Technology is the making, usage and knowledge of tools, techniques, crafts, systems or methods of organization in order to solve a problem or serve some purpose. The word ''technology'' comes ; . The term can either be applied generally or to specific areas: examples include ''construction technology'', ''medical technology'', and ''information technology''.
Technologies significantly affect human as well as other animal species' ability to control and adapt to their natural environments. The human species' use of technology began with the conversion of natural resources into simple tools. The prehistorical discovery of the ability to control fire increased the available sources of food and the invention of the wheel helped humans in travelling in and controlling their environment. Recent technological developments, including the printing press, the telephone, and the Internet, have lessened physical barriers to communication and allowed humans to interact freely on a global scale. However, not all technology has been used for peaceful purposes; the development of weapons of ever-increasing destructive power has progressed throughout history, from clubs to nuclear weapons.
Technology has affected society and its surroundings in a number of ways. In many societies, technology has helped develop more advanced economies (including today's global economy) and has allowed the rise of a leisure class. Many technological processes produce unwanted by-products, known as pollution, and deplete natural resources, to the detriment of the Earth and its environment. Various implementations of technology influence the values of a society and new technology often raises new ethical questions. Examples include the rise of the notion of efficiency in terms of human productivity, a term originally applied only to machines, and the challenge of traditional norms.
Philosophical debates have arisen over the present and future use of technology in society, with disagreements over whether technology improves the human condition or worsens it. Neo-Luddism, anarcho-primitivism, and similar movements criticise the pervasiveness of technology in the modern world, opining that it harms the environment and alienates people; proponents of ideologies such as transhumanism and techno-progressivism view continued technological progress as beneficial to society and the human condition. Indeed, until recently, it was believed that the development of technology was restricted only to human beings, but recent scientific studies indicate that other primates and certain dolphin communities have developed simple tools and learned to pass their knowledge to other generations.
Dictionaries and scholars have offered a variety of definitions. The Merriam-Webster dictionary offers a definition of the term: "the practical application of knowledge especially in a particular area" and "a capability given by the practical application of knowledge". Ursula Franklin, in her 1989 "Real World of Technology" lecture, gave another definition of the concept; it is "practice, the way we do things around here". The term is often used to imply a specific field of technology, or to refer to high technology or just consumer electronics, rather than technology as a whole. Bernard Stiegler, in ''Technics and Time, 1'', defines technology in two ways: as "the pursuit of life by means other than life", and as "organized inorganic matter."
Technology can be most broadly defined as the entities, both material and immaterial, created by the application of mental and physical effort in order to achieve some value. In this usage, technology refers to tools and machines that may be used to solve real-world problems. It is a far-reaching term that may include simple tools, such as a crowbar or wooden spoon, or more complex machines, such as a space station or particle accelerator. Tools and machines need not be material; virtual technology, such as computer software and business methods, fall under this definition of technology.
The word "technology" can also be used to refer to a collection of techniques. In this context, it is the current state of humanity's knowledge of how to combine resources to produce desired products, to solve problems, fulfill needs, or satisfy wants; it includes technical methods, skills, processes, techniques, tools and raw materials. When combined with another term, such as "medical technology" or "space technology", it refers to the state of the respective field's knowledge and tools. "State-of-the-art technology" refers to the high technology available to humanity in any field.
Technology can be viewed as an activity that forms or changes culture. Additionally, technology is the application of math, science, and the arts for the benefit of life as it is known. A modern example is the rise of communication technology, which has lessened barriers to human interaction and, as a result, has helped spawn new subcultures; the rise of cyberculture has, at its basis, the development of the Internet and the computer. Not all technology enhances culture in a creative way; technology can also help facilitate political oppression and war via tools such as guns. As a cultural activity, technology predates both science and engineering, each of which formalize some aspects of technological endeavor.
Engineering is the goal-oriented process of designing and making tools and systems to exploit natural phenomena for practical human means, often (but not always) using results and techniques from science. The development of technology may draw upon many fields of knowledge, including scientific, engineering, mathematical, linguistic, and historical knowledge, to achieve some practical result.
Technology is often a consequence of science and engineering — although technology as a human activity precedes the two fields. For example, science might study the flow of electrons in electrical conductors, by using already-existing tools and knowledge. This new-found knowledge may then be used by engineers to create new tools and machines, such as semiconductors, computers, and other forms of advanced technology. In this sense, scientists and engineers may both be considered technologists; the three fields are often considered as one for the purposes of research and reference.
The exact relations between science and technology in particular have been debated by scientists, historians, and policymakers in the late 20th century, in part because the debate can inform the funding of basic and applied science. In the immediate wake of World War II, for example, in the United States it was widely considered that technology was simply "applied science" and that to fund basic science was to reap technological results in due time. An articulation of this philosophy could be found explicitly in Vannevar Bush's treatise on postwar science policy, ''Science—The Endless Frontier'': "New products, new industries, and more jobs require continuous additions to knowledge of the laws of nature... This essential new knowledge can be obtained only through basic scientific research." In the late-1960s, however, this view came under direct attack, leading towards initiatives to fund science for specific tasks (initiatives resisted by the scientific community). The issue remains contentious—though most analysts resist the model that technology simply is a result of scientific research.
The use of tools by early humans was partly a process of discovery, partly of evolution. Early humans evolved from a species of foraging hominids which were already bipedal, with a brain mass approximately one third that of modern humans. Tool use remained relatively unchanged for most of early human history, but approximately 50,000 years ago, a complex set of behaviors and tool use emerged, believed by many archaeologists to be connected to the emergence of fully modern language.
Human ancestors have been using stone and other tools since long before the emergence of ''Homo sapiens'' approximately 200,000 years ago. The earliest methods of stone tool making, known as the Oldowan "industry", date back to at least 2.3 million years ago, with the earliest direct evidence of tool usage found in Ethiopia within the Great Rift Valley, dating back to 2.5 million years ago. This era of stone tool use is called the ''Paleolithic'', or "Old stone age", and spans all of human history up to the development of agriculture approximately 12,000 years ago.
To make a stone tool, a "core" of hard stone with specific flaking properties (such as flint) was struck with a hammerstone. This flaking produced a sharp edge on the core stone as well as on the flakes, either of which could be used as tools, primarily in the form of choppers or scrapers. These tools greatly aided the early humans in their hunter-gatherer lifestyle to perform a variety of tasks including butchering carcasses (and breaking bones to get at the marrow); chopping wood; cracking open nuts; skinning an animal for its hide; and even forming other tools out of softer materials such as bone and wood.
The earliest stone tools were crude, being little more than a fractured rock. In the Acheulian era, beginning approximately 1.65 million years ago, methods of working these stone into specific shapes, such as hand axes emerged. The Middle Paleolithic, approximately 300,000 years ago, saw the introduction of the prepared-core technique, where multiple blades could be rapidly formed from a single core stone. The Upper Paleolithic, beginning approximately 40,000 years ago, saw the introduction of pressure flaking, where a wood, bone, or antler punch could be used to shape a stone very finely.
Man's technological ascent began in earnest in what is known as the Neolithic period ("New stone age"). The invention of polished stone axes was a major advance because it allowed forest clearance on a large scale to create farms. The discovery of agriculture allowed for the feeding of larger populations, and the transition to a sedentist lifestyle increased the number of children that could be simultaneously raised, as young children no longer needed to be carried, as was the case with the nomadic lifestyle. Additionally, children could contribute labor to the raising of crops more readily than they could to the hunter-gatherer lifestyle.
With this increase in population and availability of labor came an increase in labor specialization. What triggered the progression from early Neolithic villages to the first cities, such as Uruk, and the first civilizations, such as Sumer, is not specifically known; however, the emergence of increasingly hierarchical social structures, the specialization of labor, trade and war amongst adjacent cultures, and the need for collective action to overcome environmental challenges, such as the building of dikes and reservoirs, are all thought to have played a role.
Meanwhile, humans were learning to harness other forms of energy. The earliest known use of wind power is the sailboat. The earliest record of a ship under sail is shown on an Egyptian pot dating back to 3200 BC. From prehistoric times, Egyptians probably used the power of the Nile annual floods to irrigate their lands, gradually learning to regulate much of it through purposely built irrigation channels and 'catch' basins. Similarly, the early peoples of Mesopotamia, the Sumerians, learned to use the Tigris and Euphrates rivers for much the same purposes. But more extensive use of wind and water (and even human) power required another invention.
According to archaeologists, the wheel was invented around 4000 B.C. probably independently and nearly-simultaneously in Mesopotamia (in present-day Iraq), the Northern Caucasus (Maykop culture) and Central Europe. Estimates on when this may have occurred range from 5500 to 3000 B.C., with most experts putting it closer to 4000 B.C. The oldest artifacts with drawings that depict wheeled carts date from about 3000 B.C.; however, the wheel may have been in use for millennia before these drawings were made. There is also evidence from the same period of time that wheels were used for the production of pottery. (Note that the original potter's wheel was probably not a wheel, but rather an irregularly shaped slab of flat wood with a small hollowed or pierced area near the center and mounted on a peg driven into the earth. It would have been rotated by repeated tugs by the potter or his assistant.) More recently, the oldest-known wooden wheel in the world was found in the Ljubljana marshes of Slovenia.
The invention of the wheel revolutionized activities as disparate as transportation, war, and the production of pottery (for which it may have been first used). It didn't take long to discover that wheeled wagons could be used to carry heavy loads and fast (rotary) potters' wheels enabled early mass production of pottery. But it was the use of the wheel as a transformer of energy (through water wheels, windmills, and even treadmills) that revolutionized the application of nonhuman power sources.
Innovations continued through the Middle Ages with new innovations such as silk, the horse collar and horseshoes in the first few hundred years after the fall of the Roman Empire. Medieval technology saw the use of simple machines (such as the lever, the screw, and the pulley) being combined to form more complicated tools, such as the wheelbarrow, windmills and clocks. The Renaissance brought forth many of these innovations, including the printing press (which facilitated the greater communication of knowledge), and technology became increasingly associated with science, beginning a cycle of mutual advancement. The advancements in technology in this era allowed a more steady supply of food, followed by the wider availability of consumer goods.
Starting in the United Kingdom in the 18th century, the Industrial Revolution was a period of great technological discovery, particularly in the areas of agriculture, manufacturing, mining, metallurgy and transport, driven by the discovery of steam power. Technology later took another step with the harnessing of electricity to create such innovations as the electric motor, light bulb and countless others. Scientific advancement and the discovery of new concepts later allowed for powered flight, and advancements in medicine, chemistry, physics and engineering. The rise in technology has led to the construction of skyscrapers and large cities whose inhabitants rely on automobiles or other powered transit for transportation. Communication was also improved with the invention of the telegraph, telephone, radio and television.
The second half of the 20th century brought a host of new innovations. In physics, the discovery of nuclear fission has led to both nuclear weapons and nuclear power. Computers were also invented and later miniaturized utilizing transistors and integrated circuits. These advancements subsequently led to the creation of the Internet. Humans have also been able to explore space with satellites (later used for telecommunication) and in manned missions going all the way to the moon. In medicine, this era brought innovations such as open-heart surgery and later stem cell therapy along with new medications and treatments. Complex manufacturing and construction techniques and organizations are needed to construct and maintain these new technologies, and entire industries have arisen to support and develop succeeding generations of increasingly more complex tools. Modern technology increasingly relies on training and education — their designers, builders, maintainers, and users often require sophisticated general and specific training. Moreover, these technologies have become so complex that entire fields have been created to support them, including engineering, medicine, and computer science, and other fields have been made more complex, such as construction, transportation and architecture.
Many, such as the Luddites and prominent philosopher Martin Heidegger, hold serious, although not entirely deterministic reservations, about technology (see "The Question Concerning Technology)". According to Heidegger scholars Hubert Dreyfus and Charles Spinosa, "Heidegger does not oppose technology. He hopes to reveal the essence of technology in a way that 'in no way confines us to a stultified compulsion to push on blindly with technology or, what comes to the same thing, to rebel helplessly against it.' Indeed, he promises that 'when we once open ourselves expressly to the essence of technology, we find ourselves unexpectedly taken into a freeing claim.'" What this entails is a more complex relationship to technology than either techno-optimists or techno-pessimists tend to allow.
Some of the most poignant criticisms of technology are found in what are now considered to be dystopian literary classics, for example Aldous Huxley's ''Brave New World'' and other writings, Anthony Burgess's ''A Clockwork Orange'', and George Orwell's ''Nineteen Eighty-Four''. And, in ''Faust'' by Goethe, Faust's selling his soul to the devil in return for power over the physical world, is also often interpreted as a metaphor for the adoption of industrial technology. More recently, modern works of science fiction, such as those by Philip K. Dick and William Gibson, and films (e.g. Blade Runner, Ghost in the Shell) project highly ambivalent or cautionary attitudes toward technology's impact on human society and identity.
The late cultural critic Neil Postman distinguished tool-using societies from technological societies and, finally, what he called "technopolies," that is, societies that are dominated by the ideology of technological and scientific progress, to the exclusion or harm of other cultural practices, values and world-views.
Darin Barney has written about technology's impact on practices of citizenship and democratic culture, suggesting that technology can be construed as (1) an object of political debate, (2) a means or medium of discussion, and (3) a setting for democratic deliberation and citizenship. As a setting for democratic culture, Barney suggests that technology tends to make ethical questions, including the question of what a good life consists in, nearly impossible, because they already give an answer to the question: a good life is one that includes the use of more and more technology.
Nikolas Kompridis has also written about the dangers of new technology, such as genetic engineering, nanotechnology, synthetic biology and robotics. He warns that these technologies introduce unprecedented new challenges to human beings, including the possibility of the permanent alteration of our biological nature. These concerns are shared by other philosophers, scientists and public intellectuals who have written about similar issues (e.g. Francis Fukuyama, Jürgen Habermas, William Joy, and Michael Sandel).
Another prominent critic of technology is Hubert Dreyfus, who has published books ''On the Internet'' and ''What Computers Still Can't Do''.
Another, more infamous anti-technological treatise is ''Industrial Society and Its Future'', written by Theodore Kaczynski (aka The Unabomber) and printed in several major newspapers (and later books) as part of an effort to end his bombing campaign of the techno-industrial infrastructure.
Technology is properly defined as any application of science to accomplish a function. The science can be leading edge or well established and the function can have high visibility or be significantly more mundane but it is all technology, and its exploitation is the foundation of all competitive advantage.
Technology-based planning is what was used to build the US industrial giants before WWII (e.g., Dow, DuPont, GM) and it what was used to transform the US into a superpower. It was not economic-based planning.
Project Socrates determined that to rebuild US competitiveness, decision making through out the US had to readopt technology-based planning. Project Socrates also determined that countries like China and India had continued executing technology-based (while the US took its detour into economic-based) planning, and as a result had considerable advanced the process and were using it to build themselves into superpowers. To rebuild US competitiveness the US decision-makers needed adopt a form of technology-based planning that was far more advanced than that used by China and India.
Project Socrates determined that technology-based planning makes an evolutionary leap forward every few hundred years and the next evolutionary leap, the Automated Innovation Revolution, was poised to occur. In the Automated Innovation Revolution the process for determining how to acquire and utilize technology for a competitive advantage (which includes R&D;) is automated so that it can be executed with unprecedented speed, efficiency and agility.
Project Socrates developed the means for automated innovation so that the US could lead the Automated Innovation Revolution in order to rebuild and maintain the country's economic competitiveness for many generations.
The ability to make and use tools was once considered a defining characteristic of the genus Homo. However, the discovery of tool construction among chimpanzees and related primates has discarded the notion of the use of technology as unique to humans. For example, researchers have observed wild chimpanzees utilising tools for foraging: some of the tools used include leaf sponges, termite fishing probes, pestles and levers. West African chimpanzees also use stone hammers and anvils for cracking nuts, as do capuchin monkeys of Boa Vista, Brazil.
Theories of technology often attempt to predict the future of technology based on the high technology and science of the time.
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name | Timothy Leary |
---|---|
birth name | Timothy Francis Leary |
birth date | October 22, 1920 |
birth place | Springfield, Massachusetts, U.S. |
death date | May 31, 1996 |
death place | Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
nationality | American |
occupation | Psychologist Author |
employer | UC Berkeley Kaiser Family Foundation Harvard |
known | Psychedelic therapy |
spouse | }} |
Timothy Leary attended the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts from September 1938 to June 1940. Under pressure from his father, Leary enrolled as a cadet in the United States Military Academy at West Point. In his first months he acquired numerous demerits for rule infractions and then got into serious trouble for failing to report infractions by other cadets when on supervisory duty. He was alleged to have engaged in a bout of drinking and then failed to be forthright about it. For violating the Academy's honor code, the Honor Committee asked him to resign. When he refused, he was "silenced", that is, shunned and ignored by his co-cadets as a tactic to pressure him to resign. Though acquitted by a court-martial, the silencing continued as well as an onslaught of demerits for minuscule infractions of the rules. When the treatment continued in his second year, his mother appealed to a family friend, U.S. Senator David I. Walsh, head of the Senate Naval Affairs Committee, who conducted a personal investigation. Behind the scenes, the Honor Committee revised its position. The Honor Committee announced that it would abide by the court-martial verdict and then Leary resigned and received an honorable discharge. Almost fifty years later, Leary said that it was "the only fair trial I've had in a court of law".
Leary transferred to University of Alabama where he received a B.A. degree in psychology in 1943. His obituary in the ''New York Times'' said he "finally earned his bachelor's degree in the U. S. Army during World War II," when he was a sergeant in the Medical Corps. He received an M.S. degree in psychology at Washington State University in 1946, and his Ph.D. degree in psychology at the University of California, Berkeley in 1950. The title of Leary's Ph.D. dissertation was "The Social Dimensions of Personality: Group Structure and Process." He became an assistant professor at Berkeley (1950–1955), director of psychiatric research at the Kaiser Family Foundation (1955–1958), and a lecturer in psychology at Harvard University (1959–1963). He was fired from Harvard for failing to conduct his scheduled class lectures, though he claimed that he had fulfilled all of his teaching obligations. The decision to dismiss him was allegedly influenced by his role in the popularity of then-legal psychedelic substances among Harvard students and faculty members.
Leary's early work in psychology expanded on the research of Harry Stack Sullivan and Karen Horney regarding the importance of interpersonal forces in mental health. Leary focused on how the interpersonal process might be used to diagnose disorders and patterns found in human personalities. He developed a complex and respected interpersonal circumplex model, published in ''The Interpersonal Diagnosis of Personality'', which offered a means by which psychologists could use MMPI scores to determine a respondent's characteristic interpersonal modes of reaction.
Leary married Marianne Busch in 1945, who gave birth in 1947 to their first child, Susan, while he was working on his PhD at the University of California at Berkeley. Susan was followed two years later by a son, Jack. In 1952 the Leary family spent a year in Spain, subsisting on a research grant awarded to Leary. A Berkeley colleague of Leary's, Marv Freedman, later recounted that "…Something had been stirred in him in terms of breaking out of being another cog in society…".
In 1955, Leary's wife committed suicide, leaving him to raise their son and daughter alone. He described himself during this period as "an anonymous institutional employee who drove to work each morning in a long line of commuter cars and drove home each night and drank martinis ... like several million middle-class, liberal, intellectual robots."
Upon his return from Mexico to Harvard in 1960, Leary and his associates, notably Richard Alpert (later known as Ram Dass), began a research program known as the Harvard Psilocybin Project. The goal was to analyze the effects of psilocybin on human subjects (in this case, prisoners, and later, students of the Andover Newton Theological Seminary) using a synthesized version of the then-legal drug—one of two active compounds found in a wide variety of hallucinogenic mushrooms including Psilocybe mexicana. The compound was produced according to a process developed by Albert Hofmann of Sandoz Pharmaceuticals, famous for synthesizing LSD.
Beat poet Allen Ginsberg asked Leary to participate in the experiments after hearing about the Harvard research project. Leary was inspired by Ginsberg's enthusiasm and the two shared an optimism in the benefit of psychedelic substances to help people ‘turn on’ (discover a higher level of consciousness). Together they began a campaign of introducing other intellectuals and artists to psychedelics.
Leary argued that psychedelic substances, used at proper dosages, in a stable set and setting could, under the guidance of psychologists, alter behavior in beneficial ways not easily attainable through regular therapy. Leary's research focused on treating alcoholism and reforming criminals. Many of Leary's research participants reported profound mystical and spiritual experiences, which they claim permanently altered their lives in a very positive manner. According to Leary's autobiography, ''Flashbacks'', LSD was given to 300 professors, graduate students, writers and philosophers and 75 percent of the test subjects reported the experience as one of the most educational and revealing experiences of their lives.
The Concord Prison Experiment was designed to evaluate how the effects of psilocybin combined with psychotherapy would rehabilitate prisoners upon being released. After being guided through the psychedelic experience ('trips') by Leary and his associates, 36 prisoners allegedly repented and swore to give up future criminal activity. For prisoners in USA, the average recidivism rate is 60 percent; the recidivism rate of the subjects involved in Leary's project dropped to 20 percent. The Concord Prison experiment concluded that long-term reduction in overall criminal recidivism rates could be achieved with a combination of psilocybin-assisted group psychotherapy (inside the prison) along with a comprehensive post-release follow-up support program modeled on Alcoholics Anonymous. The results of this experiment were later largely contested by a follow-up study, citing several problems, including time differences monitoring the study group versus the control group, and other methodology factors, including the difference between subjects re-incarcerated for parole violations versus those imprisoned for new crimes. The study that contested Leary's research concluded that only a statistically slight improvement could be shown by using psilocybin (as opposed to the significant improvement Leary reported).
Leary and Alpert founded the International Foundation for Internal Freedom in 1962 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. This was run by Lisa Bieberman (now known as Licia Kuenning), a disciple of Leary and one of his many lovers. Their research attracted a great deal of public attention and, as a result, many people wanted to participate in the experiments, but were unable to do so because of the high demand. In order to satisfy the curiosity of those who were turned away, a black market for psychedelics developed near the Harvard University Campus.
According to Andrew Weil, Leary was fired for not showing up to his lecture classes, while Alpert was fired for allegedly giving psilocybin to an undergraduate in an off-campus apartment. This version is supported by the words of Harvard President Nathan M. Pusey, who, regarding Leary's termination, released the following statement on May 27, 1963:
On May 6, 1963, the Harvard Corporation voted, because Timothy F. Leary, lecturer on clinical psychology, has failed to keep his classroom appointments and has absented himself from Cambridge without permission, to relieve him from further teaching duty and to terminate his salary as of April 30, 1963.
In 1963 he had a televised debate with Jerry Lettvin of MIT.
Leary's activities interested siblings Peggy, Billy and Tommy Hitchcock, heirs to the Mellon fortune, who in 1963 helped Leary and his associates acquire the use of a rambling mansion on an estate in the town of Millbrook (near Poughkeepsie, New York), where they continued their experiments. Leary later wrote:
We saw ourselves as anthropologists from the twenty-first century inhabiting a time module set somewhere in the dark ages of the 1960s. On this space colony we were attempting to create a new paganism and a new dedication to life as art.
Later, the Millbrook estate was described by Luc Sante of ''The New York Times'' as:
the headquarters of Leary and gang for the better part of five years, a period filled with endless parties, epiphanies and breakdowns, emotional dramas of all sizes, and numerous raids and arrests, many of them on flimsy charges concocted by the local assistant district attorney, G. Gordon Liddy.
Others contest this characterization of the Millbrook estate; for instance, in ''The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test'', Tom Wolfe portrays Leary as only interested in research, and not using psychedelics merely for recreational purposes. According to "The Crypt Trip" chapter of Wolfe's book, when Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters visited the residence, the Pranksters did not even see Leary, who was engaged in a three-day trip. According to Wolfe, Leary's group even refused to give the Pranksters acid.
In 1964, Leary co-authored a book with Alpert and Ralph Metzner called ''The Psychedelic Experience'', based upon the Tibetan Book of the Dead. In it, they wrote:
A psychedelic experience is a journey to new realms of consciousness. The scope and content of the experience is limitless, but its characteristic features are the transcendence of verbal concepts, of spacetime dimensions, and of the ego or identity. Such experiences of enlarged consciousness can occur in a variety of ways: sensory deprivation, yoga exercises, disciplined meditation, religious or aesthetic ecstasies, or spontaneously. Most recently they have become available to anyone through the ingestion of psychedelic drugs such as LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, DMT, etc. Of course, the drug does not produce the transcendent experience. It merely acts as a chemical key—it opens the mind, frees the nervous system of its ordinary patterns and structures.
Repeated FBI raids ended the Millbrook era. Regarding a 1966 raid by G. Gordon Liddy, Leary told author and Prankster Paul Krassner: "He was a government agent entering our bedroom at midnight. We had every right to shoot him. But I've never owned a weapon in my life. I have never had and never will have a gun around."
On September 19, 1966, Leary founded the League for Spiritual Discovery, a religion declaring LSD as its holy sacrament, in part as an unsuccessful attempt to maintain legal status for the use of LSD and other psychedelics for the religion's adherents, based on a "freedom of religion" argument. (Although The Brotherhood of Eternal Love would subsequently consider Leary their spiritual leader, The Brotherhood did not evolve out of IFIF International Foundation for Internal Freedom.) On October 6, 1966, LSD was made illegal in the United States and controlled so strictly that not only were possession and recreational use criminalized, but all legal scientific research programs on the drug in the US were shut down as well.
In 1966, Folkways Records recorded Leary reading from his book ''The Psychedelic Experience'', and released the album, ''The Psychedelic Experience: Readings from the Book "The Psychedelic Experience. A Manual Based on the Tibetan...".''
During late 1966 and early 1967, Leary toured college campuses presenting a multi-media performance "The Death of the Mind", which attempted to artistically replicate the LSD experience. Leary said the League for Spiritual Discovery was limited to 360 members and was already at its membership limit, but he encouraged others to form their own psychedelic religions. He published a pamphlet in 1967 called ''Start Your Own Religion'', to encourage people to do so (see below under "writings").
Leary was invited to attend the January 14, 1967 Human Be-In by Michael Bowen the primary organizer of the event. Leary spoke at the Human Be-In, a gathering of 30,000 hippies in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco and uttered the famous phrase, "Turn on, tune in, drop out". In a 1988 interview with Neil Strauss, Leary stated that slogan was "given to him" by Marshall McLuhan during a lunch in New York City. Leary added that Marshall, "was very much interested in ideas and marketing, and he started singing something like, 'Psychedelics hit the spot / Five hundred micrograms, that's a lot,' to the tune of a Pepsi commercial. Then he started going, 'Tune in, turn on, and drop out.'"
At some point in the late 1960s, Leary moved to California. He made a number of friends in Hollywood. "When he married his third wife, Rosemary Woodruff in 1967, the event was directed by Ted Markland of ''Bonanza''. All the guests were on acid."
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Leary (in collaboration with the writer Brian Barritt) formulated his circuit model of consciousness, in which he claimed that the human mind/nervous system consisted of seven circuits which, when activated, produce seven levels of consciousness (this model was first published as the short essay, "The Seven Tongues of God"). The system soon expanded to include an eighth circuit; this version was first unveiled to the world in the rare 1973 pamphlet "Neurologic" (written with Joanna Leary while he was in prison), but was not exhaustively formulated until the publication of ''Exo-Psychology'' (by Leary) and in Robert Anton Wilson's ''Cosmic Trigger'' in 1977. Wilson contributed significantly to the model after befriending Leary in the early 1970s, and has used it as a framework for further exposition in his book ''Prometheus Rising'', among other works.
Leary believed that the first four of these circuits ("the Larval Circuits" or "Terrestrial Circuits") are naturally accessed by most people in their lifetimes, triggered at natural transition points in life, such as puberty. The second four circuits ("the Stellar Circuits" or "Extra-Terrestrial Circuits"), Leary claimed, were evolutionary off-shoots of the first four that would be triggered at transition points that we will have when we evolve further, and would equip us to encompass life in space, as well as the expansion of consciousness that would be necessary to make further scientific and social progress. Leary suggested that some people may "shift to the latter four gears" (i.e. trigger these circuits artificially) by utilizing consciousness-altering techniques such as meditation and spiritual endeavors such as yoga, or by taking psychedelic drugs specific to each circuit. An example of the information Leary cited as evidence for the purpose of the "higher" four circuits was the feeling of floating and uninhibited motion experienced by users of marijuana. In the eight circuit model of consciousness, a primary theoretical function of the fifth circuit (the first of the four developed for life in outer space) is to allow humans to become accustomed to life in a zero or low gravity environment.
Leary's first run-in with the law came on December 20, 1965. Leary decided to take his children and Rosemary to Mexico for an extended stay to write a book. During a border crossing with his girlfriend Rosemary Woodruff and two children Jack and Susan from Mexico into the United States, marijuana was found in his daughter Susan's underwear. They had crossed into Nuevo Laredo, Mexico in the late afternoon and discovered they would have to wait until morning for the appropriate visa for an extended stay. They decided to cross back into Texas to spend the night and were on the bridge when Rosemary remembered she had a very small amount of marijuana in her possession. It was impossible to throw it out on the bridge so Susan put it in her underwear. After taking responsibility for the controlled substance, Leary was convicted of possession under the Marihuana Tax Act on March 11, 1966, and sentenced to 30 years in jail, given a $30,000 fine and ordered to undergo psychiatric treatment. Soon after, however, he appealed the case, claiming the Marihuana Tax Act was, in fact, unconstitutional, as it required a degree of self-incrimination. Leary claimed this was in stark violation of the Fifth Amendment. On December 26, 1968, Leary was arrested again, in Laguna Beach, California, this time for the possession of two roaches of marijuana, which Leary claimed were planted by the arresting officer. He was later convicted of this offense. On May 19, 1969, The Supreme Court concurred with Leary in ''Leary v. United States''. The Marihuana Tax Act was declared unconstitutional, and his 1965 conviction was quashed. On the day his conviction was overturned, Leary announced his candidacy for Governor of California, running against Ronald Reagan. His campaign slogan was "Come together, join the party." On June 1, 1969, Leary joined John Lennon and Yoko Ono at their Montreal Bed-In and Lennon subsequently wrote Leary a campaign song called "Come Together".
On January 21, 1970, Leary received a ten-year sentence for his 1968 offense, with a further ten added later while in custody, for a previous arrest in 1965, twenty years in total to be served consecutively. When Leary arrived in prison, he was given psychological tests that were used to assign inmates to appropriate work details. Having designed some of the tests himself (including the "Leary Interpersonal Behavior Test"), Leary answered them in such a way that he seemed to be a very conforming, conventional person with a great interest in forestry and gardening. As a result, Leary was assigned to work as a gardener in a lower security prison, and in September 1970 he escaped. Leary claimed his non-violent escape was a humorous prank, and left a challenging note for the authorities to find after he was gone. For a fee, paid by The Brotherhood of Eternal Love, the Weathermen smuggled Leary and his wife, Rosemary Woodruff Leary, out of the United States and into Algeria. He sought the patronage of Eldridge Cleaver and the remnants of the separatist USA Black Panther party's "government in exile." After staying with them for a short time, Leary claimed that Cleaver attempted to hold him and his wife hostage.
In 1971, the couple fled to Switzerland, "where they were sheltered and effectively imprisoned by a large-living arms dealer, Michel Hauchard, who claimed he had an 'obligation as a gentleman to protect philosophers,' but mostly had a film deal in mind." In 1972, President Richard Nixon's attorney general, John Mitchell, persuaded the Swiss government to imprison Leary, which it did for a month, but the Swiss refused to extradite him back to the U.S. In that same year, Leary and Rosemary separated. Leary became involved with Swiss-born British socialite Joanna Harcourt-Smith, a stepdaughter of financier Árpád Plesch. Leary "married" Harcourt-Smith at a hotel two weeks after they were first introduced; she used his surname until their breakup in early 1977. They traveled to Vienna, then Beirut and finally went to Kabul, Afghanistan, in 1973. "Afghanistan had no extradition treaty with the United States, but this stricture did not apply to American airliners", Luc Sante wrote in a review of a biography of Leary. That interpretation of the law was used by U.S. authorities to capture the fugitive. "Before Leary could deplane, he was arrested by an agent of the federal Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs."
At a layover in the United Kingdom, as Leary was being flown back to the United States, he requested political asylum from Her Majesty's Government, but to no avail. He was then held on five million dollars bail ($21.5 mil. in 2006). President Richard Nixon had earlier labeled him "the most dangerous man in America." The judge at his remand hearing remarked, "If he is allowed to travel freely, he will speak publicly and spread his ideas." Facing a total of 95 years in prison, Leary hired criminal defense attorney Bruce Margolin and was put into solitary confinement in Folsom Prison, California.
Leary made somewhat of a pretense of cooperating with the FBI's investigation of the Weathermen and radical attorneys, by giving them information that they already had or that was of little consequence; in response, the FBI gave him the code name "Charlie Thrush".
Leary would later claim, and members of the Weathermen would later support, that no one was ever prosecuted based on any information he gave to the FBI.
The Weather Underground, the radical left organization responsible for his escape, was not impacted by his testimony. Histories written about the Weather Underground usually mention the Leary chapter in terms of the escape for which they proudly took credit. Leary sent information to the Weather Underground through a sympathetic prisoner that he was considering making a deal with the FBI and waited for their approval. The return message was "we understand".
While imprisoned Leary remained a productive writer, sowing the seeds for his incarnation as a futurist lecturer with the StarSeed Series. In ''Starseed'' (1973), ''neurologic'' (1973), & ''Terra II: A Way Out'' (1974), Leary transitioned from Eastern philosophy and Aleister Crowley to a belief that outer space was a medium for spiritual transcendence as his principal frame of reference. ''Neurologic'' also added the idea of "time dilation/contraction" available to the activated brain through the cellular, DNA, or atomic level of reality. ''Terra II'' is his first detailed proposal for space colonization. Leary's muse peaked with ''Exo—Psychology'', ''Neuropolitics'', and ''Intelligence Agents''.
Leary cultivated a friendship with former foe G. Gordon Liddy, the notorious Watergate burglar and conservative radio talk-show host. They toured the lecture circuit in 1982 as ex-cons (Liddy having been imprisoned after high-level involvement in the Watergate scandal) debating about different social and fiscal issues from gay rights and abortion to welfare and the environment with Leary generally representing the voice from the left and Liddy representing the voice from the right. The tour generated massive publicity and considerable funds for both figures. Along with the personal appearances, a successful documentary called ''Return Engagement'' that chronicled the tour, and the concurrent release of the autobiography ''Flashbacks'', helped to return Leary to the spotlight. In 1988, Leary held a fundraiser for Libertarian presidential candidate Ron Paul.
While his stated ambition was eventually to cross over as a mainstream Hollywood personality, reluctant studios and sponsors made certain that it would never occur. Nonetheless, constant touring ensured that he was able to maintain a very comfortable lifestyle by the mid-1980s, while his colorful past made him a desirable guest at A-list parties throughout the decade. He also attracted a more intellectual crowd, which included John Frusciante (Leary appeared in Johnny Depp's and Gibby Haynes' 1994 film ''Stuff'' which showed the squalid conditions that Frusciante was living in at the time), Robert Anton Wilson, David Byrne, science fiction ''wunderkind'' William Gibson, and Norman Spinrad amongst its ranks.
While he continued to use drugs frequently on a private basis, rather than evangelizing and proselytizing the use of psychedelics as he had in the 1960s, the latter day Leary emphasized the importance of space colonization and an ensuring extension of the human lifespan while also providing a detailed explanation of the eight-circuit model of consciousness in books such as ''Info-Psychology'', among several others. He adopted the acronym "SMI²LE" as a succinct summary of his pre-transhumanist agenda: SM (Space Migration) + I² (intelligence increase) + LE (Life extension). Leary credited L5 co-founder Keith Henson with helping develop his interest in space migration.
Leary's colonization plan varied greatly throughout the years. Because he believed that he would soon migrate into space, Leary was opposed to the ecology movement. He dismissed many of Earth's problems and labeled the entire field of ecology "a seductive dinosaur science." Leary stated that only the "larval," intellectually and philosophically backward humans, would choose to remain in "the fouled nest." According to his initial plan to leave the planet, 5,000 of Earth's most virile and intelligent individuals would be launched on a vessel (Starseed 1) equipped with luxurious amenities. This idea was inspired by the plotline of Paul Kantner's concept album ''Blows Against The Empire'', which in turn was derived from Robert A. Heinlein's Lazarus Long series. In the 1980s, he came to embrace NASA scientist Gerard O'Neill's more realistic and egalitarian plans to construct giant Eden-like High Orbital Mini-Earths (documented in the Robert Anton Wilson lecture ''H.O.M.E.s on LaGrange'') using existing technology and raw materials from the Moon, orbital rock and obsolete satellites.
During the 1980s, Leary became fascinated by computers, the Internet, and virtual reality. He established one of the earliest websites in existence and referred to the Web as "the LSD of the '90s" He became a promoter of virtual reality systems, and sometimes demonstrated a prototype of the Mattel Power Glove as part of his lectures (as in ''From Psychedelics to Cybernetics''). Around this time he cultivated friendships with a number of notable people in the field, including Brenda Laurel, a pioneering researcher in virtual environments and human–computer interaction. With the rise of cyberdelic counter-culture, Leary became a consultant to Billy Idol in the production of the latter's 1993 album, ''Cyberpunk''.
In 1990, Leary's daughter, Susan, committed suicide after years of mental instability. After separating from Barbara Leary in 1992, Leary formed a new entourage of Baby Boomer and Generation X artists and cultural figures that included people as diverse as actors Johnny Depp, Susan Sarandon and Dan Aykroyd, and his granddaughters, Dieadra Martino and Sara Brown; grandson, Ashley Martino; son, Zach Leary; author Douglas Rushkoff, publisher Bob Guccione, Jr., and goddaughters: actress Winona Ryder and artist/music-photographer Hilary Hulteen. In spite of his declining health, Leary maintained a regular schedule of public appearances through 1994.
From 1989 on, Leary had begun to reestablish his connection to unconventional religious movements with an interest in altered states of consciousness. In 1989 he appeared with friend and book collaborator Robert Anton Wilson in a dialog entitled ''The Inner Frontier'' for the Association for Consciousness Exploration, a Cleveland-based group that had been responsible for his first Cleveland, Ohio appearance in 1979. After that, he appeared at the Starwood Festival, a major Neo-Pagan event run by ACE, in 1992 and 1993 (though his planned 1994 WinterStar Symposium appearance was cancelled due to his declining health). In front of hundreds of neo-pagans in 1992, he declared, "I have always considered myself, when I learned what the word meant, I've always considered myself a Pagan." He also collaborated with Eric Gullichsen on ''Load and Run High-tech Paganism: Digital Polytheism''. Prior to his passing on May 31, 1996, Dr. Timothy Leary recorded the "Right to Fly" album with Simon Stokes. It was released in July 1996.
Leary authored an outline for a book called ''Design for Dying'', which attempted to show people a new perspective of death and dying. Leary's entourage (as mentioned above)—updated his website on a daily basis as a sort of proto-blog, noting his daily intake of various illicit and legal chemical substances, with a predilection for nitrous oxide, cigarettes, his trademark "Leary Biscuits" (a snack cracker with cheese and a small marijuana bud, briefly microwaved), and eventually heroin and morphine. His sterile house was completely redecorated by the staff, who had more or less moved in, with an array of surreal ornamentation. In his final months, thousands of visitors, well wishers and old friends visited him in his California home. Until the final weeks of his illness, Leary gave many interviews discussing his new philosophy of embracing death.
For a number of years, Leary was reported to have been excited by the possibility of freezing his body in cryonic suspension, and Leary publicly announced in September 1988 that he had signed up with Alcor. Leary had appeared at Alcor's grand opening a year previously. He did not believe that he would be resurrected in the future, but he believed that cryonics had important possibilities and stated the chance was "one chance in 1,000". He called it his "duty as a futurist", and helped publicize the process and hoped it would work for his children and grandchildren if not for him, although he said he was "light-hearted" about it. Leary had relationships with two cryonic organizations, originally Alcor and then CryoCare, which delivered a cryonic tank to Leary's house in the months before his death. However, Leary subsequently requested that his body be cremated, which it was, and distributed among his friends and family.
Leary died on May 31, 1996 at the age of 77. His death was videotaped for posterity at his request, capturing his final words. During his final moments, he said, "Why not?" to his son Zachary. He uttered the phrase repeatedly, in different intonations, and died soon after. His last word, according to Zachary Leary, was "beautiful."
The film ''Timothy Leary's Dead'' (1996) contains a simulated sequence in which Leary allows his bodily functions to be suspended for the purposes of cryonic preservation, and his head is removed and placed on ice. At the end of the film is a sequence showing the creation of the artificial head used in the film.
Seven grams of Leary's ashes were arranged by his friend at Celestis to be buried in space aboard a rocket carrying the remains of 24 other people including Gene Roddenberry (creator of ''Star Trek''), Gerard O'Neill (space physicist), Krafft Ehricke (rocket scientist), and others. A Pegasus rocket containing their remains was launched on April 21, 1997, and remained in orbit for six years until it burnt up in the atmosphere.
Timothy Leary's ideas heavily influenced the work of Robert Anton Wilson. This influence went both ways and Leary admittedly took just as much from Wilson. Wilson's book ''Prometheus Rising'' was an in depth, highly detailed and inclusive work documenting Leary's eight circuit model of consciousness. Although the theory originated in discussions between Leary and a Hindu holy man at Millbrook, Wilson was one of the most ardent proponents of it and introduced the theory to a mainstream audience in 1977's bestselling ''Cosmic Trigger''. In 1989, they appeared together on stage in a dialog entitled ''The Inner Frontier'' in Cleveland, Ohio hosted by the Association for Consciousness Exploration, (the same group that had hosted Leary's first Cleveland appearance in 1979). Wilson and Leary conversed a great deal on philosophical, political and futurist matters and became close friends who remained in contact through Leary's time in prison and up until his death. Wilson regarded Leary as a brilliant man and often is quoted as saying (paraphrase) "Leary had a great deal of 'hilaritas', the type of cheer and good humour by which it was said you could recognise a deity".
Owsley Stanley, one of the pioneers of the era, would later write of him:
Leary was a fool. Drunk with "celebrity-hood" and his own ego, he became a media clown—and was arguably the single most damaging actor involved in the destruction of the evanescent social movement of the '60s. Tim, with his very public exhortations to the kids to "tune in, turn on and drop out", is the inspiration for all the current draconian US drug laws against psychedelics. He would not listen to any of us when we asked him to please cool it, he loved the limelight and relished his notoriety... I was not a fan of his.
Author and Merry Prankster Ken Kesey remained a supporter and admirer of Leary throughout his career,
Leary can get a part of my mind that's kind of rusted shut grinding again, just by being around him and talking.
World religion scholar Huston Smith was turned on by Leary after the two were introduced to one another by Aldous Huxley in the early 1960s. The experience was interpreted as deeply religious by Smith, and is captured in detailed religious terms in Smith's later work ''Cleansing of the Doors of Perception''. This was Smith's one and only entheogenic experience, at the end of which he asked Leary, to paraphrase, if Leary knew the power and danger of that with which he was conducting research. In ''Mother Jones Magazine'', 1997, Smith commented:
First, I have to say that during the three years I was involved with that Harvard study, LSD was not only legal but respectable. Before Tim went on his unfortunate careening course, it was a legitimate research project. Though I did find evidence that, when recounted, the experiences of the Harvard group and those of mystics were impossible to tell apart—descriptively indistinguishable—that's not the last word. There is still a question about the truth of the disclosure.
The slogan, "Turn on, tune in, drop out", signified a conceptual way of thinking wherein a person would turn on to their own way of thinking, tune in to themselves, and drop out of society. This constituted a concept of inward self reliance.
''The Psychedelic Experience'' was the inspiration for John Lennon's song "Tomorrow Never Knows" on The Beatles' album ''Revolver''. Leary once recruited John Lennon to write a theme song for his California gubernatorial campaign (which was interrupted by his prison sentence), inspiring Lennon to come up with "Come Together", based on Leary's theme and catchphrase for the campaign. Leary was also present when Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono recorded ''Give Peace a Chance'' during one of their bed-ins in Montreal and is mentioned in the lyrics of the song. He appears in the world television broadcast of "All You Need is Love" as well. The Moody Blues also recorded a track about Leary, ''Legend of a Mind'', on their 1968 album ''In Search of the Lost Chord'' in which the refrain is "Timothy Leary's dead. No, no, no, no, He's outside looking in".
While in exile in Switzerland, Leary and British writer Brian Barrett collaborated with the German band Ash Ra Tempel, and recorded the album Seven Up. He is credited as a songwriter, and his lyrics and vocals can be heard throughout the album. For some reason he left this experience out of his autobiography.
In June 2011 The New York Times reported that the New York Public Library had acquired Leary's personal archives, including papers, videotapes, photographs and other archival material from the Leary estate, including correspondence and documents relating to Allen Ginsberg, Aldous Huxley, William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Ken Kesey, Arthur Koestler, G. Gordon Liddy and other prominent cultural figures. Following an archiving period of up to two years, the material will be open to scholars.
References in Richard Alperts book, "Be Here Now!" which is his transformation into Baba Ram Dass and his life in India with Baba's Guru and LSD experience.
Category:1920 births Category:1996 deaths Category:People from Springfield, Massachusetts Category:American neopagans Category:American occultists Category:American psychologists Category:American people of Irish descent Category:Cancer deaths in California Category:Chicago Seven Category:College of the Holy Cross alumni Category:Consciousness researchers and theorists Category:Converts to Hinduism Category:Deaths from prostate cancer Category:Drug policy reform activists Category:Harvard University faculty Category:American writers of Irish descent Category:LSD Category:People associated with the Human Potential Movement Category:Philosophers of mind Category:Psychedelic drug advocates Category:Psychedelic researchers Category:Space burials Category:University of Alabama alumni Category:University of California, Berkeley alumni Category:University of California, Berkeley faculty Category:Washington State University alumni Category:ESP-Disk artists Category:Expatriates in Algeria bs:Timothy Leary bg:Тимъти Лири cs:Timothy Leary da:Timothy Leary de:Timothy Leary el:Τίμοθι Λίρι es:Timothy Leary eo:Timothy Leary fr:Timothy Leary hr:Timothy Leary it:Timothy Leary he:טימותי לירי la:Timotheus Leary hu:Timothy Leary nl:Timothy Leary ja:ティモシー・リアリー no:Timothy Leary pl:Timothy Leary pt:Timothy Leary ro:Timothy Leary ru:Лири, Тимоти simple:Timothy Leary sk:Timothy Leary sr:Timoti Liri sh:Timothy Leary fi:Timothy Leary sv:Timothy Leary tr:Timothy Leary zh:蒂莫西·利里This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
name | Michio Kaku |
---|---|
birth date | January 24, 1947 |
birth place | San Jose, California, United States |
residence | New York City, New York, United States |
nationality | American |
field | Theoretical physics |
work institutions | City University of New YorkNew York UniversityInstitute for Advanced Study |
alma mater | Harvard University (B.S., 1968)University of California, Berkeley (Ph.D.,1972) |
doctoral advisor | Stanley Mandelstam |
known for | String field theory, Popular science |
footnotes | }} |
is an American theoretical physicist, the Henry Semat Professor of Theoretical Physics in the City College of New York of City University of New York, the co-founder of string field theory, and a "communicator" and "popularizer" of science. He has written several books on physics and related topics, he has made frequent appearances on radio, television, and film, and he writes extensive online blogs and articles.
At Cubberley High School in Palo Alto, Kaku assembled an atom smasher in his parent's garage for a science fair project. At the National Science Fair in Albuquerque, New Mexico, he attracted the attention of physicist Edward Teller, who took Kaku as a protégé, awarding him the Hertz Engineering Scholarship. Kaku graduated ''summa cum laude'' from Harvard University in 1968 and was first in his physics class. He attended the Berkeley Radiation Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley and received a Ph.D. in 1972, and in 1972 he held a lectureship at Princeton University.
During the Vietnam War, Kaku completed his U.S. Army basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia and his advanced infantry training at Fort Lewis, Washington. However, the Vietnam War ended before he was deployed as an infantryman.
Kaku has had over 70 articles published in physics journals such as Physical Review, covering topics such as superstring theory, supergravity, supersymmetry, and hadronic physics. In 1974, along with Prof. Keiji Kikkawa of Osaka University, he authored the first papers describing string theory in a field form.
Kaku is the author of several textbooks on string theory and quantum field theory.
''Hyperspace'' was a best-seller and was voted one of the best science books of the year by both ''The New York Times'' and ''The Washington Post''. ''Parallel Worlds'' was a finalist for the Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction in the UK.
In April 2006, Kaku began broadcasting ''Science Fantastic'' on 90 commercial radio stations, the only nationally syndicated science program on commercial radio in the United States. It is syndicated by Talk Radio Network and now reaches 130 radio stations and America's Talk on XM. The program is formatted as a live listener call-in show, focusing on "futurology," which he defines as the future of science. Featured guests include Nobel laureates and top researchers on the topics of string theory, time travel, black holes, gene therapy, aging, space travel, artificial intelligence, and SETI. When Kaku is busy filming for television, ''Science Fantastic'' goes on hiatus, sometimes for several months. Kaku is also a frequent guest on many programs, where he is outspoken in all areas and issues he considers of importance, such as the program "Coast to Coast AM," where on 30 November 2007, he reaffirmed his belief that there is a 100% probability of extraterrestrial life in the universe.
Kaku has appeared on ''The Opie and Anthony Show'' a number of times, discussing popular fiction such as ''Back to The Future'', ''Lost,'' and the theories behind time-travel that these and other fictional entertainment focus on. Steven G. Spruill's novel ''The Janus Equation'', which describes the time travel of a post-op transsexual mating with her past self and thereby becoming father and mother to her present self, prompted Dr. Kaku's comment: "Well, you're in deep doo doo if that happens."
In 1999, Kaku was one of the scientists profiled in the feature-length film ''Me and Isaac Newton'', directed by Michael Apted. It played theatrically in the United States, was later broadcast on national TV, and won several film awards.
In 2005, Kaku appeared in the short documentary ''Obsessed & Scientific.'' The film is about the possibility of time travel and the people who dream about it. It screened at the Montreal World Film Festival and a feature film expansion is in development talks. Kaku also appeared in the ABC documentary ''UFOs: Seeing Is Believing'', in which he suggested that while he believes it is extremely unlikely that extraterrestrials have ever actually visited Earth, we must keep our minds open to the possible existence of civilizations a million years ahead of us in technology, where entirely new avenues of physics open up. He also discussed the future of interstellar exploration and alien life in the Discovery Channel special ''Alien Planet'' as one of the multiple speakers who co-hosted the show, and Einstein's Theory of Relativity on The History Channel.
In February 2006, Kaku appeared as presenter in the BBC-TV four-part documentary ''Time'' which seeks to explore the mysterious nature of time. Part one of the series concerns personal time, and how we perceive and measure the passing of time. The second in the series deal with cheating time, exploring possibilities of extending the lifespan of organisms. The geological time covered in part three explores the ages of the earth and the sun. Part four covers the topics of cosmological time, the beginning of time and the events that occurred at the instant of the big bang.
On January 28, 2007, Kaku hosted the Discovery Channel series ''2057.'' This three-hour program discussed how medicine, the city, and energy could change over the next 50 years.
In 2008, Kaku hosted the three-hour BBC-TV documentary ''Visions of the Future'', on the future of computers, medicine, and quantum physics, and he appeared in several episodes of the History Channel's ''Universe'' series.
On December 1, 2009, he began hosting a 12-episode weekly TV series for the Science Channel at 10 pm, called ''Sci Fi Science: Physics of the Impossible'', based on his best-selling book. Each 30-minute episode discusses the scientific basis behind imaginative schemes, such as time travel, parallel universes, warp drive, star ships, light sabers, force fields, teleportation, invisibility, death stars, and even superpowers and flying saucers. Each episode includes interviews with the world's top scientists working on prototypes of these technologies, interviews with sci-fi fans, clips from science fiction movies, and special effects and computer graphics. Although these inventions are impossible today, the series discusses when these technologies might become feasible in the future.
In 2010, he began to appear in a series on the website Gametrailers.com called ''Science of Games'', discussing the scientific aspects of various popular video games such as ''Mass Effect 2'' and ''Star Wars: The Force Unleashed''.
Kaku is popular in mainstream media because of his knowledge and his accessible approach to presenting complex subjects in science. While his technical writings are confined to theoretical physics, his public speaking and media appearances cover a broad range of topics, from the Kardashev scale to more esoteric subjects such as wormholes and time travel. In January 2007, Kaku visited Oman. While there, he talked at length to select members of that country's decision makers. In an interview with local media, Dr Kaku elaborated on his vision of mankind's future. Kaku considers climate change and terrorism as serious threats in man's evolution from a Type 0 civilization to Type 1.
On October 11, 2010, Michio Kaku appeared in the BBC program "What Happened Before the Big Bang" (along with Laura Mersini-Houghton, Andrei Linde, Roger Penrose, Lee Smolin, Neil Turok, and other notable cosmologists and physicists), where he propounded his theory of the universe created out of nothing.
Kaku credits his anti-nuclear war position to programs he heard on the Pacifica Radio network, during his student years in California. It was during this period that he made the decision to turn away from a career developing the next generation of nuclear weapons in association with Edward Teller and focused on research, teaching, writing and media. Kaku joined with others such as Helen Caldicott, Jonathan Schell, Peace Action and was instrumental in building a global anti-nuclear weapons movement that arose in the 1980s, during the administration of U.S. President Ronald Reagan.
Kaku was a board member of Peace Action and on the board of radio station WBAI-FM in New York City where he originated his long running program, ''Explorations,'' that focused on the issues of science, war, peace and the environment.
His remark from an interview in support of SETI, "We could be in the middle of an intergalactic conversation...and we wouldn't even ''know''.", is used in the third Symphony of Science installment "Our Place in the Cosmos".
Category:City College of New York faculty Category:American physicists Category:American radio personalities Category:City University of New York faculty Category:Princeton University faculty Category:Futurologists Category:Harvard University alumni Category:American academics of Japanese descent Category:American people of Japanese descent Category:Japanese-American civil rights activists Category:Pacifica Radio Category:String theorists Category:Theoretical physicists Category:University of California, Berkeley alumni Category:People from San Jose, California Category:1947 births Category:Living people
ar:ميتشيو كاكو bg:Мичио Каку ca:Michio Kaku cs:Michio Kaku de:Michio Kaku et:Michio Kaku es:Michio Kaku fa:میچیو کاکو fr:Michio Kaku id:Michio Kaku it:Michio Kaku he:מיצ'יו קאקו ht:Michio Kaku hu:Michio Kaku nl:Michio Kaku ja:ミチオ・カク no:Michio Kaku uz:Michio Kaku pl:Michio Kaku pt:Michio Kaku ro:Michio Kaku ru:Митио Каку sk:Michio Kaku fi:Michio Kaku sv:Michio Kaku tr:Michio Kaku uk:Мічіо Каку zh:加來道雄This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
name | Vernor Vinge |
---|---|
birth date | October 02, 1944 |
birth place | Waukesha, Wisconsin, U.S.A. |
occupation | Computer scientist |
nationality | American |
period | 1966— |
genre | Science fiction |
notableworks | ''True Names'' (1981), ''A Fire Upon the Deep'' (1992), "The Coming Technological Singularity" (1993), ''Fast Times at Fairmont High'' (2002) |
spouse | Joan D. Vinge (1972–1979, divorced) |
influenced | Cyberpunk |
awards | Hugo Awards, Best Novel: 1993, 2000, 2007; Best Novella: 2003, 2005 Prometheus Awards: 1987, 2000, 2004, 2007 |
website | http://vrinimi.org/ }} |
Vernor Steffen Vinge (; born October 2, 1944 in Waukesha, Wisconsin, U.S.) is a retired San Diego State University (SDSU) Professor of Mathematics, computer scientist, and science fiction author. He is best known for his Hugo Award-winning novels and novellas ''A Fire Upon the Deep'' (1992), ''A Deepness in the Sky'' (1999), ''Rainbows End'' (2006), ''Fast Times at Fairmont High'' (2002) and ''The Cookie Monster'' (2004), as well as for his 1984 novel ''The Peace War'' and his 1993 essay "The Coming Technological Singularity", in which he argues that the creation of superhuman artificial intelligence will mark the point at which "the human era will be ended," such that no current models of reality are sufficient to predict beyond it.
Vinge came to prominence in 1981 with his novella ''True Names'', perhaps the first story to present a fully fleshed-out concept of cyberspace, which would later be central to cyberpunk stories by William Gibson, Neal Stephenson and others.
His next two novels, ''The Peace War'' (1984) and ''Marooned in Realtime'' (1986), explore the spread of a future libertarian society, and deal with the impact of a technology which can create impenetrable force fields called 'bobbles'. These books built Vinge's reputation as an author who would explore ideas to their logical conclusions in particularly inventive ways. Both books were nominated for the Hugo Award, but lost to novels by William Gibson and Orson Scott Card.
These two novels and ''True Names'' also emphasized Vinge's interest in the technological singularity. ''True Names'' takes place in a world on the cusp of the Singularity. ''The Peace War'' shows a world in which the Singularity has been postponed by the Bobbles and a global plague, while ''Marooned in Realtime'' follows a small group of people who have managed to miss the Singularity which otherwise encompassed Earth.
Vinge won the Hugo Award (tying for Best Novel with ''Doomsday Book'' by Connie Willis) with his 1992 novel, ''A Fire Upon the Deep''. In it, he envisions a galaxy that is divided up into 'zones of thought', in which the further one moves away from the center of the galaxy, the higher the level of complexity one can achieve. Nearest the center is 'The Unthinking Depths', where even human-level intelligence is impossible. Earth is in 'The Slow Zone', in which faster-than-light (FTL) travel cannot be achieved. Most of the book, however, takes place in a zone called 'The Beyond', where the computations necessary for FTL travel are possible, but transcendence beyond the Singularity to superhuman intelligence is not. In the last zone, 'The Transcend', there are apparently no limitations at all. The Beyond, therefore, permits a classic space opera, using technology that would push past the Singularity. ''Fire'' includes a large number of additional ideas making for an unusually complex and rich universe and story.
''A Deepness in the Sky'' (1999) was a prequel to ''Fire'', following competing groups of humans in The Slow Zone as they struggle over who has the rights to exploit a technologically emerging alien culture. In addition, ''Deepness'' explores the themes of technological freedom vs. technology as a tool of enslavement and control, among other deep political issues. ''Deepness'' won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2000.
Vinge's novellas ''Fast Times at Fairmont High'' and ''The Cookie Monster'' also won Hugo Awards in 2002 and 2004, respectively.
Vinge's 2006 novel, ''Rainbows End'', set in a similar universe to ''Fast Times at Fairmont High'', won the 2007 Hugo Award for Best Novel. His next novel, ''The Children of the Sky'', is a sequel to ''A Fire Upon the Deep'', set approximately 10 years later. It is scheduled for release in October 2011.
Vinge retired in 2000 from teaching at San Diego State University, in order to write full-time. Most years, since its inception in 1999, Vinge has been on the Free Software Foundation's selection committee for their Award for the Advancement of Free Software. Vernor Vinge was Writer Guest of Honor at ConJosé, the 60th World Science Fiction Convention in 2002.
Vinge was formerly married to Joan D. Vinge, also an accomplished science fiction author.
A pro-market/anarchocapitalist theme can be seen in other works, either explicitly (''The Ungoverned'', ''Marooned in Realtime'') or more quietly (the confrontation between the Emergents and the Qeng Ho in ''A Deepness in the Sky'').
In David Brin's ''Kiln People'', there is a reference to the main character experiencing something like "Vingeian focus," a quick reference to ''A Deepness in the Sky''. Vinge's review of the book is featured on the back cover.
In the sleeve notes for Harmonic 313's album "When Machines Exceed Human Intelligence", Mark Pritchard refers to his "good friend Vernor Vinge", crediting him for naming the "technological singularity".
In Robert J. Sawyer's ''WWW:Watch'', a novel featuring an emerging artificial intelligence, a character quotes from Vinge's 1993 essay ''The Coming Technological Singularity'' in reference to what is happening. (The listener is surprised to hear that the author's name is pronounced "Vinjee" instead of rhyming with "hinge".)
Category:1944 births Category:Living people Category:American science fiction writers Category:American technology writers Category:American computer scientists Category:Writers from California Category:Clarion Writers' Workshop Category:Writers from Wisconsin Category:Hugo Award winning authors Category:Prometheus Award winning authors Category:People from Waukesha, Wisconsin Category:Mathematics educators Category:San Diego State University faculty Category:Worldcon Guests of Honor Category:Transhumanists Category:Singularitarianism
bg:Върнър Виндж de:Vernor Vinge es:Vernor Vinge eo:Vernor Vinge fr:Vernor Vinge it:Vernor Vinge he:ורנור וינג'י hu:Vernor Vinge nl:Vernor Vinge ja:ヴァーナー・ヴィンジ no:Vernor Vinge pl:Vernor Vinge pt:Vernor Vinge ro:Vernor Vinge ru:Виндж, Вернор sk:Vernor Vinge fi:Vernor Vinge sv:Vernor Vinge tr:Vernor Vinge uk:Вернор Віндж vi:Vernor Vinge zh:弗诺·文奇This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
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