E-Kind

By Gery Apostolova

There are three main drivers of human progress: fear of death, new toys, and telling tales.

The fear of death makes us look for extended spaces of human activity and bridges over spans of inexistence. Virtual space created by the electronically supported web supply such infinity to our kind. The fast-growing twenty-first century is still a time of technology, and humankind look like kids playing at the gates where routes through time start. And still we are keen on telling our individual tales lest they might fail to get in their niche of extended existence.

In our passionate impatience to reach infinity of the race, humankind is turning into e-kind. It takes up the vast spaces of virtuality, making itself free from material and spiritual cargo, at the same time being dependent on both material and ideal modes of existence.

The author has been on the track of active philosophy for the late thirty years or, to put it in a metaphoric way, in the misty grounds of teaching young people of a dying country how to survive in a fast-changing environment. The name chosen for misty people in a misty space is e-kind. The book is the authors report about her experience with growing e-kind. The approach to knowing is called SIAN (systematic, integrated approach to the net), and the general field of this type of philosophizing thus is fixed as belonging to the philosophy of the infosphere.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Jun 24, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524629632

Gery Apostolova

The author of E-Kind, and Conditio Sine Qua Non, previously published by Author House.

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© 2016 Gery Apostolova. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 06/21/2016

ISBN: 978-1-5246-2962-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5246-2961-8 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5246-2963-2 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

CONTENTS

Preface The Question of the Cradle

Acknowledgements

Introduction

E-SPACE: OUTLINES OF E-THEORY

Chapter 1 The Talkative Web

Chapter 2 The Experience of the WWW and the Fact of Its Expansion

Chapter 3 Definitions of Terms or an Overview of the Names Given to Our Objects of Interest in the Early 2000s

Chapter 4 Fears and Hermeneutics: Science versus Magic or a Fake Theory of Homo Astralicus

Chapter 5 Virtual Culture or E-Culture

Chapter 6 E-Kind

Chapter 7 Antinomies and Controversies in the Warring Webs

Chapter 8 Integrity of the Self

Chapter 9 Just Some Metaphors

MENTALITY AND INTERTEXT

Chapter 10 The English-Speaking Web

Chapter 11 Nodes of Transcendence

Chapter 12 E-Folklore in Tale and Game

Chapter 13 E-Kind in View of Linguistic Anthropology

Chapter 14 The Lives of a Text

UNDERSTANDING E-CULTURES

Chapter 15 E-Kind Writes a Letter Home

Chapter 16 Bridging Cultures

Chapter 17 Weaving the World Anew

Conclusion: The Question of the Fridge

Bibliography

We rest. A dream has power to poison sleep;

We rise. One wandering thought pollutes the day

We feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep;

Embrace fond foe, or cast our cares away:

It is the same! For, be it joy or sorrow,

The path of its departure still is free:

Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow:

Nought may endure but Mutability.

---P. B. Shelly, Mutability

PREFACE

The Question of the Cradle

The Earth is the cradle of the mind, but we cannot live forever in a cradle.

---Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, 1911

Whatever we say in the beginning of an attempt to draw the attention of those interested in the survival of humankind would be incomplete or inconsistent.

This is the most fascinating thing about starting a piece of writing with the single aim of raising a few questions and the hope of getting sufficient feedback, whether it be silence, criticism, or tales of individual experience.

The following text is a piece of active philosophy in the silent mode of a contemporary I-dialogue, where the younger generation basically plays the part of the learners, while the elder generation serves as the teacher, who is also capable of learning more quickly and making broader pictures of the world under mental construction. It is a teacher's approach to issues of a singular nature, contained in the universality of human existence and viewed in the perspective of a vast space of midreality, situated between the physical and mental worlds and supported by the World Wide Web.

Humankind has been growing up. It has stored its histories and tales, the memories of each singular community added to the universal culture of Earth, preserving its multiple identities in sacred ways. Yet the question of its short-lasting individual existence has not yet been solved. Achieving that kind of immortality needs a larger than physical everyday-ness. An extended virtual existence, independent of time and physical space, looks attractive for offering entrances and exits between the stages of immortality.

What's more, today's younger generations seem lost when it comes to family values, deprived of their physical habitat, and unhappy for having to cope with their polyphonic loneliness, where voices of other values distract them from the sole purpose of motivating their unique existence. Unable to see beyond our own selves, we become smaller than these voices and unable to understand the existence of the other outside our extrapolated mentality and the pains of their singularity.

Today, it has become global news and an object of hope and fear, as usual -- the question of the passing of humankind into its next mode of existence, which is a step toward the immortality of the race. The possibility of saving an individual's brainwork in an electronic profile that will continue its further functioning is the nearest continuation of a life reached by science thus far. Whether this continuation is an analytical grid imitating a personality or a definitive mode of archiving all neural profiles of present-day personalities to be stored and studied by the broader netted global brain of humanity is up for debate. Whatever the outcome, it is clear that humanity is trying to settle in the vast spaces of netted virtuality. And it is equally clear that this is an attempt to preserve each individual singularity of the netted self of a greater kind, which has left the cradle of its physical growth.

Humankind is attempting the step towards extended existence -- in other words, it is trying to grow out of its physical binds and boundaries and reach dimensions seen in our dreams and discovered in the tales of our growth that we believe are in our genes.

To this purpose, humanity must be taken from its physical connection with the ecosystem of an individual's growth -- on any terms. A human individual must be left alone with his or her mind so that the latter can start working at its full potential.

This generally causes unhappiness. The broadest developed cultures are those who became unhappy with their environmental lot earlier in history and, thus, have since been artificially reconstructing their natural space to serve their needs. Cultures who have been proud of and content with their natural habitat have been fighting for it even as they lose it, spread all over the planet, and unhappy. Those nations have built the cultural spaces of nostalgia, which has stored memories in clear-cut forms and in pathetic and ethic brilliance -- mostly without knowing what and why but at least storing the craft of how things were done.

The turning of the mode is a fact. Humankind can reproduce its memory and the functioning of its logos (brainwork that comes nearest to its natural mind). This is not yet immortality, but it is as good an extension to humanity's existential boundaries as becoming unlimited. I have chosen to call this work E-Kind, not only because of the electronically supported space of the mode, but also because it contains a hint about Earth-supported existence with extended ethical codes. This is just appearance, designed as colourful metaphors, for they have sprung following the metaphor of a growing child who needs to be drawn outside his or her cradle.

This book, thus, is concerned with human nature as seen in its transfer across the environments -- an endeavour whose aim is human survival on a netted Earth. And in this net there is unlimited space for the telling of our own individual stories, which bear the knowledge of our self-significance in meanings flashing independently or simultaneously to our choice and our cultural binders.

***

Let's presume there are three main drivers of human progress, from growth out of childhood first and on to immortality as it is envisioned today -- fear of death, new toys, and telling tales.

The fear of death makes us look for extended spaces of human activity and bridges over spans of pain and inexistence. Virtual space, created by the electronically supported web, supplies our kind with such infinity. The fast-paced twenty-first century is still a time of technology, and human beings are like children playing at the gates where routes through time start. And still we are keen on telling our individual tales, lest they might fail to find their niche and achieve extended existence.

In our passionate impatience to reach infinity of the race, humankind is turning into e-kind. This new race takes up the vast spaces of virtuality, making itself free from material and spiritual cargo while at the same time becoming dependent on both material and ideal modes of existence.

For the past thirty years, I have been on the track of active philosophy or, to put it metaphorically, on the misty grounds of teaching young people of a dying country how to survive in a fast-changing environment. The name I've chosen for misty people in a misty space or midreality is e-kind. E-Kind is my report on my experience with growing e-kind. I have called my approach to the research contained in this work SIAN (systematic integrated approach to the net). And the general field to which the type of philosophising herein belongs is the philosophy of the infosphere.

I designed this text in 2007 and have spent the years between then and now getting E-Kind published.

My approach still applies to the present state of global humanity. We are still close to our cradle and crying for our colourful stories. However, there is no way back.

The text is also an individual application of philosophy that has painfully but consciously left its absolute grounds to explore a singular case. That is why I have called the approach SIAN.

Further, I am going to stick to my case. It is, in its own application, a tool of induction of a more complex nature than just a unit of factuality.

The Singular Case Perspective

A teacher must reach both ends of growth or check the frontiers of any transition incurred by growth, making sure existence is not broken. We still need our physical stage of living, as we must follow the instruction of the biosystem in order to preserve the continuation of its life. In singular cases, this is the strongest motivation of existence and its strongest defence against any change that might break its physical component. This is what e-kind cherishes -- a status of connected singularities, where a single case might lose motivation but the connected other single cases can reproduce it for that special set of singularities.

In the singular case perspective, history is the nearest tale. It concerns each of us differently. And it is still where our transferring existence finds both the example and resources by which we construct our existence within a metaphor-based model of general nature that is yet transparent to singularity.

Back in the early 1990s, we were to lay the foundations of an academic tradition in a fast-changing world. It was meant as a record of the rapid restructuring of our minds and attitudes in a time of economic and sociopolitical transition and cultural transcendence, seen from a changing Bulgarian perspective, where the world came upon our horizon speaking English.

I am a philosopher. Two things have bound my effort in the search for knowledge -- (1) securing my freedom and (2) learning how things work and how they make other things work. The former is the practical solution to finding the adventure we cherish as children of this world and for which we look into our cultural backgrounds. The latter is sheer curiosity -- a necessary trait for teachers, women, and philosophers who are in pursuit of wisdom. Both are aspects of an individual's desire to stay fit for this life as long as possible while securing the further existence of humankind in all possible forms.

I am a Bulgarian. That makes it vitally important for me to find out how the above features fit into my native culture. And this search has brought me to the belief in our significance to humanity and in our contributions to what today can be termed 'global culture'.

I am an educator. This means I am involved in the process of bringing people up to the standards of a demanding, rapidly growing world that, in the words of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, feels the pressing imperative of leaving our cradle, the Earth. To this end, we need first to extend the perspective of our own culture.

Thus, the need for this book arose from my close professional involvement and discussions with people of a wide range of age, interests, and trade. I've communicated with children; high school students; university undergraduates, graduate and postgraduate students of English philology, applied linguistics, PR and advertising, and culture studies and rhetoric; English language (EL) teacher-trainees; and adult friends both directly and via the World Wide Web.

E-Kind is concerned with key issues of our time and of my native culture. Its ultimate goal is to urge young minds to explore the frontiers of existence. It records some aspects of my search to place Bulgarian culture within the spaces of the future worlds and gives insights to both explorers of unique territories and mediators of cultural diversity.

Its goal, thus, is not originality but education -- the education of survivors in need of a teacher who would motivate their further existence and touch for them both ends of growth that is too rapid, checking for its unbroken continuation. We learned English, and through it, we learned a new emerging space of intangible type, through which we had to gain access to a tangible world.

A teacher is trusted with remodelling the structures of a working mind. The Bulgarian culture contains a blend of Eastern and Western features, and Bulgarians have correspondent brain structures. I had to teach or weave into the brain patterns of my students Western knowledge, without causing damage and leaving the final choice to them. In order to neutralise the old structures by which they knew the world, I first gave them vast amounts of information, thus disabling their attempts to order. I then followed the turns and twists of the models I needed to fix. They were warned about this method, and they participated of their own free will. And I had their complete trust.

It was not a risky procedure, and none feared a dead end. Now I can formulate the reason for it -- we were weaving our tale, and each of us had the freedom to replay our work until the end of our training and then use the working parts of it in our continuing physical existence with a set mentality. We used language as both the tools and the building material. All of these tools and materials remain after being used. And this is the most precious thing about teaching a language. Language has all the resources for reconstructing a world in all its modes and takes up no physical space but is, rather, a virtual storage space.

I presume that human language is the material boundary of the next stage of human growth toward its extended mode of existence in midreality as e-kind.

Although E-Kind contains a vast range of references, I take responsibility for the arrangement and interpretation of the ideas and facts woven in it.

Let the praise go to all of my great teachers, while the imperfections be attributed to me alone as author of this text. And the pride goes to the generation to whom I taught philosophy in the guise of English classes. Let the judgement be theirs.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Keeping in mind what was stated in the preface, let me begin with a word of gratitude to my students from the last couple of years. I am grateful to those who gave me their whole trust and were active in their studies and asked questions and to those who were not, for they urged me to ask the questions myself and search for answers.

Answers to the same questions shift in time. We tend to place texts supporting archetypes and cultural values into time-bound contexts, only to discover that stereotypes and beliefs shimmer under the sun of a greater world and apply to spaces yet unexplored. Books that we have considered old and useless suddenly emerge in our day, giving insights. We do not need to go to antiquity for that. Knowledge of our kind abides in our minds, and solutions to how we are to cope with the changing environment are inside our physical bodies. Our existence is extending our inbuilt knowledge to broader spaces. Our microcosm is searching for exits, allowing it into bigger worlds until they merge to form a cosmos of a next level and the search starts again.

The answers that our time needs, though, are the clues to doors leading out of the labyrinth and letting us be in novel spaces of freedom.

Next, I shall thank my colleagues from the English department at the South-West University of Bulgaria for their unfailing backup and trust in me. And I am grateful also for the unique experience I was given as a philosopher of science teaching to philologists while practicing the art of rhetoric bound in text. So I must thank both those who gave me freedom and those who limited it in their own power and binds.

I am especially obliged to Maria Georgieva and Lilyana Grozdanova for their genuine support of my academic searches ever since the early 1990s as a teacher, examiner, and pursuer of deeper knowledge in the field of English studies. And so, too, am I obliged to Vesela Katzarova and Ellie Kalapsazova for their wholehearted sharing of every bit of information that helped me slip on the shoes of Alice and run into my own adventure amid the green fields and lavish gardens of Oxford.

Next comes the board of ESSE (European Society for the Study of English), who granted me the opportunity of reading in the Bodleian Library of Oxford. In particular, I give my gratitude to its treasurer, Lachlan Mackenzie, who gave me invaluable advice on how to experience a scholarly adventure, and to its president Fernando Galvan for his letter of recommendation, which was accepted as sufficient grounds for giving me the privilege of an insider to Oxford libraries during summer 2007.

In this line, I am to say a word of gratitude to Irina Peryanova from the University of National and World Economy (UNWE), Plamen Bratanov from the PR department of South-West University (SWU), Vanya Mavrodieva and Vera Gancheva from Sofia University (SU), Lucy Kostova from University of Veliko Tarnovo (VTU), David Jenkins and Margarita Slavova from (University of Plovdiv) PU devoted scholars and educators, true friends, and inquisitive minds ready to share adventure and take part in a debate.

There are also people who have always been ready to listen to a hypothesis, to lend a hand in the making up of the conceptual frame and production of the book, or to think in a synchronised way on their own topics. Among these are Diana Milcheva, Yana Chankova, Sylvia Georgieva, and a thousand virtual friends from the World Wide Web, where I have been trying out some aspects of this search in artistic disguise.

The farther I go down this list of people and institutions that have played a crucial role in fostering my philosophical search for the phenomenology of a Bulgarian self in the spaces of leading science, the heavier it becomes. I am obliged to Julia Stefanova and the Fulbright society in Sofia, as well as to the people from the Boston Fulbright community, who let me 'enjoy my freedom', granting me the unique freedom of involvement in the making of leading science. I am grateful to professor Veliko Milutinovic, who invited me to IPSI conferences, where Integrity of Internet Studies was the leading theme, and who introduced me to the world of science. And I am grateful to Tom Greene and Professor Chomsky; to Stephen Yablo and the colleagues from MIT's Department of Philosophy and Linguistics, who were my hosts in 2007 and 2008; and to the Math