Posthuman Blues

It occurred to me that it would be a good idea to compose a classification system for perceived "alien encounters" and similar claims. The idea is loosely based on ufologist Dr. J. Allen Hynek's now-famous "Close Encounters" classification scheme. (A Close Encounter of the Third Kind specifically denotes UFO "occupants," thus the Spielberg movie . . .

Apparently the Center for UFO Studies was to have devised something similar, but it's possible they've lost interest. The importance of a proper classification method, to me, is the potential ability to separate geuine events from "noise." (As you can guess, the alien abduction signal-to-noise ratio is quite low. Most "abduction" reports can be explained without invoking any sort of nonhuman intelligence. But I'm convinced there is an overlooked residue of actual experiences.) More on this effort later.

Blogs and brains

Blogs are the text-based equivalent to "reality" TV: ubiquitous, candid and fueled by the same sort of once-avant garde aethetic. If a future artificial intelligence wants to really know what's going on in the outside world, it may choose to peruse the entirety of the world's ever-growing infestation of blogs -- in which case bloggers' innermost thoughts and day-to-day meanderings will be assimilated into a vast living snapshot of humanity. Fifteen nanoseconds of fame -- if you're lucky.