time8machine is my Undergraduate Intelligence Initiative at Kennesaw State University. As a Physics major with a Mathematics minor, I am running a zero-budget, student-scale research program that directly engages with one of the most profound questions in science and philosophy today: “What is intelligence, what is it for, and what is its future?” This is the exact question at the center of the John Templeton Foundation’s major Intelligence Venture launched in 2026. time8machine serves as the visible, open, and agile undergraduate counterpart — a public research lab doing the same foundational work at the student level.
Mission:
To explore intelligence as a fundamental physical phenomenon written into the fabric of reality, using rigorous physics and mathematics to understand how knowledge and intelligence move, persist, transform, and emerge across time, minds, cultures, and machines.
The Physics of Knowledge Framework
At the core of everything I do is the Physics of Knowledge — a framework that treats cognition, knowledge transmission, and intelligence itself as physical systems governed by the same laws that govern the universe.
Central principle:
FRICTION = the terrain of the mind.
Just as physical objects encounter resistance when moving through space, knowledge and intelligence encounter friction — linguistic, cultural, interpretive, material, temporal, and computational — as they travel through time and systems. This friction shapes what survives, what is lost, what is distorted, and what evolves into something new.
The Four Pillars
time8machine is structured around four interconnected research pillars that mirror the guiding themes of the Templeton Intelligence Venture:
1. Story of Intelligence
How cultural artifacts — cave paintings, scrolls, books, symbols, myths, and art — function as early forms of proto-telepathy, enabling minds to connect across centuries through friction-laden knowledge transmission.
2. Diversity of Intelligence
Investigating the full spectrum of intelligence: basal/cellular, animal, human, and artificial. Using physics-based models (such as diffusion, perception, and PhysicaVision) to compare and understand different forms of cognition.
3. Plurality of Intelligence
Studying collective and distributed intelligence — swarms, societies, networks, and emergent group minds — modeled as physical systems where friction operates at scale.
4. Future of Intelligence
Designing grounded, physics-rooted approaches to AGI that augment rather than replace humanity, ensuring alignment with the rich terrain of human knowledge and experience.
My Approach
This is fully open-source, longitudinal student research.
All notes, computational models, experiments, reflections, and progress are shared publicly in real time on:
facebook.com/time8machine, @EPISTEMICEAGLE
and across other platforms. No waiting for grants. No institutional gatekeepers.
Just direct, rigorous, transparent exploration at the undergraduate level. I invite fellow students, researchers, professors, and curious minds to follow the journey, offer feedback, and join the conversation.
Patrick Drake
Kennesaw State University
Physics + Mathematics
time8machine.com
