THE TITLE

Development of Experiential Learning Simulations in Applied Philosophical Remix and Cyber-Shamanism

ABSTRACT THE FOLLOWING is an attempt in exposition to systematize a history of U.S. America in terms of consciousness and technology and to discuss its implications in simulated reality technologies. Then, having garnered guidance from experiential learning cultures, the exposition will investigate current uses for these designs within participatory and experiential learning. Lastly the exposition will expound on derivative ideas from aforementioned sources for experimental experiential learning simulations. BIO William Halibut is a poetic-experience designer and multi-modal curator from Worcester, MA who creates experiential poetry. His work is created in co-operation with building engineer Wendall Carefare under the honorific howlAB, how life art to be. The artist states that humancomputer interaction has become useful for exploring the non-traditional art mediums, such as experiential poetry.

Given that user experience design is instrumental for computer-mediated social interactions of any kind, there is a natural call for ethical, mytho-poetic and philosophically considerate design of technologies and simulations. In order for the technologies to be used ethically, we must consider their context in our culture and daily lives and ask ourselves some questions.

How can we curb our appetite for diminishing resources? Is there appropriate distribution of foundational technology among American citizens to facilitate egalitarian social opportunities? Are there strategies of learning which can equip all of us for the centurys new challenges, (such as overpopulation or lack of mentorship)?

Development of Experiential Learning Simulations in Applied Philosophical Remix and Cyber-Shamanism

A division of howLAB theory and research William Halibut, thb.

CH0

Introduction
THE FOLLOWING is an attempt in exposition to systematize a history of U.S. America in

terms of consciousness and technology and to discuss its implications in virtual reality technology. Then, taking lessons from experiential learning cultures, the exposition will investigate redefinitions of current uses for these technologies with participatory and experiential learning, and lastly it will expound on derivative ideas for experiential learning simulations.

Some subjective definitions will help the casual reader fit more comfortably into the pants of this exposition. Experiential Learning Simulations, Applied Philosophical Remix, and Cybershamanism are all terms up for extensive variability of interpretation. First experiential learning is the process of making meaning from direct experience. A simulation is an imitation of some real thing, a state of affairs or a process. An experiential learning simulation interfaces human-computer interaction, by providing an imitation of direct experience. Second applied philosophy is the expression of ones philosophy by ones actions under the employ of ones will. Applied philosophical remix is piecing together multiple philosophical models to craft a personally-chosen belief system. Applied philosophical remix is the subject of experiential learning in this exposition. Finally, cybershamanism is the application of applied remixed philosophy in experiential teaching; in other words, it uses random belief as a pedagogical tool.

Q1

A Brief History of Consciousness and Technology.

A history of manipulation in American consumer culture with perspectives from original colonization, Manifest Destiny and technological-scientific Divinity, propagandic technology and 1960s protest, and the sci-tech-military-industrial-political infrastructure.

Humans interfaces with tools have coevolved for around 2.5 million years. From bones to crafted axes and artisanal scrapers and boring tools to touch-screen mobile computers and can openers and cans, humans existences have relied on this relationship. Semiologial (signs & symbols) human communication is fated around 100,000 years ago and spoken language around 60,000 years. Amazingly the humans on Earth at this moment, 2011 AD, are anatomically indistinguishable from those same humans of 60, 000 years ago. If at birth, one of those ancestors were placed in a family of our society, he would likely have the same chance for survival as any of us. This is important to keep in mind, now considering that our history and traditions, our tools and speech and cultural instances are all that our populations evolution is now based upon. We as a species make the moral choices, which before were handled by simpler resources competition and environmental adaptation plasticity. It is interesting then to pursue a particular specie-al line of cultural divergence: the settling and cultural development of America. Considering this divergence, how have our mythology and consciousness changed along with our technologies or tools? First to investigate is the original colonists and early colonials technology and mindset; Second are the first instances of industrial technology and scientific divinity in the nineteenth century; Third is an investigation of Fords Model T, WWII, the militaryindustrial complex and how America arrived at its current consumer capitalist structure;

Fourth is a view into the beginnings of computer technology and mass communication in television viewed through the 1960s counter-cultural protest movements. I will attempt to dissect this morass of historical obfuscation not strictly with scholarly papers but also with artistic analyses; as Ezra Pound said, Artists are the antennae of the race.

Before the Revolution, the American colonists had won on international reputation as preeminent inventors and users of mechanical devices. Their material situation had contributed to a need for innovation in the practical arts. Labor was scarce, resources were abundant and a vast continent invited development, (Leo Marx, p 49). The forerunners of capitalism, the Protestants came to the pursuit of those resources with unexampled puritanical zeal, (Leo Marx, p 49). (Adams, 1900) A distinction between these capitalists and those of now, these businessmen were strong participants in their communities. They formed commons and town halls to deal with all the troubles of living in unfamiliar territory. Ben Franklin, an early citizen of the colonies in Boston and Philadelphia believed, That as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an Opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours, and this we should do freely and generously, (Franklin, 1793). Benjamin Franklin was well known in the colonies for his inventions that he shared freely such as distributing plans for his Dutch Oven, founding the first lending library in America, the fire brigade, spectacles and more. He was also a successful businessman in the printing business. He toiled for much of his young life to eke a living from it, and eventually could contribute freely to society and he did so judiciously, becoming a Continental Congress representative and holding many political positions elected nearly against his will (according to him).

The other side of this technological affinity was the beginning of separation of the colony from the Old Worlds traditions of mythology and monotheistic consciousness. Quoting from The Education of Henry Adams (1900), The force of The Virgin was still felt at Lourdes, and seemed to be as potent as X-rays; but in America neither Venus nor Virgin ever had value as a force at most as sentiment, (Adams, 1900). When the Puritans migrated to America, they took with them a religious zeal. They had protested the Church of England, many had migrated to the Netherlands to escape it, and then secured a charter to colonize the Americas to practice religious freedom. They had a strict view of the Bible, finding sex to be shameful and insisting on many austerities. The Woman had once been supreme; in France she still seemed potent, not merely as a sentiment but as a force. Why was she unknown in America? For evidently America was ashamed of her, and she was ashamed of herself, otherwise they would not have strewn fig-leaves so profusely all over her, (Adams, 1900). Calvinistic Puritanical practice could be described as a rickety bridge over hell-fire and eternal torture in the escalators between the seven levels of purgatory. These colonists societal shame about sex as taboo, denied the power of natural human conception and primitivism and that hot command of the woman over reproduction. All the artists had used sex for sentiment, never for force; to them, Eve was a tender flower, and Herodias an unfeminine horror. Society regarded this victory over sex as its greatest triumph, (Adams, 1900). The absence of reverence for Old World religious ideals like the divinty of women became the basis for the aetheistic or nihilistic consciousness of new generations. Coupled with the unexploited bounty of the land and Manifest Destinys pioneer spirit of entitlement, this paved the way for a scientific/technological secularism to take hold. This also colored the future with prolific innovation in technology and a strong sense of

individuality among the community of peers (anyone that owned land was considered a goodman).

The first instances of industrial technology and scientific divinity in American surfaced in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Manifest Destiny ignited the colonies adventuresome spirit like a starting gun in a high-school track meet. One idea was that the Republic had been providentially singled out among all the Nations as in the cult of Manifest Destiny to exemplify the progress of mankind, (Leo Marx, pg 51). And as this consumed the consciousness of American colonists in the early 19 th century, many new inventions were created to facilitate this expansion. Walt Whitman commented on the powerful locomotives careening through the landscape, The machine was the Type of the modern emblem of motion and power pulse of the continent, (To a Locomotive in Winter, Leaves of Grass), The story told by such images was that mankind, having seized the hidden laws of nature was assured henceforth of the steady expansion of knowledge and power in every realm of experience material intellectual and moral (Or spiritual), (Leo Marx, p 51). In the Education of Henry Adams (1900), Chapter 25, The Dynamo and the Virgin, Adams attends the 1900s Worlds Fair and recounts his perceptions of the industrial inventions displayed there. Adams was born in 1838. His book won the 1919 Pulitzer Prize after his death in 1918. To Adams, the dynamo became a symbol of infinity. As he grew accustomed to the great gallery of machines, he bagan to feel the forty-foot dynamos as a moral force, much as early Christians felt the Cross. The planeti itself seemed less impressive, in its old-fashioned, deliberate, annual or daily revolution, than this huge wheel, revolving within an arms length at some vertiginous speed, and barely murmuring scarcely humming an audible warning to stand a hairs-breadth

further for respect of power...Before the end, one began to pray to it; inherited instinct taught the natural expression of man before silent and infinite force, (Adams, 1900). The infinite power Adams described, for him, replaced the awe and aura of the meager education he had in monotheistic Catholic religion. It seemed to him that technologys blind will to outdo nature, became an overwhelming moral force for many people who did not comprehend how it was assembled, and as well scientists and technologists of older traditions. A man named Langley seems to have discovered a doubled solar spectrum but was astounded by X-rays, as if Radium denied its God or, what was to Langley the same thing, denied the truths of his Science (Adams, the Dynamo and the Virgin). After once admitting that a straight line was the shortest distance between two points, no serious mathematician cared to deny anything that suited his convenience, and rejected no symbol, unproved or improvable, that helped him to accomplish his work, (Adams, The Dynamo and the Virgin). The of this new way of consciousness was undeniably real, and so what could one do but accept it? This sort of submission tastes of the fear that inspires belief by imperious appearance. In other words, the prowess of the scientist baffled Adams, who could not comprehend his discrete knowledge. Scientific or mathematical knowledge, those ciphers of competence, put in a position of priesthood their technicians, those ministers for the Infinite Power of mechanical technology in a society that valued their destiny (this will do it for us). Scientific divinity is a bit of an elusive concept, being that we are in the midst of general acceptance of the scientific view of consciousness. It contains the radical and positive notions that the universe can be understood and manipulated by careful observation of the behavior of material things (Carroll, XXXX). There are the beginnings of questioning by science about the validity of basing truth from the warrant,

or assumption that we live in a universe that we can perceive. Especially in the science of psychology and theoretical quantum physics, there is thought in the idea that atheistic belief in science is but another set of beliefs like Christianity or Polytheism. Quantum physics seems confusing because we think we didnt invent the previous ideas of physics. When you remember that we invented all the lines and boundaries, any description of the universe that leaves you out is inaccurate because any description of the universe is a description of the instrument that you used to take your reading of the universe. Ergo, any model we make of the universe does not describe the universe, it describes what our brains are capable of saying at this time, (Wilson). Just as these belief systems have their dogmatic and skeptical adherents, so does scientific belief and scientific divinity reflects the idea that some accept scientific theory as facts and not merely rigorous temporal guesses. This is supported by the submissive feelings that Adams described; how can one have skepticism for knowledge of theory or a belief system that he doesnt truly understand, but perceives as the only avenue of truth? Submission to an infinite and incomprehensible cosmic horror made a literary name for H.P. Lovecraft. A provoking illustration of Lovecrafts poetry of the imponderable is embodied in the character of Nyarlathotep. Into the lands of civilization came Nyarlathotep, swarthy, slender and sinister, always buying strange instruments of glass and metal and combining them into instruments yet stranger. He spoke much of sciencesof electricity and psychologyand gave exhibitions of power which sent his spectators away speechless, yet which swelled his fame to exceeding magnitude. Men advised one another to see Nyarlathotep, and shuddered. And where he went, rest vanished; for the small hours were rent with the screams of a nightmare, (Lovecraft). His character is supposed to be related to the 19th century scientist Nikola Tesla. It is no accident that Lovecraft makes the harbinger of doom of humanity a figure of science, almost a smiling front man demonstrating the exciting advances that will bring us a new

future in the world of tomorrow. Here is the super-nova of blinding, scorching light of knowledge that will send us, screaming, back into the comforting darkness of a new medievalism. Will Murray, who wrote Behind the Mask of Nyarlathotep has advanced the hypothesis that Lovecrafts dream image of Nyarlathotep was influenced by reports of the public demonstrations of Nikola Tesla, whose inventions were astonishing enough, but who wild claims surpassed them. He seemed a dubious, even sinister, figure to some at the time, with his electrical tricks and marvels, jocosely revealed with the legerdemain of a modern Simon Magus on public stages across the country. He even boasted of a device that could crack the very earth asunder, (Price, 2006). Another prominent example is Mark Twains wrangle with the steamboat in Huckleberry Finn, illustrated in American Literary Culture and the Fatalistic View of Technology by Leo Marx. Mark Twain, or Samuel Clemens, had long hoped that industrial science would be an influence with humane benefits. In his older age he grew very skeptical and fatalistic about that possibility. Clemens had invested his darkening view of American society in the image of the machine as a destroyer. In the steamboat scene of Huckleberry Finn, Clemens deliberated for some time in indecision about whether that noxious goliath of the river would smash Tom and Nigger Jims raft, effectively ending the adventure and ending the vestiges of the ideals of Clemenss American youth. In the end he decided against it. THE idea of scientific divinity is born of immense cosmic might. It not to say it is universally abused or that the holders of this knowledge are furtive or deceptive. Of course many well-meaning and rigorous practitioners of skepticism and imagination employ science and technology in our age as well. However, the reader should not soon forget that it is also typically reserved to the schools of advanced study and so its cipher lies in the hands of the few, despite wide efforts to put it in the hands of the hoi polloi.

The opening of the twentieth century, and on until 1961, may lead one to consider a few topics, as they concern interfacing of human consciousness and human technology. Fords Model T and its marketing, World War II and its propagandas influence on consumer culture as well as its influence on politics, industry and the military are important examples of American cultural trends and demonstrate the origins of Jobs perspective on design. A poignant example of the relationship between people and products in America is illustrated by the reign of the Model-T automobile in the 1920s. Throughout the 19 years it was manufactured, its design remained unchanged, except for one thing: Every year, it was cheaper than the year before. From the perspective of Model T users, it was a great vehicle: reliable, predictable, and inexpensive. However, by the mid-1920s, it was not selling well relative to many of its competitors, and Ford discontinued it in 1927 (Michigan History, <http://www.detnews.com>). The reason it didnt sell well was because Fords competitors were competing by designing their styles differently from Fords. Because he had originally produced them to be efficient and to lower their price to make them available to many more people, other companies could step in by changing their tactics. When Ford stopped Model-T production, the company came out with the Model-A in four colors and hence remained competitive. In WWII, mass tactics for motivation were employed to mobilize the countries resources for total war. Many new technologies were researchedparticularly notable were assembly lines for weapon manufacture, food preservation techniques for the armed forces, mass communication techniques and many others. War bonds were advertised as a social imperative asking citizens to contribute what they could to the war

effort. Branding techniques arose from the mass advertising and social programs so that by the end of the war, they were highly refined to produce action. In the post-war atmosphere, advertising agencies were created (popularly illustrated these days by Mad Men on AMC) that worked closely with mass communication providers were instrumental in creating the 1950s consumerist culture. When men came home from the war, vast Levitt-towns were built as suburbs and industry ran with the methods refined during the necessities of total resource efficiency. [I need citation for all this information.] In his farewell address in1961, President Dwight D Eisenhower warned against what he called the military-industrial complex that was the engine of the countrys war machine. His speech strongly emphasizes against the very tenants that drive our scientific technological industries and shape our consciousness today. Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United State corporations. This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence-economic, political, even spiritual-is felt in every city, every state house, every office of the Federal government. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together. Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrialmilitary posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades. In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government. Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been over shadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers. The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded. Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.

It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system-ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.

America's leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment. (Eisenhower, 1961). Eisenhowers warnings were to portent many of the events that occurred after his presidency, starting with the 1960s protest movement. In the 1960s, mass media was a burgeoning industry, computer technology was on the rise in high-tech corporate world, the Civil Rights movement began, lasers were invented, the Vietnam War began, Mao Zedong launched his Cultural Revolution, the Cold War was heating up, ARPANET appeared in 1969, the Berlin Wall was built, and Japans bullet train was first introduced. The 1960s Civil Rights movement, Vietnam War Protests marked an important even and fostered a widespread dissemination of the fatalistic view of technology, (Marx, 1980). In 1964, Mario Savio helped launch a mass sit-in of students, faculty and others and urged them, saying, There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you sick at heart, that you cant take part; you cant even tacitly take part, and youve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus and youve got to make it stop. And youve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless youre free, the machine will be prevented from working at all (Savio, 1965). This was a meeting about a conflict between the Free Speech movement and the Berkeley California administration president; the year prior, its president proposed, a

technocratic multiversity, stressing a close affiliation with large industrial corporations and the government (Marx, 1980), which embodies the dangers noted by Eisenhower quite directly. Ginsberg said that the 1960s counterculture movement paralleled beat poetry in its, return to nature and the revolt against the machine (Ginsberg, 1971). The counterculture, the idea of technology is illustrated by its efficacy in authoritative domination and oppression in the United States. Only around 60% of Americans have regular access to the technology and around 30% of the world population has access to it. By taking drugs and practicing rigorous spiritual discipline, one could drop out of this corporate-techno-scientific-military-industrial-complex. Protesters felt they could, cut through the layers of conformed consciousness to the authentic, natural and real existence underneath (Marx, 1980). One problem with this was that the bourgeoisie white folks, whom wanted this, did not make enough effort to entice minority militants or laborer unions to join. The extravagance of the green movement was revealed by how simply it was dispelled by the military draft of 1972 (Marx, 1980). After this, the multiversity system held its power and strengthened. The progression into this era is well illustrated by the film Tommy by The Who. It follows a blind, deaf and dumb boy damaged by the death of his father in WWII. His step-dad tries all manner of things to repair Tommy so he would no longer be disabled or feel depressed and so he sets him up with a hit or three of LSD. He afterwards discovers his talent in playing pinballhe plays by sense of smellwhich is a clever metaphor for his learning to express himself by playing guitar. Tommy gains a huge following and like a rock star, attracts a huge crowd. So, Tommys mother and father begin to merchandise his message. Tommy wants everyone to be let in, not just those with money. But in the interests of his family, he shrugs it off and tries to lead these people down to the same

experience of changing consciousness that he went through, starting with blind pinball playing (a clever metaphor for the casting of belief in ones abilities and learning to sense without the egoism of sensation). However, the crowds start breaking his machines and the mob murders his parents. So it goes. This is a metaphor for the folly of trying to persuade many people into something, especially with capitalistic intentions. Tommy is also a good metaphor for the way the counterculture failed to spread its message. That is, it used the same channels of communication that its adversaries used and distorted its message. This important lesson from Tommy is explained by Umberto Eco in his paper, Towards a Semiological Guerilla Warfare (1967). He suggests that no matter what one tries to change in the message of one-way mass media like radio and television, that message intended by the source undergoes noise and re-contextualization. In other words the meaning received at the other end of a transmission is ambiguous. The medium does not transmit ideologies: It itself is an ideology; television is the form of communication that takes on the ideology of advanced industrial society, (Eco, 1967). Eco suggests that people ought to take back power of communication one-by-one. Guerrilla warfare is asking people to discuss the messages theyre receiving and to reverse these messages or to investigate multiple interpretations of them. Like in reading poetry take the things that they are fed everyday and consciously make them harder to digest through dialogue and self-monitoring. This is counsel to use personal and intimate means of restoring agency to people because programs harden into structures and hopeful directions become demanding grooves. These are high prices for the benefits, of a large, centrally organized society (Marx, 1980).

This long history has culminated in this new century, our age, with the advent of computational systems. Network technology, in the form of the Internet, spread out to millions of people. It is interesting then to pursue a particular specie-al line of cultural divergence: the settling and cultural development of America. Considering this divergence, how has our consciousnesses changed along with our history and development of technological tools? The original colonists and early colonials technology and mindset were focused on freedom of religion and action, profit and capitalism and their inventions were shared freely and widely. Second are the first instances of industrial technology and scientific divinity in the nineteenth century, the Industrial Revolution took over and people moved to cities and away from pastoral and religious consciousness. Third, America survived total war and founded a military-industrial complex with mass propaganda and made vast profits from arms dealing. Fourth is a view into the beginnings of mass communication and consumer culture that inspired 1960s counter-cultural protest movements. The split of consciousness after these protests detached democracy from the common people and enthroned the wielders of the military-industrial complex, whom began to form a communication-technological-political infrastructure. As Ezra Pound said, Artists are the antennae of the race.

The craftiest online businesspeople have come to realize that...Both horizontal and vertical businesses face competition from their peers in an increasingly commoditized landscape. Its almost impossible to establish a foothold that cant get undercut by a tiny shift in the price of one component. So instead of going into business, these players become search engines, portals, or aggregators, rising one level above all those competing businesses and skimming profit off the top (Rushkoff, 2011). The abstraction inherent to the digital universe makes us rely more heavily on familiar brands and trusted authorities to gain our bearings. Like tourists in a foreign city sighing in relief at the sight of a Starbucks or American Express sign, users tend to depend more on centrally defined themes and instantly recognizable brands. They are like signposts, even for the young people we consider digital natives, who turn out to be even more reliant on brand names and accepted standards for understanding and orientation than are their digital immigrant counterparts. Activism means finding a website, joining a movement, or liking a cause all of which exist on a plane above and beyond their human members. Learning, orienting and belonging online depend on universally accepted symbols or generically accessible institutions (Rushkoff, 2011).

Q2

Program or Be Programmed: Procedural Rhetoric.

As colleges all over American become flooded with students, the traditional intimacy of higher education is lost. Some universities have become, or were always, a job-training pipeline. Some appear to be businesses, supplying other businesses with human products: component parts for product-machines. How can an education teach people to fish, rather than teach them how to buy hooks? In this atmosphere, perhaps experiential learning simulations are a useful path, whereby people might teach themselves with the aid of virtual mentorship.

In the Ambiguity of Play, Sutton-Smith discusses play between animals and children. When baby tigers play together, they nip and wrestle each other, learning to hunt through conceit. A nip is like a computer simulation, because it is a conceit of real or imagined situations. The nip is practice for the reality of hunting: biting and ripping. So the cubs apply this nipping play to the activity of bite-filled hunting. Therefore, a nip in play is a type of learning. Simulations are playful, they are safe versions of reality; computer programs allow us to create different play scenarios. Experience gained in the simulated learning teaches one certain thought patterns, communication methods and certain states of mind, or consciousness, which the learner can apply to similar real-life situations or in other capacities. For example, one could learn to communicate with others through instant messaging clients like Aol IM or Skype. These host a safe environment of communication because one cannot see the others reaction to the words and it is much easier to keep ones own state of mind without reacting to so many social cues. Therefore a very playful communicator could learn through the conceit of simulated

conversation, and apply this style of playful communication in face-to-face communication. Rushkoffs Program or Be Programmed hosts commandments for balance in simulated and direct living. Because simulation is a learning tool applied to direct living, Rushkoff supposes that we ought to understand what exactly were simulating and why. What do we pass on to posterity through the simulations that we use? Rushkoff introduces human language acquisition [speaking and listening] and literacy [reading and writing] as a comparison to the advance of computer technology into virtual reality simulations. He equates this advance with the acquisition of using computer programs and coding them to simulate systems of reality or to simulate nonordinary systems of reality. This conception correlates with Bogosts ideas of procedural rhetoric: the practice of persuading through processes in general and computational systems particularly, (Bogost). I shall define computational systems as simulated systems of reality/non-ordinary reality. For example, a virtual reality simulation could simulate the ingestion of hallucinogenic mescaline from the San Pedro cactus. One could persuade for legalization of such hallucinogen through a simulation system, which could give the user only useful philosophical or experiential feedback. Or one could persuade against the same hallucinogen through a simulation, which would give the user a detrimental or negative, or disorienting or benignly confusing experiential or philosophical feedback. Procedural rhetoric here consists of persuasive and simulated systems of reality or non-ordinary reality. They represent an acquisition of the consciousness of human beings,- one that may characterize the future for those that are in control of it and those who are controlled by its implications. Rushkoff warns that, The refusal to adopt a new style of engagement with computational systems dooms us to a behavior and

psychology that is increasingly vulnerable to the biases and agendas of our networks (p17, Rushkoff). Rushkoff posits that access to programming might be as widespread as the present rate of literacy, or at the present level of access to computer technology, but admits that it is only an ideal supposition that such a large body of people would be able or willing to learn programming, as it relies on the ubiquitous education of people in a often-obscure set of languages. But he says, Failing to be aware and capable of managing access to new technology could mean relinquishing our collective agency to the programs or machine-tools authored by a few (p20, Rushkoff). Additionally, Rushkoff suggests that, instead of marveling at a person or group, whove gained the ability to communicate well in a new way, we tend to marvel at the tools through which this is all happening (p20, Rushkoff). In terms of procedural rhetoric, these tools are the embodiment of the philosophies of those groups who create them. Historically, it is not unusual that leaders exist in a group of humans. Many myths and societies are structured to support leadership, from Queen Maya and Buddha to the Greek Gods, American presidents, and leaders in the sciences such as Benjamin Franklin or Nikola Tesla, to Steve Jobs. It is in our nature it seems to organize ourselves this way. Perhaps this can change, however even in small groups of humans it seems it is the norm for different people to assume different roles, from native Americans to prepolytheistic shamanic societies. Lao Tsu in the Tao Te Ching suggests that people in a position of power, or leaders, might assume a more Universalist philosophy: relinquish egoism and to rule by identification will all hys people, and the environmental ecosystems they exist within. This is a model for a more non-exploitative style of rule, using powerful empathy and facilitation of the groups interests.

Laniers discussion of tribal ascension, which is the notion that in the design of the internet and technology that some designs are more influential than others and that these designers benefit most from the system that they design. Where one or a few people control the interpretation of information for many people, a danger is posed when these people are not skeptical of what theyre told, and interpret it to condone some actions or policies. For example, when the developer cares more about the abstraction of his design of a network, he disregards the people providing the network. If you think your design is perfect and gives people exactly what they need, heedless of opposing ideas, or absent of them, then you can easily disregard human beings, people in the pursuit of ideal procedural design. Through no real fault of their own, but by inertia, the current leaders have crafted structures beneath them as automated money-generators, using human fuels. We [technology optimists] are drawn into obsession over the disconnected possibilities of technology, serving as little more than an equal an opposite force in techno-libertarians celebrating the [pseudo-]Darwinian wisdom of hive economics (p24, Rushkoff). Meanwhile were all trying to keep up with a relentless outpouring of new technologies and the swift deaths of older devices. Aggregators and hybrid advertising simulations occupy the main portals to the rest of computer content, and so forms the superstructure of this type of persuasion. We feel proud that were willing to do or spend whatever it takes to user [technology] with little regard to how it actually impacts our lives. As a result, instead of optimizing machines for humanity, we are optimizing humans for machinery (p21, Rushkoff). In shining example of optimization of humans for machinery, products these days seem designed to manipulate folks and to create needs. There are many options, many

choices available to people these days to fit the demand for diversity. However, there never seems to be the option not to choose these technologies. Choice is less about giving people what they want than getting them to take what there is (Rushkoff). In the days of traditional industrial manufacturing (roughly before1970), end users of a product may have only had one interaction with an organization: the store from which they bought it, which may have also provided support and repair services. Packaged software included three or more: the store that sold the hardware, the store that sold the software, and the providers of technical support. With the introduction of web-based software interactions, the number of organizations increased, with the addition of an ISP and website provider. Modern mobile phone based applications may involve even more: a handset manufacturer, an operating system developer, a network provider, an application developer, and a content provider. All of these organizations contribute to the end-user experience, often without a lot of coordination between them (925, Kuniavsky). Some design campaigns are based around creating a demand for a supply of a product that a company has already produced. These use the tactics of propaganda to influence peoples feelings and reactions to buy products swiftly. When the avalanche of people buying a certain product like iPhones, it creates a cascade where the imperative to buy becomes a social imperative or status imperative rather than a functional one. This manipulation or crafting of feelings, thoughts, beliefs, needs and wants is supported by an iterative cycle of design, redesign and testing. This comment by Steve Jobs well illustrates the philosophical attitude of manipulative or one-sided design, Its really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people dont know what they want until you show it to them (Business Week, May 1998). To illustrate the extents of manipulation in contemporary product design, I will draw from the industry standard, The Human-Computer Interaction Handbook. Article

46 in this compendium is on user experience and human computer interaction. It was authored by Mike Kuniavsky of the ThingM Corporation. To control a users affect (what the organism feels), motivation (what the organism needs and wants), cognition (what the organism thinks, feels and believes), and behavior (what the organism does), companies must use different tactics of experience evaluation to craft certain responses from customers. Product designers test for perceived usefulness of a product, or its ease of use. They vouchsafe to satisfy levels of Maslows Hierarchy of Needs: self-actualization, esteem, belonging, safety, physiological. Instrumental in successful marketing is the qualification that, the products perceived potential for changing the users life and how well it satisfies this potential (Kuniavsky, 2008), is well crafted or illustrated to be so crafted. Using psychological and procedural rhetoric, it seems a company could design products to create reasons for an action. When companies brand their products, they can create expectations of value for all of their products, to which the consumer responds based on that products perceived usefulness. Tactics used in World War II to influence peoples activity are ancestors of these strategies. In order to convince the person that they had a lack, the advertising pronounces that the particular consumer would be X if they bought Z product or signed up for Y web service. If a company has a good way of presenting their companys reason for making a product, people can quickly identify with what they say. It is no matter how true it is to the actual reason the product is being produced. People often buy into what you tell them about yourself. Typically the prime focus of HCI development is geared towards is making the processes of billing, sales, account management, marketing, and customer service easier and faster (Kuniavsky, 2008).

This as the focus of simulation is troublesome because it emphasizes the cultural importance of these activities in the fabric of our society. There is a real chance that evolutionary psychology, artificial intelligence, and Moores Law fetishism will catch on in a big way, just as Freud or Marx did in their times. Or bigger, since these ideas might end up essentially built into the software that runs our society and lives, (Lanier, 2008). In response to the trend of one-sided design, Lanier warns that the ideology of some network-architects and technology innovators could be infused with a dogmatic cybernetic totalism. Cybernetic totalism involves a few ideas. First the absence of important skepticism about ones own thought structures. Second, computer science is tangled with inaccurate ideas about biological evolution, extrapolated to assume that human thought can be patterned accurately with computers. Lanier also proposes its relationship to collective intelligence and the dissolution of complex ideas owned by intelligent individual intelligences into a collective and dissociated intelligence. Lanier discusses his observation that technology persuades people by existing in a certain way and operating on the mind in a particular fashion. Lanier uses cybernetic totalism as a warning against dogmatic design philosophy in computer technology. He suggests that users and developers should be designing together or the latter is imposing their philosophies on the former in a controlling manner. He says that we should preserve all alternatives in thinking, so that our history and interfaces do not conform us to one perspective. He wishes that designers would allow for maximum flexibility in their designs. For example, a program should indeed be designed to complete a certain task, but everything that is not necessary to the goal of the program be up to the user to decide. He has rooted these ideas in the soil of scientific skepticism; he says that a users expectations conform to

the philosophy of design and that their minds may conform without complaint to even a restricting design. He says that if a designer or developer thinks of humans as computer patterns, then he will indeed design for computers and not actual people. Rushkoff argues that we need to Rely on purposes and values as powerful as those leaders tools of philosophy and logic (p21 Rushkoff). But where does ones body end and his tools begin? One idea is that the line is drawn just where one accepts certain constraints; this can be determined by ones choice of programs or choice of program parameters or by ones own hand if one learns to program. One crucial deception of procedural rhetoric is that one cannot know what hy is asking of a tool unless hy understand how this tool was programmed. For example, when one uses Google, how can one know how that program denotes relevance in the results? How does the program decide what to display? Freedom means freedom to choose how and with whom one views ones own reflection (p24, Rushkoff). In ubiquitous programs, such as Facebook, ones default action is instant sharing and transient, short messaging. This deemphasizes certain communication, like historically-threaded, deep or focused conversation. While of course a user can discover his own way of using the tools, Guns are a technology more biased towards killing than say, clock radios (p24, Rushkoff). And with a network technology biased towards certain forms, it is perhaps useful to investigate the biases of its procedural rhetorics. Teaching and knowledge transfer in distributed knowledge systems, like network computing systems, seem to fit well into Rushkoffs discussion of programming and learning agency in communication. According to Gee, gamers learn socially with an internet communitys distributed knowledgethey can look up cheats, learn how to

hack programs, speak with people of various backgrounds, and build an education through exploratory agency. The learner in a game community also feels like an information insider and therefore leads hys own teaching and production using available resources. From Bogost: Play is the free space of movement within a rigid structure (Bogost), and Interactivity I define in terms of conversation: a cyclic process whereby actors alternatives or competingly think, listen, and speak. Interaction quality depends on all three (Bogost). Play in learning seems an important asset of computer systems technologies. Leisure systems, like open source forums, are created with interactivity and play in mind. Forum based play relies on rhetoric and argument in a community setting. This interaction is a simulation of conversation in a Roman forum where people can discuss the span of non-ordinary and ordinary realities. There is much learning and teaching, playing in argument and words. Play is liminoid, it occupies an ambiguous threshold between reality and unreality, as a casting stage for real life will, or action. When a procedural rhetoric does not involve play, it is not conducive to experiential learning transfer in reality. When it is geared to avoid dogmatic or destructive philosophy, it can produce critical thinking and variable interactivity, as well as a larger ranger of potential realities. The use of programs might focus on some crucial issues discussed by Rushkoff. 1. Do not always be online. Computer simulations do not exist in time, but humans do. Allow for more thoughtful, intentional use. 2. Live in person. Use computer simulations as tools for functions: long distance communication, anonymous/random communication with various people, learning and gaming. Move away from replacing intimate/local life with simulation.

3. You can choose not to choose. Computer simulations require choices be made to work. This leaves out things we dont notice or record and forces choice where choice is irrelevant. Can we choose not to choose? Approximations arent reality. Choice is less about giving people what they want than getting them to take what there is. 4. You cant be completely right. Simulations can oversimplify complex problems. Bias against contradiction and compromise. Tend to polarize and generalize. Treat simulations as models rather than accurate depictions. 5. One size dont fit all. People, ideas and businesses that dont function as abstractions are at a disadvantage. Preserve local and particular activities. 6. Be yourself. Connect your responsibility to your experiences in simulations, because it still represents you. 7. Dont sell your friends. Digital media is biased toward contact with others, dont connect with people for their content or cash but for interactions sake. 8. Tell the truth. Its a bazaar. 9. Share dont steal. Separate openness of ideas and collaboration from taking advantage; if you like media, buy it directly from who you find responsible for it. 10. Program or be Programmed. Understand what the different tools are designed to do, and keep them in mind when you use them, or the tool will be using you. Programming and usability leaders might be reminded that these issues in procedural rhetoric are weighty and to respect the gravity of persuasive systems that can be ambiguous and deceptive or rigid and constraining. We might keep in mind playfulness and humor in our designs, not consider ourselves gods, favor facilitation and distributed learning and teaching as models so that we are not left teetering

between our desires and fears, but in control of our agency and not fatally confused by our resulting infrastructure (we thought it was gonna make us more free and equal and conscientious and most of all, aware!)

There are some contemporary designs which can be locked in and perhaps be intractable. One is anti anonymity, that only people who know each other in real life should speak online. Two is anti individuation, that there should be a template to conform a range of people to a design philosophy. Three is anti personal-expression (related to anti individuation), in systems like Facebook and twitter, etc that fragment communication in a template and is designed to condone a singular information structure. These problems may be circumvented if designers release their hold on what is an acceptable design or acceptable information. Considerations for leaders in procedural design can be more humanistic and dualistic, to preserve older and newer options together and not to lock in any one system or design philosophy. First, I think people should be emphasized in design. A designer should draw from the people he literally knows, and design a system for them instead of designing for people a system of his own philosophy. People arent dumb, they dont need a design that coddles their thinking, people just need help when they ask. Second, I think finance should not control human knowledge. It is not the part of ourselves that we should model the rest uponit is the section of society most vulnerable to sophism in fact. Third, I think designers should accomodate the opposite of their philosophy as well as their philosophy, give the user an option (even if your design is the default...thats fine). Let users choose how they will use your technologies.

Fourth, I think designers should facilitate knowledgable remixing (knowing something deeper about what is remixed) but also new creations and a mixture of personal experiences. Fifth, I think that it would be wise that designers, Be optimistic that civilization will survive their challenges and put effort into creating a balanced and mutable world for our posterity (Toynbee and Ikeda, 1989). Sixth, I think that designers should emphasize the users voice and let him craft his own image if he so wishes. Seventh, Just because Steve Jobs was successful monetarily with a certain design and philosophy, it doesnt mean you should be his priest. Priests are notorious in our century for mercilessly enforcing an ideology of someone elses. Use you own brain to communicate and to design the interface of others communication. Be skeptical, even of things that are successful. Same reason religions came become oppressive, an idea disconnected from your physical/psychological reality is merely interpreted by you, it doesnt mean youre following a higher power when you say sex is sin...for example. Eigth, Be wary of orthodoxy in any idea...computer thinking is just an approximation of human thought that can be modeled (there is much to everything that can not be modeled...how can you recreate existence and what is the point of not actually experiencing it outside of simulation unless youre designing for the end of the world). Ninth, Create alternative environments to the ones you provide. Let people choose you over other ideas. You are not god, youre just a guy. If you allow the user to educate himself about alternatives to your ideas, you honor him and you honor your own idea (and you dont dig yourself into dangerous rectitude). For the users, I echo Lanier and propose some of my own interpretations of him: First, Users should create separate identities mainly when theyre online unless the site function necessitates their non-simulation identity, like linked-in.

Second, Users should create things that they dont share. They should also think longer about what they share, to wait a week or a day or an hour and make more thoughtful shares. Third, Users should try poetry, or personal expression. This can be inside jokes, personas, ebonics and internet-language, metaphors to differentiate the two selves (one that is bodied, one that is disembodied). Fourth, Users should be skeptical and challenge their own philosophies as well as the dogmatic thinking of others. Fifth, Support humanistic alternatives to inhuman designs (designs that are not made for you but for aggregation or for profit). Sixth, Deprogram your thinking sometimes and use all the tools available to you, not just the most convenient ones. Each has its own benefits. Seventh, Ask yourself: Do you use a certain technology because you SEE its positive benefits? If alternative may benefit you more, why do you not switch? Do you do it because there is no alternative?

Q3

Cybershamanism: Lessons from Shamanic Cultures.

Taking examples from shamanic literature, that is biographies, anthropological reports,

and foundational documents, this section investigates uses of experiential learning in shamanic cultures, specifically Taoist, Native American, Toltec, Yaqui Indian, Celtic, Hermetic and Gnostic mysticisms, and South American Indians.

cybershamanism is the application of applied remixed philosophy in experiential

teaching; in other words, a cybershamanic procedural rhetoric uses random belief and comparative belief as a pedagogical tool.

Oral cultures depend on stories to preserve and transmit important data (Friedlander, Narrative Strategies, pg 6). In those times, people were protected from experience by
these stories. They were grounded in the local cultures of people and had a suitably functional and well-channeled purpose. Their source message was in story form so that its listeners heard not warnings and dogma but instead experienced a simulation of someone elses experience and transferred their experience with narrative into practice. They were not inundated with narratives competing for their attention as we are. Perhaps a bard was paid, but his stories inspired warriors caught in the middle of brutal skirmishes and small survivals and victories. We live in an age after that of novels which, do not present the exemplary

images of heroic endeavor found in epic and romance genres but rather teaches the manners and the social skills needed to advance in an urban, capitalist world (Friedlander, Narrative Strategies, pg 6). We live in an age that requires a new type of
narrative, a new kind of experiential learning, which cannot be replaced by surrogate any longer.

In many shamanic cultures there is a leaning towards meditation, contemplation and thought experiments. Often they involve a ritualism to train the mind into believing a chosen reality. Their experiential learning often involves meditation practices. For example, in The Wind is My Mother, Bear Heart talks about some things his mentor had him do: sit in a field, immobile except for the eyes, for 2 hours (training observation skills); cling onto a tree for hours with little instruction about why he is supposed to (endurance, self-control); he was instructed to lay on an ant hill so that if he moved he would be badly bitten by fire ants (self control, faith in the creatures). In Carlos Castendas book, The Teachings of don Juan: a Yaqui way of Knowledge, he recounts the learning experiences that don Juan put him through. Many involved consciousness-altering natural drugs, many that they prepared themselves. He would cut peyote caps from the cacti in a valley and they would eat them to hallucinate and attempt to interpret the experience to learn about himself and to re-interpret the world in order to gain perspective on ordinary reality. don Juan had Carlos smoke a mixture of mushrooms and other plant matter that they let sit for a whole year; this mixture makes the user experience a physical detachment, a lag in bodily control (one cant move unless one wills it consciously) and he asked him to try to stand up and walk around, then to interact with his hallucination: he tries to stare at a river and when the user sees the water as green fog and bubbles, he tries to latch on to one of the bubbles and travel with it to see far away. Regardless of our cultural interpretation of drugs, the shaman uses them very respectfully, and with great gravity. His teaching is centered on it. These drugs show the user that his ordinary perception is no more fixed or rigid than a stream, and that one can control his perception and therefore his actions in the world. This is equivalent to deconstruction of societal-learned heuristics, teaching the student to perceive the world for himself.

Here are some samples from The Way of the Shaman, an anthropologists perspective on a south american shamanic culture and The Wind is my Mother, a Cherokee shamans interpretation of experiential learning, healing and random belief. The first is involved in drug use, the latter is not except for tobacco.

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Q4

Sociality, Playful Participatory Design.

The essence of experiential learning is playful and participatory. As an experienced shaman may provide the structure for a lesson, it is usually a test of the learners own abilities.

In our globalized mythologies, origin and source are obscured by their presentations and tend to meld in with oral information. Information and communication become a sort of theory or simulation of life rather than a depiction of direct and localized experience. The recipient is detached because the experiences are remixed, revised and passed this through multiple sources, all with a say on a fixed or dissociative output. He has the power to perceive this message in any way he wants, but has little context for apportioning that information as separate from his own experience, since it becomes a sort of force that strikes him enough to seem real. American scholars have realized what a Technicolor love movie, conceived for ladies in the suburbs, means when it is shown in a Third World village. In countries like Italy, where the TV message is developed by a centralized industrial Source and reaches simultaneously a northern industrial city and a remote rural village of the South, social settings divided by centuries of history, this phenomenon occurs daily. (Umberto Eco, Towards a Semiological Guerrilla Warfare).

We could take back narrative for our own purposes and for localized learning. A method that would emphasize those purposes is experiential learning mythology. We have an entire species worth of history and mythology to draw upon. Curation and synthesis is a useful tool to draw upon, to ask recipients of information to test out theories and philosophies on real life, or

simulations of real life that they can transfer to their real experiences. People can teach according to childrens actual daily realities and send them on experiences using digital simulation and analog reality alike. Using digital technology purely is lazy and not viable for everyone. Not everyone responds to learning by lecture or meta-cognitive fabrication or imagination.

Forgetting for a moment the environmental impact of computer technology production, emotional machines would be useful in the case of social programming and participatory education. Making the curriculum relevant to the lives of each individual studenthave students put their skills to immediate applicationteaching how best to learn, so that students maintain curiosity throughout life (Norman, Emotional Design, 206). This brings a few ethical design questions and one socio-economic question to mind. One, will the robots be teaching conformity in societal ideas of good and bad interests? Or will it be open to the true desires of the user or secondary users such as parents?; Two, Might the curriculum taught by the robot be limited to what someone decides that society needs? Could it be open source, with access to all pursuits and professions and styles of mentorship? Three, will this simply entrench the rich further as overlords of human destiny? Or, how will we evenly distribute this technology, if there is anything to be said for the co-ownership of any human technology + learning by all humans in a global technocracy?

The technology is exciting and potentially useful, and it could for certain individuals be the superior method of learning. Ideally, students would need an unconstrained curriculum and freedom from scheduled learning. Students could learn more experientially and have tools of knowledge at their helpful disposal with experiential simulations.

Currently, this is possible. Mobile technology replaces the more fantastic idea of droids following us around. There are many ways to integrate experience with this widespread technology to mentor people. With widespread computing and instructable education packages, it could be easy to distribute. People could also go to a central learning center and be sent out on experiences. The emotional element is the biggest problem. How would the program respond dynamically with the user? It could be using some sort of social media, skype, etc. But these would not work everywhere...and everywhere to where one stands is where experiences should range. Something as simple as text messages could have wide application around the world in terms of emotional mentorship. Also using social technology to connect students to mentors could be a more humanist option. A possible source of much experiencial possibility on the web is a bit limited by net aggregators and other services that are indiscriminate in terms of content for their data. Most of the links are merely the loudest, most clicked on. Delving into other internet experiences, Ill address freenet as an avenues of more customizable and variable options for experiential learning. Internet searches are searching only 0.03%...of the total web pages available, (Beckett). Beckett has done some research on the darkweb, freenet and Sealand servers. Alfred Knopf contributes ideas about human-computer interaction and social media, You have to be somebody before you can share yourself (Knopf). The darkweb, the deepweb, the dark side of the internet is open for us The deepweb is currently 400 to 550 times larger than the commonly defined world wide web. The deepweb is the fastest growing category of new information on the internet, (Beckett). There are plently of alternatives to the biggest sources of constraint as well. Another, the Freenet Project, is free software which lets you anonymously share files, browse and publish "freesites" (web sites accessible only through Freenet) and chat on forums, without fear of censorship. Freenet is decentralized to make it less vulnerable to attack, and if

used in "darknet" mode, where users only connect to their friends, is very difficult to detect, (freenetproject.org/whatis.html). You simply download the application, and you can choose a level of security and get access to many sites, which are remaining anonymous for various reasons. Now to consider the manner with which a simulation of this nature might be administered participatorily to students. Schofield suggests that in any interaction, trust must be established. To do so he suggests that the two groups or two individuals work side by side on the issues to determine how either party can be of help to his partner. Step 1 is to establish trust that one is an expert in the domain. This is inaugurated by an offer to send the party that howLAB would contact a set of paper, articles and books that represent initial reading on the subjects they propose to be experts in. This shows a respect for the intelligence of the other and an assumption of equality (even if you dont employ us, this will help). Step 2 is to give feedback on the others plans and ideas in a timely or timeless manner, giving them practical knowledge to finish what theyre doing more quickly without using too many resources. This demonstrates an understanding of constraints of the other. In howLABs internal projects, the other would need to quickly understand the constraints of the howLAB project and have the knowledge of howLABs design philosophy for a particular experience or project to contribute substantially or accurately. Step 3 is to realistically promise and over-deliver at the level of implementation of an idea. Trust is easily built when promises are fulfilled and especially when more is delivered (wiggle room).

These are all great hints at building a good relationship between simulations or teachers and students. The simulation or teacher is there as a collaborator, who is there to facilitate learning and not to spoon-feed it to the learner. Another important point Schofield makes is that with collaboratory learning, each lesson has its own particular context of task and human perspective. This makes it tough to generalize reliability and appropriate implementation because each person will be responding differently. In other words, the teacher or simulation must communicate well 1. what it is and what this means for any project, 2. what its teaching and what the students work will go towards and 3. what its not teaching. This serves to dash any illusions that the student might have and start the experience off on equal footing. In terms of a long-term relationship between two entities, the good must be taken with the bad, and trust must be preserved but be re-evaluated honestly. Design every relationship with the prediction that future contact will happen. Making sure that students are rewarded by giving them feedback on their experience so they know they didnt imagine the results of the learning.

Q5

Experiments in Experiential Learning Simulation.

Here are two proposals for experiments in experiential learning simulations. The first is a concept for a virtual reality simulative game in which the user experiences what it might be like to take psychadelic drugs. The second is something like a trans-media art exhibit that more or less follows the suggestions of this paper in applied philosophical remix and cybershamanic thought experiment.

Design Proposal for Psychadelia

There're two realities: one is the one you might recognize. The other is induced
either through psychedelics or machine-stimulated, either invokes your ally. You must choose your ally. That ally is your only ally. He will teach you something, if you're able to listen.

Machine Ally option: "This ally is your only ally. He is not a man. You will learn from
him. He has made you into a frog wearing a gossamer sweater. A frog's actions are his thoughts. A man's thoughts are opportunities for action. You are a frog: an unacceptably small life form, easy and ready for the crushing, the vile fingers of grubby children, the apathetic autobody slams. "But I'm a man!," you say. Yes, indeed you are. Don't forget that. Now, be observant, but your life doesn't necessarily depend on it.

Mescalito Ally Option 2: Water vibrates and the sound is silent but rumbling is heard.
You meet different versions of Mescalito, depending on what he wants to teach you. He

teaches songs, his name (specific to each person and to be kept secret), etc (from the Castenadas books).

At the end: the user must interpret the clues she receives during this hallucinogenic
or altered perceptive experience and use them in the reality she regonizes. Emphasized, they may be nigh intranslatable as words or straight ideas, so the user should be warned not to expect the clues to be in the normal way games are played. They will however give a particular feeling, belief or insight that will allow the user to solve the *puzzle* in the reality she recognizes.

Gameplay: "3d" navigation of the environment: faux-3d-2d, created by 2D optical

illusion. Top down character-based gameplay. Experiences based on "the teachings of Don Juan".

Devices: Haptic Gloves, Keyboard, Mind-Computer-Control device.

Senses: Touch, Hearing, Sight, Feeling, Emotion

Suggestions from students: Might predict stimuli with audio track. Draw on different
psychological states for allies. Simulate drug withdrawal too, with cues of changes consciousness. Careful of being dogmatic + making propaganda: we want users to experience what someone would actually experience, and not thrusting something

*true* in their faces. Electric consciousness via electronic stimulation of user's brain simulation.

Prototype Report for New Frontiers: the Ocean within Us

> Purpose > Target User Groups > Functional and Experiential Components > Considered Permutations

Purpose
One of the more excitingly hearty aspects of our technological capabilities is their tendency to change the way we humans think. When one uses a shovel, hys mind digests its design and parses the possibilities of its use. In other words, ones mind conforms to the design of the shovel technology in order to dig down, or cut sideways, or pat down layers. This conformity may be referred to as a change in consciousness, or a change in the employment of ones will according to hys perception of possibilities. Network technology, or computer technology, is significant in terms of our consciousness because its perceptive design is variable and its physical design has the potential to connect many peoples perspectives together. Having arrived at this technology with some employment of atheistic and monotheistic worldviews, coupled with a scientific consciousness, it is exciting that it leads us to a different kind of consciousness. This consciousness is a more universal or interconnected worldview. It importantly reveals the subjective nature of scientific consciousness. I will not, in the discussion of this prototype, delve into an explanation of this theory, but it is important to mention in terms of the objective of this particular experiential simulation. The experience design for this research, with the title, New Frontiers: the Ocean within Us, 1. Provides a historical context for other changes in human consciousness (this process of change hereafter will be referred to as an Aeon), 2. Provides an interpretation of the *new* or *upcoming* conflict between the societal structures of the previous Aeon and the upcoming Aeon, 3. Provides a prediction for the future existence of human civilization. The purpose of these provisions is to Exist as an experiential simulation, which employs an alternative method of teaching. It should allow the visitors to use their own

personal frame of reference to experience and learn. This is intended to simulate a vision of the present and past from an approximate future consciousness; In other words, it is intended to simulate a thought experiment in universal consciousness, or neo-shamanic consciousness.

Perhaps we can consider our consumer secularism and Atomic Age thinking to

be signs of the decline of atheistic consciousness. As disillusionment with an indirect worldview begins to wear on us, the successor Aeon arises in our minds. New Frontiers delivers a view of this new Aeon and a view of its environmental context
(New Frontiers Curator Pitch, 2011) .

Target User Group

The target user group is primarily people that feel hopeless in some way about our environmental or social dilemmas and lifestyles and those that may believe that there is no way to change or stop the processes that create or structure those dilemmas and lifestyles. For this user group, it is designed to give these folks a new path to function in a world ravaged by previous Aeons and to show them new ways of experiencing their consciousness. The universal perspective of many shamanic practices condones merging with the dust of the world, or reacting to all stimuli as if they were unknown. These may reduce suffering by the espousal of suffering; in other words, to love unconditionally all aspects of existence, good or bad as an experience of being. Speaking less metaphysically about life, our target user group might also include presidential election candidates, leaders of men, religious nut jobs, oil company staff, computer technology company staff, future planners and policy makers, builders, engineers, scientists and other groups that need a way to feel

comfortable with the environmental or cultural destruction their professions wreak by providing for the demands of their consumers and their own fear of insecurity or for the philosophers stone of their passion or ambition.

Functional and Experiential Components

Functional Components ~ 4 Computer Terminals 8 Pairs of headphones 1 Video Projector, 2 Speakers 2 Fans 6 Hamburgers, 6 Strings, 6 Plastic Platforms Shells, Trash 1 klien bread (1.5 ft across) Bags of Spoons, 2 types of icing or nutella 8 posters 1 Chair, 1 contact Microphone, Finger Condoms 1 CD Player Stacks of Paper for Surveys, Directives 1 Field trip calendar Copies of programs Various legal narcotics (red bull, cut in half ping pong balls and white noise through headphones, coffee, alcohol, cigarettes, salvia, etc) Legal narcotic smoking instruments (matches, bowl, lighter, mouth-peices) Experiential Components ~ For the maximum legibility of the experience of New Frontiers, this is a supposed run through of the simulation:

1. Visitor Applebaum steps through the doors of EMPAC B374, and sees the sign for New Frontiers, which beckons him to walk into Area One and asks him to participate in this simulated consciousness/thought-experiment. 2. Visitor Applebaum walks up to the personal timeline table. He is asked by marked instructions to make a timeline of his life and to segment it based on changes in his view of religion. Then he is provided with a moderate list of environmental disasters, significant bits of recent history, and changes in internet technology. He compares these timelines. 3. He visits the consciousness alteration station and asks to be administered pingpong ball hallucinatory treatment. He visually hallucinates about a bat merging bodies with his kid. He asks for a cigarette, and goes outside to smoke it. 4. He reads the posters about the changes in different Aeons, then watches the first narrative video of the change in consciousness from shamanism to polytheism. He connects to the narrative because it reminds him of his own hometown, and he adopts the Black Dog and other spirits as a symbol for his older idea of shamanism, which was purely superstitious, rather than a tool for learning. 5. He enters Area Two and reads about how his body is continually exchanging cells with his environment. He is a biologist, and is unsurprised but appreciates the idea of interconnectedness in this idea. 6. He walks over to the poster about the deep horizon oil spill and the thought that he is responsible for the disaster in some way disturbs him. He is a bit resistant to the simulations representation of interconnected responsibility here; he doesnt want to think that way because he is used to blaming others. 7. He skips the video and the trash toys in this room after the performer repeats back in lyrics some things he said while he was hallucinating in the first Area. 8. He is grossed out by beef ceiling. He watches the third narrative video about natural meanings and new consciousness and their conflict with the old. This helps him put into perspective his previous rejection of the idea of interconnected responsibility.

9. He pays $0.25 for a poop spoon, relishing the joke about consumer culture. 10. He is intrigued by the poster about Japans conversation to atheistic consciousness after WWII and the idea of cyclic connectedness of food in Klein Bread and Beef Ceiling. 11. He strolls into Area Four, and laughs about the butt songs chair. 12. He signs up for diaspora, and learns some ways of taking control on Facebook. 13. He watches an episode of cowboy bebop with some other people. 14. He signs up for a field trip with some other visitors to go to the Hudson River near the GE Factory which has been poisoning the river for many years. 15. He wants to buy a house in the garbage patch residential community. 16. He listens to some contemporary whale music. 17. He goes back to Area One and asking for a beer. He receives a pamphlet about howLAB and also takes a few papers with excerpts from The Wind is My Mother by Bear Heart. 18. He steps out in to the hallways and chats with Walter and me about the exhibit, we clear up some of the nebulosity of his perception. 19. He leaves with a feeling of glassiness, but feels the draw to pursue a new consciousness.

Considered Permutations
The environment before and in which the audience interacts with the exhibit and howLAB representatives is of prime importance. ~ In the soft opening of the new frontiers simulation, we had multiple visitors in groups of one to three. We explained the philosophy, goal, and the ideas for the exhibits that we had. It was set up in a corner of a keg party during the summer and different people were brought down to learn about it. There was nowhere to sit down and we were very close to the audience, conversational distance. In the second showing of the new frontiers simulation we presented to an audience of around ten people on a school night. We performed once as ourselves and a second time as interns of the fake companies Exxon-Mobile and the AllAmerican Bottling Company. We explained the philosophy, changes in Aeon, and proposed our view of the exhibits as it related to the New Frontiers philosophy. Part of new frontiers philosophy involves the idea that the audience member will form his own meaning for the exhibits. However, we attempted to translate a meaning for the audience through our explanation of the exhibits; we asked them to embrace the destruction of habitats and pollution of environments as natural and some audience members reported that this seems paradoxical to the suggestion that they form their own meanings for the events and exhibits based on their interpretation of the philosophy. Another problem with the corporation-impersonation approach is that it is directly against the simulated philosophy of new frontiers to judge some forces as good or bad. Even if it is unintentional, impersonation serves to embarrass and ridicule the corporate personas we would assume. In order to ensure that the environment and exhibit interactions are more in line with the purpose, target users and design components, some of the previous

permutations must be abandoned for better options. Firstly, we must assert that for the user group and purpose to be accomplished/reached, the experience must be an experience of sharing responsibility and living peaceably even with groups perceived as creating certain environmental destructions. The experience is of seeing things as they are and accepting them for what they are without judgment, only as a stimulus. In order to design for this philosophy, we must ask the visitor in hys own context to consider the experience he is simulating. This can be best accomplished by a design which allows the visitor to think about the ideas without the interference of an expert on the subjects presented. The organization of the exhibits is important to the audience interaction as well. The old design was haphazard and exhibits were placed based only on where it was most convenient or seemed important to put them. This was corrected by organizing the flow in four parts, to match the parts of the total new frontiers concept: 1. Philosophy and Aeon History, 2. Evidence of Interconnection and Universality in our World, 3. Conflict and Inertia of Old Ways in Transition to the New Frontier, 4. Tools and Views of the New Frontier. This is a more intuitive and ordered thoughtarrangement and will also allow the visitors to navigate the interface more easily without guidance.

Ways of allowing the audience to interact with us, each other, the exhibits. Originally, the entire design involved no real audience participation. This did not seem sustainable as we eliminated hypocrisies in our design and design philosophy. We moved on to the idea of signing people up for open source applications, giving them programs and encouraging their participation in alternative computing. At first, this involved basically transferring files to them and providing them with information about alternative programs to the more proprietary ones. It was also intended to support anti-corporate ideas as well as anti-corporate movements and thinking like occupy wall street and some teaching about the 1960s protest movements connection to internet technology.

According to our design philosophy, it would be hypocritical to condone one option over another and to limit the simulation of universal consciousness to favor a certain action of will. So to correct this, we must also provide access to the normal corporate system of programs (perhaps they can be pirated copiesbut that is problematic idea, since this is also support for alternative computing) and applications. We must let the audience decide their path of heart or course of action in sight of the evidence. We do wish to simulate equality of respect for natural factors, including human factors, so we cannot be in a position of judgement. Some elements weve added to the experience design are treasure hunts, a consciousness alteration station, organizing field-trips to different and various locations, surveys and materials for the audience to create their own interpretations of new frontiers philosophy. We also thought to let the audience use computers in each section to do their own investigations, as well as to decide when to view a certain narrative element or to not view it at all. In the fourth section is also provided a supply of different kinds of science fiction films and television shows, videos and other materials to read that the visitor is free to navigate for himself.

How and Why This Method is Appropriate

These methods allow the visitor to take from the exhibition any message hy wills, while providing an appropriately thorough provision of material and activities/thought experiments for hym to experience. The visitor uses us only as resources for dialogue. Hy can alter his consciousness with legal narcotic aids or with the power of thought. This has become mainly a design simulation of other-conscious perception, rather than an explanation of such a perception, we hope. It is designed to provide only tools, which the visitor can experience to learn rather than learn to experience.

One idea of a learning simulation is that it can teach by random access, and providing the exhibit with this possibility strengthens the design of the philosophy of new frontiers: that people should abandon preconceived notions of meaning that they have not formed from personal experience, and craft new notions based on an outward attunement to the perceived environment. In other words, New Frontiers is the experience of the absence of meaning and, therefore, the introduction of belief as a tool used to craft meaning, and to conceive life directly (will and action are one with perception). Any true experience of other consciousness cannot really be measured in any significant way, so the results of the experiential learning simulation will have to be interpreted through visitor response to it. When a shaman teaches a student hy provides an experience and a story and a tool of perception, which the student learns to use to channel his will. All contexts are the learners lives and perceptions and all palettes are the learners preconceptions.

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[Experiential Learning http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experiential_education#Practice Social Computational Systems/MIT http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2010/nsf10600/nsf10600.htm]