Hi Joan: Checkout the following links September 9, 1999

http://csmaclab-www.uchicago.edu/philosophyProject/sellars/broad/mpn-con.html

http://members.aol.com/_ht_a/anilmitra/myhomepage/profile.html

http://www.horizons-2000.org/evolution_and_destiny.html

The evolution and destiny hyperlink references a document that includes Michael Greenberg's e-mail address, which is private.

I was musing about the number of people interested in consciousness. Many people where I work - this is natural... quite a few report finding it exciting; it is one of the current "in" fields in psychology, philosophy, neuroscience, artificial intelligence. Popular books continue to come out in the field. Of course, my writing seems difficult and esoteric primarily because it is fresh off the intellectual mint. However, the content addresses problems central to most persons who question "what am I" or "what am I doing here?"

Getting rid of stuff is exciting and liberating. Of course, the stuff being gotten rid of is not easy to get rid of. However, it is an exercise in discipline to decide what is functionally necessary...and to balance the desire for information at my fingertips and the freedom to explore. After a certain point, old artifacts become impediments to development. Finally, and this is the most important point, and it relates to Ms. Elk's question about "why have books on the Internet?" The most durable, most essential, and most actual container of information, ideas, knowledge, wisdom...what have you is the [human] organism. Libraries and electronic databases are supportive and secondary. In addition, beyond a certain point, though they are functional as instruments and are stores of information that is central to our civilization, the are detriments to the presence of the organism in the universe.

Anil