Ghosts in the Machine

(photo by peasap )

I was talking with Patrick Burnsof Tru TV’s “Haunting Evidence” over some cocktails one night and it became very clear that the lack of institutional research into “ghosts” is due in large amount to two key points. Firstly, you’ll find a lack of funding from credible and reliable sources. At first glance you might think this means that only poor crackpots are doing research into the unexplained, but it goes far deeper than that humble summation. From being involved with Stevens Institute of Technology I’ve learned a little about the grant writing process from echoes in the hallway and frankly paranormal research doesn’t have a practical military or commercial application, so the it’s lacking value. As Pat and I washed back some punch and sunk deeper into our armchairs he let me in on the second barrier to a successful “reputable” investigation… the lack of our ability to reproduce paranormal phenomena in a controlled environment. With neither economic value nor the ability for demonstratable progress it seems like paranormal research is stagnated at the grassroots level, but does it have to be?

Patrick and many other researchers are under the impression that ghost phenomena are linked to fluctuations in electro-magnetic fields. This shouldn’t be news to anyone with even a passing interest the topic, but what hasn’t been explored is how to make this theory interesting to a private underwriter. I posed the question to Patrick and he seemed delighted at the possibilities. If ghosts are actually imprints of human bio-electricity replaying primitive “programs” in the ether at designated locations that almost gels with some of the notions put forward by Kurzweil in “The Singularity is Near” and can in-turn get spin off some amazing revolutions in human technology.

In “The Singularity is Near”, Kurzweil discusses the number of calculations being conducted in “dormant” materials such as a stationary rock. Every time a particle moves a digital calculation is actually occurring and when you approach the world with this basic understanding of computing theory your mind opens up to new paradigms in how to develop ever more complicated machines. With this in mind we can come to a new theory… all living things might actually be capable of leaving small cohesive programs in their wake under certain conditions. If a specific location has the correct amount of magnetism or combination of factors it could be functioning as an ethereal hard drive with the environment itself as an ever evolving operating system.

We know so little about how living systems integrate on this level that anything is a possibility. If paranormal research was shifted to the laboratory as a paradigm for new possibilities in computing you satisfy both the factors required for greater funding… funding that can be used to jointly on the lab and field research.

Imagine the profit potential for the company that could patent the process of storing data in a retrievable way simply in thin air. An infinite hard drive of wireless (virtually hardware free) computing possibilities.