Searching for Zen, and the Seventh Layer

I wanted to briefly check in and post something of an update on my conceptual travels through the positive brain and the realtime evolution of the species.

Last week I had the opportunity to participate in a Zen retreat at the Big Mind Western Zen Center here in Salt Lake City. A partial coverage of my experience searching for Zen can be found on the ad hoc blog I created to document my experiences on the retreat:

http://searchingforzen.wordpress.com/

Also, here is a “heads up” on a soon-to-be blog post that I am quite excited about. In my continuing post-Singularity-Summit-futurism high, I’ve been thinking a lot about brain computer interfacing (BCI). As my thoughts have integrated the burgeoning exploits of BCI with the human brain’s evolutionary history, it has occurred to me that—at least metaphorically—BCI is like adding a seventh layer to the neocortex. This is extremely cool. In this perspective, BCI would literally be a “next step” in the evolution of the species. Look forward to a BCI-based blog post coming soon that will touch on both the cladistics of brain evolution in addition to exploration of potential implications for a synthetical “seventh layer” of the human cortical architecture.

Don’t you love the brain??!