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Initially “anyone can program reality” via written text,

invention of the printing press assigns more control to those who control the means of production/replication

In the era of mass media, there’s a sense of mainstream knowledge that’s vetted carefully by editors and publishers who share similar biases and assumptions.

In the era of computers and the Internet, we’ve seen the evolution of a more decentralized, diverse “social” media

How free are we from a the centralized set of biases associated with mass publishing?

Rushkoff argues that there are biases in the way things are programmed – programmers have biases or they’re directed according to the biases of others.

bias followed by commandment

1) Time: “Thou shalt not be always on.”

2) Distance: “Thou shalt not do from a distance what can be done better in person.”

you have to be clear whether you’re using the technology where it’s most effective, or simply conceding to its inherent bias.

3) Scale – the net is biased to scale up. “Exalt the particular.” Not everything should scale. This makes me think of E.F. Schumacher’s “Small is Beautiful.”

4) Discrete: “You may always choose none of the above.”

5) Complexity. “Thou shalt never be completely right.”

Real scholarship acknowledges, embraces, and digs into that complexity.

6) Anonymity. “Thou shalt not be anonymous.”

By default, we are incomplete in an environment that is mostly textual and binary communication. In this context, it is liberating to adopt a strong sense of identity.

7) Contact. “Remember the humans.” Content is not king in a communications environment – CONTACT is king.

8) Abstraction. “As above, so below.” Text abstracted words from speech. Invention of text led to an abstract god. Also led to treating economy as if it is nature – but it’s not, it’s a game. Don’t make equivalencies between the abstracted model and the real world.

9) Openness. “Thou shalt not steal.”

We’re seeing a transitional economy where value and compensation are being redefined, and where especially the value and exchange of social capital is increasingly more relevant.

10) End users. Here the bias is toward making all or most of us end users rather than programmers. “Program or be programmed.”

The user and the coder are farther apart. He argues that we should all understand programming, be able to build our own tools or configure tools other have built so that we have more control over the digital environment.

Margulis, inspired by the work of little-known biologists, revealed and proved these mergers for us.  At first, her worked was rejected and scoffed at.  It did not fit the still-dominant neo-Darwinian paradigm that tells us all evolutionary novelty comes from natural selection acting on genes and the gradual accumulation of random genetic mutation.  But eventually these symbioses were accepted because they could not be ignored

our physical selves are universes composed of the movemenst, biological agreements, and interactions of these beings.

"Identity is not an object; it is a process with addresses for all the different directions and dimensions in which it moves..." Margulis once stated, with her colleague Ricardo Guerrero.

Indeed, symbiogenesis has been observed in the lab.  An amoeba population, accidentally infected with bacteria was observed over long periods of time, and soon enough, the infecting bacteria could not be removed from the infected amoeba without killing the organism. 

Gaia is the work of the relational loops of push and pull between bacteria, other organisms, and the environment

But Lovelock came up with an understandable and accesible metaphor in the form of a computer program called Daisyworld.  Daisyworld is not the "proof" of Gaia: Lovelock and his colleague Andrew Watson devised the program to see if living and environmental factors could theoretically interact without intention. 

"Gaia," Margulis's former student Greg Hinkle said, "is just symbiosis as seen from space."

Gaia processes are real and observable (and sometimes referred to as "biogeochemistry", a term more acceptable to mainstream science).  Furthermore, the five kingdoms (bacteria, protoctists, fungi, plants, animals) of life are all touched by symbiosis

After she found James Lovelock, they worked on making those processes known.  Their collaboration resulted in Gaia Theory, which was a disciplinary symbiosis -- the theoretical expression of Margulis's interdisciplinary life.

All animals have symbiotic partners in their guts.  Remove these symbionts and the animals die.

Microcosmos show us a bacterial view of the world.  Bacteria exchange their genes laterally.  This means they don't pass their genomic information only when they reproduce (though this can happen), but also  through their simple existence.

Along with the many detailed examples of bacterial mergers at varying levels of cellular complexity, the world revealed by Acquiring Genomes is also a world of mating between distinct phyla

What is definite is that the merging of beings is key, and symbiogenesis offers a clearly observable alternative to the consistent but woefully incomplete neo-Darwinian paradigm.

David Bohm, who said

"Science is the search for truth...whether we like it or not."

Many neo-Darwinist concerns circled nervously around words like "Gaia" and "cooperation" (which Margulis did not like to use).  They were, perhaps rightly, concerned that these terms were ripe for religious appropriation.  But Margulis herself was outspoken against such mishandling of her research. 

it's much more complex than that -- there is something "in it" for every symbiont,

"Gaia is not merely an organism."  The Earth is beyond stale conception.  It is more magnificent and active than we can imagine.  Gaia is object and process.

this complexity is impossible to incorporate in a linear and reductive understanding.

If Gaia is conscious, it possesses a consciousness of a different magnitude, probably of a different order all together.

Perhaps as we -- in the newly and deeply connected world of the internet, social profiles, and globalization -- witness the dissolution of the cult of isolated individuality and embark on understanding a clearer and more nuanced view of individuality, so to will we ready ourselves for a clearer view of evolution and life.

Dawkins, who claims to be an atheist, relies on a host of selfish angels within us and the possibility for meme-salvation to justify his theory.  He substantiates his magical worldview on a meager past of scientific work.

To encompass complex systems with our thinking, we must imagine a model that is less like "cause-effect" more like "being-manifestation."  That is, multiple layers and numerous agents of forces unconsciously conspire together, and their conspiring is so intermingled, that it is simultaneously cause and effect, and thus beyond both. 

Now that Margulis has died, it remains our choice to catch up with what she and her life's work have set in motion.  To do so, we must bring together the many fields of knowledge she embodied.  Biologists must talk to physicists, virologists must talk to geologists, cosmologists must talk to microbiologists, and scientists musty talk to non-scientists.  This motion of meeting and exchanging ideas, if we act with it, will evolve our thinking.