defined the word “noosphere”( noos in Greek means mind) as
“the living membrane which is stretched like a film over
the lustrous surface of the star which holds us. It is
similar to an ultimate envelope taking on its own
individuality and gradually takes on itself like a luminous
aura. This envelope was not only conscious, but thinking,
the very soul of the earth”

(p. 262).

The human mind is the consciousness of a self-
reflective being, the highest form of life on earth.
Teilhard’s impassioned beliefs assert that every person is
an individual, and each is aware of his or her personal
identity (individual consciousness). However, Teilhard adds
that what we are aware of is only the nucleus which is
ourselves. The interaction of humans extends from one to
the other, something proper to each one and common to all.
To Teilhard, the fact that human beings are capable of
interacting with each other suggests that there is a
propelling force which is laying the foundation for humans
to reach a higher reality than what is known at this

moment. Teilhard's distinctive message is that there is an

 

 

 

 

 

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omnipresent force guiding humanity toward their ultimate
destination.

As the population and the sense of being collectively
united grows, Teilhard’s interpretation of the noosphere
also increases. With the advancement of communication and
the interdependence of the technological and industrialized
worlds, the intensification of research intensifies the
cerebralization of the human mind, the development of
humankind, and the improvement of human spirituality, arts,
ethos, and sciences.

To him, as this process occurs, there is a movement
of consciousness from the individual to the social, and
from the multiple to unity. A network of feelings,
thoughts and spirituality covers the earth with an immense
network of energy. “The idea is that of the earth not only
covered by myriads of grains of thought, but enclosed in a
single, vast grain of thought on the sidereal scale, the
plurality of individuals reflections grouping themselves
together and reinforcing one another in the act of a single
unanimous reflection”(p. 251). Teilhard believed that the
future of men will depend largely on how they will explore
the potential of the brain collectively.

He described thinking collectively as having a
6

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technological developments, Teilhard passionately deemed
that human beings will live in a global network of
thoughts. “Humans had lived in a narrow world, unaware of
the dimensions of time and space. Now,” he said, “a new
realization arose: time and space are organically joined
again so as to weave together

the stuff of the universe”(p. 218).

In Teilhard's opinion, this immense network coming
from the same physical base should consequently become a
multiple and convergent network of knowledge, codes,
cultural and human interests all over the earth. He
visualized this convergent scenario in a few words: “The
earth is not only becoming covered by myriads of grains of
thought, but becoming enclosed in a single thinking
envelope, a single unanimous reflection”(p. 251).

As a consequence of the increasing population and the
corresponding expansion throughout the world, the creation
of electronic communication became necessary. Teilhard
explicitly mentioned radio and electronic machines.
Humanization is accomplished by communication, by building
electronic machines and spaces that offer physical
communion, face-to-face contact that will spread to all

human beings everywhere.

Electronic Machines

In Teilhard’s predictive visions, he imagined that all
humans would steadily find methods to communicate
creatively using the potential of technology. He
impressively projected “electronic machines” as the link
that would enhance their knowledge and interest. Amazingly,
more than sixty years ago, he felt that these “astonishing
electronic machines” — which today can clearly be
interpreted as computers — are related to the power of
human brain. He addressed this topic in his written work in
Man’s Place in Nature (1950):

Here I am thinking of these astonishing electronic

machines by which our mental capacity to calculate and

combine is reinforced and multiplied by to the process
and to a degree that herald as astonishing advances in
this direction as those that optical science has
already produced for our power of vision.

As stated earlier, Teilhard envisioned that the
advancement of sciences would lead the humanity toward
higher technological progress, with better relationships
and cultural exchange between people. It was Teilhard
conviction that if humanity were to transcend barriers of
culture, geography, and ideology through the development of

technology, then people from different parts of the planet

would cooperate for the development of humankind and would

10

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become, ultimately, an interconnected network of thoughts
and knowledge.

It can be simply stated that technology becomes
essentially the extension of human beings. Electronic
Machines are, therefore, components of human beings.
Together they form a symbiosis.7

An indispensable part of the symbiosis between men and
machines is the convergence of people for building a
virtual space. Again, in Teilhard's modern thinking in
Man’s Place in Nature (1950), he declared:

Investigations in the past was isolated, but today we

find research students are numbered in the hundreds of

thousands-soon to be millions and they are no longer
distributed superficially and at random over the
globe, but are functionally linked together in a vast
organic system that will remain in the future

indispensable to the life of the community” (p. 106).

In the early stages of scientific knowledge,
Teilhard's projection of what was yet to come is ironically
unfolding before the world’s eyes. Quite powerfully, he
stated in The Phenomenon of.Man, “men yet has only just
begun to take a scientific view of his own significance in
the physical world”(p. 33). Evolution, to Teilhard, becomes
the basis for his concept of virtalization.

Teilhard demonstrated that brain is a network of

neurons. Once convinced of the phenomenon of the collective

ll

mind, Teilhard went on to describe time and space, which
represent the multiple and complex environments for humans
to communicate the potential of thoughts and knowledge.
This new dimension of time and space is called virtuality.

The genesis of communication in his vision is
essentially virtual. Teilhard saw in virtual space and time
the possibility for humans to explore the cultural,

artistic, erotic, spiritual, and ethical dimensions of life

in virtual spaces.

12

CHAPTER II - THE GENESIS OP VIRTUAL COMMUNICATION

In the preface of The Phenomenon of Man in.March 1947,
Teilhard wrote he was mainly interested “in the whole
'phenomenon of man. What I have tried to do is to choose
man as the center” (p. 29).

Teilhard philosophizes that humans are a whole with
the world. His theory of this relation, embeds the View
that there is a dimension that is not visible, but
representative; that is not concrete, but is metaphorical;
that is not merely physical, but symbolic. This space
beyond the formal space, the time beyond the mechanical
time, creates a new level of meanings (such as language,
emotions, imagination, desire, faith, belonging, art, eros,
and ethos) that are complementary to the physical world and
vice-versa.

The expression of his virtual vision of communication
is essentially his most original work. Teilhard practically
introduced the new concept of time, space, and identity in
virtual space. He insisted that the relationship between
the brain and electronic machines can be affective, and
even spiritual. He postulated that the virtual space is a
new dimension of relations — that cyberspace is the place

for discovering the RGW' potential for virtual experiences

13

 

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of communication. As the world enters a century of digital
technologies and virtual spaces, it is in such areas as
virtual reality, artificial intelligence, internet and
psychology, policy and e-commerce, privacy and cyberspace,
that Teilhard’s original vision is truly foreseen. His
early thoughts are actually coming to life and literally
experienced in today’s exchange of what is known as Virtual
communication.

At a time when television was a new invention and the
Age of Information was not even dreamed about, Teilhard had
the intuition that the future would need to discover the
potential of virtual space as it influenced human
communication. MOre than sixty years after his death, what
is known as the virtual is manifested in the form of the
internet — cyberspace, cyberculture, cybercommunities.
Virtual communication is becoming a new way of life. But
what is it all about? What societal changes and motivations
will come about as this new model of communication becomes
more predominant in our daily life? Will a new learning
domain come into existence through our acceptance of no
longer requiring a shared physical presence between two

people who want to communicate?

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A New Concept of Communication

It is crucial to consider the transition that society
is undertaking as it enters the “Information and Knowledge
Era.” This transition is continually encouraged by the
rapid technological advances in telecommunications. For
example, Biocca and Levy (1995), who have been developing
research and studying the phenomenon of virtual reality as
a medium for the masses and the social and cultural
implications that follow, have offered a new concept of
communication. They believe the virtualization of
technology will extend from the lab to the home, that the
concept of virtualization and the technology will become
part of humans' everyday life. Their research prompted them
to ask these questions: How will virtual reality influence
our perception of reality? What are the legal issues
defining communication in virtual reality? What kinds of
cultural trends will this technology encourage?

The increase of people interacting on-line, especially
on the internet, have given rise to new studies, new
theories, and new standards being set in regard to virtual
life. Hundreds of studies regarding the authenticity of the
virtual experience have been gaining the attention of

psychologists, computer experts, and educators (Strate &

15

Jacobson & Gibson, 1996; Markam, 1998; Springer, 1996).
These professionals are also asking important questions: Is
the experience of being online a real or virtual
experience? Is the experience of those who go into on-line
chat rooms, support groups, virtual communities and
cyberspace a real one?

It is now nationally and internationally recognized
that computer-mediated communication is expanding the
horizons of the human experience in new and unfamiliar
ways. What does it mean to have, or to be, a self in the
disembodied space of the on-line arena? How can this newly
emerging society, known as an “on-line”community, become
connected, committed, and even aware of their own roles
within the community as this new way of communication

becomes integrated into the world?

The Concept of Real

Webster’s Dictionary (1993) defines the word real as
“Authentic, genuine m not artificial or counterfeit.”
(p. 1890).

The “real world” is widely known and considered as

the space where humans experience life, relations, and it

includes the sense of time and space. The real is the space

16

 

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that offers the authentic experience of reality. In real
time, also called synchronous processing (as opposed to
asynchronous processing), there is the occurrence in which
the event remains at a distance from its registration as
data.

Physically, all people live in a limited space. People
dwell in specific geographical areas; they are born in a
determined time and place; they reside in a determined
area; they are familiar with laws of the earth such as the
seasons and the calendar. Space and time can be thought of
as two important factors of human existence.

As Poplin (1972) indicated, “the notion of community
traditionally refers to such unity of social and
territorial organizations as hamlets, villages, towns,
cities, and metropolitan villages,” thus invoking the sense
of “community as place” (p. 124). Cohen (1985), notes that
the traditional sociological studies of community truly

relates to the sense of common values and cultural habits.

Searching for a Virtual Meaning

The Webster’s Dictionary defines the word virtual as
“being in essence or effect, though not formally recognized

or admitted.”

l7

The concepts of virtual and real have traditionally
viewed as opposites. Why are these concepts conventionally
defined as such? Can a new position on the concepts of
virtual and real be interpreted into a new dimension?

According to Annette Markham (1998), the prejudice
against virtual as not real is present in our culture and
traditional education. “Its use in the areas of fiction
literature, movies, and electronic fantasies in space has
practically reinforced the composition of real and virtual
as opposition. This idea is found in current vocabularies
and ways of thinking” (p. 119).

She notes the consequence of this dichotomy permeating
the different areas of human knowledge when she says:

I realize now that when many writers (myself included)

describe cyberspace, they use the terms reality and

virtuality in traditional ways. We presuppose a binary
composition and opposition between real and virtual.

This help us integrate various communication

technologies into current vocabularies and ways of

thinking. We use real(and whatever we term its
opposite, virtual being the trendy choice at the
moment) to juxtapose nature versus technology,
referent versus sign, science versus fraud, genuine
versus reproduction, authentic versus fake, human

versus machine, and so forth (p. 119)

Authors such as Richard MacKinnon (1998) try to define
the term virtual as an interface space between the real and

the virtually real. “The primary difference between the

real and the Virtually real is the interposition of some

18

mediating and transforming agent or interface between the
senses and the shared perception” (p. 4).

MacKinnon seems to define real as that which is experienced
by the senses and virtual as the space between the senses
(interface).

Keeps (1994) attempts to find a semiotic definition of
the virtual, asking, “If the virtual can offer the complete
range of sensory experiences available and even optimize
those experiences such that the real comes to seem a pale
shadow of the virtual, how will one still differentiate
between the sign and the reference?” (p. 2).

Until the early 19905, the term virtual reality was
practically unknown. Beginning in 1991-92, the media
focused their attention on the “revolutionary technology
that allowed people to enter computer-generated worlds
using a helmet and glove” said Schroeder (1996, p. 1).

According to him, the discussion about what is real
and virtual started to propagate in the area of virtual
reality. One of the challenges in virtual reality is the
antirealist approach that does not consider virtual
experience as real (p. 3). Schroeder opens up the
possibility of the virtual present into the categories of

the real.

19

There are philosophical studies related to virtual
reality using the platonic image of the cave to further
explain the genesis of the virtual (Zettl, 1996; Heim,
1996).Works from the late twentieth-century focus basically
on the hyperreal, moving closer to the virtual (e.g.,
Baudrillard, 1988; Benedikt, 1991; Rheingold, 1993).

Pierre Levy (1998), a French philosopher, wrote about
technology and philosophy and defined the virtual as a
“pretense potential.” He considered the original meaning of
the world “virtual” since it was derived from the medieval
Latin - virtualis - he defined it as a strength or power.
“The virtual is a fecund and powerful mode of being that
expands the process of creation, opens up the future,
injects a core of meaning beneath the platitude of
immediate physical presence” (p. 27).

One of the original pioneers of virtual reality was

Jaron Lanier, who argued that communication can go beyond
the verbal language or body language to take on “magical,
alchemical properties.” Heim (1993), who studied the
metaphysical aspects of virtual reality, interprets the
concept of virtual as postulated by Lanier as the “post-
symbolic communication.” (p. 116).

Heim’s interpretation of Lanier’s work suggests that

we accept the virtual world as not totally real:

20

A virtual world needs to be not-quite-real or it will
lessen the pull on imagination. Something-less-than-
real evokes our power of imaging and visualization.
Recall the legend of the vanishing artist. The magic
in the story comes from the cross-over of three-
dimensional to two-dimensional frameworks. On another
level, the magic of the story comes from our ability
to cross over from the words of the narration to an
inner vision of the sequence of virtual events. The
story relates a legend about the power of symbols
while exhibiting that power. Imagination allows to use
what we read or hear to reconstitute the symbolic
components into a mental vision. The vision transcends
the limits of our bodily reality, so that from the
viewpoint of bodily existence, imagination is an
escape, even though imagination often introduces new
factors into our lives that sometimes cause us to
alter actual circumstances (p. 133).

Markham (1998), who researched people on-line for
three years, assumed the position that virtual experience
online is authentically real:

As I analized what people said, I began to understand
that real and its opposite, not real, are becoming
less valid frames, not because we are not having real
experiences, but because online our experiences cannot
be classified into binary states. Even the term
virtual, it defined as nearly real, doesn’t
encapsulate online experience. For these participants,
every experience is as real as another. This makes
sense intuitively. For most of us, every experience is
an experience, to the extent that it is lived. If it
makes sense to us and feels like it is happening, how
could it not be real? (p. 115-116).

When the experience of the virtual is related to
sexuality8 researchers have wondered how ongoing
digitalization will affect the status of subjectivity. In

considering on-line desire, fantasies, and eros, the

21

question has been raised regarding how much the virtual
eros is real. Is sexuality in the internet real or virtual?

Zizek (1997), writing about cyberspace and
subjectivity, affirmed that “In Cyberspace, we witness a
return to pensee sauvage, to ‘concrete’, ‘sensual' thought:
an essay in cyberspace confronts fragments of music and
other sounds, text, images, video clips, and so on, and it
is this confrontation of ‘concrete’ elements which produces
‘abstract’ meaningm” (p. 131).

Mark Lajoie, Psychoanalysis and cyberspace (1996),
believes that the convergence of virtual reality and
network technologies is the product of desire and eros.

For him, communicating virtually offers more possibilities
for the expression of eroticism and desire than even
communicating personally. He asks:

What differentiates talking in person from talking

through the network? When I talk with someone face to

face, the only medium I employ is language and my own
voice m Chat may allow me a range of communication
possibilities, such as multi-user chats, and some
conventions for displaying emotion or tone can also be

used (p. 153).

According to a group of researchers in the area of
virtual reality (Moser & MacLeod, 1996), the Art and

Virtual Environment has brought forth a new perspective

between technology , arts and aesthetics. Using virtual

22

technologies, artists, painters, musicians, and writers,
challenge traditional conventions in art, and suggest a new
relationship between the viewer and the viewed.

In describing a virtual geography, Wark (1994) argues
the virtual is a real experience that goes beyond the
limits of the familiar terrain where we sleep, and work:

We live every day also in another terrain, equally

familiar: the terrain created by the television, the

telephone, the telecommunications networks
crisscrossing the globe. These vectors produce in us

a new kind of experience, the experience of

telesthesia - perception at a distance. This is our

“virtual geography,” the experience of which doubles,

troubles, and generally permeates our experience of

the space we experience firsthand” (introduction).

In the arena of developing a virtual ontology: there
are probably more questions than answers. Recently, virtual
reality concepts, the development of the internet, and the
interest in cyberspace have raised interest for the virtual
among computer areas, psychology, education, and
philosophy.

The discussion about virtual communication is new. The
development of the internet has raised several questions,
such as: How is the virtual related to the real? How
real is the experience in virtual space? How can the non—

referential world of virtual reality affect people

physically, psychologically, and even aesthetically? How

23

authentic and secure is the use of virtual space for
developing electronic democracy, electronic commerce, and
virtual relationship?

Teilhard believes that the virtual is the potential of
the real. In other others, the virtual is part of the real.
How does Teilhard formulate this base for a Virtual
reality? Teilhard’s concept of virtual originates from the

concept of the “within” and the “without.”

‘Within', The Egg of the Virtual

In order to explain the “within” Teilhard defines
another word, “without.” “Without” refers to the external
aspect of reality: what is measurable, the aspect of
reality that has metrical proportion. In contrast, the
“within” refers to that aspect of reality that is
intangible. They correspond to that something which
emerges; i.e., that which is more than the sum of its
parts.

The within is present in all groups of molecules and
organisms, embedded in the physical and spiritual elements
as an internal unity, which is formed in the synthesis of
the parts. Even an individual cell has an internal unity

which can be thought of as a within. For humans, the

24

r)

if

(I

within produces its own consciousness9 , a self-reflexive
way of thought that is in a continuous process of
evolution.

Provenzano (1993), identifies the insight in Teilhard
vision as the complementing interior-exterior of things.
“The fundamental insight of Teilhard rests on the vision
that reality at all levels is composed of both aspects” (p.
146).

In explanation of the two energies, Teilhard argued,
“We are perfectly well aware in our concrete actions that
the two opposite (within and the without of things) forces
combine” (p. 63).

Basically, Teilhard defined the virtual mechanism
inside of the molecules and neurons, inside human
consciousness and self-consciousness.

The basic question: How does this personal process of
virtualization become collective, expanding to the social,
the cultural, and the technological dimension? In other
words, if there is a process of virtualization inside the
physical elements (neurons), and psychological entities
(men), how can this personal definition of psyche be
applied to an individual human mind as well as to a

collective intelligence? How does the relation of

25

 

 

LEV}

,AFV‘. "‘
by“- .

interiority or sensation, affectivity, become applied to
machines, for example?

In order to explain these affective relations, Pierre
Levy (1998) used four factors. Rather than limit the
conception of what is an element of the psyche, he provided
a definition of the psyche that can be applied to an
individual mind as well to a collective intelligence. He
defined “an integral psyche,” one that is capable of affect
and can be analyzed along four complementary dimensions:

- Topology: The psyche is structured at each moment by
its connections, systems of proximity, or specific space:
associations, systems of proximity, or specific space,
associations, connections, paths, gateways, switches,
filters.

- Semioticsm: Mutant hordes of representations,
images, signs, and messages of various shapes and kinds
(aural, visual, tactile, diagrammatic) people in the space
of connections.

- Axiology: The representations and regions of psychic
space are associated with values, either positive or
negative, depending on the different measurement systems.

- Energics: The tropism or values attached to images
can be strong or weak. All psychic activity is irrigated

and animated by an energic economy involving the movement

26

or immobilization of forces, the assignment or mobilization
of values, the circulation of energy, the investment or
divestment of representations, connections, etc. (p. 131-
132)

According to Levy, the operations of the psyche are
parallel and distributed rather than sequential and linear.

A psyche constitutes an interiority. Its topology is

not a neutral container, a pure system of coordinates,

but a qualitative and differentiated space whose
component parts are all related to one another and
form figures. Signs and messages, by circulating
through and populating the space, by constantly
referring to one another, and by actualizing
connectivity, also help create the interiority of the

mind (p. 133).

Teilhard’s suppositions do not include these four
dimensions, but he uses two of them to explain how the
subjective operations of the psyche or mind “within”
(subjectivity) is in reciprocal implication and dependent
on environmental qualities (“without”), an outside
environment that continues to provide new objects, new
practical or aesthetic configurations for it to inhabit.

To include Teilhard's theory in this discussion, it
is necessary to consider his concept of the “within”, what
he called “spiritual.” We can, therefore, complement Levy’s

four dimensions when we connect Teilhard's important

dimension:

27

.v...
Q

 

 

- Spiritualu: the psyche is involved with the self-
sense of being, the aura of transcendence by the sense of
belonging, the sense of finality, the sense of being part
of overall creation.

To Teilhard interiority is explained by the inner
force of the “within”, as already pointed out.

Levy believes that interiority is formed by the
dialectic relation between the signs and messages by
circulating through and populating the space, by constantly
referring to one another, and by actualizing connectivity
also help create the interiority of the mind. “Values
mutually determine one another and form a system m This
internal self-understanding depends upon how an individual
can analyze and understand the role that others play in
one’s life. he self-understanding process is built in a
continuous effort for understanding others.” (p. 133).

The world, the physical universe, is a particular
instance of the subjective world that surrounds,
impregnates, and sustains the context in which the message
is transmitted. The subject is its world, the world here
being understood as everything that affect envelopes. To
say that the psyche is open to the outside is something of
an understatement. It is nothing but exteriority - but an

exteriority that is infiltrated, energized, complicated,

28

transubstantiated, and animated by affectivity. The subject
is a world bathed in meaning and emotion.

As the tension between the individual and collective
mind intensifies, two vectors are significantly altered,
time and space. The self, therefore, is in constant
disequilibrium, openness, receptivity, and change, the
dialogue between the self and the collective.

The model of “within” and “without” as a complement
is practically the ontology for a real experience in
virtual space formulated by Teilhard. He sees
virtualization as the principal vector in the creation of
reality. As the process of virtualization has been with us
since the very beginning, it will affect physical
presence, the collective world, the economy, politic,
ethics, and technology. How will virtualization affect all

these aspects? Changing time and space.

Virtual Time and Space

Communication is essentially a virtual experience. A

virtual experience has two basic components: time and

space.

29

Teilhard believes that in virtual communication, time
and space change considerably. As he says in his short
work, Man’s Place in Nature (1950):

I am also thinking of the insidious growth of those

astonishing electronic computers which, pulsating with

signals at the rate of hundreds of thousands a second,
not only relieve our brains of tedious and exhausting
work, but because they enhance the essential (and too
little noted) factor of “speed of though”, are also
paving the way for a revolution in the sphere of

research (p. 67).

Teilhard simply understood that time itself can be
measured by the advance of evolution, and the speed of time
by the speed of evolution. Time can appear to go slower or
faster, according to the lesser or greater number of events
happening in its passage.

Teilhard argued in The Phenomenon of.Man about the
new concept of time and emphasized that “humans had lived
in a narrow world, unaware of the dimensions of time and
space. Moreover, these dimension have no relationship to
each other. Now a new realization arose: time and space are
organically joined again so as to weave together the stuff
of the universe” (p. 218).

Teilhard had already realized that “evolutionary time

can appear to speed up or accelerate. This is easily seen

by two phenomena: the actual speeding up of evolution and

30

the great technological advancement in the recent era” (p.
120).

The passage from the mechanical12 model to the virtual

takes into account the following aspects:

- The plurality of times and spaces.

- In virtual time and space, there is no a uniform
chronology, but a multitude of types of space
and duration.

- Time is organized and invented according to the
pertinent space where the different of life
creates.

- The use of different modalities of transmission
(oral traditions, writing, digital network)
construct different rhythms, velocities.

- Each new mechanism adds a space-time. For
example, a musical, a movie, an image, all can
introduce different time according to the speed
of images.

The change in time and space alters the physical,

psychological and cultural vectors of relations.

31

The Body in Virtual Time and Virtual Space

Prognostics for the future computers and internet
indicate they will be operating at a high speed”.
Alteration in time and space will affect the body and its
relation to space.

Virtualization forces the body to adapt to a new time
and space, redesigning its behavior, adapting to the new
configuration of the new virtual space, accommodating the
new environment of relations. A virtual relation with
people in the internet alters the configuration of the
traditional relationship.

The body can be viewed as the bridge for the relation
between the external and the internal worlds”. The body as
the communication medium plays a substantial role. The body
is the medium. The body filters through emotions, the
senses, sexuality, desire, and perceptions which succeed
in the environment and consequently affects and is affected
by the codes, languages, values, and technology of the
environment. This model of the psyche may be applied to
two people connected to the internet, talking to each
other. The process of creating meaning — signification of

the information — embraces all the physical and

32

psychological aspects of a person and his interaction with
others in an environment.

The same process occurs between people and the means
they choose by which to initiate contact. When using a
personal computer, for example, a person may manipulate or
destroy the text or image, organize the fragments of the
text, or deposit it in another person's computer. The
virtual begins to appear with the human subjectivity, with
appeal for interpretations.

Levy understood the effect of the text in this new
interpretation. saying that “the text serves as a vector, a
substrate, or pretext, for the actualization of our own
mental space” (p. 49).

The discussion among authors about the concept of
space in cyberspace agrees that cyberspace is not only a
physical space. This point is made by James Gleick (1994),
who describes the Net as being in essence a non-physical
entity: “It isn’t a thing. It isn’t an entity. It isn’t an
organization. No one owns it. No one runs it. It is simply
everyone’s computers, connected” (p. 57).

Cyberspace, therefore, cannot be viewed only as a
material thing (computers, modems, telephone lines, etc.).
According to Beniger (1996), it also has two major

nonmaterial components: relationships among individuals,

33

and the cybercultural contents of their heads - the sense
of belonging to cyberspace, and of what that might mean”
(p. 51).

Cyberspace may be outlined in three levels as
‘Rheingold (1993) suggests: “the conceptual space where
words, human relationships, data, wealth, and power are
manifested by people using CMC (computer-mediated-
communications) technology” (p.5).

As a conceptual space for creating new meanings,
cyberspace becomes a social organization and reproduction
of sense, consciousness, and meaning among its members. In
other words, a new space for creating a new identity among

the members.

Identity

It has been demonstrated that the change of time and
space affect identity15 on a personal and structural level.
Historically, the passage from print - based on a

linear structure such as books (Eisenstein, 1979)- to

virtually designed electronic graphics affected the

definitions and constructions of self in our culture.
According to Bolter (1996), who has been studying the

;psychological aspects of virtual reality and self, Western

34

culture has been influenced by the technology of printing
throughout several hundred years. According to him, two of
the most influential constructions of self in the age of
print has been the Cartesian ego. Descartes insists in the
autonomy of the individual and a radical separation between
subject and object. Descartes, and also Kant”, said the
visual and sensual aspects of human nature are subordinated
to the faculty of reason.

As print emphasized and rewarded the individuality and
uniqueness of the author, the arrival of fully electronic
technology left behind the cartesian notion of self. “Now
the new technology of representation is playing a role in
the redefinition of self” (p. 111).

In The Electronic Word, Lahnam (1993) agrees with
others that the computer disrupts and destabilizes linear
text, but he points out that this destabilization has been
a feature of the visual arts throughout the 20”‘century.
'Bolter maintains that “electronic technology is offering
two distinct sets of tools for presentation and
representation: tools for writing, and tools for
visualization and sensory presentation. The computer and
attendant technologies call forth both a new writing space

and a thew perceptual space” (p.112)-

35

The continual growth of the use of computers and the
internet has been altering human relations on both an
individual and collective level. According to Strate,
Jacobson and Gibson (1996), the process of adapting to
virtual space (cyberspace), changes the way in which we
communicate, both in format and in content. “Communication
adjusted to meet the demands and biases of cyberspace is
cybercommunication, and as communication and culture are
intimately linked, culture itself is also altered”(p. 271).

Richard H. Cutler (1996) understands how this
relationship between technology and the self provides the
opportunity to enter into a new and different kind of
relationship with others. Thus, computer media in
cyberspace technologies allow the self to form virtual
relationships, join virtual groups and organizations, and
to build virtual communities without borders. This in turn
alters the roles that people play and their very sense of
identity.

Considering the interaction and the implications of
building self-concept on line, Cutler maintained this
interaction:

produces changes in two directions: toward self-

concept building a group identity building. So, acting

out roles or taking on expanded or new identities,

participants become changed selves. They use the
interactive, face-to-face nature of technology that

36

created the opportunity to further personal

transformation and formation of groups” (p. 327-328).

Lance Strate (1996), in his analyses of cyberspace and
communication, considered time as a key element in the
formation of cultures, communities, identities, and
meanings. He introduces the idea of cybertime as an
alternative, and as a complement to the concept of
cyberspace. He argues that the computer functions as a
clock - keeping, measuring, and producing time both for the
outside world and through stories, games, and audiovisual
presentation. “Cybertime is networked time and also a
network of different concept of time” (p. 373).

According to Strate and Jacobson (1996), electronic
communication calls into being electronic space. Computer-
mediated communication (CMC) calls into being computer-
mediated space. As products of communication, computers are
creating new forms of social and cultural spaces. “We
change the ways in which we communicate, both in format and
in content. Communication adjusted to meet the demands and
biases of cyberspace is cybercommunication, and as
communication and culture are intimately linked, culture
itself is also altered” (p. 271).

As the social relations are affected by time and

space, the relation with institutions follows the same

37

parameters. The institutions, laws, and organizations, once
virtually linked, offer ways to create new meanings, new
signification. The relation between users and the
institution virtually opens space for recreating new
relations, new interpretations. The relation between an
user and a state institution is interpretative,
metaphorical.

Once interacting in the virtual environment, the
concept of ethos is consequently altered by the process of
dialectic. Teilhard nourished his ideas regarding this
process of being in constant evolution and tension. New
concepts are created, new signs are incorporated, new
interpretations are made generating a new vision into the

environment. A new ethos evolve from this virtual scenario.

Virtual Ethos

Referring to a letter written in 1927 by Teilhard,
Mooney relates ethos to beauty when he quotes Teilhard
saying that what he desired to propagate was not a theory
or system so much as a taste and perception of beauty
(Mooney, 1976):

I try to translate the species of calm intoxication

produced in me by an awareness of the profound
substance of things into theories(how I wish I could

38

translate them into music!), but these theories really

matter to me only by their vibrations in a province of

the soul which is not that of intellectualism. Those
who do not hear the fundamental harmony of the

Universe which I try to transcribemlook in what I

write for some kind of narrowly logical system and are

confused or angrymOnce again, it would be more to my
purpose to be a shadow of Wagner than a shadow of

Darwin (p. 9).

According to Christopher Mooney (1976), Teilhard used
several ways when approaching ethical issues. Certain
authors (Grau, for example) chose to center their
reconstruction around Teilhard’s analysis of love as a
human phenomenon, and to underline its significance as the
most unusual form of spiritualized human energy..

The ethos comes to him from the within, the force of
evolution, the sense of others, the world, the beauty that
is within humans. Teilhard referred, according to Grau, to
the Great Presence in The Phenomenon of Man “a sense of the
universe, a sense of the all, the nostalgia which seizes us
when confronted by nature, beauty, music —these seem to be
an expectation and awareness of a Great Presence” (p.266).
However, Teilhard asks: “But, with this point made, how are
we to explain the appearance all around of us of mounting
repulsion and hatred?”

The relationship between love and aggression, as Grau

(1976) notes, has been a perennial problem for ethicists

39

and has surfaced with considerable impact in the realm of
psychology as well, to which the well-known split between
Freud and Adler will attest. (p. 181).

Teilhard’s notion of love also implies the concept of
understanding the awareness of sharing in the struggle as
itself as the important foundation for a universal human
love.

As the same base for hope in the struggle have import

for the second and third types of obstacles, with

their peculiar facets of aggression. These obstacles
exist in the ultimately more difficult sphere of human
interpersonal relations and consist in what arises
when men take aggressive action against each other,
rather than against impersonal forces. The second type
consists of persons or a person who gets in the way of
what another person or group wants to do, and who are
attacked for what could be described as motives of
selfish, arrogant dominance. The third type, which can
be classified as the unjust aggressor, is the sort
against whom one can speak of action taken justifiable

self-defense (p. 183).

The tension between the two opposites, love and
hatred, is positively determined as Provenzano (1993)
realizes that “the positive tone to the Philosophy of
Conscious Energy comes from the underlying assumption of
him that the tendency toward organization and consciousness
is more fundamental and, therefore, stronger than the
opposite tendency” (p. 193).

Teilhard suggested that the repulsion is present in

the “within,” but

40

We should overcome the ‘anti-personalist’ complex
which paralyses us, make up our minds, accept the
possibility, indeed the reality, of some source of
love and object of love at the summit of the world
above our heads. Each one is responsible for the
ethos. It is impossible to give oneself to anOnymous
number.

Looking positively and realistically to the tension of
two forces, love and hatred, Teilhard maintains an
optimistic direction that humans may attempt to understand
each other by their increasing level of consciousness and

responsibility. He emphasized this idea in The Phenomenon

of.Man:

The most fundamental aspect of the universe is
increasing consciousness. The highest level of
consciousness that we have observed is the type of
consciousness which is present in each and every
individual human being”. Therefore, each individual
human being represents a localized maximum achievement
of the universe’s most fundamental tendency: a quantum
of energy transformed to State of self—consciousness.
The highest level of consciousness necessarily results
in the highest level of free will - and the ability to
exercise free will is liberty (p. 196).

The ethos Teilhard brought from this perspective is
consequently a decisive evolution of each individual that
grows in the process of individualization and the sense of

collectivity. Provenzano testifies that Teilhard “is so

convinced of the value and uniqueness of each individual

41

person” (p. 170). However, the subjective ethos has its
collective dimension as well.

There is an evolutionary process of self-understanding
in which humans necessarily will find another side of being
humans: collective-understanding or the sense of others.
Teilhard believes that this process of collective-
understanding comes when at the within of human beings they
find a consciousness of their own consciousness, in being a
person.

Murray ( 1996 ) argues that Teilhard’s central thesis
about the function of morality depends on man's awareness
of his responsibility:

The progress, even the very survival, of modern

science depends, moreover, upon man’s success in

responding creatively and morally to the pressure of
socialization. No single man, no isolated group or
professors, can acquire or master more than a tiny

portion of scientific knowledge. Science is a

collective possession, research a collective task. It

depends not upon professional scientists alone but on

a world-wide structure of government, industry,

education, and communications (p. 135).

The ethos also carries a social aspect. The sense of
collectivity can elicit each individual to think about
others and the consequences of his acts. Much like the
cells form a group, the brain consists of millions of
neurons, forming a body, humans create a network of

interactions with physical, social, and psychological

implications. Mooney (1968) interprets this idea:

42

The great body of mankind must be build up our of many
cells which now lead their separate existences. Just
as the human brain consists of millions of neurons
which have been composed into a unity through
innumerable connections and combinations and this make
possible the unitary consciousness in man so must men
combine with one another to form a kind of super-
organism in which a communal consciousness, a
suprapersonal unity would be manifested - with one
difference: that the cells which constitute our brain
no longer have an individual existence, whereas man,
in virtue of his reflective consciousness, retains
his individual freedom and separate existence, even
within the larger organization

(p. 100—101).

The ethos of Teilhard is an attitude that comes from
the consciousness of each individual that is in itself the
sense of collectivity. The external laws and regulations
must be up to this personal and social function. Teilhard’s
concept of collective community and its common interests
are the base for a possible ethos. As Chardin states in

Human Energy:

The powers that we have released could not possibly be
absorbed by the narrow system of individual or
national units which the architects of the human Earth
have hitherto used. The age of nations has passed. Now
unless we see to perish we must shake off our old
prejudices and build the Earth.

Ethos is more than a code of law or policy. It has to do

with the sense of beauty, eros and spirituality.

43

CHAPTER III - VIRTUAL MACHINES IN A.VIRTUAL WORLD

Teilhard’s vision of Communication is comparable
to a beautiful orchestra and symphony full of harmony
and melody. Each note epitomizes an individual cell.
Each instrument symbolizes a layer of the brain. Each
musician represents an electronic machine and each
piece of music portrays a network of thoughts and
feelings. The musical presentation, the orchestra, and
the public all combine to illustrate a convergence of
signals transforms codes that generate into a backbone
of intense energy. This, in turn, becomes a rapid
transmission and reception of common feelingsand the
sense of beauty.

As individual notes form a song, cells form the
net of neurons in the brain, the bits and bytes
transmit a message digitally to the computer system
and backbone extension, and codes and language
transmit the meaning inside of a culture.

Virtual communication is a combination of
different human and technical factors that mutually
interact. In this sense, the future of virtualization
is the digitalization of technology. This new

digitalization enters the culture, and digitalization

eventually reaches humans. People are both virtual and
digital. Likewise, so is the computer. This new
virtual scenario confirms “electronic machine,” the
convergence of technologies, internet and cyberspace;
digital culture is becoming part of the inevitable
phenomenon of men.

The next section presents the accelerated process

of virtualization as computer technologies increase.

The Evolution of Computers

The introduction of technology on earth, according to
Teilhard Chardin, is part of human intelligence, a spiral
of evolution, a necessity for social organization and
surviving. He categorically affirmed in The Phenomenon of
an that “once life takes hold on a planet we can consider
the emergence of technology as inevitable. The ability to
expand the reaches of one’s physical capabilities, not to
mention mental facilities, though technology is clearly
useful for survival” (p. 17).

Historically, human beings have developed this virtual
process everywhere by creating art, culture, religion,
economic relations, politics, technology. Virtualization

is a condition of life. More recently, virtualization has

45

increased rapidly by the introduction of the computer in
human lives.

In the second half of our century, three major changes
revolutionized telecommunications. The first was the
transistor, with the resulting expansion in semiconductor
integrated circuits. The second was the development of
solid state lasers. The third was the invention of the
optical fiber, which replaced the electron with the proton
as the carrier of information pulses.

The expansion of technology has greatly accelerated
over time”. The continuous exponential growth of
technology in the first two decades of the twentieth
century matched that of the entire nineteenth century. The
evolution of technology seeks to improve capabilities in an
higher exponential.

The capacity of computers is increasing 100 times per
decade”. Processing speeds, storage capacities and network
bandwidths continue to evolve at a faster rate as well.
Computers with increased processing memory and ability to
deal with more of the physical world will evolve to handle
more complex data types.

Gordon & James (1997) assert:

For five decades, progress in computer technology has

driven the evolution of computers. Computers are
everywhere: from mainframes to pacemakers, from the

46

telephone network to carburetors. These technologies
have enabled computers to supplement and often
supplant other information processors, including
humans

(p. 6).

The first computers only handled scalars and
simple records. With time, they evolved to work with
vectors, complex data bases, graphical objects for
visualization, and time-varying signals to users,
telecomputers, and television computers that are attached
to phones and television sets. Computers have been growing
exponentially in power, long before the invention of
integrated circuits in 1958 or even the transistor in 1947.
The speed and density of the World Wide Web, using the
internet, has stimulated other computer classes to emerge,
including network computers for corporate computation, the
use of which doubled every three years.

According to Kurzweil (1999), computers are about
one hundred million times more powerful for the same unit
cost than they were a half century ago. Miggakizza (1996)
observed that computers have significantly affected the
history of people. “The advent of computers has overwhelmed

and changed the way society functions. In this process,

society has become more and more dependent on this

47

technology. Never before, in human history, has technology
so captivated society in such a short period of time”
(p. 102).

For five decades”, progress in computer technology
drove the evolution of computers. Computers are everywhere:
from mainframes to pacemakers, from the telephone network
to carburetors. In 1997, processor speed storage capacity
and transmission rates were evolving at an arrival rate of
60%, doubling every eighteen months, beginning to
understand speech. In the next few years, computers are
predicted to deal with images, video, and provide virtual
reality (VR) for synthesis (being in artificially created
environments such as an atomic structure, building) and
analysis (recognition). All this information will be
networked, indexed, and accessible by almost anyone,
anywhere, at any time - 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. A
hierarchy of networks (Lans, WANs, POTS) connecting
computer platforms that process, store, and interface with
the cyberspace-user’s environment in the physical world
will be a possibility in cyberspace development.

In his introduction to the concept of UIC, Weiser
(1996) gave a broad idea why computer will be everywhere.

The term ubiquitous is used because computers and

computation will be everywhere, embedded in the fabric
of our lives. Ubiquitous computing will bring the

48

internet into our daily lives with less effort.
Instead of keeping lists of pertinent URLS or
“favorite places” on our browsers, the devices that
need the information can find it themselves. Instead
of “surfing” to find and sift through all of the
information available to us, some other agent or
device will do the searching for us” (p. 1).
Another important concept of Weiser’s is the vision of
Calm Technologyufl in which ubiquitous computing will
implement calm technology; a world where computers do not
cause stress, but enhance our lives and make many tasks
easier
The internet has made networking useful and it is
already becoming ubiquitous as telephones and television
become “network”-ready. There is access to networked
computers for use in the home, education, government,
health care, and business worlds. The production and
publication of literature, art and music, information,
business, the exchange of data through e-mails and web
sites is emerging quickly into the World Wide Web, creating
more possibilities for communication. Access to more
bandwidth and the convergence of technologies will create a
new space and time for this new arena of communication.
Communicating over the internet is indeed

revolutionary and - as did the railroad, telephone, radio,

and television - brings with it the potential for much

49

change in how the world will perceive distance, time, space
and global boundaries.

To Kurzweil (1999), “the telephone and the internet
network, the two great networks of the twentieth century,
will be joined by and merge with all the other electronic
distribution system of the twentieth and twenty—first
centuries” (p. 42). He argued:

The evolution of the computer from 1947 to the present

is the basis of a model that will use to forecast
computer technology and its uses in the next five
decades. We believe that our quest is to get all
knowledge and information into cyberspace, indeed, to
build the ultimate computer that complements ‘man’ (p.

7).

In these past years, there has been an increasing
interest in computer technologies, psychology, and_
neuroscience, for the relation between men and machines.
While there is an evolution of technology, there is also
interest in making computers more physically, socially and
psychologically adaptable to humans. The idea of changing
from a tool to a medium has made computers more adaptable
and closer to humans in the digital era. The new studies in
Artificial Intelligence, virtual reality, neuroscience,
media equation, and affective computing demonstrate the

interest for making the relation between humans and

machines much better.

50

Predicting the future of technology, Kerzweil (1999)
predicted that the 2lst century will be virtual in the
first sense of the word.

It will dawn with the realization of the immense
potential in laboratories, tapping the unexploited
resources of semiconductor microelectronics and
optoelectronics, and drawing on the power of human
mind to devise the software and algorithms that will
quicken the pace of the revolution in services and
networks. Virtual, in the second sense, will
characterize the services and networks of the future.
A new, tangible reality will be fashioned for mankind,
in which virtual sounds, pictures and sensations will
simulate real presence. This seeming witch-craft will
reach such heights that networks themselves and some
service, virtually at present will appear perfectly
independent of their physical substrates and quite
intangible. Today’s technology can fool the eye and
ear. It creates the virtual, media-propagated
environments which transcends space and time (p. 31).

Especially in recent years, the process of
virtualization has dramatically accelerated by the
introduction of computers in the scenario of communication.
Levy (1999), in his studies about collective intelligence
and technology, attested “the speed and force of
contemporary virtualization are so great that they exile
beings and their attendant knowledge, alienate them from
their identity, skills, and homeland” (p. 186). As the
process of virtualization accelerates, the tension between

personal, collective, and environment increases. The

transition from mechanical time, space and vision to the

51

digital and virtual is sure to bring about unresolved
conflicts and tensions, especially in the change of
institutions, values, morals, education, religion and
society.

The ultimate virtualization of life is becoming
evident in many segments of our lifestyles. The
virtualization of the economy is an example. The economic
negotiations all over the world are changing the way in
which consumers buy and transact. The entertainment
industry is another example. The hundred of new channels
that are available for the virtual is becoming part of the
routine within many societies.

The introduction of technology on earth, according to
Teilhard Chardin, is part of human intelligence, a spiral
of evolution, a necessity for social organization and
surviving. In the process of the evolution of machines,
computers have become an extension of the human brain and a
partner that connects and organizes the internal (self
organization) and external worlds (society).

As the technology of computers increases, interest has
grown in the brain/computer relationship. Recent studies

have demonstrated this relation.

52

Network of Neurons

During the past 10 years, there has been considerable
interest in the studies of the human brain“. The World
Federation of Neurology officially dubbed the 19905 “The
Decade of the Brain.” Cytowic (1996) states there are
approximately 23,000 neurologists throughout the world
studying the phenomenon of the brain “I recall that not too
long ago only the most thoughtful, self-motivated, and
philosophically-oriented practitioners pondered how mind
emerges from brain. Today that question challenges bright
individuals from several disciplines” (p.l).

As a biologist, Teilhard looked into the complexity of
the nervous system”, with its ability to store extensive
memories and recognize visual, auditory, and tactile
stimuli. He argued that the primary vehicle for increasing
complexity consciousness among living organisms originated
in the nervous system. The transformation and organization
of small particles (cells, atoms, electrons) advanced from
molecular combinations to more complicated ones. This
process happens inside of cells, inside of the brain, and
in human networks.

This same process can be expressed by the transmission

of waves in radio (sound), the signals of television, the

53

bits and bytes in a computer transmission, and the
electrons existing inside the wires transmitting data. For
example, one piece of data can be sent from one computer to
a network of computers connected to other networks through
the internet. The network environments. A group of people
working in different computers, sharing data and
information.

Cytowic categorically maintained that “information is
transferred through the nervous system in more ways than
most people realize. Multiple communication channels exist
in addition to what we know of as nerves, synapses, and the
hard-wired circuitry familiar from classic neuro-anatomy”
(p. 62). Cytowic argues the important relation between
cortical layers and cells and the relation of them with the
adjacent cortical column (p. 76).

To Teilhard the nervous systemxsis a neural network
composed of billion of neurons. The communication system
for humans follows the same structure.

A neural network is based upon the structure of the
brain which consist of many billions cells called neurons.
These build into a network and electrical signals can pass
between neurons at a very fast speed by a conversion into
chemical energy. Each neuron in the brain is equivalent to

a single processing unit in the computer.

54

Neural Network and Artificial Intelligence

Historical studies in Artificial Intelligence24
demonstrate the mathematical base with which computers were
invented. Warren McCulloch, after completing medical school
at Yale, along with Walter Pitts, a mathematician, proposed
a hypothesis to explain the fundamentals of how neural
networks made the brain work. Based on many experiments
with neurons, McCulloch and Pitts showed that neurons might
be considered devices for processing binary numbers. An
important foundation of mathematical logic, binary numbers
(represented as 1 and 0 or true and false) were also the
basis of the electronic computer. This link is the basis of
computer—simulated neural networks, also known as Parallel
Computing.

Teilhard dismissed the scientists at that time for
limiting their focus to only the human body and felt they
were lacking in their research by not paying attention to
the power of mind. He notes in The Phenomenon of Man that
“the time has come to realize that an interpretation of the
universe — even as positivism one - remains unsatisfying
unless it covers the interior as well as the exterior
things” (p. 35). His whole vision of men is a constant

alert: “The true physics is that which will, one day,

55

achieve the inclusion of man in his wholeness in a coherent
picture of the world” (p. 36). He called attention to the
complexity and meaning of the human brain and the physical
and transcendent aspects of the mind. In order to explain
his concept of the evolution of thought, he created the
term “noosphere.”

According to Teilhard, noosphere results from the
combined action of two curvatures - “that roundness of the
earth and the cosmic convergence of mind.” The human brain
has been developing because of its increased cranial
capacity. The brain is a complex arrangement of cells and
neurons forming a network of thoughts. As Teilhard says,
the mind “gives a sense of spatial immensity, a sense of
depth, a sense of number, a sense of proportion, a SEnse of
quality, a sense of movement, and therefore, the mind
illuminates our vision and organizes the world outside of
us” (p. 34).

Research has shown that a signal received by a neuron
travels through the dendrite region, and down the axon.
Separating nerve cells is a gap called the synapse. In
order for the signal to be transferred to the next neuron,
the signal must be converted from electrical to chemical
energy. The signal can then be received by the next neuron

and processed.

56

In 1956, at the Dartmouth Conference, ten young
researchers shared a dream of using a computer modeled in
the ways that humans think. Their hypothesis was that the
mechanisms of human thought could be precisely modeled and
simulated on a digital computer. This was the foundation of
Artificial Intelligence. With the use of “thinking” robots
in agriculture, industry, NASA, and the military, the
advance of AI has been astonishing.

Teilhard predicted the evolution of a machine that
barely existed in his time beyond being a glorified abacus:
the computer. John Mabry, in a recent article about
Teilhard - “Cyberspace and the Dream of Teilhard” - states:

Teilhard’s vision of what computers will achieve
the completion of our brains, in that there would
be the instantaneous retrieval of information
around the globe. Second, computers will improve

our brains by facilitating processes more quickly
than our own resources can achieve them.”

Jennifer Cobb (1995) related the development of the
internet to Teilhard’s vision.

In the last half century, our models of the mind
have become electrical and computational. Today,
neuroscientists routinely talk about “feedback
loops” and “brain circuitry”. Instinctive
behaviors are said to be “programmed” or “wired”.
We possess the “software” for certain kinds of
mental activity. One study of Teilhard and Net
found that Teilhard’s complexity-consciousness
law is the same as what we now think of as the
neural net. We now know from neural-net
technology that when there are more connections

57

between these connections, there will be sudden
leaps in intelligence, where intelligence is
defined as success rate in performing a task.
The physical structure of computers is configured much
like the human brain. To Teilhard, this natural model of

configuration is the prototype for the creation of a global

network of communication that we call the internet

Convergence and Internet

 

In his writings about “Ubiquitous Internet Computing,”
Weiser (1996) affirms “the internet revolution has barely
started. It won’t be done until everything is on the Web.
Light switches, pagers, copiers, printers, as well as PCs,
benefit from Web connection” (p. 1 ).

Predicting a vehicle for carrying thoughts everywhere
in the world, Teilhard tried to find an image for this
“net.” “Humankind is now caught up, as though in a train
of gears, at the heart of a continually accelerating vortex
of self-totalization.”

Teilhard touched upon the notion that one must find a
vehicle to move forward. As humans beings exist
everywhere, it is already assumed that they are connected

by a net of thoughts. But a ‘net’ is necessary for packing

58

the words, images, and sounds created by human minds. Cergg
(1997) predicts the growth of the internet, saying that:

Until 2047, internet is everywhere. In seventy-four

years it has grown from an idea to interconnect

heterogeneous packet-communication networks to a

world-wide, ubiquitous communication web joining

people, businesses, institutions, appliances, and all
forms of electronic equipment in a common

communication framework. Like electrical power, it is
assumed to be available whenever and wherever needed

(p. 31).

He adds:

The world’s population will be about 11.5 billion by

2047, compared to about 5.8 billion in 1996. Internet

will probably achieve penetration rates similar to

television and telephony, at least in the parts of the
world that have suitable power generation and other

technology infrastructure (p. 38).

The internet is growing every day. Vinton Cerf (1997),
designer of the internet system, says that by the year 2000
there will be more than 100 million users. “This kind of
reaching out from anywhere in the world,” he says, “has got
to change the way we think about the world. It will become
critical for everyone to be connected. Anyone who isn’t
will essentially be isolated from the world” (p. 33). The
possibility for new bandwidth, the speed internet will
acquire, the new facilities and services on line, the

wireless connected to the Internet, the World Wide Web, and

the merging of cable, entertainment and television

59

companies will make the internet a place of convergence of
knowledge. All these advances in technology will change
our lives and affect us as individuals, spiritually,
physically and pathologically.

Regarding international research, Teilhard believes
that students, “are no longer distributed superficially and
at random over the globe, but are functionally linked
together in a vast organic system that will remain in the
future indispensable to the life of community”(p.106).
Cunningham (1997) interprets Teilhard vision of forty-six
years ago as the coming of the internet.

Consciousness happens in the third phase, according to
Chardin. He views it as the moment at which the world is
covered with the incandescent glow of consciousness.

Cobb sees in the development of the internet the
realization of the third phase of evolution. “Teilhard saw
the Net coming more than half century before it arrived”

(p. 2).

Cyberspace

The word Cyberspace was used for the first time in
1984 by the science-fiction writer William Gibson in his

novel Neuromancer (1986) to describe an electronic

60

environment in which data and programs can be seen and
manipulated as if they had physical attributes — shape,
color, motion. It represents the transformation of
communications technology from a connection between
locations into a location of its own. People are able to
plug themselves into cyberspace, and move around and
interact with the data “objects”. As a concept developed by
Gibson and other writers, cyberspace is a “virtual reality”
that is full of images, some of which exist nowhere else
but in electronic form and some of which are symbolic
representations of the physical world. Cyberspacefi’is both
real and imaginary — partly a type of collective dream,
partly a place where people encounter experiences that
yield serious and permanent consequences in all dimensions
of their existence.

Studying the relation between Teilhard Chardin and the
internet, Kreisberg (1995) notes that Teilhard predicts
the use of the prefix “cyber” in regard to the computer-
human matrix, since “cyber” is commonly used in computing
cycles.

The promise of the use of cyberspace as a new vehicle
for transmitting and receiving knowledge is increasing as

technology improves. Bell & Gray (1997) believe that

61

“Cyberspace will provide the basis for wonderful new ways
to inform, entertain, and educate people” (p. 5).

Heim also views cyberspace as “more than a
breakthrough in electronic media or in computer interface
design. With its virtual environments and simulated worlds,
cyberspace is a metaphysical laboratory, a tool for
examining our very sense of reality” (p. 82).

Seduced by the aesthetics fascination of cyberspace,
Heim sees cyberspace as in William Gibson’s vision, as
more erotic than sensuous, more spiritual than utilitarian.
He is convinced that “the computer's allure is more than
utilitarian or aesthetic, it is erotic.” The cyberspace
“fascinates not only our eyes and minds, but also our
hearts. We feel augmented and empowered. Our hearts beat
in the machines. This is Eros”.(p. 87). Taking the
Cyberspace entities as belonging to a broad cultural
phenomenon of this period of computer technologies, he
argues Cyber Eros has its roots in Plato philosophyflfi
“Platonic metaphysics helps clarify the link between Eros
and computerized entities” (p. 87).

Another aspect of Cyberspace is that it supplants
PhYSical space, gathers people more closely together,
avoids isolationism, and offers an unrestricted freedom of

expression and proximity.

62

On the other hand, according to Heim, today’s computer
communication does present disadvantages when we
communicate in cyberspace.

In this paradoxical context that cyberspace offers,
how can one make cyberspace an experience of real
communication? There are two ideas which support a real
communication. One is that of community and physicality,
the other is that of shared values. These ideas help to
provide the basis of many network observers’ sense of
“cyberspace”.

The concept of interpretive community, which can be
traced in part to Stanley Fise (1989), focuses less on
physical location than on values and culture. It is not
one's neighborhood but rather one's way of seeing the world
that identifies and defines interpretive communities.
Although members of an interpretive community may share
some physical spaces for a period of time, an interpretive
community, says Joseph Harris, “refers not so much to
specific physical groupings of people as to a kind of loose
dispersed network of individuals who share certain habits
of mind.” (p. 105)

This sense of community has been demonstrated by those
interested in the values of specific groupings of

professionals. Thomas Kuhn’s (1970) notion of scientific

63

communities is based, for example, on the idea of its
members sharing common values and cultural norms. In the
political arena as well, the idea of community is one
rooted in its members’ sense of values and purpose (Lacalu,
1991).

How could we civilize cyberspace? Is it possible to
create public policies that shape it to serve our needs?
How will the information superhighway change our social,
educational, and political connections? What will the
social spaces and rhetorical forums of the future look
like?

In Teilhard’s investigation there are important
aspects he considers as the base for this cyber community:
the sense of individuality that is accomplished in meeting
others; the sense of collectivity present in each
individual; the energy of love that provides a strong
desire for communicating and the spiritual aspect of
knowledge to be shared with others; and lastly, machines as
the extension of humans.

In writing The Revolution Yet to Happen, Bell & Gray
(1997) predict the amount and type of information in
cyberspace. “We believe that our quest is to get all
knowledge and information into cyberspace, indeed, to build

the ultimate computer that complements ‘man’” (p. 7).

64

By 2047, predict Gordon and James (1997), we will be
residents of many “virtual villages and cities in the
cyberspace sprawl defined by geography, demographics and
intellectual interests” (p. 10).

The cyber in Teilhard’s vision is the way humans will
overcome the geographic space of communication and will be

the alternative for traveling this distance faster.

Virtual Education

The access to computers and the internet has
tremendously affected the method and the content of
education. The youngest generations of people growing up in
the culture of digital media have already began to absorb
virtual education. The quick and inexpensive access to
information has affected the traditional space of
education.

As Gordon & James (1998) predict: “we will become
symbiotic with our networked computers for home, education,
government, health care, and work, just as the industrial
revolution was symbiotic with the steam engine and latter
with electricity and fossil fuels”(p. 10).

Teilhard insists that knowledge is part of the nature

and mission of human beings. This knowledge, however, must

65

be transmitted to others. Knowledge is fruit of human work.
It is power.

In The Phenomenon of.Man Teilhard affirmed that
“knowledge for its own sake. But also, and perhaps still
more, knowledge for power. Increased power for increased
action. But finally, and above all, increased action for
increased being” (p. 249).

Teilhard emphasized the sharing of knowledge
through machines. The newest technologies are already
offering great opportunities for access to virtual
libraries, museums, universities, sites of government and
particular institutions which actually may be a new
revolution in education”. Bill Gates (1999) believes making
technologies a central part of the educational experience
to connect entire communities with school, including
museums, libraries and governments offices will create a
new way of teaching and learning will be enhanced.

Restructuring the traditional educational system
by incorporating new technologies will change education.
Thornburg (1991) believes the future of education will
depend on restructuring education in a way that adapts to
the new technology revolution that is already taking place

in business.

66

The new virtual schools and universities in different
part of the world are facilitating the exchange of
knowledge at a cheaper and faster rate. The experience in
virtual reality and education is an important key for
helping students to experience environments they most
likely would never be able to visit in a geographical
sense.. For example, a student in USA may travel virtually
to Greece to see the pyramids.

Machines will break barriers of language. Multiple
languages are a barrier to communication, and much of the
world’s population is illiterate. Video and music,
including gestures are, however, universal languages easily
understood by all. Thus, the coupling of images, music and
video with computer translation of speech may become a new,
universal form of communication. The possibilities are
endless when one begins to realize that an entire way of
life could drastically change as more technology is applied

into everyday existence.

Physical and Cognitive Emotions

In recent years new studies in the areas of
psychology and neuroscience have arrived at a certain

consensus that physical and cognitive emotions are related

67

to each other. A whole vision of emotions will facilitate a
more affective relation with computers and advance toward
the possibility of computers becoming “emotional” in the
future.

Picard (1997), in her book Affective Computing,
considers the cognitive and physical aspects of emotions on
humans for developing computers that would be able to
recognize and express emotions:

Today we know that both brain and body interact in

the generation of emotion and its experience. NOt

only can thoughts lead to emotions, but emotions can
occur without obvious cognitive evaluations. The view
points on the relative importance of the physical or
cognitive components today depend largely on how

“cognitive” and “physical” are defined (p. 22).

Teilhard (1967) had complex insights regarding how
emotions and aspirations are essential for humans. “We have
followed, in the individual, the gradual assumption of the
emotions, aspirations, and actions in an indefinable sui
generis, which is all these things at once and something
more as well” (p. 38).

Constituted by a physical characteristic, humans have
sensibility and emotions. Teilhard does not define
precisely the psychological aspects of humans, but offers a

large panorama for the emotional elements of human beings.

Teilhard considers the potential of human body as the

68

medium for communication with the external world.
Evidently, he did not develop a systematic theory of
emotions, but considered the complexity of the human body
and its senses in its role in communication.
Chris and Parker (1997) consider the functions of the
senses in this interaction:
We experience the real world through the
operation of sight, touch, smell, audition and
taste, all of which convey information to the
brain. The senses are complex systems, but in
order to operate their need be operated by
external energies such as light or sound. “This
information is transformed into a form usable by
the brain and provides information regarding the
form and content of the external world and of the
perceiver’s position within this world. In normal
sensory perception the various senses work
together in providing a stable to use sensory
information to guide actions and make decisions
(p. 53).
Several studies in emotions28 have shown how important
a role emotions play in human intelligence, rational
decision making, social interaction, perception, memory,
learning, creativity and more. Picard suggests in her
studies about emotions that it is time to examine how
emotions can be incorporated into models of intelligence,

and particularly into computers and their interactions with

humans.

69

Recently there has been a preponderance of evidence
that emotions play a pivotal role in functions considered
essential to intelligence.

The recent studies in Intelligence approaches present
the concept of Multiple Intelligence (Gardner, 1983) in
which human intelligence takes multiple forms, including
social intelligence, which includes interpersonal
relations. The traditional notion that emotions and
rationality Emotions theorists have also argued the role of
emotion as a powerful motivator in intrapersonal skills.

Studying emotional intelligence, Salovey and Mayer
(1990) identify the importance of emotional intelligence,
which they define as “the ability to monitor one’s own and
others feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them
and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and
actions” (p.123).

Others psychologists studying emotions, such as
Goleman (1995), maintain that emotional abilities are more
important than the traditional psychometric model of
intelligence. This new understanding about the role of
emotion in humans indicates a need to rethink the role of
emotion in computing.

Neuroscience has increased the knowledge of the brain

mechanisms, hormones, and neurotransmitters. Developmental

70

psychologists have added information on developmental
changes in emotions and their role in attachment and
temperament, and the ways in which the development of
emotions and cognition are interrelated. Clinical
psychologists have found relations among psychological
disorders and types of emotion experiences and examined
ways of applying the new knowledge of emotions in
psychotherapy (Izard, 1977).

If Teilhard truly considered the computer as the
extension of humans, then he suggested that computers need
to be able to relate to people more adequately. Affective

Computing may be a new step for this symbiosis.

.Affective Computing

According to Picard, if we want computers to be
genuinely intelligent and to interact naturally with us, we
must give computers the ability to recognize, understand,
even to have and express emotions.

Teilhard recognized new dimensions in the human mind
which must be explored in order to develop all its physical
and psychological potential. He mentioned briefly the new
dimensions that takes place in human mind. If the machine

is the extension of humans, computers, therefore, must be

71

 

able to interact with humans on a certain level. If the
relation between the network of neurons is equivalent to
the network of humans and machines, men have to create
computers that have abilities to respond emotionally to
humans. If computers are the destiny of humankind, they
must have more than pieces of hardware. They must become
human-like.

Picard proposed that computers should be adaptive to
people. In other words, computers and humans must form a
natural symbiosis. Teilhard insisted on the necessity to
personalize what is a product of human invention. In his
concept of convergence, the union of different entities
(everything that has energy) - “whether it be the cells of
a body — the member of a society or the elements of a
spiritual synthesis, in every organized whole, the parts
perfect themselves and fulfill themselves” (p. 262).

The searching for a center - “the confluent of orbits
of their centers” — is a necessity for the formation of the
whole. The computer system, such a confluence of hardware
and software — animated by energy of bits and bytes,
convergence the energy forming a confluence of small
particles, generating unity. Such an organism searching for
identity, the computer has an evolutionary physical and

spiritual structure that look for unity together.

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Teilhard (1959) considered the virtual elements of
reality (either internal or external structures) as a
process of unification.

Under the influence of these two factors - the

essential immiscibility of conciousness, and the

natural mechanism of all unification - the only
fashion in which we could correctly express the final
state of a world undergoing physical concentration

would be as a system whose unity coincides with a

paroxism of harmonized complexity (p.262).

Toward the process of virtualization, the “physical”
and “spiritual” aspects of human nature and the products of
human creation must form a symbiose. In this context,
Affective Computing is a necessity for humans and computers
to feel a part of each other. Experimenting?9 with software
that recognizes humans speech, Automatic Speech ReCognition
(ASR)”, a group of researchers started a wide range of
projects in pattern recognition, machine learning, neural
networks, computer-chip design, supercomputer design,
recognition, and novel human-machine interfaces.

Olive (1997) in his studies considered, for example,
that to write a computer opera it would be necessary to
deal with the intriguing subject of computer emotions.
Other research, conducted by Kurzeil (1997), suggests that

our computer systems must be capable of understanding the

variability of human speech. Studying computers and

73

 

language, Schank (1997) suggests that program computers
should be able to generate and understand sentences. Other
studies conducted by Reeves & Nass (1996) about computer
and social behavior demonstrates that computer users can
perceive computer as possessing personality and being
social and polite. Rosenfeld (1997) suggests that in the
near future “computers should be able to reliably recognize
a wide variety of objects and actions, including their
user’s faces (and voices), facial expressions, body
postures, and gestures.”

To Teilhard the noosphere is a “planetary thinking
network,” an interlinked system of consciousness and
information. Compared with the evolution of the cerebral
cortex in humans, the evolution of designing computers must
follow the structure of the human brain, with its net of
neurons, the cognitive and emotional complexity of the
cervical and limbic areas of the brain, as the neurological
studies of the brain demonstrates. If “electronic machines”
are the extension of human brain and spirituality, Teilhard
believes that in the future computers will be able to
understand and respond to a certain extent of human

emotions and spirituality.

74

Teilhard’s vision has been developed as we enter into
the new century. Humans now have a direction: walk toward

a virtual world.

75

CHAPTER IV - TOWARD.A VIRTUAL WORLD

This last century has become technologically
revolutionized in these few modes of communication: the
transistor, radio, television, computer, and the internet.
The passage from one era to another, with all the social,
cultural and ethical changes, is part of the natural
process of evolution. Current technology is continuing to .
evolve in the area of digital computing.

Digital computing, based on “bits” of information
which are either off or on — zero or one, has created the
Virtualization of text, sounds, pictures, and moving
images. The many advances in communication technologies,
such as computers, the World Wide Web, wireless, internet,
artificial intelligence, and virtual reality have confirmed
that the digital revolution has already taken place.

However, there still exist challenges and problems
regarding technology and humans that need to be confronted
as we enter into the Age of Information. Some of the
challenges include: living a world from cybercorps,
electronic commerce, virtual reality, electronic media, and

multimedia to cyberpolitics and cyberlaw.

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The Conflict Between Real and Virtual in Technology

Social scientists have in recent years devoted much
attention to new information and communication
technologies. Yet there has not been a consensus within the
various approaches involved on how to explain the role of
communications media, human—computer interfaces, or
scientific and technological advances in general.

In recent years the dominant approach has been
centered around “the sociology of scientific knowledge,”
which rejects the realism or the notion “that there is a
world to be investigated which exists independently of
human belief and language. According to Schroeder(l996)
this thought is mainly shared by social constructivism,
deconstruction, or postmodernism. (p. 2-15).

By denying the real experience through the media, this
assumption denies that knowledge is separated from the
reality to which it refers. As a consequence, neither the
genesis or the effects of new technologies can be
explained.

More importantly, without realism, the progress of
technology and science cannot be considered immersed in the
culture. Technology is imposed by ideology, and therefore,

the product of this interaction is superficial and unreal.

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It creates a dualism between people, technology, politics,
economics, and what they produce. Unfortunately, if this
dualism exists, its is impossible to build a foundation
which would allow, for example, computers to be used more
extensively in education.

While there is the consideration that these
technologies supposedly make our social world less real,
they initiate much thinking about the blurring of
boundaries between nature and culture, between humans and
nonhumans. These latest incarnations of post-modern
antirealist ideas come to be known as “cyberculture” and
its favorite adjective is “virtual.” Heim analyzed this
point made by Escobar saying that we are “concerned with
virtual reality, therefore, we need to look at these
postmodern ideas as part and parcel of the range of
cultural phenomena that have sprung up around this
technology” (p. 4)

The discussion between the relation between technology
is presented in the thought of the existentialist
philosopher, Martin Heidgger, who developed a middle
position. He considers technology as a part of human
existence, even though that technology may be used for

power and ideology. Heim (1993) addresses Heidgger as the

78

philosopher who accepted technology as the inevitable part

of human existence.

The Computer as a Simple Tool

According to some authors“, computers have been
developed mainly in paradigms of logic and rationality,
emphasizing too strongly the rationalism and formality of
computers. Norman (1997), who studied the relationship
between humans and computers, concludes that the computer
is a tool constructed in a linear, logical, and formal
manner. That has created a separation between people and
machine.

Sometimes the technology has been deliberately
constructed to produce mechanical systems that operate
reliably, algorithmically, and consistently. They are based
upon mathematics (in the case of the first computing
devices) and logic (in the case of the more modern
devices).

Consequently, computers have not yet been considered
fully integrated into peOple's daily lives.

Norman expresses this gap:

Researchers trying to create intelligent computers

have focused on problem solving, reasoning, learning,
perception, language and other cognitive tasks

79

considered essential to intelligence. In the 19605,
workers in the fields of cognitive psychology and
artificial intelligence ignored emotions and social
interaction and focused exclusively on sheer
intellect: reasoning, remembering, problem solving,
decision making and thought. The parts of human
intelligence we thought would be easy to stimulate -
seeing, hearing, walking, moving, turned out to be
incredibly difficult. We have barely begun to study
the social and emotional aspects of artificial
intelligence (p. 264).

The decision of expanding the use of computers for
educational means is not one that can be made lightly.
Drawing on neuropsychological research and an analysis of
current education practices, Healy (1999) demonstrated that

the use of computers may compromise the children’s ability

to concentrate and to absorb and analyze information.

The Internet

Many issues surround the computer-mediated public
sphere which currently exists through the internet. The
internet evolved as a network of computers in public
institutions which allowed cooperative research between
universities, hospitals and government research
establishments. The internet has in recent years become
the space for business, relationships, individual and
collective spaces. Psychological”, policy‘”and ethical34

questions have been raised, illuminating many concerns.

80

According to the psychologist Wallace (1999), the Web
is heavily spiced with “role-plays,” deceptions, half-
truths and exaggerations, perhaps making it a risky
business when people come to develop relationship on the
internet.

Studies of addiction have shown that psychiatric
illnesses such as depression, are often associated with F
internet addiction as well. Young & Rodgers (1998) suggest

that low self-esteem, poor motivation, fear of rejection,

 

and the need for approval associated with depressives
contribute to increased internet use.

Many have identified the reality and identity
construction that is said to occur in both networked
virtual worlds on the Internet and in multi-sensory virtual
reality as an “altered state of consciousness’ that
produces heightened awareness and transcendence (Benedikt,
1993; Stenger, 1993; Rushkoff, 1994).

The notion that virtual reality potentially induces an
altered state of consciousness and a sense of disembodiment
begins with Gibson's fictitious ‘cyberspace’ as a space of
‘consensual hallucination'(1984). Theorists consistently
refer to this ‘spaceless place’ (Nixon, 1992) to describe

the way humans interact within global networks.

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Communication in cyberspace is quickly raising
numerous intellectual property35 issues, among them
significant challenges to the traditional notions of
copyright. Furthermore, the promise of intense
communication in cyberspace raises questions regarding the
importance of personal privacy, the security of
institutions, and the credibility of transactions.

Research conducted by Lessard & Baldwin (2000) showed
that the physical and psychological problems such as
stress, isolation, discrimination and exploration already
exist inside the internet jobs. “There is a very good
reason why people don’t like to talk about how rough it is
to really work in the internet business. There is enough
misery among the workers who are building tomorrow’s
digital economy” (p. 4).

Since we are creators, producers and users at the same
time, the net becomes a very powerful medium, completely
different from radio and television. In this new arena of
“communication democracy,” the balance between individual

rights and collective interest may become an issue.

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Policy Issues

Given its decentralized character and ever-growing
expansion, attempts to list or ‘map’ the internet’s
interconnected computer sites have been difficult at best.
The internet has been a model for still-fictional and
idealized notions of cyberspace - described as a new and
unregulated ‘frontier’. The virtual free-space is raising
important issues regarding freedom and regulation.

Policy issues such as electronic commerce, cyber-
crime, cyberporn and censorship, customized news delivery,
online democracy, and security and freedom concerns need to
be addressed as we evolve into the new world of internet.

Analyzing the cultural aspects of the internet as a
virtual place and culture (net-culture), Rob Shields (1996)
sees in the internet a challenging policy issue for three
factors: privacy, copyright and regulation. “Internet has
been called the first true ‘cyberspace.’” With this, it has
raised questions concerning the nature of social
interaction. Cyberspaces such as the internet offer,
according to Shields, “temporary autonomous zone where
illegitimate contents and forms of communication may flow

unrestricted (for example the widespread dissemination of

83

child pornography via downloaded computer-image files)” (p.
1).

The internet is changing the way people deal with
institutions and laws. Shapiro (1999) argues that a
radical change is beginning - not just in how we compute or
communicate, rather, it is a potentially radical shift in
who is in control of information, experience and resources.
He shows how new technology is allowing individuals to take
power from large institutions such as government,
corporations and the media. Powerful entities are resisting
this change and limiting our new digitally-enhanced
autonomy.

There has been a challenge for establishing a balance
of power for the digital age (between self-interest and
public interest; the market and government; personal
control and shared power). Without this balance, our
relationships on the internet may become vulnerable,

generating insecurity and fear.

International Challenges

In a broad look at the development of the internet,
technical problems such as lack of network development,

economic investment, social and economic problems are

84

visible. Many nations all over the world are still not
prepared to enter into the scenario of the Age of
Information. Frieden (1996) writes that many nations still
have fewer than 10 telephones per 100 habitants. However
unbelievable, some people are still waiting for a telephone
line.

The major difference between the rich and poor
countries has widened an isolation gap for billions of
people. The relation between poverty, ideology, and
expansionism is still a challenge for the convergent world.

The ideological aspects of media, interest groups, the
manipulation of power-media, and the psychological aspects
of advertising still create difficulties for the expansion
of the internet.

The concept of convergence also has technological,
regulatory and business implications. Some governments in
particular countries still have the monopoly of regulation36
and a resistance to technological innovations. The
development of a global scenario for convergent
technologies hits economic, social, educational and
geographical challenges. For instance, building the new
architecture of telecommunication resources, access to

bandwidth, networks will demand potential investment. It

will take much time and patience to transfer data, voice,

85

and video information into the Information Age, as well as
confronting governmental and private competitions, laws and

disputes.

86

CHAPTER V - A NEW SCENARIO OF TECHNOLOGY AND VIRTUALIZATION

The information technology has had a social,
psychological, and cultural impact. Earlier in his career,
Teilhard envisioned the world elevating toward more and
more technology and he passionately brought forth the idea
of virtual communication. He did not ignore or try to
bypass the problems and challenges he knew it would bring
to humankind.

Hi5 “ global-village vision” was formulated in a
virtual dialectic, characterized by the tension in the
nature of humans who longed for the sense of wholeness on
one hand, and yet on the other hand, the temptation for
dualism existed. This gigantic conflict had practical
consequences which were either physical or psychological,
perhaps economical or ethical, or cosmic or scientific.

Teilhard’s contribution to this new scenario of

technology and virtualization may be defined as follows:

The Vision of the Virtual as the Potential of the Real

As already presented, the relation between the concept
of real and virtual is still generating dichotomy in

different disciplines related to technology.

87

According to Teilhard, knowledge is not separate from
the reality to which it refers. The genesis of technology
is based on the real-virtual as a complement. Then science,
technology, and society may coexist and complement each
other. The relation between technology and society, a
dynamic one, will produce advances in the “reality” of the
social settings in which they have become embedded.

Taking the virtual aspects of the elements cited, his
contribution relates especially to the following points:

-— The use of the body as a medium for interaction in
network environments.

- The cognitive and physical aspects of emotion
considered as components of each other.

- The computer software integrating codes and symbols of
the cultures

- The relation between people and computer technologies

as physically and psychologically integrated.

The Convergence of Technologies

Convergence is the law of communication. The brain
carries inside convergence of cells, neurons, that generate
thoughts that are thrown into the universe, much like a

group of computers forming a network. The millions of

88

antennas, parabolic dishes, magnetic fields, satellites,
backbones, networks, cellular phones, and the internet
follow the same design as human brains: a network of
energy, a convergence of thoughts that create language,
ideas, knowledge, and the sensory experience of human
energy.

According to Teilhard, as biological evolution
proceeds, it will produce increased variety and higher
degrees of organization. It also produces more varied, more
intense, and more highly organized mental activity or
awareness.

By developing the personal level of consciousness,
humans will be led to new types and higher degrees of
organization. On the one hand, there are new patterns of
cooperation among individuals - cooperation for practical
control, for enjoyment, for education and notability in the
last centuries, for obtaining new knowledge. On the other
hand there are new patterns of thought, new organizations
of awareness and its products.

Convergence will result from the following steps taking
place:
- The development of the internet will link human beings
around the globe, and through the internet humans will

gain access to the virtual education, health,

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business, and universities. Many groups will be unable
to offer opportunities to transmit and share knowledge
among different people in a worldwide setting.

The building of a planetary democracy of communication
and solidarity among people.

The exchange of telecommunication networks, systems
and services that enable people geographically present
on the five continents to develop systems (either
metal or optical network cables — as well as wireless
and satellite communication systems).

The use of electronic machines as a channel to
transmit knowledge.

The multiple effort of different nations combining
their research capabilities to enhance mutual
progress.

The appreciation of different cultures, languages and
people.

The awareness of being both an individual and of a
collective group - an ultimate sense of humanity among
people.

To be able to access radio, television, journals, the
internet, universities and schools in different parts

of the world.

90

A Human Basis for Technology

The human body for Teilhard is a medium in and of
itself. The complexity of cells, the nervous system,
glands, emotions, the senses, eros - perception must be
integrated with electronic machines to help humans to
experience the world outside in the best possible harmony.

Computers are becoming more physically and
psychologically in contact with people. A person can now
wear a computer in their belt. They are getting closer to
their muscular tension, heart rate, temperature, and so on.
Many people already have more physical contact with
computers than they do with other people.

Considering the whole aspect of communication
in Teilhard, the relation with computer technologies must
be healthy for humans. If technology is an extension of
humans, it must an attempt to fulfill humans on some level.
The symbiosis of men and machine must be one that forms and
completes. The human basis for the improvement of the
relation between people and computers may fit in the
following aspects:

- The use of the body and senses for virtual reality

and other related technologies.

91

- The use of virtual reality technologies and affective
computing to help people with stress, depression,
anxiety, addicted, etc.

- The merging of the biological with

microelectronic discoveries.

- The development of Nanotechnology — a body of
technology in which products and other objects are
created through the manipulation of atoms and

molecules.

 

- The development of Quantum Computing based on qu-
bits, which are essentially zero and one at the same

time.

Virtual Aesthetics

Moving from the mechanical concept of computers to a
more virtual concept will eventually allow humans to
explore the aesthetic aspect of reality.

The genesis of the Teilhard's aesthetic originated in
his concept of “within” as beauty. He confirmed it by
saying “from all the points of nature, the forces of bodies
converge, to become interiorized and sublimated in beauty

and truth” (p. 63).

92

The beauty that appears externally has its roots
internally. It is such an interior energy that follows
virtually the law of everything in nature.

The aesthetics result from self-consciousness and the
use of technology for the development of arts. The recent
development in computer design confirms these aesthetics
principles:

- Exploring the aesthetic dimensions of art in
multimedia design

- Exploring the 3D image in art design

- Utilizing multimedia(sound, image) and animation

- Designing better interfaces for computers

- Making computers smarter and more affective

Virtual Mind and Machine

Teilhard was a visionary of the future. To him the
future of technology meant to extend what one we can do
with the body, the senses, and the mind. The future,
interpreted by Teilhard, involves the association of the
progress of science related to these three factors.

He became profoundly enchanted with the power of the
mind and machine; he imagined that one day technological

progress would eventually create a computer that would

93

represent the configuration and the potential of the layers
of the brain.

He understood men as are mutants and dynamics, by
following the law of the universe — that is considered
progressive. The evolution of technology has been a
continuation of the evolutionary process of acceleration of
the mind of human beings’ aspirations.

The vision of evolution in Teilhard offers
possibilities for exploring the marvelous and incredible
power of the human brain, cells, DNA, light, and energy
associated with technologies that have been taking place in
different areas of computer technology.

- Machines will eventually have human thoughts, emotions
and consciousness.

- The development of Affective Computing that recognizes
and expresses emotions.

- The 100 billion neurons of the human brain will
contribute to developing technology that follows the
model of human brain.

- The studies of human genetics associated with the
development of technologies

- The development of optical computing using stream of

photons (particle of light) rather than electrons.

94

- The development of molecular computing, applying
actual DNA to practical computing applications.

- The traditional printed book can be replaced by
electronic books.

- The traditional school and library can be transformed

virtually.

Virtual Spirituality

The concept of spirituality37 in Teilhard is related to
the technological progress of humankind and is essentially
ecumenical and universal. Through the technological
development, humans enable themselves to develop
unification, centration and spiritualization. These aspects
are related to science and technology.38

Spiritualization has to do with the sense of improving
self-consciousness. To him “life is entering into a new era
of autonomous control and self-orientation. As a direct
result of his socialization, man is beginning, with
rational design, to take over the biological motive forces
which determine growths - in other words, he is becoming
capable of modifying, or even of creating, his own self”

(p. 181).

95

To Teilhard, the development of mental and spiritual

dimensions reside in the force of the “within.” This force

is present in each individual. For his ecumenical and

universal concept of God, Teilhard offers a base for a

“spirituality for the cyberspace.”

His virtual concept of spirituality as evolution and

destination of humanity may be categorized by the following

points:

By intensifying the relationship among people
communicating on the internet, the growth that emerges
will bring about a sense of collectivity.

Developing relation with the collectivity favors the
sense of self-consciousness. (individuality).
Improving technological endeavor contributes to the
progress of humankind

Using the potentialities of human abilities (physical,
artistic, spiritual, moral) will enable the
contemplation of the divine.

Investing in research and studies will contribute to

the wealth of the world.

Conclusion

In order to live real experience in virtual network

environments, considering the whole aspects of the

96

relation between humans and computers, Teilhard’s vision
of virtualization as part of the real experience is
fundamental for the new scenario technology is providing
to human beings.

The development of technology responds to the
evolution of the human brain. Virtual taken as a
potential of the real determines a new relation of time
and space that is secure and necessary for creating a
convergent world that offers more social, cultural, and
economic possibilities for those who are connected to
cyberspace.

The development of virtual network environments that
offer access to virtual culture, economy, education,
entertainment and places will create a “global village.”
The development of a fundamentally virtual society is
part of the finality of progress and technology. For this
endeavor, Teilhard’s vision offers a human, aesthetic,
and ethical basis for technology that is urgent and
necessary as we enter into the world of Virtual ecomony,
education, arts, entertainment and relationships.

Further multidisciplinary studies related to the
experience of real in virtual network environments will
contribute to the enrichment of this important area of

study and research.

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1. For the comparison between the concept of Darwin and Teilhard
regarding evolution see, for example, Birx (1990). He deliberately
focuses on the life, thought, and lasting influence of both Darwin and
Teilhard de Chardin, their contrasting interpretations of evolution,
stress, materialism, and spiritualism, respectively.

2. Several authors have interpreted the complex meaning of the terms
created and linked by Teilhard. See Klauder (1971:133-150).

3. Overviews of this debate in relation to the concept of Complexity may
be found in Jacques Rosseau, in Aristotle. McCarty (1976: 110-111).
‘.The terms radial and tangential are introduced in The Phenomenon of
Man (1940). See PM pp. 53-66; chap. 3. “The Within of Things”, esp. pp.
63-66; “Spiritual Energy” pp. 168-169; “Human Energy” pp. 115-116.

5. In Teilhard, energy has a vast extent and varied application of
meaning. It can refer not only to physical phenomena, but can be used
analogously with an applied meaning to the realm of spirit.

6. Overview of this debate in relation to the collective mind is
presented in Levy’s Collective Intelligence (1997). Levy gives a
philosophical base for the discussion of Collective Intelligence.

7. There is a large amount of literature on the discussion of the
relationship between humans and machines. A philosophical discussion
may be found in Heim(1993). He develops the concept of Heidgger and
Technology. For a technical and commercial discussion humans-computers,
Norman (1998) offers a good base. For a physical and psychological
discussion user-computers, Picard (1997) offers an overview from the
concept of emotions until the possibility of computers “having”
emotions.

8. Mark Lajoie in his article “Psychoanalysis and Cyberspace” - in
“Cultures of Internet” chapter 10, edited by Rob Shields(1996) London:
Sage Publications offers detailed aspects of sexuality and cyberspace.
9. In Teilhard, consciousness has a much wider connotation than in
traditional thought. It includes “radial force” (energy) or “psychisnfl
in inert matter. Simple consciousness of perception in animals.
Reflective consciousness in man (de Lubac).

m. According to Umberto Eco the fascination with the networked virtual
reality is much like the fascination with hyper-real worlds such as
Disney.

“. The concept of spiritual in Teilhard may be found in Klauder (1971:
29-125)

”. Jay David Bolter (1996), chapter 7, pp 105-119 offers an overview
difference between printed graphics and electronic graphics.

”. The high-speed in internet is predicted by Vinton, G. Cert (1997:34—
42) “When They are Everywhere” in Beyond Calculation edited by Peter
J. Denning, Robert Metcalfe (1997) New York: Copernicus. In his
perspective the internet will probably achieve penetration rates
similar to television and telephony, at least in the parts of the world
that have suitable power generation and other technology
infrastructure.

“. See in Popper (1994: 1-23) arguments about knowledge: objective and
subjective, relation body-mind and its discussions.

5. Heather Bromberg in his article “Are MUDs Communities” Identity,
Belonging and Consciousness in Virtual Worlds” in “ Cultures of
Internet” - Virtual Spaces, Real Histories, Living Bodies edited by Rob
Shields( 1996 ) London: Sage Publications offers an excellent panorama
virtual space related to psychological and cultural aspects of
virtuality.

98

 

16. Especially Martin Heidgger and those influenced by him, such as

Derrida, and through the Frankfurt School and those in its tradition
such Habermas discusses the objective and subjective interpretation -
hermeneutics of this relation in modern culture.

”. 25 years of Computer history may be found at
http://www.compros.com/timeline.html

15. For a comprehensive overview on the future of computer capacity,
see: Hans Moravec, Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human
Intelligence ( Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988). Also The
Age of Intelligence Machines ( Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990), 401-
419.

”. Weiser & Brown(l997:76-85) divide the age of computing into three
eras. In the first, the era of the mainframe, computers were few and
expensive. In the second, the era of the personal computer. In the
third, the coming era of the ubiquitous computers.

20 For the notion of Calm Technology, see Weiser (1997: 76-85). He
suggests that distributed computing is not yet adapted to our lives.
Ubiquitous computing, characterized by deeply embedding computation in
the world, will require a new approach to fitting technology to our
lives.

3. The brain has been studied in different perspectives. See (Pinker,
1997) “How the Mind Works” and Deacon, 1997, “The Simbolic Species.”
22. For an overview of the Neural Network,
ftp://ftp.sas.com/pub/neural/FAQ.html. This web site has numerous
resources on past and current research on neural nets.

8. A comprehensive explanation the construction of nervous system in
the context of noosphere in Teilhard, see The Phenomenon of'Man
(1959:180-189).

“. An excellent exposition of the historical and theoretical aspects of
Artificial Intelligence may be found in
http”//tqd.advanced.org/2705/applications.html and
http}//www.geocities.com/Research Triangle?Lab/8751/what.html.

25. For an overview of Cyberspace applications from cybercorps,
electronic commerce, virtual reality, electronic media, and multimedia
to cyberpolitics and cyberlaw, in “Cyberwords” see T. L. Kunii & A.
Luciani (Eds.) (1998) Tokyo: Springer

26. Herbert Zettl (1996) “Back to Plato’s Cave: Virtual Reality”, pp.
83-103 develops the concept of virtual using the example of the cave by
Plato in “Republic”.

m. There are vast studies about Virtual Reality and Education. A good
site is in http://eastnet.educ.ecu.edu/vr/vrits/2-4cox.htm.

m. A wide vision of different approaches about emotions may be found in
the studies made by Izar (1991). The Social psychologists approaches on
the influence of emotions on social interactions and relationships.
Cognitive and social-cognitive psychologists that emphasizes the
increased our knowledge of the cognitive determinants of emotions and
emotion as cognition relations. The Personality psychologists that have
begun to analyze traits in terms of discrete emotions. Clinical
Psychologists have found relations among psychological disorders and
types of emotion experiences and examined ways of applying the new
knowledge of emotions in psychotherapy.

29. Recently, a group of researchers started a wide range of projects
(pattern recognition, machine learning, neural networks, computer-chip
design, supercomputer design, image compression, expert systems,
handwriting recognition, document analysis, uses of global networks

 

 

 

 

99

 

such as the World Wide Web, novel human-machine interfaces) that opened

new studies about emotions and computers, Picard(1997) argues about
the Affective Computing trying to proof computer may “have” emotions.
Studying computer music and linguistic information in computers,
Olive ( 1997 ) considers that to write a computer opera is necessary

to deal with the intriguing subject of computer emotion.

m. In “The Age of Spiritual Machines”(1999:101-260) Kurzweil offers an
excellent overview of how the integration technology body and brain may
generate a physio and spiritual relation using the potential of
technology and the structure of human brain.

x . Weiser, “Beyond Calculation”, McCullogh (1996) and Norman (1997)
offers an overview about the matter.

”. Recent study reports a substantial correspondence between internet
use and depression. In a two-year longitudinal study Kraut, Patterson,
Lundmark, Kiesler, and Scherlis present data that indicate that
increased internet use causes increased depression. Studies of
addiction have shown that pscychiatric illnesses, such as depression,
are associated with alcoholism and drug addiction, as well as Internet
addiction(Young &Rodgers, 1998)

n. Attorney General Janet Reno recently vowed to catch the
cybervandals. The FCC needs to face new challenges in the net area.
Cybercrime on the internet has become an important issue in policy.
Also in computer industry, there is the concern of how to protect the
boom of the e-commerce and the privacy of the users. Business Week,
February 21, 2000, :CyberCrime” p. 37-42.

M. The recent attacks to the important sites in USA by Hijacking has
raised questions about the vulnerability of the internet, how to
protect the sites, how to control such attacks. See Newsweek, February
21, 2000,p. 39-49.

”. Laura Gurak (1997) gives a general view in concerning security in
Cyberspace such structures of online communication, gender in
cyberspace, communities of the virtual future.

36.Rob Frieden (1996) International Telecommunications Handbook gives an
overview of technology development, Law, Policy related to regulation
and deregulation in different nations in the world.

”. The theological aspects of spirituality in Teilhard is developed by
Klauder J. Francis Aspects pf the Thought of Teilhard de Chardin. He
compares, for instance, the relation between Teilhard theology and St.
Thomas Aquinas and the Franciscan School.

”. Discussion about Science and Faith is explored in Teilhard's vision
by James Birx (1967) in Interpreting Evolution on Darwin and T.
Chardin, p. 179-263.

100

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