Mini FAQ

Origins of the term 'Omegapoint':  Read The Phenomenon of Man .  There Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's explains the idea that all mankind is converging in the "noosphere" to reach the "omegapoint" and create a collective super-consciousness .

Why the amazon links?

Costs: it costs us about $300/month to run the Omegapoint Network Enterprises sites and have appropriate bandwidth connections. The affiliate fees help in covering the costs (thank you - kind customers, and thank you Jeff Bezos - for your brilliant invention).

Interest: some people actually like to have an easy way to get material we link to.

Research: (1) Our search linked terms allow easy checking for new material,  (2) Its fascinating to see what folks actually buy in the aggregate.  For example. The amazon lists below show a dynamic portrait of items people actually buy ... When the sample size is large enough, Amazon allows display of aggregate purchase trends by institution (e.g. MIT    Yale   Princeton    Stanford   Caltech   UCLA   Berkley   Pepperdine   U.S. House of Representatives    NASA   The World Bank).

fascinating .. isn't it? --  your thoughts are welcome ... particularly good pieces will be linked or posted as appropriate (sorry, we can't respond to all mail).

on the word "tribune"  - from the Merriam - Webster Collegiate Dictionary: Main Entry: 1tri·bune Pronunciation: 'tri-"byün, tri-' Function: noun Etymology: Middle English, from Latin tribunus, from tribus tribe Date: 14th century 1 : a Roman official under the monarchy and the republic with the function of protecting the plebeian citizen from arbitrary action by the patrician magistrates 2 : an unofficial defender of the rights of the individual - tri·bune·ship /-"ship/ noun Main Entry: 2tribune Function: noun Etymology: French, from Italian tribuna, from Latin tribunal Date: circa 1771 : a dais or platform from which an assembly is addressed

I use the term 'tribune' principally in sense 2.1 - a platform from which to address a cyber assembly ... sense 1.2 is also appealing ...

Assorted Resources:

AGING and LONGEVITY , another treatment ...

culture related reading: The Springboard : How Storytelling Ignites Action in Knowledge-Era Organizations by Stephen Denning (there's more than meets the eye here  .. story telling is extremely important) The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else  by Hernando De Soto A Future Perfect : The Challenge and Hidden Promise of Globalization  by John Micklethwait, Adrian Wooldridge Guns, Germs, and Steel : The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond

First  -- the  apologia.    First  -- the  apologia.    I meant to transcribe these thoughts a while ago.  Too many good intentions, too little time!  About errors,  there are several types of those here. There are the typographical errors. Yes, I am not a perfect typist, and, I do not use a spellchecker. There are the grammatical errors .. forgive me for those too. There are sure to be some factual and logical errors. Do let me know about them.  As time permits, I will address the more serious ones first.  There are sure to be opinions and speculations that don't sit well with some and sit very well with others.  Let me know about these; I welcome the discussion.  Send a link to your comments and as time and propriety permits ... I'll link.

Searching for a creative strategy to accelerate knowledge and wisom accumulation. - that's the goal. Why? Our fate depends on it. The candles have almost been snuffed out once. The dark ages did in fact occur.  Only by accident did a few isolated candles continue to flicker. It took about a thousand years and the renaissance  to rekindle the big candles and continue forward movement. 

Despite our best intentions, dark ages may occur again. Amazingly, for some people, the dark ages are already here despite the glare of the stadium lights.

There are additional, deeper reasons, for this discussion. In time,  i'll get to those.  In the meanwhile ... it all starts with good questions.     David Hilbert  asked some great (mathematical) questions.  They are somewhere later on this page.  You might not know about Hilbert. Very few people actually do.  One of his questions prompted Alan Turing   to postulate a universal computing machine.   When World War II came about, Turing turned theory into practice building code-breaking machines (especially the Colossus machine). Colossus cracked Germany's secret codes, which in turn contributed significantly to the allied victory over Germany.  Alan's work also inspired Von Neumann and others.  Von Neumann and his computing architectures led to computers that did the heavy lifting on calculation for the atomic bomb , and that led to the end of WWII with Japan.  Whether the bomb was the right thing to do or not will be left for others to discuss.  The point here is that Hilbert's questions were the principal motivators for Turing. Turing invented the idea of modern abstract programming and stored instructions, and that's how we got to present day computers and their applications. (yes, there are others that contributed in moving from the vacuum tube to the Itanium, but there would be no reason for them to do so if not for Hilbert and then Turing).

So here are some of my questions; its highly likely that many others have posed the same or similar questions.  Since there's no universal agreement on the answers yet, they are worth repeating. As time permits, I'll refine these  ...  perhaps someone really smart (like Hilbert was) will organize these and related questions into the 23 questions for the new century.

Nagging questions:

What are some of the things worth thinking about?

Why are we here?

Can we do anything about it?

Should we do anything about it?

What problems are worth investigating?

Are there any overriding priorities that must be addressed really soon?

Do we Americans occupy a unique place in history?

Does our national wealth and budget influence history?

Does our national tax structure match the opportunity and priorities in front of us?

Do we know enough about knowledge? (yes, this is a metaquestion)

Ongoing commentary

About Creativity

Synthetic Intelligence and Memetics  (take a look at Principia Cybernetica as well). I mention synthetic intelligence. Its in my notebooks ... and i do need to transcribe it. (so this IS a public to do list).

Biochemistry and Aging: Notes adapted from the National Institutes of Health and Aging.

The Future History of the Universe.

coming soon ...

discussions of Justice, Liberty, Allocation of Resources, the Future of Mankind, the Future of the Universe.

Did you know?

There aren't too many books about Justice around.  (Look at Justice  to see what is published under that label).  There are many books about law and legal topics, but not many about justice.  Isn't that interesting?  I put together a collection of law titles. The only serious contemporary theoretical book about justice is "A Theory of Justice" by John Rawls and the commentary on Rawls. There's more to be said about this ...

David Hilbert   posed a set of interesting mathematical questions at the turn of last century. The 23 problems he posed were so significant that much of today's mathematical advances and technologies rest squarely on the problems he articulated ( see Mathematical Developments Arising from Hilbert Problems, edited by Felix Brouder, American Mathematical Society, 1976,  -- you can read Joyce's  HTML version of Newson's translation of this paper if you mathematically inclined.

Hilbert's problem title headings are:

1. Cantor's problem of the cardinal number of the continuum
2. The compatibility of the arithmetical axioms
3. The equality of two volumes of two tetrahedra of equal bases and equal altitudes
4. Problem of the straight line as the shortest distance between two points
5. Lie's concept of a continuous group of transformations without the assumption of the differentiability of the functions defining the group
6. Mathematical treatment of the axioms of physics
7. Irrationality and transcendence of certain numbers
8. Problems of prime numbers
9. Proof of the most general law of reciprocity in any number field
10. Determination of the solvability of a diophantine equation
11. Quadratic forms with any algebraic numerical coefficients
12. Extension of Kroneker's theorem on abelian fields to any algebraic realm of rationality
13. Impossibility of the solution of the general equation of the 7-th degree by means of functions of only two arguments
14. Proof of the finiteness of certain complete systems of functions
15. Rigorous foundation of Schubert's enumerative calculus
16. Problem of the topology of algebraic curves and surfaces
17. Expression of definite forms by squares
19. Are the solutions of regular problems in the calculus of variations always necessarily analytic?
20. The general problem of boundary values
21. Proof of the existence of linear differential equations having a prescribed monodromic group
22. Uniformization of analytic relations by means of automorphic functions
23. Further development of the methods of the calculus of variations

These problems inspired intense effort, competition and development.

Its getting late now, so I'll stop right here.  On the to do list:

* from Hilbert - to Turing - to the Halting Problem - to Computers.

serious reading about computers:   

 Hilbert - Turing - Von Neumann - Computers Bibliography: