Have I written it here? Or have I only thought about it?
I could go back and search the prior posts, but that's not how things work here at SharpSugarShock, we only go forward, usually as fast as possible, often with both hands off the wheel and our eyes glued to the cute chick w. the great ass on the sidewalk, that's how we like it. So..."tits or GTFO", as they say.
Software Singularity (SS): This is the basic Kurzweil idea but updated...because I'm smarter than him. The Singularity is here, right now, we are inside of it. The thing being we've not yet realized it and so we can't quite take advantage of it. The way in which this works is that as humans apply psychic energy (magic) to the world we change it, internet + software allows us to change reality (by that psychic magic process) essentially instantly and essentially everywhere. This is the disruptive change which the Singularity can be used to enable.
Omni-net (ON): This is the idea of ad-hoc network-aware wireless mesh networks becoming omnipresent. My device talks to your device talks to the main trunk line. My device and your device talk to a cell phone repeater that talks to the main trunks. And various iterations. I like to use the ideas of Nearest Neighbor Next Nearest Neighbor Networks (N5) or NANs (Neighborhood Area Networks). The point with this one, and it's a good example of the SS from above, is that we can actually do this, really, right now, if there was software to allow it, and if there was software to allow it it would spread very rapidly to transform the entire network simply be being available. There's a self-as-server post around here which ties in to this as well.
Fiber-net (FN (pronounced "fin")): This is the logical counterpart to the ON, you use fiber optics to engage in what is called quantum cryptography, this allows you to "trust" and to monitor for interception, packets on the wire (or photons on the fiber I guess). The idea of the ON and the N5 system it allows is that you can draw data across a range of sources and validate it that way. I can check the same story on FOXNEWS and CNN and somewhere else, I can also check the FOXNEWS story against itself by using two different routes to connect to it, I do all of that because of the untrustable nature of the ON, you don't know if your path to the source is secure (or even real, maybe you've got the DNS poison and are redirecting to fictitious hosts). These would be hardwired things. The local data shop, or the 7-11, or your apartment.
Personal Omni-Device (POD): This is the near-future iPhone. We've got them already, I mean it was quite interesting to consider this device prior to the iPhone existing and then to see them pop up in reality. Not a *tremendous* unique idea on my part, and likely stolen unconsciously, but still interesting to make predictions and have them come to pass. The thing that lets you access and process information which can be...anything. Taxes, pictures, email, video, etc. And so since you can look at anything with it you can use it for anything and it becomes the single device to "in the darkness bind them". This can again be done right now. Extensions to this idea involve other devices wirelessly "publishing" their own available resources so you can command them as needed from your POD. For instance your TV can tell your POD that it's there and then you can use your POD to control your TV, stereo, whatever.
Single Human Enhancement Layer (SHEL): This is a set of technologies which enable various human enhancements depending on what's available currently. At the low-end it's a antenna, larger battery, charging mechanisms (solar, wind, motion harvesting, wall plug, etc), and hopefully some ballistic\fragmentation protection, at the high-end it's Iron Man, basically.
I think those are the ones I tend to use most often and thus want to shorten to initials most often.
There are other concepts but I don't think they've got cute names for them.
You know, psychic energy influences reality, that's a big one. Usually easier to call it Magic, but then folks get weird about that, think it means things it don't (hint: It might be magic, but you will always have to do the work).
Direct economics. The idea (again, this is something we can do, right now, if there was software and laws for it, and again, once those two exist....it will instantly become everywhere) being that discreet individuals can transfer value (money) between each other on a random access basis. No cash, no swiping your card, no need for ATMs and checks and deposits. I think it's got some emergent properties. Also called micro-commerce.
What else?
Can't recall. I'll update this post, or, more likely, post new lists under the same post name to make them easier to find.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Neglect
Ah blog, I've neglected you, so sorry, so sad.
Here we go again.....
Need to get back in to the swing of the writing. Or the rut of it perhaps. Which means I'll have to quit editing the posts for being Future-Tech specific and just slap them back in to the general ranting nonsense realm. Quickly I makes the now standard blog-apologist qualifier, to wit: Ain't nobody what reads this space anyhow, so I'm sure this repurposing update will be met with a great deal of fanfare and approval. Or, not.
I want to take some time off from the news. Which leads to me having more free time at work. And work is slow so it's blogging that remains.
Why not talk about the news then? No reason, I guess I can, you interested to hear about it? Sure you are.
It's actually a nice little lead in to what I see as a stunningly common and widespread issue, and one of my favorite issues at that, cognitive bias.
Emotions. The gift-curse of being human. W.o. them we are nothing w. them we are raving lunatics. Better to be mad than dead I suppose.
In the SD realms much of what I've seen and learned has been based around emotions. This is of course superficially interesting because of the common misassumption that SD is about ass-whuppery. Most often what I see (or tend to perceive? Perhaps a projection? Potentially a potent potion of perceptual poison?) is emotions being used as weapons by folks, what's interesting here is that they are not using their own emotions (rage, disapproval, scorn, etc, or the withholding of the better ones, affection, trust, etc) but instead manipulating the emotions of the target. Often the target even assists them with this and often the target will be utterly unaware of what is happening. Which, really, makes them pretty fuckin' sweet weapons in my opinion. When you can "steal" somebody elses hardware and then trick them in to shooting themselves in the foot and make them think it was their idea? Awesome.
I think the news, whatever that vague concept means to you, is becoming increasingly adept at using that weapon. This is because (back to the Future-tek) of the news orgs becoming "int0rw3bz enabled". As a side note the interesting thing about being internet enabled is that...it's a voluntary upgrade. It's a taking advantage of what's already present rather than creation of a new medium. For instance blogs and FaceSpace are pretty good examples of ways folks can now network and advertise and gather intel that have existed for a period of time but are only now becoming used in that fashion. Observed also how this relates to the concepts of the software Singularity which I talked about in prior posts. Or at least I hope I talked about it, I'll need to if I haven't.
So. The use of emotions as weapons against their host target. Making somebody mad or sad so you can manipulate them. Or making them make themselves mad or sad. You know, like presenting them with various words and pictures that produce consistent and predictable emotional responses. Pictures of dead babies. Words about beauty and wealth. And so forth.
As advertising dies, as predicted on prior blogs, instead we move towards an attentional economy. Again I suspect I talked about this prior but if not I'll prepare a blogging on it. Humans create what we put work in to, often times this is indirect. For instance if I go to see a concert I'm not going to be doing anything personally, but by "paying attention" (note use of "pay" in this usage) to it I create (help create) the entire concert, pay for a ticket, pay the band, the venue, etc. Even if I get free tickets you can know that money is trading hands somewhere and it's to the intention of getting attention.
News works this way. The number of folks that give a crap about your stories, clickthru, etc, the more you can make (still using sidebar adverts and such, but that'll only last so long, and of course those adverts use the same attentional economics) so then what you're interested in is not news, not in the (ie, what I consider) classical sense, it's not events in the world that are of importance, it's events in the world that will provoke an emotional response in the reader.
It's a funny thing too I guess. Co-workers this morning still talking about that fucking boy in the balloon, or lack of boy. Still! Read my lips: Nothing. Happened.
And yet...something did happen, is happening, will continue to happen, because of...? Attention being paid to it. And it consumes all this resource to do so. Supposing Anderson Cooper does a bit on the incident, I don't know if he did but he's a good example for my purposes, and suppose he makes some easy number liked 600$ an hour. Spending 10 minutes of his time, which I assume involves 10 minutes of camera man time, production assistant time, and more at the back end of editing and arranging and so forth, and we can be putting pretty gross amounts of cash in to something ephemeral, which then becomes nice and solid, instantiates itself if you will, in reality.
But why? Because they told us to care about it? Or because it was an easy and effective emotional grab? And now that we were grabbed we get backlash when we're "wrong", we get angry w. them for fooling us, tho we were never really fooled in that we were just told to accept something as fact (it's on the news, right?) and had no reason to question it, so it perpetuates.
I suppose this can be a good thing in the interpersonal realm. Get in a fight with the girlfriend and then the backlash will be a swing towards lovey-dovey happiness and make up sex.
The down is the up and all of that.
So then, to take a break from the news for reasons of increased emotional integrity, which is really just attentional integrity. Emotions often being only real when we pay attention to them. Often, not always.
Another thing, three other things:
1) You are what you do.
This one comes in a lot of forms. As you think so shall you become. Reap what you sow. Thought creates reality. Or from the above paying attention instantiates events in reality and then once they are "real" they can continue to roll along on their own after they've sprung fully formed from our foreheads.
This is a central tenet for me at this point. It's largely so "obvious" (cog bias) that it's hard to even talk about or explain w.o. it sounding so obvious folks misunderstand it. It's the "secret" to everything. Want to be good at martial arts? Easy. Do them, every day, for 10-20 years, you'll be good at the end of that time (and maybe well before). Want a nice garden? Read about gardening daily, think about your own garden daily, check it, water it, sit amongst the rows and beds. Writing books? Same\same. Again, obvious.
This leads to
2) You only have a certain limited amount of time and energy.
This applies both lifetime and daily. This isn't about excuses folks make saying they are tired or busy, that's true but irrelevant for our purposes here. No matter what, you will only have so much time in a day, and what you spend that time on (spend?) is what you become. If I spend 15 minutes a day showering and brushing my teeth and other kinds of grooming I become a groomed and clean dude. If I spend 15 minutes shoveling fastfood down my food hole every day I become a corporate supporter of McDonalds (or brand of choice). A 1 hour commute transforms you in to a person who spends 2 hours a day alone in your car, probably irritated.
Aside: Emotions can be draining, do you think the modern malaise might be partly manufactured by all those little irritating digs we surround ourselves with? I do.
This is probably the most important of these principles\truths to consider. In particular this is true because many things we want to do to become (per 1) ) are not short term activities. For instance being a good father is an investment of a significant period of our limited time and energy over a significant time span.
Other ways in which this truth is important are all along those lines. What are you doing that you won't be happy w. having invested in when it is time to retire (and we're talking Replicant style retirement here). Drugs? Drinking? Sitting in rush hour traffic, irritated, alone? Getting pissed off at "the news" by stories about the fucking republican shitards and the douchelord democrate asshats? What about playing video games? Reading genre fiction? Watching reality TV?
and so we arrive at:
3) If it's important do it every day, if it's not important don't do it at all.
This one is a Dan Gable quote, perhaps adulterated by the internets. It's not quite an actual literal truth, as a very wise friend of mine clarified for me recently, but it's a fine little personal heuristic.
Another variation I came up with recently being: Would I have rather spent the time jerking off?
Because if it's not as rewarding as a self-inflicted orgasm is it really worth engaging in?
That one is a bit more flippant, but I do loves me some flippancy.
This is where we bring the 3 truths together to unify. What are you doing with your time? You know what you do becomes what you are and you know you've only go so much time so why are you doing what you are doing and do you really want to be doing that?
I don't think I really want to watch TV, particularly the series, I don't think I really want to watch the news (or monitor from my internet lair more accurately) and I think there are likely to be other things I might not really want to do either. Heck I bet jerking off could be added to that list, dumping the literal as well as metaphoric masturbation.
But that's all definition by the negative. Things I can cut out. What about the things I want to make sure to do "every day" (in the sense that there might be somethings you don't actually want to do daily but that are important)?
For instance if you want to consider yourself a martial artist...is that really fair to do if you do not have a personal private (or maybe not private, but...) practice on the daily tip? I don't think so. And even in the case that you do you might still end up a beginner, dabbler, hack, or something. But at least you'd have the dedication to make "martial arts" (impossibly vague and meaningless in the current usage) part of who you are, rather than a thing that you do (I know, if you're doing it and then becoming it, isn't it "you" just as well? Sorta, but no, not really, IMVHO).
So, from news to 3 essential truths. No tech stuff?
Only 1800 words here, I think I can tack a bit on at the end.
Psychic energy is attention. Focused attention becomes reality. Which is magic (to effect\"create" reality). Thus we can say that what we spend our collective psychic energy on is a distributed extended magical ritual. Ideas like money, religion, law (which side of the road you drive on).
Techwise we've come to an interesting place particularly since crossing the Singularity barrier. We can now focus and distribute attention in, perhaps not entirely, but still relatively novel and new ways. We don't have to watch the TV show at the particular time, we can watch in Hulu, or DVR, so the show can still get our support, and thus be more likely to sustain production.
There is the common reference to human minds being able to "hold" about 7 things at once (often cited as +/- 2) and there is the other side of the "you are what you do" thing, which is that you (as a living organism) are going to (unable to prevent IMO) adapt to what is around you. So when we surround our selves with the modern malaise we'll adapt to it in some way. Maybe by becoming more active and maybe by shaping our selves to it and letting it in to our lives.
The news then exists because we pay attention. Most of the folks I know consider themselves informed in many ways and use the news to get that inform(ation) and thus keep it going, but I think the news is no longer our servant but our master, learning to manipulate us to give it attention so that it can in turn absorb more attention from us, strengthening itself. Psychic Parasite.
Bad memes.
There's the fracturing of attention as well these days. If we look at 2) from above we can see that this is another bad meme and psychic parasite, we can't amount to anything if we're constantly distracted (ie, paying attention to) by everything. The technology is making this possible. And largely this is because Software Singularity (SS) style we're paying attention to, spending psychic energy on, creating the tools to do this to our selves. FaceSpace, Twitter, blogs, news, always-on always-present (Omni-Net) internet connections which allow the distraction further and further in to our lives. Why if I didn't love the internet so much it would make me considering getting rid of my precious iPhone (full disclosure: I don't own an iPhone). ;-)
Here we go again.....
Need to get back in to the swing of the writing. Or the rut of it perhaps. Which means I'll have to quit editing the posts for being Future-Tech specific and just slap them back in to the general ranting nonsense realm. Quickly I makes the now standard blog-apologist qualifier, to wit: Ain't nobody what reads this space anyhow, so I'm sure this repurposing update will be met with a great deal of fanfare and approval. Or, not.
I want to take some time off from the news. Which leads to me having more free time at work. And work is slow so it's blogging that remains.
Why not talk about the news then? No reason, I guess I can, you interested to hear about it? Sure you are.
It's actually a nice little lead in to what I see as a stunningly common and widespread issue, and one of my favorite issues at that, cognitive bias.
Emotions. The gift-curse of being human. W.o. them we are nothing w. them we are raving lunatics. Better to be mad than dead I suppose.
In the SD realms much of what I've seen and learned has been based around emotions. This is of course superficially interesting because of the common misassumption that SD is about ass-whuppery. Most often what I see (or tend to perceive? Perhaps a projection? Potentially a potent potion of perceptual poison?) is emotions being used as weapons by folks, what's interesting here is that they are not using their own emotions (rage, disapproval, scorn, etc, or the withholding of the better ones, affection, trust, etc) but instead manipulating the emotions of the target. Often the target even assists them with this and often the target will be utterly unaware of what is happening. Which, really, makes them pretty fuckin' sweet weapons in my opinion. When you can "steal" somebody elses hardware and then trick them in to shooting themselves in the foot and make them think it was their idea? Awesome.
I think the news, whatever that vague concept means to you, is becoming increasingly adept at using that weapon. This is because (back to the Future-tek) of the news orgs becoming "int0rw3bz enabled". As a side note the interesting thing about being internet enabled is that...it's a voluntary upgrade. It's a taking advantage of what's already present rather than creation of a new medium. For instance blogs and FaceSpace are pretty good examples of ways folks can now network and advertise and gather intel that have existed for a period of time but are only now becoming used in that fashion. Observed also how this relates to the concepts of the software Singularity which I talked about in prior posts. Or at least I hope I talked about it, I'll need to if I haven't.
So. The use of emotions as weapons against their host target. Making somebody mad or sad so you can manipulate them. Or making them make themselves mad or sad. You know, like presenting them with various words and pictures that produce consistent and predictable emotional responses. Pictures of dead babies. Words about beauty and wealth. And so forth.
As advertising dies, as predicted on prior blogs, instead we move towards an attentional economy. Again I suspect I talked about this prior but if not I'll prepare a blogging on it. Humans create what we put work in to, often times this is indirect. For instance if I go to see a concert I'm not going to be doing anything personally, but by "paying attention" (note use of "pay" in this usage) to it I create (help create) the entire concert, pay for a ticket, pay the band, the venue, etc. Even if I get free tickets you can know that money is trading hands somewhere and it's to the intention of getting attention.
News works this way. The number of folks that give a crap about your stories, clickthru, etc, the more you can make (still using sidebar adverts and such, but that'll only last so long, and of course those adverts use the same attentional economics) so then what you're interested in is not news, not in the (ie, what I consider) classical sense, it's not events in the world that are of importance, it's events in the world that will provoke an emotional response in the reader.
It's a funny thing too I guess. Co-workers this morning still talking about that fucking boy in the balloon, or lack of boy. Still! Read my lips: Nothing. Happened.
And yet...something did happen, is happening, will continue to happen, because of...? Attention being paid to it. And it consumes all this resource to do so. Supposing Anderson Cooper does a bit on the incident, I don't know if he did but he's a good example for my purposes, and suppose he makes some easy number liked 600$ an hour. Spending 10 minutes of his time, which I assume involves 10 minutes of camera man time, production assistant time, and more at the back end of editing and arranging and so forth, and we can be putting pretty gross amounts of cash in to something ephemeral, which then becomes nice and solid, instantiates itself if you will, in reality.
But why? Because they told us to care about it? Or because it was an easy and effective emotional grab? And now that we were grabbed we get backlash when we're "wrong", we get angry w. them for fooling us, tho we were never really fooled in that we were just told to accept something as fact (it's on the news, right?) and had no reason to question it, so it perpetuates.
I suppose this can be a good thing in the interpersonal realm. Get in a fight with the girlfriend and then the backlash will be a swing towards lovey-dovey happiness and make up sex.
The down is the up and all of that.
So then, to take a break from the news for reasons of increased emotional integrity, which is really just attentional integrity. Emotions often being only real when we pay attention to them. Often, not always.
Another thing, three other things:
1) You are what you do.
This one comes in a lot of forms. As you think so shall you become. Reap what you sow. Thought creates reality. Or from the above paying attention instantiates events in reality and then once they are "real" they can continue to roll along on their own after they've sprung fully formed from our foreheads.
This is a central tenet for me at this point. It's largely so "obvious" (cog bias) that it's hard to even talk about or explain w.o. it sounding so obvious folks misunderstand it. It's the "secret" to everything. Want to be good at martial arts? Easy. Do them, every day, for 10-20 years, you'll be good at the end of that time (and maybe well before). Want a nice garden? Read about gardening daily, think about your own garden daily, check it, water it, sit amongst the rows and beds. Writing books? Same\same. Again, obvious.
This leads to
2) You only have a certain limited amount of time and energy.
This applies both lifetime and daily. This isn't about excuses folks make saying they are tired or busy, that's true but irrelevant for our purposes here. No matter what, you will only have so much time in a day, and what you spend that time on (spend?) is what you become. If I spend 15 minutes a day showering and brushing my teeth and other kinds of grooming I become a groomed and clean dude. If I spend 15 minutes shoveling fastfood down my food hole every day I become a corporate supporter of McDonalds (or brand of choice). A 1 hour commute transforms you in to a person who spends 2 hours a day alone in your car, probably irritated.
Aside: Emotions can be draining, do you think the modern malaise might be partly manufactured by all those little irritating digs we surround ourselves with? I do.
This is probably the most important of these principles\truths to consider. In particular this is true because many things we want to do to become (per 1) ) are not short term activities. For instance being a good father is an investment of a significant period of our limited time and energy over a significant time span.
Other ways in which this truth is important are all along those lines. What are you doing that you won't be happy w. having invested in when it is time to retire (and we're talking Replicant style retirement here). Drugs? Drinking? Sitting in rush hour traffic, irritated, alone? Getting pissed off at "the news" by stories about the fucking republican shitards and the douchelord democrate asshats? What about playing video games? Reading genre fiction? Watching reality TV?
and so we arrive at:
3) If it's important do it every day, if it's not important don't do it at all.
This one is a Dan Gable quote, perhaps adulterated by the internets. It's not quite an actual literal truth, as a very wise friend of mine clarified for me recently, but it's a fine little personal heuristic.
Another variation I came up with recently being: Would I have rather spent the time jerking off?
Because if it's not as rewarding as a self-inflicted orgasm is it really worth engaging in?
That one is a bit more flippant, but I do loves me some flippancy.
This is where we bring the 3 truths together to unify. What are you doing with your time? You know what you do becomes what you are and you know you've only go so much time so why are you doing what you are doing and do you really want to be doing that?
I don't think I really want to watch TV, particularly the series, I don't think I really want to watch the news (or monitor from my internet lair more accurately) and I think there are likely to be other things I might not really want to do either. Heck I bet jerking off could be added to that list, dumping the literal as well as metaphoric masturbation.
But that's all definition by the negative. Things I can cut out. What about the things I want to make sure to do "every day" (in the sense that there might be somethings you don't actually want to do daily but that are important)?
For instance if you want to consider yourself a martial artist...is that really fair to do if you do not have a personal private (or maybe not private, but...) practice on the daily tip? I don't think so. And even in the case that you do you might still end up a beginner, dabbler, hack, or something. But at least you'd have the dedication to make "martial arts" (impossibly vague and meaningless in the current usage) part of who you are, rather than a thing that you do (I know, if you're doing it and then becoming it, isn't it "you" just as well? Sorta, but no, not really, IMVHO).
So, from news to 3 essential truths. No tech stuff?
Only 1800 words here, I think I can tack a bit on at the end.
Psychic energy is attention. Focused attention becomes reality. Which is magic (to effect\"create" reality). Thus we can say that what we spend our collective psychic energy on is a distributed extended magical ritual. Ideas like money, religion, law (which side of the road you drive on).
Techwise we've come to an interesting place particularly since crossing the Singularity barrier. We can now focus and distribute attention in, perhaps not entirely, but still relatively novel and new ways. We don't have to watch the TV show at the particular time, we can watch in Hulu, or DVR, so the show can still get our support, and thus be more likely to sustain production.
There is the common reference to human minds being able to "hold" about 7 things at once (often cited as +/- 2) and there is the other side of the "you are what you do" thing, which is that you (as a living organism) are going to (unable to prevent IMO) adapt to what is around you. So when we surround our selves with the modern malaise we'll adapt to it in some way. Maybe by becoming more active and maybe by shaping our selves to it and letting it in to our lives.
The news then exists because we pay attention. Most of the folks I know consider themselves informed in many ways and use the news to get that inform(ation) and thus keep it going, but I think the news is no longer our servant but our master, learning to manipulate us to give it attention so that it can in turn absorb more attention from us, strengthening itself. Psychic Parasite.
Bad memes.
There's the fracturing of attention as well these days. If we look at 2) from above we can see that this is another bad meme and psychic parasite, we can't amount to anything if we're constantly distracted (ie, paying attention to) by everything. The technology is making this possible. And largely this is because Software Singularity (SS) style we're paying attention to, spending psychic energy on, creating the tools to do this to our selves. FaceSpace, Twitter, blogs, news, always-on always-present (Omni-Net) internet connections which allow the distraction further and further in to our lives. Why if I didn't love the internet so much it would make me considering getting rid of my precious iPhone (full disclosure: I don't own an iPhone). ;-)
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