Futurism: Avoid Becoming Egregiously Electronically Eggheadish or Face Catastrophic Loss of Control

Chapter 5 of Back to My Future: My Life and Times at Purdue University

Two four six eight time to differentiate. D to the x, dx/dy d to the y/dy. Three point one four one five nine. Cosine, tangent, inverse sine add an asymptotic line that’s the egghead battle cry. (Modified Northwestern chant from the 1980s.)

Yes, the number crunchers of the world – the software/app creators who simulate, model, and devilishly devise cool-until-they’re-not financial derivatives, along with the World of Warcraft – do rule the world. We now love them – “hey, I can socialize with this cool plastic holding LED box in my palm” – whereas, just thirty years prior, we made John Hughes-like films that poked fun, then hugged them for being, “our strange, little, geeky friend.”

Coming back to a campus loaded with technocratic guys and gals-in-training (given my old major as an engineer), to be a liberal artsy fartsy is a lesson in humility. (Another lesson – yep, get those too much.) The cool people used to be easily defined via the American ideal sold Eskimo-style via modern mass media: the leggy blonde that just needs a rubber band for the hair, and she’s good; the V-shaped guy with abs of steel created with iron, calisthenics, and huge scoops of Creatine. I get that. Or, I got that, as is the case.

Nerds, now, not so much.

Now, in my mid-life, all these Java-scripting, data mining, Flash-and-beyond gurus are awfully full of themselves. The world works to their skills, and suddenly, I’m redundant in actions and conversations. (An Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) would put things back to a more manageable level…like 1600.) There is this tendency to come at you (the nerds’ approach to friendship): hey, do you know this programming language or how to hack (or reengineer) this application? You don’t, well you are not worthy of my nanoseconds. Because I don’t build apps or do apps, or buy every type of hand-held, my- world-is-complete tool, I must be uncool, oddly ancient, and seen as an artifact of a bygone time.

Figures.

Just when I finally get to the point of an odd, trial-by-fire assuredness in self, I am now considered solely a sinusoidal function of my technological knowledge and consumerism acquisition – which, if you knew my life recently – one would understand mere survival was a 1,000 terabytes more important that iPoding, iPhoning, and iPading my way back to the lower-middle rung of the American social ladder. Such is the globalized nature of these ones and zeroes – they control every transaction, interaction, transportation, and social act humanity seems to engage in daily.

And here I come back to university for history, political science, economics, and management (yes, some tech stuff in there) and I’ll-be-damned if the world has not gone and got itself into a harried and frenetic rush to be more Neo, Johnny Mnemonic, Keanu Reeves-like. Not exactly the category I’d take for 1,000, Alex. The majority may deem this the primrose path; I deem it the course to devolving into very wooden, two-dimensional, on/off, as-the-circuit-board- decides-based-on-the-program people. You are not ‘the one’, people.

Tell me: what happens when this machine awakens? Or if not that, what if electricity/electronics goes awry? How about making all that power for 9 or 12 billion inhabitants, or more? Do you like being able to do things for yourself – consider it a right – then look out, that will be changing in the apps-for-all-tasks future. Facebook and Google are stepping stones. Likely as not, we are two to two-to-the-nth power generations away from an Alpha-to-Epsilon Brave New World. I do not know when, but 2540 is not as far from now as it seems. (Just as Huxley wrote in 1932…about a future that is closer to today than it was in his generation. Exponential growth of the ghost in the machine, I deduce.)

By now, my poking-fun-at-nerds to digressing-satirical-rant may seem at odds in the halls of ‘higher learning’, but it reflects the purposes we are fueling are not as wondrous as those that make them daily come together think. They are flawed. Nerds take note. While all the cool stuff does amused, it is the financial models, the personality testing/modifications, the medicines that contort behaviors from age six, the genetically-modified food, the technology-dependent structure of society that will shudder one day to a halt, as we have invested too much faith in the machines, the codes, the flickering of tubes, the diodes, and the 10,000-page equation someone (or a team of brilliance) worked really hard on, but forgot the necessary backdoor, thus the butterfly cum epic tsunami.

It won’t happen in my lifetime, I regret to inform.

But nothing happens quite in the time frame one projects.

Avoid becoming too tied to these new systems. Somehow, the Earth got along pretty well for 99.999999999% of its existence without a diode, transistor, or machine code to tap into for instructions. The instructions we petty humans were given (and not followed) worked well when man played with poo, worshiped all manners of beast and bright star, to a conclusion that was never deterministic. Not even realistic – given their faith-based technology.

What I am saying is: I wish for my good ol’ simplistic days, too.

Just that line does not suit the technocrats, computer scientists, and doctors of electrical mayhem very well.

They always need more data…

Star Trek: The New Frontier, the New Franchise

Last night, Star Trek opened in Lansing, IL to a sparse crowd. I mean sparse...like 25 people. However, the area is not known for being receptive to this sort of movie.

J.J. Abrams has taken over the Enterprise (NCC-1701) and the franchise that is Star Trek. With that weighty responsibility (for the Trekkies) Abrams exploits the one fundamental ingredient in Sci-Fi that is the most malleable to all these adeventures: Time.

Copious amounts of stories can be written, and undone, with the modification of the space-time line. Change of events, change of results. Like rolling a 1,000,000 sided dice to get a different outcome.

The Enterprise crew is everyone from the original series launched in the 1960s. This is an origin story, at first, but soon sets up the future events for the new director of the course of the Enterprise's adventures.

Cast

John Cho as Hikaru Sulu
Ben Cross as Sarek
Bruce Greenwood as Capt. Christopher Pike
Simon Pegg as Scotty
Chris Pine as James T. Kirk
Zachary Quinto as a young Spock
Winona Ryder as Amanda Grayson
Zoe Saldana as Nyota Uhura
Karl Urban as Dr. Leonard ‘Bones’ McCoy
Anton Yelchin as Pavel Chekov
Eric Bana as villian Nero
Leonard Nimoy as Old Spock

Now, everything can be seen as far-fetched and difficult to understand in this origination story line. Roger Ebert, not always in his right mind, was playing his critiquing games on this classic. Which is always why it is annoying to please critics. They pick. They look for gaffs. They conjecture about what is wrong instead of what is RIGHT.

The cast pulled off an admirable job in framing this close enough to the 1960s characters while adding in the small amount of personal lives and new ticks that can be explored and elaborated on in future films.

And that is what I liked.

Technology is catching up to the Star Trek dream. Even the gritty scenes of the inside of the Enterprise seem a bit out of step with what is suppose to be happening in the 23rd century.

But it is the adventure of movies that makes a place like a Star Trek movie go where no movie has gone before...we hope.

R.I.P. : Netscape goes to The Tech Great Beyond

Netscape is officially a dead end as a technology platform, as it will no longer be supported. (Picture above is from blog.wired.com.) I came into knowledge of the internet via Netscape and Mosaic browsers. (Picture below left is from browsersheritage.com.)
In 1993, while at Purdue University, I spent an inordinate amount of time in Grissom Hall doing web searches on Mosaic, an NCSA platform, while learning little or no code, but downloading alot of worthless information. "Back in the day", my account limit on this information to store on the local university server was like 10-20MB. I, personally, didn't own a 386 or 486 Intel at 25-75 MHZ, nor could I get a baude rate above 9600 KB/sec. But it was fun, nonetheless.

I chatted often with a college girl, Jennifer Hollingsworth, who went to Lebanon Valley College in Pennsylvania in 1995 while in that same Grissom computer lab. We'd kill hours of time, talking about school (more her schooling than mine), discussing politics (which I knew nothing of) or relationships (ours, friends or families.) Probably for 3+ months, we racked up close to 250 hours of chat room time, all for free. The internet was good.
(Though this relationship ended over whether I would visit her in Pennsylvania - I would have, but I was broke - and the fact she pulled a 2.0 in that semester, honors student, mind you, thus pissing her family off to undoubtedly no end. She cut me off before I could either apologize appropriately or fix what I fucked up...pardon the language.)

While I was screwing the pooch of on-line relationships, Netscape took over from Mosaic as the browser software of choice, in my opinion, during the mid-to-late 1990's. But that was soon to be a thing of the past as Internet Explorer took over dominance, thanks to good ole Microsoft.

As blog.wired.com suggests:

Netscape released its browser’s source code and created the Mozilla project in
1998. AOL then acquired Netscape in 1999. Recognizing that
Netscape got some things right and others wrong, Blake Ross and some of his
developer friends branched off to create Firefox, which for all
practical purposes is the current incarnation of Netscape. Many believe the original Netscape died with the AOL purchase. Since then, the web
browser scene has been rife with change — Mozilla gave way to the leaner, faster
Firefox and Apple developed its own Safari browser — and Netscape’s browser has
been rendered largely irrelevant. Indeed, as AOL's director of the Netscape brand Tom Drapeau points out, his team has failed to put a dent in IE’s dominance, and the latest release of the Netscape browser is simply “a skinned version of Firefox with a few extensions.”

I didn't give way to Internet Explorer - using Netscape until probably 2000-1 - but I was different anyways: I didn't own my very own computer until 2001. (My aunt bought one in 1999, but never used it, never knew how, so, I generally kept it updated with software or moved my files via the old 1.3 MB disks...yikes!)

I would also go to Kinko's to do my interneting then. (I was making good money, then, but not thinking very smart - except that a Kinko's girl would usually let me work over Kinko's for nearly no charge.) She was a very nice person - but unavailable, in that sense.

AOL hadn't been a dial-up of choice until I got that 1st computer in January 2001. (I figured those handy drink coasters (those disks) had to have something on them, so, why not?) After only 3 months, I wasn't interested in AOL anymore. I did Compuserve for awhile (after a stint in the Westville Hilton) using, "AOLSUCKS" as my password.

AOL /Time Warner deal (picture from webcomicbattle.com) has turned into the biggest joke. The relevancy of both corporations has diminished to the point that I really don't know what either one (as if they are seperate) is doing.. this after being one of the largest mergers in American history. (And, at the time, the dot.com bubble had not burst.)

Meanwhile, Netscape, the initiator of this story has gone to moth balls. 14 years it took to go from new kid, to industry leader, to struggling competitor to bad platform, to defunct/obsolete program.

This mirrors often how I feel: in 1993, life was looking better. I was young, impressionable, quick to act, and had ideas for the future. After graduation in 1996, my path seemed set to go - I could make some hey, drive towards new heights, maybe innovate something. By 2001, the wheels were tettering on a precipice of legal malaise. And, in 2008, I feel quite defunct and outdated.

We might all have to die - figuratively - a 1,000 deaths before we get it right. As browsers now are nothing more than 1st generation access points to others in the world. As all the applications on Iphones, blackberries and Steve Jobs-only-knows-what-else come to fruition, we see things get replaced, get outdated or wither away in this tech world. (Ms. Pacman, Nintendo box, Atari 2600 for pictured examples.)

To go beyond, as we approach 2012, the Mayan's end of celestial time, we might see the future as not so bright.

The intrusions into people's lives are becoming more pronounced, more impassioned by a less-than-enlighted society that hasn't understood technology from the git go. The governments learn from people they wouldn't hire 25 years ago - even though these nerds could hack their mainframes, and essentially disrupt commerce, the most important aspect of technology today, money flow, in the time it took most of the nerd herd to masturbate over some floozy they can't get nanoseconds from. This manipulatory fact has hastened the demise of individual freedoms, just ask your government, if you can.

The death of one technology or platform only gives rise to another with faster transistors, more complex algorithms and more uses by us, the consumer, but less understanding, by us, the controlled. The entertainment value alone made it that easy; seeing what the TV has done, the computer became like an uber cocaine to people without personal connections. Governments caught on, and we serve them, now, more than ever.

Hopefully, this tour down my memory lane, through the technology life cycle will remind you that you are the most advanced system ever developed - so don't be a slave to a box constructed by others, like you. Be your own system - and update, revamp and design for the future. Or you'll likely be another defunct person walking around.

KEEP IT FRESH TO DEATH!!!

I do, Robot: Marriage, Sex and the slippery slope

I read Wonderland or Not's post on Robot Marriage and looked at a MSNBC and LiveScience article on it. To me it is an inevitability that comes with the course of our society. The slippery slope has long been greased and readily available by the ever failing partnerships many have.

I know this comment will strike a discordant note, but feminism and the infantilization of men has paved a way for poor relationships. After WWII, the rate of divorce climbed to stratospheric heights, and between bad marriages, selfishness and the broken homes, well, we might as well GO ROBOT.






The simple reasons this could work:

1. People that are unsuccessful in human relationships for a wide variety of reasons (appearance, shyness, poor interactions, poor lovers or instability.)


2. People that utilize technology in a vast array of ways to fulfill their needs (and sex is a need for many that I've stumbled upon in life.)


3. An alternative to socially unacceptable behavior ( you name them in your head...prostitution seems to be a bugaboo amongst people of faith.)


4. Robots could provide stimulation and gratification that simply isn't available from a person. (And the criteria most would have could be fulfilled via a robot.)

The rest of this is a modified comment of mine from Wonderlandornot.
When it comes down to it, we all have desires to act or choose not to act on. If there is a machine (or blow up) that provides a release and somehow satiates our desires, then it is a worthy enough path.
Artificial means are becoming the status quo in America/World society. Drugs to balance us, cosmetic operations to mold us and machines to do whatever we need them TO DO. Why would sex & companionship be ANY different?
Use Pills for sexual dysfunction.
Use Pills to "make us happy."
Use Computers to do our ‘mundane’ calculations. (Can any of you do a multi-linear regression or Laplace transform without it –in 60 seconds?)
Use all these PDAs to communicate, like, "how you your so not into him/her." How much of your current 'social interaction' now is on a keyboard or a video link? And that’s pretty impersonal, don’t you think?

DNA experiments above ALL our heads. (Clone me up, Scotty!)
We started this slippery slope with test tube babies, genetic mapping and other enhancements to our physical beings. This is just another avenue of exploration...one we've thought about for many, many years, going back to Greek Antiquity.

No, this isn’t what we should be doing - but as time marches on, these things are an inevitability… 20+ years ago, if you piddled with a computer TOO much, you were a geek, loner and a loser. Now all the “cool” people are computer savvy. Plenty of ignorant people (people you would never talk to normally) have plenty of technology in their hands that they avoided like a plague not too many years prior.

Hence, when a functional apparatus for partnership comes out, and people mock, deride or sneer at its usage (and permanent linkage to it), we will soon enough find that this ROBOT will become accepted as people eventually acknowledge it useful and wondrous nature. (And since the first users will be very comfortable with tech, it isn’t like they would be cheating on humanity that much…)

Yet, every prior generation loses something to tech.

I’ve met quite a few people that feel sex is a mundane task too. They’re usually married. So why not have it completed by something, a robot, that won’t piss you off if you suck literally and figuratively at it?

And no, I haven’t “blown up any date”......yet.

The Five B's of my female Robot:
Brains. This will be the easiest initially to satisfy. Obviously programming them with a compedium of knowledge is a cake walk. But the ability to facimilate a subtle and engaging personality will be the real trick.
Bible. Not in the traditional sense. But the do good unto others. Goes to the Isaac Asimov three laws of Robots. However, if you Robot partner "felt" abused, then shouldn't be able to abandon you?
Body. Both sexes want the penultimate in this area. Good side: they will always be in the same beautiful shape. Bad side: you won't.
Beauty. Inner beauty will be the hard part. You don't want a bore - else you'd go back to humans. Outer beauty: damn this could be made even better if the robot could morph into a variety of aesthetically-pleasing faces and skin tones.
Brawn. What's a robot if it can't do a whole lot more than you can? Like fix a futuristic car, or redo your house in a couple of weeks. These little tasks would be a snap for my robot honey.

I DO ROBOT.

It's been awhile since I could hold my head up high

I went away from this blog site for some crazy reason. Being from usage the best one I have used. As per usual, no one came to visit that I am aware of. The baseball book post likely had a great deal to do with it.

My other blog - JP's GM Fantastic - is a Yahoo account that lacks the ability to do fancy blog things. Really , Yahoo has missed the boat and it reflects in their stock price lately and their profits. I was dedicated to Yahoo since 1995-96. Yes, that long. I've had the same email since 1998. And that reflects a commitment to them. But they haven't developed with the times. They forged ahead badly in the Website/Advertising arena, forgotten how to move forward with better products, and became lazy in establishing better content. Lack of creativity and access to latest web software has made Yahoo a fraud on the Internet.

I'm no technical expert, but it is easy to see they dropped the ball. Google has done innovative things, taken risks (some really legally unhealthy) but they have amassed a huge following. I took the Apple side (Yahoo) in the fight. (Though Apple has moved ahead.)

I'm switching over to the other side.