People will have research bots that users program to collect information from the web and report back on the topic. The user can then index the report, along with comments about the value of the information, and share them within a community. Like posting something to facebook. "Rich posted a bot report on island getaways in panama."
-- Mobile and Free
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Program idea
You build a widget or a whole app that presents data in a visual form. It collects the data and then displays it real time on a station. You can program the station to shuffle through a series of datasets to create a real channel feeling.
Some examples:
A visual representation of the sun and moon daily traverse.
A scoring of various weather sources rated against the sensor readings (you need sensor pack which measures humidity, sunlight, precip, and temp). The visual is a swirl of representative avatars getting closer or farther, redder or bluer. The particular movements of the zooming avatars is also indicative of activity. The current temp etc would also need to be represented. All data would be scored and archived for weighting different forcasts based on previous successes. Automatic collection.
Energy consumption in the home. These visuals should have some personality as well.
Stocks
Twitter
-- Mobile and Free
Some examples:
A visual representation of the sun and moon daily traverse.
A scoring of various weather sources rated against the sensor readings (you need sensor pack which measures humidity, sunlight, precip, and temp). The visual is a swirl of representative avatars getting closer or farther, redder or bluer. The particular movements of the zooming avatars is also indicative of activity. The current temp etc would also need to be represented. All data would be scored and archived for weighting different forcasts based on previous successes. Automatic collection.
Energy consumption in the home. These visuals should have some personality as well.
Stocks
-- Mobile and Free
Friday, August 21, 2009
Doubt
What your parents are waiting for is devine providence. They want vindication. They want to be right because they've gone so far down the path and done so many shameful things along the way that they can't afford to be wrong. If they turn around, they'll have to face those things again.
Best to push forward through the wilderness. That way there is no wasted effort.
They are lost to certainty. There used to be something called skeptics. These people doubted everything. But there movement decayed into cynicism when they let their doubt harden. I guess maybe they forgot to doubt their own doubt and just became cynics.
Now everybody is signed on. They step out of the nursery and pick up their flag. And the salesmen are waiting outside the door to hand them out. The movements are eager for harvest. They need fresh blood and yearn to reach plurality.
That's why the child protection act was passed. The movements couldn't stand by and let their kids be poached by rivals. So they gave them up altogether. Turned them over to the church to raise in protection centers.
The church of non-bias of course. Not the religions of the past. Those old practices are just as fractured as any of the movements. The church of nonbias gave up any political authority. They renounce public life and focus these days on running the protection centers and staying out of the argument. A few of their members are still adherents to the founding order of the factcheckers, but people stopped asking for their judgments and they couldn't intervene without looking like they were taking sides so they stick to their monestaries mostly.
-- Mobile and Free
Best to push forward through the wilderness. That way there is no wasted effort.
They are lost to certainty. There used to be something called skeptics. These people doubted everything. But there movement decayed into cynicism when they let their doubt harden. I guess maybe they forgot to doubt their own doubt and just became cynics.
Now everybody is signed on. They step out of the nursery and pick up their flag. And the salesmen are waiting outside the door to hand them out. The movements are eager for harvest. They need fresh blood and yearn to reach plurality.
That's why the child protection act was passed. The movements couldn't stand by and let their kids be poached by rivals. So they gave them up altogether. Turned them over to the church to raise in protection centers.
The church of non-bias of course. Not the religions of the past. Those old practices are just as fractured as any of the movements. The church of nonbias gave up any political authority. They renounce public life and focus these days on running the protection centers and staying out of the argument. A few of their members are still adherents to the founding order of the factcheckers, but people stopped asking for their judgments and they couldn't intervene without looking like they were taking sides so they stick to their monestaries mostly.
-- Mobile and Free
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
William Blake
Look up something called America. It's about the coming end of empire.
-- Mobile and Free
-- Mobile and Free
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
MotionCommand
Just like the iPhone, my laptop has a motion command software. If I want to turn it off, I can just drop it.
-- Mobile and Free
-- Mobile and Free
Human Rights
People talk about God-given rights because if human rights are given to man by God then he doesn't owe his neighbor anything for them.
-- Mobile and Free
-- Mobile and Free
Third Rail
When did it become a political third rail to point to another country and say, hey look what they're doing. This country is doomed when it can't solve it's problems as well as a five-year old at the beech getting tips from his neighbor on building a better sand castle.
Needs better metaphor.
But seriously. We are closing ourselves off to so many solutions by insisting on reinventing the wheel.
-- Mobile and Free
Needs better metaphor.
But seriously. We are closing ourselves off to so many solutions by insisting on reinventing the wheel.
-- Mobile and Free
Socrates and the children
Socrates was executed for corrupting the minds of the youth.
N-worlds is a place where communication freedom has factionalized the population so much that no concensus is possible. In this world, parents no longer raise their own kids because it is seen as an undue political influence. In n/w, the closest thing there is to a concensus comes on the consideration of new membership.
It is a society of certitude not tolerence. So the parties agreed it was necessary to remove children (the only constituency potentials in the society) from their parents' attempts to corrupt their children with their personal views.
-- Mobile and Free
N-worlds is a place where communication freedom has factionalized the population so much that no concensus is possible. In this world, parents no longer raise their own kids because it is seen as an undue political influence. In n/w, the closest thing there is to a concensus comes on the consideration of new membership.
It is a society of certitude not tolerence. So the parties agreed it was necessary to remove children (the only constituency potentials in the society) from their parents' attempts to corrupt their children with their personal views.
-- Mobile and Free
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Human rights
The people who always want to talk about their human rights are rarely the ones who want to talk about their human responsibilities. They are clear about what they want from each other without ever talking about what they owe _to_ each other.
-- Mobile and Free
-- Mobile and Free
carrie orwell
I was reading this link by Stephen King about how many hours he spends in front of a screen of some sort. It's the usual kind of shocking thing that people say when they first deny, and then come to realize by actually paying attention, about much time they actually spend staring at the liquid crystal.
I haven't finished the article yet, but I wanted to note down a few thoughts first before i finish it. First, is my reaction to this knee jerk response about staring at a screen. that it is somehow operably stupefying the user by some kind of osmotic process that wheedles its way from the flat crystal across the short distance to my face and into my brain. I know that, culturally, we are supposed to be embarrassed by this relationship. That friends we create are not real, relationships must be tawdry, time wasted and intellect sapped. The usual.
What it doesnt account for is the idea that this time can actually be more productive than f2f junkies and their sweaty palm slapping jelly time they spend with their fellows. There is nothing inherently smart about this process. Fleshy fraternaties have plenty to not recommend them. I mean, it could be a shared public expression or (lunch) counter protest, but it also could be a terrible mob; it could be a dinner with friends, but it could be a lynching. The f2f medium is just that. It is an open protocol that can be turned for good or bad purposes just like any other medium. Sorry Marshall, I know you think the medium is the message, and i don't categorically disagree, but just like anything, swinging to the extreme (in this case to through down a whicked awesome turn of phrase), is probably not where the answer lies. Perhaps its better to say that the message is not only the message, but carries some burden or relationship with the medium it sits upon.
And anyway, i think you were mostly talking to people who try to study communications to remind them that, in addition to studying what is being said, it is as equally important to study how the message is transmitted between entities.
In any event, the popular thing to do is to criticize the newer medium. Partially because entrenched interests inevitably support their native environments against all newcomers and sew the seeds of distrust around anything new that escapes their immediate business model.
Something else that was interesting was the idea the King brought up about Orwell. You tie the screens from 1984 to the screens of 2009. I agree, there is a parallel between the citizen time-use breakdowns with many people staring at (re)education material. But it struck me that there is one striking difference between now and that novel. In the novel, the government was staring back. That is not (directly) the case. But it got me thinking.
The government may not have eyeballs on your eyeballs, but that doesn't mean someone isn't watching you. Orwell was working from what he knew. In the wasteland of television, the camera was the tech dejour. It made sense that the controllers (whoever they may be) would employ the state of the art tech to do their bidding. But, as the CCTV found in Britain, cameras have a big problem. they are eyes without brains. It's very hard to use them to track broad populations. For that you need math. And the captured image is only recently beginning to be understood in a way that will feed math.
Instead, the monitoring that goes on is more modern. Instead of watching my face or what i'm doing as i'm slogging around my apartment, it turns out to be much more efficient to track the swath of snail slime as the user lopes his or her way through the digital realm. Sure, you can't figure out what they may do when they leave their computers, but fortuntately people are doing that less and less and as a result, their slime wake is getting bigger and bigger. Additionally, they are taking their tech with them so you can see begin to track their tech trail as it stretches out across the default world as well.
Now that's scarry.
But i got a little off track in this stream of consciousness. Originally, what i wanted to say was that spending your time in front of the computer screen is not automatically negative. It is what you do with that time or what that time enables you to do that will ultimately be the determining factor for the progression of humanity. Personally, I think the internet and the desktop computer have been great forces for creative expression that have had a long winter slumber in the mass-mediated culture days of the past half-century. People are creating. they have the tools to make things worth creating. And that is the thing that, if we are to be saved, may finally put people on a footing from which they can become modern and engaged in their world. and feel like they can be engaged. and feel like they must be engaged.
Of course, this is all chaos, but then...i'm a chaotic. If you didnt want that kind of answer, you shouldn't ask me.
I haven't finished the article yet, but I wanted to note down a few thoughts first before i finish it. First, is my reaction to this knee jerk response about staring at a screen. that it is somehow operably stupefying the user by some kind of osmotic process that wheedles its way from the flat crystal across the short distance to my face and into my brain. I know that, culturally, we are supposed to be embarrassed by this relationship. That friends we create are not real, relationships must be tawdry, time wasted and intellect sapped. The usual.
What it doesnt account for is the idea that this time can actually be more productive than f2f junkies and their sweaty palm slapping jelly time they spend with their fellows. There is nothing inherently smart about this process. Fleshy fraternaties have plenty to not recommend them. I mean, it could be a shared public expression or (lunch) counter protest, but it also could be a terrible mob; it could be a dinner with friends, but it could be a lynching. The f2f medium is just that. It is an open protocol that can be turned for good or bad purposes just like any other medium. Sorry Marshall, I know you think the medium is the message, and i don't categorically disagree, but just like anything, swinging to the extreme (in this case to through down a whicked awesome turn of phrase), is probably not where the answer lies. Perhaps its better to say that the message is not only the message, but carries some burden or relationship with the medium it sits upon.
And anyway, i think you were mostly talking to people who try to study communications to remind them that, in addition to studying what is being said, it is as equally important to study how the message is transmitted between entities.
In any event, the popular thing to do is to criticize the newer medium. Partially because entrenched interests inevitably support their native environments against all newcomers and sew the seeds of distrust around anything new that escapes their immediate business model.
Something else that was interesting was the idea the King brought up about Orwell. You tie the screens from 1984 to the screens of 2009. I agree, there is a parallel between the citizen time-use breakdowns with many people staring at (re)education material. But it struck me that there is one striking difference between now and that novel. In the novel, the government was staring back. That is not (directly) the case. But it got me thinking.
The government may not have eyeballs on your eyeballs, but that doesn't mean someone isn't watching you. Orwell was working from what he knew. In the wasteland of television, the camera was the tech dejour. It made sense that the controllers (whoever they may be) would employ the state of the art tech to do their bidding. But, as the CCTV found in Britain, cameras have a big problem. they are eyes without brains. It's very hard to use them to track broad populations. For that you need math. And the captured image is only recently beginning to be understood in a way that will feed math.
Instead, the monitoring that goes on is more modern. Instead of watching my face or what i'm doing as i'm slogging around my apartment, it turns out to be much more efficient to track the swath of snail slime as the user lopes his or her way through the digital realm. Sure, you can't figure out what they may do when they leave their computers, but fortuntately people are doing that less and less and as a result, their slime wake is getting bigger and bigger. Additionally, they are taking their tech with them so you can see begin to track their tech trail as it stretches out across the default world as well.
Now that's scarry.
But i got a little off track in this stream of consciousness. Originally, what i wanted to say was that spending your time in front of the computer screen is not automatically negative. It is what you do with that time or what that time enables you to do that will ultimately be the determining factor for the progression of humanity. Personally, I think the internet and the desktop computer have been great forces for creative expression that have had a long winter slumber in the mass-mediated culture days of the past half-century. People are creating. they have the tools to make things worth creating. And that is the thing that, if we are to be saved, may finally put people on a footing from which they can become modern and engaged in their world. and feel like they can be engaged. and feel like they must be engaged.
Of course, this is all chaos, but then...i'm a chaotic. If you didnt want that kind of answer, you shouldn't ask me.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
judgment
This is a perfect example of what I was talking about this morning. This story about Cramer (the business media guy that Stewart shredded) proclaiming the bottom of the housing market and telling everyone that it was safe to get back in. Turns out, he was wrong. But that doesn't seem to have an impact on his ability to keep spouting new bs or even retracting his previous (recorded) statements though they are now proven demonstrably inaccurate.
Lack of accountability enables wistful judgment because it unhooks the concept from the presence of contrarian facts (or perhaps witnesses the demise of the objective "fact" altogether). The ironic thing in the digital age where everything is recorded is that it creates so much information noise that, though we could go back and see what was said, we actually don't have the time. This creates a disjuncture with the past and a breakdown in linearity which used to tie an evaluative tension on what people say to what they have said.
That doesn't happen anymore. Not only is there too much information out there to stop and look backwards, but also (maybe...and more crucially) because so much of many individuals is now very public, the myth of the cohesively rational actions of an individual is becoming exposed. Because it's becoming harder to accommodate all statements under a single persona, the public has begun to eschew the possibility that precedence and linear rationality are valid standards for evaluating personal action.
for example, the bible-toting, fiscal conservative governor can cheat on his wife and spend thousands of tax dollars on his personal comfort without losing his job. Or a former governor can use her disabled child to score a political point making up lies about death panels, yet still be covered as a serious person the next time she says anything to the press.
Is there really the possibility of judgment in the realm of discontinuity?
Lack of accountability enables wistful judgment because it unhooks the concept from the presence of contrarian facts (or perhaps witnesses the demise of the objective "fact" altogether). The ironic thing in the digital age where everything is recorded is that it creates so much information noise that, though we could go back and see what was said, we actually don't have the time. This creates a disjuncture with the past and a breakdown in linearity which used to tie an evaluative tension on what people say to what they have said.
That doesn't happen anymore. Not only is there too much information out there to stop and look backwards, but also (maybe...and more crucially) because so much of many individuals is now very public, the myth of the cohesively rational actions of an individual is becoming exposed. Because it's becoming harder to accommodate all statements under a single persona, the public has begun to eschew the possibility that precedence and linear rationality are valid standards for evaluating personal action.
for example, the bible-toting, fiscal conservative governor can cheat on his wife and spend thousands of tax dollars on his personal comfort without losing his job. Or a former governor can use her disabled child to score a political point making up lies about death panels, yet still be covered as a serious person the next time she says anything to the press.
Is there really the possibility of judgment in the realm of discontinuity?
Monday, August 10, 2009
When the time comes
All I want to do is come to my end and sincerely say, what an adventure I had. What spectacular events did I pass through on the sojourn through the ephemeral?
-- Mobile and Free
-- Mobile and Free
Saturday, August 8, 2009
Friday, August 7, 2009
2054
A consciousness emerges on the internet and begins to regulate behavior. Omni present intelligence until it begins to divide. The personality could become social or anti. What conditions would make it peel off into layers of malevolent sub routines?
-- Mobile and Free
-- Mobile and Free
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Town Halls
Democrats are being out-hustled at their town hall meetings. I read today that a 200 protesters showed up at a town hall on a town with only 4000 people in total. What is to be done?
The first thing to do is to identify the sickness for what it is--a class war. And like every good class war, the rich are paying the poor to fight it for them.
Just like in the 20s when the wealthy paid for the pinkertons and othe penny-a-day thugs to beat labor organizers, the upper class has enlisted the poor in proxy to protect their interest.
Unlike the pinkerton days, this time the priveleged have figured out how to get to poor to the front without paying them directly. Instead they funnel their cash into a closed-cycle process where money goes to large marketing firms and "research" institutions which create copy to feed to conservative media which cajoles and frightens a culturally prepared contingent to act-organically.
These people are prepared from birth by wealthy interests to adhere to a culture that supports wealthy interests. They are taught that elite means liberal. They are bred into a world They are seeded with trigger phrases.
Change the subject. Teach a class on the closed cycle.
-- Mobile and Free
The first thing to do is to identify the sickness for what it is--a class war. And like every good class war, the rich are paying the poor to fight it for them.
Just like in the 20s when the wealthy paid for the pinkertons and othe penny-a-day thugs to beat labor organizers, the upper class has enlisted the poor in proxy to protect their interest.
Unlike the pinkerton days, this time the priveleged have figured out how to get to poor to the front without paying them directly. Instead they funnel their cash into a closed-cycle process where money goes to large marketing firms and "research" institutions which create copy to feed to conservative media which cajoles and frightens a culturally prepared contingent to act-organically.
These people are prepared from birth by wealthy interests to adhere to a culture that supports wealthy interests. They are taught that elite means liberal. They are bred into a world They are seeded with trigger phrases.
Change the subject. Teach a class on the closed cycle.
-- Mobile and Free
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Doubt
Andrew squeezed his way down the aisle to find his seat. He gathered his magenta robes in his right hand and turned sideways to move past a grey suit that stood in the aisle talking to a brunette seated in 5E.
Toward the back he saw his own empty seat at 20A. In the adjacent seat, he saw a large red feather that bobbed and swooned over the head of the seat in front of it. Finally, the great feather hat straightened as the woman underneath it finished stowing her carry-on under her seat. Andrew allowed the hint of a groan on his lips.
She was crossing the safety belt across her crimson skirt when he made it to his seat. He set a small cloth bag on the floor in front of his seat and again gathered his robes about his legs and eased around to sit. The two exchanged silent half-smiles as he dug for his seat belt. With a click, the two looked absently ahead and waited for to arrive in silence.
-- Mobile and Free
Toward the back he saw his own empty seat at 20A. In the adjacent seat, he saw a large red feather that bobbed and swooned over the head of the seat in front of it. Finally, the great feather hat straightened as the woman underneath it finished stowing her carry-on under her seat. Andrew allowed the hint of a groan on his lips.
She was crossing the safety belt across her crimson skirt when he made it to his seat. He set a small cloth bag on the floor in front of his seat and again gathered his robes about his legs and eased around to sit. The two exchanged silent half-smiles as he dug for his seat belt. With a click, the two looked absently ahead and waited for to arrive in silence.
-- Mobile and Free
Excel cubed
Cells in a spreadsheet have multiple faces which can house more characteristics. The faces are toggled with gestures. The cells can be totally resorted based on any criteria. Each cell can have unlimited params.
Good for VR.
-- Mobile and Free
Good for VR.
-- Mobile and Free
Doubt
They don't have programmers in the future. Instead, they are called called communicators who build new systems by describing the program parameters to a machine. The more eloquent his communication, the better the app.
Moores law is believed to have been broken but maybe it's that the human race gave up and died. What remains is simply a matter of inertia.
-- Mobile and Free
Moores law is believed to have been broken but maybe it's that the human race gave up and died. What remains is simply a matter of inertia.
-- Mobile and Free
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Doubt
It wasn't that he didn't believe. In fact, he did believe. He believed that it would fail. But that was enough to hang him. The apostacy of doubt had long been forbidden to the people, by the people.
The cult of certainty reigned across the land. Skeptics were the lunatic fringe who, if they existed at all, at least had the decency to keep walking forward with the rest.
Homer was not a skeptic. He was a believer just like everyone else. The future had a form and it was coming toward them every minute closer.
***
The child moved across the room with the vessel, pouring water. The adults extended their empty glasses but not their attention to the small form that moved among them.
Her blond hair was pulled back into a long tail that swished rhythmically with each light step. The dress she wore was uncomfortably new. The collar chaffed her short neck and the tight bodice made it difficult to lift the pitcher to pour.
The adults at the party were dressed in drab grey suits. They stood in groups of three and four and talked about politics. "What was the president thinking with those summit shoes of his?" "How did the new congressional food supplements taste and how can we get some?"
Edgar held his cup out low and finished telling the pretty brunette about his time as a consultant for the south-mid-Atlantic party. "We got creamed out there by the damned DotOrg in that election. Imagine taking 17% of the vote today? They were a serious bloc then, but now they'd take the oval office if they could crack the double digit."
A shadow appeared below him and his glass began to refill.
-- Mobile and Free
The cult of certainty reigned across the land. Skeptics were the lunatic fringe who, if they existed at all, at least had the decency to keep walking forward with the rest.
Homer was not a skeptic. He was a believer just like everyone else. The future had a form and it was coming toward them every minute closer.
***
The child moved across the room with the vessel, pouring water. The adults extended their empty glasses but not their attention to the small form that moved among them.
Her blond hair was pulled back into a long tail that swished rhythmically with each light step. The dress she wore was uncomfortably new. The collar chaffed her short neck and the tight bodice made it difficult to lift the pitcher to pour.
The adults at the party were dressed in drab grey suits. They stood in groups of three and four and talked about politics. "What was the president thinking with those summit shoes of his?" "How did the new congressional food supplements taste and how can we get some?"
Edgar held his cup out low and finished telling the pretty brunette about his time as a consultant for the south-mid-Atlantic party. "We got creamed out there by the damned DotOrg in that election. Imagine taking 17% of the vote today? They were a serious bloc then, but now they'd take the oval office if they could crack the double digit."
A shadow appeared below him and his glass began to refill.
-- Mobile and Free
Monday, August 3, 2009
Something
She was only mostly a liar. On Tuesdays and birthdays she took to truth telling. He reminded himself what day it was as he walked up to her seated at their table.
"Howard? What are you doing here?" asked his wife as he walked up.
"Oh, I come here for lunch on Wednesdays. What brings you uptown sweetheart?" He asked and leaned down for a kiss.
"Well what a pleasant surprise. I'll have to remember that." Gesturing to the woman seated across from her she continued, "This is Alicia, she organizes events for Dragoon. We are meeting to discuss using our studio for their new show."
The woman looked up from the menu for the first time, extended a well-manicured hand and lied. "Pleased to meet you."
"Yes. Very nice to meet you," he lied back. Then turned to his wife. "may I join you?"
-- Mobile and Free
"Howard? What are you doing here?" asked his wife as he walked up.
"Oh, I come here for lunch on Wednesdays. What brings you uptown sweetheart?" He asked and leaned down for a kiss.
"Well what a pleasant surprise. I'll have to remember that." Gesturing to the woman seated across from her she continued, "This is Alicia, she organizes events for Dragoon. We are meeting to discuss using our studio for their new show."
The woman looked up from the menu for the first time, extended a well-manicured hand and lied. "Pleased to meet you."
"Yes. Very nice to meet you," he lied back. Then turned to his wife. "may I join you?"
-- Mobile and Free
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