This is our editorial for the next issue of Terasem’s Journal of Personal Cyberconsciousness, to be published in a few days.
Onward and Upward, by William Sims Bainbridge and Giulio Prisco
This issue of Journal of Personal Cyberconsciousness considers the expansion of civilization into outer space during the age of artificial intelligence, published at a time of change in current spaceflight programs. For example, on May 30, 2025, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) submitted a request for funding during the next fiscal year that was just 75.7 percent of what it had received in the previous year [1]. However, the investments to return to the Moon and send human astronauts to Mars were increased, and NASA’s budget cuts were primarily in fundamental scientific research. Then the US Congress debated restoring the funding level, a sign that chaos need not equal hopelessness. Had there been an extensive public debate, some advocates for pure science might have argued that exploration of our solar system by human astronauts should be paused while AI probes and robot landers perform that function efficiently and extensively, so humanity can understand what its realistic options actually are.
Humanity may have reached a point in history when much really advanced science must be accomplished by independent organizations, rather than by governments. That might be very difficult in some fields, such as astronomy and astronautics which require large investments in equipment, from spacecraft to telescopes. On March 12, 2025, the largest digital camera in the world was added to the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, which is funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science, and was named after the woman who first discovered evidence suggesting the existence of dark matter [2]. Although largely funded by the US government, the telescope is actually on a mountain in Chile, which reminds us of the importance of international collaborations.
The citizen science page of the observatory’s website invites public participation: “What good is a giant data set if we don’t have as many eyes on it as possible, ready to make discoveries? That’s where you come in – the more people looking for particular objects or patterns in the data, the more questions we can answer. Explore real science projects and contribute to astronomy and astrophysics today!” [3]. Already, volunteers can search across the rapidly growing collection of exceedingly high resolution photographs of distant galaxies, because the observatory has partnered with the independent Zooniverse organization devoted to “people-powered research” [4]. Over the coming years, the specialty within artificial intelligence called “computer vision” will also be applied, but in an evolving partnership with human observers.
Cyberconsciousness seems to be an even more appropriate field for citizen science, given that our own minds are central to the equation, and individuals can explore artificial intelligence in many ways. To be sure, people from different cultural backgrounds and influenced by different political ideologies may have trouble collaborating. Yet diversity is a central feature of human history and the probable future of civilization, so we should learn to be interested in alternative viewpoints, rather than opposing them. Often technological progress requires convergence of very different methods, such as that the space shuttle rocket had birdlike wings, and AI chatbots are often based on words that humans have written.
Then there is the highly convergent science of science. Using cyberconsciousness tools and concepts, citizen scientists can explore both general principles and specific applications, through analysis of online journal publications, the public archives of organizations that support research, and examination of innovations as they impact our own lives. For example, anyone can go online to nsf.gov, select “find funding,” then “award search,” then “advanced search” and enter an archive of all the grants ever made by the National Science Foundation, searchable with many variables including keywords and the NSF organizational unit that provided the funds [5]. After one finds several grants in an area of interest, it is easy to copy and combine the couple of paragraphs of text describing each one, then upload the large file into ChatGPT-4 or some other chatbot which will answer questions about the research area. This method can be used to compare adjacent fields of science or engineering, and the progress over the years.
One large-scale result may be transforming History from a field of the humanities into a human-centered science, with implications for Sociology and Cultural Anthropology. Once upon a time, Cultural Anthropology could have been described either as an extension of colonialism, an antidote to it, or a combination of both. But now, the people who belong to any culture can study one of the others, perhaps following the century-old Cultural Relativism that demanded respect for all other cultures. That has two major implications: (1) While our own culture deserves as much respect as any other, it also deserves criticism from a variety of perspectives. (2) We cannot expect any particular theory to emerge quickly as the one true truth, even though competing theories will differ in how well they are supported by evidence.
As the past is the basis for the future, research on the development of our minds and societies will prepare us to create new ones. Indeed, citizen science and research by independent organizations can be experimental, developing prototypes of innovative cognitive, social and economic forms. Indeed, given that governments are run by politicians who at best promote the ideologies already most popular with their voters, creative discovery of new forms of civilization may be far beyond their ability to reach. That may or may not require innovators to oppose a particular ideology, and even Political Science should expand to consider how individuals and independent organizations can develop valid new policies.
An important issue is how citizen science should be funded. Of course, wealthy philanthropists can fund citizen science projects with their own money. In principle, citizen science could also be funded by governments, but in practice it’s difficult to see how a citizen science project funded by a government could remain stable when the government changes. More likely, the project would be seriously disrupted just like NASA’s fundamental science projects have been seriously disrupted by the current US administration.
Direct crowdfunding by the people is an interesting option. The governance and operations of grassroots citizen science projects, crowdfunded by the people and decentralized, can be streamlined and optimized by means of blockchain technology. One of us (GP) was involved in a project designed along this line and called Space Decentral [6]. The project eventually stalled, but the lessons learned could help other decentralized citizen science projects take off and thrive.
Some future issues of Journal of Personal Cyberconsciousness may explore particular areas, as this one does for the future partnership between human minds and artificial intelligences as civilization expands out into the universe. Yet other issues may be “open” rather than “focused,” and include articles from all across the scope of the journal, and thus might occasionally include a new contribution about cyberconsciousness and spaceflight.
References
[1] http://www.nasa.gov/fy-2026-budget-request/
[2] http://www.nsf.gov/news/nsf-doe-vera-c-rubin-observatory-installs-lsst-camera
[3] rubinobservatory.org/explore/citizen-science
[4] blog.zooniverse.org/2025/06/23/vera-rubin-observatory-first-look/
[5] http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/advancedSearch.jsp
[6] archive.devcon.org/devcon-4/the-social-and-economic-fabric-of-decentralized-space-development/
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