In this post I’m trying to look at the Cognitive Theoretic Model of the Universe – the CTMU – and see how it kinda lines up with what we’re living with in tech today. Maybe it sounds wild, but the idea that the whole cosmos is a kind of self‑talking system can kinda echo the way my phone, my laptop and even the smart thermostat at home keep chatting with each other.
The CTMU says every piece of reality is part of a big, looping whole. If you think about the internet, that’s not a far stretch. A single tweet can set off a chain reaction that ends up on a news broadcast. So instead of seeing a server as just a box, I start to picture it as a tiny node in a living web. That view forces us to treat each device as something that matters beyond its own function.
Artificial intelligence, like the voice assistant that tells me the weather, seems to follow a similar pattern. It learns from each question I ask, refines its answers, and then uses those tweaks to handle the next request. It’s a feedback loop, almost like what the CTMU calls a self‑organizing rule. But I also wonder if we’re putting too much faith in machines that just mimic that loop without really “understanding” anything.
Then there’s the Internet of Things. My smart fridge tells the grocery app when I’m low on milk, the thermostat talks to the weather service, my fitness band sends heart‑rate data to a cloud service. All those bits of data pile up into a massive grid, which feels a lot like the CTMU’s picture of a universe that’s constantly aware of itself. Yet some folks worry that this everywhere‑connected world could end up spying on us more than helping us.
Blockchain is another odd match. A blockchain ledger records each transaction in a way that’s meant to be transparent and self‑validating – kind of like a tiny universe that checks itself. Decentralized apps try to run without a single boss, which mirrors the CTMU’s claim that no part of reality needs an outside ruler. Of course, the tech is still messy and the energy use is a big question mark.
So, pulling all this together, the CTMU gives us a handy story‑line for why our digital world feels so tangled and alive. It pushes us to see bits of code and hardware not just as tools, but as parts of a growing, self‑shaping system. Maybe that’s a useful way to think about building the next app or network – not just adding more features, but adding more connections that can talk back to the whole. In the end, whether the universe really works like a giant computer is still up for debate, but the comparison sure makes the tech we use every day feel a little more profound.
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