Multiplicity: Emblem

I was going to make the brain my emblem for Multiplicity but I really wanted to incorporate the idea of networking into my blog. Yes, Multiplicity can be represented with physical networking (like the brain) but I think a more pertinent emblem would be a bit more virtual. I decided to use the Facebook “+1” icon as my emblem for Multiplicity.

As Calvino said, “each life is an encyclopedia,” and I believe that Facebook actually does a pretty good job of showing us that on a daily basis. The interconnectivity of humans is mind-blowing and I cannot tell you how many times I’ve been surprised by a “mutual friends” page. Not only that, but with the advent of Facebook Timeline, our entire lives can be outlined on the web for everyone to see and reference. Hopefully one day I’ll get a biography better than Facebook but for now, I think it’s amazing! Facebook effectively connects us all through the past, present, and future time to come.

Multiplicity: Analogy

Last year I took a class called Behavioral Neuroscience and got an introductory education about the connections within our brains and how information from the outside world is taken in and transmitted to neurons and how we process that information and transmit it into new movements/thoughts. It was fascinating and really helped me to understand some of the neuroscience concepts that I had only superficially studied.

The image below is called a cortical homunculus. Although it’s not very accurate, it allows you to see the “body within the brain;” it is a visual representation of the sensory connections and their respective body parts. From this you can see that many of our nerves are concentrated in the hands, mouth, and lips.

Although not everyone has taken that class I think most people have a basic understanding of how neurons in the brain work. For example, we receive information from the world around us through our senses and we transmit that data via the electrical connections in our brains. Our brain processes that information and sends it out via an electrical signal to produce a response. Our body is infinitely connected. The human brain is the best system of networking ever created. It is the most efficient and complex.

We can think of Multiplicity as a system of neurons in the brain. Our brains are the best example of a physical encyclopedia that we have. Our also have the ability to instantly reference knowledge from our past, present and future thoughts. Moreover, our brains (through evolution and natural selection) represent the past, present, and future forms of Multiplicity.