Intellectual Property

Free Culture - Lawrence Lessig

Download it, and read it.

Over and out.

Vacation to-do list:

-Write more to-do lists
-Draw on jeans for an hour a day
-Have at least 4 small watercolors done
-Start my novel/story/thing
-Learn a few sexy songs on the piano
-100 pushups, 50 pullups, and 50 leg lifts per day
-Start my render/sketchup packet

I have a ridiculous life and I may not live to see 30.

Over and out.

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.

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.

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.

Changy things.

I can't imagine a past world where things aren't as transient as they are now.

LONG GOD DAMNED ENTRY

Ok, so, finally a longer post, now that I'm not feeling like a total wastoid, allthefreakintime.
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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.
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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!
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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.
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Holy crap, this is nearly a 4 page paper double-spaced.
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OH multiple dimensions. A system branches into a new dimension when it references itself.
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I find I have a lot more to write about when I don't have a deadline. Weird!

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.