4/26/07 13:08 - permalink - email - category: Futurism
Outworld, I am Vlad Spears.
Inworld, I am Vadim Amat.
They are the same person.
Ania (Ania Perfferle) and my friend Chris Martinez (Superstar DJ Sirhc Martinek) opened the Second Life world to me, and I've seen some of the light. (Actually, I've seen mostly the dark. The makers behind Second Life, Linden Lab, are located in San Francisco, and the world of Second Life runs on Pacific Daylight Time. Most of my time inworld happens post-midnight, with a moon in both my skies.)
I'll admit: I was highly reluctant to embrace Second Life simply out of concern over loss of time in an already packed schedule. What I've realized since my first reach inworld is that it's not a time sink in the way of games and television. It's a modern tool, a rich extension of your identity rather than simple-minded entertainment. It's a part of Real Life. If you have it going on out here, you'll have it going on in there.
If there's nothing out here to extend, your Second Life will be just as empty. Just as in Real Life, there is no purpose in Second Life other than the one you make for yourself. There is no ultimate goal, no mountain apex which denotes the cosmic winner, no collectively agreed upon game at all. What you do inworld, just like what you do outside in Real Life, is entirely up to you. They are the same thing.
You might be able to argue Second Life is glorified chat, but I see a crucial difference: the game-style engine provides spatial and cultural context making interactions something more than simple text communication on a screen. While the shared quests and enemies of multi-player games reinforce connections in group dynamics, they don't create the feeling of connection with others. That comes from us... it's just what people do given the proper setting. Like smokers who get hooked on the social scene a ready cigarette opens for them, Second Life allows people to instantly connect with the convenience of chat but with more social depth... "Hey... nice avatar. You're hot. Do your tattoos have meaning?"
Vadim Amat soaking up Limbik Frequencies at Skylab, Aslan. (slurl)
Second Life offers a spectacular way to collectively listen to streaming music: hanging out in gorgeously decadent clubs where you set your avatar dancing while listening to a live DJ or band. On my 17" MacBook Pro, I open Second Life in half the screen while answering emails, writing posts or working on Max patches in the other half, every so often hitting chat to tell the DJ what a phenomenal drop that was or talk to another club denizen about the music we're all listening to. Musicians who can extend their Real Life presence into Second Life may find a wonderful new route to listeners. In a virtual manifestation of my deepest science fiction dreams, many music venue builders have brilliantly chosen to place their clubs in orbit high above the continent.
Vadim Amat hanging at Trash Palace, floating above Elvarg. (slurl)
For instant, unexpected fascination exploring Second Life rocks. Teleporting to randomly chosen places on the world map will expose you to many varieties of user construction, most of which can be wandered at will: castles, squats, furry colonies, corporate office buildings, prairie homes, ruins, the bottom of the sea, the roof of the world. Because it's Second most people are still more busy in Real, and the continent has high population but sparse density at any given moment unless you hit the current hotspots. With online users of 25,000 to 35,000 at all hours, you can always find a crowd somewhere. I did walk in on a group nude in their hot-tub once, though, and was invited in.
Ultimately, this may all be rationalization. From the beginning, flying Peter Pan-like over the landscape, I was sold.
Maker Faire
4/22/06 23:49 - permalink - email - category: Futurism
A brief condensation of the Maker Faire at the San Jose Fairgrounds, Saturday, 22 April 02006.
Lego. Lego. More Lego including a nice hands-on with the Mindstorms Nxt sets.
Musical instruments made from reclaimed motorcycle parts.
Monome. People loving it. The Monome tables were continually jammed with crowds of bobbing heads rocking the demos.
Robotics everywhere. Basic stamp programming classes for Boe-bot kids.
Sheetmetal and welding workshops, The Crucible blasting fire into the air all day long.
Glass blowing explanations and demonstrations.
Yosh's cartoon cats playing the drums.
Computer-guided woodcutting with the ShopBot.
Motorized unicycles.
Bonsai clovers, orchids on intergalactic journeys in hermetic, antiseptic environments, fungal art. An incredible conversation with artist Phil Ross on the nature of fungi, humans and the web of life on earth.
On-demand laser etching of laptops and mobile phones. "This phone is tapped!"
Segway polo. Segways everywhere, actually.
Leif's accrc.org cluster of crusty computers rendering incredible graphics with 7.9 GHz of combined crunching power, all while running off a vegetable oil generator. "Obsolescence is a lack of imagination."
Resizing mobius strip handbags and air powered, convertible ball gowns. Recycled clothing remade.
Children creating helium filled soap suds and watching in delight as they floated away into the sky.
Infinite Ascent
2/20/06 22:51 - permalink - email - category: Futurism
Evolution is a fact. As in all life and science, there are rough spots and yet-to-be-understood aspects, but the evidence for evolution is overwhelming at all levels.
If you're in the small percentage of the human populace attempting to ban the teaching of evolution and create an environment hostile to rational thought, I refer you to the recantation of Galileo Galilei in 1633. Galileo was forced by the Church to renounce his writings claiming our Earth revolved around the Sun. Galileo's forced denial of heliocentrism factually changed absolutely nothing. Sol still anchors our planetary system and we continue circling it on our blue world.
In our near future, evolution is likely to make its presence known in unavoidable fashion. Doug Miller and I recently exchanged posts about Sweden's social and technological push to become oil-free by 2020, and shortly before this exchange Doug made an excellent post titled Meritocracy & Uselessness:
I am a beneficiary (today) of the meritocracy. My success is entirely founded on my ability to learn and apply new skills at a ferocious rate — a rate so fast, in fact, that I really can say that I have forgotten more about any number of subjects than most people know. ...At the same time, I suspect the day is coming when, due to age, I start to slow down. When I can’t learn as fast, and when it’s cheaper to hire someone younger and faster and sharper than continue to pay me. I’ve seen the under- and unemployed Baby Boomers — and I know how easy it would be to join their ranks.
Doug's thoughts above weave the common thread: evolution operates on more than the physical. We generally conceptualize evolution as descent along the branches of a relationship tree. I think the term ascent is truly the proper descriptive framework. Any idea, action, or process which can confer an advantage or disadvantage to continued existence is part of the game. Advantages over others are selected for and propagate. Disadvantages are selected against and are out-reproduced.
In this science fiction novel we're all living inside of, the technological remaking of humanity is proceeding at an ever-increasing pace. Ideas and the ability to give them life as action are the world's currency. In the physical arena, we're up against a hothouse of pandemics, global warming, energy depletion and all the problems of overpopulation.
Evolving in an environment like this, what would beneficial traits be?
- an understanding of crisis: we cannot wait to be saved
- access to vast pools of accumulated human knowledge
- mental fluidity and the ability to use this knowledge
- strategic cooperation and planning with others
As we climb the slope of The Singularity, as we rocket into infinite ascent, as the forces of everything come to bear upon each other in increasing tension, evolution kicks into progressively higher gear. Those who cannot work with the very stuff of which we are made and make, the thoughts and words which allow us to move forward and stay intact... will be selected against.
In a world trading in ideas, those who cannot think will find themselves without coin of the realm.
The Future Looks Like Sweden
2/11/06 23:11 - permalink - email - category: Futurism
This summer, friends of mine are leaving San Francisco to permanently relocate their family to Stockholm. With the impending departure of Yoram and Maria, my filters are trapping many references to Sweden I may have missed before.
The UK Guardian has a short, excellent business article on Sweden's plans to be the first oil-free economy. The plans call for a complete move to renewable energy for Sweden's populace of nine million people... within fifteen years.
Some interesting stats appear in the article:
For 2003, 26% of Sweden's energy came from renewable resources. Compare this to 6% for both the EU as a whole and the United States in the same period.
In 1970, Sweden's oil dependency clocked in at 77% of their energy usage. By 2003, oil had been reduced to only 32% of their total.
"The attempt by the country of 9 million people to become the world's first practically oil-free economy is being planned by a committee of industrialists, academics, farmers, car makers, civil servants and others, who will report to parliament in several months.
The intention, the Swedish government said yesterday, is to replace all fossil fuels with renewables before climate change destroys economies and growing oil scarcity leads to huge new price rises."
Here in the United States, we consume around 7.3 billion barrels of oil per year. If our elected representatives in congress would simply enact legislation mandating a minimum vehicular fuel efficiency requirement of 35 miles per gallon for cars, SUVs and minivans, we could shave an annual 1.7 billion of those barrels off our total over a 20 year phase-out of aging vehicles.
The United States can't even move toward more efficient vehicles, yet Sweden's going to be oil-free by 2020. How can a country described as "the world's only remaining super-power" get faced by a small nation of nine million people? It's comparable to the Soviets throwing down a moon-shot challenge and the United States trying to bounce higher on pogo sticks.
How can the supposed "leader of the free world" completely fail to compete in what will likely be the greatest revitalization of human energy technology since residential coal rooms were emptied?
From Sweden's Wikipedia entry... this may have something to do with it:
"Sweden was one of the poorest countries in Europe in the 19th century, shaped by heavy alcohol consumption, until improved transportation and communication allowed it to utilize natural assets from different parts of the country, most notably timber and iron ore, which allowed the creation of a welfare state in the early 20th century. Today, the country is defined by liberal tendencies and a strong national quest for equality, and usually ranks among the top nations in the UN Human Development Index."
In Sweden, people are seen as people, not just consumers. Sweden works for the good of her people, because Sweden is her people.
Isn't this what America was meant to be?
This Green City
1/30/06 22:28 - permalink - email - category: Futurism
The New York Times ran New Laws Crack Down on Urban Paul Bunyans, a piece on the progressive movement in cities enacting laws to protect trees and greenery. The article opens with a story about the loss of three Monterey cypresses on Telegraph Hill in San Francisco. The trees were prime perching for our wild parrot population, and the emotional objections to their removal included brave stands in front of buzzing chainsaws. In response to the public outcry, San Francisco has amended city ordinance to allow trees, even on private property, to become protected landmarks.
This isn't just a story about "bleeding heart" liberals protecting urban bird habitat. This is human empathy with creatures losing their environment to steady, capitalist development in pursuit of the almighty dollar.
Consider this, from the Times:
"Once a cause for genteel women's clubs bent on beautification, the new get-tough stance on trees is largely a result of real estate. A study of three dozen cities using satellite imagery by the nonprofit group American Forests, completed two years ago, found that over the past 25 years, cities have lost up to 30 percent of their tree canopy to development.
San Francisco's tree canopy hovers at a slim 11.9 percent of the city's surface area, compared with New York's 21 percent and Washington's 28.6."
The cities are a microcosm of the planet as a whole. We empathize because, emotionally, we know the habitat being eaten day by day belongs to us, as well.
I'm convinced we're seeing the upswell of what will become a tidal wave of green awareness and support here in the United States. There may always be factions for which money and hierarchy are the primary motivators... witness the "conservative" minority currently on a stolen throne in the United States. The ability of these people to grasp and hold power is coming to an end. All one has to do is watch George Bush's popularity polls to see how easily he tumbles in sync with the monetary fortunes of voters. Throw in another inevitable catastrophe or two, like hurricane Katrina, and his ratings will dive to rock bottom.
Now imagine what happens as we round the next corner in environmental destruction and the damage done to the system really begins to show: scarcity of fish, meat unsafe to eat, water pollution causing human birth defects as it already does in other animals, changing weather patterns creating wastelands of once hospitable regions, masses of people displaced and miserable.
Our coming adversity will expose the corporate monsters who created this situation with our quiet complicity. Necessity being the mother of invention, we're going to invent, swiftly, new ways of living. As a race, we'll learn a valuable lesson about individual responsibility. Rusting Hummers will provide shelter for small animals. If it isn't recyclable, it won't be manufactured. Consumerism will give way to stewardship.
The Bushes of the world... empty, hollow faces fitted loosely over multi-national corporations, will all come tumbling down.
I see a future where human environments are designed to work with nature, as nature. I see buildings merged with trees, strict laws on zero pollution and wide public discourse on the ecological impacts of new technology.
I see renewed ability in humans to understand ourselves as just another animal, and a recognition all creatures in the biological framework of the globe share equal rights with us.
I see a new green and blue world, lovingly tended because we almost lost it.
I see the politics of fear and separation, the lynchpins of unrestrained capitalism, overtaken and scoured away by common sense.
I see a future where a living, breathing ecosystem is the soul of every city.
An Unprecedented Age
1/10/06 22:26 - permalink - email - category: Futurism
This afternoon I walked through The City. It could have been any large, cosmopolitan City, any place teeming with modern humans and the extensions of ourselves we've created. Looking at the people walking beside me, speaking into their communicators to other people walking in other Cities, I realized: a place like San Francisco of 02006 has not existed before.
Homeward bound on the North Bay ferry, I worked for an hour on a modern miracle: a slim device with a keyboard and display screen. The face of my laptop displayed a high resolution image beamed to us from another tool sifting the sands of Mars.
There are 6 billion+ people on this planet, and the weather forecast claims 9 billion likely by mid-century. This density of mind and muscle has given us possibility and power reserved for gods of the ancient world.
The technologies we've created to harness and extend ourselves have bridged the divide between peoples in a fashion preceding generations could only dream of. If homo sapiens can imagine it, we may create it. Our shared languages, both spoken and otherwise, have brought home the truth of our situation as one organism, one system, one interconnected whole.
Every person in the world populace is a super-powerful, multi-dimensional neuron in a planet-spanning mind. As more people are connected and learn to work together, this mind grows in ability. The LazyWeb becomes the AnswerWeb becomes the SurroundWeb becomes the ThisIsWhatYouWereAboutToAskMeWeb becomes the functionally OmniscientWeb.
We live in an unprecedented age, presenting unprecedented opportunities.
Grasping these opportunities means solving new problems.
We'll need unprecedented answers.
The past has clues for us, but not answers. It's time to create something new.
Someone out there, right now, has the seed which will grow into a solution for our population problem. The makings for common sense and technological fixes for the damage we've done are already in place, it just takes the planting of this seed and the nurturing of its growth. As you read this, someone is already tending to the green change in humanity's awareness.
Someone has a cure for self-doubt and the schism between ourselves and the externalized Other so many can't function without. They're putting the message into the world and fixing it in place: human animals can do it for themselves. There is no difference between within and without.
Someone knows how to make responsibility exciting and energizing rather than feared. There is no blame when there are no failures. There are no failures when you work together until the task is complete.
Someone knows how to stop AIDS in its tracks.
Someone knows how to find parents for every child without.
Someone knows how to eliminate the need for weapons.
Someone knows how to reforest the world and return extinct species to life.
Someone knows how to provide enough for every single person on Terra, even those who want more than they need.
Someone has a plan for raising the educational values of every nation under the moon and stars. An educated populace makes better decisions about the future. They know themselves as parts of the whole rather than brief flashes of ego and survival.
Someone isn't going to simply sit back and wait for the globe to collapse under humanity's weight. Someone already born and working has a foundation for moving forward, instead of back.
Someone has the answers and the ability to bring them to life, right here, right now.
I think this someone is you.
Personal Identity
10/30/05 21:48 - permalink - email - category: Futurism
What makes you who you are? What defines a human being? Thought experiments are big in philosophy, so try this one on:
It's mid-afternoon, and Ania is plotting to have Vlad assassinated. She's heard quite enough talk of fractal sound, science fiction, the coming Singularity and robotic overlords, so she's secretly hired a hit-woman to shoot Vlad tonight at the café. "Ah, peace and quiet at last!"
All the excitement of his impending demise has made her a bit tired and being tired makes her cranky, so she lays down to take a little nap.
Shortly after Ania falls asleep, Vlad brings in his newly perfected duplicator machine, a device which will copy the exact configuration of a person and create another, atom for atom. It looks much like a cardboard box with controls pencilled on the side.
"This will show her," he thinks. "She'll see the usefulness of my crazy ideas after this." He presses the big red button and Presto-Change-O! There are now two Anias sleeping soundly, just a few inches between them in the bed, where before was only one. He wakes the new Ania 2. Grumpy at being awakened and still groggy from sleep, she doesn't notice the original Ania 1 lying in bed next to her. Vlad and Ania 2 proceed to the café.
At Café La Scala in Walnut Creek, Ania 2 orders her au lait and leans way back, savoring the sips as she waits for the hit-woman. She doesn't know she's only recently entered this world. Her memories tell her she's lived a life of world traveling, college education and club-hopping leading up to this moment. She knows who her parents are and she knows she paid the hit-woman twenty dollars to shut Vlad up for good. She remembers doing it, but, unbeknownst to her, those memories come from Ania 1 doing the original legwork and passing the twenty to the assassin in a pack of gum.
Meanwhile, back at the house, Ania 1 has woken from her nap. She's refreshed and feeling nice, all her previous unhappiness evaporated. She just needed to catch up on her sleep! She realizes she loves Vlad, even if his incessant rambling about things which make no sense drives her out of her mind occasionally. She's had a change of heart about offing him. "Oh no! Look at the time! He must have let me sleep, like the sweetheart he his, and gone to the café alone! I must make haste and stop the hit-woman from shooting him!" She scrams out the door with a quickness.
At the café Vlad is working on his laptop, head bobbing to the beat in his headphones, lost in focus on his work. As Ania 1 enters the café, so does the hit-woman. The assassin sees Ania 1 and then, a heartbeat later, sees Ania 2. Both are looking at her expectantly and pointing to the guy she's supposed to shoot. One is saying "Don't shoot him, I've changed my mind!" while the other is saying "Shoot him, he's driving me crazy!"
The hit-woman is very glad she brought two sets of handcuffs tonight, because her evening has just gone weird. She doesn't like it when perps get jiggy and start appearing in two places at once. Yes, she's an undercover agent in homicide and she likes to send people to the slammer.
As she slaps the cuffs on them both, Ania 1 says "I thought I wanted to kill him, but I realized I didn't!" Ania 2, pissed off, says "I wanted to kill him, that's why I made arrangements to do so. Who is this bimbo dressed up like me?"
Vlad looks up, finally. Seeing all the commotion, he assumes it's excitement over his duplicator machine and begins explaining the situation to the cop.
Some questions:
Which Ania is responsible for the crime?
Ania 1 physically initiated the entire situation by doing the hiring of the assassin, but changed her mind about murdering Vlad in the end and told the hit-woman not to shoot. Should she be charged with attempted murder? Remember, she tried to stop the hit-woman at the end.
Ania 2 didn't physically do the hiring, but thinks she did and remembers doing it, and was ready to conclude the deal and see Vlad capped. Should Ania 2 be charged with attempted murder, accessory to attempted murder or nothing at all because she wasn't "the one" who did the hiring? She didn't even physically exist when arrangements were made to off Vlad, but she was pointing the finger and telling the hit-woman to shoot. You could attempt to define her state as something akin to brainwashing, but if you remove the memories and motivations arising from them, what are we left with for Ania 2? She was an atom for atom duplicate of Ania 1, so there is nothing else.
What makes a person? Is it the configuration of their atoms? Is it their actions? Is it something outside of their material construction?
We know if a person's brain is damaged, their personality and memories are damaged. They seem to change from the person they were before the injury. What is a memory? If I remember doing something, is this the same as having done it? Can I be held accountable for my memories? What if they are just duplicated brain configurations which make me think I performed the remembered act, as in the case of Ania 2 above?
If you have two people configured exactly alike down to the atom and the instant, are they the same person? Are Ania 1 and Ania 2 simply two instantiations of Ania? At this moment, if you let them jointly out of your sight you won't know which is the original and which is the duplicate upon their return. Sharing a common memory of life up to the moment Ania 2 was awakened and went to the café with Vlad while Ania 1 stayed home asleep, how far will their paths have to diverge before they can be seen as obviously different people?
The above thought experiment, while sounding far-fetched, has implications for a wide range of issues we currently face as a world society:
- cloning
- gene-splicing
- abortion
- privacy rights
- intellectual property
- nationalism
- religious beliefs and other superstitions on identity
What makes a person? The sooner we answer this question, the sooner I'll make the schematic for my fabulous duplicator machine publicly available.
The Difficulty Of Looking Far Ahead
10/5/05 23:51 - permalink - email - category: Futurism
Private sector spaceships, hobbyist gene-splicing, silicon trees generating electricity, ethics and extraterrestrial life, extra-solar colonization as necessary human expansion, modified humans populating millions of experimental societies on far-flung planets, man's best friend with an engineered intelligence increase, regret mitigation via dissociated personalities living separate lives...
All this and more was discussed after Freeman, George and Esther Dyson took the stage at the Fort Mason Conference Center for an evening in The Long Now Foundation's ongoing series of Seminars about Long-term Thinking. Moderated by Stewart Brand, President of the Long Now Foundation, "The Difficulty of Looking Far Ahead" was a perfectly apt title for this soiree of futurism via science, history and business. Freeman himself offered this caveat at the beginning- "Science is organized on unpredictability... and is not conducive to long range projections."
I found myself in disagreement often, and they often disagreed with one another, but that's what makes science go. This accomplished, intelligent man and his accomplished, intelligent children blew the doors off all opposition to the scientific method as the best tool for the advancement of human society. By simply speaking with each other and the audience of what may or may not come they demonstrated Hegel's thesis/antithesis/synthesis as the basis for everything we already are.
Freeman Dyson on the mic:
A few small bites of the free-ranging discussion:
Freeman likens the rise of biotech to the computer industry's growth, and sees domestication and widespread acceptance of biotechnology 50 to 100 years in the future. Early computer developments never showed the advent of small, cheap and ubiquitous computing, and Freeman feels the same course will be followed by biotech. He envisions home genome programming kits engendering "new art forms as lively as cinema, painting or sculpture." While he spoke of dark hazards, he considers our current global situation much less dangerous than the threat of nuclear annihilation posed during the Cold War. Quote of the night- "What can be done with microbes is much more dangerous than orchids and roses, even more dangerous than lizards and snakes. Rules must be rewritten so kids can play with dinosaurs but not viruses."
George envisions cultured structures of living tissue, buildings grown for specific use, modified kelp given vascular systems growing from ocean floor into light gathering dwellings above the sea surface. He sees human climate control as a natural outgrowth of our eventual change-over to more eco-friendly energy sources and is against nuclear power generation. He endorses a complete archiving of every fragment of information possible, allowing future historians to "keep history honest."
Esther, the business (and, by extension, politically) oriented member of the trio feels we can see a repeated and yet unlearned lesson in Iraq and Afghanistan: bringing down the bad guys at the top doesn't fix the problem. As a result of fast flowing info and technology, we fail to comprehend the deep-rooted, systemic problems and apply band-aids rather than fixes. Surprisingly, she spoke against anonymity in favor of systems of trusted reputations- "Everything works best when it's transparent, including people."
In keeping with the aims of the evening, Stewart Brand asked the Dysons how much contemporary science fiction they read.
All three answered "not enough."
Photo by Jacob Appelbaum.
Photo License: Creative Commons - Some Rights Reserved.
Culture Of Life
9/1/05 00:06 - permalink - email - category: Futurism
In mid-August I received a weekend call of the sort we all pretend will never come, and by the following Monday night was on a plane headed for the midwest. Ruby, my grandmother, responsible for so much of what makes me a decent human being, was in hospital with pancreatic cancer.
I was at her bedside each day with my grandfather and other family members: watching her breathe, listening for the occasional slips of recognition and coherence between the drugs and dementia. I kept returning to thoughts of her past life and how, for each and every one of us, it all comes to these few final moments here upon this mortal coil.
I am enraged.
We let life slip away, pointlessly. It's as if because "we all know" it will eventually come to this, we stop short of what we could be and collectively fulfill the prophecy. My grandfather carried the photo above through the entirety of WWII, yet soon it and his memories will be all that remain. We could create a paradise of immortals, filled with humans vibrant and alive as my grandmother was then, if only we'd straighten our priorities.
This is not simple idealism. It's absolutely possible if enough of us want it together.
Here's what I want:
Let's honestly assess the morass of religion for what it is: superstition and social control. Remove the cross and we can see beyond the torture instrument to human self-determination. Let's accept ourselves for what we are and take responsibility for life and death. Imagine a populace placing life above all other considerations, including nationality, skin color, gender, sexual preference and, especially, money. Let's get on with being human and doing what humans do best: create.
Let's start with creating ourselves. If we pour as much effort and budgetary priority into medical science, bio-tech and saving lives as we do into killing and destroying for profit, imagine the diseases we would never worry about again. Imagine living a life knowing cancer and Alzheimer's were maladies of history. Imagine cures for heart disease, HIV, hepatitis C, Parkinson's, multiple sclerosis. The list goes on and on. We have minds capable of cracking them all.
Imagine living a life as long as you want it to be. Imagine being in the driver's seat without anything else, especially old age, dictating how it was going to be lived. Imagine not having to figure out what you want to do with your lucky 80-odd years, only what you want to do next. Don't roll your eyes, wag your finger and say "It will never happen." Look around you... look at all of our human triumphs and advances, each one preceded by the same wagging finger.
It will happen.
The question is: "When?"
It's too late for my well-loved grandmother, but we may yet attain it. We're able to return to the primordial Garden. We may be unlost. The wandering may come to an end.
Imagine a national budget in which defense spending is only a small fraction compared to education, medicine and science.
Doesn't wanting that sound like a better idea than wanting what we have right now?
Two Thousand Nineteen Eighties
6/26/05 16:29 - permalink - email - category: Futurism
From my observations, culture and progress run in cycles. Oppression pushes people down, like the readying of a spring. The fist wavers, and people leap up, taking all of society with them.
I'm not old enough to remember the 60s, but the general impression I've received from friends who were there describes a response to tightly laced culture, old social institutions in dire need of change.
The revolt collapsed through inexperience in the 70s, giving the bad guys another opening for return in the 80s. I remember crying with other students and teachers on learning Reagan had cut the funding for our magnet school in the midwest, a school a class of inner-city ghetto kids had viewed as the only positive thing in their lives, and a doorway into a future we never thought we could have. I remember lying awake every night, listening for warheads in the skies above, warheads we had been trained to know were inevitable. I remember the dank smell of bomb shelters and my continual waking nightmare: knowledge of nuclear vaporization at any moment. Massive deficits, armed conflicts, government corruption, destruction of infrastructure... the grind of a boot. People went crazy under the heat. The arts, without funding, still managed to thrive as an only outlet for the rage of a nation.
And suddenly, it all fell apart.
People woke up, talked to one another, realized the guys running our nation were a bunch of lying criminals pocketing our taxes, and moved the country back in a direction that fit an actual majority of lives. For a moment, the future looked as though it might come after all. Clinton showed up, a dark horse who took the bad guys by surprise, and got the US in the black for a change. Have you ever noticed how deficits rise under Republicans in modern America, but shrink under Democrats? How is it the NeoCons have successfully convinced the public the reverse is true?
And now, here in the mid 00s, it feels a great deal like the early 80s again. Nastier, grittier, a deeper divide, much more at stake... the same feeling of being broken and of the world about to come crashing down.
I'm betting we're following the curve: priming the spring again for a backlash, exponentially bigger than the last.
Singularity Studies Reader
5/28/05 23:14 - permalink - email - category: Futurism
Livejournaler Ankh_f_n_khonsu posted a superb 40 title Singularity Studies Reader to the LJ Transhumanist community a short while ago, with direct Amazon links as icing. While I've read many of these, some are new to me... it's tome hunting time.
A multitude of favorites on khonsu's list: Kurzweil's Age Of Spiritual Machines, Hawkins' On Intelligence, Gershenfeld's When Things Start To Think, Paul's & Cox' Beyond Humanity...
Testing The Membrane
5/13/05 00:31 - permalink - email - category: Futurism
In Mediated I wrote about speaking with my grandfather on his new CapTel captioned telephone, and the array of ideas which crossed my mind.
Several more conversations have been had since and we've started playing small games of cat and mouse with the captioners. My first indication they would break the veil of invisible participant was in their method of handling misspellings of uncommon names. When unsure of a name's spelling, many captioners fall back on general chat etiquette and place a "(sp?)" after the potentially mangled name. Once we've spelt the name for our silent typist it's then correctly captioned for the rest of the conversation.
In an effort to utilize this thin edge of the wedge, we've started discussing some of the questions I raised in my original post, slipping them into the minds of our captioners. Sometimes we address the captioner directly and wait for a response. The pause gives the captioner time to think about what they would say, if they could. When no response appears, we move on as if nothing unusual has happened.
Captioners would seem to be in a unique observatory position, getting a daily shift's worth of American conversation, randomly sliced. What do they hear? How will it change them? How will they act on it? Will they break the barrier and put their experience into the public realm? Write a book? Go on talk shows to explain what they've come to realize about people and politics and life in general? Create a weblog and write about it? We speculate regularly on these ideas while conversing, knowing they are listening.
Regularly listening in on the lives of Americans, at some point the overwhelming realization must occur that even in our diversity of views and situations we are fundamentally the same.
Related: Mediated
A World Of World Cities
5/1/05 21:17 - permalink - email - category: Futurism
Stewart Brand of The Long Now Foundation is talking about continued urbanization (via Tim O'Reilly at O'Reilly Radar), and the impact of cities on everything from birth rates to environment.
While I enjoy the remote and isolated, I am a city dweller, tried and true. I'm not fond of suburbia or "the country life," except in short, focused doses. Brand's report above has prompted me to think about just why I love cities so much.
- Cities change. If there's one thing I've truly embraced in life, change describes it. Being contextualized by that which is fluid and dynamic makes me fluid and dynamic in response. I'm not separate from the system of chaos, I am integral to the design.
- Cities are complex. Living in a large city is an ongoing conversation with someone new every day. The city is so much larger than you, with so many thoughts and patterns at angles with each other, you never know what will come out of its mouth. Odds are good I can turn a street corner in any district of San Francisco and find myself in a situation I've never seen or thought about before. This doesn't happen nearly as often in suburbia.
- Cities enjoy economy of scale. When you look for the edge of culture or the future of technology, cities across the world are where these are found. On the individual scale, I can enjoy authentic Vietnamese cuisine one night, Italian the next and wrap it up with fine Thai and Russian food for the weekend. And I can bicycle or walk to all of them.
- Cities are where solutions come from. The three factors above create a place where many brains move and grow with each other. New people continually add to the mixture, bringing new ideas and methods to the table. The big conversation takes unexpected turns in completely different languages from one moment to the next.
We're all here to be with each other, and, like weblogs, this is what cities are for.
Related: World Cities
New Is Now Is The Future
4/29/05 15:32 - permalink - email - category: Futurism
History isn't what it used to be.
I'm into the new and the now, but the new and the now has changed with instant transmission. Nothing goes out of style as we revive the dead and bring it into the future, all dressed up and living here with us. With six billion plus people on the planet, there's always a large enough group to keep any meme alive.
Swing, goth, mods. Bluegrass, surf, doo-wop. Greek and Roman gods, golden age science fiction, the life story of your deceased relative. Thylacines, ancient egyptian genes, australopithecines. Everything which once was will be extant again.
This is exactly what I would expect to see as we near the Singularity's slope to infinity: history and culture collapsing from both past and future to the hot flash point of Now. This is why I find it relevant to blog about older books, like Heinlein's and Rucker's works. They're not only still useful for minds today, they're becoming more useful by the second.
Mediated
4/7/05 10:06 - permalink - email - category: Futurism
I recently spoke to my grandfather via CapTel mediated telephone conversation. CapTel is in ramp-up now, with main distribution only to veterans. Full-scale voice recognition and transcription is planned, but for now it's you, your conversation partner and a silent third party transcriber.
Text scrolls along for the subscriber on a small LCD. The captioning was fairly good, and provided my grandfather the ability to hold a solid telephone conversation for the first time in many decades. He's in his mid-80s and quite hearing impaired, age now conspiring with original damage from shelling during WWII. This is a work-around for his lost ability almost on par with the implanted optic lenses of some years back.
During the conversation I was quite conscious of the third person's presence... questions ran through my head as we spoke:
- When tough conversations must be had, will people hold back from the truth and the straight line for fear of what the person listening might think?
- How often do people try to engage the transcriber as an active participant, perhaps to settle an argument?
- How often do transcribers themselves feel the urge to interject, to answer a question or make a statement? Does this urge subside with experience? Is this professionalism or apathy? How often do they feel an ethical dilemma in something they've overheard and must remain silent to? Can the transcriber be held liable in some instances, such as child endangerment?
- Are there already cases where someone has mis-transcribed conversation to devastating effect, ending relationships and destroying happiness? Or perhaps created misrepresentative text resulting in legal trouble for either of the conversing people? How long until waivers are required absolving CapTel of all responsibility?
- Are there times where the ability for someone to truly communicate has saved a life, created new happiness and joy?
- I wonder if transcribers send out the occasional "fuck you" on the screen to misogynists, racists, homophobes, zealots and other lowlifes then quit the job. Perhaps they take over one side of the conversation entirely, substituting their own thoughts to the deaf party. How often? On acceptance of the transcriptionist job do you sign an agreement affirming you will not do this? Are there legal penalties if you do?
- As a transcriber, could you bring suit for emotional distress against the person you were transcribing? Could you make a case for a hostile work environment?
- Are the conversations/transcriptions recorded to provide legal leverage for CapTel? Is this information for sale and searchable?
- How can someone do this for a job? Never mind potentially offensive conversations... I would go crazy transcribing all the banal blather flying across American phone circuits. Doughnut conversations in abundance. On the flip side, imagine the non-doughnut conversations to be heard. Are transcribers sometimes witness to amazing, wondrous interactions, changing their own viewpoint and their life? Is it possible first-hand experiences of this transcribing group will spill out to larger influence on society as a whole, promoting understanding and embracing of the spectrum of human life?
In the foreground, I participated in a wonderfully complete, transcontinental conversation with my grandfather. When I told him I loved him, I know he saw the words. In the background, when the conversation was over I felt the urge to thank our silent transcriber for their services, the culmination of all those questions above.
But I couldn't. My grandfather/transcriber was already disconnected.
Chief Iconoclast - Daevlmakr Media
Designing Monsters - vitruvius.livejournal.com
reading
Emma Bull - War For The Oaks
Thomas Jefferson - The Jefferson Bible
Baggini & Fosl - The Philosopher's Toolkit
listening
Effect69 - Contact Made
Beta Two Agonist - Zero Point Field
Daevls On FlightDynamics
recent
Bring It, Machine
Cycling '74 Loves Cats
Seemingly Solid Things - Glenn Gibson @ GIVEN
drmArm
Life In 3d
It's Full Of Stars
|
This is a Flickr badge showing public photos from vladspears. Make your own badge here.
|
category
2Second(fuse) 7
Action 1
Atmos 3
Biome 1
BlueDeceiver 2
Creation 6
Daevlmakr 12
Exorcism 16
Flow 11
Futurism 15
Gear 19
Idea 4
Image 3
Incantation 19
Knowledge 5
Listen 19
LiveMusic 3
Locate 2
Look 3
MaxMSPJitter 16
Politics 16
Quote 1
Read 10
Science 2
SoundDesign 4
Technology 3
Tinderbox 5
Unfälle 2
Vegetarian 3
Vision 2
month
06_02008
03_02008
02_02008
01_02008
11_02007
10_02007
09_02007
07_02007
06_02007
05_02007
04_02007
03_02007
02_02007
01_02007
12_02006
11_02006
10_02006
09_02006
08_02006
07_02006
06_02006
05_02006
04_02006
03_02006
02_02006
01_02006
12_02005
11_02005
10_02005
09_02005
08_02005
07_02005
06_02005
05_02005
04_02005
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
weblog
bldg.blog
Cesare Marilungo
Chris O'Shea
Christian Fromme
Dan Winckler
Data Is Nature
David Fine
Doug Miller
Hal Rager
Hihiromi
hyperTextuality
Information Aesthetics
Jacob Appelbaum
Jaeysin's Xylophone
Jeff Vail
Jeffrey Radcliffe
FlightDynamics
Mac Tonnies
Maehymn
Mark Bernstein
Marsha Vdovin
Martin Spernau
Mediapathic
Neomarxisme
Onegoodmove
Pascal Venier
Seth Elalouf
Sex In Art
Steven R. Livingstone
The Nonist
Trond Lossius
link
Better Humans
Council for Secular Humanism
Creative Commons
DailyKos
Diesel Sweeties
EFF
FuturePundit
The Heinlein Society
HMC MediaLab
IFTF
Make
New Scientist
The Panda's Thumb
Press Think
Questionable Content
Rarefaction
ScaryGoRound
SpaceSuitGroup
Scientific American
legalese
All written material on 2Second(fuse)
authored by Vlad Spears is published under the
Creative Commons Some Rights Reserved license
Attribution - NonCommercial - NoDerivs 2.0
Fight corporate ownership of culture:
Create and Disseminate!
