The Banana Peel Project

Somewhere among the redwoods, it became clear to me that it was really, really hard to talk about mind.

Anybody who spends a lot of time thinking about the philosophy of mind will tell you that there is no way to prove that anyone beyond yourself is a conscious, thinking individual with a concept of self. A redwood tree will grow towards the sun, an animal will seek out food, and a human being will do any number of things that it perceives to be in its best interest. These things are, as most people will agree, alive. A rock will crack if you hit it with a hammer, a fire will grow and spread, and a waterfall will find the easiest way down a mountain. Yet these things are, as most people will agree, not alive. In some ways, these questions are about the nature of causality. In other ways, they beg questions like, How do we know when something is alive? Perhaps more to the root of the question, how do we know when something thinks it is alive?

I don’t know. But I think that digital technology might be able to help answer these questions.

Digital technology is a model of mind that is apparent, accessible, and visible. For that reason, we can study digital technologies as things while simultaneously treating them as processes. Digital technologies organize, translate, and store information–just as our minds do. Their base exists in material form but their meaning consists of pure energy, just as our minds are dependent on our bodies but somehow separate from them.

I guess this is just one more way that green things convince me that there is something powerfully important about digital things.

[the banana peel project]