Roger Nelson

GCP blog

This (archived) page is the repository for the occasional updates I have been sending to the GCP mailing list every two or three months over the years.

GCP/EGG Update November 21 2005

It's been a busy time of travel and meetings, often with people and purposes that are aligned with the GCP's and, most likely, with yours as well.

In September, Lefty and I went to Unity Village near Kansas City. It's a beautiful campus that is the center of a worldwide, inclusive spiritual movement. I had a whole morning to talk with ministerial students and others about the technology of research on interactions of consciousness and environment, and the evidence for Interconnecting Minds: Signs of a Global Consciousness.

In late October I joined about 40 other people at a conference in Ashville NC on Universal Awakening. This is a new organization, with a mission to think deeply about how to be active in bringing us to a future that is the product of our highest human capacities. More at universal-awakening.org

A few days ago, I gave a talk at Temple Medical School Grand Rounds for Psychiatry. Interesting experience. Physicians and Psychatrists are very practical people, interested in making things work, so they had solid, skeptical questions, but they could see confirmation of their own subjective insights that touch on how we live in the world—sometimes with ease, other times with immense difficulty.

Our friends at the Lifebridge Foundation have just opened the Lifebridge Sanctuary, a retreat setting for non-profits who are looking for a beautiful private space for group reflection, creative thinking and cutting edge conversation. For further information: lifebridge.org/sanctuary

We have a couple of new eggs, and we have lost a couple of long-running eggs to the difficulties of networking in a time of spam and virus-hacking. Getting our data through firewalls was not a consideration in 1998, but it is now. An interesting sign of both the longevity of the project and of the changing nature of our technological interconnectedness. Some aspects grow more transparent, but others more obscure.

It makes me think of the truly immense tasks before us as masters of our destiny. The tools we create as the newest and best manifestations of our creativity and potential come with complexities and side effects, unintended consequences, that are potent, and definitely not planned for. It is daunting to envision the developing ensemble of human progress (which seems sometimes to point in the other direction—but our work suggests that positive expectations are the way to go.)

The formal event sequence that is the primary analysis for theGCP includes samples both positive and negative, but one of the clearest results continues to be that compassion is a defining characteristic of the events that most strongly affect the EGG network. That should be no surprise, of course, because this is the common ground or core of the interactive, interdependent group or global consciousness that we're touching.

While traveling in December and January I probably will have occasional access to the Internet, but less than usual. Email will continue to be the best way to contact me. Perhaps I'll send out another note before leaving, but if not, let me wish you now the best for the next coming holidays, wherever you may be.

Best, Roger

GCP/EGG Update 2 October 2005

I am happy to report that the noosphere server is up, as of the 30th Sept, after just a day of down time. My wizard son Greg helped establish that there was no damage, and our best guess is that the basic problem was a transient hardware glitch. We were concerned by a flood of data requests that looked like a denial of service attack, but it seems these were just a secondary manifestation of a temporarary memory overload.

The delicate balance of facilities and structures in computer systems is amazing, and it is interesting to focus on that remarkable presence in the world. I must admit to some level of anxiety while the server was down. It is easy to become accustomed to our tools and facilities just being there, and a lapse reveals something of our intimate dependencies. I actually missed the noosphere server and the GCP's lively presence in my every day. And that is such a trivial matter compared to the enormous losses suffered from Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf states and New Orleans. What a lesson, if only we would step back and learn from it.

So, I am happy we're back online, not least because it is possible to look at the EGG network's response to Katrina. The primary test on the first day was not significant, but the next few days show variance fluctuations almost as large as those on Sept 11 2001. (Linked from Results table.) This is a perspective we will study more carefully in future analyses, as part of a focus on learning more about effective measures and their interpretation.

Again I commend to you the earthquake analyses by Peter Bancel. There is plenty of careful work to do before we can fully understand the potential and confidently interpret this work, but it is exciting. Have a look. The direct URL is earthquakes, and especially the last part, on precursor indications.

Some new events have been added to the Results table, including Katrina, the tragic stampede in Baghdad, and the recent rally against the Iraq war in Washington. If I have time before leaving, there is also an un-analysed prediction concerning the terrorist bombings in Bali that will be added. Results.

There are also some new musical interpretations of GCP data at music by Phillip Wood and by Jeff Robertson. Links are at the bottom of the page. And though I haven't seen it yet, Mike Leznoff has made an animation of the changing tapestry that appears on the home page. He says the motion accentuates the bilateral patterns—it's almost hypnotic.... I'll put a piece of that on the website when it becomes available.

I can also introduce some new egg hosts. The most recent are Adam Ward in Taiwan, and Walter Cooke in Bermuda. In the past few months we also have added eggs in Mexico, Natalie Larrode, in Estonia, Henri Laupmaa, in Malasia, Arthur Eeckart, in Colombia, Sergio Carvajal, and Argentina, Andres Kievsky. Not sure I introduced all of these folks in previous notes.

Nice to be back in business. It would be still nicer if all the reporting in my update were about pleasant, positive events. But as they say, It's all good. For sure it is all what it is, and accepting what is must be the first step in creating what will be.

Best, Roger

GCP/EGG Update 20 September 2005

I have been feeling it is time for an update for a while, and now have a particular need to send one.

The noosphere server is down, as of late on the 29th Sept, so there is no access to the website, nor can the eggs report their current data. So this update is partly a note to egg hosts to let you all know the situation. Your eggs will continue to store data for reporting when the server is up and running again. I hope it will turn out to be a minor problem but I will not be able to determine this until later today.

When we're back online, one item you may find especially interesting is the continuing earthquake analysis by Peter Bancel. Previously I wrote about the clear indications of an effect that is evidently dependent on the importance of major quakes to human consciousness. There is also information that can help us think about the nature of the GCP/EGG network response, including theoretically important issues such as locality. Peter's most recent work shows the time course of the response, and it appears that it begins well before the primary temblor of the earthquakes. This is (as always in our data) a subtle correlation, so it typically does not show in a single event, but requires signal averaging over many earthquakes. (The huge tsunami quake is an exception, and it does show the general pattern.) I hope you will be able to look at these findings soon. The direct URL is earthquakes.

I will make this short, and will send another update as soon as the server is available. We have had some major events, I will make this short, and will send another update as soon as the server is available. We have had some major events, including the disaster in New Orleans and the gulf states in the US. As you may guess, it is odd to write to you about what you might be interested in looking at if only the noosphere server were running.

My best to you all,
Roger