OHMs now does not only mean 'On Her Majesty's Service'! As I'm sure most of you are aware, many science fiction stories feature some kind of 'hive mind'. This is generally described as being a kind of 'gestalt psychic field', controlled by some locus (whether or not it is an individual or a sum of the whole) and exerting some level of control over the cognition of its individual parts. Whilst this is a cool-yet-disturbing idea, do you think it is physically possible? If some kind of 'psychic field' existed, then this would be a simple matter, but is there another physical phenomenon that explains this? One idea (besides another 'psychic field') is a possible usage of electromagnetic fields that link brains/bodies together.
This could partially explain close proximity actions, such as touching, having greater influences on a relationship. This would be mixed with other stimuli that only rely upon perception; so perhaps there is some kind of 'psychic field' built into (community-living/loving) humans, such that certain stimuli have an unconscious effect on us, causing us to act in a society-like manner? Science fiction has once again explored this idea for us; an example is Isaac Asimov's Foundation series (2nd Foundation, for those who know).
This may not be such a silly idea, either. In a National Geographic (last year sometime, I think), there was an article about domestication. It turns out that domestication has some kind of genetic basis: the researchers tamed Russian snow foxes (I think they were snow foxes...) to be either domesticated or anti-domesticated (the sort that start to growl and scratch when a human just walks into a building) simply by selecting pups that acted in a friendly or non-friendly manner. The domesticated foxes ended up being like doggies or kitties in friendliness! (Word choice deliberate). The also noticed phenological and behavioural changes (besides friendliness) such as spotted coats and curly tails. Thus, some kind of genetic change is happening to domesticated animals that makes them domesticated: even after some generations without human contact, descendents of domesticated animals are domesticatable still, whilst offspring of undomesticated animals aren't any friendlier when raised by domesticated parents. They are not yet sure if these genetic changes are a result of selecting for desirable qualities (e.g. cuteness selection drives tail curling) or whether phenological changes are due to selecting for behavioural traits (are coat spots genetically linked to friendly behaviour? And what does this mean?).
Another question: are humans the ones being domesticated to animals? Do our pets know just which actions please us and do they use these traits to gain a survival advantage?
Perhaps the greatest question, however, is about us: to what extent have we domesticated ourselves to form civilisation?
And is this 'domestication' essential to form surviving communities?
Josh Harbort, your Locus.
"This Garden belongs to NORG!"... sorry, had to put that in.
ReplyDeleteI have read a few books where they canvas the idea of electromagnetic communications between creatures... "they communicate by low-frequency bioradio." No physiological basis is discussed, by I find the idea quite attractive.
The human body does a fairly good job as a radio receiver: if you read the account of the `first cyborg' (a guy that had a nerve patch implanted in one arm, so that impulses could be read/write from it) you'll find that they could listen to the radio through his arm! All that is needed is some sort of excitable conductor.
I am a little less clear on how to generate radio in the first place: presumably a driven antenna would be needed. I imagine that it would be possible by sequentially firing a set of electroplaques.
For further interest (and possibly relating back to your HeLa turbine post):
ReplyDeletehttp://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2767210/?tool=pmcentrez
Getting back to the silver foxes, the economic motive for domestication was the value of their pelts. An interesting result was that selection for juvenile-like (non-aggressive, trainable) behavior also produced foxes with juvenile pelts! The juvenile pelts were spotty and non-uniform, making the worthless as fashionable coats.
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