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The scarification process now known as tattooing most likely goes back to at least the Neolithic age (the New Stone Age). Tattooing probably also has a prehistoric beginning. The tattoos frequently displayed by modern aborigines are thought to reflect skin designs from the Neolithic ancestors of modern Europeans. It is amazing to think these designs are thought to date back twenty millennia or more. The oldest verifiable example of tattooing goes back five thousand years to the frozen, mummified remains of the “Ice Man” of Central Europe, a frozen legacy in tattoo history. As with any historical topic there are assumptions interwoven with fact, but the “Ice Man” is a factual example of the vast history of this art form.

Further back in history, we can see evidence of tattoos on Egyptian mummies. These specimens date back up to four millennia ago and many believe they represent the true beginning of recorded tattoo history. The tattooed mummies are all female so it has been speculated that they were courtesans and that the tattoos served to identify this social strata of ancient Egypt.

After Ancient Eygpt came the Graeco-Roman world, which did not practice tattooing except as a means of labelling slaves. The Greeks and Romans looked upon this practice as being too barbaric, but not for slaves, illustrating the low level of feeling towards these unfortunate people. Celtic and Germanic tribes of the same era, whom the Romans considered to be uncivilised barbarians, extensively engaged in tattooing. The Picts, various tries who lived in what is now northern and eastern Scotland, did something entirely unique in tattoo history by painting their entire bodies the colour blue.

During medieval Europe is it is widely accepted that the art of tattooing became dormant. Catholic beliefs of the time forbade body ornamentation. Tattoos were condemned as being primitive and Pagan. Meanwhile other parts of the world such as Asia, Polynesia and what would become North and South America, tattooing was celebrated. Tattoo history was kept alive during the European Middle Ages by Asiatic and Polynesian cultures. The Maori of New Zealand developed elaborate spiral tattoos on the face and body that were an integral aspect of their religious beliefs. At this time the art was refined, becoming integrated with sacred religious rites and rituals. Many believe term tattoo we use today comes from the Tahitian Polynesian word tatu, which means to mark.

Western civilisation was once again partaking in tattoos as sailors returned from the South Seas adorned with samples of Polynesian tattoo art in the 17th and 18th centuries. As sailors travelling in Polynesia reintroduced the tattoos this art form was mainly associated with sailors for years. British and American artisans began to merge primitive designs with fine art, adding an additional dimension to the laborious process of the tattoo, which was a marker in tattoo history.

If any genuine “free will” exists, it is at the level of the “I-ness” of a system, the decision making routine, that it comes into play. Before we dive into the technicalities of this issue, let’s first try to brainstorm on what can be understood by “free will”. Although intuitively we “know” what “free will” is, just as we know what consciousness is,it is extremely hard to define it in words. Let’s try to build an ontology “free will” by reciting its features and by drawing the borders of this concept from the notions of what it is not.

I followed a very interesting discussion on the issue of free will and whether it is needed in AI, which I will neither repeat nor summarise here, but a number of striking concepts of which I will use in this essay. I do not claim to have come up with those concepts myself nor do I claim to be an expert on the issue, but I believe that I can add some interesting concepts to the discussion deriving from Ben Jacob’s “Bacterial Wisdom”, “Global Brains” and “Societies-of-Minds”. I will also propose to incorporate an artificial functional mimic of “Free Will” in a Webmind such as the AWWWARENet (Artificial World Wide Web Awareness Resource Engine Net).

A number of concepts stood out above the noise of the aforementioned discussion, which I’ll mention here as features (and non-features) of the “free will ontology”:

“Choice, override, randomness, unpredictability, (non)determination, chaotic, (non)causality and evolution”.

Indeed, for a “Will” or decision-taking routine to be “free”, it must be able to override those possible decisions, which are “causality-determined”. In Goertzel´s Webmind the discriminating faculty is the AttentionBroker routine). In the AWWWARENet, the AttentionBroker presents its conclusions, what course of action is to be taken as being the most rational, as having the highest probability of success, to the I.I.I (Identity,Initiative and Illusion generating routine). In as far as the system has an “override” function, the system appears to be endowed with a faculty of “choice” to an outside observer of the system.

The need for a random-picking faculty arises, when the AttentionBroker present the I.I.I-routine with more than one equally likely options i.e. options with identical priorities.

The issue becomes more poignant, when due to a scarcity of resources or time imposed resource constraints not all options can be carried out simultaneously or worse are mutually exclusive i.e. some must be sacrificed at the expense of others.

Which one to choose if they have all equally preferable numerical outcomes of a resultant vector of the pros and cons and the only differences are to be found on a qualitative level?

It goes without saying, that the advantage-disadvantage summing includes attributing preferential weighting of long term advantages over short term disadvantages.

A rational/causal decision for the system will try to optimise the chances for survival of the system in the long term; short term repairable damage can then be tolerated as a temporary sacrifice.