timothy-leary-chaos-cyber-culture

THE BRAIN AS A DIGITALTRANSMITTEIEAs our brain evolves, it developsnew vehicles and information-processingdevices inorder to feed its insatiable hunger forstimulation. Like any adolescent oi^an,ttie human brain requires an enormous,continual supply of chemicaland electix)nic data to keep growingtoward matiirity.In the last eight years, Uie dendriticmetabolism of my informationorgan (brain) seems to have undergonea dramatic change. My eyes havebecome two hungry moutiis pressedagainst flie Terrarium vdndow fliroughvMch electix)nic pulses reach diereceptive areas of my brain. My brainseems to require a daily input of severalbiUion bytes of digital (light-speed)information. In this 1 am no different tiian Uie average, televoidAmerican sluggishly reclining on tiie bottom of the Terrarium. Mybrain also requires regular diets of chemical foods. But my VeryPersonal Computer has ti-ansformed my brain into an output organemitting, discharging digital Information tiirough tfie Terrariumwindow into ScreenLand.Just as tiie heart isprogrammed to pump blood, my sinewybrain is now programmed to fire, launch, ti-ansmit, beam tiioughtstim)ugh flie electix)nic window into Cyberia. The screen is dierevolving glass door tiirough which my brain botii receives andemits her signals.As a result of personal computers and video arcades, mil-Uons of us are no longer satisfied to peer like passive infantsflirough tiie Terrarium wall into tiie ScreenLand filled witii cyberstarslike Bill and Hillary and Boris and Saddam and Madonna andBeavis and Butt-Head. We are learning how to enter and locomotein Cyberia. Our brains are learning how to exhale as well as inhalein tiie datasphere.Of course, not all humans will make this move. Many of ourfinny ancestors preferred to remain marine forms. "You'll never getme up In one of Uiose," said tiie tadpole to tiie irog.Many humans will be ti-apped by gene-pool geography orcompelled by repressive societies or seduced by material rewardsand tiius reside in tiie material-fiesh worid of mammalian bipeds.Oh, yeah. To escape from tiie boredom and to rest after tiieir onerous,mech-fiesh labors, tiieywill torpidly ingest electronic realitiesoozing from tiieir screens. But Uiey will not don cybersuits andzoom into ScreenLand.We til-brains who learn toconstiTict and inhabit auto-realitiesspend some time in tiiecyberworidand some in tiie material-organicworid. We zoom tiuDugh Uie datmospherelike Donkey Rongs andPac Women, scooping up info-bitsand spraying out electixmic-realilyforms. And flien we cheerftillyreturn to tiie slow, lascivious, fleshlymaterial worid to indulge ourbodies with sensory stimulationand to exercise our muscles bypushing around mechanical realitiesin sport or recreation.On tiie skin-tissue plane,our left brains are limited tomechanical-material forms. But inScreenLand our right brains arefree to imagineer digital dreams,visions, fictions, concoctions, hallucinatoryadventures. All tiiese screen scenes are as real as a kick-inthe-pantsas far as our brains are concerned. Our brains have nosense organs and no muscles. Our brains command our bodies andsend spaceships to flie Moon by sending signals in only one hnguistic:fliequantum language of zeros and ones.NO MORE MIND-BODY PARADOX FORTRI-BRAIN ORGANISMSniH We til-brain creatures seem to be resolving tiiat most^; j ancient philosophic problem. Forget tiie quaint, mam-^fe^H malian dualism of mind versus body The interplay oflife now involves digital brain body matter digital screen.Everyfliinganimal, vegetable, mineral, tangible, invisible,electiic-is converted to digital food for flie info-starved brain. Andnow, using flie new digital appliances, everything fliat fliebrain-mind can conceive can be realized in elechxmic patterns.To be registered in consciousness, to be "realized," everysensory stimulation must be deconshiicted, minimalized, digitalized.The brain converts every pressure signal from our skins, ticklesfrom our genitals, delectables from our tongues, photons fromour eyes, sound waves from our ears, and, best of all, electi^nicbuzzlness from our screens into quantum realities, into dfrectoriesand files of 0/1 signals.We til-brain amphibians are learning how to use cyberwear(computer suits) to navigate around our ScreenLands flie way weuse flie hardware of our bodies to navigate around flie materialmechanicalworid, and the way we use spaceships and space suitsto navigate around flie outer space.TIMOTHV LEAIY CHAOS I (VIEI CULTUtE.