Applied neuroscience

Brain surgeon Wilder Penfield [link] found that whenever he tugged at one place in childhood memory, he pulled the rest of childhood experience with it. His patients would report : “I can hear the sound of my mother’s voice calling me for dinner ..I smell the scent of fresh baked bread like I did then ..I see my mother waiting for me on the porch .. I feel her warmth ..I actually feel like I did as a child right now.” Psychologists see the same thing going on with their clients while they’re talking about present-day relationships. For example, when they report talking to somebody who has a voice or manner similar to one of their parents ..it often triggers the feelings they experienced in the presence of that parent. Could be feelings of warmth and pleasure ..or feelings of intimidation and submission. They may pass through these states during the day without even knowing it. What they do remember, however, is a feeling that tells them whether or not they enjoy someone’s company.

My first boss, Tony, was a commanding presence. He looked like a mafia don ..with a deep baritone voice and a quick temper. He shouted at people a lot and often in a disparaging manner. He intimidated my colleagues, which made them cringe in his presence. For some reason his behavior didn’t bother me. I even got a chuckle out of them. I think I figured out why ..and I believe I owe it to Dr Penfield. Although my father didn’t live with us very long, what I remember about him most is that he was gentle and reasonable. He would explain things I did wrong and never scolded. I don’t have memories of growing up with a ‘bully’ like many of my colleagues. Consequently, Tony didn’t evoke the same feelings in me as he did in them. I always figured there was a method to his madness and he always treated me with civility, while my colleagues always felt like they were getting a whipping.

Baths

Last night at the baths some of us were complaining about how much we were paying for our children’s education. It’s somewhere in the vicinity of $10,000 a year, even at the state colleges. One woman told us about a program called the ‘Santa Barbara Fund’ that pays for tuition ..but it turns out you have to be like a 2nd generation Santa Barbara native. Someone else said that even with a 4.0 GPA ..it’s almost impossible to get in these days. I mentioned that a lot of students applying to UC can overcome a low GPA .. even poor SAT scores ..by writing a compelling essay. Something describing some kind of hardship they had to deal with while growing up. That made another guy laugh and say it’s hard to imagine what kind of hardship anyone would have growing up in Santa Barbara. My first thought was to tell him that he’d be surprised, but decided against it and instead I said “Hey, colleges reward creativity ..” which made everyone laugh and start making up stuff:

"Mom and I are living in a station wagon down by the lagoon .."
“I had to take care of my ailing aunt Edna after school ..”
“I immigrated from Peru with 12 brothers and sisters
..mom worked as a housekeeper to put us through school”
“My parents are hippies and don’t believe in traditional schooling
..I ran a food co-op growing up”
“My parents were killed in a fire somewhere on the 14th floor ..”

Around this time I had to say goodnight and leave ..and had to laugh. Nobody noticed ..I could still hear them making up stories while I was walking away.

Sirens of Titan

Is it a coincidence that the Cassini space probe inexplicably stopped sending images as it was about to fly by Titan, one of the moons of Saturn? Titan is known to harbour conditions necessary for life. Another place considered to be a likely candidate for extraterrestrial life is Europa, one of the moons of Jupiter. However, the canyons of Europa have eluded attempts at observation as well [link]. Early radio astronomers claim to have received signals, leaking from Titan, that suggest the presence of an extraterrestrial species. However, they are trapped and shielded from detection by parasitic aliens from another galaxy ..aliens who have been exploiting Titan’s resources for eons [link]. This explains why conditions there have deteriorated to an almost “pre-biotic” state. The result has been a sort of reverse-geo-evolution. In it’s day, Titan could have been just as hospitable a place as Earth is today.

Local buzz

Got a buzz with smokers at the high school stadium this evening – after completing my workout. Two teenagers big enough to be football players ..but probably weren’t. I could tell by their friendliness and total lack of defensiveness that they weren’t gang bangers. They laughed when they saw how long I would hold the smoke in. You don’t have to do that anymore. I have smoked with gang members before .. often enough that they recognize and trust me. They call me the hippie pot smoker ..and go “Hey, tell us some more of that weird-ass, trippy shit.” I figure if they’re going to get high ..they might as well know something about it. I am afraid that one day I'll run into a group of paranoid gang bangers ..which I have, come to think of it. It’s a forested area and I sometimes don’t see them until I run into them. As much as I might think it’s disarming to stop and share a smoke. They might think it wasn’t such a good idea to give that old guy a buzz. After I leave, they may go “..hey, wasn’t that the narc who took out Emilio ..?” ..and decide it might be safer if they took me out. I guess that makes me sound kinda’ paranoid too.

Narrative space

Proceedings from the Symposium on Extraterrestrial Psychology

Dr. Latimer: Language is nothing more than a stream of symbols that signify nothing until we recognize something we have either seen or heard before and can find it's meaning stored in our mental dictionary. In a plurality of worlds, without a storehouse of shared experience, efforts at communication would be an exercise in indecipherable gestures. Verbal communication is the manipulation of symbols to which meaning is assigned by culture. An important point to keep in mind my friends is that the events experienced by members of a culture over time are what make up the narrative thread of that culture.

Dr. Zhavern: When we look into space, we don’t see things as they are. What we see is a narrative thread winding it’s way through the cosmos ..a cosmos that may be shared by narratives other than our own. However, to it’s participants ..each narrative looks like the only cosmic game in town. Like language, we skew space to resemble something we’ve either seen, or heard before. It’s the only way we can come to grips with it.

Dr. Orloff: I think human consciousness is a fragmented and unstable process. It creates rapid models of factual and counterfactual worlds inside the brain for things it cannot observe ..but only infer. The brain keeps track of these different versions until only those that contribute to narrative coherence receive sufficient signal strength to survive while those leading nowhere dissolve into noise ..and disappear into non-narrative space .. all in an instance.

Dr. Pangloss: I think consciousness is made up of searchlights, projected from different mental versions of the world we create. They eventually converge to form concentric circles in the brain that illuminate the focal points that contribute most to narrative events, and fade rapidly at the periphery with fewer contributing points until things go black somewhere around the edges of non-narrative space.

My feeble brain ( hasn’t got a clue ): Are you saying that the narrative threads of extraterrestrials aren’t likely to uncoil very closely to ours ..(?)

Humboldt dot net

The sight of a sheriffs car approaching a grow site activates a network. Text messages are transmitted to owners who may or may not live within the county. Within minutes, timber trucks arrive on the scene to block access to the site. If they don’t get there in time to intercept the sheriff ..and the growers at the site, flashing their medical marijuana cards, can’t convince officers that 75 terraced acres of 8-foot tall plants are intended for personal use .. then arrests may be made. When that happens, you can be sure high-powered attorneys from Sacramento will arrive within the hour and the grower’s rights will prevail. You see, that’s how Humboldt dot com works ..it allows marijuana farmers to bring global forces to bear on local police incursions into the Emerald Triangle.

Eli

I saw Eli again for the first since middle-school. Both of us briefly attended the International school of Geneva (Ecolint). He was the son of a rich Indian jewelry trader. I remember it was the first time I ever tasted Godiva chocolates. Now he’s fond of repeating how he took over the family business ..watched it grow ..then lost it in a recent, one-sided divorce settlement and has had to start from scratch. Selling to rich, gay Saudis’ helped. Now he travels around the world looking for precious stones and customers for his jewelry business ..and playing polo. Africa, Thailand, Hong Kong, Saudi Arabia and Geneva Switzerland are all on his trade route. Although Geneva is still where he calls home ..he’s hardly ever there so he said he was thinking about selling his house and buying a retirement home in Thailand. I didn’t know how to respond other than suggest he talk to his accountant first. His business extends to fine watches too, though I wasn’t able to get a price on a used Cartier ..and he wouldn’t sell me the one he was wearing. He said what I need is a Rolex Submariner. I asked him to keep an eye out for me ..preferably pre-owned. We’ll see. I don’t think he was here on business, which helps explain why it was such an enjoyable visit. It was good to see him again and I look forward to seeing him in Geneva next summer, which is probably why I wasn’t more enthusiastic when he was talking about selling his place.

Quality of understanding

“The meaning of a sentence is derived from the original words by an active, interpretive process. The original sentence that is perceived is rapidly forgotten and memory is for the information (meaning) contained in the sentence.” [link]

For years, neuro-linguists have studied what remains after we hear somebody speak. What they’ve come up with is something that resembles a three-dimensional network inside of our head. The network is made up of propositions (coded events), scripts (a sequence of coded events) and associated images and feelings. Although part of the network is constructed from the original sentence ..most of it is supplied by the past experience of the listener. What we come away with is a feeling of resonance and familiarity, based largely on our own beliefs and experience ..and not necessarily the meaning intended by the speaker.

Push that knot away

Noticing change

The four principles of Vipassana meditation are: 1) seeing clearly 2) being present 3) noticing change and 4) suspending judgment.

 I’m sitting on the beach, reminding myself to be more mindful and notice change. I mean changes in my head as well as changes in surf conditions. It’s hard to tell my thoughts are changing much ..they don’t pass cleanly. I grab hold of one and it forms a loop. I enjoy hearing the loop so much, I play it until it becomes background noise. It doesn’t go away. I see a flock of pelicans go by and hear a loop that sounds like: “Whoa, how prehistoric-looking ..what does Gina call them? Predators of the sea.” I ask myself when I last saw Gina.  Esalen, 2008. I’ve been playing that loop for almost three years now..?! I return to the present. I hear sea lions barking and go: “Wonder whose boat they’re going to scuttle next ..?” I remind myself I’m sitting on the beach ..scuttling is in the future ..I’m in violation of the second principle. I notice people going by: “Wonder how I look.” Then I'm like, WTF, who cares ..no one’s looking ..I’m just sitting on the beach for chrissake. I tell myself to calm down. Self-consciousness is a remnant of tribal past. If you didn’t look cool, you risked banishment. A consequence that probably hasn’t occurred for over 20.000 years now ..or perhaps occurs on any given day in high school. But now I'm just playing  another loop ..a rationalization loop to help me feel less neurotic. These loops get built-in and they attract more content over time. It’s hard to tell they were just passing thoughts once.

Extraterrestrial psychology

Astrophysicist Gregory Benford says we need to consider extraterrestrial economics when looking for signals from outer space. He suggests SETI narrow down its search to what we can reasonably expect extraterrestrial to achieve at such great distances ..assuming they’re not omnipotent. I applaud him for his pragmatism, however I think we also need to consider extraterrestrial psychology if we are to expect a reasonable chance of successful contact. Otherwise, I don’t see how we hope to achieve any kind of meaningful communication. Since we have no basis from which to conceive of the extraterrestrial mind, I think we have to start with something we can observe ..and I believe that would be us.

Psychologists already know that rational thought is a spatio-temporal process. It’s powerful but limited to weighing evidence about the physical universe. Other-worldly experience is out-of-scope. I believe this would also apply to the thought processes of any aliens we encounter. First, we’d only know we’ve encountered them if they share the same spatial-temporal dimension as us. Second, those we do meet would have to have some way of processing information about this shared dimension that is similar to ours. In other words, like us .. they would also have to integrate sensory information into a coherent model of the world they inhabit. So, I believe the first step in contemplating extraterrestrial life is to better understand our own. I mean, lets face it .. at this point it’s all we got.

Science tells us that knowledge is often knowledge of differences. Given that the human brain is tuned to receive only a narrow band of information available on earth, which is further constrained by culture ..I’m not sure it’s safe to assume that the alien mind is similarly tuned. They do not share the same background. We know that human perception is based on background information as much as information from the present ..and that the brain integrates information selected by the senses with information available in memory to create a coherent whole. I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect extraterrestrials, who do not share our planetary history, to perceive our surroundings the same way we do. The way I’ve heard it explained best goes something like this:

“We could try and introduce ourselves to them ..but all they might see is a sparse dusting of energy waves occurring in a vacuum ..with some probability of identity based on their backgrounds ..not ours.”

Presented at the ~> SB Institute for Consciousness Studies

Gold coast

Beautiful autumn day. Sunlight passes horizontally through the eucalyptus trees and turns to gold ..I’m fully in love with this time of year. Out on the deck, the air is perfectly still ..there’s no breeze coming from any direction. Makes me think about the waves I’m missing on the beach. I pop a couple tabs of ginseng ..hop into the alfa ..turn up Blind Faith and pull way too far into traffic lanes on Anapamu Street. Real swift. I pop it into reverse and swing my head around when I realize the cars have stopped to let me through. I proceed ..giving them a courtesy wave .. then head around the Milpas bend. I pass by the marquis for the County Bowl ..and remind myself to keep an eye on the road. I pass by Trader Joe’s ..giving the right of way to cars already in the circle ..and shoot out on highway 101 ..listening to Steve Winwood singing ‘Sea of Joy’. I exit almost immediately on Olive Mill ..downshift to 15 mph on Channel Drive and check out the tide and the surf and the sun shining on the water. Perfect glassy conditions with crisp, waist-high waves peeling off Hammonds. I pull over ..grab my Churchills’ ..knowing that the fins of choice now days are Vipers ..feeling a slightly stupid sense of brand loyalty. I spend five minutes on the sand doing breathing exercises and sizing up the situation. I take a running start .. dive into an oncoming wave and surface on the backside feeling free ..like the wave washed over my brain and removed all constraints .. putting me in perfect condition for whatever happens next.

PTSD

The military is known for instilling leadership and teamwork ability ..skills that battle conditions can quickly take away. According to a Rand study, nearly one third of all returning troops suffer from some form of post-traumatic stress (PTSD) or traumatic brain injury. Some of them show up at student services where I see them. James was part of a tank crew. On a hot day in Iraq ..they left the hatch open. That’s when a grenade blast slammed his head against an iron plate. At home, he enrolled in college using his GI benefits. However, crowded classrooms make him feel trapped and panicky. When he tries to contain these feelings, he finds he can’t make sense out of what the instructors are saying. Answering a question is like trying to find the answer to a riddle. He mumbles and strains to put together a coherent sentence ..and hopes he’s somewhere in the ballpark. I referred him to the VA for therapy. A short time later he quit school and went looking for a job. He hoped the skills they taught him in the service would help. Unfortunately, many employers told him they couldn’t accommodate time off for therapy. When I talked to him about it, he said he didn’t think that was the real reason. “They hire the disabled all the time.” He says “Guys that need just as much time off as I do.” “No, it’s more like they’re afraid I’ll go postal or something. Head-cases make them nervous.”

Territorial dispute

My neighbors across the creek have finally defeated Aaron’s efforts to live in the house that he built. It’s a beautiful Spanish-style residence that sits perched on the canyon just back from the creek. It has masonry-white walls, red tile roof, hardwood floors ..and no electricity. My neighbor Susan has kept him in court fighting for an electrical easement for so long now that he can’t afford to live there anymore. I like Aaron and I think it’s sad, really. At first I thought it was a case of extortion ..offering him easement rights in exchange for money or his first-born. I went on a long screed about this in a journal entry last year [link], if anyone’s interested.

Anyway, I have a new theory. I think it’s a tragic case of misperception. I believe it’s what happens when a strong-willed, powerfully-focused neighbor tries to negotiate a property agreement with a contractor who suffers a profound attention deficit. Aaron, the contractor, can’t stay on topic long enough to reach an agreement ..any kind of agreement. Susan gets frustrated and believes he’s taking her for a ride. I’ve actually heard her say things like “He talks in circles, purposely avoiding the issue, saying one thing then another .. he’s been bull-shitting me for so long, I don’t believe a word he says anymore.” Aaron, on the other hand, throws up his hands and tells me he has no idea what she wants. Susan says all she wants him to do is repair a shared driveway if he’s going to have to dig a trench through it in order to reach an underground utility. I don’t think Aaron can track what she’s saying long enough to grasp this. He can’t figure out whether she wants him to re-model her house ..re-surface the street ..scrap the project ..or leave a duffel bag filled with hundreds of thousand of dollars in an airport locker. He complains that she’s got him in a Catch-22. “She won’t let me go underground and she won’t let me go overhead” he says. “There used to be a pole on her property with wires leading to my property, but she conspired with the city and California Edison to have them removed so she could put me in the situation I’m in right now where she’s calling all the shots. I think she’s a sick greedy control-freak..! Don’t you ..?” I don’t know about that ..but I do know my head starts to spin whenever I try talking to Aaron about anything specific. I try asking him how long the trench would have to be ..and he tells me how long he’s been living in Santa Barbara (he’s fourth generation). I ask him to show me where the underground hook-up is so I can see for myself ..and he points to where the pole used to be and tells me he’s been robbed.

Social ecology

I grew up in the safety of a middle class neighborhood, which didn't seem all that safe to me. Housewives visited each other in the middle of the day carrying coffee mugs filled with Vodka. I could hear them downstairs complaining about their kids ..and how they’d like to “..really rip into them sometimes.” However, it was usually the mothers who were not present that got to be the subject of ridicule .. spouse and children included. So, it was very important that I be raised not to be a topic of housewife gossip. But I knew it was inevitable ..they spared no one ..everyone got his or her turn on the ‘chopping block’. They knew it too ..I could feel the tension. I could definitely hear it in the grief my mother gave me. Expressions like “What will the neighbors think..!?” were often used in reference to the length of my hair or the style of my clothes. Then there was “Look, I’m not talking Little Lord Fauntleroy or anything ..but it wouldn’t hurt if you wore something other than Levis or corduroys to school everyday ..what about those nice gray slacks I bought ..how come you never wear those ..?” Because I’d be mortified, I thought. I was more concerned with what a group of vicious classmates would do than what a flock of housewives might say. Which reminds me, the expression “birds of a feather” was one of the choice clichés my mother frequently hurled at me. So, you could say I was raised on a diet of clichés and hackneyed expressions. I guess it’s no wonder I don’t have an original thought to my name.

Dear John

Eric received a Dear John letter just before shipping stateside. It has made civilian life hell. Much more painful than anything he experienced in Afghanistan. He tells me she was everything he was living for over there. Now he’s reminded of her everywhere he goes, like ..the clubs ..city streets ..friend’s houses. He describes it as “..receiving an jolt of electricity around every turn.” Classes are torture, he can’t concentrate and I get the impression that student services are wasted on him. I’m out of my league. I see signs of depression. He has difficulty sleeping and concentrating .. the pain is like, everywhere he goes .. and he’s beginning to withdraw. I’m going to have to refer him to VA and hope that they don’t drug him into oblivion. I’m not unfamiliar with the pain of being dumped, however, so I try to convince him that it doesn’t last ..the shocks will begin to fizzle-out and his memory will begin to clear-out. But he’s not paying attention ..it’s not what he wants to hear. I try to imagine what it’s like. I picture him getting hit in the head (or punched in the stomach) with a baseball bat every time he goes through a door. Now he doesn’t open many. He doesn’t leave his room much either.

Net neutrality

There’s a space inside my mind that opens up from time to time ..and in those rare moments I’m in there, everything resonates with equal potential. I think it’s a place Eastern practitioners refer to as ‘Buddha mind’ ..a neutral state free from forces of passion and indifference ..and nagging opinions about what’s right and what’s wrong. In other words, it’s out of reach of my judgmental mind. Apparently neuroscientists have discovered this place too. They’ve located a network inside the brain that comes online whenever the analytic networks are at rest. They call it the ‘default state network’ [link] and it lies somewhere outside regions of the brain dedicated to analysis and judgment. It skirts areas that are active in weighing alternatives and narrowing down possibilities. These areas are never at rest. Even when they go offline, the ‘default state network’ keeps them humming in unison. This creates a state of equilibrium where no one tendency outweighs another. They say it restores a sense of balance and even-mindedness. In some ways it sounds as though they’ve discovered what Eastern practitioners have experienced for the last 25 centuries.

Working memory

Presented to the
Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies

It was interesting for me to see a recent study in neuroscience that supports my theory of reading comprehension [link] Bear with me while I try and explain (or you can duck out now and I won’t be offended). What they found is that working memory interacts with the senses in order to produce a stable view of our surroundings and reduce errors of perception. For one thing, it has to identify signals that are the result of actual sensory events and filter out extraneous signals that are produced by fluctuations inside the nervous system itself (like those caused by changes in activity levels, neurotransmitter concentrations, circadian rhythms, etc..). Neuroscientists refer to this as the ‘sensory orientation’ function [link]. The visual areas in the brain must distinguish changes in actual sensory events from changes in internal activity in order to follow the ‘genuine’ action. They claim that the brain makes this estimate based on principles of ‘Bayesian inference’, which are not much different than principles of ‘Pragmatic inference’. It works something like this: Incoming signals that are considered likely to occur, based on the contents of working memory, are given a boost. Signals considered less likely are held in abeyance and immediately suppressed if subsequent events don’t do anything to rehabilitate them.

Scatter brain

I’m chopping tomatoes for scrambled eggs when memories of doing this in the past pop into my head ..followed by thoughts about my partner’s progress on the road to Austin. A whistling sound brings my attention back to water for tea when I suddenly see flashbacks of my sister laughing at me about my breakfast routine ..followed by the sound of my college roommates yelling at me about how long it takes ..which morphs into a rehearsal for what I’m supposed to say at a meeting this afternoon. Suddenly scalding tea is spraying out of my mouth and I douse it with orange juice and realize I’m already sitting at the table eating breakfast.

Killer zen

Trying to resume meditation practice can sometimes be as difficult as running a 10k after several months off. My thoughts bother me as much as shin splints. At first, I pester myself with questions like, “what the fuck am I doing?” and “am I doing, whatever the fuck it is ..right?” Then I start ordering myself to get it right and make sure I’m making the most of my time. Now I’m going back to a time when I thought I was doing it right. Now I’m lost in thought over the 1,001 things I could be doing better. Now I’m telling myself to get over it .. this is not what mediation is about. Now I feel the constraints of my opinions bearing down on me ..now I feel the constraints of other people’s opinions bearing down on me, which turn out to be my own opinions disguised as other people’s opinions. I tell myself to take responsibility for them otherwise I lose the ‘center’ and my mind becomes scattered, which is something I learned about in a psychology class. Now I feel like I’m just remembering what other people tell me and not really experiencing it for myself. When I manage to push these thoughts away and return to the present moment ..I hear the swoosh of traffic on Anapamu street. This bothers me so I actually try to push it away too. I immediately realize the futility of that and remember what Zen master Perry used to say: “..be aware of the sound of traffic ..let it be a reminder of the passing nature of everything.” So, I let the traffic go by without further complaint. Now I’m back to asking myself “am I doing what I want, or what other people have told me I should do.” Because I know damn well, like a rebellious child .. I resist what other people tell me I should do. Now I’m congratulating myself on this little scrap of insight. Now I’m asking myself if it’s really insight or just another example of remembering what someone else told me, like my mother or a grade school teacher. Now I’m criticizing myself for not having one original thought of my own. I glance at the watch I set beside me and realize only three minutes have gone by. I’m aiming for twenty. This is torture.

Kirsty

..a voice made for rock ‘n roll.

Prānayāma

I’m attending Prānayāma practice tonight. Prāna means ‘breath’ or ‘life force’ and āyāma means ‘abode’. So it’s the practice of restoring the place where your life force resides. I admit, it does oxygenate the system. I can feel a warm tingling sensation in my hands and feet ..and the feeling that all’s well spreading through my brain ..making me all smiles. Afterward, I hang around talking to the session leader Jeff ..a friend who I haven’t seen for a long time. He tells me that Brian moved back to Pennsylvania but Dave can still be seen walking around town. Jeff is busy preparing for a workshop on Ayurvedic healing this weekend. One of tonight’s participants is an elderly woman who receives Ayurvedic treatment. She’s planning a 50-day excursion through India this fall. I think that’s remarkable. Now Jeff is telling me about an ancient language he read about in the Upanishads where the sound carries the meaning by itself, without the need for an intermediate concept. He goes “ ..consider the expression ‘shhh’ in English. It conveys a soothing sensation all by itself.” Makes me think about the sound the ocean makes as it rolls over the sand on the beach ..and about all the times I’ve sat there listening to it ..then I think about how it sounds like a simple breath ..then I realize that breathing is not really simple, only thinking makes it so ..it’s really a complex process that’s been around since the beginning ..then I remind myself not to overthink it ..now I’m wondering how much I missed while Jeff was talking and I was listening to myself think.

A new tune

..one of Scotland’s finest

Rhapsody

Laura is yelling at Andy in proper English, but it’s lost on him. Andy is a dog whose English is limited to a few basic commands, usually associated with specific actions he picked up from me or obedience school. Laura’s displeasure is clear however. That’s carried by the intonation pattern or ‘vibration intervals’ of speech ..kind of like the difference between hearing a song by Metallica and a song by Faith Hill. Out on the streets, my usual California monotone is often lost on people. No one cares about carefully formed sentences. Too neutral. Like Andy, what they want to hear is the intonation pattern. Intonation, like music, is universal and carries feelings better than whatever it is I’m trying to say. And feelings are the first thing you want to find out. Who wants to listen to a monologue ..or an angry shrill. Even the usual “Good morning, how are you ..?” sounds more engaging when spoken with a lilting southern accent. It sounds like they really care ..even when they don’t.

Media and consciousness

A reply from Dr Jenkins re.Age of Inception (posted below)

Bill – Keep in mind that the quotes for the interview are necessarily a simplification of my arguments about the film, though I have been pleased by the discussion they have generated. I would agree totally with you that the film's perspective on reality and perception also has a generational slant. It's interesting though that the films and television shows which take on some of this philosophical/spiritual argument are often associated with games and other digital media -- so I would see The Matrix, the final episode of Lost, and Inception, as all part of the same conversation about our relationship with the real world. We may as a culture be more open to such ideas because of our experience of the digital, just as people in the industrial age were more apt to think of a clockmaker god, or people in the early 20th century started to understand repetition compulsion in terms of a phonograph record in their heads. As Sherry Turkle suggests, we use technologies as tools to think with and a key question we use them to consider is our consciousness. – Henry Jenkins