What's Your Red?
The Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) will be an interesting extension of consciousness, not so much for the purposes of everyday communication, but for abstract thinking.
Up until now, visual abstraction has been all analog, by extracting essences from consensus reality, to a reduced form on canvas or other surface.
Potentially the BCI could rather be used for abstract and philosophical questions such as how we understand red, something Nicholas Humphrey referred to as "redding" in the book "Seeing Red: A Study in Consciousness", where visual sensations or impressions of red seen by the eye translate to meanings of red.
A hypothetical scenario where two people "red" together, and associated image search results appear on the screen:
AUBREY:
Wait let me get it on right.
NEONE:
You have it backwards! There...OK, read my red, what do you see when I'm thinking red?
AUBREY:
I am about to learn the theory of your mind. It looks green actually. No it's Mao!
(A gallery of images appears, mostly of Andy Warhol's Mao series, commingled with images of Mao Zedong's Little Red Book)
NEONE:
What else would first come to mind for a Chinese girl? It's interesting that we got Andy Warhol's Maos!
AUBREY:
What's my red?
(A search result for "phenomenology of redemption" appears on the display)
NEONE:
Ah, a dry list of books with red in the title. Almost 15,000 books with this title. I'm thinking "phenomenology of red"
AUBREY:
Wow, interesting! I'm now thinking of blue.
(Images of various shades of blues are returned, photos of sky and clouds, as well as a quote by Emerson: "Dream delivers us to dream, and there is no end to illusion. Life is a train of moods like a string of beads, and, as we pass through them, they prove to be many-colored lenses which paint the world their own hue, and each shows only what lies in its focus.". Also One of the most misleading representational techniques in our language is the use of the word 'I.')
AUBREY:
The expected cliches, but I wonder where these Emerson and Wittgenstein quotes come from? Photos of jazz musicians--that must be your truest thought of blue.
Up until now, visual abstraction has been all analog, by extracting essences from consensus reality, to a reduced form on canvas or other surface.
Potentially the BCI could rather be used for abstract and philosophical questions such as how we understand red, something Nicholas Humphrey referred to as "redding" in the book "Seeing Red: A Study in Consciousness", where visual sensations or impressions of red seen by the eye translate to meanings of red.
A hypothetical scenario where two people "red" together, and associated image search results appear on the screen:
AUBREY:
Wait let me get it on right.
NEONE:
You have it backwards! There...OK, read my red, what do you see when I'm thinking red?
AUBREY:
I am about to learn the theory of your mind. It looks green actually. No it's Mao!
(A gallery of images appears, mostly of Andy Warhol's Mao series, commingled with images of Mao Zedong's Little Red Book)
NEONE:
What else would first come to mind for a Chinese girl? It's interesting that we got Andy Warhol's Maos!
AUBREY:
What's my red?
(A search result for "phenomenology of redemption" appears on the display)
NEONE:
Ah, a dry list of books with red in the title. Almost 15,000 books with this title. I'm thinking "phenomenology of red"
AUBREY:
Wow, interesting! I'm now thinking of blue.
(Images of various shades of blues are returned, photos of sky and clouds, as well as a quote by Emerson: "Dream delivers us to dream, and there is no end to illusion. Life is a train of moods like a string of beads, and, as we pass through them, they prove to be many-colored lenses which paint the world their own hue, and each shows only what lies in its focus.". Also One of the most misleading representational techniques in our language is the use of the word 'I.')
AUBREY:
The expected cliches, but I wonder where these Emerson and Wittgenstein quotes come from? Photos of jazz musicians--that must be your truest thought of blue.
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