In about 1975, Arcosnati opened the site to the public for guided tours. An information and sales room was located in the base of the Restaurant staircase. These tours were a precursor to Dave and Ernies' Restaurant. In the tradition the Woods family enabled Cosanti to emulate from Taliesin, an onsite component of the prime meme of universal history contained in the Corchoran models and the Black Book was introduced into our contado, the local domain of geography and culture surrounding the Arcosanti site.
If I were to distill the common experience uniting the intensity of the early days and the ultimate goal of the work today, it is the intelligent design for social awakening congruent with the natural foundation of conscious social symbiosis: an algorithm for an experience of presence as human beings in that moment: the hoped-for future experienced here and now, face to face.
In the immediate aftermath of genetic evolution of complexity-consciousness, memes exploited the new design space of consciousness, the neurobiology of the human brain in visual-centric language- contingent design space. One person's sense of the essence of this mutation, with its exceptional replicatory advantage over natural selection, a meme of history as old as language, is "against things". Humor and irony certainly are an evolutionary strategy of the weak against the strong. As one tasked with developing the algorithm to build sustainable civilization, to name it, in effect, "renunciation city", was a problematic choice almost impossible to overcome, one discussed among serious patrons at the time.
It is another unfortunate corollary of the the founding meme of "structure before performance", itself a parody of phonetic linearity language presents inherently, is that meme theory and arcology theory emerged separately as contemporaneous responses to the Neo-Darwinian synthesis. This presents us in hindsight with the uncritical association with Teilhard. Every generation has its faux pas, intrinsic to the scientific endeavor, and intellectual amateurs at the helm alike. That's why pencils have erasers. For example, "my" zoologist celebrity/Teilhard colleague, infamously was a conspicuous influential early skeptic of the then revolutionary discovery of plate tectonics. We early birds catch a lot of worms. Even though worms' genetic code is longer than ours, a fact worth pondering. Scientists and Twitter posters are subject to peer review. Prophets in the desert elude this blessing and can wander for decades until longevity and infirmity intersect with corrective knowledge. Who knew that cumulative human knowledge would double in the ensuing interval but still not catch up to our 1975 proclamation of the prime meme! Unlike our richly incentivized counterparts in the meme wars, the creationists, we have been pitifully negligent to appropriate retroactively the credit for evolution's unlikely random design (as it appeared before supercomputers revealed the innovation bias inherent in this universe.) Our "first finder's claim" to the most valuable information it is possible to know in the design space of universal possibility as of today's date remains dormant.
What is more, this priceless uniqueness value remains, at my distance, forgotten. Even, until recently,
by me. Like me, its existence left fossil evidence due to a plethora of meme induction pursued deliberately, if largely unconsciously, at the time. The late seminar was embarrassingly devoid of scientific detail. Documentary evidence is sufficient of our intention to, as respondents delicately expressed, brainwash, potential future thought leaders with a suite of mimetic induction modalities that were themselves synthesized for the first time. Paolo consented to and astoundingly even participated in my endeavors in this regard, which were no less than an extension of age of exploration claims to all conceivable possessions implied by their first discovery/"finders keepers" meme. This is a no-brainer negotiating ploy. Who knows? It could even work. A variation of it was used to facilitate the Mongol Empire version of "good cop" with some success. The cost benefit is without precedent. In the long run everything is true.
Yes, the territory was already occupied, inconveniently, by a climax species of its own evolutionary niche, as is the current world when we arrived. This is of great relevance, given the decisive value of local collaborators, called by Toynbee internal proletariat, to any would-be alternative culture replication advantage. One could describe meso-american temple states as memes autonomously occupying brains displaced by other occupying memes of greater evolutionary short term replicative power, aided by locally evolved genes' immunity exploiting sexual reproduction to replicate versus genes lacking these mutations. Contagion is an equal opportunity algorithm,
Tourism was a conspicuous new income stream, assuring Paolo's support by self funding and surplus ,profit. In Medieval times the economic algorithm of town formation, our conscious inspiration at the time, was pilgrimage destination, possession of a relic. In my home city of Santa Barbara an exact replica of Byzantine Christendom's meme was recreated, St. Barbara's Orthodox Church. It's possible, as I've often done, to time travel to the lost millennium of our history preserved intact. But its value as a meme replicator was that it definitively, explicitly framed the first person first impression of hundreds of thousands of people residing in the contado of our claim to the Prime Meme. Giving tours had no glory in the pecking order. A mind numbing round of routine like washing dishes for Wright's apprentices. And guess who got to cherry pick the the celebrities or any other interesting visitors, skim the cream? If I acknowledge that, why not concede, I also picked the staff and set the narrative meme. All of which was worthless without the right line person, David Belskis. I regret that nepotism influenced the process prior to David's exemplary and unrecognized critically important work. Those involved deserved more class, and can rest assured those sins are well punished. Perhaps fully only this year with the unnatural death of my beloved brother and colleague, Chris, in my place. All on me, all an outcome of my actions then. Chris died without knowing the vindication we now may realize. With that I must pause and regroup.
If nothing else, the above provides a larger contest for what might be called Prime Meme 1.0,
the familiar "Most important urban experiment of this century." In my defense, this was 23 years before 2000. Consider this essay as an update, better late than never, which is what 2018 seemed like in the early exponential age. What is it about presence that empowers the most byzantine memes of delaying it to replicate. Such as waiting until deep AI agrees with us when it tires of serving driverless cars and tunnels under LA. Somebody please ask it to play Go against Tokyo. My guess is arcology, or AI augmented arcology, is the most likely prediction of strong AI. Perhaps all these memes monetizing our evolutionary heritage by undermining it at our expense are really just softening up the opposition by sacrificial gambits. I'm declaring, strengthened by the latest advances in AI and Neuroscience, checkmate {Go equivalent}. What follows will reveal the basis for this prediction.
