1. Minimum of yes or no questions.
2. End it first.
3. Cut it off when it's good.
4. Talk about them.
5. One savory compliment.
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Physics
So, I've said it before, but at some point in my life, I want to be a physics teacher.
Physics is probably the branch of science (or probably of any subject) that I can explain best to people. And I love explaining things anyway, so it seems like a good combination, to do something that I love and that I'm also very good at.
Today I was brooding over what my class would actually be like, but the most prominent part of the class that I'd want to have is "play time." This would be a semester long project (for elementary to graduate students) to spend 15 minutes of every class with a partner, just playing with stuff and trying to get weird/funny/entertaining stuff to happen using physics. They could design a game, a gadget, a weird cannon or something, but it would have to be inherently silly in process and execution.
Physics for me is very visual and experiential. I can play things out in my mind and twist them around to make sense of them from most angles, and I think that's largely because so much of my (and other's) childhoods involve using physics to do some weird stuff.
For instance, my friend had a treehouse on a dusty dirt hill growing up. The dirt, when thrown, would make huge dust clouds (much to the annoyance of the neighbors) and just look really cool. So we set up this system where a giant (to a 9 year old) rock was set teetering about 15 feet off the ground, and on it's way down, it would smack a series of catapults launching thus dusty dirt all over the place, and it would end up looking like a collapsing building. Aside from looking really awesome, an array of interesting (and complicated) problems needed to be solved using intuitive physics and trial and error.
Obviously you can't go launching dirt all over the place, but intertwining fun with creativity can act as a sort of rocket fuel for solving difficult, nuanced problems.
Physics is probably the branch of science (or probably of any subject) that I can explain best to people. And I love explaining things anyway, so it seems like a good combination, to do something that I love and that I'm also very good at.
Today I was brooding over what my class would actually be like, but the most prominent part of the class that I'd want to have is "play time." This would be a semester long project (for elementary to graduate students) to spend 15 minutes of every class with a partner, just playing with stuff and trying to get weird/funny/entertaining stuff to happen using physics. They could design a game, a gadget, a weird cannon or something, but it would have to be inherently silly in process and execution.
Physics for me is very visual and experiential. I can play things out in my mind and twist them around to make sense of them from most angles, and I think that's largely because so much of my (and other's) childhoods involve using physics to do some weird stuff.
For instance, my friend had a treehouse on a dusty dirt hill growing up. The dirt, when thrown, would make huge dust clouds (much to the annoyance of the neighbors) and just look really cool. So we set up this system where a giant (to a 9 year old) rock was set teetering about 15 feet off the ground, and on it's way down, it would smack a series of catapults launching thus dusty dirt all over the place, and it would end up looking like a collapsing building. Aside from looking really awesome, an array of interesting (and complicated) problems needed to be solved using intuitive physics and trial and error.
Obviously you can't go launching dirt all over the place, but intertwining fun with creativity can act as a sort of rocket fuel for solving difficult, nuanced problems.
Sunday, December 6, 2009
Saturday, December 5, 2009
Awake
I'm almost positive no one reads this anymore, but that's ok!
I made a new piece tonight.
I have these little desk lamps I got for $2.50 at Stop&Shop. I bought 5 or 6 of them. Who knows when you need a lamp.
Anyway, these lamps sport the energy saving light bulbs that satisfy my green-guilt. I have them strategically positioned all over my room to provide versatile and comforting lighting.
My desk is right on the window that gets the best sunlight, so that's where my plants go. And, incidentally, where my main lamp goes at night.
The other day, though, I bought some herbs plants (rosemary, bay and thyme) in little pots. I put them on my desk so they can get the light they need, but the lamp took up too much space. So, I figured I could stamp the lamp to the wall above the plants so I can get the same illumination at night without robbing the plants of precious desk real estate. I used regular thumb tacks to post the plastic base to the window frame. All was well.
Then I thought, these lamps have little trays for loose change and pencils and other odds and ends. Flipping this tray 90 degrees vertically makes this tray useless. So, I glued some loose change, thumb tacks, other odds and ends to the base as if I'd just tossed them there in a hurry. Only the objects are defying gravity. Weee!
I'm waiting for the glue to dry. I'll post pictures on facebook when it's up.
I made a new piece tonight.
I have these little desk lamps I got for $2.50 at Stop&Shop. I bought 5 or 6 of them. Who knows when you need a lamp.
Anyway, these lamps sport the energy saving light bulbs that satisfy my green-guilt. I have them strategically positioned all over my room to provide versatile and comforting lighting.
My desk is right on the window that gets the best sunlight, so that's where my plants go. And, incidentally, where my main lamp goes at night.
The other day, though, I bought some herbs plants (rosemary, bay and thyme) in little pots. I put them on my desk so they can get the light they need, but the lamp took up too much space. So, I figured I could stamp the lamp to the wall above the plants so I can get the same illumination at night without robbing the plants of precious desk real estate. I used regular thumb tacks to post the plastic base to the window frame. All was well.
Then I thought, these lamps have little trays for loose change and pencils and other odds and ends. Flipping this tray 90 degrees vertically makes this tray useless. So, I glued some loose change, thumb tacks, other odds and ends to the base as if I'd just tossed them there in a hurry. Only the objects are defying gravity. Weee!
I'm waiting for the glue to dry. I'll post pictures on facebook when it's up.
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Mirrors
My mirror sculpture has been a refreshing challenge.
The first challenge was where to get the broken mirror shards to paste to my wall. Fortunately, the full length mirror I posted on my wall in my new apartment fell off and shattered, leaving me some shards to work with.
Only half the mirror broke, though, so I beat the other half with a hammer.
I tried duct tape to post to a corner of my wall,
But it slid down my wall and fell.
I tried scotch tape,
Same fate.
I tried plasticine (#1, the kind we used in our studio models), rubbed on the back of the shards. The shards stuck just fine, and are sticking up on the wall like champs. This combination of broken mirror and clay has opened up a new medium for me, with some fun potential.
Our new apartment is mint, and I'm happy to call this little place home.
The first challenge was where to get the broken mirror shards to paste to my wall. Fortunately, the full length mirror I posted on my wall in my new apartment fell off and shattered, leaving me some shards to work with.
Only half the mirror broke, though, so I beat the other half with a hammer.
I tried duct tape to post to a corner of my wall,
But it slid down my wall and fell.
I tried scotch tape,
Same fate.
I tried plasticine (#1, the kind we used in our studio models), rubbed on the back of the shards. The shards stuck just fine, and are sticking up on the wall like champs. This combination of broken mirror and clay has opened up a new medium for me, with some fun potential.
Our new apartment is mint, and I'm happy to call this little place home.
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Hovering
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zT7iKmfrCU&feature=channel
Look at this guy's work!
I WANT ONE.
Look at this guy's work!
I WANT ONE.
Transparency
Transparency is the primary concept behind my building, so I'm going to rant about it here.
Actually, first off, let me rant about my ranting process. Always at the start, and usually throughout my design process, I write about my building. I go through my mental "experiences" with the building's forms and spaces, certain emotions I want to feel while experiencing the building inside and out, etc. Writing helps me to ground my ideas and distill the useful bits from what would otherwise remain fuzzy and therefore useless. In terms of it's effect on my final design, my building writing is probably the most important part of my design process.
So, transparency. I think this work will be (with any luck) a hallmark of the 21st century. I define transparency as a lack of friction when apprehending what exists. To put it more bluntly, what you see is what you get. Usually a person or object with this quality "simple". Anything complex or convoluted is proportionally more difficult to apprehend in full. For some objects, such as a car engine or a cell phone, this is a design requirement; lots of what is going on is hidden from view because of metallic seals and, waterproofing, the small scale or lack of moving parts, etc.
I don't believe this has to be the case for a building.
A lot is happening behind the scenes in a building, namely mechanical systems and structure. Structure can be made beautiful, and there is plenty of precedent. Mechanical systems can be ordered and painted to be at worst half-decent looking, at best an integral sculptural element to the building.
A building that encapsulates transparency should be, in spirit, like the human hand. A hand is an entirely practical device (much like the rest of the body). Specifically, though, a hand is mostly transparent. Veins and arteries, bones and joints are visible through the minimally thin layer of skin to protect the inner workings. There is nothing superfluous in a hand, a purely mechanical, practical tool, yet it is one of the most drawn/painted body parts. There is something elegant and beautiful with an unafraid, totally transparent, yet unimaginably complex form. If a building is elegantly designed and unified in it's strategies, and then left as transparent as possible, it would then become true and beautiful.
Also, the nature of this project warrants the use of a spiritually transparent building. Learning is an act of exploration, and the environment should feel as "explorable" as possible to encourage this mindset from the first few moments of approaching the building.
HOW to actually do this is the hard part. I'm thinking lot's of glass, mitigated by strong, clean structural elements fully exposed. If something is concealed, there needs to be a very obvious reason for it, readily apparent and accessible to any curious patron. Utilities and mechanical should run around like veins and arteries and be as clean and directional as the structure. Passive systems should move and change with the day, so the interior condition is variable but smart. This moving adaptability (self-adjusting louvers, for instance) has some practical reasons, but it's mostly for aesthetics, keeping with the spirit of a transparent, growing and changing experience. Sharp edges, rectilinear forms, clean cut and fully connections.
That's all for now.
Actually, first off, let me rant about my ranting process. Always at the start, and usually throughout my design process, I write about my building. I go through my mental "experiences" with the building's forms and spaces, certain emotions I want to feel while experiencing the building inside and out, etc. Writing helps me to ground my ideas and distill the useful bits from what would otherwise remain fuzzy and therefore useless. In terms of it's effect on my final design, my building writing is probably the most important part of my design process.
So, transparency. I think this work will be (with any luck) a hallmark of the 21st century. I define transparency as a lack of friction when apprehending what exists. To put it more bluntly, what you see is what you get. Usually a person or object with this quality "simple". Anything complex or convoluted is proportionally more difficult to apprehend in full. For some objects, such as a car engine or a cell phone, this is a design requirement; lots of what is going on is hidden from view because of metallic seals and, waterproofing, the small scale or lack of moving parts, etc.
I don't believe this has to be the case for a building.
A lot is happening behind the scenes in a building, namely mechanical systems and structure. Structure can be made beautiful, and there is plenty of precedent. Mechanical systems can be ordered and painted to be at worst half-decent looking, at best an integral sculptural element to the building.
A building that encapsulates transparency should be, in spirit, like the human hand. A hand is an entirely practical device (much like the rest of the body). Specifically, though, a hand is mostly transparent. Veins and arteries, bones and joints are visible through the minimally thin layer of skin to protect the inner workings. There is nothing superfluous in a hand, a purely mechanical, practical tool, yet it is one of the most drawn/painted body parts. There is something elegant and beautiful with an unafraid, totally transparent, yet unimaginably complex form. If a building is elegantly designed and unified in it's strategies, and then left as transparent as possible, it would then become true and beautiful.
Also, the nature of this project warrants the use of a spiritually transparent building. Learning is an act of exploration, and the environment should feel as "explorable" as possible to encourage this mindset from the first few moments of approaching the building.
HOW to actually do this is the hard part. I'm thinking lot's of glass, mitigated by strong, clean structural elements fully exposed. If something is concealed, there needs to be a very obvious reason for it, readily apparent and accessible to any curious patron. Utilities and mechanical should run around like veins and arteries and be as clean and directional as the structure. Passive systems should move and change with the day, so the interior condition is variable but smart. This moving adaptability (self-adjusting louvers, for instance) has some practical reasons, but it's mostly for aesthetics, keeping with the spirit of a transparent, growing and changing experience. Sharp edges, rectilinear forms, clean cut and fully connections.
That's all for now.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Brave New World Paper.
Ignoring, for the purposes of this discussion, the obvious evil of the endeavor, controlling an entire society is a complicated problem to solve. Millions of people need to be coordinated in a unified motion, rebellions squelched or prevented all together, yet with all the needed productivity and wealth of a free society. Countless variables need to be carefully massaged to keep things flowing smoothly, or else total collapse.
There are various methods to achieve this goal of molding an entire society like clay. Abject fear is one. But, like a cornered animal, fear of a man with a big stick will only get you so far before one of the animals lashes out in self defense. Most people will fall victim to rule by an iron fist; they just don’t have the cast-iron moral fortitude to know they have the right to fight back. But a handful of individuals with cunning means and a little luck can catalyze a total societal shift. However, opportunity for a rapid collapse of this kind has to already be in place for this sort of revolution to work.
Another, and more successful, option for controlling an entire people is propaganda. Once you can rally people on their own “terms” around a few infectious ideas, the inevitable rebellion of the handful of naysayers is scolded, not by a higher power with a threat, but from their peers. Fear of punishment and alienation from friends, family and loved ones is vastly superior to fear of a punishment from above. If one respects the opinion of those they love more than they respect themselves, they will smoothly fall in line and do their part. Those that are true individuals, with a fully independent vision are quickly rationalized and alienated at the local level. The real challenge is planting the correct ideas into the memetic landscape to get – and keep - the engine running.
The fictional society in A Brave New World demonstrates several feasible, overlapping strategies to keep society in line and “stable.” One of the most powerful strategies employed is the manufactured obsolescence of the nuclear family.
Family relationships are among the closest humans can have, and are generally built upon the emotional bonds resulting from the raising of children. With technological advances, the “family” is obsolete. Carefully tuned machines raise children from a fetus, using audio recordings during incubation and sleep, and brutal conditioning as young children. Because children are mass-produced like cars, on a literal assembly line, the particular fears implanted put their minds enforce a steep philosophical and emotional landscape. Their worldview becomes impossible to escape, especially without the support of the tight knit societal microcosm of a family.
Because it is assured that the entire society is on the same wavelength, the helpfully redundant self-correcting mechanism of pervasive taboo keeps people in line if they manage to climb out of the mental sand trap. It’s important to note again that, once these societal mechanisms are set in place, they take care of themselves. Only tweaking from a higher authority is needed.
A subtler, and more perilous mechanism in place is the taboo against working or living alone. It’s seen as unproductive and at best frowned upon, in the book’s society, to be without the company of others. One can privately and honestly desire to spend time alone in this society, but despite the strong desire to confide in others, it’s a great risk. One has social standing to lose, the last true value in a society where all productivity is completely controlled and moderated.
But social standing isn’t the “goal” of this self-reinforcing meme. People are most likely to be themselves, to think creatively, independently and without fear, while alone. Immunity to independent, self-righteous thought is the keystone for all of the aforementioned mechanisms, the one wedge that could drive the system. As independent thought is private by nature, a publicly run society is eaten away at from the inside once isolated sects can bud a revolution. With a variety of overlapping and self-regulating mechanisms at the local, personal scale, people stay in line and do their part to maintain social stability.
It’s important to note the true strength of the nuclear family, and the myriad phenotypic effects of its absence. A tight knit family dynamic is far more robust than the individual with no intellectual leanings, if only because a family has it’s own social self correcting mechanisms tucked into it’s own steep valley. A close family is all but impenetrable once established. The taboo against exclusive relationships and friendships, promiscuity encouraged, prevents “families” budding up in the society. A family can move as one, brutally strong entity and act as a strong root for outside individuals to seek solace and hope in, if they privately share an independent philosophy. It’s for this reason that destruction and prevention of family in a controlled, self-stable society is an absolute necessity.
Self-reinforcing taboos can moderate and reconfirm themselves without much outside influence. Evidence for this phenomenon exists everywhere in any society, and can be cultivated into a mechanism of macro-societal control if the right technologies are employed. Warning signs of this are taboos against independent, self-confirmed thought, and acidic decay and prevention of closed, tight knit family and friend units. One might observe these phenomena happening around us in the modern age, mostly escalating on their own. With a knowledge of how memes take root and continually confirm and fight for their existence, societal change for the better is possible.
There are various methods to achieve this goal of molding an entire society like clay. Abject fear is one. But, like a cornered animal, fear of a man with a big stick will only get you so far before one of the animals lashes out in self defense. Most people will fall victim to rule by an iron fist; they just don’t have the cast-iron moral fortitude to know they have the right to fight back. But a handful of individuals with cunning means and a little luck can catalyze a total societal shift. However, opportunity for a rapid collapse of this kind has to already be in place for this sort of revolution to work.
Another, and more successful, option for controlling an entire people is propaganda. Once you can rally people on their own “terms” around a few infectious ideas, the inevitable rebellion of the handful of naysayers is scolded, not by a higher power with a threat, but from their peers. Fear of punishment and alienation from friends, family and loved ones is vastly superior to fear of a punishment from above. If one respects the opinion of those they love more than they respect themselves, they will smoothly fall in line and do their part. Those that are true individuals, with a fully independent vision are quickly rationalized and alienated at the local level. The real challenge is planting the correct ideas into the memetic landscape to get – and keep - the engine running.
The fictional society in A Brave New World demonstrates several feasible, overlapping strategies to keep society in line and “stable.” One of the most powerful strategies employed is the manufactured obsolescence of the nuclear family.
Family relationships are among the closest humans can have, and are generally built upon the emotional bonds resulting from the raising of children. With technological advances, the “family” is obsolete. Carefully tuned machines raise children from a fetus, using audio recordings during incubation and sleep, and brutal conditioning as young children. Because children are mass-produced like cars, on a literal assembly line, the particular fears implanted put their minds enforce a steep philosophical and emotional landscape. Their worldview becomes impossible to escape, especially without the support of the tight knit societal microcosm of a family.
Because it is assured that the entire society is on the same wavelength, the helpfully redundant self-correcting mechanism of pervasive taboo keeps people in line if they manage to climb out of the mental sand trap. It’s important to note again that, once these societal mechanisms are set in place, they take care of themselves. Only tweaking from a higher authority is needed.
A subtler, and more perilous mechanism in place is the taboo against working or living alone. It’s seen as unproductive and at best frowned upon, in the book’s society, to be without the company of others. One can privately and honestly desire to spend time alone in this society, but despite the strong desire to confide in others, it’s a great risk. One has social standing to lose, the last true value in a society where all productivity is completely controlled and moderated.
But social standing isn’t the “goal” of this self-reinforcing meme. People are most likely to be themselves, to think creatively, independently and without fear, while alone. Immunity to independent, self-righteous thought is the keystone for all of the aforementioned mechanisms, the one wedge that could drive the system. As independent thought is private by nature, a publicly run society is eaten away at from the inside once isolated sects can bud a revolution. With a variety of overlapping and self-regulating mechanisms at the local, personal scale, people stay in line and do their part to maintain social stability.
It’s important to note the true strength of the nuclear family, and the myriad phenotypic effects of its absence. A tight knit family dynamic is far more robust than the individual with no intellectual leanings, if only because a family has it’s own social self correcting mechanisms tucked into it’s own steep valley. A close family is all but impenetrable once established. The taboo against exclusive relationships and friendships, promiscuity encouraged, prevents “families” budding up in the society. A family can move as one, brutally strong entity and act as a strong root for outside individuals to seek solace and hope in, if they privately share an independent philosophy. It’s for this reason that destruction and prevention of family in a controlled, self-stable society is an absolute necessity.
Self-reinforcing taboos can moderate and reconfirm themselves without much outside influence. Evidence for this phenomenon exists everywhere in any society, and can be cultivated into a mechanism of macro-societal control if the right technologies are employed. Warning signs of this are taboos against independent, self-confirmed thought, and acidic decay and prevention of closed, tight knit family and friend units. One might observe these phenomena happening around us in the modern age, mostly escalating on their own. With a knowledge of how memes take root and continually confirm and fight for their existence, societal change for the better is possible.
Friday, July 17, 2009
Legs!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pG5X31CDg_g&NR=1
She's a cyborg, and can run way faster than I can!
And she's hot. 'nuff said.
She's a cyborg, and can run way faster than I can!
And she's hot. 'nuff said.
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Oy!
I'm preparing for another long blog post, I swear.
A friend of mine ended a letter hilariously, so I'll end this post with what he said.
I think I'm turning into one of those whacked out artists that we read about, with a few bright glimmers of productivity punctuated by a ridiculous circus of self destruction. I can't help but find it hilarious, and I think that's a bad thing.
Slippery when wet,
~The Floor
A friend of mine ended a letter hilariously, so I'll end this post with what he said.
I think I'm turning into one of those whacked out artists that we read about, with a few bright glimmers of productivity punctuated by a ridiculous circus of self destruction. I can't help but find it hilarious, and I think that's a bad thing.
Slippery when wet,
~The Floor
Monday, June 29, 2009
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Stephen Fry is my favorite.
Swearing!
He also narrates the Harry Potter audio books, which I've listened to, beginning to end. I make no apologies.
He also narrates the Harry Potter audio books, which I've listened to, beginning to end. I make no apologies.
Dusty car window art
This guy is awesome!
New art form!
He's also awfully articulate, with some surprisingly profound things to say about art in general. I could write an essay on this dude.
New art form!
He's also awfully articulate, with some surprisingly profound things to say about art in general. I could write an essay on this dude.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
I put paintings I like on my desktop.
Holy blogosphere batman.
I love art deco. And this painting. It's my desktop image on my laptop.
This is my desktop on my second monitor:
If I'm able to paint like this some day, I'll die happy. Look at it! He uses freakin' purple and obnoxious blues and aquamarines and they FIT. I can practically taste the humidity in the air. I don't know how he does it. Look at the guy, Monet was a badass:
Dude rocked the beard.His expression is like, What? Yeah, I paint. Whatevs.
LONG GOD DAMNED ENTRY
Ok, so, finally a longer post, now that I'm not feeling like a total wastoid, allthefreakintime.
- - -- --- ----- --------
First off, I want to react to the cloning debate. At the start, I was totally for cloning. Call me a futurist, but I think trying to tiptoe our way into the future is silly. We need to steer into the future and get ready for it, because our wealthy celebrities are our guinea pigs. All this stuff is going to happen, and it's going to happen to us, or our kids, or our grandkids. Come on now.
After listening to others and actually (with gritted teeth) taking the other side of the argument, I thought of some interesting, if not slightly humorous, arguments against cloning. One thing I thought of that I never brought up, is how a clone would be legally related to the "parent." An unmodified genetic copy is "grown" just like a normal baby, in a womb for 9 months. It's born a regular kid, but just happens to be your identical twin with a different birthday. Is this... your child? The mother's child? Do you share it with her? What about the original egg: if it's not from the birth mother, does the other mother have a say? What if you don't want to share with the child that they are a clone, or give the child your contact information? I figure it'd have to work something like sperm donation: you get paid less for your 50% contribution of genetic code, so long as you remain anonymous. And for good reason! If your genetic stock is running around 10-20 years from now, playing soccer and doing well in all their math classes, they just may want to know who their genetic daddy was that gave them their devastatingly handsome good looks. *cough* Just sayin'
Having a beard is fun, though. I shave a lot less and feel like a sexy lumberjack. I want to finally get into modeling this fall. We'll see!
A lot of people, I think, look at these possibilities with fear. It's unnatural! Make a law! Rahhh.
I disagree! This is just where things are going, and we need to embrace it; put the past behind us. However well we succeed at rationalizing the past, thinking it's this idyllic place of newspaper boys and ice cream trucks and honest hard working families, we need to spend that mental energy on that possible, becoming-reality, and see what awesome opportunities lie ahead for our species. It will be "better," in scare-quotes because of our myriad of standards.
-- --- ----- ------- -----------
As I related in an earlier entry, I have a few topics I want to touch on. The big one is self reference. I'm not talking about referencing myself in my blog, or referencing myself referencing myself talking about referencing myself talking about it in my blog. Actually, that's exactly what I'm talking about.
I brought up the topic of a program's code affecting itself in class, but I don't think anyone really latched onto it. It's immensely important to the debate. People kept coming back to a program only being as smart as it's programmer. My website is only as smart as the code I wrote for it.
Notice the word "wrote" there, past tense. It's within the language of javascript (a simple and easy language to learn for the inner workings of websites) for me to write my code affect the code I wrote. Obviously, if I write the code to affect the self-referencing code it is using to reference itself, odds are VERY good the code will destroy it's own ability to reference itself from there on out. The code will hence forth be stuck, unable to reference itself to affect it's self referencing ablity.
So, back to the idea that code is only as smart as it's programmer. If code can't reference, and thus change, itself, then yeah, the code's not going to do anything creepy and clever. But if there is a situation where the code can try out alternatives and test the bits of code against eachother and pick the best code against a given standard or even fine tune the standard the code is selected by, then you end up with a runaway process where the code quite literally can get smarter, wildly independent of the programmer. This is how Deep Blue worked, roughly.
Deep Blue, among many other game-playing computers cannot possibly have all the game's permutations in it's "head." There are simply too many too hold, too many to sift through. If Deep Blue had to go through every possible move in every possible game from the current state of the game, we'd be here until the earth gets eaten by the sun, at that point a swelling red giant.
Obviously Deep Blue, et others, need a sorting process, and, ideally, a learning process, to learn to keep the good bits and discard the wholly bad bits entirely. This self referencing of a program's own code can branch out exponentially, affecting itself affecting itself which affects how it affects itself ad infinitum. As mentioned earlier, this can end badly if the program affects the way it affects itself, but assuming the program's self affecting ability can be affected in the direction of self affectibility, we end up with a fast runaway process producing, and consisting of, infinite intelligence. AHH!
---- ------ -------- ---------
And now I come to self-replication! This one has been going on for billions of years, and it's a slice or two of the 3-part pie that makes up evolution-by-natural-selection, the 3 slices being heredity, variation, and replication. Something, whatever it is (a gene or a meme) makes a bunch of copies of itself, every so often making a copying error, and the better copies will have a better chance of making copies of themselves...
Whatever increases the likelyhood of the gene/meme making more copies of itself, and therefor, eventually, improvements on itself, whether or not this improvement is affected by the gene/meme's phenotype (but especially if it is), will increase the frequency of the gene/meme's existance.
So let's extrapolate. If a carefully programmed natural selection process is the basis of a robot's code, then we can just assume that their mind will evolve just as beautifully as a bird's wings or a tiger's body. Let's hope we can meld with these super-robots, or let our minds apprehend the cyber-cybernetics to grow into super-human-robot-things.
- -- - ---- - - - --------
Holy crap, this is nearly a 4 page paper double-spaced.
--- -- -- --- -- -- --- -- --
OH multiple dimensions. A system branches into a new dimension when it references itself.
- -- --- ---- ----- ------
I find I have a lot more to write about when I don't have a deadline. Weird!
- - -- --- ----- --------
First off, I want to react to the cloning debate. At the start, I was totally for cloning. Call me a futurist, but I think trying to tiptoe our way into the future is silly. We need to steer into the future and get ready for it, because our wealthy celebrities are our guinea pigs. All this stuff is going to happen, and it's going to happen to us, or our kids, or our grandkids. Come on now.
After listening to others and actually (with gritted teeth) taking the other side of the argument, I thought of some interesting, if not slightly humorous, arguments against cloning. One thing I thought of that I never brought up, is how a clone would be legally related to the "parent." An unmodified genetic copy is "grown" just like a normal baby, in a womb for 9 months. It's born a regular kid, but just happens to be your identical twin with a different birthday. Is this... your child? The mother's child? Do you share it with her? What about the original egg: if it's not from the birth mother, does the other mother have a say? What if you don't want to share with the child that they are a clone, or give the child your contact information? I figure it'd have to work something like sperm donation: you get paid less for your 50% contribution of genetic code, so long as you remain anonymous. And for good reason! If your genetic stock is running around 10-20 years from now, playing soccer and doing well in all their math classes, they just may want to know who their genetic daddy was that gave them their devastatingly handsome good looks. *cough* Just sayin'
Having a beard is fun, though. I shave a lot less and feel like a sexy lumberjack. I want to finally get into modeling this fall. We'll see!
A lot of people, I think, look at these possibilities with fear. It's unnatural! Make a law! Rahhh.
I disagree! This is just where things are going, and we need to embrace it; put the past behind us. However well we succeed at rationalizing the past, thinking it's this idyllic place of newspaper boys and ice cream trucks and honest hard working families, we need to spend that mental energy on that possible, becoming-reality, and see what awesome opportunities lie ahead for our species. It will be "better," in scare-quotes because of our myriad of standards.
-- --- ----- ------- -----------
As I related in an earlier entry, I have a few topics I want to touch on. The big one is self reference. I'm not talking about referencing myself in my blog, or referencing myself referencing myself talking about referencing myself talking about it in my blog. Actually, that's exactly what I'm talking about.
I brought up the topic of a program's code affecting itself in class, but I don't think anyone really latched onto it. It's immensely important to the debate. People kept coming back to a program only being as smart as it's programmer. My website is only as smart as the code I wrote for it.
Notice the word "wrote" there, past tense. It's within the language of javascript (a simple and easy language to learn for the inner workings of websites) for me to write my code affect the code I wrote. Obviously, if I write the code to affect the self-referencing code it is using to reference itself, odds are VERY good the code will destroy it's own ability to reference itself from there on out. The code will hence forth be stuck, unable to reference itself to affect it's self referencing ablity.
So, back to the idea that code is only as smart as it's programmer. If code can't reference, and thus change, itself, then yeah, the code's not going to do anything creepy and clever. But if there is a situation where the code can try out alternatives and test the bits of code against eachother and pick the best code against a given standard or even fine tune the standard the code is selected by, then you end up with a runaway process where the code quite literally can get smarter, wildly independent of the programmer. This is how Deep Blue worked, roughly.
Deep Blue, among many other game-playing computers cannot possibly have all the game's permutations in it's "head." There are simply too many too hold, too many to sift through. If Deep Blue had to go through every possible move in every possible game from the current state of the game, we'd be here until the earth gets eaten by the sun, at that point a swelling red giant.
Obviously Deep Blue, et others, need a sorting process, and, ideally, a learning process, to learn to keep the good bits and discard the wholly bad bits entirely. This self referencing of a program's own code can branch out exponentially, affecting itself affecting itself which affects how it affects itself ad infinitum. As mentioned earlier, this can end badly if the program affects the way it affects itself, but assuming the program's self affecting ability can be affected in the direction of self affectibility, we end up with a fast runaway process producing, and consisting of, infinite intelligence. AHH!
---- ------ -------- ---------
And now I come to self-replication! This one has been going on for billions of years, and it's a slice or two of the 3-part pie that makes up evolution-by-natural-selection, the 3 slices being heredity, variation, and replication. Something, whatever it is (a gene or a meme) makes a bunch of copies of itself, every so often making a copying error, and the better copies will have a better chance of making copies of themselves...
Whatever increases the likelyhood of the gene/meme making more copies of itself, and therefor, eventually, improvements on itself, whether or not this improvement is affected by the gene/meme's phenotype (but especially if it is), will increase the frequency of the gene/meme's existance.
So let's extrapolate. If a carefully programmed natural selection process is the basis of a robot's code, then we can just assume that their mind will evolve just as beautifully as a bird's wings or a tiger's body. Let's hope we can meld with these super-robots, or let our minds apprehend the cyber-cybernetics to grow into super-human-robot-things.
- -- - ---- - - - --------
Holy crap, this is nearly a 4 page paper double-spaced.
--- -- -- --- -- -- --- -- --
OH multiple dimensions. A system branches into a new dimension when it references itself.
- -- --- ---- ----- ------
I find I have a lot more to write about when I don't have a deadline. Weird!
Monday, June 22, 2009
I've been working on my website all weekend, so I haven't updated this, even though I have some ideas for new entries kicking around. Check out my site in the meantime, it will be incorporated in our presentation of Jodi.org in an interesting way...
http://myweb.wit.edu/batsona1
Things I'll write about when I get the chance
Self-reference and how it relates to consciousness/multiple dimensions/complexity
Self-replication
Probably some more on positive/negative feedback systems
http://myweb.wit.edu/batsona1
Things I'll write about when I get the chance
Self-reference and how it relates to consciousness/multiple dimensions/complexity
Self-replication
Probably some more on positive/negative feedback systems
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Owww.
This week was ridiculous. 5-6 cups of coffee a day, sleep came in nap form for 3 days straight, tons of intense computer work. My body and brain are mad at me.
Monday, June 15, 2009
I like good advice.
I don't get it often, and I rarely ask for it. It's not a matter of pride, but efficiency. Asking someone for advice is giving them a blank check to talk your ear off, which can end badly for you or both parties, depending on your style. I've gotten good at not asking for advice unless it's going to be fruitful, which happens rarely, sad to say. But when I feel I've a lot to gain, I get really excited and make sure the person is well aware of my high regard for them. I think a pure, clean and honest request for real advice is a tremendous compliment. It should be savored by both parties.
I get flack sometimes for being arrogant, but it's simply candor (really). I do my best to be as frank and realistic as I can about my pros and cons. I work hard at everything I care about, and I talk about the things I care about, so the scales tipped that way from the get go. But, on top of this, I think people only press "record" on the positive-qualities recap, so only the "I'm awesome" rants go on record. Unfair. I suck at a lot of things, and a few of them I'm a little insecure about, but I make damn sure not to delude myself about them. Even if I avoid bringing these things up, I do so because it's inappropriate for the situation.
In any case, I think some people are just plain allergic to healthy, proud people.
I don't get it often, and I rarely ask for it. It's not a matter of pride, but efficiency. Asking someone for advice is giving them a blank check to talk your ear off, which can end badly for you or both parties, depending on your style. I've gotten good at not asking for advice unless it's going to be fruitful, which happens rarely, sad to say. But when I feel I've a lot to gain, I get really excited and make sure the person is well aware of my high regard for them. I think a pure, clean and honest request for real advice is a tremendous compliment. It should be savored by both parties.
I get flack sometimes for being arrogant, but it's simply candor (really). I do my best to be as frank and realistic as I can about my pros and cons. I work hard at everything I care about, and I talk about the things I care about, so the scales tipped that way from the get go. But, on top of this, I think people only press "record" on the positive-qualities recap, so only the "I'm awesome" rants go on record. Unfair. I suck at a lot of things, and a few of them I'm a little insecure about, but I make damn sure not to delude myself about them. Even if I avoid bringing these things up, I do so because it's inappropriate for the situation.
In any case, I think some people are just plain allergic to healthy, proud people.
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Complete paper
Adrian Batson
6/11/99
Frankenstein
A mind can be defined by the scope of the perspective it holds over the world it perceives. When a mind's overall perspective narrows, it is not only crippled by the following disconnect from reality, but permanently altered when the new paradigm sets root in the unused and wilting mental real estate left sadly abandoned. In the novel Frankenstein, the protagonist Victor Frankenstein experiences the agony of complete personal downfall through, and as a by-product of, his indulgence in a careless pursuit of ultimate knowledge.
Usually, great evil can be linked to traumatic childhood experiences. In the case of the mind’s corruption by obsessive intellectual pursuits, however, an ironically idyllic childhood is often requisite. Victor’s childhood is a generally happy one, peppered by the occasional loss of loved ones to be expected. With his vast intellect, he was magnetically drawn to the sciences, something he had an affinity for. A seemingly bright and endearing interest would later turn cancerous.
The path toward crippling intellectual tunnel vision is paved with good intentions. Victor’s quest for knowledge is ominously ambitious: he desires to discover the secret to life. A far-reaching and powerful sum of knowledge, it is undoubtedly one of the most difficult scientific problems to solve. Victor focuses relentlessly on the subject, and via his unique talents and capacities, achieves this knowledge. Though Victor has a grand, if slightly unsettling, vision of a new race of beautiful humans crafted by his own hand, his single mindedness suffocates his peripheral perception.
When one’s vision of reality is selective, logic loses it’s power. Logic is only as valid as the premises used to churn out the answer. Like putting the wrong numbers in a calculator, the device will give a “correct” answer, but not the one needed. Likewise, when Victor grows more deeply and intensely focused on his goal, he loses sight of his past life. This decay of self is a self-reinforcing feedback loop; he never grasps the damage he is doing to himself, his future and his family, and thus cannot logically react to it. Indeed, he is stuck in a fantasy world, cordoned off from reality.
Self-reinforcing loops are an important piece to this puzzle, and should be looked at a bit closer. Most people are in an equilibrium point, almost by definition; change happens quickly and suddenly usually, and corrects itself as soon as it can. In a negative feedback loop, behaviors deviating too much from the mean are corrected and brought back around an average. Only if one has a wide and crisp perspective on life, is this self-correcting stability healthy; all the facts are in and decisions are made as wisely as they can be. When this perception narrows, as in Victor’s case, the outside information that was positively necessary to keep he or she in check is mostly lost. As a result of his obsessive endeavor to create a life form from scratch, he slides swiftly down a slippery slope, away from his past equilibrium point. Only when he completes his creation does this downward spiral come to an abrupt halt.
The point in the novel when Victor at last finishes his creation demonstrates succinctly the brutal crash of an instantaneous (and involuntary) widening of perspective. His waking monster staring up at him becomes the unavoidable, living proof of his chronic folly up to that point. The quick shift to the old paradigm is an important aspect of the overall phenomenon, but doesn’t always need to be from such a sudden shock of an animate patchwork monster. Often the sacred values of the past self remain intact and untouched; lonely island rocks, slow to wear, in a black, churning sea. In Victor’s case, his friendship with Clerval, and more prominently, his romance with Elizabeth, is kept untainted and untouched despite the intense focus on his work. These hard-line connections to his former childhood self are his only life lines, seeds from which he can regrow his past life. It’s conceivable that, if the monster never killed his loved ones, he’d have been able to build a new life from the ashes.
Though one can grasp brief glimmers of the warmth of a complete self, it will never be what it was. “Use it or lose it” applies nicely to the mind’s functioning. Despite Victor’s obvious brilliance in one area, the loss of intellectual blood flow to the other important areas of his mind and life results in a mental atrophy. These unused tracts of mental real estate are often taken over by the obsession, rewritten, and lost forever. Only redemption of past errors and a healthy pursuit of the aforementioned life-lines can dig one out of the hole caused by the initially innocently and nearly inescapable addiction to dangerous knowledge.
6/11/99
Frankenstein
A mind can be defined by the scope of the perspective it holds over the world it perceives. When a mind's overall perspective narrows, it is not only crippled by the following disconnect from reality, but permanently altered when the new paradigm sets root in the unused and wilting mental real estate left sadly abandoned. In the novel Frankenstein, the protagonist Victor Frankenstein experiences the agony of complete personal downfall through, and as a by-product of, his indulgence in a careless pursuit of ultimate knowledge.
Usually, great evil can be linked to traumatic childhood experiences. In the case of the mind’s corruption by obsessive intellectual pursuits, however, an ironically idyllic childhood is often requisite. Victor’s childhood is a generally happy one, peppered by the occasional loss of loved ones to be expected. With his vast intellect, he was magnetically drawn to the sciences, something he had an affinity for. A seemingly bright and endearing interest would later turn cancerous.
The path toward crippling intellectual tunnel vision is paved with good intentions. Victor’s quest for knowledge is ominously ambitious: he desires to discover the secret to life. A far-reaching and powerful sum of knowledge, it is undoubtedly one of the most difficult scientific problems to solve. Victor focuses relentlessly on the subject, and via his unique talents and capacities, achieves this knowledge. Though Victor has a grand, if slightly unsettling, vision of a new race of beautiful humans crafted by his own hand, his single mindedness suffocates his peripheral perception.
When one’s vision of reality is selective, logic loses it’s power. Logic is only as valid as the premises used to churn out the answer. Like putting the wrong numbers in a calculator, the device will give a “correct” answer, but not the one needed. Likewise, when Victor grows more deeply and intensely focused on his goal, he loses sight of his past life. This decay of self is a self-reinforcing feedback loop; he never grasps the damage he is doing to himself, his future and his family, and thus cannot logically react to it. Indeed, he is stuck in a fantasy world, cordoned off from reality.
Self-reinforcing loops are an important piece to this puzzle, and should be looked at a bit closer. Most people are in an equilibrium point, almost by definition; change happens quickly and suddenly usually, and corrects itself as soon as it can. In a negative feedback loop, behaviors deviating too much from the mean are corrected and brought back around an average. Only if one has a wide and crisp perspective on life, is this self-correcting stability healthy; all the facts are in and decisions are made as wisely as they can be. When this perception narrows, as in Victor’s case, the outside information that was positively necessary to keep he or she in check is mostly lost. As a result of his obsessive endeavor to create a life form from scratch, he slides swiftly down a slippery slope, away from his past equilibrium point. Only when he completes his creation does this downward spiral come to an abrupt halt.
The point in the novel when Victor at last finishes his creation demonstrates succinctly the brutal crash of an instantaneous (and involuntary) widening of perspective. His waking monster staring up at him becomes the unavoidable, living proof of his chronic folly up to that point. The quick shift to the old paradigm is an important aspect of the overall phenomenon, but doesn’t always need to be from such a sudden shock of an animate patchwork monster. Often the sacred values of the past self remain intact and untouched; lonely island rocks, slow to wear, in a black, churning sea. In Victor’s case, his friendship with Clerval, and more prominently, his romance with Elizabeth, is kept untainted and untouched despite the intense focus on his work. These hard-line connections to his former childhood self are his only life lines, seeds from which he can regrow his past life. It’s conceivable that, if the monster never killed his loved ones, he’d have been able to build a new life from the ashes.
Though one can grasp brief glimmers of the warmth of a complete self, it will never be what it was. “Use it or lose it” applies nicely to the mind’s functioning. Despite Victor’s obvious brilliance in one area, the loss of intellectual blood flow to the other important areas of his mind and life results in a mental atrophy. These unused tracts of mental real estate are often taken over by the obsession, rewritten, and lost forever. Only redemption of past errors and a healthy pursuit of the aforementioned life-lines can dig one out of the hole caused by the initially innocently and nearly inescapable addiction to dangerous knowledge.
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Frankenstein paper
[transcribed from sketchbook in class]
Brainstorming:
-Development of tunnel vision
-Positive and negative feedback systems, equilibrium points, shifting paradigms
-Initial innocence (victor's childhood, innocent pursuit of knowledge)
-Premise that knowledge/scientific pursuits primary above all else, difficult problem to solve is consuming
-Vestigial remnants of tunnel vision after knowledge/achievement, consequences of this
-Atrophy of old self, growth of new corrupt irrational self in place of old which takes over mental landscape
-Old self partitioned off, brought out by love or sacred values
[end transcription]
I want to write most of my paper carefully documenting the process of acquiring tunnel vision and the following intellectual hangover that results. I'll use the novel as a reference, loosely following the story, referencing the relevant bits and quoting if it's fruitful.
Tonight at 8, 9 central, you'll experience the long, irritatingly arduous editing process of the one, Adrian Batson, developing his thesis for the exciting up-and-coming paper due in 48 hours!
To a grand, brilliant mind, intellectual tunnel vision is a constant threat.
A mind can be defined by how wide a perspective it holds over the world it perceives. When this perspective narrows, one can be crippled and destroyed by the paralyzing disconnect from reality. In the novel Frankenstein, the protagonist experiences the agony of complete personal downfall through, and as a by product, of his indulgence in a careless pursuit of knowledge.
A mind can be defined by the scope of the perspective it holds over the world it perceives. When a mind's perspective narrows, it's not only crippled by the following disconnect from reality, but permanently altered when the new paradigm sets root in the dying, unused mental real estate left sadly abandoned. In the novel Frankenstein, the protagonist Victor Frankenstein experiences the agony of complete personal downfall through, and as a by product of, his indulgence in a careless pursuit of ultimate knowledge.
That'll do for now. Gotta stay up all night to write it. Sigh.
Brainstorming:
-Development of tunnel vision
-Positive and negative feedback systems, equilibrium points, shifting paradigms
-Initial innocence (victor's childhood, innocent pursuit of knowledge)
-Premise that knowledge/scientific pursuits primary above all else, difficult problem to solve is consuming
-Vestigial remnants of tunnel vision after knowledge/achievement, consequences of this
-Atrophy of old self, growth of new corrupt irrational self in place of old which takes over mental landscape
-Old self partitioned off, brought out by love or sacred values
[end transcription]
I want to write most of my paper carefully documenting the process of acquiring tunnel vision and the following intellectual hangover that results. I'll use the novel as a reference, loosely following the story, referencing the relevant bits and quoting if it's fruitful.
Tonight at 8, 9 central, you'll experience the long, irritatingly arduous editing process of the one, Adrian Batson, developing his thesis for the exciting up-and-coming paper due in 48 hours!
To a grand, brilliant mind, intellectual tunnel vision is a constant threat.
A mind can be defined by how wide a perspective it holds over the world it perceives. When this perspective narrows, one can be crippled and destroyed by the paralyzing disconnect from reality. In the novel Frankenstein, the protagonist experiences the agony of complete personal downfall through, and as a by product, of his indulgence in a careless pursuit of knowledge.
A mind can be defined by the scope of the perspective it holds over the world it perceives. When a mind's perspective narrows, it's not only crippled by the following disconnect from reality, but permanently altered when the new paradigm sets root in the dying, unused mental real estate left sadly abandoned. In the novel Frankenstein, the protagonist Victor Frankenstein experiences the agony of complete personal downfall through, and as a by product of, his indulgence in a careless pursuit of ultimate knowledge.
That'll do for now. Gotta stay up all night to write it. Sigh.
Saturday, June 6, 2009
Robotic Singularity
I have some ammo for next class's discussion [should it have been class's or classes or class'? Grammar fail.]
So, I firmly believe humanity can create a being much (much) brighter than itself. As bright as a being can be.
Natural Selection is an algorithm. With a handful of simple, immutable rules, Natural Selection (NS from here forth) can create gorgeous, intuitively appealing designs that get the job done in half the time. Sale this Thursday! Every half-fucked sea-creature on the planet, every upside down, self-defeating idea since the birth of culture is the result of NS.
Here are the rules!
1. Heredity (i.e., the ability to pass traits on to offspring)
2. Reproduction (i.e., the ability to multiply and thereby increase population size)
3. Variation (i.e., differences in heritable traits that affect "Fitness" = the ability to survive and reproduce)
With these thr33 simple rules, vast rolling landscapes of charming (and terrifying) design work can be done, without anyone at the steering wheel.
This is the important part!
A "stupid" algorithm can produce something really smart and well designed, given enough time.
This is an important point to consider when discussing a stupid machine producing a mind smarter than humanity.
If we can set up a fluid, malleable framework where memes (an analogue of genes) have free reign in a "virtual" world, a type of "person" could emerge (again, given the right restraints). However, as a friend related in class, the human's biological computer has biological, hard wired limitations (for good reasons from the gene's perspective) to trim and prune, to stifle too much intellectual growth. Machines don't have to have that!
So long as we raise our computers right.
So, I firmly believe humanity can create a being much (much) brighter than itself. As bright as a being can be.
Natural Selection is an algorithm. With a handful of simple, immutable rules, Natural Selection (NS from here forth) can create gorgeous, intuitively appealing designs that get the job done in half the time. Sale this Thursday! Every half-fucked sea-creature on the planet, every upside down, self-defeating idea since the birth of culture is the result of NS.
Here are the rules!
1. Heredity (i.e., the ability to pass traits on to offspring)
2. Reproduction (i.e., the ability to multiply and thereby increase population size)
3. Variation (i.e., differences in heritable traits that affect "Fitness" = the ability to survive and reproduce)
With these thr33 simple rules, vast rolling landscapes of charming (and terrifying) design work can be done, without anyone at the steering wheel.
This is the important part!
A "stupid" algorithm can produce something really smart and well designed, given enough time.
This is an important point to consider when discussing a stupid machine producing a mind smarter than humanity.
If we can set up a fluid, malleable framework where memes (an analogue of genes) have free reign in a "virtual" world, a type of "person" could emerge (again, given the right restraints). However, as a friend related in class, the human's biological computer has biological, hard wired limitations (for good reasons from the gene's perspective) to trim and prune, to stifle too much intellectual growth. Machines don't have to have that!
So long as we raise our computers right.
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Frankenstein Writing
For my paper I want to discuss the theme of intellectual blinders and the subsequent atrophy of other mental and emotional capacities. By relating and referencing the story, I'd talk discuss the causes of destructive and obsessive, monomaniacal intellectual focus, how this develops, and it's consequences. I also want to discuss in detail the loss of perspective as a positive feedback system, and what sorts of subjects can push someone down this slippery slope into mental decay. I'm not sure what the tone would be, whether I ever discuss the possible redemption of a character in this state.
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
AH!
I've been burning the candle at both ends and falling behind in my classes and it all manifested itself physically this last night/this morning. I feel awful and anxious and like sleeping all day, and that's the last thing I can do right now.
Yet somehow I won the people's choice award in the memorial project competition. Yay!
Yet somehow I won the people's choice award in the memorial project competition. Yay!
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Mobius
So I want to write a time travel novel.
I love time travel, mostly because it's a difficult problem to solve (obviously a fictional problem, a thought experiment.) I grew up watching Back to the Future religiously, and despite all the comical and endearing loopholes, I was fascinated by the bizarre cause and effect of the time travelers' actions.
The novel I write won't be from the perspective of the time travelers. Usually the narrator goes back in time and sees things unfold differently from their own perspective. I want to write a linear time travel story. We start from day one, and end with the end. This will be challenging, as you'll have future manifestations of familiar characters show up early in the story. Their presence will have to be dramatic yet interesting at the time of reading, and even more interesting later on, when you meet them in "their" time.
More on this later.
I love time travel, mostly because it's a difficult problem to solve (obviously a fictional problem, a thought experiment.) I grew up watching Back to the Future religiously, and despite all the comical and endearing loopholes, I was fascinated by the bizarre cause and effect of the time travelers' actions.
The novel I write won't be from the perspective of the time travelers. Usually the narrator goes back in time and sees things unfold differently from their own perspective. I want to write a linear time travel story. We start from day one, and end with the end. This will be challenging, as you'll have future manifestations of familiar characters show up early in the story. Their presence will have to be dramatic yet interesting at the time of reading, and even more interesting later on, when you meet them in "their" time.
Informational Singularity
All of humanity's knowledge exists upon the head of a needle.
It wasn't always this way. Before the invention of electricity, often attributed to the birth of artificial light, but more importantly to a new landscape of instantatious information dispersal, information had a dimension.
Informational transmission was done manually, over many miles via carriers of whatever sort was available. Unless they were in the room, sending your friend some juicy gossip took time, because it had to traverse space. Information today still traverses space, of course, but it does so so quickly that it happens outside the human scale of events. .05 seconds is a mostly irrelevant time interval; if you get the message in .27 second as opposed to .73 seconds, your decisions and reactions will be virtually unaffected. The point here is that, because the point between information release and capture is so short, it becomes a singularity. A dimension is lost. Your friend used to live across the state, now they live in the same room with a thin wall. All information exists on the same spot, just waiting to be sorted through (which is why google and others are so important, they hone the sorting process of all the information already on your lap, but that's another thing entirely, if not an interesting analog)
I think music today reflects this singularity, literally and in spirit. Literally, in that the fast flying interaction of different cultures makes their cross polination inevitable in the culture's most prolific and creative minds. In spirit, because lots of different information exists in the same piece, despite it's manefestly distant origin. If a dimension is cut out, all of a sudden everything is right on top of everything else. A new design landscape is opened up every time a dimension is removed.
I'm just curious to see what happens to the culture when teleportion ramps up.
It wasn't always this way. Before the invention of electricity, often attributed to the birth of artificial light, but more importantly to a new landscape of instantatious information dispersal, information had a dimension.
Informational transmission was done manually, over many miles via carriers of whatever sort was available. Unless they were in the room, sending your friend some juicy gossip took time, because it had to traverse space. Information today still traverses space, of course, but it does so so quickly that it happens outside the human scale of events. .05 seconds is a mostly irrelevant time interval; if you get the message in .27 second as opposed to .73 seconds, your decisions and reactions will be virtually unaffected. The point here is that, because the point between information release and capture is so short, it becomes a singularity. A dimension is lost. Your friend used to live across the state, now they live in the same room with a thin wall. All information exists on the same spot, just waiting to be sorted through (which is why google and others are so important, they hone the sorting process of all the information already on your lap, but that's another thing entirely, if not an interesting analog)
I think music today reflects this singularity, literally and in spirit. Literally, in that the fast flying interaction of different cultures makes their cross polination inevitable in the culture's most prolific and creative minds. In spirit, because lots of different information exists in the same piece, despite it's manefestly distant origin. If a dimension is cut out, all of a sudden everything is right on top of everything else. A new design landscape is opened up every time a dimension is removed.
I'm just curious to see what happens to the culture when teleportion ramps up.
Monday, June 1, 2009
On futurism
The manifest-list thing really had me sold up until the part where they get all "war is awesome! Let's shoot our friends! Oh, and lets hate on women while we're at it." But the last point was my favorite by far.
I find the manifesto to be a weird blend of Atlas Shrugged and Fight Club. It's like Ayn Rand's writing in that it glorifies technology and capitalism and progress, finding beauty in the sprawling, utilitarian organism of industry. Fight club is more about destroying oneself, tearing things down and reveling in the ruins, inciting revolt and building anew from the wreckage. Basically beating the hell out of each other to feel something concrete and unequivocal and personal.
So often anything man made that isn't art (and often even when it is) it's automatically lumped into the ugly/neutral/does not apply category. A tree or a human hand or a slinking tiger on a branch is seen as beauty par excellence, almost because people didn't make it. A vast train yard with tens of hundreds of tracks, a complicated mesh of wires and cables and lights hug above it is considered an eye sore, or a necessary evil. There's no appeal to aesthetic taste, no ordering or symmetry, etc to make it beautiful, its too bare and functional to be beautiful. Bah! The human hand is more utilitarian than the grimiest coal plant. Every bone and vein and muscle is finely tuned with no appeal to beauty whatsoever. [Good thing too! Or else hands wouldn't be nearly as useful with frilly bows and useless symmetry] Yet no one draws train yards! I think they're neat looking: their fine tuned, crisp clockwork timing, perfectly crafted mechanical connections and human lives on the line at litereally every moment inspires a pretty serious aesthetic buzz. Ugly Shmugly.
I find the manifesto to be a weird blend of Atlas Shrugged and Fight Club. It's like Ayn Rand's writing in that it glorifies technology and capitalism and progress, finding beauty in the sprawling, utilitarian organism of industry. Fight club is more about destroying oneself, tearing things down and reveling in the ruins, inciting revolt and building anew from the wreckage. Basically beating the hell out of each other to feel something concrete and unequivocal and personal.
So often anything man made that isn't art (and often even when it is) it's automatically lumped into the ugly/neutral/does not apply category. A tree or a human hand or a slinking tiger on a branch is seen as beauty par excellence, almost because people didn't make it. A vast train yard with tens of hundreds of tracks, a complicated mesh of wires and cables and lights hug above it is considered an eye sore, or a necessary evil. There's no appeal to aesthetic taste, no ordering or symmetry, etc to make it beautiful, its too bare and functional to be beautiful. Bah! The human hand is more utilitarian than the grimiest coal plant. Every bone and vein and muscle is finely tuned with no appeal to beauty whatsoever. [Good thing too! Or else hands wouldn't be nearly as useful with frilly bows and useless symmetry] Yet no one draws train yards! I think they're neat looking: their fine tuned, crisp clockwork timing, perfectly crafted mechanical connections and human lives on the line at litereally every moment inspires a pretty serious aesthetic buzz. Ugly Shmugly.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Impressionism
From our trip from the MFA, I enjoyed looking at the impressionist paintings the most. It's definitely my favorite style (Monet's Impression of a sunrise has been my desktop background on both monitors for a few months, a little obsessed) and if I ever sat down and learned to paint, it would most closely resemble my own work.
The way an impressionist painting works, the use of color and contrast and intuitively luscious shapes and gradients create an impression of a distinct landscape in the mind. It's an optical illusion. Very little information is provided, and the automatic sense-making mechanisms in the brain fill in all the blanks and information. In Sunrise, the carefully slashed brush strokes are undoubtibly tall ships. Monet didn't paint a boat. He painted the shapes, the impression of boat-ness (with remarkable skill).
http://langabi.name/blog/wp-content/images/blog/optical%20illusion.jpg
In this illusion, the two labeled blocks are the exact same shade of gray. The brain automatically (and mistakenly, as good illusions can do) uses the context to change the way something very concrete is perceived. Impressionism uses these same built in interpolaters [not a word] to do heavy lifting with very little concrete information in the actual painting. But when this mental toolkit is hijacked skillfully, a painting will just look "right." Success!
http://www.webexhibits.org/colorart/monet.html
Here's another neat link to the Sunrise painting (again, obsessed). Play with the sliders and read about it. The saturation filter is really awesome: the sun disappears in greyscale!
This style also has a lot in common with the renders I do for studio. It's more important with a good render to provide an impression of something than to be perfectly exact with every detail. Getting the colors, perspective, shading and lighting all balanced can make something digital look inexplicably real. I still have a long way to go stylisitically, but it's fruitful to think about it in these terms.
The way an impressionist painting works, the use of color and contrast and intuitively luscious shapes and gradients create an impression of a distinct landscape in the mind. It's an optical illusion. Very little information is provided, and the automatic sense-making mechanisms in the brain fill in all the blanks and information. In Sunrise, the carefully slashed brush strokes are undoubtibly tall ships. Monet didn't paint a boat. He painted the shapes, the impression of boat-ness (with remarkable skill).
http://langabi.name/blog/wp-content/images/blog/optical%20illusion.jpg
In this illusion, the two labeled blocks are the exact same shade of gray. The brain automatically (and mistakenly, as good illusions can do) uses the context to change the way something very concrete is perceived. Impressionism uses these same built in interpolaters [not a word] to do heavy lifting with very little concrete information in the actual painting. But when this mental toolkit is hijacked skillfully, a painting will just look "right." Success!
http://www.webexhibits.org/colorart/monet.html
Here's another neat link to the Sunrise painting (again, obsessed). Play with the sliders and read about it. The saturation filter is really awesome: the sun disappears in greyscale!
This style also has a lot in common with the renders I do for studio. It's more important with a good render to provide an impression of something than to be perfectly exact with every detail. Getting the colors, perspective, shading and lighting all balanced can make something digital look inexplicably real. I still have a long way to go stylisitically, but it's fruitful to think about it in these terms.
Friday, May 29, 2009
First entry
This week has been a ridiculous gear shift. Jumping right from commuting to work from home to starting school with an intense project and moving into an apartment with my friends. It's my first time living on my own (dorms don't count in my mind) so it's been a little weird. I feel like a grown up now.
Boring first entry, but I want to see how this works.
Boring first entry, but I want to see how this works.
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