The prediction, in brief:

If cyberspace is utopian it is because it opens the possibility of using the deterministic platform for unpredictable ends … We might even grow a system large and complex and unstable enough to leap across that last possible bifurcation – autopoetically – into that strangest of all possible attractors, the godmind.

Predictor: Porush, David

Prediction, in context:

In his speech “Transcendence at the Interface: The Architecture of the Cyborg Utopia – or – Cyberspace Utopoids as Postmodern Cargo Cult,” carried in the publication of presentations made at the 1992 Library and Information Technology Association (LITA) conference in Chicago, David Porush, professor of interdisciplinary literary studies and co-director for Autopoeisis, an AI research project at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, writes:”If cyberspace is utopian it is because it opens the possibility of using the deterministic platform for unpredictable ends (as the laws of chaos are teaching us is possible), launching us into ever-higher orders of complexity as we fluctuate non-linearly in this far-from-equilibrium cyborg system. Perhaps, who knows, we might even grow a system large and complex and unstable enough to leap across that last possible bifurcation – autopoetically – into that strangest of all possible attractors, the godmind, just as Gibson predicts. ItÕs pretty to think so, anyway. And both comforting and dismaying that even as postmoderns we still labor under these irresistible delusions.”

Date of prediction: January 1, 1992

Topic of prediction: General, Overarching Remarks

Subtopic: General

Name of publication: Transcendence at the Interface: The Architecture of Cyborg Utopia - or - Cyberspace Utopoids as Postmodern Cargo Cult

Title, headline, chapter name: Transcendence at the Interface: The Architecture of the Cyborg Utopia – or – Cyberspace Utopoids as Postmodern Cargo Cult

Quote Type: Direct quote

Page number or URL of document at time of study:
Page 135

This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Garrison, Betty