Cybernetics & Religion

Take a moment to go to NASA's Saturn radio emissions page; select the "click here" link at the start of the article on their page to listen to the short sound clip. Now, listen to the first few moments of this short excerpt from the classic 1956 science fiction movie Forbidden Planet. The similarities are startling. The soundtrack for the movie was created by Louis and Bebe Barron. The film represents the first instance in which a movie was scored entirely with electronic music. Louis Barron constructed electronic circuits that generated the sounds; most of the tonalities were generated using a ring modulator. In creating the electronic circuits, Barron used the equations in Norbert Wiener's 1948 book Cybernetics: Or, Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine. ―Saturn And 'Forbidden Planet' Movie Share Music, Christensen, 2007 The world we are living in ― a world that couples Homo sapiens with fast-paced hyper-technology ― is strange to us because sometimes it feels like what it is, a transient dream. We are dreaming a strange, waking dream; an inevitably brief interlude sandwiched between the long age of low-tech humanity on the one hand, and the age of human beings transcended on the other. We are living in the latter days of humanity; cyber-technologies will quickly replace us. Just inches of time away exists a speedy reality bearing down on us that we may sense, but do not show on our faces. Alchemists of old sought to turn lead into gold. Future cyber-alchemists of techno-transmutation will turn base humanity into gold to the envy of Midas. ―Beyond Humanity, Paul & Cox, 1996Read less