Synnoetics and self: the construction of planetary identity as an aesthetic oeuvre

In this article an expanded model of a constructed planetary self is sought, informed by the meta-discipline of “synnoetics”-a term coined in 1961 by Louis Fein in unpublished documents, to describe “the cooperative interaction, or symbiosis of people, mechanisms, plant or animal organisms, and automata into a system that results in a mental power (power of knowing) greater than that of its individual components.” (Fein, 1960) As the Net has brought about the death of the Cartisian cogito and the collapse of the Oedipal narrative, monolithic identity is renounced and replaced by a constructed identity of ubiquity. Synnoetics takes us one step further, as we are able to consciously construct a Synnoetic self as an aesthetic oeuvre, further challenging traditional notions of singular, monolithic identity and extending notions of the postmodern, decentered self into simultaneously new and ancient selves defined by shape-shifting, Psi-interaction, and cumulative, distributed, inter-species knowing. It is my position in this paper that the parallel trajectories of development in nanotechnologies; research in Psi and anomolous phenomena, and the proliferation of ubiquitous technologies has created a medium for the creation of a synnoetic self. The merger of these research agendas represent a fourth stage in the development of cybernetics, as the research facilitates an entirely new channel for information exchange and communication between humans, plants, animals, and machines, and consequently, for the construction of a planetary, aesthetic, beyond the human, self. The role of technology shifts, as it is used not to augment or extend human consciousness, but to measure the extent to which the boundaries of human, plant, animal, and machine consciousness are not known. For example, in Psi phenomena, consciousness needs sensitive technology to be understood and directed, thus consciousness augments technology, not the other way round. Psi phenomena as a form of wireless communication may be of profound importance to the future development of interactive ubiquitious interfaces, synnoetic intra-species minds, and a new, undefined context for aesthetic experience.