Gestalt Collage

A common Sci-Fi theme:

Typically, we think of our bodies as a bunch organs, limbs and brain and skeleton, etc.—basically a collection of parts.  It would be more accurate to say that our bodies are a bunch of patterns that make up a bigger pattern.  Our cells are regenerating constantly.  I remember hearing that it takes about 7 years for all our cells to have been completely replaced with new ones.  Whether it is the skin exfoliating or the more dramatic case of liver regrowing itself, our DNA holds the patterns of the different parts.  We literally are not the same physical person we were as kids.  All our cells have been replaced numerous times.  What is continuous is the pattern, the gestalt.

It is noteworthy that cancer occurs when old or damaged cells that would normally be replaced, do not die.  They mutate instead.  They can also begin trying to change the existing pattern and start reproducing other cells based on their deformed pattern thus creating tumors and such.  I believe this is a good reminder for a culture that is abnormally fearful of pain and death.

Emergent behavior and swarm robotics:

Because we are immersed in our society it is harder for us to analyze it.  At times society seems so normal that we are lulled into treating it as self-evident.  So looking elsewhere can help see the mechanics.  Ever watch a starling flock swarming its way across the sky?  The flock is in constant flux, but somehow seems to hold together as a whole.  Even when the flock splits in two, both smaller flocks retain the same, recognizable ‘pattern’.  Birdbrains certainly didn’t say, hmmm…I bet this would be a very effective way to travel as a group.  Some greater whole emerged out of their similar instincts acted out in great number.

Well, I don’t know the history of robotics, but I remember an article in Time or Newsweek or something some ten or more years ago that had a little blurb on robot ants.  The experiment was set up with a number of very simple robots that had a very limited set of programmed actions simulating a crude approximation of an ant gathering ‘stuff’.  Alone the robots acted like the scientists expected according to its protocols.  Together the robots began cooperating and larger patterns formed from their gathering.  The fact that emergent behavior could arise out of inorganic robots certainly brings new light to our categories.

Photographs and 3D dots:

Missionaries circulate stories of remote tribes where these tribal men and women were shown photographs of themselves and their homes.  Despite the subject matter being absolutely familiar, they could make no sense of the pictures.  They were not blind, but their brains simply had not learned to take cues from the angles, size difference and shading and whatever we so casually use to bring the 3^rd dimension into focus off of a 2^nd dimension media.  Less we scoff at the ignorant barbarians, I remember all too well the first time I saw one of those 3D computer-generated pictures.  All I saw was a bunch of dots…for a long time.  Friends gave me all sorts of advice.  Go cross-eyed.  Focus on a point you imagine behind the picture.  Look at this section here, that’s the tip of the wing.  Stubbornly, teary-eyed, I stared for probably 45 minutes before I finally saw the eagle.  Almost instantaneous, probably about as fast as a super-saturated solution crystalizes, the picture came into focus.  Gestalt.  The next time I saw a 3D picture, it didn’t take nearly so long.  Fortunately my brain learned how to wrap itself around the new pattern.

According to research:

Not sure if I can articulate exactly how, but somehow I feel this fits right in.  It’s no wonder we miss so many typos.

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is that frist and lsat ltteer is at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a  toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by itslef but the wrod as a wlohe.

To be continued…  actually, I should take submissions, eh?