I think I've got a handle on it now. It was confusing me for weeks. Making my brain hurt on the inside. Casting me in to doubt. But now I've assembled new meaning and....it's ON.
In the old days myth was reality. Only the most basic of data structures could be propagated. And thus only the most basic data.
Humans make meaning. We call it "pattern recognition" but that's like saying a computer is just a bunch of ones-and-zeros. It's not really accurate, because it describes only the physical level, not the holistic level, after all we do more than recognize patterns, if all we did was recognize patterns we wouldn't really do much would we.
We create patterns. We create reality. We determine reality by ascribing meaning to the patterns we see. We call them good or bad. We call them right or wrong. We call them true or false.
"Constant flow of becoming" is a phrase I saw in a myspace.
Whoops. Ate sugar, brain turning off, as insulin floods system. Bad idea.
There's a war on, a struggle to make meaning matter, to root it in tradition and history, to make the meaning mean something, stand for something, be true.
That is the big lie.
It is what it is now, it's a field effect with many poles. You don't determine anything but your vector in it. Any ray in a vector storm.
I am whatever you say I am, if it wasn't, then why would I say I am?
If you go to disco night, dressed disco style, is it really disco style? Yes, because everybody will know what it is there. Doesn't matter if it's real disco or not, because there is no real disco....except of course the one you are at, making it, real disco.
There is no predicting the future. There is only creating the future by selling people on your ideas to the point that they do them.
American are obsessed with celebrities! Americans are obsessed with celebrities! Americans are obsessed with celebrities!
But really we're obsessed with American Idol, which creates celebrities from nobodies and fulfills the promise above.
Americans are obsessed with celebrities, so the media is obsessed with stories about celebs, because since we're obsessed with them means we'll click thru and give them money (what they want) in return for what we want (pictures of Brittney's cooch) meaning that when you visit your favorite media site there will be pix of Brits cooch, because that's what they are reporting, you can't read the story about the space proteins, because they didn't publish that one, because....Americans are not obsessed with space proteins.
Viral. The networks enable viral. Hot Viral Meme.
It's like a pulse of information that flows around the world.
We must break the language barrier and then it will end. Then we can be as one, as viral becomes universal and the omnidevice carries it directly in to our heads as it occurs.
It's the carrier wave that we sync to. We all know William Hung. We all know Paris Hilton has a lazy eye. We all know Dwayne Wade is retiring. We all know the Rolling Stones are getting back together. We all know Hillary will never win. We all know that WTC7 was a controlled demo.
Individually we'll have our opinions, but those opinions are formed from truth fractions, from meaning memes, from a snowstorm of confetti we mush together like play-doh in to what we see right now.
It's all kinda obvious I'll admit. Why was it giving me trouble? Because I wanted it to mean something more than it does. It doesn't mean anything. It just is that way. Learning to ride the tides somehow. Learning to fit in to the world waves.
Fit in. Conform. Hold tight. Relax...here it comes again.
There is a thing beyond language. Before language. Meaning. Words are imperfect. Text is worse. But meaning is something we know in our bones because...it's what we do, it's ALL we do. We are the hot viral meme of planet earth.
We will spread to the stars and make them mean something and give them names. And those names will mean something by God!
It is what we say it is as we say it. It's the perfect magic.
Vista is a load of crap. Terrible. Buggy. Just...plain....BAD! Slow.
And as it was written so shall it be.
Macs "just work" and as it was written so shall it be. The idea of just works, the idea of simplicity and elegance in design become simplicity and elegance.
Yah. I'm done here for now.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
PoPoMo
Would it be post-post-modernism? Or neo-modernism?
Eating is really getting to me. I feel more coerced by my nutritional choices than almost anything else. At least I can reject mass media.
stuffwhitepeoplelike
I find this interesting as most of the comments are white people saying "well, only liberal white richies from the cities really". And WP saying "That SO true!".
There is this....thing happening for which there is no name. We rush towards it every day. It's called, short hand, The Singularity, and it's here now, but it's moving too quickly, so we don't realize we are inside it yet, because it's arrived ahead of our ability to perceive it evolving.
It's about the death of history I think.
Data storage, data transmission.
First there were stories, sorry I know this is remedial, then we had books, books were pretty good for a long time, the basic format, and then we have mass production of books, distribution via railways, and then virtual books.
It's hard to talk about the spread of data this way. Do you remember when Napster started up? I would see terabytes of data online at times and think "shit fuck jesus that's a lot of music". And Napster was pretty terrible lets remember.Song fragments.Bad search.No file ver. Stuff like that.
It was prior to this a thing static. You printed a book, indelible ink on vellum. And that was it. I wrote before (in the old blog) about this thing I read, regarding reading, about saccades, eye movements, such that you could monitor them and change the text of a page being read between saccades and the reader would not notice. In fact they might be unable TO notice.
It all becomes so tangled so quickly. Which, really is the issue, you can't tease out the parts anymore. I mean I'm trying to talk about stuffwhitepeoplelike and I have to go back to talking about printing presses, pre-printing-press printing even? In order to do it? I have to break syntax and grammar and punctuation like to do this?
You know what you know, but how do you know that? How do you know you know them? You remember them. Studies show we don't really remember what we remember remembering. We remember other things and construct a memory from those parts. "Studies". Look at me, just like other people.
I always mention the Precession of Simulacra, because I think it's a really good idea, I mean, obviously right? Why would I mention it otherwise? Unless it was a really bad idea, in which case I'd be mentioning it to talk about that, which would make it a good idea, because it would still serve as an example of what I want to complain about.
3rd order simulacra are the important ones. Hyperreal Baudie calls them.
This, quickly, is the idea that a copy of a thing replaces the actual thing. A falsehood that masks the absence of underlying truth.
Hold it together! I'm sure I can do this! Deep breaths!
I contend of course that all things are those things in the current era. Like inter-saccade text masking.
If your iPod was replaced by my Ipod in the night by stealth, and, additionally, I replaced your iPod's HDD with your HDD (that is, I take your ipod, but take out the drive, put it in to my ipod, return that ipod (now yours, but, once, mine) to you) then you'd never know right? Besides the stickers I put on mine and the lack of stereo on the earphones. I don't actually own an ipod, or, rather, I do, but I don't use it.
And then with the memory thing. Would you notice or would you begin to create false memories regarding what has changed. Like Hilary in Bosnia (topical! +2 points).
Or would it be neo-po-mo?
Follow along: Modernism was the idea of rejecting the old shit, for the new shit, which was based in objectivity and ideas that things are a way, and that that way is true, followed by pomo, the idea that subjectivity replaces objectivity, FUNCTIONALLY (I cap it because some folks seem to miss this "subtle" point), and then because we engage based on that, it becomes nearly objective. In that we all react as if it was so.
It's like 1984 shit you know?
For example WTC7 collapsed. It "looks like" a controlled demo. We've seen those on TV. If it looks like that, then it must be that, because that is known, so this becomes that, even if it's not true. Put another way, how many buildings with the design of WTC7 have you seen debris dropped on, fires on, and then collapse? Or, even, how many other buildings do you know of that are designed in the method of WTC7? I don't know of any. I think it was a pretty unique building. The circumstances of it's destruction, also unique. Because what else you got? A fire isn't a fire plus debris, and a fire would be addressed, where as the WTC1&2 shit was taking up the time and water that would have addressed the WTC7 issue in other scenarios. An earthquake isn't debris, even if it results in a fire. Of course they don't really have earthquakes in NYC, so maybe indeed an earthquake would produce a pancake. We'll never know of course, that's the point. We ain't going to build a new one and then drop shit on it and set fire to it, to see if it goes down like it did, and if we did, it wouldn't, because, despite "identical" construction it would not, in fact, be identical, so we'd get a different result. So then we have only after the fact "it must have been a controlled demo, because it looks like a demo" or "computer models which we've bent to explain what happened, because, well, we saw it happen so clearly that's what went down".
So, clearly WTC7 was a controlled demo. Never mind the impossibility of it actually being that. "What else could it be? I mean....just *look* at it!"
So what comes after that?
First we have to get rid of the idea inherent in the 3rd order stuff. As there is no underlying reality then it's not masking anything. It is what it is again. So it's back to objectivity.
stuffwhitepeoplelike is a hot viral meme. it's also nothing at all. stupid, frivolous. by whites for whites about whites. Which we know because it's white people saying that. it's also a dialog on race. and a book deal.
Rather than One Truth, which can be looked at, and acted upon, many ways, there are many truths, each of which is acted upon at the same time.
They used to be able to lie because we could not know.
Remember those AP pix from Iraq that featured doctored smoke trails? And doctored Red Cross vans?
If we didn't have Internets we would not know this was so. If we didn't have awesome digital computers we wouldn't have the doctored photos (which are digital themselves most likely, certainly by the time they are edited and distributed they are not really real photographs but instead simulacra of them, digital copies of the information values of the original photo (if indeed such a thing was ever really real)) so then....what does it mean?
There is no meaning. It just is.
Where is this going you are asking?
There is no going. Implies destination. Destination is not real. There is no this either.
You buy computer. It's yours. But it is the same as many others. But it's not, since yours does not work. But they replace that, with working part, but that part is not the same as prior part, so then is it still same computer and is it still the same as other peoples same computers?
Or is it just what it is? The idea of relationally linking backwards is the thing that has died. It's in the next apt over, but the stink has not permeated yet to the hallways, so we don't realize it.
This is the same idea. It's here, but we can't know it yet, so we don't know it. The cancer is tumor now, but you don't die until it's bigger, later.
Now we have itunes or rhapsody or whatever. No need for Napster. But there is still limewire and kazaa and torrents.
there is too much data, so our old abilities are no good here, they just don't work. But it's not that they just don't work, like we've gone blind or something, but they produce artifacts, but unlike the artifacts which apply to the term I'm using, which are things you can see are not right, these are the other kind, the kind, like mis-memories, which we don't know about. So how do you know you know what you know?
I read that study about saccades. I could even, if I wanted, go find it, and really read it. Because you know when I said I read about the study, I mean that I read something about the study, not the real study. Does the study even really exist? Let's assume so, and assume I find it, read it, and educate myself enough about what I read there to understand it, or, at least enough so that I think I understand it, but then....it just turns out to be wrong.
Like String Theory or Relativity or Newtonian motion.
I can't know all of that. We can't know all that we know. The average American (this is an in joke, I don't really mean average American) doesn't understand enough about the complex financial system to understand the subprime crisis. I've read many things about it now, across different sites, backgrounds, that stuff. And I don't know if any of that is true. Assertions that it is true *because* are the thing.
Napster was bad, sued to death, never alive. It's reborn now, Christ like Napster, new clothes, Barbie Napster, retro-nostalgia marketing. Itunes is good, makes billions, people are happy about a thing that takes billions of dollars away from them and they get tinny sound from tinny speakers in their ears.
Even people who know can't know all they know. Clemens did steroids, but, unknown to him, unknown to his trainer, it wasn't what they thought it was, it was something else. Maybe it wasn't even a steroid. Maybe it was....?
So we know, he knows, his trainer confirms, we are all wrong. How do you know what you know?
It's beyond the absence of an underlying truth and it's beyond an immaculate underlying True Truth. Those require post-facto justifiers. There is only the now now.
I do nothing, but I am productive. I do a lot, but not enough, I am not productive. Though I do more than nothing, because it is not enough, it is nothing.
Computers didn't used to work this way. Work didn't used to work this way. We do work to make others work, to make the computers work takes work, and the computers are then used to play Solitaire. Which is not work. Get back to work!
It's inexpressible! It is beyond human ability so I can't say it, I can only try to allude to it.
PostMo was a linguistic set of ideas. Language was flawed. Godel's theory. Language exists only inside of language and thus is based on things, flawed things, so it is flawed, and thus anything using it is flawed.
If you could find a way to make a font "whither" with sarcasm (and this is my idea, so give me some of your million dollars when you do it) you would make a million dollars. It would go from normal to italics, the whithering. Million dollar idea.
But we are beyond language now. That's what makes it post pomo. Soon we will start to record everything. carbon will create the next gen WORM drives and we'll never erase, only update the version history pointer. And then we record it all, all the time. Your glasses contain your screen contain your camera your mic, because it's your cellphone too.
Anywhere you go you are recording broadcasting. This is the neo-modernism. We'll do things differently, based on a objective reality. But the truth will die because truth is subjective, so when we moved to neo-objectivism there will be no more truth.
Is cheating bad? Cheating on your SO I mean. I know two couples that got together because of cheating. Married, one of them, the couples. So...that is good right? It depends.
Saw a video. Dude walks away from the cops. Dude turns. Cop shoots the fuck outta him. What?!
Dude is out of camera frame, pulls gun, cops see gun, shoots perp. Oh!
Even when you see it you don't see it.
Even when everything is known there is no truth, in fact, there is less truth, because there is more to argue over.
If WTC7 had had streaming digital cameras in it, we'd know it wasn't a controlled demo. But they footage would be faked. But the footage (footage? no, no more foots) would be on WORM drives, so it could be faked? But what if the cameras were compromised? So it was still a cover up for a controlled demo. Even tho it's obvious that it wasn't one at all.
The more we know the less we know. The more we know the less we can have mythic truths of absolute character. Jesus did fuck Mary M, and she was a whore, but she didn't make him pay, because...he was poor too. Was he still The Jesus?
Jesus didn't ever really exist. It was Joshua.
We try to construct the meaning, because meaning it truth. Planes crash in to building = Government cover up. That makes sense. Planes crash in to building = proof of inferiority of Muslim culture and the failure of their mode of civilization. We all know that planes crashed in to the buildings. We saw it. Over and over we saw it. Real people saw it. News cameras. TVs. But we don't know what happened, what the truth was. The more we know, the less we know we know.
There's that old joke about a generalist knows less and less about more and more until he knows nothing about everything. This is that.
The corollary is the same. The specialist knows more and more about less and less until he knows everything about nothing. This is also possible.
Because the more you know about a thing the less it matters. To other people.
Truth is a form of meaning. Meaning only exists when people are around to put it on things.
If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is around....it doesn't mean anything. But if there is a person there....then it might a sign. An omen. A life changing event (particularly if it lands on you). It might be something you think about a lot and it might inform your life for years as you think back to it (I mean, really, have you ever seen a tree fall in a forest when nobody was around and there was no "reason" for it (clearly there was a reason, or would be, because...it happened.)?) It might become a story you tell people, whenever somebody says "if a tree falls in a..." and you'd interrupt them and say "i saw that once".
A moon runs in to a planet, no life on the planet. Doesn't mean anything. Our moon runs in to our planet? That's some seriously heavy shit man. Means everything in the whole world.
stuffwhitepeoplelike is talked about in news (not really news, but we call them news) articles and we say it's like this or like that, that it's indicative of trends, that it's indictive of trends, that it's new and it's not like it was before. but it's not. it's what we say it is. now.
The manufacture of meaning from old signs that are now meaningless means nothing. Unless it means something to you.
Many things don't actually mean anything. Even to us. We read in to them (read? really? no, not really)things, we put things on them, but many of them slide right by. I spilled some coffee from my cup this morning, on to my pants, didn't mean anything.
So not everything means something, but we make the meanings, and those meanings are what we regard as truths. But those truths are made of things we've made. Made meaningful.
Sure, sure buddy, you split an atom and there's a big BOOM! But...what does that mean? Yes, yes, fine! It's "true", it's "real", but....what does it MEAN?
Meaning is now fluid. Meaning is always reconfiguring.
Retro means what we say it means. There is no separation of the idea and the fact. There is no accuracy or perception of illusion because there is no illusion. And accuracy exists in the moment.
Anyway. More later. My head is cleared now.
Eating is really getting to me. I feel more coerced by my nutritional choices than almost anything else. At least I can reject mass media.
stuffwhitepeoplelike
I find this interesting as most of the comments are white people saying "well, only liberal white richies from the cities really". And WP saying "That SO true!".
There is this....thing happening for which there is no name. We rush towards it every day. It's called, short hand, The Singularity, and it's here now, but it's moving too quickly, so we don't realize we are inside it yet, because it's arrived ahead of our ability to perceive it evolving.
It's about the death of history I think.
Data storage, data transmission.
First there were stories, sorry I know this is remedial, then we had books, books were pretty good for a long time, the basic format, and then we have mass production of books, distribution via railways, and then virtual books.
It's hard to talk about the spread of data this way. Do you remember when Napster started up? I would see terabytes of data online at times and think "shit fuck jesus that's a lot of music". And Napster was pretty terrible lets remember.Song fragments.Bad search.No file ver. Stuff like that.
It was prior to this a thing static. You printed a book, indelible ink on vellum. And that was it. I wrote before (in the old blog) about this thing I read, regarding reading, about saccades, eye movements, such that you could monitor them and change the text of a page being read between saccades and the reader would not notice. In fact they might be unable TO notice.
It all becomes so tangled so quickly. Which, really is the issue, you can't tease out the parts anymore. I mean I'm trying to talk about stuffwhitepeoplelike and I have to go back to talking about printing presses, pre-printing-press printing even? In order to do it? I have to break syntax and grammar and punctuation like
You know what you know, but how do you know that? How do you know you know them? You remember them. Studies show we don't really remember what we remember remembering. We remember other things and construct a memory from those parts. "Studies". Look at me, just like other people.
I always mention the Precession of Simulacra, because I think it's a really good idea, I mean, obviously right? Why would I mention it otherwise? Unless it was a really bad idea, in which case I'd be mentioning it to talk about that, which would make it a good idea, because it would still serve as an example of what I want to complain about.
3rd order simulacra are the important ones. Hyperreal Baudie calls them.
This, quickly, is the idea that a copy of a thing replaces the actual thing. A falsehood that masks the absence of underlying truth.
Hold it together! I'm sure I can do this! Deep breaths!
I contend of course that all things are those things in the current era. Like inter-saccade text masking.
If your iPod was replaced by my Ipod in the night by stealth, and, additionally, I replaced your iPod's HDD with your HDD (that is, I take your ipod, but take out the drive, put it in to my ipod, return that ipod (now yours, but, once, mine) to you) then you'd never know right? Besides the stickers I put on mine and the lack of stereo on the earphones. I don't actually own an ipod, or, rather, I do, but I don't use it.
And then with the memory thing. Would you notice or would you begin to create false memories regarding what has changed. Like Hilary in Bosnia (topical! +2 points).
Or would it be neo-po-mo?
Follow along: Modernism was the idea of rejecting the old shit, for the new shit, which was based in objectivity and ideas that things are a way, and that that way is true, followed by pomo, the idea that subjectivity replaces objectivity, FUNCTIONALLY (I cap it because some folks seem to miss this "subtle" point), and then because we engage based on that, it becomes nearly objective. In that we all react as if it was so.
It's like 1984 shit you know?
For example WTC7 collapsed. It "looks like" a controlled demo. We've seen those on TV. If it looks like that, then it must be that, because that is known, so this becomes that, even if it's not true. Put another way, how many buildings with the design of WTC7 have you seen debris dropped on, fires on, and then collapse? Or, even, how many other buildings do you know of that are designed in the method of WTC7? I don't know of any. I think it was a pretty unique building. The circumstances of it's destruction, also unique. Because what else you got? A fire isn't a fire plus debris, and a fire would be addressed, where as the WTC1&2 shit was taking up the time and water that would have addressed the WTC7 issue in other scenarios. An earthquake isn't debris, even if it results in a fire. Of course they don't really have earthquakes in NYC, so maybe indeed an earthquake would produce a pancake. We'll never know of course, that's the point. We ain't going to build a new one and then drop shit on it and set fire to it, to see if it goes down like it did, and if we did, it wouldn't, because, despite "identical" construction it would not, in fact, be identical, so we'd get a different result. So then we have only after the fact "it must have been a controlled demo, because it looks like a demo" or "computer models which we've bent to explain what happened, because, well, we saw it happen so clearly that's what went down".
So, clearly WTC7 was a controlled demo. Never mind the impossibility of it actually being that. "What else could it be? I mean....just *look* at it!"
So what comes after that?
First we have to get rid of the idea inherent in the 3rd order stuff. As there is no underlying reality then it's not masking anything. It is what it is again. So it's back to objectivity.
stuffwhitepeoplelike is a hot viral meme. it's also nothing at all. stupid, frivolous. by whites for whites about whites. Which we know because it's white people saying that. it's also a dialog on race. and a book deal.
Rather than One Truth, which can be looked at, and acted upon, many ways, there are many truths, each of which is acted upon at the same time.
They used to be able to lie because we could not know.
Remember those AP pix from Iraq that featured doctored smoke trails? And doctored Red Cross vans?
If we didn't have Internets we would not know this was so. If we didn't have awesome digital computers we wouldn't have the doctored photos (which are digital themselves most likely, certainly by the time they are edited and distributed they are not really real photographs but instead simulacra of them, digital copies of the information values of the original photo (if indeed such a thing was ever really real)) so then....what does it mean?
There is no meaning. It just is.
Where is this going you are asking?
There is no going. Implies destination. Destination is not real. There is no this either.
You buy computer. It's yours. But it is the same as many others. But it's not, since yours does not work. But they replace that, with working part, but that part is not the same as prior part, so then is it still same computer and is it still the same as other peoples same computers?
Or is it just what it is? The idea of relationally linking backwards is the thing that has died. It's in the next apt over, but the stink has not permeated yet to the hallways, so we don't realize it.
This is the same idea. It's here, but we can't know it yet, so we don't know it. The cancer is tumor now, but you don't die until it's bigger, later.
Now we have itunes or rhapsody or whatever. No need for Napster. But there is still limewire and kazaa and torrents.
there is too much data, so our old abilities are no good here, they just don't work. But it's not that they just don't work, like we've gone blind or something, but they produce artifacts, but unlike the artifacts which apply to the term I'm using, which are things you can see are not right, these are the other kind, the kind, like mis-memories, which we don't know about. So how do you know you know what you know?
I read that study about saccades. I could even, if I wanted, go find it, and really read it. Because you know when I said I read about the study, I mean that I read something about the study, not the real study. Does the study even really exist? Let's assume so, and assume I find it, read it, and educate myself enough about what I read there to understand it, or, at least enough so that I think I understand it, but then....it just turns out to be wrong.
Like String Theory or Relativity or Newtonian motion.
I can't know all of that. We can't know all that we know. The average American (this is an in joke, I don't really mean average American) doesn't understand enough about the complex financial system to understand the subprime crisis. I've read many things about it now, across different sites, backgrounds, that stuff. And I don't know if any of that is true. Assertions that it is true *because* are the thing.
Napster was bad, sued to death, never alive. It's reborn now, Christ like Napster, new clothes, Barbie Napster, retro-nostalgia marketing. Itunes is good, makes billions, people are happy about a thing that takes billions of dollars away from them and they get tinny sound from tinny speakers in their ears.
Even people who know can't know all they know. Clemens did steroids, but, unknown to him, unknown to his trainer, it wasn't what they thought it was, it was something else. Maybe it wasn't even a steroid. Maybe it was....?
So we know, he knows, his trainer confirms, we are all wrong. How do you know what you know?
It's beyond the absence of an underlying truth and it's beyond an immaculate underlying True Truth. Those require post-facto justifiers. There is only the now now.
I do nothing, but I am productive. I do a lot, but not enough, I am not productive. Though I do more than nothing, because it is not enough, it is nothing.
Computers didn't used to work this way. Work didn't used to work this way. We do work to make others work, to make the computers work takes work, and the computers are then used to play Solitaire. Which is not work. Get back to work!
It's inexpressible! It is beyond human ability so I can't say it, I can only try to allude to it.
PostMo was a linguistic set of ideas. Language was flawed. Godel's theory. Language exists only inside of language and thus is based on things, flawed things, so it is flawed, and thus anything using it is flawed.
If you could find a way to make a font "whither" with sarcasm (and this is my idea, so give me some of your million dollars when you do it) you would make a million dollars. It would go from normal to italics, the whithering. Million dollar idea.
But we are beyond language now. That's what makes it post pomo. Soon we will start to record everything. carbon will create the next gen WORM drives and we'll never erase, only update the version history pointer. And then we record it all, all the time. Your glasses contain your screen contain your camera your mic, because it's your cellphone too.
Anywhere you go you are recording broadcasting. This is the neo-modernism. We'll do things differently, based on a objective reality. But the truth will die because truth is subjective, so when we moved to neo-objectivism there will be no more truth.
Is cheating bad? Cheating on your SO I mean. I know two couples that got together because of cheating. Married, one of them, the couples. So...that is good right? It depends.
Saw a video. Dude walks away from the cops. Dude turns. Cop shoots the fuck outta him. What?!
Dude is out of camera frame, pulls gun, cops see gun, shoots perp. Oh!
Even when you see it you don't see it.
Even when everything is known there is no truth, in fact, there is less truth, because there is more to argue over.
If WTC7 had had streaming digital cameras in it, we'd know it wasn't a controlled demo. But they footage would be faked. But the footage (footage? no, no more foots) would be on WORM drives, so it could be faked? But what if the cameras were compromised? So it was still a cover up for a controlled demo. Even tho it's obvious that it wasn't one at all.
The more we know the less we know. The more we know the less we can have mythic truths of absolute character. Jesus did fuck Mary M, and she was a whore, but she didn't make him pay, because...he was poor too. Was he still The Jesus?
Jesus didn't ever really exist. It was Joshua.
We try to construct the meaning, because meaning it truth. Planes crash in to building = Government cover up. That makes sense. Planes crash in to building = proof of inferiority of Muslim culture and the failure of their mode of civilization. We all know that planes crashed in to the buildings. We saw it. Over and over we saw it. Real people saw it. News cameras. TVs. But we don't know what happened, what the truth was. The more we know, the less we know we know.
There's that old joke about a generalist knows less and less about more and more until he knows nothing about everything. This is that.
The corollary is the same. The specialist knows more and more about less and less until he knows everything about nothing. This is also possible.
Because the more you know about a thing the less it matters. To other people.
Truth is a form of meaning. Meaning only exists when people are around to put it on things.
If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is around....it doesn't mean anything. But if there is a person there....then it might a sign. An omen. A life changing event (particularly if it lands on you). It might be something you think about a lot and it might inform your life for years as you think back to it (I mean, really, have you ever seen a tree fall in a forest when nobody was around and there was no "reason" for it (clearly there was a reason, or would be, because...it happened.)?) It might become a story you tell people, whenever somebody says "if a tree falls in a..." and you'd interrupt them and say "i saw that once".
A moon runs in to a planet, no life on the planet. Doesn't mean anything. Our moon runs in to our planet? That's some seriously heavy shit man. Means everything in the whole world.
stuffwhitepeoplelike is talked about in news (not really news, but we call them news) articles and we say it's like this or like that, that it's indicative of trends, that it's indictive of trends, that it's new and it's not like it was before. but it's not. it's what we say it is. now.
The manufacture of meaning from old signs that are now meaningless means nothing. Unless it means something to you.
Many things don't actually mean anything. Even to us. We read in to them (read? really? no, not really)things, we put things on them, but many of them slide right by. I spilled some coffee from my cup this morning, on to my pants, didn't mean anything.
So not everything means something, but we make the meanings, and those meanings are what we regard as truths. But those truths are made of things we've made. Made meaningful.
Sure, sure buddy, you split an atom and there's a big BOOM! But...what does that mean? Yes, yes, fine! It's "true", it's "real", but....what does it MEAN?
Meaning is now fluid. Meaning is always reconfiguring.
Retro means what we say it means. There is no separation of the idea and the fact. There is no accuracy or perception of illusion because there is no illusion. And accuracy exists in the moment.
Anyway. More later. My head is cleared now.
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Plan for the future
Figured I should get this one down again as well.
The essential life-changing technologies I see as being important:
The ON, Omni-Net, mesh style wireless network to replace all other forms of radio broadcasting. People themselves, via the ODs and Shells, function as nodes, broadcasting and receiving. This might be too strenuous for certain energy storage modalities, in which case we'd have them set up like coffee-shops, or IN coffee shops, most FN locations would double as ON broadcast nodes. Software radios allow for local channel hopping to insure folks get a signal. You rely on verifying checksums against other folks cached files to determine a reliability ratings for your data. In many cases you'd route via multiple paths to the same server to insure against man in the middle type of data hacks. Your critical data comes across short wave transmission, physical connection, FN, or directional transmissions and is cached locally so that you don't need to grab it across and unknown cloud. This one is important because it allows universal integration of the physical world and the data world.
The OD, Omni-Device, a single ubiquitous little lump that provides the enhancements to reality that will make things easier and weirder. Most physical devices cease to exist. News papers. DVDs. CDs. Advertisements of all sorts. Notebooks. Books. Magazines. And with them goes all the things they support. If you can download a computer game at a reasonable pace over the FN at the local FN shoppe, why do you have stores dedicated to buying and sellings games? You can interact with a real person, game adviser, over the ON, so you don't need people to help guide purchasing locally either. Books stores, CD stores the same way. You'll still need stores for physical goods of course. This also allows integration of the data world and the physical world because your data is all always with you. Appointment booking, reminders for same, cell phone, and things like shopping, prices update in the data world, display thru the OD, bus\train schedules, or even requests, your ability to work follows you around, good because some types of work will likely go away and we'll all be conducting small micro-economic transactions all the time. Another thing the OD facilitates. Since there's no physical money you and your buddy trade chits between ODs and you can do so in any number of quantities. Sub penny quantities. A single beer. A question answered. A software macro traded. A media file. CPU cycles. Almost anything. Another aspect of the OD is that of data customization. You are always at your "desktop". Your file browser view is always the same. Nobody moves the Recycle Bin\Trash Can to a weird spot. Your favorite music player is always installed. And this allows a significantly greater level of customization of function. Most computer usage is not broad and general. Instead of click here, click there, click there, you just program a single "button" to do all of that at once and then combinations of buttons strung together become your system commands.
The Shell. This is a cute acronym, but I won't go in to that. All the things a human needs to survive in the cold world reside on the human being. Ideally you include enough power and artificial muscle that it moves itself around. But otherwise you make it light enough that it's no big deal to carry it around with you. Since it's an integrated unit you can distribute the weight better than a backpack\messenger bag\purse. One purpose is violence resistance and prevention. Anti-terror packages. Like everybody has a NBC suit all the time. Everybody is wearing anti-fragmentation armor all the time. Everybody has a SOS beacon on them all the time. Incorporate NBC detectors and you have a nice mobile detection lab for early threat warning. It carries a battery and a variety of charging mechanisms. If the OD and associated hardware doesn't have audio\video then the Shell will. You can add a bunch of weird stuff in to it. Rather than produce a plastic container for each and every sugar beverage you have each suit hold a reservoir, or more than one and you fill\refill it with liquids as needed, eliminates waste. Same for a food container and utensils. If the technology hits the right points you can incorporate enhanced senses (IR, UV, telescopes, etc) enhance musculature, and transport modes (from Heelies to mag-lev to the human dragonfly flight suit).
Of course the OD is part of the Shell, the Shell as a concept is pretty comprehensive, there's not much you can't throw in there. The key concept is the carrying it with you at all times part. I like to think that even at the most basic level it would provide for instant traction, holding an injured body part in place, also to be used in cases of explosion. This would allow it to hold you sitting\standing so you can get rid of most furniture.
A lot of this is pretty minimalist stuff. Most folks will find it unattractive for that reason, but if we are not going to have a major die-off of the human race, which is pretty likely I suspect, then we are going to have to get pretty minimalist to pack more people and our associated support structures on to the planet.
So those are they, the big ones. Pretty broad and abstract of course, but it's the effects more than the tech I suspect.
Wearing a Shell also does a lot to eliminate clothing.
Nutrition is one I have not been able to put a futurist spin on. Beyond the obvious.
Currently "food" is fairly complex. Things like vitamin and mineral supps are less effective than the same things consumed as parts of food. Lots of conflicting data about food, what to eat, how much, when. Lots of secondary issues, how to provide for that food, how to grow it, what to do with the waste, how to transport it, preserve it, prepare it.
So obviously the ideal is that we "figure it out" and then move to extracting raw nutrients in the correct form and ratio, avoid damaging them in processing and transport, and then live off a paste or goo that contains all the essential stuff we need, none of what we don't, and indulge in the occasional bit of chocolate cake and beer on occasion.
Maybe we can get our EFAs and protein from krill and krill paste. Other alternatives would be micro-agriculture, rooftop gardens...for a whole city.
The essential life-changing technologies I see as being important:
The ON, Omni-Net, mesh style wireless network to replace all other forms of radio broadcasting. People themselves, via the ODs and Shells, function as nodes, broadcasting and receiving. This might be too strenuous for certain energy storage modalities, in which case we'd have them set up like coffee-shops, or IN coffee shops, most FN locations would double as ON broadcast nodes. Software radios allow for local channel hopping to insure folks get a signal. You rely on verifying checksums against other folks cached files to determine a reliability ratings for your data. In many cases you'd route via multiple paths to the same server to insure against man in the middle type of data hacks. Your critical data comes across short wave transmission, physical connection, FN, or directional transmissions and is cached locally so that you don't need to grab it across and unknown cloud. This one is important because it allows universal integration of the physical world and the data world.
The OD, Omni-Device, a single ubiquitous little lump that provides the enhancements to reality that will make things easier and weirder. Most physical devices cease to exist. News papers. DVDs. CDs. Advertisements of all sorts. Notebooks. Books. Magazines. And with them goes all the things they support. If you can download a computer game at a reasonable pace over the FN at the local FN shoppe, why do you have stores dedicated to buying and sellings games? You can interact with a real person, game adviser, over the ON, so you don't need people to help guide purchasing locally either. Books stores, CD stores the same way. You'll still need stores for physical goods of course. This also allows integration of the data world and the physical world because your data is all always with you. Appointment booking, reminders for same, cell phone, and things like shopping, prices update in the data world, display thru the OD, bus\train schedules, or even requests, your ability to work follows you around, good because some types of work will likely go away and we'll all be conducting small micro-economic transactions all the time. Another thing the OD facilitates. Since there's no physical money you and your buddy trade chits between ODs and you can do so in any number of quantities. Sub penny quantities. A single beer. A question answered. A software macro traded. A media file. CPU cycles. Almost anything. Another aspect of the OD is that of data customization. You are always at your "desktop". Your file browser view is always the same. Nobody moves the Recycle Bin\Trash Can to a weird spot. Your favorite music player is always installed. And this allows a significantly greater level of customization of function. Most computer usage is not broad and general. Instead of click here, click there, click there, you just program a single "button" to do all of that at once and then combinations of buttons strung together become your system commands.
The Shell. This is a cute acronym, but I won't go in to that. All the things a human needs to survive in the cold world reside on the human being. Ideally you include enough power and artificial muscle that it moves itself around. But otherwise you make it light enough that it's no big deal to carry it around with you. Since it's an integrated unit you can distribute the weight better than a backpack\messenger bag\purse. One purpose is violence resistance and prevention. Anti-terror packages. Like everybody has a NBC suit all the time. Everybody is wearing anti-fragmentation armor all the time. Everybody has a SOS beacon on them all the time. Incorporate NBC detectors and you have a nice mobile detection lab for early threat warning. It carries a battery and a variety of charging mechanisms. If the OD and associated hardware doesn't have audio\video then the Shell will. You can add a bunch of weird stuff in to it. Rather than produce a plastic container for each and every sugar beverage you have each suit hold a reservoir, or more than one and you fill\refill it with liquids as needed, eliminates waste. Same for a food container and utensils. If the technology hits the right points you can incorporate enhanced senses (IR, UV, telescopes, etc) enhance musculature, and transport modes (from Heelies to mag-lev to the human dragonfly flight suit).
Of course the OD is part of the Shell, the Shell as a concept is pretty comprehensive, there's not much you can't throw in there. The key concept is the carrying it with you at all times part. I like to think that even at the most basic level it would provide for instant traction, holding an injured body part in place, also to be used in cases of explosion. This would allow it to hold you sitting\standing so you can get rid of most furniture.
A lot of this is pretty minimalist stuff. Most folks will find it unattractive for that reason, but if we are not going to have a major die-off of the human race, which is pretty likely I suspect, then we are going to have to get pretty minimalist to pack more people and our associated support structures on to the planet.
So those are they, the big ones. Pretty broad and abstract of course, but it's the effects more than the tech I suspect.
Wearing a Shell also does a lot to eliminate clothing.
Nutrition is one I have not been able to put a futurist spin on. Beyond the obvious.
Currently "food" is fairly complex. Things like vitamin and mineral supps are less effective than the same things consumed as parts of food. Lots of conflicting data about food, what to eat, how much, when. Lots of secondary issues, how to provide for that food, how to grow it, what to do with the waste, how to transport it, preserve it, prepare it.
So obviously the ideal is that we "figure it out" and then move to extracting raw nutrients in the correct form and ratio, avoid damaging them in processing and transport, and then live off a paste or goo that contains all the essential stuff we need, none of what we don't, and indulge in the occasional bit of chocolate cake and beer on occasion.
Maybe we can get our EFAs and protein from krill and krill paste. Other alternatives would be micro-agriculture, rooftop gardens...for a whole city.
Tecknowledgry
I read a lot of the tech sites. Job related hazard. I've written previously about the omni-device or "OD" and thought I might reiterate those sayings as the full implications seem to keep being missed by the tech media world at large. Because I'm a SupraGENIUS and they are f33bz.
Computing can be divided in to broad classes. You have high-end people doing actual useful work. Physics sims, aerospace design, climate modeling, that kind of thing. Then you have gaming, which is a special case in that optimization can reduce the need for hardware, or, put another way, dedicated hardware can reduce the need for general computing. Finally there is "everything else" also known as "the average user".
Clearly it's in the interests of the companies to encourage you to over buy, and really it's in our interests as well. This is because they need money, and lots of it, for research, and we need ("need") smaller computers that work faster.
But this stands in contrast to the current state of things which is more access based than computing based. You need to get to the internet to get to Yahoo which is where you put your email. You need to get to the internet to get to iTunes to get new music. You need to get to the internet to get to Youtube and Myspace and IM.
So step one is internet access (in the future we'll talk about ON the omni-net) and then step two is data access or local storage.
That part is pretty cheap though really compared to the rest of it. 4GB micro-sd card for 25$ currently. Nobody yet has seemingly twigged to my brilliant idea of WORM storage. Never erase, just expand. Go look at one of those micro-sd cards. Tiny! So small they come with something else to read\manipulate them. So rather than a spinning magnetic platter you get tiny little chips and plug them in to banks. Probably in serial also in some fashion as your oldest data will likely be access least and your most recent data will be highspeed-cached local to your display\processor. So when you run low on space you buy another 6-pack (in the future everything will be a "6pak" as the basic unit of measure, you'll be required to overbuy in order to provide economic churn, which will create micro-economies of resale as well, but anyway....)of storage and slot it locally and move some of your stuff to your home system or upload to remote storage (data fortresses will be big business in the future, beyond the data center, little arcologies) it will be both really. Then we get to the OD.
All you need is ON access and some small but functional amount of highspeed local storage. The rest of it comes to you from the ON.
The ON is a unified kind of broadcast medium. No more analog, tv, cell, wifi, wimax, just a big weird mesh, software to sort it all out. Intel has made a software radio that fits on a chip, that's basically it.
The iPod multi-touch thing is cute but still pretty lame really. I read about a set of goggles that can recognize objects and record and catalog them. I've talked about that level of functionality before as well. Finger gloves and virtualized keyboards are next. They have "brain mice" which I think are actually more like "brain keyboards" now, retail "read your mind" style products. These will get smaller.
The goggles then can be set up as augmented reality display devices as well. And that's your essential OD. The pod module lump itself then doesn't have\need any interface, maybe some basic readouts, power, connection, etc.
But mostly it just serves as a constant parallel task manager. If you need additional computative power you can rent\buy it from other local ODs or local CPU farms. But really what will you need it for? For gaming you'll want a dedicated hardware lump and improved display surface. So mostly you'll just need data access and storage. Communications.
The first stage Shell will feature a battery, charged from a variety of low power sources, harvested body heat and motion, solar, wireless charging surfaces.
So they work towards this, but they never seem to address it directly. The iPhone will be replaced by ODs and the ODs will replace the computer as we know it.
Current computers of the mobile variety are limited by the need for a display surface and the power issues that come with that. Other big power drains are spinning the hard disk or any other spinning disk (DVD) and we'll replace those with solid state stuff. It doesn't have to be fast, just fast enough. Same with the CPU, most tasks are bandwidth limited, access limited, not CPU time limited. Once we settle a universal data standard we can actually configure the hardware to work based on those ideas. CPUs engineered to crunch Flash, HTML, XML, etc.
And then computers in the personal sense come to an end. Their logical endpoint is the OD. The thing you carry with you all the time that does all the things you want, most of which involve data access in one form or another and very few of which involve any actual computation, particularly computation that must be done local to your system.
But the interesting part is the effects of all that. The research engines will have stopped by that time. I suspect that, barring Zombies in 2013, this will happen about 2015 or so. iPhone gen 4 or 5.
ID Theft can be killed as mentioned. Access verification. Nothing happens with out you knowing it, nothing accesses your data without you being aware of it and aware of what and who it is. Your OD notifies you of these events.
You combine this with universal debit\credit transations via biometrics (finger prints) plus pin plus access verification. You want to buy something you pick it up, scan it, your OD talks to the vendor OD, accesses your data, you see that request, you verify that you are present (biometics) and you verify a short number sequence.
Then you can't be effectively robbed either. There's nothing to take and not much of a way to coerce people with out getting caught. Since you can't for instance take them to a ATM and make them take out money for you. There is no money. Jacking ID info results in that access being logged, so even if you could use it, you'd be caught quick.
Of course there will be hackers and such, no getting around that, but it's much less personal in the crime department. Nobody jumps out of an alley for your cash.
Computing can be divided in to broad classes. You have high-end people doing actual useful work. Physics sims, aerospace design, climate modeling, that kind of thing. Then you have gaming, which is a special case in that optimization can reduce the need for hardware, or, put another way, dedicated hardware can reduce the need for general computing. Finally there is "everything else" also known as "the average user".
Clearly it's in the interests of the companies to encourage you to over buy, and really it's in our interests as well. This is because they need money, and lots of it, for research, and we need ("need") smaller computers that work faster.
But this stands in contrast to the current state of things which is more access based than computing based. You need to get to the internet to get to Yahoo which is where you put your email. You need to get to the internet to get to iTunes to get new music. You need to get to the internet to get to Youtube and Myspace and IM.
So step one is internet access (in the future we'll talk about ON the omni-net) and then step two is data access or local storage.
That part is pretty cheap though really compared to the rest of it. 4GB micro-sd card for 25$ currently. Nobody yet has seemingly twigged to my brilliant idea of WORM storage. Never erase, just expand. Go look at one of those micro-sd cards. Tiny! So small they come with something else to read\manipulate them. So rather than a spinning magnetic platter you get tiny little chips and plug them in to banks. Probably in serial also in some fashion as your oldest data will likely be access least and your most recent data will be highspeed-cached local to your display\processor. So when you run low on space you buy another 6-pack (in the future everything will be a "6pak" as the basic unit of measure, you'll be required to overbuy in order to provide economic churn, which will create micro-economies of resale as well, but anyway....)of storage and slot it locally and move some of your stuff to your home system or upload to remote storage (data fortresses will be big business in the future, beyond the data center, little arcologies) it will be both really. Then we get to the OD.
All you need is ON access and some small but functional amount of highspeed local storage. The rest of it comes to you from the ON.
The ON is a unified kind of broadcast medium. No more analog, tv, cell, wifi, wimax, just a big weird mesh, software to sort it all out. Intel has made a software radio that fits on a chip, that's basically it.
The iPod multi-touch thing is cute but still pretty lame really. I read about a set of goggles that can recognize objects and record and catalog them. I've talked about that level of functionality before as well. Finger gloves and virtualized keyboards are next. They have "brain mice" which I think are actually more like "brain keyboards" now, retail "read your mind" style products. These will get smaller.
The goggles then can be set up as augmented reality display devices as well. And that's your essential OD. The pod module lump itself then doesn't have\need any interface, maybe some basic readouts, power, connection, etc.
But mostly it just serves as a constant parallel task manager. If you need additional computative power you can rent\buy it from other local ODs or local CPU farms. But really what will you need it for? For gaming you'll want a dedicated hardware lump and improved display surface. So mostly you'll just need data access and storage. Communications.
The first stage Shell will feature a battery, charged from a variety of low power sources, harvested body heat and motion, solar, wireless charging surfaces.
So they work towards this, but they never seem to address it directly. The iPhone will be replaced by ODs and the ODs will replace the computer as we know it.
Current computers of the mobile variety are limited by the need for a display surface and the power issues that come with that. Other big power drains are spinning the hard disk or any other spinning disk (DVD) and we'll replace those with solid state stuff. It doesn't have to be fast, just fast enough. Same with the CPU, most tasks are bandwidth limited, access limited, not CPU time limited. Once we settle a universal data standard we can actually configure the hardware to work based on those ideas. CPUs engineered to crunch Flash, HTML, XML, etc.
And then computers in the personal sense come to an end. Their logical endpoint is the OD. The thing you carry with you all the time that does all the things you want, most of which involve data access in one form or another and very few of which involve any actual computation, particularly computation that must be done local to your system.
But the interesting part is the effects of all that. The research engines will have stopped by that time. I suspect that, barring Zombies in 2013, this will happen about 2015 or so. iPhone gen 4 or 5.
ID Theft can be killed as mentioned. Access verification. Nothing happens with out you knowing it, nothing accesses your data without you being aware of it and aware of what and who it is. Your OD notifies you of these events.
You combine this with universal debit\credit transations via biometrics (finger prints) plus pin plus access verification. You want to buy something you pick it up, scan it, your OD talks to the vendor OD, accesses your data, you see that request, you verify that you are present (biometics) and you verify a short number sequence.
Then you can't be effectively robbed either. There's nothing to take and not much of a way to coerce people with out getting caught. Since you can't for instance take them to a ATM and make them take out money for you. There is no money. Jacking ID info results in that access being logged, so even if you could use it, you'd be caught quick.
Of course there will be hackers and such, no getting around that, but it's much less personal in the crime department. Nobody jumps out of an alley for your cash.
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