Introduction

An essay is „a short literary composition dealing with a subject analytically or speculatively; an attempt or endeavour, effort; a test or trial“.  The essay presented here attempts to introduce to the International Conference on Natural Information Technologies a method of thinking that is rooted in the natural processing of information, as it happens in actual life.

After some 35 years of professional work in clinical psychology, one may feel emboldened to say that one has gained some insights into how information processing takes place in actual life. The human brain is the information processing mechanism we use to evaluate – among other things – the contributions to this Conference on the subject of Natural Information Technologies.

Looking attentively to the way the human brain functions educates one on the subject of information processing. The perceptional mechanisms that are the infrastructure of thinking are a product of the development of the human race. Nature, by the evolutionary pressure of selection, has made sure that only such brains will be inside of cranium of participants of this Conference, which obey its rules. One may presuppose that the participants of this Conference are of sound mind and are capable of reasoning, communicating and understanding.

If the present attempt – endeavor, undertaking, essay – to present an idea runs aground, the reason for the failure will not be that the participants of this Conference are, for lack of neurological capacities, not able to understand what is communicated in the present essay. Rather, the participants are in that case not willing, not prepared or not interested in the idea. Alternatively, the subject to be presented may not have been prepared in such a fashion that an average participant can absorb it, mull over it and, after a while, understand it. Another possible reason for a rejection of the idea would be what is termed in the trade “resistance”, which means an inability to perceive something in a different light, an unwillingness to discard the well-trained methods of evaluating something, the reluctance to leave the well-trodden paths of one’s thinking.

Knowing that the participants of this Conference are blessed each with a brain that is capable of learning something new, and assuming that the participants participate because they are willing, prepared and interested in the subject of natural information technologies, the task of the essayist is to present the subject in a fashion that invites an interested participant to make the effort of thinking it thru. The contribution of the reader of this essay would be, then, to check his conservatisms with regard to what constitutes rational thinking, as opposed to natural thinking. The title of the Conference: “Natural Information Technologies” does hint that there exists an opposition between it and information technologies that are not really natural. This contrast is the subject of the present essay.