In the 80’s Peter Gabriel realised music was a visual game, and he seems to be one step ahead again.
Writing on Edge.org he talks of ‘Open Water’, a phrase that would later become the name of Mary Lou Jepsen’s start up company bringing to the world the capability of ‘telepathic machines’.
He writes….
“Open Water–The Internet Of Visible Thought
It now seems inevitable that the decreasing cost and the increasing resolution of brain scanning systems, accompanied by the relentless increase in power of computers, will take us soon to the point where our own thinking might be visible, downloadable and open to the world in new ways.
Source https://www.edge.org/response-detail/26632
He continues…
“The emergence of this suite of technologies will have enormous impact on the everyday ways we live and interact and can clearly transform, positively and negatively, our relationships, aspirations, work, creativity, techniques for extracting information.”
I, like Peter Gabriel, see the potential of such technology for creative play.
The realm of thought, though, is far more subtle and flickering than that of photos, videos or words. It’s very nature is temporary, but with training it can be both stabilised and navigated – enabling imagination to be externalised, and the creative process quickened.
He continues to imagine a world where…“Those not comfortable swimming in these transparent waters are not going to flourish. Perhaps we will need to create “swimming lessons” to teach us how to be comfortable being open, honest and exposed—that we can be ready to float and navigate in these waters of visible thought.”
With such technology on the horizon, just like social media transformed one-to-many communication, new opportunities will flow.
“Soon, we will be able to plug in the architect directly and with a little bit of fine tuning, see her latest thoughts printed and assembled into a building that same day. The same goes for film and for music and every other creative process. Barriers between imagination and reality are about to burst open. Do we ignore it or do we get into boat building like Noah? Here comes the flood.”
As I say, in the age of telepathic machines, you’ll need a ‘School of Thought’, and you’ll probably need a Filter too.
