Here is a Brief Description of Our 1999-2000 Demonstration of Remote Viewing

We have long been engaged in experiments relating to time. Thus, our experiments that we use in this public demonstration are also designed to assist us in our time experiments. Here are the basics of our experiments that you see conducted here:

At an appropriate moment, a predesignated person (a "tasker") writes something called a "target specific." The tasker is the person who decides what our viewers will look at when they remote view. What our viewers look at is called the "target." The "target" is defined by the "target specific," which is a written description of the target. Our "time spin" on these experiments is operationalized by having the target specific written AFTER the remote-viewing sessions are conducted. If this sounds odd, consider this....

It has long been noted in more than one psi lab that it does not seem to matter whether or not a target specific is written before or after the remote-viewing session is completed. That is, if a remote viewer perceives a target, but that target is not chosen until after the session is conducted, the accuracy of the session seems to be about the same as with a situation in which the target is chosen before the actual viewing takes place. At The Farsight Institute, we have replicated these basic results, and conducted additional experiments to widen our understanding of the parameters involved. What we seek to do now is to add an additional ingredient to our prior experiments, an ingredient that involves public participation. In short, we want to know if our past results are dependent on a certain psychic mind set among our in-house participants. Or, from an opposite point of view, we want to know if adding other onlookers and participants, especially individuals who are skeptical or even hostile to the general remote-viewing phenomenon, will affect the outcome of the experiments. Remote viewing is a mental phenomenon where ideas matter. In this case, we need to know how robust our time experiments can be in the presence of a wide range of participant viewpoints.

The key question, from a skeptical public's point of view, of course, is the independence of the person who is choosing the targets. We are grateful for the assistance of respected outsiders for this role. Individuals who help us are making a significant contribution to our research efforts. Specifying a target so that it works correctly with our remote viewing experiments is not as simple as it might seem initially. It is essential that our target specification procedures be completely comparable across all of our experiments. Small variations in the manner of target specification can produce profound variations in session results, and to understand variations in results our controls must not vary haphazardly. Choosing useful targets takes time and careful thought.

The TASKING-POST Experimental Condition
When a target is written after remote-viewing sessions take place, we call this a "tasking-post" experimental condition. The key ingredient in such a situation is to allow the public to verify that the remote-viewing sessions are not altered after the target description is posted. In such a situation, each viewer produces a typed transcript of his or her remote-viewing session. The transcripts are then encrypted using the freeware version of PGP (Pretty Good Privacy), one of the leading encryption software programs. The viewers keep their passwords secret until the target description is publicly available. The encrypted session transcripts are available for ftp download from this site. You (the onlooking participant) can download the transcripts and hold them on your computer's hard drive while you wait for the tasker to decide on the target and to write the target specific. When the target specific becomes available, we post it (without encryption) on this site for you to see. We also at that time post scans of the original sessions and both passwords that are needed to de-encrypt the session transcripts. To de-encrypt the transcripts you double-click on the files (on your hard drive, not our web site) from within Windows Explorer and then enter the appropriate password. If you are using a Mac computer, you will need to have PGP installed. An unencrypted version is then saved on your hard drive that you can read with Notepad or any word processor. You can then compare the transcripts with the actual session scans to verify that they are correct and unaltered. Then you can compare the session scans with the target specific to see how well we did!

After the session transcripts are encrypted by the viewers and made available to the public for download, the tasker chooses a target and emails our Experiment Facilitator with the target choice. The tasker attempts to specify fully all three target aspects of the target as per our guidelines. At this point, the tasker (and our Experiment Facilitator for that matter) is blind to any information relating to the content of the encrypted remote-viewing sessions. As long as the general idea of the target matches our published design parameters, the proposed target concept is accepted by our Experiment Facilitator. The Experiment Facilitator then examines the proposed target specific and either accepts it as is or suggests nonfundamental syntactic changes to make the wording of the target specific correspond with our experimental design. This process ensures the independence of the outside tasker while simultaneously maintaining the consistency of our target specification process.

The nature of an experiment:
As with all of our projects, this public demonstration of remote viewing is an experiment for us, and we treat it much like our other experiments. The main difference between this and our other experiments is that we collect and analyze our results publicly so everyone can watch us "in the laboratory," so to speak. And as with all experiments involving new components, there are no guarantees. We simply do our best and let you watch. Indeed, we want you to watch; you are part of this experiment. If we need to change things, we will, and again you will watch. This public demonstration is for everyone in "real time," so to speak, and it is designed to be both educational and fun. We hope you will join us in this adventure.

One final note, we would like to encourage any scholars or academics working at universities or colleges who would be interested in participating in our future public demonstrations as taskers to contact us, even if availability is only for a limited period of time. A number of volunteers are needed. We give all participants thorough instructions (as well as practice) on writing target descriptions for use in this demonstration experiment. Participants need only their own personal computer and a normal Internet connection.

To Everyone: Please be patient with the entire process as we conduct our experiments. Do not look for immediate miracles. This is a lively and long-term project. Come back often, participate, discuss, and enjoy.

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