Notes for the Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul - Rudy Rucker

Notes for The Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul, by Rudy Rucker
In the meantime I got well, also I retired from teaching. I have till next March to
finish the two remaining chapters, though I’d like to do it sooner so I can start on a novel.
I feel good about the Mind chapter, I put in almost everything I’d wanted to, and
more. There’s some more technical stuff that I’ll do in the last chapter.
Now I face organizing something about society. It probably wouldn’t hurt to reread
what I’ve written so far, in order to smooth things. But I know if I reread I’ll have to rewrite,
also I’d have to take into account John Walker and Brian Silverberg’s bugs, woobies, and
coobies. (The last two are Walker-ese for “would be nice to change” and “could be
improved.”) And right now I’m more interested in pushing forward.
How did I organize the previous four chaps?
One - Computation. General idea of computing, universal machines, PCs, Net, CAs.
A flow from the simple to the complex.
Two - Physics. Classical physics as parallel computation, chaos, quantum mechanics.
A flow from the simple to the complex.
Three - Biology. Reproduction, morphogenesis, homeostasis, ecology, a-life,
evolution. Flow from low-level to high-level processes.
Four - Mind. Reflexes, neural nets, thoughts as gliders, consciousness, personality,
AI, enlightenment. Flow from low-level to high-level.
For Five - Society, I think I’ll also try and flow from low to high level.
June 17, 2004. What’s Interesting About Society?
On the road, in the Wild West: Boulder, Colorado and Pinedale, Wyoming. Did some
other stuff, now coming back to Chapter Five.
I’ve been reading a few pop science books about society, just now a piece of junk
called The Wisdom of Crowds, full of self-serving horse manure about the efficacy of
democracy, the free market and capitalism. It garnered a rave review in the NY Times, of
course. These low-level pop sci books have chapters that say one thing over and over and
over and over, illustrating their points with shopworn received truths and predigested news
stories ⎯ without ever jumping out of the system to carry out any meta-analysis. Sheep in a
cement cell, lapping at the spreading puddle of their own lukewarm urine. “This is great
stuff!”
I hate so many topics that have to do with society. Fixing traffic by charging more
tolls. Elections. Corporations. Committees. The sociology of science. The stock market.
Sports. Triumphant movies about sports.
I think there ought to be things about society that I can love talking about, things that
are real, and not just about pigs who think about power and money. How people avoid
bumping into each other when they’re walking on the street. How your emotions chaotically
dance around when you’re talking to friends and family. Bonding with people.
Conversations. Status maintenance. Nabokov’s remark about a lovers’ conversation being
like an opera aria, with the words not really mattering. A teacher in a classroom. Listening
to the sounds of a city through an open window.
I’d like to break through to a radically different way of talking about society, to throw
a bucket of ice-water in the face of the sleep-walking sheep who think Big Media News and
The President are what matters, when these are in fact the most remote epiphenomena of
society’s computation in progress.
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