I’ve written about this topic before. And though I type on it, stare at a laptop screen framed of it, and am utterly surrounded by it, the idea is still provocative even to me, that plastic (an innovation so subtle yet ubiquitous) is also at the core of a potential threat to life on Earth. I took a real interest in this idea because it seemed obviously urgent, but because one particular aspect seemed totally, and a bit ironically neglected. The irony I find is, so many people fall back on the topic of the weather. Evidently, not so much when it counts. To help myself and others understand my somewhat radical thoughts about the environment, and to discuss such ironically neglected aspects, I present as preface three very real, very relevant facts about our planet and life, followed by obvious speculation about how these phenomena might be inter-connected and in such a way as to to change life as we know it.

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An assumption based in logic, that seems unfortunately too true about our Country is that, in the United States of America, not knowing something makes one popular. This is because, more Americans “don’t know” than those that “do know”,  making ignorance a more socially acceptable attribute at times than intellect.

America, in an age of information, has become a home for a Culture of the Stupid. So says the Washington Post and its sources in a piece titled The Dumbing of America. We have to wonder if this phenomena is the result of people mistaking vision for academic, intellectual or social elitism. Or, if this is just the beginning of an era of Anti-Intellectualism.

In August of 2007, scientists found a one billion light-year sized hole in the universe. Left to my unending curiosity, I’ve done a bit of thinking. And now, I’d like to offer the few ideas I had about the discovery. Ponder what intrigues, enjoy what silliness entertains.

Theory #1 - The Hole — the cold spot — is the area associated with the events of the Big Bang.

Not unlike a crater on some surface, this cold spot could represent an area where billions of years ago, the event we commonly refer to as The Big Bang, took place. While over time space itself (we believe) has expanded, one would expect most everything was expelled outward from that point at extremely high temperatures (leaving the most immediate area entirely barren). Everything was “vaporized” or more accurately put, transitioned to highly energetic plasma and gas. The CMB (Cosmic Microwave Background) tells how just how it was distributed. Does this “hole” give us an indicate from where?

Theory #2 - The Hole is Aliens!

By creating electromagnetic fields many linear detection methods can be deflected or subverted. It makes sense, at least depending on how you look at projects like SETI. And, of course these aliens would need to know the ole’ saying: out of sight — out of mind.

Theory #3 - The Hole represents the discovery of new physics

Last, the most likely: this region of space contains unknown properties or material with unknown properties to physics. This would lead to our inability to make accurate detections and potentially offer us a region of space that seemed to lack all features. We’ve only narrowly escaped our home venue of Earth. While it may seem a radical idea to accept, there is no evidence that our observations from Earth aren’t dramatically limited to a subset of realities describable by our derived physics only.

From the mind there can be no escape. A simple notion can influence, until we’re a daze in thought. Yet, some thoughts are so complex and run so long they are able to penetrate the core of the mind from which they spring. Some realizations so ultimate they might even revoke our sense of self. For even when we are lost in thought do we rarely understand the truth, that we are lost to thought. Here the BBC covers exactly that in a documentary entitled Dangerous Knowledge. The film covers a group of geniuses who each ended their quest for knowledge in suicide.

This category, Unending Curiosity, is essentially for questions I can’t expect to answer but feel compelled to ask anyway. These questions seem like they’d go on for ever if you did try to answer them, and certainly just the asking could take a while.

So, one of these more interesting ideas is of course Technology, and I mean as a whole. However, it seems we rarely look at Technology from more than one, rather simple dimension. For most people, this dimension allows them to see a simple progression of tools or a linear release of innovations. But, technology has an interesting substance which I feel allows it to be better described as the evolution of human usage.

This, because without need there is no use, and vice versa. Moreover, there is little that can be innovated upon. Lacking these fundamental concerns, the idea of Technology slowly collapses , or at least, so does its underlying value.

What, and how we use it, is our Technology. And, Technology changes how existence, either in how skills or our uses are employed, improved and connected with each other and our existence, or through providing a platform for more innovative construction. Technology is an extension of our existence in this way.

None of this complexity dismisses the truth discovered though, in our single dimension view of things: as time changes, one might throw away tools for new one,s or replace tools with refined human skills.

This idea itself, specifically, is what I’m hung up on; this idea of the continuous refinement of human skills.

My question (read as Unending Curiosity) is: How does the mind integrate replacements for deprecated human skills and behaviors (as those mental tools are themselves Human Technologies)? Also, how, if at all, is the knowledge or wisdom accredited to obsolete or deprecated uses/behaviors/technologies retained or passed along (so as to ensure technologists are not working on the exactly same problem continuously, only being re-represented)?

( ref: http://www.tcf.ua.edu/AZ/ITHistoryOutline.htm )