Society, mediated: The four dimensional human

[C C]

http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/article1648516.ece

EXCERPT: . . . [In "The Four Dimensional Human" Laurence] Scott exquisitely captures “the bleeding away of presence” caused by life in the digital world. [...] A century ago, the fourth dimension was popularly thought of as a place outside of time and location, a world that could be reached only through a yet undiscovered conduit or portal. [...Many intellects & professionals...] eagerly envisioned that portal and its promise.

For Scott, modems provide the doorway into an infinite array of new territories, allowing us to finally inhabit space in a way that could be called four-dimensional. “[...] in the last twenty years the limits and coherence of our bodies have been so radically redefined”, he observes. “We have an everywhereness to us now that inevitably alters our relationship[s ...] Like the 4D man, we are able to insubstantiate ourselves to the point that the solid stuff around us seems insubstantial.” But “everywhereness” takes a toll [...]

“Everywhereness” describes how it feels when there is no longer any experience – meeting a friend, looking out of a window, feeling momentarily exasperated or exhilarated – that is particular to that moment, that place, those people. Social media make each moment four-dimensional, Scott says [...] Because “everywhereness” demands a blurring of here and there, it “can produce a sense of absenteeism, and the suspicion that, despite being in many places at once, we’re not fully inhabiting any of them”. The Four-Dimensional Human adds immeasurably to the burgeoning literature on what social media do to our innermost lives, relationships, and stance towards the world....

[elte]

I seem to remember something about the fourth dimension in physics could be gotten to if one could move off the brane of the universe. Could that mean if space and time could be exited, one would be in the fourth dimension? Maybe that place could be equated to the supernatural, which like a fourth dimension is speculative.

[C C]

I seem to remember something about the fourth dimension in physics could be gotten to if one could move off the brane of the universe. Could that mean if space and time could be exited, one would be in the fourth dimension?

In the context of the block-universe conception of spacetime, time itself seems for practical purposes to be a version of the geometric 4th dimension rather than just a "4th dimension" in a non-spatial or alternative mode. But it's usually not taken to be the literal 4th dimension despite exhibiting some of its characteristics.

Maybe that place could be equated to the supernatural, which like a fourth dimension is speculative.

That did become a popular idea for awhile in the 19th century, after Bernhard Riemann carved a way for higher dimensions to be expressed in mathematics (if still not intuitively / perceptually so for us).

Gauss's student Bernhard Riemann brought a definitive clarification to the meaning of measure. He acknowledged in the introduction to his famous lecture "On the hypotheses which lie at the bases of geometry" that this was influenced, not only by Gauss, but also by ideas of the philosopher John Friedrich Herbart, who pioneered early studies of perception and learning. Herbart's work played a significant role in debates centered on how the mind brings structure to sensation.

Like cognitive scientists today, Herbart broke down the world of appearances into the subjective impressions that build it. He rejected the idea that space was the thing that contained the physical world. For him spatial forms were mental images derived from relationships among any number of things we experience. They arise in our conception of time (the future being ahead of us and the past behind us), as well as number, and are applied to all aspects of the physical world. Herbart accepted that any perceived object could be thought of as a collection of properties bound together. Many of these properties are produced interactively — colour, for example, happens when light interacts with an object and with the eye. In his collected works, published in 1850 and 1851, Herbart defined space as, "the symbol of the possible community of things standing in causal relationship." The eyes and the sense of touch, separately triggered, then later fused and developed, begin the production of space in our minds. For Herbart visual images were like hypotheses that are constantly adjusted in response to feedback from the eye which acts as the measuring device.

Riemann suggested that before we can understand Gauss' extensive quantities we need a broader notion of magnitude or measure, one that isn't tied to space as we perceive it.

[elte]

I recall learning of the Rieman Series in math.

Instead of 4th dimension I guess I meant 5th. I was wondering why I didn't see reference to the new age musical group from the sixties when I was googling for info.

[Magical Realist]

"Omnipresence has become an ordinary human dimension."--Mcluhan

“Language does for intelligence what the wheel does for the feet and the body. It enables them to move from thing to thing with greater ease and speed and ever less involvement.”
― Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man

"The present is always invisible because its environmental. No environment is perceptible, simply because it saturates the whole field of attention."
Mademoiselle: the magazine for the smart young woman, Volume 64, 1966, p. 114

"Everybody tends to merge his identity with other people at the speed of light. It's called being mass man."--Mcluhan

"Attention spans get very weak at the speed of light, and that goes along with a very weak identity."==Mcluhan