West mind

The new Westworld explicitly references Julian Jaynes’ The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.

It’s my favorite book and theory that is almost certainly wrong but is so interesting and fascinating that it leads in all sorts of still-fruitful directions.

I say Jaynes’ theory is almost certainly erroneous, but there has to be I think some explanation for the huge transformation of humanity that occurred about when he delineates it. If it was cognitive in nature, something big happened then and we’ll probably never know what.

True of IT too

I’ve noticed this among scientists and people in IT, too.

It’s not just lack of time, most often. It’s extreme incuriousity and even disdain for anything that can’t be neatly defined in an equation or some other “empirical” systematization.

But when I get that big promotion at work even though I am not technically as good as you, here’s why: I spent a whole lot of time studying sociology, psychology, writing, politics and anthropology (and many other fields) so that I can find out what my boss needs and do it before she even knows she needs it, and I can write a damn nice business case that people ask me to use as a template for all other company business cases. I can also outmaneuver the galoot in the other department who is attempting to sabotage my work using my knowledge of psychology and sociology, and in addition I can gauge the tone of a meeting better than most of my peers using those same tools and get my way far more often than I would otherwise. Furthermore, I can in my own field and quite a few others ascertain the rough directions they are going to determine how to position myself better for the future.

None of this I would be able to do if I hadn’t intensely studied other fields other than my own on my own time. Absolutely none.

And these are just the ones that help me at work — others such as ecology, literature, critical theory, genetics, biochemistry, philosophy, linguistics, philology, paleontology, geophysics, neurology, aircraft design and so many more just made me a better and more capable person in general.

A silo is fine, if you want to be constantly confused, bamboozled and befuddled by the world.

Otherwise, step out. Step the hell out.

Inevitable demise

This sort of practice was inevitable.

In the first stages of general purpose computing, it was about empowering the users — about making their lives better and due to the embedded values of the hippies and weirdos who pioneered personal computing, this stuck for a while.

It means that mobile and desktop searchers will end up seeing different results.

Google is not just launching the mobile search index to run alongside its desktop index, it will become the primary index.

This has nothing to do directly with profit, even. It has to do with control and the primacy of the wish to assert that control to disallow unwelcome freedom and initiative.

Soon the world will be well beyond Orwell — unpermitted thoughts will be impossible to think because any method of discovering those ideas will be controlled by a few companies that are the seigneurs presiding over all culture, deciding what one is allowed to think and what one is not.

Welcome to the future.