| Mind Media Review | April 2008 Special Issue on the Future of Mindware Technology |
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 When you look at our offerings of
self improvement software and technologies, they may seem high
tech but imagine what the future may bring.
Someday your personal computer will become your gateway to enhanced intelligence and creativity, emotional stability and unimagined personal and professional success. Your home PC has morphed to become an incredible communication tool as well as your personal coach. It uses its "artificial intelligence" navigate a yet unimagined future world of rich world-wide or even interstellar information. By constantly learning about you, it can now not only keep track of your day but lay out a personal growth path. It will keep you course in your personal development, giving a new meaning to the term computer self improvement. Your PC will provide you with both practical time management coaching and wise big picture guidance. It may even give you spiritual cues to help you understand and master the universe around you. Or even further in the future, computer aided methods of transformation of human consciousness. Could that colorful screen upon which you may be reading this become that door? This is a question that has intrigued those who have studies the potential of the PC, and the answer may be that this reality is closer than we realize. 
In 1990, Simon and Schuster published a book, Would the Buddha Wear a Walkman? by Judith Hooper and Dick Terisi, both editors at Omni magazine at the time and co-authors of the best selling book, The Three-Pound Universe.In the chapter, "Using Your Computer to Expand Your Mind", they say: The computer is more than a number crunching word processing, artificial brain. In the right hands it's also a mind-expanding, creativity-boosting, even mind-altering tool. We have already accepted the microcomputer as a machine that can assume some of our tedious menial chores. But it has a potential as a mind-enhancing device as well. And the key is the software. Here is an excerpt: “We have divided the field into five categories: smartware (which makes you smarter, more organized, a better writer, a better negotiator), psychological software (such as Eliza), stressware (aimed at reducing anxiety), games/head trips (trips into alternative realities) and spiritual software (intended to make you deeper). Thus far we have looked at some of the kinds of software programs the authors predicted. But as the technology of the compute leaps forward and our understanding of the mind become increasingly better, some of these other more far-out mind/computer software programs will become possible.”
In this chapter, they spotlight the founder of Mindware and Mind Media in Bruce Ehrlich and Digital Psychology." How does he see the future of computers, psychology and self-improvement? He foresees a dramatic growth in future years in which computers become "electronic Buddhas." They are programmed to enhance the users life experience, relationships and even their spirituality. Another growth area in the potential future partnership between computers and the human psyche is "psychoactive software. Are there real scientific principles and practical technologies behind these possibilities? The answer is YES!
Dr. Hans Moravec, a professor at Carnegie Mellon Institute has predicted that computers will become more "intelligent" than humans by the mid-part of this century if not before. Imagine then the computer developing an expert system model of a Zen master or psychotherapist. Expert systems that go far beyond Eliza's simple trickery to programs that teach real wisdom. Now combine these abilities by giving computers the ability to interact with people with biofeedback and neurofeedback. Using sensors, computers can detect biological processes such as Galvanic Skin Response and neurological processes such as brain waves as measured by EEG.
The most recent biofeedback breakthroughs have involved the recording and training of actual altered states of consciousness experiences. There actually has been recording flesh-and-blood Zen Masters as they enter Samadhi, the highest state of being in the Zen school.
Perhaps if we use our techology to make
ourselves wiser and better people, we can develop ethics to
match our scientific understanding. Then computers and
software as an expander of human intellect, creativity and
consciousness will have a glorious future that we
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Consider the power of a virtual reality computerized biofeedback system. A system augmented by an artificially intelligent computer coach. Or perhaps a real human guiding a group of people over the Web. Still another possibility, a group of humans supporting each other in their exploration consciousness linked up through a computer network. Shades of virtual group therapy! 
