Hamlet's Halo -- a One-Act Play on Words

SCENE: Wittenberg. A chair before a desk in the office of R. Buckminster Fuller. The young Prince Hamlet confides in his professor.

BUCKY. Ignorant of the regenerative significance of synergy, man is vulnerable to de-generative feed-back consequences in his comprehensive determinations.

Universe is the comprehensive integral-aggregate system embracing all the separate integral-aggregate systems of all men's consciously apprehended and communicated experiences.

The total of experiences is integrally synergetic. Universe is the comprehensive a priori synergetic integral.

HAMLET. O God, I could be bounded in a nut shell and count
myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I
have bad dreams.

BUCKY. All experiences are finitely furnished with differentiated cognitions, recognitions and comprehensions.

Universe is finite because it is the sum total of finitely furnished experiences.

HAMLET.There are more things in heaven and earth, Professor,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

BUCKY. The word con-sider-ation comes from sidus, the Latin for star, the focal point of an as yet nondifferentiated concentration of events--ergo, con-sider-able, or con-stellar patterning, means an exploratory grouping of "stars" or complex idea entities that seem to man's limited tuneability to stand out together: Universe expanding through progressively differentiating considerations.

HAMLET. Indeed it goes so heavily
with my disposition that this goodly frame, the
earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most
excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave
o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted
with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to
me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.

BUCKY.Generalized systematic conceptuality's omni-directional relationships are only angularly configured and are independent of size or dimension. No man has ever "seen" outside himself. His brain is a multi-frequency (four sensory ranges) scanning (TV) integrator, continually operating in co-ordination with a multitude of memory (kinescope taped) TV scanners.

Thinking is the self-disciplined process of preoccupied consideration of special-case sets of feed-back answers selected out of the multitude of high frequency alternating trans-ceiver brain traffic.

Thinking consists then of a self-disciplined deferment of conscious consideration of any incoming information traffic other than that which is lucidly relevant to the experience intuited quest for comprehension of the significance of the emergent pattern under immediate priority of consideration.

HAMLET. Why, then, 'tis none to you; for there is nothing
either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

BUCKY. Whereas all metaphysical phenomena were shuntingly disposed by the Einsteinian physicists into a then supposedly infinite universe's ephemeralization; it now comes as a surprise result of our finite-universe hypotheses that the metaphysical is as strictly definitive as the physical. And as the metaphysical embraces intellection, we may say that the nonsimultaneous all-knowledge (omniscience, or wisdom) gained by all men out of all-experience (universe) is comprehensive by a discreet margin of two to all-energy (omnipotence) whose measure omniscience took.

BUCKY.There is a question-asking possibility that omniscience may be transcendental in velocity to the definitive physical speed of energy omnipotence. The synergetic anticipatory capabilities of intellect (in respect to conceptual formulations of evolutionary transforming potentials of universe and the anticipatory stratagems evolved by intellect to test such hypotheses) imply the possibility of a velocity transcendence of omniscient functioning over omnipotence functioning which could mean an intellectually regenerated evolutionary extension of universe in generalized synergetical integrity. Intellect's comprehensive anticipatory objectivities indicates a speed of functioning transcendental to physical events. Intellect may be "creating" finitely extending and re-fining universe as it asks each next good question.

Exeunt.

Professor Fuller speaks from "Omnidirectional Halo" as published in No More Secondhand God and other writings
by R. Buckminster Fuller (1971)

Bucky Fuller's Requirements for a Dwelling Advantage

File under features no home should be without:

Universal Requirements of a Dwelling Advantage

III. A. Provision of ready mechanical means, complementing or implementing, all development requirements of the individual's potential growth phenomena--allowing the facile, scientifically efficient, no-energy-or-time-loss--spontaneous development of self-disciplined education, by means of

1. Conning*, i.e., selectively stimulated awareness of the momentary interactions of universal progressions accomplished by means of facile reference to vital data on
• history
• news
• forecasts

calls for a conning facility combining book and periodical library, radio, television facilities, systematically arranged incoming reports on
1. current supply and demand conditions
2. current dynamic conditions -- weather -- earthquakes--latest scientific research findings
3. social dynamics-surfacing of commonweal problems of comprehensive readjustment to new potential and concomitant obsolescense factors
4. latest technical reference in
   • texts
   • movie documentation
   • television university (soon evoluting to increasing importance and reliability as the Autonomous Dwelling Facility becomes widely available) (52)

from No More Secondhand God and other writings
by R. Buckminster Fuller (1971)

While this list may well describe the home of the later 21st Century, it probably best describes a research center in the first decade of that century.

* Bucky takes his definition for conning from his days in the Naval War College, meaning to examine or study, but also to steer a ship. :dj

Time Consciousness and the Role of Dominant Myths

Having been a fan of both Brian Eno (see "Stars: the Consciousness of Cool," below) and Stewart Brand since the '70s, I was surprised to learn that the two had come together in the '90s, collaborating on the project described in Brand's book of the same name: The Clock of the Long Now.

Here we find Eno master of time as well as space. Brand credits Eno with coining "the long now," which, says Eno, extends "our concept of the present in both directions, making the present longer" (29). Then Brand and Eno take the long now into the realm of myth, for The Clock of the Long Now, with its associated 10,000-Year Library,

aims for the mythic depth to become, as Brian Eno puts it, "one of those system-level ideas which sets in motion all sorts of behavior without ever having to be referred to directly again. This is what dominant myths do: they make some sorts of behavior ring with recognition and familiarity and value and a sense of goodness, and thus lay deep templates for social cohesion about what would otherwise be very hard-to-discuss topics." (49)

Or as James P. Carse would say in Finite and Infinite Games:

• “We resonate with myth when it resounds in us.”
• “Myths, told for their own sake, are not stories that have meanings, but stories that give meanings.”
• “Whole civilizations rise from stories—and can rise from nothing else.”

Just imagine what kind of civilization might arise from the myth of a long now...

Future Consciousness

Some thoughts from Howard Gardner:

Five Minds for the Future

[T]he world of the future--with its ubiquitous search engines, robots, and other computational devices--will demand capacities that until now have been mere options. To meet this new world on its own terms, we should begin to cultivate these capacities now. (2)

In the future, we need a less ritualistic, more deeply internalized form of discipline. (41)

Perhaps, as educator Vartan Gregorian has suggested, we need a specialization in becoming a generalist. Such a specialization would target promising candidates and devote resources toward the enhancement of synthesizing capacities. (75)

Corporate visionary John Seely Brown has quipped that, in the world of tomorrow, people will say, "I create; therefore I am." (77)

If one wishes to raise individuals who are respectful of differences across groups, a special burden is accordingly placed on education in the social sciences, the human sciences, the arts and literature. (114)

I would like to live in a world characterized by "good work": work that is excellent, ethical, and engaging. (127)

[A]nyone who aims to cultivate these minds must have a concept of what it means to be successful and what it means to fail. (164)

Data Consciousness

Digital history may be overwritten, but it is never lost. Just as in language, the past is held etymologically in the present.

On Cloud Computing

Cloud computing relies upon virtual machines to meet the elastic demands of network processing. Need another server? Instantiate another virtual machine.

But a virtual machine is just a file, a file that contains every bit required to represent the main memory of an actual computer--an operating system, an application, and some data. Then, in the ultimate case of code-generation, a program branches to that file and immediately begins to behave as a separate computer, the computer defined by that file.

Similarly, a book is just a file. When the brain reads the text in that file, the interpreter that is the mind branches to the code in the file and executes it as though it is a separate mind, the mind defined by that book.

The question, then, is this:

What analogy exists in the virtual private cloud?

Pattern Recognition: Perfect Numbers and Binary Numerology

For several weeks, recently, I awoke each morning thinking of perfect numbers, that species of positive integer for which the sum of its positive factors equals the number itself. Naturally, I had heard of perfect numbers in college, and I knew of 6 and 28, but was unaware of any others. As I lay there each day, I wondered what 6 and 28--and their factors--had in common, and whether any other numbers shared that characteristic.

1+2+3=6

1+2+4+7+14=28

It soon became clear that, because both numbers were even, and, by definition, their factors had to include 1, there would have to be an odd number to offset the 1. Then I saw a possible relationship between powers of 2 and the largest odd number in the factor set, so I began thinking in powers of 2 and could readily see the beginnings of a pattern in my two knowns:

21*(20+21)=6	[1+2+3=6]
22*(20+21+22)=28	[1+2+4+7+14=28]

The European scholars of the last millennium
Have considered the Polynesians to be illiterate
And therefore intellectually inferior to Europeans
Because the Polynesians didn't have a written history
And used only a binary mathematics,
Or "congruence in modulo two."
The European scholars scoffed,
"The Polynesians can only count to two."

-- from "Numerology" in Synergetics by R. Buckminster Fuller

Unfortunately, two instances does not constitute a pattern. Since I could not readily think beyond 28 without pencil and paper, I began to search for a precedent, and realized I could produce a pattern if I could bend the usual definition of a perfect number just slightly, including the number itself in the special case of unity, i.e., the sum of the factors of 1. Now I had a pattern:

20*(20)=1	[1=1]
21*(20+21)=6	[1+2+3=6]
22*(20+21+22)=28	[1+2+4+7+14=28]

Since the Polynesians lived on the sea
And were naked,
Anything upon which they wrote
Could be washed overboard.
The Polynesians themselves
Often fell overboard.
They had no pockets
Nor any other means
Of retaining reminder devices
Or calculating and scribing instruments
Other than by rings
That could not slip off
From their fingers, ankles, wrists, and necks,
Or by comblike items
That were precariously
Tied into the hair on their heads
Or by rings piercing their ears and noses.
These sea people had to invent ways of calculating and communicating
Principally by brain-rememberable pattern images.
They accomplished their rememberable patterns in sound,
They remembered them in chants.
With day after day of time to spend at sea
They learned to sing and repeat these chants.
Using the successive bow-to-stern,
Canoe and dugout, stiffing ribs and thwarts
Or rafters of their great rafts
As re-minders of successive generations of ancestors,
They methodically and recitationally recalled
The experiences en-chantingly taught to them
As a successive-generation,
Oral relay system
Specifically identified with the paired ancestral parents,
Represented by each pair of ship's ribs or rafters.

-- from "Numerology" in Synergetics by R. Buckminster Fuller

Naturally, I expected to find the next perfect number in the next iteration of my pattern:

23*(20+21+22+23)=120

Unfortunately, the factors of 120 add up to 240--not perfect. Undaunted, I tried the next iteration:

24*(20+21+22+23+24)=496

I checked my work, and eureka; I had found it--the next perfect number! Certain I would live forever in the annals of mathematica, I googled "perfect numbers" just to be sure. And there in the SERP, I learned what I'm sure you already know: there are many known perfect numbers higher than 496; in fact, Euclid had discovered the first four perfect numbers using powers of 2 some 2300 years before me. C'est la vie...

As complex twentieth-century,
Electronically actuated computers
Have come into use,
Ever improving methodology
For gaining greater use advantage
Of the computers' capabilities,
As information storing,
Retrieving, and interprocessing devices,
Has induced reassessment
Of relative mathematical systems' efficiencies.
This in turn has induced
Scientific discovery
That binary computation
Or operation by "congruence in modulo two"
Is by far the most efficient and swift system
For dealing universally with complex computation.

-- from "Numerology" in Synergetics by R. Buckminster Fuller

But Euclid approached the problem from a different angle. Rather than looking at the factor set as a series of binary terms, Euclid looked for cases in which 2^p-1 was prime; then he would find the next perfect number in 2^p-1(2^p-1). The problem is, checking a number for prime is a great deal of work. That said, networked computers have taken us to amazing extremes; the largest prime known as of today has about 13 million decimal digits.

In this connection we recall that the Phoenicians
Also as sailor people
Were forced to keep their mercantile records
And recollections in sound patterns,
In contradistinction to tactile and visual scratching--
And that the Phoenicians to implement
Their world-around trading
Invented the Phoenician,
Or Phonetic, or word-sound alphabet,
With which to correlate and record graphically
The various sound patterns and pronunciations
Of the dialects they encountered
In their world-around trading.
And we suddenly realize
How brilliant and conceptually advanced
Were the Phoenicians' high-seas predecessors
The Polynesians,
For the latter had long centuries earlier
Discovered the binary system of mathematics
Whose "congruence in modulo two"
Provided unambiguous,
Yes-no; go--no go,
Cybernetic controls
Of the electronic circuitry
For the modern computer,
As it had for millenniums earlier
Functioned most efficiently
In storing and retrieving
All the special-case data
In the brains of the Polynesians
By their chanted programming
And their persistent retention
Of the specific but no-longer-comprehended
Sound pattern words and sequences
Taught by their successive
Go--no go, male-female pairs of ancestors.

-- from "Numerology" in Synergetics by R. Buckminster Fuller

So I think we need a more elegant approach to searching out perfect numbers, as well as primes. Rather than tying up a multitude of computers for months on end, laboriously crunching out the simplest of arithmetic routines, we need pattern recognition routines that can "see" the properties of a number, probably in its most basic state: binary. When we develop these routines, we will likely find that they do not "see" the patterns at all; instead, they will "hear" the rhythm of zeroes and ones, and "feel" their perfection or their primal nature.

But certain numbers
Such as prime numbers
Have their own cosmic integrity
And therefore ought to be integrally expressed.
What the numerologist does
is to add numerals horizontally (120 = 1 + 2 + 0 = 3)
Until they are all consolidated into one integer.
Numerologists have also assigned
To the letters of the alphabet
Corresponding numbers: A is one, B is two, C is three, etc.
Numerologists wishfully assume
That they can identify
Characteristics of people
By the residual integer
Derived from integrating
All of the integers,
(Which integers
They speak of as digits,
Identifying with the fingers of their hands,
That is, their fingers)
Corresponding to all the letters
In the individual's complete set of names.
Numerologists do not pretend to be scientific.
They are just fascinated
With correspondence of their key digits
With various happenstances of existence.
They have great fun
Identifying events and things
And assuming significant insights
Which from time to time
Seem well justified,
But what games numerologists
Chose to play with these tools
May or may not have been significant.
Possibly by coincidence, however,
And possibly because of number integrity itself
Some of the integer integrating results
Are found to correspond elegantly
With experimentally proven, physical laws
And have subsequently proven to be
Infinitely reliable.
Half a century ago I became interested in seeing
How numerologists played their games.
I found myself increasingly intrigued
And continually integrating digits.

-- from "Numerology" in Synergetics by R. Buckminster Fuller

So, applying Bucky's zeal for integrating integers to a sample of perfect numbers, we arrive at an astounding observation:

28 = 2 + 8 = 10; 1 + 0 = 1

496 = 4 + 9 + 6 = 19; 1 + 9 = 10; 1 + 0 = 1

8128 = 8 + 1 + 2 + 8 = 19; 1 + 9 = 10; 1 + 0 = 1

33,550,336 = 3 + 3 + 5 + 5 + 0 + 3 + 3 + 6 = 28; 2 + 8 = 10; 1 + 0 = 1 8,589,869,056 = 8 + 5 + 8 + 9 + 8 + 6 + 9 + 0 + 5 + 6 = 64; 6 + 4 = 10; 1 + 0 = 1 137,438,691,328 = 1 + 3 + 7 + 4 + 3 + 8 + 6 + 9 + 1 + 3 + 2 + 8 = 55; 5 + 5 = 10; 1 + 0 = 1 2,305,843,008,139,952,128 = 2 + 3 + 0 + 5 + 8 + 4 + 3 + 0 + 0 + 8 + 1 + 3 + 9 + 9 + 5 + 2 + 1 + 2 + 8 = 73; 7 + 3 = 10; 1 + 0 = 1

Integrating the integers of the first several multi-digit perfect numbers consistently yields 1, unity.  Coincidence? I doubt it. More likely, it is evidence of number integrity itself.