The Acceleration of Knowledge: The Jumping Jesus Phenomenon (1991)

The Acceleration of Knowledge: The Jumping Jesus Phenomenon; Audio Cassette – Audiobook, Jan. 1 1991
by Robert A. Wilson (Author)

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Sounds True, Incorporated (Jan. 1 1991)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1564550842

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The Jumping Jesus Phenomenon
By Robert Anton Wilson
Updated by Bob Pauley

Assume the measure of all known scientific facts at the beginning of year A.D. 1 as One
Jesus, named for the celebrated philosopher born in that year. That first year A.D. was One,
by the way, not Zero – much the same as the first inning of a ball game is Inning 1, not Inning
0, from beginning to end.

That knowledge brought Homo sapiens from about 100,000 years ago and the discovery
of fire, let’s say, through the early years at the University of Athens (Socrates, Pythagoras,
Plato, Aristotle, Archimedes, etc.). Prior to that, of course, it actually took all the billions of
years that led us to such a pivotal moment in time.

How long did it take us to double this accumulation of knowledge, to achieve the
equivalent information of Two Jesuses? …Only 1,500 years or so with the likes of Cicero,
Seneca, daVinci, Fibonacci, Gutenberg and their learned colleagues.

And doubling again? Only 250 years, taking us up to year 1750 and Four Jesuses. Eight
Jesuses took less than 125 additional years, through about 1875. By 1940 we were at 16 J,
and 1970 at 32 J. These were the times of Pascal, Leibniz, Boolean, Babbage, Bell, Edison,
Ford, Marconi and Einstein to name but a few.

By 1985 the count was up to 64 J, 1992 at 128 J. 1995 brought us to 256 J, 1998 over 512
J. We now have developers of our modern computer in the mix, along with the research labs
of Bell, IBM, Xerox, Hewlett-Packard and the like. And there’s Bill Gates and Stephen Jobs,
helping to market the computers that thousands of scientists around the world are busily
developing.

We are now at several thousand Jesuses and the Jesuses are jumping quickly. In short, we
are living in a mental transformation space; that is, an omni-dimensional halo expanding
toward infinity in all directions. The innovators are now people like you and me, creating new
ideas from anywhere there’s a plug-in.

The electronic center of this halo of mentation is no longer confined; it is everywhere. It is
available to you right where you are seated at this moment. Just plug in a terminal or turn on
your PDA, desktop or laptop and there you are. The machine doesn't care who, what or where
you are. Thanks to Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn for their PCP/IP, the protocol that enables the
global sharing of information, and Tim Berners-Lee who brought us the World Wide Web.
What’s next? Pencils that store all the information they write; textbooks being replaced by
laptops and PDAs; robots teaching our children? We can only imagine what the future holds
for us but rest assured it will be an exciting time to behold.

The Jumping Jesus Phenomenon is not a theory anymore; it is a fact: Technology is
doubling our vast knowledge today with unprecedented rapidity, and it is available to you and
me literally anywhere there’s a plug-in or a Wi-Fi connection! If you are an accomplished
educator, as I suspect you are, you won’t want to miss out on this incredible era in which you
and I have been fortunate enough to have been born.

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A documentary about this subject, called 'TechnoCalyps', is available here: https://concen.org/content/technocalyps-2006