3. What do we mean by virtual reality?

The immersive variety of VR is the one in which an individual dons goggles and perhaps other devices for sensory feedback (maybe even a whole body suit, providing even tactile response.) The key to this type is that the individual is cut off from 'ordinary' reality and its sensory cues... all of his normal sensory 'input' is being replaced by something else. This is essentially a private experience, although it obviously can be connected to the experiences of others through a centrally controlled 'virtual space' in which the person's virtual 'form' can be perceived by others... the person need not look anything like his/her own body within this space; indeed they need not look like a person at all.

The non-immersive variety, which Myron W. Krueger calls 'artificial reality,' requires no personal hardware. Rather, the person enters an environment - a room, a simulator, etc. - where normal sensory cues are not cut off, but are supplemented by additional sounds, images, or other sensations. Presumably, with the advent of holographic technology, such an environment might be like the 'Holodeck' on Star Trek. The advantage of this type of VR is that it can be a communal experience, with many people participating at once. In a sophisticated enough environment, it might be difficult to determine who the "real" participants are. In this environment, they remain themselves, participating in their own quite real body, although obviously costuming and masquerade may be part of the experience.

And then, for the Gibson fanatics, there is the neural-direct model of VR. In the present, it remains vapourware. But as a model it appears to be inspiring many VR enthusiasts who want to go beyond the immersive/non-immersive dichotomy. The neural-direct model would mean that all types of sensory input (which could include olfactory, gustatory, or other perceptory cues difficult to create through a bodysuit or simulator) are 'jacked' into the proper areas of the brain. They would, of course, be completely indistinguishable from normal sensory input. The neural-direct model would be like the 'cyberspace' of Gibson: where the person's consciousness is entirely transferred into virtual reality. It would no longer be a question of simulation or computer-generated artifice: sensations exactly identical to "real" ones could be created...

Interestingly, some people operating in the neural-direct paradigm are searching for ways to implant memories of experiences as if they were 'real,' a la Total Recall. If the memories are indistinguishable from other memories, then they are as 'real' as any other experience... at least as far as the person is concerned. But unless the other people in the person's experiences receive the same 'memory implants,' they will have no validation for them... and there is always the question of how to suppress the person's 'true' memories from that time period, and whether those memories might resurface and challenge the implanted ones.

Well, all three of these models are not where we are today. Today, we mostly have crude forms of the immersive variety (flight simulators, where the person climbs into a 'virtual' cockpit, etc.) and, of course, things like MOOs and MUDs, which can be considered text-based virtual realities. MOOs are fun, but of course, we don't perceive the world textually, so they are short of what most people would want from VR. However, like the immersive variety, they offer the person the ability to be someone other than themselves. Like a radio program, MOOs leave most of the world-visioning to the imagination of the user.

Most of the work going on right now is in developing the technology for immersive VR. There are vast technical problems to be overcome. Coming up with 3D convincing computer-generated models of objects, whose perspective and form changes as fast as the person turns their head, requires incredible amounts of processor power. Modulating sound through headphones so that it appears to come from different points in space is also processor-intensive. And then there's the hurdle of tactile feedback. A VR glove might be able to give the person the sensation of lifting or holding an object. But designing a VR suit that will keep someone from falling on their butt when they try and sit on a virtual chair - there's the rub. It won't be easy, to say the least.

But people's initial reactions to immersive VR have been generally favorable. It's hardly "more real than real" yet. Virtual items still look more like clusters of polygons than anything else. Most VR simulations are done Walt Disney-style: the person is 'guided' through the experience from beginning to end, with perhaps a few limited choices along the way. More complex simulations still leave the person within a 'bounded' virtual world - either in terms of space or in terms of the number of virtual objects and experiences present in that world or the 'rules' governing possible interactions... but it won't be 'virtual reality' until it contains the unexpected and the spontaneous, like real life. Perhaps some input from chaos theory could assist in this process, by coming up with 'virtual worlds' where the new and unexpected is constantly being introduced.

The advantage of immersive VR is that new vistas of possibilities are opened up. Other people can represent themselves to those they encounter in any way they choose - as a table or lamp, for example. The 'virtual world' can operate under different laws of physics than our own. Using a gyroscope, as in the movie Lawnmower Man, would allow people to move through 'cyberspace' in any of the 3 dimensions, rather than being limited by gravity to walking. Perhaps many of the entities we encounter in VRspace might be AIs - indeed, part of the challenge might be distinguishing them from other people - a true Turing Test. Communication between people in immersive VRspace might be through abstract symbols - floating bits - instead of speech...

Not surprisingly, some of the first people to see the possibilities in VR have been the pornographers. They have rapidly jumped on the 'teledildonics'/'cybersex' bandwagon. Penthouse magazine has been one of the first to try and colonize this new terrain, with their 'interactive' porno CD-ROMs. In the vision of the 'teledildonicists,' all types of virtual stimuli will be simulable, including the tactile and gustatory (for example), so 'cybersex' with a 'virtual' or 'telepresent' partner will be the ultimate form of "safe sex" and perhaps the logical "evolution" from phone sex... indeed, some have openly wondered whether people might not prefer the simulation to the real thing, although skeptics simply call this just another form of high-tech masturbation.

The main disadvantage of immersive VR is that it is solipsistic and private. You may be sharing experiences with others, but that is merely because a central processor is matching your "outputs" to their "inputs." Since most developers are working toward personally interactive VR, where the person shapes their 'virtual space' as they go along, inevitably the trend will be back toward solipsism. If you encounter someone painful or bothersome in VRspace, you simply 'move' toward a 'virtual space' where they no longer exist. Most people will probably prefer to interact with VR companions of their own creation, exhibiting personalities and features that they choose.

Krueger's non-immersive 'artificial reality' provides a different approach. It is also interactive, but the 'reality' is simultaneously responding to the actions of a group of people, ranging from two to maybe hundreds... when you step into one of his STORYSPACEs, you know that outcomes will be shaped by more than just your personal choices... they will be shaped by the choices of the entire group. This is surely more 'real' than immersive VR. The advantages of non-immersive VR are obvious. The room can contain all kinds of quite physical objects, which are tangible, but whose appearance is constantly being altered as the setting changes. The person is having an artificial experience, but they are still having it in their quite real physical body, with other real physical individuals. Non-immersive VR can combine quite 'real' objects - trees, whatever - with 'unreal' ones, such as animatronic figures (like Disney), holograms, disguised objects, optical illusions, etc...

Surprisingly, fewer people are working on non-immersive VR. It's obviously less portable. And it may not satisfy people's demands for 'artificial realities' which are wholly unlike the 'real' one, where their identities, perceptions, etc. are completely different. Further, it's likely to be a much more 'guided' experience than immersive, interactive VR, although the designer can also find ways to implant remarkable degrees of flexibility or randomness into the experience. Certainly, in non-immersive VR, things that are very rapid-motion and contact-heavy (like 'virtual sports') might be much easier to simulate and do. Artists have generally shown more interest in non-immersive VR, since it seems to be a way of exhibiting art which involves the audience to the nth degree - the ultimate form of performance art.

Anyway, in either immersive or non-immersive VR, some things will be impossible to eliminate. The person will always feel the weight of their own body and have the prioperception of having two limbs, even if they appear in VR as having eight. They will not forget that they just entered a VR chamber or donned VR goggles, therefore, however convincing the experience, they will still know a priori that it is not reality. Thus it will not even be as convincing as a dream (which stops being convincing when the person wakes up, of course.) These types of VR cannot eliminate sensations of pain, hunger, thirst, fatigue, or any other physical pre-existing feelings. Most people will know how 'virtual' the worlds they are in by the fact that they cannot be injured or die - even if the 'pixels' of their 'body' are scattered to the four winds, their consciousness is not changing.

For these reasons, immersive or non-immersive VR are not likely to be more convincingly 'real' than a hallucinogenic episode created by a psychoactive drug, whatever people like Leary might have to say about the matter. During an LSD trip, people see their hand melting, and they accept it as a matter of fact, without questioning it. In VR, you will watch your hand 'derez' and disappear, and find it "cool", but you will know that your (physical) hand is still there. However, neural-direct VR experiences have this possibility - of complete suspension of disbelief on the part of the percipient - and therein lies both their danger and their promise. Neural-direct VR might truly be "more real than real," and thus be the ultimate example of what Baudrillard calls hyperreality. People might prefer the simulation to the real thing.

In Gibson's VR, your consciousness is actually translated into the "Matrix." Thus, it is possible for you to be "flatlined" and die within the virtual realm. With neural-direct VR, we may discover some disturbing things. It may be possible, as in the movie Brainstorm, to "record" experience of other people, and play them back for others. The ultimate vicarious experience. What happens, then, when we "record" somebody else's death, and all the things that happened in their brain during death happen in ours? Will we die also? All kinds of interesting metaphysical questions are raised by neural-direct VR. Will neural-direct VR mean new personalities can be implanted, as well as experiences or perceptions? Thus, in your virtual reality, you not only have the experiences of a superhero, but feel like one also? Could you be made to think you are someone else, as in the movie Total Recall?

The possibilities here are horrific. An extremely advanced form of neural-direct VR might be totally indistinguishable from 'real' reality. If it was introduced into a person's brain in some undetectable way, they might not know anything has happened, and not even know they're now in a 'virtual world.' Thus, the possibilities for control are immense. It would be the ultimate form of 'false consciousness.' The State could move from ideological control to total perceptual control. Dissidents could be neutralized by simply introducing their perceptions into false realities where their demands have already been met. Bentham's Panopticon might finally meet its 'virtual' realization...

But, at the same time, optimists see great promise in the technology. They suspect that, as humans experiment with the creating of 'virtual realities' in cyberspace, they will start to think more closely and critically about the processes used to elaborate and construct the 'consensus realities' of 'realspace.' VR advocates think that it will enable human beings to reach new plateaus of creativity, since inventions and works of art can be visualized and studied 'immersively' before being introduced to the "real world." Some think that it is part of the ongoing transitional phase of humanity - that as we learn more and more about our mind/brain and our processes of reality-creation, we will make a "quantum leap" in our consciousness toward our destiny as co-reality-creators...

The telephone, radio, and television all had their early utopians and doomsayers. Each was predicted to either elevate or level civilization. In many cases, these technologies disappointed both the pessimists, since they were not as bad as they thought, and the optimists, since they never lived up to all their promises. There were arguments (as there are over VR) over their future cost, availability, accessibility, interconnection, and control, and many of the predictions were based on models of superseded technologies, such as the telegraph. In large part, this was because how these technologies were used and articulated was determined by a particular social and cultural environment. It is likely to be the same way with virtual reality.

4. The Cyberpunks Reinvent Science Fiction

For the past ten years, science fiction has meandered along, often repetitive, boring, and banal. SF's staunchest defenders turned their backs on the genre, and the classics remained gathering dust on library shelves. But seemingly, out of nowhere, a new wave of authors has cropped up throughout the US. Young, knowledgeable, funny and mean,they've reinvented the product. The name they've chosen for themselves flaps in the air like a banner. Cyber for "cybernetics", a word that doesn't mean very much, but brings to mind the most advanced tecnologies and the green light of the computer screen; and punks because their style echoes that kind of rock music. Cyberpunks.

The term was coined by Gardner Dozois, an American writer, in an attempt to describe the work of William Gibson, whose novel, Neuromancer, was a great hit, winning three respected awards: the Hugo, the Nebula, and the Philip K. Dick Award. The term was so successful that both William Gibson and many other authors, whose works were published in the last few years, claimed it for themselves.

There is also a second Cyberpunk wave consisting of such writers as Jack Dann, John Shirley, and Kim Stanley Robinson, amongst others.

With its technologic and provocative connotations cyberpunk faithfully expresses the new authors' ambitions. Their texts are fast, incisive, ironic and disconcerting, and relate time, reality, and changes that are being wrought in the present by new technologies and computer science. Gone are the Galactic Empires, and consequently, the aggressive alien and the confused ET's. They are replaced by a universe of synthesis, both precise and sardonic, full of telematic pirates, peripheral cyborgs and worlds that oscillate between laughter and frenzy, luck and amnesia, action and entropy. What better way is there to present these giants of this new and insolent fiction than letting them talk about their worlds.

GREG BEAR ('Blood Music' and 'Eon'): "I think that the term cyberpunk is an abomination and I don't recognize myself in that movement. The cyberpunks are revolutionary only in name, all they really care about is selling as many of their books as the can.... People like Gibson, Rucker and Sterling have a sensitivity which is much more European than mine. I feel much more American than they are, in the sense that I think I'm more egalitarian and more open in my options and choices.... Our perception of science and technology has changed a lot since a few years back. Science has become a major cultural success, a form of art, in its own way.... If I had been prevented from becoming a science-fiction writer, I would have shot my brains out.... For the first time in history, with the advent of Reagan's SDI, science fiction has really had an impact on world politics, because SDI has influenced politics, even though it doesn't yet exist.... I'm not ashamed of Reagan, but he worries me.... As a Democrat, I'm ill at ease when I see that the Republicans have all the good ideas."

WILLIAM GIBSON ('Neuromancer' and 'Count Zero'): "I never studied science, but I use science and technology to conjure up new images, to create the surroundings and the atmosphere for my novels. I could say that I use scientific language in a poetic fashion. I'm a supplier of popular icons.... I have a feeling that we're living in an era of rapid changes and we don't realize what's happening. My work, consequently, consists of taking real, everyday life and transforming it into a fantasy, to make it more acceptable. In the sense, I deal more with social criticism than with future perspective.... My triple prize winning has made my existence a lot easier, but I have the impression that being widely accepted sort of neutralizes us one- time "angry young men." I don't think, however, that success has corrupted me.... I don't really belong to a group or a school of thought - I am part of the generation of people who have no special ties, but happened to land on the publishing world all at the same time. People have made up a dozen or so words to try to define us. None has really satisfied me up 'til now."

Hell, that was just one and one-quarter pages of text, and you are CRAZY if you think I'm gonna type the remaining one and three-quarters. Besides, that was all William Gibson had to say anyway, and I'm tire and sore.

About Max Headroom: They used the word 'ice' in a similar manner to the way Mr. Gibson used it in 'Count Zero'. There ARE other similarities though, but that was the only one I feel really suck out and bordered on plagiarism. Don't get me wrong, I like Max, but I thought "Jeez. Now if they make a movie of it the people who see it will think HE stole it from Max Headroom."

Even though I'm tired and sore, I'll add a few more things about Cyberpunk. There was an article in the April '87 issue of COMPUTER LANGUAGE that was titled "Timothy Leary and the Cyberpunks." It is basically an interview with Leary. The main focus of it is on some software that Leary has written that is called 'Mind Mirror', which, come to think of it, would be interesting to run online here for the users to use...Hmm... Anyway, Leary is also developing some software program called Mind Movies. "In my software movies, you decide on who the hero will be and what attributes he or she will have. The script keeps coming up and you have choices. At the end, the movie is your unique version of the book. I want to give people the tools to create things themselves."

The first Mind Movie will be based on, you guessed it, Neuromancer. Novelist William Burroughs is working with Leary on the script for the first Mind Movie, which is based on William Gibson's book Neuromancer, about a CyberPunk computer kid. Keith Haring, a graffiti artist, is doing much of the graphics, Helmut Newton te still photography, and New Wave rock group Devo the soundtrack. The last two sentences are direct quotes from the article but I forgot the quote marks. The rest will have quote marks in the propr places.

"Dr. Leary is, and always has been, a psychologist. In the 1950's he was well known for devising psychometric techniques that gave the individual the ability to diagnose him or herself. That's why he was invited to teach a Harvard University. Leary was also very prominent in the development of innovative group therapy techniques before the 1960s cultural revolution. With his current foray into "software for the mind," however, many people have begun attaching the slogan "Turn on, tune in, and boot up" to him. But he doesn't really appreciate the tone of this twist on the famous 1960s phrase "Tune in, turn on, drop out." Psychology has to do with human thinking and cognition, and I see the computer as a device for processing thoughts and ideas," he maintains. "I'm convinced as a psychologist that one of the many reasons for the conflict, destruction, and disorder categorizing human behavior today is the technology we use to think, which is abysmally destructive and confusing," says Leary. Because letters "don't mean anything," he claims people make up nonsense syllables. And yet in a discipline such as chemistry we use letters like C,H,O, and N to clearly indicate the elements carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. "These letters mean something to everybody in the real world," he says. "Throughout the planet you may call water 'aqua', 'vassa,' or 'd'leau.' There are literally thousands of ways to describe water in an oral or verbal tradition, and yet nobody understands what anyone else is talking about. But if you just write the letters H2O, in every culture people will know what you are talking about."

And Leary believes computers may be the key to closing this "information gap." The word computer is defined by most dictionaries as a hand-operated electronic device for processing or communicating human thought. This definition can be extrapolated, Leary says, to include the three techniques humans have historically used or "computing" (processing their thoughts).

The first of these techniques is muscular (gestures and sounds). The second is written, involving either hand-operated (a papyrus and plume or pen) or mechanical methods (such as the reproduction of books, which uses letters). The third is electronic, involving computers, which Leary refers to as "thought appliances." "I love the word 'appliance,'" he says with a smile. "Because Big Brother doesn't want appliances. He wants things like systems and AI combines."

But Leary believes that computers exist as appliances that help the individual think for him or herself. His definition also implies use on a mass scale. "A few deces ago, only big companies or countries had the right to use computers," he says. Today, however, "The average American has perhaps 30 to 50 machines in his or her home, although there's still a big industry of airplanes and rockets and tanks. But there's no question that in the liberal, democratic, industrial countries, such as North America and Western Europe, every person in every home will depend more and more on individual appliances. "The notion of machines being appliances for the pleasure, whim, and comfort of the individual is really very new and honestly quite American." Leary claims that in the Soviet Union the Xerox machine is one o the most feared entities because with it ideas can get out quite freely. Also feared are the undergrond publications called Samizdats, which advocate individual growth. "Of course, it's always true that a new technology is always controlled by the conquerers, military, and bureaucrats," Leary says. "They're the only ones who have the energy and power to build a tank, steam engine, or whatever. But then the next generation of people come along, and you can't stop human instinct to think for itself. You can hold it down, but in every situation it springs forth."

Contrary to popular perceptions, Leary claims he has never advocated drugs. "That's ridiculous. That's like advocating that no one has a right to tell anyone else what to do with their lives," he says. "I'e always been a moderate, and I've always been pro-choice. Drugs are chemicals that can change your thinking. There's no question about that."

In the 1960s, Leary claims that he used chemicals to activate different circuits in his brain and help change his consciousness. "Drugs are technologies," he says, and submits that individuals should have the right to change their consciousnesses any time they want to. "But Big Brother doesn't want that," he says. "Every bureaucracy is against the CyberPunk use of drugs because drugs are a way to change your mind. Big Brother wants to control what you think. He finds the idea of individuals changing their consciousness alarming." Yet Leary contends that anything involving an individual freedom to think for him or herself will always have negative overtones. Even so, Leary admits that he's honored to be called a "dangerous kook."

"The very fact that my ideas have gained such widespread consciousness is recognition of my nonviolent and free expression of ideas. Why am I so dangerous? Because of my ideas. And I welcome that. But he also concedes he has been hurt by rumors that he is "brain-damaged." "What's ruined my image is the allegation that my brain has been burned out, that I'm toasted, that I'm a babbling idiot," says Leary. "This is what any orthodoxy does with someone whose ideas they can't handle."

Leary has come to recognize these allegations as barriers to overcome. "Of course,they've complicated my life," he admits. "And yet it's my challenge to show that I'm not brain damaged. "I've never been wounded by imprisonment or slander - that's just how humans play. If you set yourself as an individual who is playing the game of ideas and really competing for the consciousness of the country, they're going to throw everything against you.

"What is more deplorable than the use of drugs for pleasure or with intellectual intent," says Leary, "is that many of the people who take and abuse drugs often see no other means of personal reward. If you're a deprived person, say from a ghetto, you're more likely to use drugs because it's the only way you can reward yourself," says Leary. "And that's unfortunate. The answer is to give people better ways to cope."

Leary admits that he has used (and still does use) any drug of choice. "But I do it prudently, moderately, and cautiously," he says. "I have a thousand other things I can do to amuse myself. I don't want to be strung out, spun out, freaked out, or blitzed out." Why? Because the human mind is to valuable a thing to waste. "We have been endowed with a brain that contains a hundred billion neurons, and each neuron has the capacity ofne microcomputer. So everyone's carrying them around, but we're not all using them. It's hungry; it's like a muscle. It wants to be used!"

But if the human brain is just a bunch of micros networked together, will there come a time when we can duplicate or improve the mind's abilities? "So-called artificial intelligence is an oxymoron," Leary says with conviction. "Intelligence is natural. Humans get together and build systems for processing data faster, for filing, for expert systems, and so on. But it all generates from the 'wet ware' - the brain."

Leary accepts what he calls the challenge of AI, but he feels that humans can always outwit the big AI combines. "Who controls clusters of electrons?" he asks. "Are electrons demons moving through space? Can you pull them down? With electronic media, you just can't apply the laws of the industrial society anymore. If in 20 years I'm dead, under the old industrial way of thinking my inheritors might still control the copyright to books I'm writing now. You can't do that with information that's in the form of electronic clusters."

In Timothy Leary's opinion, computer programmers are the true "CyberPunks" and the real heroes of today. "They have the intelligence, courage, and imagination to access high technology - particularly knowledge technology - for their pleasure, purpose, profit, or whim." To Leary, it's people like Captain Midnight and Captain Crunch - nicknames for two men who illegally broke into computer and television channels - that define the spirit of CyberPunk, a vnotion he thinks was born within the hacker culture during the mid-1970s.

Leary also credits hackers with being the original frontier Libertarians. "I like the word 'punk' because it sets people apart and shows that what they're doing is unauthorized," he says. "It's no accident that Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were both long-haired, barefoot freaks. They were the original CyberPunks. Their names will go down with great Libertarians in history."

The word CyberPunk connects Herbert Weiner's notions of cybernetics and control systems with the idea of someone who uses technology for personal growth, freedom, and unauthorized communication, according to Leary. "I'm open to the idea that human beings come in different models and that certain individuals are able to handle more amounts of raw data more effectively than others," he says. "I think most programmers have nervous systems that are simply faster and can deal with more data. They also have to deal with an unforgiving mathematical system." Leary also views members of the programmer community as the thought processors of the future and disagrees with the stereotype of programmers as socially alienated, uncommunicative, and uncreative. Even so, "Programmers should be proud of these accusations and labels," he says. "It makes you different. Naturally people will be suspicious of difference, which means you've got to be twice as strong, twice as tough, and twice as skillful. That's the test of innovation."

He does admit, however, that programmers haven't developed the sophisticated, literary, cultural, aesthetic, or even erotic aspects of human thinking as much as they might. "They're so involved in such a challenging reality that they tend to neglect other aspects of their humanity," he says.

Leary has some strong concerns for the future of humanity and the Information Age. America has gone through a drop in intelligence, Leary says, with superstition, violence, racism, tribalism, and religious fanaticism on the rise. "The antidote to this is a shot of intelligence," Leary believes. "It's not going to be done by the teachers, the politicians, or even the writers. It's going to be done by computer programmers, software designers, and software artists. "The human race is facing a tremendous crisis. And it's the job of those people involved with computers as thought appliances to raise the intelligence level of our culture by at least 10%. If we could just change things upward by 10%, that networking would be irresistible."

While this is a great responsibility and a wonderful challenge for those he refers to as the CyberPunks, Leary feels it is also an attainable goal. "CyberPunk is a very heroic term to me," he says. "And the tradition of the computer hacker as CyberPunk goes back throughout human history. It's always been these individualistic things that kept us thinking."

Computer hackers, who by definition are individualists, are a rare breed. "They are the ones who 'go where no man [or woman] has gone before,' says Leary. "They will go down in history the way all great explorers have gone down."

"Even in the worst scenario of a Big Brother situation, you're going to have hackers who are in there in the bowels. They understand it better than the dictators. And because of that, there will always be hackers, and programmers, and CyberPunks."

Ok, now it's me again your friendly neighborhood cyberpunk. Just wanted you to know that Mind Mirror is made by Activision and is available for most computers. Haven't tried it, but it's what Dr. Leary calls a thought processor.

5. Language, Information, Entropy, Evolution

When Claude Shannon, a scientist as Bell Labs, first began to work out the rudiments of information theory (IT) back in the 1940s, he was interested in dealing with a rather specific problem - how to prevent electronic "line noise" (an inevitable result of quantum fluctuations) from interfering with the transference of a communication signal. This was similarly the case with Norbert Weiner, who invented (and coined) cybernetics originally to deal with the sophisticated problems surrounding regulation of ballistic firing mechanisms. However, Shannon (like Weiner, who was the son of a philologist) soon began to realize that information theory (like cybernetics) might be applicable to a whole host of areas, especially human language. However, Shannon only made a few speculations about one area where IT might also be applicable - biology - and unfortunately few picked up his inroads into this area of inquiry. Many people have protested how Shannon's ideas have been moved into more tangential or metaphysical areas, but it should be noted that he was one of the first people to start raising these questions.

The principle that Shannon hit upon was fairly simple: redundancy. It is one of the ones on which error-checking modems are based today. Basically, the idea is that the "message" contains extra "bits" which verify the integrity of the message itself, but convey no additional information to the receiver. Shannon realized that there was an important link between probability, communication, and entropy. In the universe, all systems are moving from less probable states (perfect order) toward more probable states (entropic heat equilibrium - total random Brownian motion of all molecules in the system.) Likewise with messages. At the point of transmission, they are in their least probable state (there is only one possible "meaning" that could be derived from them) but along the means of transmission, noise (random "bits") corrupts the message so that multiple meanings of the message are all equally probable. (Hence, on the other hand, the receiver says, "Huh? Say that again?") The game of 'Telephone' is, of course, based on this very principle.

Ever since Maxwell's imaginary demon, physicists have started to slowly realize that information is an important factor in the link between entropy, work, and energy. In Maxwell's imaginary experiment, a demon would open and close a gate (perfectly frictionless, of course - this is a thought experiment) so that slow-moving and fast-moving molecules would be separated, thereby reversing the entropy or disorder of a gas. But there was a problem - the demon would have to be able to see the molecules in order to have the information of which ones were moving fast and which ones were going slow. As Maxwell realized, at this level the photons from the demon's flashlight would affect the motion of the molecules - Heisenberg's uncertainty principle would begin to take effect. Increasing information also increased entropy. Information about a system could help us restore systems to a less probable state (this is what medical knowledge does for human bodies in high states of disorder) but only at a cost of increasing entropy in the universe somewhere else, and contributing thereby to the entropy of the universe as a whole. Living organisms basically do just this - maintaining their own coherence while adding waste products to their environment.

The attempt to apply information theory to biology has occurred in various areas. Herberto Maturana and Francisco Varela lead the group of theoretical biologists who see the immune system as an information-processor (of organismic self-identification) rather than a war-fighting police-state. Maturana and Varela also struggle against representationalism in cognitive science, suggesting that the nervous system is "operationally closed," and the blind tunnels of the neo-Darwinian programme, which fails to see how an organism and its environment are "structurally coupled" and how evolution is essentially an information-exchange process. The neo-Darwinians finally managed to complete their grand synthesis when Lamarck was held at bay with the Weismann Barrier (between germ line and organism) and the "language" of the Mendelian gene was found in the rungs of the ladder of the DNA spiral. The Human Genome project now plumbs this strange tongue, but it is likely to uncover some unpleasant facts that may well doom the academic perch of the neo-Darwinian synthesis.

The neo-Darwinians made it part of their battle cry that evolution is essentially a-teleological. The only operating principles in evolution were mutation of the DNA from radiation (which was essentially random) and adaptation (natural selection eliminating mutations which were unfit.) The twin poles of chance and necessity as described by materialist molecular biologist Jacques Monod. In essence, the neo-Darwinians proposed that mutation was producing an endless random sequence of genetic "messages" and that some censor was standing at the end of the line, killing every one that didn't make "sense," and this explained the complexity and diversity of lifeforms that we see today. (Just like an infinitely large bunch of monkeys sitting at typewriters, with every one failing to produce a Shakespeare opus being shot. ) To deny the intellectual parsimony of this theory was liable to get one declared a Lamarckist, or worse a creationist, and in any case, certainly an unscientific reactionary. Yet there were people who accepted the theory of evolution but saw extreme problems in nature relying on such a "blind" mechanism.

Some like Stephen Jay Gould attempted to "save the appearances," proposing that the neo-Darwinian synthesis was basically correct, but that some other mechanisms might also occasionally be involved, like punctuated equilibria and genetic drift. Others questioned the gradualism of natural selection, suggesting that various types of catastrophism might have caused a much more severe and rapid "selection" process. But the full frontal assault on neo-Darwinism has been led by computer scientists working on the artificial life front. These A-life researchers working on cellular automata programs have begun to realize something critical about organic evolution - that it is not a-teleological precisely because it is algorithmic. Not all possible mutations occur, because the language of DNA, like human language, is redundant , and limits the number of possible "messages" that can be generated through messenger RNA. The ridiculed work of Barbara McClintock on "jumping genes" began to be revived, as some molecular biologists began to realize that genes did more than just "code" for proteins - they also shifted around in the chromosomal sequence (just like words do in sentences while maintaining overall meaning) and, more importantly, governed other genes in that sequence through a grammar of rules for juxtaposition.

Mutation could not randomly "shuffle" around DNA. DNA was self-organizing, and thus likely to preserve certain structures once they had come into being. Some of the new theoretical biologists suggest that it can even orchestrate its own modification, thus bringing the heretical possibility of quasi-Lamarckian purposiveness back into mutation -- and offering explanations of how some organisms in the fossil record retraced their evolutionary steps and escaped evolutionary "blind tunnels" and extinction. The new cognitive biology suggests that nature is throwing dice in the creation of new organisms, but they're heavily loaded; and that the typewriters the monkeys are working on in "typing out" the language of life seem to have certain keys stuck together. Life appears to be based on dissipative structures (relying on nonequilibrium thermodynamics, like the Zhabotinksy Reaction) which are negentropic; life maintains its own self-organization by continually exchanging information with its environment and cybernetic self-monitoring feedback. Rather than a "green scum" on the face of the planet, life on planet Earth seems to be part of its war against entropy and the dissipation of meaning.

We are here, of course, going against the 'Central Dogma' of molecular biology: nature does no bookkeeping. Once an organism is physically transformed by the environment, there is no way to keep "track" of the change within its cellular structure. Organisms are information-impoverished, plastic to the extreme, but unable to know where they've been or where they're going phylogenetically. Nonetheless, some biologists insist that there are other things going on in evolution besides mere random mutation and blind selection. Symbiosis (cooperative rather than competitive strategies between organisms), saltationism (rapid 'leaps' through evolutionary 'search space'), self-organization (crystallization of stable biological structures), and directed mutation all seem to be part of nature's template for biological life. Alife researchers are beginning to realize that the trick of evolution is to build into the system a means of generating novelty - i.e. keeping life a negentropic open system - and one of those great devices was hit upon epochs ago: sexual reproduction, the best way we have of reshuffling the genomic deck.

The how of organismic information exchange boggles most biologists, who are not prepared to accept the fact that organisms are not closed systems, but are instead bioelectronic transceivers receiving constant electromagnetic 'signals' from their environment. Circadian rhythms and other bodily 'clocks' are synchronized through light's "interface" with the pineal gland - but evidence is mounting that other biological processes (including consciousness itself) are affected by electromagnetic signals from other sources, especially the planet's own geomagnetic field. Rupert Sheldrake's "morphogenetic fields" may explain how certain biological forms repeatedly "crystallize" and are repeated throughout the phylum, and certain atavistic features display how the phylogenetic past is reactivated in the ontogenetic present. Organisms are constantly exchanging electromagnetic information with each other; some have explained the "healing touch" as the natural ability of organisms to exchange information and break down intra-organismic information blockages ("your body should not be like this; instead it should be like this.")

The new info-biology and info-medicine holds some great promise. Some biologists have begun to look at aging in the body and brain as "noise accumulation." Basically, as certain inevitable recopying errors accrue in an organism's DNA, after countless cell reduplications, these errors overwhelm the "signal" of the organism's own self-coherence and it dies. Aging, the entropic fate of every organism, may be reversible, if we start to learn the 'grammar' of DNA; but there is a cost, as we will certainly add to the entropic fate of our planet via our burgeoning overpopulation and production of waste products. Disease might be come to be understood as information blockage, as the organism's "communications channels" are blocked from receiving the proper "signals" from the outside environment. Algorithmic accelerated artificial-life evolution may show how life on this planet made its "breakthroughs." Already, some curious Alife experiments are showing that symbiosis and mutualism are early strategies being adopted by some very uncompetitive cellular automata at the outset of their 'evolution.'

Ultimately, however, we cannot leave the matter there without dealing with the emergence of language, consciousness, and the 'other half' of coevolution. Richard Dawkins suggests that the genes' process of information production originally ruled the biological world, but with the emergence of homo sapiens the memes (units of linguistic-mental information rather than linguistic-genetic information) began their own strategies for selfish proliferation. It was William Burroughs who first suggested that language itself might be a virus, a parasitic piggybacker on the backs of homo sapiens, manipulating him for its own purposes. Noam Chomsky suggests that the human brain is "hardwired" with the fundamental structures for producing language - the crucial adaptation which may have made memetic evolution, a much more rapid and more highly redundant process than genetic evolution, take off in the brain of some distant Paleolithic ancestor. The emergence of spoken, and later written, language, may not be accidents; they may have been structured adaptations to increase biological information exchange and retention. (Perhaps it all started when he ate that mushroom.)

Certainly, one of the main realizations offered to us by the vast corpus of postmodernist literary theory that so many of us run from in horror from is the strange, almost quasi-intentional self-transformation of language. Derrida writes about the "play" of language, of the "unwillingness" of the signifier to remain bound to the signified, and of how writing writes itself through the author. If biology is linguistic, perhaps language is biological. The ancient writers seemed to grasp the nature of language, of the way that its permutations and recombinations were governed by curious webs of metaphor and self-referentiality. They called this protean language argot - the Art Gothique of the cathedral, the goetic art of the magician, the ship Argo which brought Heracles to the Golden Fleece, and the Arc Got or rainbow of light. Not surprisingly, argot was the language of the man of the street - the tongue of vagabonds, gypsies, thieves, highwaymen, pirates, and courtesans. Within the base dross of clever and foul words might be found the philosophical gold of wisdom, if one had the gematriac tools for recombination. This tongue reached its pinnacle in as the Langue D'Oc (Occitan) in the South of France, and is still found in the recorded poems of the troubadours of that time.

If language is an extraterrestrial virus that "invaded" mankind, as Burroughs suggests, perhaps it is a symbiote rather than a parasite. Certainly, the memes have enabled the genes to go to places they have never been before. The memes have shown the genes to themselves and increased the distance of biological information exchange. Biological evolution on planet Earth could only have gone so far without inevitably taxing the limits of the biosphere, but memetic evolution offers the possibility of homo sapiens escaping the gravity well of the planet and possibly taking genetic evolution in new and unprecedented directions. If we define life, heretically, as a process for perfecting the universe's ability to accumulate and preserve information about itself, it may be the case that language represents the universe's best weapon against its own entropic heat death. The snag is if information accumulation is basically a net transfer of entropy outside the system, this will ultimately fail if the universe is a closed system. Unless, of course, the universe is simply the least probable of many coexisting parallel universes.... and its redundant grammar is the laws of physics themselves.