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

Notes for The Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul, by Rudy Rucker
The fractal of human memory.
Fractals can be regular, random, or gnarly. Sierpinski (or Julia for that matter), dust,
Mandelbrot (for awhile anyway, but even it wears out).
A gallery of different kinds of fractals. Native forms of the computer that happen to
sometimes resemble natural images.
Fractals that grow by a process of filling in gaps, such as trees, river drainage basins,
the human lungs and circulatory system. Fractals based on a superposition of frequencies,
such as white noise, water waves, and random events. Fractals that form from isolated events
of different sizes that act as self-organized criticality, such as coastlines and mountain ranges.
Fractals from chaotic attractors, such as Julia sets and the basis of attraction for a pendulum
and magnets. Information-based fractals such as the Mandelbrot set.
The Mandelbrot set was a new paradise. And I needed the microscope of a computer
to explore it. Looking at Platt’s Mandelbrot set at Bruce Sterling’s house before the
“Cyberpunk” panel.
We have a very nice example of a fractal within our own minds: the structure of the
human memory.
As a practical application of fractals, I’ll expand upon my notion of the “lifebox,”
which I think could become a very popular and profitable software application in the
Twenty-First Century.
The idea behind the lifebox is fairly simple. You talk or type into your lifebox
program, telling it stories, putting in journal notes, pasting in photos, and so on. And the
lifebox assembles your stories into a coherent database that people can interrogate. At a
certain level, talking to your lifebox will convincingly mimic the experience of talking to
you. What better memorial to leave behind so that people can still “talk” to you after you’re
dead?
The aesthetics of gnarl.
As another application of fractals and chaos, I discuss how these notions illuminate
our traditional concepts of artistic beauty and literary composition. How I use fractal
composition techniques.
Fractal methods of literary composition. Data base.
Is beauty gnarliness?
Geometry, light.
The beauty of three-dimensional motion. Zooming through size-scales with your
eyes.
The quantum Mind
But, as I’ll explain, my feeling is that the human mind as one immediately
experiences it is quite unlike the working of a standard digital machine. As Nick Herbert
puts it in his essay, “Holistic Physics, or, An Introduction to Quantum Tantra”
Nick Herbert is one of the more colorful characters in Silicon Valley. He started as a
physicist designing hard drives, and now he’s become a guru teaching a doctrine of
“Quantum Tantra.” Beneath the California surface, he’s quite serious, with some remarkable
insights about the meaning of quantum computation. You might put it like this: if you stop
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