UFO Researcher Stanton Friedman on Jacques Vallee and alien consciousness technology.

photo by: Skeptiko

(Mark Zuckerberg, CEO Facebook) Now, when we talk about augmented reality, there are three important use cases that we think about…

That’s Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, spreading Facebook’s Brave-New-World-Gospel re the merging of consciousness and computing. He’s actually taking his foot off the pedal a little bit with this group of developers. If you search for some of his more freewheeling discussions he straight-up talks about mind reading, telepathy and even mind control. It’s all part of Facebook’s glorious future. And, you know what? He might be right.

Skeptiko has always been about controversial science and spirituality related to consciousness, but if we’re going to be honest, we have to accept that technology has a role to play in cutting through some of the philosophical bullshit that sometimes dominates these discussions. I mean, when mind reading is another app you can download on your iPhone 20, some of the “spiritual” questions surrounding consciousness will be answered.

Same goes for UFOs. The main question that’s dominated the UFO field for the last 10 years is whether we should remain focused on nuts-and-bolts technology related questions/issues, or shift the focus to experiences and experiencers. Jacques Vallee has been a leading thinker in this area linking modern UFO encounters extended consciousness phenomena. I’ve covered this topic in my recent interview with him and my interview with Robbie Graham. But since we had not heard from anyone in the nuts-and-bolts camp, I decided to turn to Stanton Friedman for this episode.

Stan and I talk about a number of things. One of the things we talk about is this technology angle as it relates to the “consciousness stuff” that shows up in the UFO phenomenon:

Alex Tsakiris: One thing I want to throw out there and get your opinion on, because again, I come at this whole thing from a totally different perspective, my main interest is consciousness science. We study near-death experience, psi phenomenon. Last time I had you on I thought you did a marvelous job of connecting us to the Betty and Barney Hill case and how that leads right into some of this extended consciousness stuff, that again, no one ever gives you credit for, they always say, “Stan’s the nuts and bolts, saucer guy and that’s all he knows,” and that hasn’t been my experience. Let’s leave that aside for a minute and I’ll tell you, when I hear somebody talk about UFOs and they lead with, and lean too heavily on the technology component, I’m always a little bit leery. I mean, we’re talking about information that would completely change our understanding of who we are, where we came from, why we’re here and then you’re going to lead with, “Oh, and it’s going to be free energy for your car.” I mean, it may be free energy, but the social implications are so much bigger, I do always feel like I’m being distracted, and I don’t know how you feel about that.

Stan Friedman: Yes, I agree with you. I agree with you, there are a lot of distractions out there. I keep telling people, when I have a chance, that I’m convinced that the aliens know a heck of a lot more about the crazy stuff, if you will, near-death experiences and mental telepathy, you know, stuff like that, that the rest of the scientific community doesn’t want to d...