Nova Spivack – Minding the Planet

Notes: Many people have requested this graph and so I am posting my latest version of it. The Metaweb is the coming “intelligent Web” that is evolving from the convergence of the Web, Social Software and the Semantic Web. The Metaweb is starting to emerge as we shift from a Web focused on information to [...]

Wow. This is a very cool new project — controlling video games with a braincap. Related Posts:Big Thinkers' Most Dangerous IdeasMust-Know Terms for the 21st Century IntellectualA New Kind of Memory AidHuman-Brained Monkeys Pose Ethical ChallengeExtracting Video from Cat Brains

This article discusses new research in how the brain makes buying decisions and other choices — what is now called “neuromarketing”. Neuromarketing researchers seek to discover, and influence, the neurological forces at work inside the mind of potential customers. According to the article, most decisions are made subconsciously and are not necessarily rational at all [...]

I have come across several references to Natasha in the last week. It seems to be a well-documented case of extra-sensory medical perception. This type of perception is not at all uncommon among Tibetan lamas and Chinese Taoists that I have studied with, and I have heard from friends who are close to Native American [...]

Here is a fascinating article about a parrot with a 950 word vocabulary, a sense of humor, and telepathy! Related Posts:A Universal Classification of IntelligenceDolphins are Smarter Than We ThinkStudy Discovers Whale Song SyntaxAfrican Gray Parrot Understands Concept of ZeroResearchers Discover Sense of Fair Play and Morality Among Animals

The Creativity Machine is a special application of neural networks based on the deliberate introduction of mathematical noise into the network. By adding noise after the network has been trained, the system is able to wander around slightly less rigidly, leading it to “free associate” and even to “dream” and “hallucinate.” Stephen Thaler came up [...]

Here is an interesting article on “Cognitive Overload” for those interesting in a more scholarly analysis of the subject. Nice work! Related Posts:New Version of My "Metaweb" Graph — The Future of the NetUsing Nanoparticles to Augment Human Brains…?Beautiful Idea: How to Program the Global MindThe Metaweb is Coming… See this Diagram…Semantic Web Officially Approved [...]

And interesting

The company in Japan that brought us the “BowLingual” dog-bark translator has now announced their new Dream Workshop device. They claim you can use it to program your dreams at night while you sleep. People who’ve tried it say it sometimes works. Only one minor problem… the dreams don’t always go as planned… Related Posts:Must-Know [...]

CNN posted an article today about the potential risk of nanotechnology on the human brain. Basically some research shows that nano-scale particles such as industrial waste, or even components of nanotechnologies, can migrate through the human circulatory system and eventually lodge in the brain. This could cause harmful effects. But on the other hand, maybe [...]

One of the many cool things about the Metaweb is that it functions as a vast bottom-up collaborative filtering system. RSS feeds represent perspectives of publishers. Because feed publishers can automatically or manually include content from other feeds they can “republish,” annotate and filter content. Every feed is effectively a switch, routing content to and [...]

This article discusses new experiments that seem to indicate that certain animals can think about their own cognition — what is called “metacognition.” For example, if given a memory task, some animals such as bottlenose dolphins, are capable of indicating that they are “not sure” — in other words that they “don’t know” the answer. [...]

Here’s an article about an interesting modern theory that purports to “prove” that “reality” is not just an illusion. It’s a bit of a complicated appeal to the basis of language, but makes some good points. However, I think there may be a fundamental flaw at the very root of the argument. Related Posts:Is There [...]

According to Reverse Speech theorists the mind embeds reverse messages in ordinary speech. This is not so outlandish a claim — it is known that the brain uses reversal at a very fundamental level in language and perception. Check out this summary of reverse speech results to see some very interesting cases — in particular [...]