Broadcasting the Evolution

Consolidating Broadcasts

2008-05-03T18:03:00.002-04:00

I have a major headache but have a blurry need to post...

For me, media is the nervous system of our global organism. Granted it's human-centric, but this planet is, at least for the moment, human-centric. We are the species that drives more changes to the global organism than any before us.

For a long time, media was hierarchical, top-down, with the people with power/money, dictating the signals that were sent to the the rest of the people. But now, as has been being predicted for decades, media is more like the human nervous system with each person a cell able to send messages to the entire system. Videobloggers, podcasters, bloggers, artists taking advantage of long-tail realities...the democratization of media in general have all led to me being able to communicate with you, you communicating with your firend in Israel, your friend in Israel sending me messages from across the world and all of us broadcasting our messages to the other cells and the entire organism.

Some messages line up or help define and become evolving memes. These messages often come in the form of new technologies, attitudes, communities, and ideas.

After years of begin fascinated by media, i've now spawned too many channels to keep track of on a regular basis.

So, now i'm beginning to change my platform. On the one hand i'm beginning to grow each of the broadcast channels and their communities one by one. One at a time, i want to attend to each of the broadcast platforms i have and grow them until they are healthy, rife with neural connections with other "local" neurons.

At the same time, i'm consolidating. Bringing each of the communities to the core of the work i'm most interested in doing.

Over the past several weeks i've had my attention where i've wanted it most for nearly a decade. I've been developing the first installable module of the Human Operating System. And, of everything i've done in the past few years, outputting this product and everything that comes with it has stimulated something in me that i had almost forgotten about. And the deeper i've gone into doing this thing that i love, the more i've found myself grateful and fascinated by how to best serve the communities i'm developing it for.

Soon, all of my broadcast paths will lead to the Human Operating System. And, if all goes well, i'll be getting the community input to take it to levels i haven't yet considered. Here's to community.

Why Teenagers Hate Hope

2008-04-04T13:09:00.002-04:00

I was talking with my friend Mike Cage the other day about the intense skepticism of current high school and college students.

He said something that stirred me to thinking. He said, "The 'Chicken Soup for the Soul' series has ironically created the context for extreme cynicism amongst teenagers. It's done this by creating endless waves of chain emails sharing stories from their various books and then following those heartfelt stories with a picture of the cuddly puppy and then either a marketing plug or a hex about a life of hellish torture, acne and celibacy should you not forward the story to others."

What's come of this, he explained, is that teenagers think that everything is just another scam trying to get them to believe something, buy something, or get their name on some douchebag's email list.

This kills hope. In a world where everyone is peddling the newest, latest, greatest thing, we've sensitized our teenagers to be wary of everything. We've given them the world via unlimited resources on the Internet and then stripped that world of its soul. Then, in the few places that they actually have passion - instead of letting them explore it, we send them to school where the last shreds of passion and fascination can be fully and categorically destroyed through the forced study of outdated subjects in a militaristic setting.

School (noun) - where passion is, at all costs, discouraged - except by those rare teachers who, by some grace, have managed to slip through the educational systems maintaining at least some of what fascinated them in their youth.

I have an interview coming up soon on Pathbreaker.tv with educational iconoclast and author, John Taylor Gatto. Gatto quit teaching on the OP ED page of the Wall Street Journal in 1991 while still New York State Teacher of the Year, claiming that he was no longer willing to hurt children. One of the main topics he's railed against for nearly two decades now, if i can editorialize, is an educational system which turns students into robots.

For me, this is the main issue. In his book, Island, Aldous Huxley says that the point of boys and girls is to become fully human. We live in a system which kills our ability to do this. Obsessed with the ol' reading, writing and arithmetic model 'current' public educational teaches outdated, outmoded forms of learning.

They focus endlessly on content rather than the ability to learn. As Joseph said, it would be better if the education system were totally dismantled so kids, who at this point can learn anything about anything in 2 hours or less on the Internet, can actually start learning.

What teenagers yearn for now is anything that smacks of authenticity - even, as Mike pointed out, if that authenticity is a corporate pre-packaged image designed to sell to people seeking authenticity. No offense Suicide Girls.

The outstanding question for me is, "what now"? What can we do to create an environment for teenagers that doesn't suck and that supports them in getting to know what really fascinates them so they can start building a life around it?

A Real Character

2008-04-04T10:28:00.005-04:00

You know, it's funny, I was talking with Joseph the other day and he made some remark to me about being a real character and that i've always been a real character.

For whatever reason this cliche skipped along the pond of my mind and rippled my reflection of myself.

A real character.

You know, for years i've thought of myself as easy to get along with but a little 'off the beaten path'. Then i took stock of where my attention is lately. Here's what i came up with:

1. Working with private clients to deliver high impact one-on-one or group experiences enabling intentional performance. Intentional Performance is a way of describing what i do which i've stolen directly from Joseph. Lucky for me, he's bright and generous and allows me to continually steal his descriptions.

Intentional Performance begins with the stabilization of a well-formed core awareness. This stable core awareness is somatically based. It is the idiosyncratic configuration of your muscles and senses in the system’s natural ‘best’ state. This stable best-state configuration allows for maximum behavioral flexibility and optimal integration of new information and behaviors. From this state, i help clients unfold the best internal and external strategies congruent with their outcomes.

2. Raising Buddha - a blog exploring what it means to parent. Ironically, because my attention is on well-formed neural and behavioral development, this blog spits in the face of typical parenting styles. (This summation is not based on a statistical study, just personal experience.)

3. Sex With Devon - a video blog exploring healthy attitudes towards sex and sexuality. This vlog is admittedly irreverent simply because i talk openly about sex.

4. Pathbreaker.tv - a video blog about living your bliss by following your passion. Implicitly this means not staying on societal tracks of what you 'should' be doing.

5. Developing an installable Human Operating System. Much as i've deluded myself into believing that everyone needs a human operating system for the past decade or so - i've come realize that no one even knows what the hell i'm talking about.

It was recently explained to me in simple marketing terms like this: If you need to teach someone to know that they need what you're offering - then they don't actually need it.

6. The Global Myth - also something no one experiences as a necessity.

In review i seem to be orthogonal to most people's ways of thinking about things.

C'est la vie.

Coming to terms with this, i've renamed my blog's subtitle: Thoughts of a Cultural Iconoclast.

Evolving my blog

2008-04-04T10:16:00.001-04:00

I'm changing my blog today and wanted to keep a record of the old sidebar information. Here it is:

EXPERIMENT 2.0

In the spirit of Buckminster Fuller, this blog documents my experiment to find out what one person can contribute to benefiting the world and all humanity.

Given my interests and talents I'll be actively promoting and developing three things:

1. Neuro-Logics - the natural logic of our nervous systems specifically as it's applied to the world's first neurological/behavioral share-ware platform.

2. Our Global Myth - the unifying story of what humanity as a whole and we as individuals are becoming.

3. Important and emerging trends, technologies and individuals.

ABOUT ME Essentially, I do PR for the brain. It seems to me that there are no problems that can't benefit from amplified intelligence. So I put my time towards teaching people the ABC's of using their own nervous systems. A lot of what I teach and promote is common sense stuff that, for one reason or another, no one knows. These are things we should have been taught since Day One by our parents and public schools.

Most of this work is based on developing a universal "human operating system" - a way of effectively running our experience of the world from the inside out and a cross platform so that, on a global scale, we can begin to develop and improve our communication, interaction and ability to shape our experiences.

In a world where, learning to learn and being up to date on current technology is becoming more critical, this blog is the practical human counterpart to the emerging technology that is changing our culture and our lives.

The Experiment Continues

2007-11-29T12:20:00.001-05:00

So it's taken many iterations but i think i've finally got one that works. The evolution may finally be broadcast on a larger scale.

Without counting any chickens i'll only say that i will be happy when the broadcasting goals i've been pursuing for over a decade now are more than just goals. I'll be happy when the only definition of success applicable to my broadcasting adventures IS NOT Winston Churchill's,

Success is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.

The most recent SwD episodes are the beginning stages of it. What i'm doing is putting out the 3 major states involved in state control. If it works, people will begin elicit/installing them in themselves.

So far i've done initial episodes for
The Default State and
The Connected State
Soon i'll do one for the state of Intent as well.

If it's successful - i'll start working on more sophisticated installations so that people can install/elicit the states more easily and begin using them and remixing them to put back out into the world.

Becoming The Perfect Medium

2007-11-28T23:19:00.000-05:00

I like the thought of becoming a perfect vessel through which the universe can express itself. It feels good. It feels like a good way to be humble and useful to those things so much more than me. And somehow, it enables me to live in Love.

You & I

You
You are the tension
that lives in my psoas
and waits in my chest
to stiffen

I am the calm before the swoon
traveling forever

in the love

you inspire

-------
Of all the hobbies i could have gotten involved in, falling in love has a worked out Really well for me.

Anyway, i signed on as this has become the unofficial, very occasional online journal entry i keep. I just read a Raising Buddha post the other day and got a kick out of it and realized how cool it is to have various channels to track my thinking for myself.

I once went to dinner with my best friend and this fabulous Hollywood producer (and if i remember correctly, a former drag queen) and he said to me that journal entries were fabulous ways to notice patterns that are usually outside of your awareness because you'll see the same issues come up again and again. I think that's all that needs to be said about that.

A lifelong study

2007-08-07T10:58:00.001-04:00

To adapt a quote from Hal Blumenfeld, M.D. Ph.D, author of Neuroanatomy through Clinical Cases,

Deciding to study Neuro-Logics is somewhat like agreeing to paint a large mural that you will spend the rest of your life carefully improving and refining. To begin painting this mural we must first agree on the orientation of our subject matter - choose an up and down, forward and backward. Then we will boldly sketch out the major features of the composition, paying particular attention to the relationships between different components and how the composition works as a whole. The rough sketch provides a framework so that as we embark on painting various segments of the mural in ever finer detail we never lose sight of the big picture, and we are therefore able to pass seamlessly from one area of the mural to another.

Welcome to Neuro-Logics - the lifelong study and application of who you are and how you work. For some of us, this study has been going on for a long time. And whether it's been called yoga, Integral Theory, Buddhism, somatics, psychology....it was ultimately a way for you to learn more about how you function in ways that are increasingly effective and satisfying. For others, the idea of learning to use themselves is totally foreign. For me, Neuro-Logics as a discipline that allows us to usefully yolk all of the studies of human functionality together and develop an effective way to define and measure results and a curriculum to make them happen.

In our own way, whether we like it or not, each of us agrees to paint the large mural of Neuro-Logics (learning how to use ourselves in accordance with the logic of our own neurological system) from the time we're born. We agree and the people around us agree to help us in its development.

In our culture, this is a tacit agreement. Essentially we can't not paint this mural because it's who we are from our DNA to the way we walk, from balls to bones. So, even though there is rarely is a conscious and intentional decision on the part of parents to raise their children in accordance with the demands of their kids' system's natural inclinations, they are still shaping the way those systems develop.

Subsequently, most children, when they come of age to make this decision for themselves - are already ill-formed in their development AND unaware that there is even a decision to be made. Because of this, those of us in nations technologically advanced enough to allow us to move beyond basic concerns of survival and into more generative and creative uses of our brains that engage more of its potential - don't.

Since Neuro-Logics is about the logic of who you are and how you work, it is already defined before you begin. Your task is to come to know yourself in such a way that you can best understand how you function and then use yourself intelligently and effectively in accordance with your own natural design.

Neuro-Logics is most effectively begun pre-natally so that a child's development is promoted in the most healthy manner possible from day one. Anything less than this already begins to work against the system and compromise that system's ability to function optimally.

The earlier this is begun the better because the majority of major neurological development occurs early on and sets the mold for all future possibilities in what is (at least currently) a hardwired way. During early development the neurology learns whatever is modeled for it - be it well-formed or ill-formed, and the truth is, it's just easier to do it right the first time then it is to fix it later.

That said, just as with language, if you're just beginning to learn the Neuro-Logics of your own system, it's not hopeless and the field of Neuro-Logics itself seeks to make it easier to learn yourself in this way than ever before...

The Evolution is Being Co-opted

2007-08-06T22:38:00.000-04:00

For the time being i am going to begin using this blog to publish parts of a book i've been working on. I'm moving my personal journaling to a private blog.

This blog will continue to be used to post broadcasting updates and objectives, relevant thoughts and ideas or anything else i think seems like it might be interesting.

Summer Updates

2007-08-06T22:13:00.000-04:00

The Devon White site is about to update. Karenscape is now officially a studio with an administrator and a whole team. Viral Evolution Media was incorporated today, live trainings in Nyack start up again next Tuesday, it's almost tour season and i'm beginning the Yoga Training programme. So, i'm broadcasting and beginning to develop the information into lots of presentable forms as well as developing the beginnings of an actual network through which to broadcast the information.

Viral Evolution Media, Inc. is the salient form of my ideas right now. Here's the rough draft description of the company:

About Us
Viral Evolution Media is a 21st century broadcast company. As a company and as a group of individuals Viral Evolution Media thrives on moving the social system forward. in a positive direction. We do this by crossing cutting edge behavioral technologies, with high caliber information and early adopter technology bringing end-users information in ways they’ve never experienced before- information that will change the way they experience learning forever. We’re wiring the messages of greatest success directly into the hearts, brains and behaviors of our global community.

A Global Nervous System
Viral Evolution Media is founded in the idea that humans are social beings involved in an intimately communal system. Our media, our messages and the messages of those companies we choose to support engage the world as a unified and interconnected entity. We believe that mass media is the most advanced form yet of a global nervous system Mother Nature has been creating since the dawning of life on Earth.

Today almost every individual in a technologically capable society can enter his or her cybernetic input in a way that reaches the entire system near-instantly. And, as with any nervous system, some signals are promoted while others are suppressed. Viral Evolution Media promotes what we see as the evolutionary signals of the system, the signals that are moving us forward as a species into a future we do not know…yet…are designing for success.

It is our Mission, our responsibility, and our intention to put out the best signals possible in support of a healthy and well-formed humanity.

Welcome to the Evolution.

That's it for now.

Experimental Updates

2006-12-14T22:50:00.000-05:00

It's been quite the time since i've posted here. I have several other blogs going now most of which address the more pertinent of my day to day activities.

However, i realized i needed to make an update on the Experiment posts. The Experiment has taken a very practical route of late. Here's how:

1. Kiela is running her own experiment now and we're documenting it online through the Broadcasting Evolution Yahoo! Group.

2. I've taken my immediate attention off media and put it on the more immediate approach to accomplishing that long-term goal. Basically it goes like this: I love doing work with people's nervous systems. I think that sharing NeuroLogic is one of the coolest fucking things in the world. It's my Path. If Love has a form that it uses to come through me it's in teaching people how to run themselves - both in person at the individual level and, eventually, through mass media. However, that has about as much shelf appeal as bat guano. Every time i try booking a gig at a college in order to teach kids "exquisite decision-making" or "how to make it through your quarter-life crisis" - shit college kids will really get a lot from - i get ten people who have no idea why they're there (other than the word of mouth that i'm interesting to listen to). However, if i give a gig called, "The best head ever" or "deepening orgasms" or "How to Become an Unforgettable Lover" i get standing room only. Alright,i get it - sex sells. In fact, at colleges, sex, drugs and saving the world all sell. I dig it. These are all topics to which i can speak with expertise. And, they give me a really cool platform through which to present ideas that will bring value to people's lives immediately, they have a hook, they're marketable, and i can sneak in other ideas (like how to make exquisite decisions) while i talk about and install great sex strategies.

So now, following this vein to the heart of my life, I'm putting all of my attention on building that avenue of media broadcasting. Working with Karen as a partner and Shane and Roxanne of Barefeet Studios as our web/marketing development team (They Rule!) I'm putting my attention to where my strengths reside.

Shit! I just lost the majority of this post. Now i need to try and recapture a bit of it before it's gone but - that sucks.

Anyway, I'm helping Karen transform her company into a studio. We're an awesome team - augmenting our powers through the Synergy of Us. Soon we'll both be in the position to have the majority of our attention where we want it completely.

3. My time with Miles has been amazing. The Experiment's greatest rewards come through him. I have no idea what he'll contribute to the world and i have no idea how deeply he'll enjoy himself in it but we're having a blast so far. I know that most good parents ultimately feel that their gift to the world is their child but i want more. I want to demonstrate to him that he's my gift along with other major contributions. I've started a whole blog dedicated to out time together. It's really a blog for his records when he's older. And for mine. And for anyone else that gets some benefit from it.

4. The Experiment proper - while the experiment is a 4th path gig (in the world, not in a cave or in my head) there is a significant part of it that has to do with a.) me spending time actually doing the work alone because i like doing it that way and b.) researching and studying. I recently got a new book that is like the Bible for the core of what i've been thinking about since i was 16. In fact, i just wrote a letter to my brother who's in boot camp, earlier today. Here's an excerpt:

Karen recently gave me a book which is as close to the Bible for my current interest as I could have come. It's a holy scrit my friend. It's called The Psychobiology Of Gene Expression. Essentially it's an in-depth exploration of how psychosocial experiences (emotional and environmental experiences) have a powerful and on-going relationship with the ways our genes express themselves.

What that means in a practical sense is this: right now as the Army introduces you to an entirely new way of experiencing the world, as they force things that were once foreign to become second nature to you, they are not working simply at the level of your body-mind but deep down into your genetic structure. Here's how:

Gene expression is an on-going activity. In every cell of your body, your DNA, the personal blueprint of Gregory Drexler, exists. From its headquarters inside the nucleus of your cell, it cooperates with a messenger called RNA to give orders to the rest of the cell. Like a Drill Sergeant your DNA is giving these signals endlessly. And like a military commander it has both long term and short term plans. It's long term plans are like plans for national defense or war-governing strategies, they offer overarching plans like growing you into a strapping young man, constant brain development, respiration, proper hormone release, etc. But our magnificent bodies (i know – yours is particularly magnificent now right) have short term highly adaptable plans as well. And this is true down to the genetic level, where second-by-second your DNA is making micro-adjustments to the signals it's sending out based on the input and feedback it's getting from (a) your internal state and (b) your immediate environment.

For example, when toxic gas is streaming into your nose, the entire system registers it. This information is taken to the DNA and what are called Immediate Early Genes. The job of these genes is to coordinate immediate action within the overarching strategy of the Commander DNA. These Immediate Early Genes are like the Drill Sergeant concerned with immediate action - organizing the nuclear platoon to produce proteins that will best deal with the external assault here and now. These genes will activate hormone expression (though hormones will release before this as well) as well as a series of other actions. Meanwhile, the rest of your DNA is still running the war as only Gregory Drexler would.

This is pretty much the exact thing I've been thinking about since I was 16. I've been thinking about it and not taking the next logical step to find out if there was anybody in the world working on this type of stuff, i.e. how to influence myself and others at the genetic level using words and the mediated space between us. As it turns out, there are people doing this.

Alright, that's it for now. The Experiment continues only now with some measurable movement forward. I'm starting to gain traction. Whew!

Watch out world - here we come! Full body style.

Big Love,

Devon

The evolution metamorphosizes

2006-12-14T19:26:00.000-05:00

It's been quite the time since i've posted here. I have several other blogs going now most of which address the more pertinent of my day to day activities.

However, i realized i needed to make an update on the Experiment posts. The Experiment has taken a very practical route of late. Here's how:

1. Kiela is running her own experiment now and we're documenting it online through the Broadcasting Evolution Yahoo! Group.

2. I've taken my immediate attention off media and put it on the more immediate approach to accomplishing that long-term goal. Basically it goes like this: I love doing work with people's nervous systems. I think that sharing NeuroLogic is one of the coolest fucking things in the world. It's my Path. If Love has a form that it uses to come through me it's in teaching people how to run themselves - both in person at the individual level and, eventually, through mass media. However, that has about as much shelf appeal as bat guano. Everytime i try booking a gig at a college in order to teach kids "exquisite decision-making" or "how to make it through your quarter-life crisis" - shit college kids will really get a lot from - i get ten people who have no idea why they're there (other than the word of mouth that i'm interesting to listen to). However, if i give a gig called, "The best head ever" or "deepening orgasms" or "How to Become an Unforgettable Lover" i get standing room only. Alright,i get it - sex sells. In fact, at colleges, sex, drugs and saving the world all sell. I dig it. These are all topics to which i can speak with expertise. And, they give me a really cool platform through which to present ideas that will bring value to people's lives immediately, they have a hook, they're marketable, and i can sneak in other ideas (like how to make exquisite decisions) while i talk about and install great sex strategies.

So now, following this vein to the heart of my life, I'm putting all of my attention on building that avenue of media broadcasting. Working with Karen as a partner and Shane and Roxanne of Barefeet Studios as our web/marketing development team (They Rule!) I'm putting my attention to where my strengths reside. In addition to this, Karen and i are working to transform Karenscape into a studio. We're an awesome team and we seem to be steadily augmenting our individual powers through the synergy of Us.

Meanwhile, the sex venue is a blast. It's the perfect avenue to deliver the content i want while still being able to get an audience in a fast paced culture where people want the good life but need to be sold into giving their attention to something that benefits them in a way they don't know they don't need benefitting - i.e. who the hell knows that life would be better if they knew how to run their nervous systems.

3. Miles is amazing. The Experiment has been absolutely perfect in my experience of him. I mean, most good parents use "my kid is my gift" as their default contribution to the world and i don't want to just do that but, he's a gift to me. And just being so present with him has been a spell. It's like Christmas everyday. I started a blog about my time with him. It's mostly for him, for his records when he's older. It's for me too - for when i'm older and i want to remember. and maybe some other people will find some value in it.

4. On the personal front, i'm spending more time actually attending to the details of my everyday awareness: working out, isometrics, running!, sitting, deepening my INTENT, etc. Also, Karen recently bought me what has become the Bible of my life - The Psychobiology of Gene Expression by Ernest Rossi. It's about exactly the things i've been thinking about since i was 16 - how to influence myself (and others) at the genetic level. Actually, i just wrote a letter to my brother about it which i'll excerpt here:

Karen recently gave me a book which is as close to the Bible for my current interest as I could have come. It’s a holy scrit my friend. It’s called The Psychobiology Of Gene Expression. Essentially it’s an in-depth exploration of how psychosocial experiences (emotional and environmental experiences) have a powerful and on-going relationship with the ways our genes express themselves.

What that means in a practical sense is this: right now as the Army introduces you to an entirely new way of experiencing the world, as they force things that were once foreign to become second nature to you, they are not working simply at the level of your body-mind but deep down into your genetic structure. Here’s how:

Gene expression is an on-going activity. In every cell of your body, your DNA, the personal blueprint of Gregory Drexler, exists. From its headquarters inside the nucleus of your cell, it cooperates with a messenger called RNA to give orders to the rest of the cell. Like a Drill Sergeant your DNA is giving these signals endlessly. And like a military commander it has both long term and short term plans. It’s long term plans are like plans for national defense or war-governing strategies, they offer overarching plans like growing you into a strapping young man, constant brain development, respiration, proper hormone release, etc. But our magnificent bodies (i know – yours is particularly magnificent now right) have short term highly adaptable plans as well. And this is true down to the genetic level, where second-by-second your DNA is making micro-adjustments to the signals it’s sending out based on the input and feedback it’s getting from (a) your internal state and (b) your immediate environment.

For example, when toxic gas is streaming into your nose, the entire system registers it. This information is taken to the DNA and what are called Immediate Early Genes. The job of these genes is to coordinate immediate action within the overarching strategy of the Commander DNA. These Immediate Early Genes are like the Drill Sergeant concerned with immediate action - organizing the nuclear platoon to produce proteins that will best deal with the external assault here and now. These genes will activate hormone expression (though hormones will release before this as well) as well as a series of other actions. Meanwhile, the rest of your DNA is still running the war as only Gregory Drexler would.

This is pretty much the exact thing I’ve been thinking about since I was 16. I’ve been thinking about it and not taking the next logical step to find out if there was anybody in the world working on this type of stuff, i.e. how to influence myself and others at the genetic level using words and the mediated space between us. As it turns out, there are people doing this.

I'm only a hundred pages into it so there's a lot left to go but, it's spurring a lot in me.

That's it for today - i've got lots of work to do before i go over to Nell's. Miles and i begin our week long adventure in two days so i need to hustle now.

Big Love,

Devon

My friends are my pride, because I'm a lion

2006-09-16T16:50:00.000-04:00

I just got my this blog cross-posting to my DevonWhite.org site and i found this draft waiting to be posted:

I wanted to take a moment to growl out out my respect for my friends.
You continue to be my raison d'etre.

more now than ever.

Everyone has a super human power

2006-05-02T00:08:00.000-04:00

"Everyone has a super human power. I recently realized mine is the ability to seduce any woman." - April Goncalves

April followed that thought up with another.

"What's better to do with your enemies than mindforce them to have sex with you."

Human Operating System

2006-04-18T21:53:00.000-04:00

To do my best in this experiment i follow my strengths and my passions.

In this vein, i'm working on developing the world's first human operating system - a common platform people can use to learn, improve and share experiences and behaviors.

Over the past 50 years humanity has taken tremendous strides in what we are capable of. It seems at long last, that as a society we're discovering that being at our best, being "in the zone" or in the flow is our natural and default state.

One of my greatest strengths is that i'm good at helping people learn to be in and hold the configuration of their "best" state. My thought now is that while every person i can teach this gains something valuable, the greatest value resides in making this state (and human operation in general) available and accessible to the greatest number of people so that we can all begin sharing and improving it together. Towards that end developing the world's first human operating system is one of the most potent ways i can think of to "benefit all humanity."

In all honesty, i've been working on this for a while, but since it's intentions have been reshaped as part of the experiment, it seems to be moving forward a little faster than before. I'll post more on the human operating system soon. In the meantime, here's a little coming soon ad designed by Red James.

Initial Thoughts on Experiment 2.0

2006-04-18T21:16:00.000-04:00

So the question now is, "what does it mean to be conducting this experiment?"

So far it means giving my life to something. Which, in its way, is nothing new.
A long time ago, maybe 15 years now, i gave my life to Love. And i gave myself to Love again and again and again throughout my life. Love was and has always been what came naturally - what wanted me and what i wanted in return. What served me and what i served.

After college it developed into something more specific and i gave my life to a broadcast network i was then developing. (that link won't work on macs. sorry)

At 26, i gave my life to my son. This remains true to this day.

None of these have ended. Each has become part of the other and all of them have brought me to this place and this experiment now.

They have all been empowering and fulfilling beyond measure. And they've made all the difference in my life - transforming the everyday into the everyday miraculous.

And now, it seems that these three things i have already given myself to are urging me forward in this new way. And so, i'm finding out what it means to give myself to a life serving humanity and the world.

So far, it's been a lot like falling in love. The ideas of what it means to serve refine themselves in me like sweet whispers from a lover. More and more my every thought comes back to, "how does this serve the experiment?" And each day, i feel my relationship with this thing weaving into the fabric of my life.

It's a powerful thing, being driven by and pulled down a Single-minded path. It's a powerful thing letting something much greater then the limitations of my ego influence each and every decision. To become transparent to the transcendent. Which is, it seems, the greatest benefit and the greatest change for me that has begun since the experiment began...being present to the greatness that is beyond me, opening myself to its gentle current during as many moments as possible during my days.

Finding out what it means to be...in this new way.

Happy Easter Jesus

2006-04-16T18:19:00.000-04:00

Experiment_2.0

2006-04-13T19:13:00.000-04:00

In 1927 at the age of 32, bankrupt and jobless, living in inferior housing in Chicago, Illinois, a man named Richard Buckminster Fuller watched his young daughter Alexandra die of pneumonia. Feeling responsible he began drinking. On the verge of suicide Fuller made the decision instead to embark upon what he called, "an experiment…to find what a single individual can contribute to changing the world and benefiting all humanity."

Inspired by Fuller and the singular purpose by which he was driven, I am beginning my own copycat experiment in the same vein.

From here forward, this blog will be a record of my experiment. Though I'm not going to keep as rigorous notes of my day-to-day existence as Fuller (he made journal entries every 15 minutes) this will be a log of the things I do in fulfillment and development of my experiment.

Paduan Beginnings

2006-01-30T01:42:00.000-05:00

Here's a post that's gonna' be useful for anyone who's raising children in a way that encourages a sense of stability and confidence...as they move through the world in a well-formed and congruent way...a way where they're not only learning to make good decisions for themselves but how to take their environment and other people into consideration as they do.

It's based on updating and passing along mythologies, containers in which our children can grow themselves and understand and experience the world in a way that makes sense to them and inspires them to achieve greatness. In this case, a modern day Jedi.

Though my paduan in this case is 12, I'm already feeding in the beginnings of this work to my 3 year old and have been since the day he was born. This is a far cry from the random three R's of public education. It's based on my life's work of NeuroLogic as well as the seminal work of Dr. Joseph Riggio and his MythoSelf(r) Process.

Enjoy the post.

For the children.

Devon White

Paduan Nutrition

2006-01-30T01:00:00.001-05:00

Here's a brief audio post about nutrition inspired by my 12 year old Paduan apprentice. It reminds of me of what my good friend Nate used to say. He'd say, my grandfather told me if I were ever in a bad mood I should check three things:

Am I hungry?
Am I thirsty?
Am I tired?

99% of the time I was.
The remedy is simple.

Eat, sleep and get some rest.

Good operating begins with good fuel.
I want everyone to write out a nutritional schedule for every weekday breakfast.
Make them fast, easy and inexpensive. They should take into consideration any dietary needs you have personally. And they should be things you actually want to eat and/or drink.

Here's the audio link: Paduan Nutrition

Worthwhile resources: "The Way to Eat" by David Katz M.D. M.P.H.

The book is great - far too many affirmations that "I'm ok", but the information is excellent and what little exposure I've had to him, the Dr. is a good guy.

More resources to come...

Introducing...

2006-01-20T16:49:00.000-05:00

So here's my first audio podcast. It's rough and a little jilted but it's a beginning. The computer i'm working on kept whirring and screeching every 20 seconds so i had to keep starting over and recording little clips at a time. I kept forgetting what i had already said so i wrote it out because i wanted to sound like i was a robot reading from a script. Awesome.

The music comes from DJ Shadow who's work i highly recommend purchasing. (I think headphones may be in order to enjoy his exquisite beginning although i think taking them off after his music ends will save you the pain of my novice audio engineering mistakes.)

As always credit for mention of the GDS or Generalized Desired State goes to Dr. Joseph Riggio and Roye Frasier with acknowledgement and respect for the totality of the models they have created.

The purpose of this introductory podcast (aside from getting the cobwebs out of my throat) is to begin a community conversation about how we use ourselves and how we are creating the future into which we're living. It's an intro piece (hence the name).

I'll follow this podcast up with some more "how-to" pieces helping us to "build" the common language and strategies inside of ourselves so that we can begin to take advantage of our incredibly powerful brains.

If the future of the human species is to learn to use its brain, this is my way of beginning to introduce the software that will enable us to do exactly that.

Broadcasting the Evolution,

Devon

Assignment Dos

2006-01-12T00:17:00.000-05:00

First of all, keep your list close at hand. This will be something we reference throughout the training.

For assignment dos i want you to go through your list and prioritize the top 5 most important goals and write a brief summary about how they relate to you having and living your perfect life.

The second part of this assignment is this:
Spend some time remembering the great people in your life - your heroes, be they close and personal relations, myths or superstars. Pick four and get into them. Spend some time reading up on them, talking with them, thinking about them - not too much, just enough to get you excited, enough to make you remember what it is that's so great about them and how and why they inspire you.

Now, write up a brief summary about what qualities make them great to you. How do they represent who you already are and/or who you are not yet but would like to become. Post this to your blog.

This is due on Friday. I'll speak with each of you by Friday night.

Remember: enjoy this. These should be people who have inspired the qualities you most value in life. They are in some way very important to your life in that you resonate with them. You'll know you're doing it right if you feel inspired and on track.

p.s. This exercise is not limited to people who have been your heroes in the past. you can pick new ones. The more they inspire you the better. I want at least two of them to be famous.

First Assignment

2006-01-08T23:30:00.000-05:00

Your first assignment is:

Establish your GDS* or default state.
Be able to run it on your own.

Remember the test question for being in state is: like this what's possible?
A: Some variation of, "anything."

Next, in addition to being able to run it, write it out. I want to know how it feels, what it's like, what's remarkable about it, the whole sha-bang. Write out its sequence as well as all other important pieces you want to remember and of which you'd like to keep track. Write this information on your blog with the title, Configuration of my GDS. (Keep your blog private for the moment, we'll talk about why soon.)

Finally, from this state write a list of everything you can think of that you would like in your life. Write down everything, big, little, ridiculous, profound. I want both long term and short term items. Relationships, activities in which you'd like to be engaged, the way your relationships are, stuff you want to have, anything and everything you can think of - have fun with it. Create your ideal world.

The more time you put into doing this, not belaboring the list but enjoying it and making it as inclusive as possible, the better. We're going to be using this list a lot to establish outcomes, track progress, and know what we set out to get and what we're actually getting throughout the training.

* *NOTE: The terms GDS and Generalized Desired State are taken from the MythoSelf(R) Process designed by Dr. Joseph Riggio and is used with permission, acknowledgement and respect of the totality and wholeness of that model.

A Note to Psychonauts

2006-01-05T14:23:00.000-05:00

Please use this forum to ask questions and give feedback on the material presented. If you don't understand something or how something relates to what we're doing, bring it up. We'll be developing other forums for communicating over the next few weeks but for now use what we've got.

Best,

Devon

User Interface Design - Post 1

2006-01-05T13:10:00.000-05:00

Technology and new information often make old things obsolete. A major component of the well-formed functioning human of tomorrow is the human operating system - an idea that will make much of 20th century psychology obsolete. Critical in its development is the art and science of user interface design. This series of posts is a somewhat imaginative and fanciful sketch of the type of thinking that i think people will develop for using our brains. The idea of developing an actual user interface "in your head" will seem weird and unnatural to most people but, i would venture, is a readily achievable thing if taught and modeled to children during age-appropriate stages of neural development.

Once age-appropriate neural stages have passed the ability to develop such interfaces (e.g. a vivid internal hallucinated world such as the memory palaces used by scholars in the dark ages and made popular in the recent Thomas Harris series about Hannibal Lecter) becomes more difficult to develop in a way similar to the way learning a non-native language becomes more difficult after the age of 7.

That said, just as with language, this doesn't bar people who have already passed these stages from designing and developing such an interface, it just raises the price of admission.

Anyway, as far as a User Interface is concerned it's important to understand some basics of neurological information processing.

First of all, all information is only experienced as mediated by the nervous system. The way you take in, integrate, experience and communicate reality is always by way your nervous system. Specifically, you experience reality, both your 'internal' world and the processed version of the extant or external world, through five sensory modalities. These are:

Visual
Auditory
Kinesthetic
Olfactory
Gustatory

and, as i will suggest in future posts, frequentially* via activity of the pre-frontal lobes of the neocortex and their organization of the neural fields generated by the firing patterns and connections of the vast neural complexes of the brain.

* frequency is experienced and represented via the above mentioned five senses, so any discussions about the language of frequency is still using and building upon the earlier senses rather than a suggestion of some 6th sense. Frequential language as i'm proposing it deals with the frequency of information - both how a person organizes information and how they transmit it.

These systems are fundamental channels for all human experience. THEY ARE THE PRIMARY CHANNELS THROUGH WHICH HUMANS CAN COMMUNICATE. In other words, if there are other ways to represent information - we can only talk about them with the language we have. In this way we're like early reptiles which, only aware of an outside world and a present moment, they couldn't conceive of an internal emotional landscape or a future in which they might move to a bigger swamp. Organizing our informational channels for effective and user-friendly use seems like it should be a top priority of all educational systems.

Along with those channels i'm a proponent of people knowing how they work in general, e.g. having an intimate familiarity with themselves and a majority of the systems that make up the whole of their system, from the digestive to the circulatory, the central and peripheral nervous systems and more...

In conceiving of the design and implementation of our own personal human operating system let's begin with the basic standards and protocols of user interface design, a design intended to make the users interaction experience as simple and intuitive as possible. In other words, the focus is on how a person interacts with his or her nervous system and thereby how they "interface" and interact with the world.

Much of the following is excerpted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_Interface_Design

There are several phases in the user interface design process. We're covering these topics as they relate to designing and installing our own human operating systems. (Note, if you're actually trying this model on then treat it not as a theoretical model - as you proceed, try on each piece of the HOS and play with your user interface.) The more you try it on, the better it'll be.

Step 1: Indentify and define the purpose and function of the system: This is the organizing priniciple of the entire system. In other words, what are you for?

Alright, that's it for now. I'll get further into this soon. In addition to expanding on the above idea, some of the other pieces we'll address on UID include:

* Functionality requirements gathering - assembling a list of the functionality required of the system to accomplish the goals of the project and the potential needs of the users.

*User analysis -

o What would the user want the system to do?
o How would the system fit in with the users normal workflow or daily activities?
o How technically savvy is the user and what similar systems does the user already use?
o What interface look & feel styles appeal to the user?

*Information architecture - development of the process and/or information flow of the system (i.e. for phone tree systems, this would be a option tree flowchart and for web sites this would be a site flow that shows the hierarchy of the pages).

*Prototyping - development of a wireframes, either in the form of paper prototypes or simple interactive screens. These prototypes are stripped of all look & feel elements and most content in order to concentrate on the interface.

*Usability testing - testing of the prototypes on an actual user—often using a technique called talk aloud protocol where you ask the user to talk about their thoughts during the experience.

*Graphic Interface design - actual look & feel design of the final graphical user interface (GUI) based on the findings developed during the usability testing. This last phase is often handled separately by a graphic designer who also has knowledge in user interface design. However, some user interface designers are also proficient graphic designers.

The Human Operating System - Part II

2006-01-05T01:08:00.000-05:00

Today: Get to know a little about where operating systems come from - computer operating systems are the latest and greatest models for using our own nervous systems and they're the foundation for our personal human operating systems.

Here are the pieces most relevant to this conversation:

(Quoted from Wikipedia)
"In computing, an operating system (aka, OS) is the system software responsible for the direct control and management of hardware and basic system operations. Additionally, it provides a foundation upon which to run application software such as word processing programs, web browsers and others."

In humans, a human operating system (aka, HOS) is the system software responsible for direct control and management of hardware and basic system operations. In the case of humans, the software responsible for control and management functions is also hardware, i.e. the central nervous system.

The HOS runs all the functions of life, keeping your heart beating, your lungs breathing, and millions of other functions we rely on daily to live. It coordinates and runs both voluntary and involuntary processes. It runs all processes whether we're aware of them or not.

The use of the HOS model is that it gives us an effective way of understanding, tracking, organizing, and directing all of our behaviors be they voluntary or involuntary. It also provides universal systems to communicate and program our nervous systems and experiences of the world. Like its computer counterparts, it offers the opportunity to community-develop more effective systems of information processing and all the benefits that come along with that.