Dematerialization and Virtualization

comparison of nuclear fusion and cognitive fusion

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Dematerialization

Sources of conventional energy are typically associated with well-recognized forms of matter. These range from solid fuels (wood, coal, peat, etc), through liquid in some form (rivers, tides, oil, etc), to gas (wind, natural gas, etc). With the focus on plasma to achieve controlled nuclear fusion, there is now a progression to what is described as a "fourth state of matter". The shift in focus to plasma, as ionized gas, may be understood as a form of "dematerialization". The capacity to derive energy directly from the sun (solar power, etc) may also be understood as directly dependent on plasma-based processes.

The question of whether human society is subject to dematerialization processes has been a matter of research since the work of Robert Herman, et al (Dematerialization, in Jesse H. Ausubel and Hedy E. Sladovich, eds., Technology and Environment 1989). Initially dematerialization was defined primarily as the decline over time in the weight of materials used in industrial end products or in the "embedded energy" of the products. More broadly, dematerialization now refers to the absolute or relative reduction in the quantity of materials required to serve economic functions (cf Iddo K. Wernick et al. Materialization and Dematerialization: Measures and Trends, Daedalus 125, 1996, 3). This may be expressed as reducing the total material that goes toward providing benefits to customers -- accomplished through greater efficiency, the use of better or more appropriate materials, or by creating a service that produces the same benefit as a product (cf Dematerialization and Immaterialization)

Dematerialization has taken on a wider significance in relation to electronic information. It may then be understood as a process to convert assets and securities held in physical form into electronic form or to directly allot securities in electronic record form. Ecological sustainability may be assessed as the dematrialization of production and consumption (cf Peter Bartelemus, Dematerialization and Capital Maintenance: two sides of the sustainability coin, 2002). An important potential avenue for achieving sustainability objectives is to develop policies aimed at dematerialization of consumer preferences and consumption patterns (cf Dematerialization, habit formation and social interactions in consumer behaviour, 2005).

The widely-recognized emergence of a knowledge-based society, matched by an increasing concern with faith-based structuresand disciplines, also points to the importance of dematerialization. It is within this context that "cognitive fusion" may be understood to take place. This trend is better recognized under the term "virtualization".

Virtualization

More generally, dematerialization may be understood as one of the processes of virtualization. The relationship to a form of cognitive fusion is noted, from the perspective of art, by Urs Jaeggi (Morandi's Bottles, Duchamp's 'Fresh Widows', and the Tower of Babel, XXIInd International Art History Colloquium of the Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, 1998 in Queretaro):

Virtualization as the one path. This invalidation of reality, the dematerialization is taking its course. Paralleling it, and drawing on the same resources, is a strand of enlightenment. It is becoming ever more important and its radicality is not underestimated, but prejudicially and polemically exaggerated -- either positively or negatively. The issue is the apparently seamless experience resulting from the synthesis of television, advertising, consumption, technology, and knowledge. And the issue is precisely the content that, from the beginning, critical theory has fulminantly if unsuccessfully criticized as an aberration of modernity.

Timothy W. Luke (MegaMetaphorics: Re-Reading Globalization, Sustainability, and Virtualization as Rhetorics of World Politics, 1999) usefully clarifies -- from a self-reflexive perspective -- the cognitive challenge of seeking to describe, within a highly dynamic collectivity, concepts that are used to provide coherence to social processes:

What are “world politics?” For some, this question is easy: it is anything political about, from or on the current world system of states, economies, and nations. For others, this question is much more difficult: it is the politics of world-definition, world-construction, world-action. And, for still others, the question necessarily mixes a measure from each of the previous groups. This paper takes the third way, casting the politics of world-definition as part and parcel of the nitty-gritty political dynamics of our world....

Megametaphors capture, in a sense, many versal possibilities as they get caught up in the politics of actualizing their more complete universalization. All who seek greater globalization, sustainability or virtualization can articulate polysemic performative discourses with such terms, which illustrate what it is “like” to be global, attain sustainable development, and become virtual. At the same time, experts will opine about these phenomena and lay persons will believe their opinions, confirming the new doxa of these discourses. Those discussions, however, essentially start to extrude elements of globalization, sustainability, and virtualization out of the debates exploring what these phenomena could be. By presuming to suggest what such changes should be, their exponents cause parallel events and processes to come into effect, which test what they should and should not be. The hesitant and multiversal qualities of such transformations, at the same time, become much more definitive and universal, because megametaphors anchor the mythic invention of their referents. Globalization could be many different things, as could sustainability or virtuality, but they all require very specific forms of completion, definition, and execution because of how they are imagined by the doxosophers who discover, define, and then deploy them in social life. Such doxosophical agents are ambiguous forces. To some, they may seem to be popular organic intellectuals; but, in the main, they live and work in the far more inorganic domains of business, industry, and the professions. Hence, it is more plausible to see them as “inorganic intellectuals.”

This is a point developed by John Ralston Saul (Voltaire's Bastards: the dictatorship of reason in the West, 1992; The Unconscious Civilization, 1995) with regard to the deformations of thought such as ideology promoted as truth and the use of language and expertise to mask a practical understanding of the harm this causes.

With respect to "virtualization" Luke argues:

The rapidity of change in the digital domains of the Internet is widely acknowledged in the megametaphorics of the present. To write about it, or reconsider the effects of its current mix of functionalities, is a hazardous enterprise, but the digerati rise to the challenge. Still, their analysis seems doomed to lag far behind the event horizon where the latest actions are happening. These changes cannot be quantified easily, and their inherent qualities are ephemeral. So much of what is written about the Net, then, must necessarily write instead about what already is written on the Net. No one really knows what its effects are. Consequently, one tries to understand what many believe its effects have been, might be or should be, because these widely circulated doxological beliefs now constitute a considerable stock of net effects in-and-of themselves. In this respect, virtualization is partly the effects of computer networks, digital discourses, and online organizations on everyday life and partly the rush of rhetoric about what many think those effects are. Their doxic effects are widespread and influential....

Information system virtualization: This concept has been intimately associated with the development of computer and information technology over the past decades. In computing, virtualization is the process of presenting a logical grouping or subset of computing resources, whether hardware or software, so that they can be accessed in ways that give benefits over the original configuration. As defined by Amit Singh (An Introduction to Virtualization, 1994-2006):

... virtualization is a framework or methodology of dividing the resources of a computer into multiple execution environments, by applying one or more concepts or technologies such as hardware and software partitioning, time-sharing, partial or complete machine simulation, emulation, quality of service, and many others.

Virtualization can therefore be understood as an abstraction layer that allows multiple virtual machines, with heterogeneous operating systems to run in isolation, side-by-side on the same physical machine. It is widely promoted as the direction of development of computer-related processes, notably knowledge-related applications. The addition of intermediate layers provides an illusion of virtual machines, virtual networks, virtual storage, and even virtual services multiplexed on top of the physical resources and services. Virtualization then provides great flexibility to provision resources, customize resources for specific needs, simplify large-scale administration, provide performance guarantees, and enforce security policies.

Artistic virtualization: Under the name Global Virtualization Council, and apparently with the encouragement of the US Department of Art & Technology, an international group of artists has been formed to "mobilize and coordinate artistic forces of virtualization internationally" following signature of the "Berlin Virtualization Charter" at the opening of the Transmediale 02 International Festival of Media (Berlin, 2002). This was seen as potentially establishing conditions under which the most far-flung aspirations of humankind are ignited. Government officials and leading media artists from around the world were to endorse the global initiative promoting a radical aesthetic ideology in the larger political and social context. As mandated by the Global Virtualization Council, the Charter aims to promote:

(a) international standards for socially-engaged interactivity and collective action;
(b) movements of international activist, hyper-mediated, utopian, and related ideologies;
(c) universal respect for, and observance of, artist rights and fundamental creative expression for all citizens without distinction as to discipline, medium, gender, bias, or identity.

The accord is seen as establishing "a promising roadmap as it provides for the employment of media for the purpose of reaffirming our faith in the suspension of disbelief, as well as the advancement of all artists towards their desire to initiate social action". The Secretary of the US Department of Art & Technology has stated repeatedly that "to succeed in the 21st Century, we must be prepared to adapt to changes in our social condition - in how we communicate, where we seek cultural enrichment, and how we balance our real and virtual lives." [more | more]

Economic virtualization: The internet is now understood to be fundamentally reshaping businesses and the industries in which they compete. A form of virtualization of the contemporary economy is now taking place even though the basic rules of the "old" economy have regained their currency, and the issues as business cycle, cost, quality, inventory, productivity or traditional measures of profitability and economic value are valid. Although IBM is claimed to have coined the term virtualization to describe the process of outsourcing. Martha Young & Michael Jude (The Role of Business Process Virtualization in Your Business, 2004) use it to refer to the process by which physical infrastructure, representing sunk costs, can be replaced with electronic infrastructure, representing a dynamic business environment. They discuss business process virtualization as fundamentally new way of working with and managing employees, many of whom might not be employees in the traditional sense.

Social virtualization: The challenge of progressive virtualization of society was explored under the editorship of Magid Igbouria (Virtual Societies: Their Prospects and Dilemma, The Information Society, 14(2), 1998). The concern goes beyond virtual classrooms, virtual universities, virtual organizations, and even virtual communities. There is relatively little awareness of how people can live and work in societies in which these and other virtual practices and social forms are widespread and mixed in with face-to-face relationships [more].

In discussing weblogs, blogs and wikis, Alolita Sharma (Social Software, Technetra, May 2003) argues that:

The democratizing progress of technology has lowered the barrier for mere mortals to communicate. Weblogs and wikis are the next steps in this progression. They facilitate social interaction among people online. This is yet another milestone in the evolution of the Internet's role in virtualizing relationships between people....Social software changes the nature of people's communication. Today, a fundamental paradigm shift is in progress.

Themes relating to the virtualization of society were explored at a conference of the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (York, 2002). Subjects included: Miquel Domènech & Francisco J. Tirado (The Virtual and the Social, 2002), Israel Rodríguez Giralt, Aleix Caussa, Daniel López (The Virtualization of Nature: Rethinking Social Ordering, 2002); Anna Vitores, Israel Rodríguez & Dani López (The Virtualization of Social Control: the Case of Electronic Tagging, 2002). The International Federation For Information Processing, through a working group established in 1997 on social implications of information processing, has now scheduled a conference on Virtuality and Virtualization, Portland OR, in 2007.

For Carlos Betancourth (Virtualization and Multi-cultural Global Cities, Periferia), the process of social virtualization may contribute to an understanding of the role of virtuality in both causing and helping to solve the civic problems faced by multicultural cities, as well in contributing new ways of thinking about public space that offer a way into thinking a politics of difference.

Virtualization of reality: This phenomenon has been framed in a variety of ways. With respect to religion, Saied Reza Ameli (Cyber capacity and Globalization of Religion in two parallel worlds, 2005) argues that:

Virtualization of reality means emergence of new version of reality in the virtual layer. Virtualization of reality is a potential for uploading all social, cultural and political analogue production of religion into cyberspace. This means that beside analogue presentation of religion in the real world, parallel presentation of religion in the virtual world with hyper capacity in the cyber world took place.

Concern has been expressed at the psychological fallout of the virtualization of reality through the death of affect. J.G. Ballard has called this "the greatest casualty of the twentieth century" -- a psychic numbness that cultural commentators from Camus to McLuhan have argued is a salient characteristic of our media-bombarded, hyperstimulated culture. It is distinguished by the disengagement from immediate experience, a cauterization of the soul. [more]

Virtualization of identity: The implications of cyberspace for identity have long been explored (cf Judith S. Donath, Identity and Deception in the Virtual Community, 1996; Sherry Turkle, The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit ; Sherry Turkle, Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet, 1995). Ronald E. Purser (Virtualization of Consciousness or conscious Virtualization: what path will virty reality take?) distinguishes between the route to further cultural fragmentation in contrast with the evocation of a renaissance in culture. Kurt Mills (The Virtualization of Identity: cyberspace, the relocation of authority, and self-determination, American Political Science Association, September 1998) [resources]. The phenomenon of "identity theft" is largely a consequence of the information society. More intriguing is the sense in which identity may be as much a metaphor as anything more identifiable, as noted by Kenneth Boulding (Ecodynamics; a new theory of social evolution, 1978):

Our consciousness of the unity of self in the middle of a vast complexity of images or material structures is at least a suitable metaphor for the unity of group, organization, department, discipline or science. If personification is a metaphor, let us not despise metaphors -- we might be one ourselves.

Virtualization of organization: This is an organization existing as a corporate, not-for-profit, educational, or otherwise productive entity that does not have a central geographical location and exists solely through telecommunication tools [more | more]. Scott M. Preston (Virtual Organization as Process: Integrating Cognitive and Social Structure Across Time and Space, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication) argues that:

Virtual organization requires a different way of perceiving the world by those who wish to participate in it. There are four key characteristics of virtual organization as process. First, virtual organization entails the development of relationships with a broad range of potential partners, each having a particular competency that complements the others. Second, virtual organizing capitalizes on the mobility and responsiveness of telecommunications to overcome problems of distance. Third, timing is a key aspect of relationships, with actors using responsiveness and availability to decide between alternatives. Last, there must be trust between actors separated in space for virtual organization to be effective. This paper describes the perceptual and social requirements of virtual organization and suggests a research plan for explicating the structure, process and content of any system based on its elements. The structures of individual actors’ perceptions and expectations and the social processes that supply the content of their social experience must be addressed if virtual organization and its advantages are to be understood

Virtualization of community: The "organizational" variant overlaps with a virtualization of community, possibly extendingto "virtual nations" (cf Howard Rheingold, The Virtual Community, 1999).

Virtualization of psychosocial activity: The increasing extent to which many now live significant portions of their day in virtual worlds has been a topic of repeated comment. This may take the form of:

• e-shopping and e-consumption
• e-gambling, including variants using virtual funds
• e-gaming, notably to the point of engaging individuals for many hours per day
• e-socializing, notably through chat rooms and including e-dating

Virtualization of social constructs: As the above items indicate, within the emerging psychosocial environment of the 21st century many elements of "reality" may be as real, if not more real, in a virtual sense than in a more tangible sense. This applies to different degrees to each of the following:

• money: it is only economic threat, and the increasing purchase of gold, that provides a striking reminder of the intangible nature of money and its primary existence as a virtual entity (cf Peter Koenig, 30 Lies About Money, 2003)
• institutions: as noted with respect to organizations, duly constituted institutions may be understood as existing as virtual entitites to a higher degree than as tangible entitites (irrespective of office buildings and factories)
• plans, programmes, schedules: as patterns of intent, their "existence" as coherent entitites is a matter of interpretation and an expression of shared confidence. The problematic nature of the existence of such entities is evident with respect to vanishing pension plans and strategic plans that are continually rolled over without producing what is promised.
• contracts: the "existence" of many entities is seemingly ensured through legally binding contracts but such texts merely provide a pattern for actions which may or may not conform to them
• meetings: face-to-face gatherings may be understood as somewhat chaotic assemblages of people for which varuing degrees of order and coyherence can be claimed. But, as with virtual meetings, the degree to which the various face-to-face interactions constitute an identifiable and coherent whole is debateable.
• threats: in a society subject to skillful warnings regarding threat (such as "weapons of mass destruction") the reality of such threats is increasingly questionable
• values

The extent to which a social construct is "real" or "virtual" might lend itself to a social application of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle in quantum mechanics (cf Shay David, On the Uncertainty Principle and Social Constructivism: the case of Free and Open-Source Software, 2003; Garrison Sposito, Does a generalized Heisenberg Principle operate in the social sciences? Inquiry, 1969), The challenge of self-referential reflexivity is understood as a methodological issue in the social sciences analogous to that principle. However the principle is frequently, but incorrectly, confused with the "observer effect" since it associates precision in measurements related to changes in velocity and position of certain particles relative to the perspective the observer takes on them.

Virtualization and image: The extent to which "reality" is now treated as "plastic", to be moulded by through image management and public relations, is now widely recognized. Social entities, whether individuals, corporate bodies, programs, products or policies, all lend themselves to being repackaged independently of their facticity. The media have a central role in the process of image formation and sustainability. Psychosocial entities may usefully be understood as constructs -- memes -- travelling along the many currents of public opinion.

Correspondence between the virtual reality of ITER and ITER-8

Despite their apparently radical differences in focus, it should be clear from the above that there are many subtle similarities with regard to the degree of "reality" of the "entities" in each case and the manner in which they are engendered and sustained by their respective processes.

A key common factor is that in both cases that which can be focused on as "real" or "existing" (eg a "particle") is a very small proportion of the effect it otherwise "virtually" engenders (eg as a "wave"). Certainty with regard to one form is only possible at the price of uncertainty with regard to the other. In the current social system this is most obvious with respect to the effects of a "wave" of "terrorism", or a "movement of opinion", or "traffic" in comparison with the concrete reality of an individual "terrorist", "opinion holder" or "vehicle".

Given the oft-stated point that atoms are for the most part characterized by empty space rather than "matter" (of the component particles), it might be asked to what extent most psychosocial entities are themselves mostly "empty" space and only "exist" to a small degree "substantially" rather than to a high degree "virtually". This would accord with Buddhist notions of the "emptiness of form". It is as counter-intuitive as the fact that human bodies are effectively 90% water.

Such similarities point to the merit of looking closely at the commonalities of the energy dynamics in the case of ITER and ITER-8 -- especially given the progressive virtualization of psychosocial systems over the period until 2030 when the parameters for operational nuclear fusion are expected. A degree of convergence with understanding of cognitive fusion is a reasonable possibility over that period. The greater the virtualization of psychosocial systems under increasing "pressure" and "heat", the more the pattern of their fundamental dynamics can be usefully seen as resembling that of plasma dynamics.

The challenge in the case of the plasma dynamics of ITER, as noted earlier, is one of scale -- reconciling dynamics at a very small scale with those on a very large scale to ensure the toroidal stability appropriate to sustainable fusion. Within this context, clarity as to what "exists" at what scale is conceptually problematic. In the case of ITER-8 there is also a challenge of scale -- reconciling moment-by-moment dynamics of individual attention with forms of attention sustainable collectively over extended periods of time (whether days, months or years) required by the exigencies of "sustainable development" and its enabling psychosocial entities (programs, institutions, schools of thought, disciplines, models, etc). At what spacetime scale is a phenomenon to be recognized as having "existence" as a coherent entity -- rather than a momentary swirl in chaotic dynamics. How much "time" is required for an "entity" to be considered "real"? Particularly problematic from small-scale perception is the challenge of recognizing (beneficial) larger scale phenomena and enaging with them (cf Engaging Macrohistory through the Present Moment, 2004). The role of music, especially symphonic music, provides a valuable metaphor for enabling engagement with a longer span of attention. But any such engagement is necessarily but one precondition for any form of cognitive fusion.

The challenge in seeking to ensure sustainable phenomena at the larger scale is well illustrated in the case of sound by that of engendering an overtone -- as a sinusoidal component of a waveform, of greater frequency than its fundamental frequency. Overtone chanting (as exemplified by that of Central Asia) makes audible the natural harmonic spectrum of the voice, so that unusual bell-like tones are heard floating above the deep voices of the chanters. It is a form of chanting on one note where the constituent parts (overtones or harmonics) are selectively amplified by changing the shape of the resonant cavities of the mouth, larynx and pharynx [more | more]. This metaphor is relevant to both the fruitful toroidal management of plasma as well as to that of the emergence of insight from meditative attention.

Management of the large scale dynamics of plasma required for fusion necessitates integrative understanding of those processes by the human mind -- however this coherence is framed by metaphor. Correspondingly, any fruitful form of cognitive fusion necessitates metaphoric support of the degree of complexity to be found in plasma dynamics and through the learnings to be acquired from fusion experiments.

Complementary fusion metaphors: "plasma dynamics" and "attention dynamics"

The language descriptive of plasma dynamics in ITER can be fruitfully explored for its implications for the attention dynamics crucial to ITER-8.

Plasma dynamics: Magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) is the academic discipline which studies the dynamics of electrically conducting fluids such as plasmas, liquid metals, and salt water. MHD theory is the simplest representation of a plasma, so plasma stability is a necessity for stable devices to be used for nuclear fusion, specifically magnetic fusion energy. stability at high plasma pressure (β) is crucial for a compact, cost-effective magnetic fusion reactor. Fusion power density varies roughly as β². In many cases MHD stability represents the primary limitation on β and thus on fusion power density. MHD stability is also closely tied to issues of creation and sustainment of certain magnetic configurations, energy confinement, and steady-state operation. Critical issues include understanding and extending the stability limits through the use of a variety of plasma configurations, and developing active means for reliable operation near those limits.

The most fundamental and critical stability issue for magnetic fusion is simply that MHD instabilities often limit performance at high β. In most cases the important instabilities are long wavelength, global modes, because of their ability to cause severe degradation of energy confinement or termination of the plasma. Some important examples that are common to many magnetic configurations are ideal kink modes, resistive wall modes, and neoclassical tearing modes. A possible consequence of violating stability boundaries is a disruption, a sudden loss of thermal energy often followed by termination of the discharge. Strategied for improving stability include: configuration, internal structure, feedback control, and disruption mitigation.

The differential equations describing MHD are a combination of the Navier-Stokes equations of fluid dynamics and Maxwell's equations of electromagnetism -- which have to be solved simultaneously. This is too complex or impossible to do symbolically in all but the most trivial cases. For real-world problems, numeric solutions are found using supercomputers. Because MHD is a fluid theory, it cannot treat kinetic phenomena, i.e., those in which the existence of discrete particles, or of a non-thermal distribution of their velocities, is important. The fundamental MHD equations rest on the assumption that the conducting medium can be considered as a fluid. This is an important limitation, for if the medium is a plasma it is sometimes necessary to use a microscopic description in which the motion of the constituent particles is taken into account.

A common simplification of MHD to enable solutions to assume that the fluid is a perfect conductor with little or no resistivity; this simplification is called ideal MHD. The magnetic field lines cannot then move through the fluid, instead remaining attached to the same small piece of fluid at all times. The connection between magnetic field lines and fluid in ideal MHD fixes the topology of the magnetic field in the fluid. Ideal MHD is an imperfect description of almost all physical systems. In reality, any physical system has some non-ideal behavior. In particular, the magnetic field can generally move through the plasma, following a diffusion law with the resistivity of the plasma serving as a diffusion constant. This means that solutions to the ideal MHD equations are only applicable for a limited time before diffusion becomes too important to ignore.

Even in physical systems that can be treated as ideal, the assumptions of MHD can break down. As noted above, many instabilities exist that can increase the effective resistivity of the plasma by factors of more than a billion. When this happens, the electric current sheets that separate different magnetic domains can collapse rapidly, causing magnetic reconnection in the plasma and releasing stored magnetic energy as waves, bulk mechanical acceleration of material, particle acceleration, and heat. Magnetic reconnection in near-ideal MHD systems is important because it concentrates energy in time and space, so that gentle forces applied to a plasma for long periods of time can cause violent explosions and bursts of radiation.

Attention dynamics: There is a vast literature relating to disciplines of concentration and meditation, namely to the appropriate management of individual attention whether for educational study or spiritual development. Meditation, understood as a discipline for handling "memetic plasma", may distinguish between concentration (as the focus of attention on a single object) and mindfulness (as the detached focus on the flow of passing thoughts). Either may be advocated, or both may be considered essential and complementary [more]. Relevant texts, that have withstood the passage of time, include the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali and The Path of Purity (Visuddhimagga).

A different body of literature is concerned with the management and focusing of collective attention through public information programmes (and propaganda), news management, public relations, image management, educational programmes, web interface design, and the like -- including audience skills of performers. Yet another body of literature is concerned with pathologies of individual attention, notably attention deficit (hyperactivity) disorder. Comparable pathologies may be found in relation to collective memory (cf Societal Learning and the Erosion of Collective Memory, 1980). The theme is of course fundamental to processes of team collaboration dependent on collective knowledge management (cf Jay F. Nunamaker, Jr. et al A Framework for Collaboration and Knowledge Management, 2001)

The challenge is to combine the insights from such collections of knowledge and practice and to determine the ways in which they may map onto the preoccupations of management of plasma. Clearly the descriptive languages and concepts differ, whether between meditative disciplines and public attention management, or between both approaches to attention management and those of plasma management. A particular concern is the requisite complexity of the distinctions made in relation to the phenomena. However it could be argued that it is in terms of comprehension of the respective dynamics that patterns of similarity become more apparent.

For example, given that magnetohydrodynamics is applicable to both plasma and liquid metals (see above), it is interesting to note that alchemists considered that the liquid metal mercury carried the signature of the omnipotent archetypal spirit -- the alpha and omega. Symbolically mercury is intimately related to the communication process and to the union of opposites. Given the psychological significance of alchemical processes, as explored by C G Jung (Mysterium Coniunctionis, 1970), there are potential correspondences to plasma fusion through the working of matter to engender a "quintessential fire", a spiritual essence associated with electricity. Controversially some physicists have explored "cold fusion", but only as a legitimation of the physical operations of alchemy rather than its psychological correspondences (cf Roberto A. Monti, Low Energy Nuclear Reactions: the revival of alchemy, 2000) [more]

Traditional elements of the discipline of meditation, according to the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, might be explored in terms of their correspondence to the challenges of stabilizing the dynamics of plasma. The classical obstacles to stabilizing the dynamics of attention in yoga are: (1) disease, (2) lack of interest or mental laziness, (3) doubt or indecision, (4) carelessness or negligence, (5) sloth or idleness of physical form, (6) absence of non-attachment or lacking control on senses, (7) mistaken notions or living under illusions, (8) inability to hold what is attained and (9) inability to hold progress in meditation.

One approach to "attention dynamics", indicative of the commonalities that can be highlighted, is that of Laurenz Wiskott and Christoph von der Malsburg (Face Recognition by Dynamic Link Matching, 1995) who present a self-organizing neural system for the recognition of objects from realistic images, together with results of tests of face recognition from a large gallery. Norbert Fürstenau (A Recursive Attention-Perception Chaotic Attractor Model of Cognitive Multistability. In: Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Cognitive Modeling, 2004) models the dynamics of the macroscopic behavioural variables, perception and attention, by a phase feedback equivalent circuit which is related to the mean field theory of temporal binding

With respect to collective attention dynamics, Jens Newig and Julia Hesselmann (Modelling the Dynamics of Public Attention towards Environmental Issues, 2004) note:

Public attention, traced over time, often displays seemingly paradox behaviour: Contrary to what one might expect, public concern is seldom highest when the environmental conditions are the worst. Rather, concern most often rises when conditions have already become better. Furthermore, public attention dynamics frequently shows self-reinforcing behaviour resulting in distinct cycles, e.g. due to some trigger event. In this paper, public attention is viewed as a social macro-level phenomenon that is sought to be explained by the interaction of a multitude of single actors, namely individual citizens, the press, and politicians. First, a causal model based on rational choice theory is constructed in order to elucidate the mechanisms according to which public attention dynamics develop and to address the question of when and why public attention rises and falls. Key variables include the acuteness and visibility of the issue at stake as well as the ability to “solve” the underlying problem. Self-amplifying behaviour of agent interaction on different time scales adds to the complexity of the model. In a second step, an agent-based computer model is constructed from the conceptual rational choice model. It allows to reproduce the basic features of typical issue-attention cycles such as those analysed in empirical case studies. The model elucidates the causal mechanism and clearly displays the emergent structure, i.e. the typical, complex patterns of attention cycles. It thus serves to test and validate the conceptual model. In addition, it allows to incorporate additional conceptual refinements such as simultaneously tracking attention towards multiple issues.

There is a case for framing any challenge of cognitive fusion by assuming that, individually and collectively, a form of attention deficit disorder is endemic, namely that much can be learnt by assuming that the pathology is not restricted to those diagnosed as sufferers. A text such as that of L. Michael Hall (Another Look at "Attention Deficiency", International Society of Neuro-Semantics, 2005) is helpfu