9-23-2012 “beyond the grim”, story about movie trailer that convinces people there’s a film about a legend about a man who believes there’s a boy who sees the grim reaper in mirror reflections and also hears whispers about who’s going to die next; international “do not consent” rule that allows a person to opt of use of his/her image for any reason while in public/private; increasing, rather than decreasing, one’s freedom from intrusion
by business/government in the always-on, always-connected internet age; the myth of the middle class, a metaphor for compliant populace ready to compromise freedoms for perception of security from imagined evils against exercising one’s freedom to exist in/out of “1984”/”animal farm” type societies …zzzz…
Tag Archives: future
Hardware-in-the-loop
The one area of intelligence that my wife and I agree on is the definition of X-in-the-loop.
A machine that requires input from a person is a human-in-the-loop device/system.
All commercial automobiles require a person to operate the automobile (but that is quickly going to change).
Is a road full of automobiles that require no human input a sign of intelligence?
What about the Curiosity rover on Mars?
What features can we list that show autonomous functions in one subset, intelligent functions in another and a set of features in the subset of the autonomy/intelligence junction?
What makes the autonomous functions of my central nervous system intelligent or conscious?
What about the automatic connection of my laptop computer’s WiFi radio subsystem in this room to the WiFi router in another part of the house and then on out to the Internet?
What is pure hardware-in-the-loop intelligence like, no HID required/allowed?
If a database is updated by a software program which seeks to maximise its collection of available knowledge, knowledge that it alone determines is valuable, is that intelligence?
And what about the age-old arguments of the conscious-vs-subconscious thought sets?
These words are just a few that pass through my thoughts before I make a last-second decision upon another upon another, etc., until I type these words in a coherent whole row called a sentence, in exclusion of and in competition within a finite possibility (you won’t find Croatian or Sanskrit here without the use of an online translator, for instance).
If the Internet is now an extension of my thought set, am I a human-in-the-loop extension of the Internet?
I sit here, taking an occasional sip of black label Irish whiskey (“Black Bush”), looking at the clock, which shows 22:38, and contemplate going to bed, where I will not be directly disturbed by the Internet, although my dreams (my subconscious?) may work through thought patterns I’ve had today about artificial machine intelligence which date back to my childhood days of the 1970s and the promise of LISP/ELIZA and other AI programs that relied on pattern-matching (why does the image of trees appear in my thoughts right now?).
…data structures…hmm…
On the floor next to me, in addition to “Dictionary of Quotations” by Bergen Evans, “Madame Bovary” by Gustave Flaubert and “The Schizoid World of Jean-Paul Satre and R.D. Laing,” are two books that captured my attention several years ago: “I, Cyborg” by Kevin Warwick, and “Natural-Born Cyborgs: Minds, Technologies, and the Future of Human Intelligence” by Andy Clark.
From them, I contemplated a novel I write using software agents in a database, with every word/phrase/sentence/paragraph/chapter hyperlinked/connected such that the story changed based on reading the reader’s online self, with a voiceover and accompanying 3D video that interjects based on the reader’s vital signs, the novel frequently switching to a series of random words to shake up the reader’s thought patterns, slipping in and out of the reader’s online life — social life, blog, game sequences, website, etc. — so that the reader soon could lose track of self completely in a world of half-plagiarism, half-homage collage.
As I write this blog entry, my software agent has jumped from suggesting the word I’m typing to suggesting the rest of the end of the sentence.
After hundreds of blog entries, my software agent has jumped from suggesting the rest of this sentence to write the rest of the blog entry for me.
Based on the research I perform on the Internet every day and the books I have lined up to read the rest of the week, as well as following my daily patterns, including eye movements, my software agent has written the rest of this week’s blog entries for me, suggesting that I skip using the Internet altogether today and go for a nice, relaxing hike in the cool autumn morning, using my “Internet of things” kitchen appliances to assemble a sandwich along with the rest of my meal/snacks to eat that my smartphone will remind me of when my vital signs show sign of hunger along the trail.
Readers of this blog can now no longer tell when I stopped writing these blog entries, or when I sometimes step in as a person-in-the-loop to tweak a blog entry as a surprise, because both I and the software agent use the trick of occasional misspellings and grammatical errors to give an ambience of authenticity to my/its speedy typing and lack of postcreation proofreading/editing.
Is this intelligence?
If all I do between computer programming gigs and life coaching, other than go out to eat, shop, attend football games, watch movies and travel with my wife, is write blog entries here, your only connection with me, could you say I am more or less intelligent than the output of my software agent?
What if my writing became more oblique and more full of interesting Internet links, would I (or, rather, my proxy) seem more intelligent?
When all of us depend on software agents to supplement or (perhaps) better yet, substitute for our online lives, is the Internet intelligent/conscious?
When software agents are interacting with software agents to create unique output that I and the other people who created their software agents would not have thought of, is that a sign that the Internet has become intelligent/conscious?
Is a “train” of autonomous automobiles traveling on a road an intelligent/conscious entity all its own, receiving stimuli from the environment and reacting as one just like a caterpillar or earthworm from our anthropomorphic view?
How can I say that my typing here is anything more than an autonomous response by my set of states of energy to the environment?
Am I really just a hardware-in-the-loop device like any other set of states of energy in the universe?
Why should I label “me” as a special condition of intelligence or consciousness? Because I say I can see myself write this blog entry while I “see” thoughts that do not win the competition to make this blog entry a coherent sequence of symbols we call words?
The wooden mannequin on my desk has no autonomous functions, does it?
What about gravitational pull holding it down on the desk?
What about the photons interacting with its surface, indicating a series of paths from the incandescent light bulb inefficiently emitting more heat than light that reflects off the shiny surface of the mannequin into my eyeballs?
Obviously, I’d be more convinced if the mannequin started talking to me in a manner I could understand — arm gestures, leg movements, etc.
I shake the desktop and the mannequin shakes in responses.
We have a relationship with each other, if not an understanding between us.
Is that a sign of intelligence/consciousness?
I cannot assume that what I anthropomorphically or anthropocentrically want to call intelligence/consciousness is what I will see when the interconnected wires and fibers we call the Internet becomes more than an automatic response to our stimuli, which is really all I am in one view, aren’t I?
Never assume the event horizon hasn’t already been crossed just because your definition of the impossible is the only one you can envision.
Hindsight is mostly 20/20.
Symbiosis is asymptomatic, in my book (but that’s the whiskey talking, not me).
Good night!
If…
If, in this parallel universe of a blog, we are to start a world war on “global culture homogeneity disguised as a global economy for the benefit of all” beginning at the grassroots level, what is the post capitalist/communist consumption/production model going to morph into?
Are we simply preparing the species for a war to clear excess on our usual endless cycle of economic booms/busts? Can we, instead, look ahead past or even possibly skip war altogether?
Creating an alternate reality/realty to test theories is not only the province of fiction writers but also policy makers, bookmakers, farmers, hunters and quilters.
While we prime the pump for a test of the vitality of angry mob mania on the edge of economic collapse in this space, let us examine the world in a few months/years/decades.
The momentum of high tech development may slow but the relative elitism of the high tech mavens creates its own weather system which sucks in and destroys during the act of recreating its image as states of energy are wont to do in what we call a narcissistic house of mirrors continuum.
Disregard the labels we use like capitalism or communism or any similar officially-sanctioned state function.
Let us look beyond the labels and look at the condition/effect of technology for technology’s sake.
Better yet, let us continue to use the paradigm of sets of states of energy without regard to hierarchy other than the tendency of energy states bonding at multiple macro levels.
How will states of energy change their bonding structures when encountering a counter wave of resistance to commercialized rapid waves of change labeled progress that occur repeatedly in the area of study we call history that fictionalises how we got to this point where we share a moment together understanding the same sets of symbols for which our sets of states of energy were aligned in reaction to previous rapid waves of change we currently see as a normalized part of us?
Who benefits and who does not?
Who is prepared for a global reset?
Many enjoy the freedom of multiculturalism and many do not.
How will this blog introduce the vision of a “passive” solar system with us seeing ourselves as central intelligent units to one that turned itself into an active, living system independent of our species, viewing us as merely one small beneficial part of a growing whole expanding into the galaxy?
We like the distractions that make us seem more important than the planet on which we’ve thrived; however, view us over the course of history of the next 1000 years and today’s debates about global economy changes logged in everyday news fade quickly, just another link in the chain of events of a galaxy creating “consciousness” on the edge of one of its “arms,” much like our Olympian/ordinary cyborgs today have machine intelligence in their prosthetic appendages that are fast becoming more rapid processors than equivalent parts of our congenital nervous system driven bodies.
More ifs as they develop…
Closing off subplots
Palatia rode the bus to work that morning.
She walked up to the back door and rang the bell.
A security guard answered. “Palatia G. Spaut?”
“Yes?”
“Follow me.”
Palatia walked with the guard to the manager’s office.
“Palatia! You made it in this morning, I see. Feeling better already?”
Palatia nodded at Veruog, her shift manager. “Yes. Thanks for asking.”
Veruog waved off the security guard and pointed at the chair next to the manager’s desk, with about all the room left on the office floor taken up by a tiny desk.
Palatia sat on the edge of the seat and looked up at Veruog.
“Palatia, first of all, I want to say you have been a good employee. Don’t say we haven’t noticed that you can handle the cash register and the food line with little supervision.”
“Thank you.”
“But…but yesterday, you called in sick.”
“Yes, I wasn’t feeling well.”
“Anything in particular?”
“Ohh…you know, aches and pains.”
“I see. And you spent the day at home in bed?”
“Pretty much…”
“Pretty much? What if I was to say that we have video evidence that you not only left your flat but you also went to a local park with friends, not returning until later in the afternoon, perfectly healthy-looking the whole day?”
“How can you say that?”
“Funny you should ask. You see, we consider you a valuable employee since you haven’t quit in the first six months of working long hours and low pay at a fast food joint. Therefore, we registered you with a security service that has links to many traffic cams, security systems and other monitoring devices so we can make sure you are out of danger.”
“Out of danger? You mean you’ve been spying on me?”
“Oh no. Let’s just say our company has health insurance policies on our best employees and to make sure our policies are well protected, we ensure that your habits outside of work are within the actuarial predictions of your overall value.”
“Huh? You pay someone to follow me?”
“No. We…or, rather, the security service uses the latest in face and body motion recognition to monitor your whereabouts and warn us if you are in imminent danger. From what we received yesterday, it appears you hiked near the edge of a canyon where several hikers died earlier this year and where some campers died of a hantavirus infection last week.”
“What? Are you kidding me? You mean you know, or think you know, where I was yesterday?”
“Yes. After we received the message from the security service, we attempted to contact you at home but got no answer. We then sent a security guard to your flat and, again, no answer. We contacted the building supervisor who was worried that one of his tenants had died on his watch, so to speak, raising his insurance premiums. He gladly opened your flat to reveal you weren’t home, which, we believe, verifies that the person we have in this recording right here…” Veruog pointed at the flat screen mounted on the wall above the desk. “…indicates, through deductive reasoning, was you.”
“But I…”
“Do you deny that you went hiking yesterday?”
“No.”
“And do you deny this scene we’re watching from satellite imagery which indicates your hiking path reached up to and over the safety barrier of the canyon edge?”
“No, but…”
“Then we have only one conclusion to make here, Palatia. You have voided the contract you signed when you agreed to work for us…”
“But…”
“…and further, based on the fine print here just above your signature, you are hereby terminated for endangering the efficiency of our company by exposing yourself to nonwork conditions that not only make us liable for training a replacement employee but also liable for health insurance coverage we had not calculated in the actuarial tables generated by your user data, including your social media profiles and the application you submitted to us. The only exception to this contract would have been if you died and, in that case, we would have collected a tidy sum. However, since you are still alive…”
“You can’t fire me! I quit!”
“Ahh, see, that’s where we differ on this issue. We have already posted the change in your employment status to our social media site which we hope you will be kind enough to reflect by changing your employment status on the various social media sites you frequently use that we agreed to document when you signed the contract.”
“That’s not fair!”
“Again, Palatia, it’s a matter of perspective. We both have our reputations to manage, including, these days, our online presence. We have held up our part of the bargain, providing you not only a safe and secure work environment, but also compatible employees, a steady paycheck and a guarantee that you are a stable, if somewhat independent type personality. Any questions?”
“Yes? What about my last paycheck?”
“We will issue you your last paycheck as soon as you return the uniforms we provided you. According to the spreadsheet, you have three uniforms issued in your name.”
“Yeah? Well, fuck you!”
Veruog pressed a button on the edge of the desk and the security guard immediately stepped into the doorway.
“Yes, ma’am?”
“We have a set of clothes in Palatia’s size. Here’s the ticket. Get one of the guys off the line to open the supply cabinet and return with the clothes. Palatia, I’m sorry, you have given me no choice but to demand that you return the uniform that you are wearing right now.”
Palatia got up to run and noticed that all the order screens in the fast food restaurant changed to an image of her jumping up from the chair in Veruog’s office.
“As you can see, Palatia, it’s up to you whether you want to turn this into a criminal act for the police to investigate. The security guard has already requested a patrol car to swing by our restaurant as soon as possible.”
Palatia, caught between wanting to maintain a viable employment record and wanting to tell this whole system off, stopped in the doorway.
She wondered if her friends, all of whom depended on shaky job histories, would take her in if she bolted.
Surely, there was more out there than background checks and slave labour jobs like hers.
Palatia quickly stripped off her clothes and ran out the back door. If Princess Kate and
Prince Harry can make millions with their clothes off, she…well, there was also that stripper named Katrina Darling…she could make herself famous as the first employee who was fired and ran naked from the premises. How much was 15 seconds of fame worth in this YouTube era of celebrity scandals and embassy burnings?
News headlines the next minute reported a naked bandit who was shot and killed by brave police officers called to the scene of a crime in progress, said an iNews reporter who had pulled up into the carpark and was shooting video of the restaurant sign when a woman, running as fast as she could, flipped a bird at the police, ran straight toward them and screamed something unintelligible. “The next moment, a manager walked out with a security guard, both of them looking panicked, saying that the dead assailant, named Palatia, had stolen two uniforms from the restaurant and threatened harm to the reputation of the establishment’s owners. The police clearly had no choice but to protect themselves from this crazed individual! Here’s my video and I thank you for watching. You can see my other videos at…” The instant news stations switched to the next forgettable crime in progress, posting a link to the video at the bottom of the screen.
= = =
While investigating what makes some people vote for one U.S. presidential candidate over another, I came across the book, “What’s the Matter with White People: Why We Long for a Golden Age That Never Was,” by Joan Walsh, referred to me by the website, salon.com, which has provided many a relaxing and entertaining moment of reading in the past.
However, after reading the following 2-star review of the book on amazon.com by Tom Peterson, I’ll have to encourage myself in the future to be open-minded about book suggestions (and, most importantly, subsequent reviews) by websites I review habitually, before I automatically jump to their linked commercial content:
The basic theme of this book is, why do some Whites refuse to fully cooperate with the destruction of their own people and culture? Why won’t they more eagerly promote the genocide of their own children and grandchildren. The policies the author promotes are Anti-White. Open borders, mass immigration, huge transfers of wealth and opportunities from Whites to non-Whites, all of it to the detriment of Whites. Lest someone think genocide is too harsh a term, note that what China is doing to Tibet is rightly called genocide, even though it is largely “non-violent”. Most of the time, genocide does not involve outright killing.
In 1965 the US was roughly 90% White. Today, a minority of children born are White. This is the most rapid demographic change in the history of North America – far more rapid than what followed the arrival of Whites to this continent in 1492. Four hundred years after that date, Amerindians and Whites were still fighting! We now witness a crushing dispossession of Whites in just a few generations. Apparently some Whites are not quite as enthusiastic about the genocide of their people as the elites would like, and this disturbs the author.
The shocking fact is that in 50 years, there will be NO majority White countries anywhere on earth. Yet every Asian country will remain Asian. And every African nation will remain African. It is White countries and only White countries that are being flooded with non-Whites and it is every single White country without exception. None of that is of concern to the author.
Imagine if Africa was undergoing forced assimilation and mass immigration of non-blacks to the point that every single African country would be non-black in a 40 or 50 years. It would rightly be called genocide. Yet this is exactly what is happening to every single White country. This is the central fact of our age, and the one the author willingly ignores in this book
Can I guess who a person like this would vote for in the upcoming U.S. presidential election? You get three guesses and the first two don’t count!
District 12
From my nephew, Jonathan, via email:
Check out this Kickstarter for a power monitoring device that straps on your existing power meter: http://t.co/Aykdtkab via @kickstarter
My wife and I bit the bullet, so to speak, buying smartphones tonight. She got the Apple iPhone 4S and I got the Samsung Galaxy SIII.
Her iPhone sits in her purse while she plays games on her iPad 1 this evening and I sit here in the study typing on an old Compaq C501NR laptop computer while the Samsung phone is on the computer desk in the living room where my wife is also watching the TV show, “Leverage.”
Maybe tomorrow I’ll run some throughput speed tests of the AT&T 4G LTE network and later the WiFi hotspot capability using my iPad 2 and a Sylvania Android tablet as test subjects.
One never rests from one’s thought sets developed in previous occupational habits such as test engineer.
When I stopped looking at the rise and fall and rise and fall of daily readership levels, I found freedom in writing blog entries for the sake of a storyline rather than for the sake of making myself popular/likable by people I know only by their favouring my blog with a view and a like or two.
Ernest Hemingway died before I was born — his influence upon me is historical rather than living. Same for Dorothy Parker. Which leads to another disjointed thought…
Sadly, I must give this storyline a new direction, one which requires a day or two of concentration on esoteric subjects I know little about.
Talk to you soon…
A nod to Roy and Megan at Walmart; the team at Buenavista; Renee and others at Beauregard’s; Joe and Jenn at KCDC; Phillip, Jordan, Steven and Cedric at AT&T; the usual and new smiling faces at Publix; Theresa at Mapco; Allison at Raffaele’s (note: my mother taught one of the owner’s sons, a student of hers when she was a first grade teacher many years ago, to improve his English by encouraging the family to spend less time speaking Italian at home).
With so many teachers out of work across the country, is now a good time to perform a giant experiment in Chicago, getting rid of the old system and trying a new one? After all, if the students’ performance is as bad as they say, would it hurt to throw out the broken system and start anew, bringing in a whole slew of nonunion teachers teaching/coaching an immersive education program that provides low pay but high bonuses for teachers whose students become more curious and make continuous improvement an ingrained way of thinking rather than a “must do” chore to survive one’s childhood years before getting out of the system and becoming whatever unmotivated/dropout students tend to become?
Oh well, that’s not where this storyline is going but I had to put it out there.
A student of history stirring the melting pot
After observing the past, present and future, I have decided, in case it’s my last chance to vote for a white, heterosexual, male, Anglo-Saxon Protestant candidate for U.S. President, to cast my ballot in November for Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan.
I don’t agree with all of their politics but, as a student of history, I see that there’s still a place in international business for the voices of white males having Northern European ancestry who made positive contributions to the idea of a democratic republic with capitalistic tendencies (i.e., the United States) and demand more of the working class than a fallback position on publicly-funded social support programs in tough times.
It is also my way of honouring my parents, whom my mother reminded me this weekend have been Republican supporters since the days of Dwight Eisenhower.
The best way to reform a group is from within, less so from the position of the fringe groups or political parties I’ve supported in the past.
A corporation is not a citizen but a citizen doesn’t always know what’s right for competitive business practices, either.
There is a thin line between predation and competition to define more clearly.
As the world absorbs and reflects the principles espoused by dead white male European philosophers regarding capitalism and communism, I will support positions of whomever is popularly elected as long as those leaders understand the basic premise that a set of states of energy which has found a way to build stronger bonds with states of energy around it will also stumble upon a method to recreate a version of itself which competes against other sets for building stronger bonds, regardless of one’s preferred set of anthropomorphic origin stories.
My slogan: “Business. Science. Competition.”
I am competing against a version of me 1000 years from now that doesn’t care about characterisations or labels like white, heterosexual, male, Anglo-Saxon Protestant candidate for U.S. President.
By voting for Romney, I realise I support the concern that establishing a stable population dependent on government support is anathema to the future where I need cooperative competition in the marketplace for resources to get our species off its collective hindends and heading out into the cosmos.
I cringe to think about a version of myself sitting at home, unemployed, receiving government funds, unconcerned about efficient distribution/competition, and serving as an anchor holding down progress while buying the cheapest, if not the highest-qualty goods available, because of limited income, lack of employable skills/education and/or no motivation.
Our species on this planet has a window of opportunity for active exploration and settlement of other celestial spheres but do we really need a social safety net to maintain and expand that window opening?
What is a social safety net? Governmental organisations like NASA? Department of Defense? Social Security? Medicare? Medicaid? Department of Education? Department of Health and Human Services? Department of Transportation? A government with three separate branches of power — judicial, legislative and executive? How about a bare-minimum government that provides “no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances”?
By voting for Romney, I’ll give the Romney/Ryan Republican Party ticket one more chance to get the balance between the private and government sectors right, preventing U.S. business from creating its own downfall, and protecting it from international versions of financial nuclear bombs without drowning U.S.-based businesses in noncompetitive laws, rules and regulations. If Obama is reelected, I expect the same from his administration working in cooperation with other government public business entities around the globe.
Then, I’ll return to voting for the Nader-type candidates for U.S. President, to keep both major U.S political parties semi/quasi honest (or at least hope to get them to incorporate nonpopulist planks), as impossible as it sounds, because I know that corporations and other nongovernmental organisations for whom we work, or which we hopefully create ourselves, are fueling the engine of our economy now as much as ever, so voting for a national political party to represent my corporal self, no matter the candidate’s racial heritage, is participating in nostalgic belief in the good ol’ days when “we’re the government and we’re here to help” had positive rather than negative connotations, whatever we choose to believe the good ol’ days to have been.
A strong national military defense is certainly a deterrent globally but I’ll take a little more, stronger, defense of my financial nest egg these days, now that I’m closer to retirement age than I am to my first year of earning a decent wage.
All while wishing that our species has better longterm goals than mine — putting Earth-based lifeforms on spacecraft while we still have a locally-stable sector of the galaxy to travel, populate and set up tourist traps.
At the end of the day, do I care about any of what I’m writing here in this blog entry if I am childless, spend most of my day with two aging cats, have no legacy to protect and only philosophical issues to turn into short stories via a habit of blogging daily to entertain myself while staving off the boredom of a 50-year old man who has seen enough of life to know there are fewer surprises to expect and less he wants to put up with?
What motivations do I have left if the only thing to excite me today is the thought of turning on or turning off readers by saying the flavour of ice cream I eat every four years makes more of a superficial difference than a deeply meaningful one to a person who’s tasted all the flavours and concluded they’re pretty much the same, separated by varying patterns on the ice cream cone to break the monotony?
Does it matter if in my thoughts I have a singular vision of what Earth-based lifeforms will look like in 1000 years that makes all of our concerns today seem miniscule by comparison?
Oh well, enough talking to myself here today. Time to roll the rubbish bin back to the house, eat lunch and take a nap.
Quite frankly, on days like today, at 50+ years of age on a beautiful, sunny, warm Monday in a quiet suburban neighbourhood, it is difficult to motivate myself to care about anything more than finding a comfortable place in the house to plop down my body and escape into a dream world uninterrupted by feline companions, one day closer to the end of the set of states of energy known as me, the world of my youth practically gone (or on reruns in TVLand rebroadcast on media streaming devices) and thus me as an adult expansion of my youth-built core almost gone with it, leaving those who care about living to divide up Earth’s resources amongst themselves.
Today, I disappear into the dot at the end of a sentence and that is sufficient to say I was once here as thoughts recreated in electronic bits represented as words in a blog entry formed by pressing fingers on a wireless keyboard communicating with a desktop computer attached to an ADSL line talking to a DSLAM connected to the Internet (which itself is a network of routers, servers, and switches, wires/fibers passing/storing energy states we label 0 or 1, also known as bits – the circles, cycles and spirals never stop, do they?).
Zzzzzz…time to talk to myself in my sleep.
Fifty years until the next generation of real innovation?
I’m floating in a thought set of two Thai teas right now so my ability to pull memories out of the nether reaches of the brain is muddled.
What is the difference between idol worshipers and the idolised?
What makes groups of people find true innovation?
Imagine the following conversation…
= = = = =
Today, we have brought together some of the brilliant geniuses of the past (as opposed to the non-brilliant ones, that is) — Tesla, Eastman, Marconi, Edison, Nakamatsu, Einstein, Khayyám, Curie — in order to find out their thoughts about today’s revolution in technology.
Moderator: “Gentlemen and lady, welcome.”
All: “Thank you.”
Moderator: “During this time of year, technology vendors tell us about their latest offerings in the open market. We’d like your opinions about their engineering achievements.”
Curie: “I am a scientist, not an engineer.”
Einstein: “Me, too.”
Moderator: “No problem. We only want your opinion about the practical applications of research you performed in your lifetimes.”
Curie: “Please proceed, Monsieur.”
Moderator: “Thank you. Over the past few days, we have seen many devices demonstrated by company executives that are meant to simplify…”
Eastman: “Are you saying that executives themselves are simplifying something?”
Moderator: “No. Let me finish and you see what I am trying to say.”
Edison: “As both inventor and company man, I can tell you that simplifying your work for the public is no easy challenge. Why, look at Tesla here. Does anyone remember who he is. I bet Westinghouse would have a thing or two to add if he were he. By the way, where is he?”
Moderator: “Well, we put out a call for him but instead, strangely enough, we received an RSVP from a musical act calling itself AC/DC.”
Edison: “Very interesting. Yet, you also invited me. Were you trying to send a message?”
Marconi: “Who, me?”
Moderator: “No. Please let me continue…”
Curie: “Gentlemen. Let our moderator finish what he had to say.”
Moderator: “Thank you. Anyway, we have a lot of devices to talk about so I’ll get right to it. We have placed on the table in front of you several of the latest products — some of them still in the prototype stage — that we would like you to comment upon. Let’s start with this one, the Motorola Droid Razr Maxx HD. Who would like to comment first?”
Tesla: “Okay, I will bite. What is this interesting toy?”
Moderator: “This is a mobile phone.”
Tesla: “A phone, you say? Where is the receiver?”
Moderator: “Well, that’s the thing, sir. You see, it is the receiver.”
Tesla: “A-ha. I see this is like a tiny television, is it not?”
Moderator: “Yes. Good analogy. You’ll also be glad to know that it uses wireless technology to send and receive radio signals…”
Marconi: “A wireless? Why didn’t you say so? How do you power this device?”
Moderator: “With a battery.”
Edison: “AC or DC current?”
Moderator: “DC.”
Edison: “Very exciting. I can see why Westinghouse chose not to show up. What about this musical act, AC/DC? Did they finally decline the invitation?”
Moderator: “No, they decided to show up by proxy. Here, let me show you. Mr. Marconi, if you will hand me the phone…?”
Marconi: “Certainly.”
Moderator: “I’ll just bring up the music app…”
Eastman: “‘Music app’?”
Moderator: “Oh, sorry. This phone has its own built-in memory…uh, well, not unlike camera film…”
Eastman: “Really?”
Moderator: “No…I mean…well, Ms. Curie, your research into radioactivity, combined with Einstein’s work on relativity, has opened up many engineering and science fields, including work on erasable memory.”
Tesla: “You can erase memories now? Fascinating…”
Moderator: “Well, not human memories, I mean…”
Tesla: “Oh? Well, that’s too bad. Imagine being able to erase ordinary memories from your mind so you could create more room for important research…”
Moderator: “Anyway, let’s get back on schedule. Inside this phone, like most of the devices we’ll review today, are miniaturised computing and memory units, not unlike the analog computers some of you are familiar with. Back to the demo! Here is what the rock band AC/DC sounds like…” [plays “Back in Black” by AC/DC]
Einstein: “Very interesting use of distortion…”
Moderator: “Yes, these are electrified instruments. If you gather closer, you can see the band performing.”
Curie: “Looks like that young man is wearing his pants a little short, n’est pas?”
Einstein: “I am impressed that the men can see what they’re playing with their hair so long.”
Moderator: “Yes, I understand what you mean. Anyway, let’s move on. Here is the next device, the Nokia Lumia 920.”
Tesla: “Why is it sitting on that little hot plate?”
Moderator: “Well, sir, this is exactly the sort of thing I thought you’d appreciate. The ‘hot plate,’ as you call it, is a wireless charger for the battery.”
Tesla: “Wireless electricity?! If I was still alive, I would be sainted for this, wouldn’t I?”
Moderator: “Yes, sir. In fact, there is a movement to do just that.”
Tesla: “All those years in isolation, fearing that no one would understand me in this or any century, let alone on this planet…”
Moderator: “And for you, Mr. Eastman, this phone has a camera.”
Eastman: “What do you mean?”
Moderator: “In fact, there are two cameras, one that faces away from you and one that faces you, which detects your face and will turn off if you stop looking at it.”
Eastman: “Amazing. But this is all it can do?”
Moderator: “We have more product offerings to show you from manufacturers such as LG, HTC, Amazon and Apple…we can get to those later. So far, what do you think about our incredible technical achievements?”
Einstein: “I don’t know. I mean, we had telephones and cameras in my day…”
Tesla: “And I demonstrated wireless radio so long ago…”
Marconi: “No, I did.”
Tesla: “Whatever you choose to believe is up to you…”
Curie: “But what do they do, exactly?”
Moderator: “Madame, these devices — the smartphones and tablets, as we call them — allow scientists and doctors from around the world to gather together in realtime.”
Eastman: “So you have solved the problem of teleportation?”
Edison: “Yes, has the ultimate goal that us scientists, engineers and inventors kept from the public — traveling through space and time — reached fruition?”
Moderator: “Not exactly. Check this out. You can see one another’s faces and hear your voices nearly instantaneously, though.”
Tesla: “And all this takes place wirelessly?”
Moderator: “Yes.”
Tesla: “This is all you have achieved in the decades since I’ve been gone?”
Moderator: “Well, not exactly. We have sent men to the moon…”
Curie: “No women?”
Moderator: “That’s right. But more than one woman has gone into outer space…”
Curie: “…and cured cancer by now, I imagine.”
Moderator: “Not exactly.”
Together: A collective sigh.
Tesla: “So what you’re saying is that the work we’ve done is just being worked and reworked all over again, combining and recombining the hard years of research for which we sacrificed our lives, our reputations, our…”
Einstein: “Precisely my thoughts. I suppose by now someone has absolutely proved or, God forbid, disproved my theories and moved on to more important science?”
Moderator: “Not exactly.”
Einstein: “I see.”
Nakamatsu: “You may think that these are unimportant achievements but I can tell you that the research does not progress as fast as you think it does. Just like in your day, there is so much competition that a lot of redundancy prevents inventors like us from making significant progress.”
Khayyám: “These smartphones, as you call them. What else can they do? The tablets appear to be a magic slate of some kind.”
Moderator: “Yes, sir. Let me show something that you might find interesting, as simple as it seems to us today — the graphing calculator function. You just plug in the formula here…and a graph of the formula, or function, is displayed there.”
Khayyám: “Wonderful, wonderful. It is poetry in motion!”
Tesla: “The more I see these things, the more I ask myself whether you have carried my research to its conclusion. Can you control minds with these smartphones? Is there a universal mind behind them?”
Moderator: “Sort of. Some people call it the web browser-based search engine. Others call it wikipedia, baidu or google.”
Khayyám: “‘Google’? Is that a mathematical term?”
Moderator: “In a way, yes. Some say it is an intentional misspelling of the word ‘googol,’ one followed by 100 zeroes.”
Khayyám: “So the universal mind is truly mathematical? It is just as I thought. I can return to my eternal meditation upon the true meaning of the philosophical poet who dabbles in mathematics.”
Moderator: “Well, that’s about all the time we have. What I’m gathering from you is an intriguing mix of disappointment and satisfaction.”
Tesla: “Yes, your devices are fun to look at. However, where are the brilliant minds of today? Have they not advanced science any further? Are they just building upon our old research?”
Einstein: “I suppose the atomic bomb is a thing of the past by now, given what you’ve shown us, opening up young people across the world to break down barriers of ignorance and connecting together their joy and vigour, ridding the world of unnecessary violence. No, wait, don’t say it!”
Moderator and Einstein in unison: “Not exactly.”
Moderator: “Thanks again for joining us. Since it seems I have not completely impressed you with our ‘all-in-one’ devices, let’s reconvene in…let’s say, oh, another 100 years and see if I can’t knock your socks off, as the saying goes.”
Curie: “Don’t call me until you’ve found a cure for radiation poisoning.”
Tesla: “Don’t bother me until they’ve found more practical applications for my inventions like mind control or creating earthquakes to move mountains.”
Khayyám: “Call me anytime but give me more time to wake up from my meditative sleep, next time.”
Einstein: “Hey, if you don’t have to put me back to sleep right now, I won’t complain.”
Nakamatsu: “Wasn’t the floppy disk a great invention? I thought so. The tiny memory card there is not so different, is it? Let me show you what I think it’ll turn into next…”
Edison: “I want to know one thing. How many iterations will it take until those things are so tiny they’ll fit inside your ear where DC power is the only way to go? Take that, Westinghouse, wherever you are!”
Marconi: “I’m with Tesla on this one, despite our previous differences.”
Tesla: “It’s about time…”
Moderator: “Yes, the concept of time is still something we share in common. Until next time, dear readers!”
Yet Another Workday
She sat down with her friends. “We are Womyn — hear us roar!!!” she proclaimed to the rushing waters of the river in the bottom of the canyon below them.
They rested for a moment, some taking swigs from their collapsible, BPA-free drinking jugs, some chewing on energy bars and some photographing their friends.
Palatia looked at her mobile phone. “Does anyone have a recent photo of Ellen? This ol’ talk show still photo doesn’t do her justice.”
The tinest piece of lint floated out of a space between Palatia’s thumb and her mobile phone.
The lint followed the invisible, random path of static electricity, air currents, solar radiation and macromolecules suspended in the dry air.
None of the day hikers knew what the lint was doing there, let alone why.
The lint had no discernible thought patterns to speak of.
But the lint was the most important link between that moment and a moment hundreds of years later.
Palatia pushed earbuds millimetres from her eardrums, cranked up some retro k.d. lang tune on her mobile phone and stood up. “Bag your trash! Pack your gear! Let’s roll!”
The lint was dragged along with the hikers for a while before a cool breeze from the valley pushed up over the canyon rim and turned the lint in another direction.
History was in the making.
Palatia was a key component of the cogs and wheels of social change on the day she decided to call in sick and skip her shift at the fast food factory labeled “Grab-n-Go Burgers, 24/7.”
The deliverer of a piece of lint.
Lint that carried a genetic message.
A message intended for someone not yet “born,” the culmination of years of research, a being not quite any one species, neither completely organic nor completely electromechanical.
The lint didn’t earn a wage, didn’t pay taxes, didn’t travel roads or depend on national defense to perform its function.
The lint didn’t breathe, it didn’t eat, it didn’t earn an education, it didn’t produce heirs and it didn’t vote.
Yet the lint was more important than all the billions of people who earn a wage, pay taxes, travel roads, depend on national defense to perform their function, breathe, eat, earn an education, produce heirs and vote.
Events millions of years later in a single galaxy were traced to the piece of lint.
The lint, though inanimate, was analysed, idolised and denigrated as if it was once alive.
What if a cloud had obscured the Sun from a group of hikers one day?
What if it had rained?
More than one “if” fills volumes of historic pondering about a piece of lint.
We call them genetic markers.
The lint called itself nothing.
Yet here it is, studied as if it had intent in at least one “if.”
All because a worker in a minimum-wage job decided to tell her shift supervisor “fuck you” and take the day off, absolutely no thought about changing the course of galactic history.
Simple scenario, you ask, too simple?
The truth is plainer than you think it is.
What I went through with my mother in-law in 1997…
…I go through with my mother in 2012.
My mother in-law was 80 years of age when her husband died. My mother was 78 when her husband died.
In both cases, as in any longterm relationship between two people, the survivor learns new forms of daily decisionmaking.
My mother in-law depended on her now-deceased son and living daughter (my wife) to help her make decisions after their father died.
My mother depends on my sister and me to help her make decisions after our father died.
When my father in-law died, my wife was almost 35.
When my father died, I was 50.
In between: fifteen years of wisdom gathered through life experiences, some shared between us, some accumulated individually.
Fifteen years of social changes/progress, including new technology (think about how much the Internet has changed in 15 years), new businesses, failed businesses, climate change, fashion cycles, pop music tastes, entertainment choices, medical science advances, etc.
Are we more or less tolerant of Iranian atheists/humanists? Liberal Quakers? Non-heterosexual relationships? Physical/mental challenges? The unemployed? Cute cat videos?
Is there room in your life for a late night TV talk show host with a robotic skeleton and cloth-horse costumed actor(s)?
Would there have been such a creature 15 years ago? Could he have been a reformed Scottish alcoholic comedian? Do such creatures exist in real life today?
I learned a new phrase today: conformity to tomorrow (from book, “Without Apology: The Heroes, the Heritage, and the Hope of Liberal Quakerism” by Chuck Fager [which I read, quickly, in the book section of Unclaimed Baggage Center]):
“Conformity to tomorrow: …consists in a moderate opposition to the existing political power, together with the espousal of the ideas and doctrines of the most sensitive, the most visionary, the most appealing trend in society. This is a trend which, from the sociological point of view, is already dominant, and is the one which should normally be expected to win out….In this way, the political stand has the appearance of being independent, whereas in reality it is the expression of an avant-garde conformism.” (Jacques Ellul, a French Reformed theologian and sociologist, 1972A, p. 123.)
I would toss musical acts like Rage Against The Machine, political groups like the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street, and economic movements like the EU handling of the PIIGS into the realm of avant-garde conformism, as well as most official social protest groups not included in terrorist lists for “wanted: dead or alive” drone attacks.
We always have to have enemies toward whom we formally direct our confusion/fear-based hatred.
But, as usual, I digress.
Earlier today, at a roadside restaurant called Carlile’s in Scottsboro, Alabama, a town where a plentiful plethora of people met for camaraderie and shopping bargains, my wife and I held a wonderful discussion with Autumn, mother of three boys aged 7, 6 and 2, the first taking the role of the responsible eldest (“Mom told you not to do that”), the second a quiet child who puts up with the physical shenanigans of his two brothers, and the youngest, the rowdiest one of the bunch.
Autumn, raised by her grandparents, lost them both nine months apart five years ago. The emptiness inside is slowly, very slowly, wrapped up in new friendships and new experiences we call the passage of time.
When she wants to turn to her grandparents for guidance, they are not there and she feels an instant pang of pain.
Although she has a beautiful tattoo of a heart on her arm where every one of her three boys first rested and for whom she tattooed their names, she would never tattoo the names of her grandparents or the name of her husband on her body because the reminder of their losses, in plain ink visible under skin, would be too much to bear (beauty is not the only thing that’s skin-deep).
She, like all parents, believes deep down that her kids will outlive her, their futures bright.
To those who’ve lost their children to congenital conditions, I give you my sympathy. No one wants to survive the death of offspring with a promising future.
My wife outlived her parents and her only sibling.
I have outlived my father but not my mother and my only sibling.
As this storyline grows more complicated, my life and the lives of my family members are intricately intertwined.
Not a loss, not a gain nor a zero-sum game is life.
The sets of states of energy are constantly in flux.
Every waking moment is an opportunity to learn.
Is new technology an enabler of your relatively expensive entertainment addictions or an avenue of opportunity for increased wealth? Does it increase the credit or debit side of your account ledger? In other words, do you go into debt to play games and watch videos?
These and other questions lead us to thought trails about the costs and benefits of a globally-connected economy, where plenty of leisure is available to the masses.
If this laptop computer and these blog entries are using up CPU cycles for the sole purpose of entertaining myself, is that okay?
What about the urgency to act, the desire to change our society significantly so that spare CPU cycles are used to ensure survival of Earth-based lifeforms here and elsewhere as long as potential energy states are available to support them in this part of the universe?
Does it matter if the majority of our species believes in self-centered activities?
What are a few decades compared to 1000 years?
What is 1000 years compared to 200 million?
Can we really know the future, no matter how much we bunch together to conform to one vision knowingly, unknowingly, voluntarily and/or coercively?
All for the sake of family, whatever that means to you/me/us?
An ordinary walk on an ordinary day…
Where shall one find peace in the midst of chaotic violence?
How shall one shed the labels and symbols of one’s youth in order to move into a comfort zone?
Should one consider questions such as “Am I better off now than I was four years ago?”
If the answer is no, then what? If yes, what then?
Desperate times call for desperate measures, the saying goes.
What if the times are just so-so, not good, not bad, just malaise and blasé rolled onto bland dough?
What of the longterm plans to populate celestial spheres with Earth-based lifeforms?
What of other plans not documented here?
Where will the storyline take us next?
Mexican warlords directing drug mules to attack and destroy American police stations kamikaze style?
Roving gangs of rogue police officers no longer beholden to upholding the law, having no pensions or medical coverage to prop up their lack of loyalty to authority, using the disguise of their uniforms to spread chaos and violence in once peaceful sub/ex/urban environs until their demands are met?
What about advances in science not covered by pop culture mass media outlets?
How do we train a whole species to reduce consumption in order to push potential catastrophic crop failure effects farther into the future?
Order and chaos — the classic dynamic dichotomy.
Extra ordinary today and that is okay.
Ahh…there’s a tug on the leash. Time to go.
Happy 26th anniversary to wife and self. Hard to believe we met in summer church camp 38 years ago!
treetrunkdings 