Resources:

Thalamocortical Algorithms in Space! The Building of Conscious Machines and the Lessons Thereof, Presentation to the World Future Society, Boston, 2010.

Thalamocortical Algorithms in Space! The Building of Conscious Machines and the Lessons Thereof, Conference Volume Paper, World Future Society, Boston, 2010.

In Its Image, A film directed by Ken Gumbs, 2007.

The Emerging Intelligence and Its Critical Look at Us, Journal of Near-Death Studies, 1998.

The Fragmentation of the Universe and the Devolution of Consciousness, U.S. Library of Congress , Registration No. TXU00775586, 1997.

Paper Trail

"How might immortality be possible? We must come to the realization that protoplasmic and machine evolution are one and the same. We must at least momentarily abandon our distinction between what is "living" and that which is inanimate and come to the appreciation of the connection between biology and its mathematical simulation. What is "alive" is not really defined. This sometimes useful distinction has to do with a group of associations with things we can eat, be eaten by, court with, converse with, and so on. My prediction is that developments are just around the corner giving machines these statuses and that the concept of virtual inputs, creative visions from apparently nowhere, will become the basis of a conscious intellect that will quickly surpass the grasping mentality of apes. We shall merge with them, living the centuries out until weary of the very notion of existence. This immortality will not be achieved until our world modeling becomes self-consistent and devoid of delusion. Then and only then, can our dreams show us the way. In this way, our foremost predator, death, can be defeated." - S. L. Thaler, Death of a Gedanken Creature, Journal of Near-Death Studies, 13(3), Spring 1995.

"STEVE THALER thinks he knows how to kindle a soul in the circuitry of a computer. With his key to consciousness in hand, computers will no longer be mere drones but creative beings with free will. Someday, he predicts, these machines will become so powerful that humans will choose to leave their obsolete flesh-and-blood "wetware" behind and live full time in the hardware world." - Bob Holmes, New Scientist, 20 January, 1996.

"Then there is Steve Thaler, a private inventor working on his Creativity Machine. This neural networking computer system has already "written" thousands of original tunes, designed soft drinks, discovered unique minerals that may match diamonds in hardness, and has been hired by a high-tech company to search for high-temperature superconductors. Thaler also has his current-generation CM working on the next-generation CM. Thaler hopes that his Creativity Machines will evolve until they become conscious and do so rapidly enough so he can leave his aging body behind and live forever in cyberspace." - E. Cox and G. Paul, Beyond Humanity: Cyberevolution and Future Minds, 1996.

"Contrary to the popular notion that consciousness is the result of a noble evolutionary process, I speculate that this rather ill-defined concept and phenomenon may be the result of the fragmentation of an otherwise completely connected and totally ‘feeling’ universe. As various regions of this universe topologically pinch-off from the whole, connection-sparse boundaries form over which sporadic and impoverished information exchange takes place. Supplied with only scanty clues about the state of the external world, abundant internal chaos drives these small parallel processing islands into multiple ‘interpretations’ of the environment in a process we identify with perception. With further division of these regions by insulating partitions, the resulting sub-regions activate to lend multiple interpretation to the random activations of others in a manner reminiscent of internal imagery. The spontaneous invention of significance by this weakly coupled assembly of simple computational units to its own overall collective behavior is what we have grown to recognize as biological consciousness. We thereby come to view human cortical activity as a highly degraded approximation to the original and prototypical cosmic connectivity." - S. L. Thaler, "The Fragmentation of the Universe and the Devolution of Consciousness," U.S. Library of Congress, Registration No. TXU00775586, 1997.

"Effectively, consciousness is currently constrained to reside within the brain due to the “connectivity gap” at the skull (as well as the senses) where connection density differs by many orders of magnitude between it and environment. Lowering the height of this dam is the solution to achieving the download of human to machine consciousness based upon Creativity Machine Paradigm." S. L. Thaler, Thalamocortical Algorithms in Space! - The Building of Conscious Machines and the Lessons Thereof," WorldFuture 2010: Sustainable Futures, Strategies, and Technologies.