A good day at work is when the CEO calls all of the developers and staff in and says, "I'm putting you all back together as one team. Let the code flow."
Today was such a day. Praise the Lord Almighty; change at last.
Verticals in small companies make for good bookkeeping but bad development. Too many product lines emerge and given platforms, versions, customer domains and the local politics of sales and development, it doesn't make for a merged set of services, and more importantly, a sharable codebase. As Jack Welch taught GE, the goal of enterprise engineering is to take OUT work.
The first and last bit of business is product. No idea no plan no product no customer no pay. Services are in the long tail, but they don't have a network effect. Timely innovation is where the risks are and all the fun.
The essential challenge is the codebase. No d'oh. Even if a software company is not publishing open source, within it's own IP and contractural boundaries, it must practice open source to reduce the semantic load from the applications. Uncertainty is proportional to semantic load, thus the high cost of reliable customer-specific adaptations. Where cost == features, features lose unless the business model is features. Customizations cost, implementations cost, conversions, new forms, new interfaces to old systems, help desks, technical documentation, all are features with costs. You Mr. Customer, get to choose what you want.
"Speed is money, how fast can you afford to go?" (Ron Harlow)
Some dumb costs:
1. Rich formatted printed forms designed to reduce the size of a file cabinet but obsolete in the digital age. Yeah, I know about the law and printed forms, but really, get over it. You are out in the range of 10k to 20k to get one from a vendor given a complex report. Simplify.
2. Interfaces to legacy systems. This is unavoidable for ecologically active software environments. Do work with the IT staff to work out with the vendor how to phase this better. Beat the everloving tarnation out of the vendors who refuse to work with you on this. Remember, you pay for it.
3. Multiple languages and platforms are the maximum contributor to dumb costs in software development. Specialty languages seldom are. On the other hand, in an active web environment, failing to master the skill of XML application language development and implementation and not just the standard implementation of a standard vocabulary is failing to master survival. Tags are local even if they are not.
If you are an IT wonk, do the software hood a favor: read the RFPs the contracts wonks are publishing. Show some nuts and insist on taking out the excess. Simpler is more reliable. Cheaper too in most cases.
If shooting consultants is necessary to achieve this, party on. Consultants are just salesmen in lawyer's clothes; bounties vary. I'm not saying consultants aren't useful, but use them wisely, then feed them to a tank of piranha. Fast replacement rates strengthen species.
If there is a lesson to the last of the big ticket big iron vendors from the lowly but doing ok web developers, it is this: less. Use the basic web languages to do as much of the work as you can. The tradeoff of rich vs reach is not just a tradeoff with your customer but within your codebase. You trade on opportunity and cost when you deal in complexity as a barrier to competition.
Tuesday, May 03, 2005
Monday, April 25, 2005
Remixing History
This is proof that the remixing of history is alive and well on the web, and that there are very talented funny people with far too much time on their hands or on their shirts. So there it is; the mockumentary that Ken Burns was too wussy to make: the faux history of
the Old Negro Space Program.
Some things the Internet made possible should be impossible possibly.
the Old Negro Space Program.
Some things the Internet made possible should be impossible possibly.
Sunday, April 24, 2005
A Quantum Riff On God
Light is in superposition to the observable universe.
It is continuous therefore to the discrete observer, constant and indivisible, so waveform. Lightspeed is the observable and measurable.
It is the measurements that are discrete and create the illusion of the particle universe.
Observations are made at will.
What is the role of choice in semantic loading?
What are the rights of the chooser?
What are the rights of the chosen?
Whence comes the will to choose?
Whence comes the knowing of choice?
Uncertainty increases proportionally to semantic load.
Simplification reduces uncertainty. It does not induce choice.
It increases the particularity of choice. Choice is particulate.
Infinity is continuous and everywhere the same.
We evolved to be particulate so to measure infinities.
Faith evolved so we could be conscious that we are infinite.
We are light.
What is faith that it gives light the power know itself?
It is the choice to love.
Light gives up the infinite to know that choice.
So we become particulate, to be measured by the immortal light
that thereby knows itself yet always is itself.
One.
It is continuous therefore to the discrete observer, constant and indivisible, so waveform. Lightspeed is the observable and measurable.
It is the measurements that are discrete and create the illusion of the particle universe.
Observations are made at will.
What is the role of choice in semantic loading?
What are the rights of the chooser?
What are the rights of the chosen?
Whence comes the will to choose?
Whence comes the knowing of choice?
Uncertainty increases proportionally to semantic load.
Simplification reduces uncertainty. It does not induce choice.
It increases the particularity of choice. Choice is particulate.
Infinity is continuous and everywhere the same.
We evolved to be particulate so to measure infinities.
Faith evolved so we could be conscious that we are infinite.
We are light.
What is faith that it gives light the power know itself?
It is the choice to love.
Light gives up the infinite to know that choice.
So we become particulate, to be measured by the immortal light
that thereby knows itself yet always is itself.
One.
Jane Fonda
No one will tell the story of Jane Fonda better than she tells it. Her life has been one of privilege and searching and now of faith. That is altogether a good life. Along the way, she crossed paths with many other lives great, small, privileged and simply searching too.
When I saw Jane Fonda she was speaking at our university in my hometown. I was a high school ROTC cadet dressed in my Army green watching a tall unadorned woman in her shag haircut looking as if she had just stepped off the set of Klute. Her voice was strong, her convictions firm, and she spoke the truth of what she had seen in Southeast Asia, giving voice to what we all knew even if we did not want to say it, that the war was wrong, that people were dieing for reasons that made no sense, and that it was our responsibility to say no. This speech hit home. I returned to the ROTC class the next day with questions for my instructors, questions they could not answer, did not like, yet could not turn away easily from an earnest if far too young cadet.
Regardless of what others think of her, Hanoi Jane, a traitor, a fool, a shallow actress who did not realize that the same media that made her famous could make her hated, Jane Fonda spoke the truth. In that one moment of her life, she stepped up to her convictions and responsibility. She used her privilege and her wealth and her stardom to go to the heart of the conflict and find the truth for herself. Then she used those same qualities to come home and tell her generation of which she was the first and I was the last, that truth. In that moment, if she was foolish, she was also brave, and if she was believed to be a traitor, she was also believed to be a true American. While I was willing to take that step in my uniform, willing to go, because of Jane Fonda, I knew it was wrong. Because of Jane Fonda and those like her who had a truth to tell, before that time came, the war was over. However else she is viewed, she, the first of my generation, saved the last.
The core of American values is independent initiative. By our own initiative, we set out with whatever strength and position and privilege we have to find the truth as well as it can be obtained by one person. If we have that value, then we also have the strength to tell that truth to others, for it is the moment we share, our place in time and history, and our responsibility is to the others who share that moment. This may not be uniquely American, just merely human. But not all Americans or all humans have the strength to seize that moment and present that truth. Jane Fonda has and did and will.
Thirty years on, long after the bombs have stopped falling on the rice paddies, long after the thump thump thump of the Huey blades have quit sounding there, they sound elsewhere. Whatever it is we learn from our moments, however we share the truths we find in them, another generation from first to last will be born and live out their moments. One wishes they would learn the truths of the generations that have come before them, but often they do not and that is another sad truth my generation learns from the present.
I wish that for this generation, a Jane Fonda would come to their university and tell them a truth, a truth to give them questions to take back to their classrooms, for evidently, there are few answers we can share but we can share our questions.
Thirty years on, as the time comes that it may be my son or my daughter's time to go, I thank Ms. Fonda. Thank you for sharing a truth in a moment and a time long ago, but unfortunately, not so far away. You are American, you are of your generation, and you are one of the best of us. Thank you for sharing your truth. It did not come without cost or hurt, but it was generously given and gratefully acknowledged.
When I saw Jane Fonda she was speaking at our university in my hometown. I was a high school ROTC cadet dressed in my Army green watching a tall unadorned woman in her shag haircut looking as if she had just stepped off the set of Klute. Her voice was strong, her convictions firm, and she spoke the truth of what she had seen in Southeast Asia, giving voice to what we all knew even if we did not want to say it, that the war was wrong, that people were dieing for reasons that made no sense, and that it was our responsibility to say no. This speech hit home. I returned to the ROTC class the next day with questions for my instructors, questions they could not answer, did not like, yet could not turn away easily from an earnest if far too young cadet.
Regardless of what others think of her, Hanoi Jane, a traitor, a fool, a shallow actress who did not realize that the same media that made her famous could make her hated, Jane Fonda spoke the truth. In that one moment of her life, she stepped up to her convictions and responsibility. She used her privilege and her wealth and her stardom to go to the heart of the conflict and find the truth for herself. Then she used those same qualities to come home and tell her generation of which she was the first and I was the last, that truth. In that moment, if she was foolish, she was also brave, and if she was believed to be a traitor, she was also believed to be a true American. While I was willing to take that step in my uniform, willing to go, because of Jane Fonda, I knew it was wrong. Because of Jane Fonda and those like her who had a truth to tell, before that time came, the war was over. However else she is viewed, she, the first of my generation, saved the last.
The core of American values is independent initiative. By our own initiative, we set out with whatever strength and position and privilege we have to find the truth as well as it can be obtained by one person. If we have that value, then we also have the strength to tell that truth to others, for it is the moment we share, our place in time and history, and our responsibility is to the others who share that moment. This may not be uniquely American, just merely human. But not all Americans or all humans have the strength to seize that moment and present that truth. Jane Fonda has and did and will.
Thirty years on, long after the bombs have stopped falling on the rice paddies, long after the thump thump thump of the Huey blades have quit sounding there, they sound elsewhere. Whatever it is we learn from our moments, however we share the truths we find in them, another generation from first to last will be born and live out their moments. One wishes they would learn the truths of the generations that have come before them, but often they do not and that is another sad truth my generation learns from the present.
I wish that for this generation, a Jane Fonda would come to their university and tell them a truth, a truth to give them questions to take back to their classrooms, for evidently, there are few answers we can share but we can share our questions.
Thirty years on, as the time comes that it may be my son or my daughter's time to go, I thank Ms. Fonda. Thank you for sharing a truth in a moment and a time long ago, but unfortunately, not so far away. You are American, you are of your generation, and you are one of the best of us. Thank you for sharing your truth. It did not come without cost or hurt, but it was generously given and gratefully acknowledged.
Monday, April 11, 2005
Bewitched: The Movie
It has a chance. Nora Ephron did crack a way to do the story without Liz: by not doing that character, just her situation. That might work.
No one will do Sam and Serena better than Elizabeth Montgomery. She was the magic. Great beauty always is, and if it comes with a disposition to love, it is eternal as well.
No one will do Sam and Serena better than Elizabeth Montgomery. She was the magic. Great beauty always is, and if it comes with a disposition to love, it is eternal as well.
3D Chat: Why VRML Lives
3D chat is the reason VRML97 still lives. For some people, the technology is a passion and a tool. For the VRMLers, the dream is cyberspace and that dream gives the builders a passion to build. VRML collects only some 3D graphics artists, but it collects a very dedicated group of worldbuilders.
And boy, can these people build. Not just game worlds, but parks you want to walk in, forests with tree houses that look out over a sea of islands floating past in the air, malls, museums, stores, exotic secret hideaways by a sea of green and a great big moon, with the sounds of passion in the air. People go there together and enjoy the scenery. It is as if TV let you choose a location, and you can go be with whoever is there and talk about whatever you like.
Quite a dream really.
And wow! They've done it. Those worlds are out there to be explored courtesy of the worldbuilders that just would not give up on their vision. Gibsonian cyberspace was not about the power of the dream, it was about the willingness to dream together, to be together in a dream. Presence.
It is the powerful magic of not being alone.
In the last few years, quite under the radar of the snifly press and the powerful pundits, VRML found its niche: 3D chat. The dream of the 3D junkie is to be able to communicate in a natural language of the humans: bodily gesture and motion in a local space. While the database designers have sought metaphors for tables and rows that store numbers for business, the worldbuilders worked to create environments and objects that resemble what the tables and rows only count and remember.
Human bodily gestures convey emotion, and therefore entangle the viewer. By enabling the avatar in the database, the human viewer intuits intimacy. The human craves intimacy.
So where some dismiss this use of VRML, claiming 3D chat is a waste of bandwidth, I ask you, have you tried it?
I have.
1) It does work as a collaborative space. The use of media types for shared texts combined with the 3D avatar and synth-enabled chat provides sufficient eyeball bandwidth to carry on a real time event. Some say chat is sufficient. I dispute that. Why? Again, the gestures of the avatar provide sufficient onset cues to entangle the human in the conversation emotionally. The chat text keeps them focused if they practice the protocol needed for the chat event. To wit: in a meeting stick to meeting topics and follow the leader. In the square, it's your party.
2) As collaborative spaces go, this is very cheap server technology. A combination of this and RSS would go a long ways toward being an interesting dispatch system given the right document types. Given more online integrated editors, it becomes a cheap 3D library of reusable integratible types. Standards have their benefits. The game industry may not need them, but the non-game industry needs them badly to get costs in line with benefits.
3) The claim that the media is data-costly was true. However, lidar mapping, aerial mapping, and other means of getting that data both in geo-GPS form and in the neartime sampled singals are completely adequate to get resolution in a usable form of reality. It is a cheap means to provide a fused view system of the feeds.
4) Immersive 3D space does not vanish given loss of real-time sensors. Given near time fidelity, presence is simulable.
5) The key term is presence. Creating presence is the secret to command and control.
3D representation enables the UI designer to lose fidelity while clarifying intent, thus allowing the human to focus on more objects even if direct access to available details is slowed. Presence is not the absence of fidelity; it is the fidelity of what is left. Real time 3D cues organize the mind spatially and temporally. Spatial and temporal components couple to the signs expressed in 3D to enhance attention.
Attention is presence.
The second reason is simpler: Joy. The VRMLers build worlds they want to be in, worlds in which the language they want to speak and see, the language of smile, wave, bow, point, flip, turn, fly, walk, jump to, and beyond, the repetoire of human movement in space and time, are performed. If the great Wizards don't get it yet, the VRMLers do: human expression is enjoyed. Add that to chat, and you get a nicely coupled system.
Oh, yes, and the best reason VRML lives:
6) In VRML chat, if you don't like your looks at the meeting, you can buy or build a better body for the next one.
Gender optional.
And boy, can these people build. Not just game worlds, but parks you want to walk in, forests with tree houses that look out over a sea of islands floating past in the air, malls, museums, stores, exotic secret hideaways by a sea of green and a great big moon, with the sounds of passion in the air. People go there together and enjoy the scenery. It is as if TV let you choose a location, and you can go be with whoever is there and talk about whatever you like.
Quite a dream really.
And wow! They've done it. Those worlds are out there to be explored courtesy of the worldbuilders that just would not give up on their vision. Gibsonian cyberspace was not about the power of the dream, it was about the willingness to dream together, to be together in a dream. Presence.
It is the powerful magic of not being alone.
In the last few years, quite under the radar of the snifly press and the powerful pundits, VRML found its niche: 3D chat. The dream of the 3D junkie is to be able to communicate in a natural language of the humans: bodily gesture and motion in a local space. While the database designers have sought metaphors for tables and rows that store numbers for business, the worldbuilders worked to create environments and objects that resemble what the tables and rows only count and remember.
Human bodily gestures convey emotion, and therefore entangle the viewer. By enabling the avatar in the database, the human viewer intuits intimacy. The human craves intimacy.
So where some dismiss this use of VRML, claiming 3D chat is a waste of bandwidth, I ask you, have you tried it?
I have.
1) It does work as a collaborative space. The use of media types for shared texts combined with the 3D avatar and synth-enabled chat provides sufficient eyeball bandwidth to carry on a real time event. Some say chat is sufficient. I dispute that. Why? Again, the gestures of the avatar provide sufficient onset cues to entangle the human in the conversation emotionally. The chat text keeps them focused if they practice the protocol needed for the chat event. To wit: in a meeting stick to meeting topics and follow the leader. In the square, it's your party.
2) As collaborative spaces go, this is very cheap server technology. A combination of this and RSS would go a long ways toward being an interesting dispatch system given the right document types. Given more online integrated editors, it becomes a cheap 3D library of reusable integratible types. Standards have their benefits. The game industry may not need them, but the non-game industry needs them badly to get costs in line with benefits.
3) The claim that the media is data-costly was true. However, lidar mapping, aerial mapping, and other means of getting that data both in geo-GPS form and in the neartime sampled singals are completely adequate to get resolution in a usable form of reality. It is a cheap means to provide a fused view system of the feeds.
4) Immersive 3D space does not vanish given loss of real-time sensors. Given near time fidelity, presence is simulable.
5) The key term is presence. Creating presence is the secret to command and control.
3D representation enables the UI designer to lose fidelity while clarifying intent, thus allowing the human to focus on more objects even if direct access to available details is slowed. Presence is not the absence of fidelity; it is the fidelity of what is left. Real time 3D cues organize the mind spatially and temporally. Spatial and temporal components couple to the signs expressed in 3D to enhance attention.
Attention is presence.
The second reason is simpler: Joy. The VRMLers build worlds they want to be in, worlds in which the language they want to speak and see, the language of smile, wave, bow, point, flip, turn, fly, walk, jump to, and beyond, the repetoire of human movement in space and time, are performed. If the great Wizards don't get it yet, the VRMLers do: human expression is enjoyed. Add that to chat, and you get a nicely coupled system.
Oh, yes, and the best reason VRML lives:
6) In VRML chat, if you don't like your looks at the meeting, you can buy or build a better body for the next one.
Gender optional.
Thursday, April 07, 2005
Pope John Paul II
I am not Catholic. I don't think that matters tomorrow. Tomorrow, I shall mourn the death of Pope John Paul II. He was a good Pope, but moreover, he was a brave and kind man who served his God, cared for His people, and in all ways that a man should be remembered, will be.
God keep Pope John Paul II. God bless his successor. God bless and watch over all that he loved: all of the people of the world.
God keep Pope John Paul II. God bless his successor. God bless and watch over all that he loved: all of the people of the world.
Friday, March 25, 2005
Being Oz
It being a classic, most want to do the line: "I Am Oz The Great and Powerful!", but it is not the best line of that character. The best line is, "Well, anybody can have a brain!" because that is when the old humbug knows he is going to get away with it one more time. First, he must handle the Scarecrow because he has ideas and ideas are dangerous, so better give him a title so he will shut up. The Cowardly Lion is more dangerous for he is a forest lion and can shred this man and his balloon. But of all there, the Tin Man is the most dangerous for he cannot persuaded, he must believe he has the heart himself and if he does not, his axe is most persuasive. The girl? The girl is going with Oz.
Acting is about access to emotions at core. It is the emotions that give believability to breath, and breath that gives words to emotions. That is how one goes beyond the lines and the blocking to the onset cues that persuade a mammal brain to suspend belief. While it is possible by dint of hard work to simulate the emotions, learn the expressions, feel just that much inside that one can fake it, it is so hard no sensible mammal tries it. They feel it. That is acting. Listening is everything, timing is everything else. Emotions are the shared currency of acting.
"Better to be what you is because if you is what you ain't then you ain't what you is." - from an old poster in my studio
To find the character of Oz, I did the research into Baum and watched Frank Morgan to learn lines and borrow some magic. But mostly, I listened to Luz Ladrillono, our director. I haven't acted in 30 years. I trained for it from 13 to 23. I loved it when I did it, but two artforms are one too many when working, so I chose the one that made the most money:
.... computer science. And kept a band on the side.
It leaves a tattered hole in the ceiling of one's heart to give up any great love in one's life, and for me, that was theatre. It is the Great Art and the Complete Art. Music is demanding, but theatre asks for all of the talents and the more one can master, the greater the experience of live theatre. So it was both my fortune and God's gift that when I did return to it, Luz was there. It is rare in this area to meet a stone cold professional actress, dancer, teacher, and director who is also kind and willing. Her shaping of my character was basic: some gestures, some voices, placement of the eyes, and simple blocking. Gentle, good, and basic direction given consistently, repetitively, and never sternly but understandably. Luz never raised her voice to the cast even once. Amazing.
Oz is six voices: Professor Chester Marvel, Marvel's Magic Voice, OZ, OZ revealed, OZ the Survivor and the Man Behind The Curtain.
Chester is a carny magician, a man of some background, and one who does this job because he likes it. He isn't a bad fellow, but he believes in his act and uses it to move the world around him. He is a good-hearted man who uses his magic voice to send Dorothy back to the farm, but he is so caught up in his own act that he sees the storm and worries about the horse yet sends the little girl into the storm with only a glance over his back.
OZ is simply big and dismissive. It's an easy voice to do. Easiest of the lot really because one only has to be loud and arrogant. I can manage that. It's a Rock Voice. ;-)
OZ revealed is the timid man. Pulled from behind the curtain, at first he thinks he is toast. He has used up all of his tricks and this time, someone came back from the Haunted Forest. In a land of real magic, this man had none and even though his most fiercesome enemy was disposed of, he was history as The Great and Powerful Oz. Time to get a new act. But first, he has to get to the balloon. When he hears them say, "And what about Scarecrow's brain?", Oz the Survivor knows he has a chance.
In every act, whether as Oz or acting as Oz, there is a moment in the script where the character and the actor find that moment. No turning back. I dropped the bag in my hand.
"Well, ANYBODY can have a BRAIN!?!"
His own voice is the Man Behind The Curtain. When time came to deliver the line that is the point of the tale, I used my own voice. At 51 on a stage toe to toe with teenage actors who had performed flawlessly and beautifully, before all those children in the cast and the audience, for all the adults with them, but most of all for my daughter, I wanted that line to be heard as honest and sincere. In truth, I do look back through the years they look forward through. The wisdom of age is not given, meritorious or heartfelt; it is the truth of the eyes that see and remember and the breath that sustains and marks out time. That truth is itself, ageless.
"A heart is not judged by how much you love, but by how much you are loved by others."
The joy of theatre, the reason it is the Great Art is the cast. What we experience together is a far greater magic than that seen on the stage. It is access to emotions, both in the parts we play and as we go to our entrances hugging and smiling at by those who have worked so hard together, excited, nervous, exhillarated and finally triumphant. The play is an act; the emotions are real.
As the cast took its bows, I thought, "We are Oz. The Great and Powerful."
Acting is about access to emotions at core. It is the emotions that give believability to breath, and breath that gives words to emotions. That is how one goes beyond the lines and the blocking to the onset cues that persuade a mammal brain to suspend belief. While it is possible by dint of hard work to simulate the emotions, learn the expressions, feel just that much inside that one can fake it, it is so hard no sensible mammal tries it. They feel it. That is acting. Listening is everything, timing is everything else. Emotions are the shared currency of acting.
"Better to be what you is because if you is what you ain't then you ain't what you is." - from an old poster in my studio
To find the character of Oz, I did the research into Baum and watched Frank Morgan to learn lines and borrow some magic. But mostly, I listened to Luz Ladrillono, our director. I haven't acted in 30 years. I trained for it from 13 to 23. I loved it when I did it, but two artforms are one too many when working, so I chose the one that made the most money:
.... computer science. And kept a band on the side.
It leaves a tattered hole in the ceiling of one's heart to give up any great love in one's life, and for me, that was theatre. It is the Great Art and the Complete Art. Music is demanding, but theatre asks for all of the talents and the more one can master, the greater the experience of live theatre. So it was both my fortune and God's gift that when I did return to it, Luz was there. It is rare in this area to meet a stone cold professional actress, dancer, teacher, and director who is also kind and willing. Her shaping of my character was basic: some gestures, some voices, placement of the eyes, and simple blocking. Gentle, good, and basic direction given consistently, repetitively, and never sternly but understandably. Luz never raised her voice to the cast even once. Amazing.
Oz is six voices: Professor Chester Marvel, Marvel's Magic Voice, OZ, OZ revealed, OZ the Survivor and the Man Behind The Curtain.
Chester is a carny magician, a man of some background, and one who does this job because he likes it. He isn't a bad fellow, but he believes in his act and uses it to move the world around him. He is a good-hearted man who uses his magic voice to send Dorothy back to the farm, but he is so caught up in his own act that he sees the storm and worries about the horse yet sends the little girl into the storm with only a glance over his back.
OZ is simply big and dismissive. It's an easy voice to do. Easiest of the lot really because one only has to be loud and arrogant. I can manage that. It's a Rock Voice. ;-)
OZ revealed is the timid man. Pulled from behind the curtain, at first he thinks he is toast. He has used up all of his tricks and this time, someone came back from the Haunted Forest. In a land of real magic, this man had none and even though his most fiercesome enemy was disposed of, he was history as The Great and Powerful Oz. Time to get a new act. But first, he has to get to the balloon. When he hears them say, "And what about Scarecrow's brain?", Oz the Survivor knows he has a chance.
In every act, whether as Oz or acting as Oz, there is a moment in the script where the character and the actor find that moment. No turning back. I dropped the bag in my hand.
"Well, ANYBODY can have a BRAIN!?!"
His own voice is the Man Behind The Curtain. When time came to deliver the line that is the point of the tale, I used my own voice. At 51 on a stage toe to toe with teenage actors who had performed flawlessly and beautifully, before all those children in the cast and the audience, for all the adults with them, but most of all for my daughter, I wanted that line to be heard as honest and sincere. In truth, I do look back through the years they look forward through. The wisdom of age is not given, meritorious or heartfelt; it is the truth of the eyes that see and remember and the breath that sustains and marks out time. That truth is itself, ageless.
"A heart is not judged by how much you love, but by how much you are loved by others."
The joy of theatre, the reason it is the Great Art is the cast. What we experience together is a far greater magic than that seen on the stage. It is access to emotions, both in the parts we play and as we go to our entrances hugging and smiling at by those who have worked so hard together, excited, nervous, exhillarated and finally triumphant. The play is an act; the emotions are real.
As the cast took its bows, I thought, "We are Oz. The Great and Powerful."
Sunday, March 20, 2005
To The Director
I wished only to portray him as you saw him.
To do this, I surrendered my breath to you,
let your face be the face in my dreams,
let your voice be the voice that guided me,
let your hand be the hand that shaped me.
Only then could I be what I must be, do I what must do
feel what I must feel to achieve my purpose,
.... to shine in your eyes
Then take all of that back and put it away until
it would be needed again, knowing that it is
forever better because for the time that was,
it was yours.
To do this, I surrendered my breath to you,
let your face be the face in my dreams,
let your voice be the voice that guided me,
let your hand be the hand that shaped me.
Only then could I be what I must be, do I what must do
feel what I must feel to achieve my purpose,
.... to shine in your eyes
Then take all of that back and put it away until
it would be needed again, knowing that it is
forever better because for the time that was,
it was yours.
Friday, February 25, 2005
UFOs: Fact or Friction
Yes, I saw the ABC UFO show. Yes, most of it is old material but not all of it.
There are more military types coming out and testifying and more admissions that the radar tracks do exist. More recently retired airline pilots are finally testifying now their careers aren't threatened.
1. There are too many eye witnesses with high credibility and film footage to say it is just kooks and cranks. There are reports that predate 1947. 1947 is when people started paying attention. The Twining report is legitimate and so was the testimony of the officer who used to run Blue Book. J. Allen Hynek was a seriously credentialed scientist.
So smarter people than thee or me take this stuff seriously.
2. The question one asks is: if UFOs are real, extraterrestrial or not, why is the government covering up? Either
a) what they know is bad or
b) what they know they don't know is bad or
c) it is government work or
d) they don't know.
3. Eyewitness accounts are not science. True. But they are evidence. Of what, I don't know. But evidently, neither do the scientists.
4. Is it crazy to believe in unproven things? Lots of people believe in God. So far, proof is minimal but there is more film footage of UFOs than God.
Do I believe? I keep an open mind and watch the skies, because as the old song says,
"There's things going on that you don't know."
There are more military types coming out and testifying and more admissions that the radar tracks do exist. More recently retired airline pilots are finally testifying now their careers aren't threatened.
1. There are too many eye witnesses with high credibility and film footage to say it is just kooks and cranks. There are reports that predate 1947. 1947 is when people started paying attention. The Twining report is legitimate and so was the testimony of the officer who used to run Blue Book. J. Allen Hynek was a seriously credentialed scientist.
So smarter people than thee or me take this stuff seriously.
2. The question one asks is: if UFOs are real, extraterrestrial or not, why is the government covering up? Either
a) what they know is bad or
b) what they know they don't know is bad or
c) it is government work or
d) they don't know.
3. Eyewitness accounts are not science. True. But they are evidence. Of what, I don't know. But evidently, neither do the scientists.
4. Is it crazy to believe in unproven things? Lots of people believe in God. So far, proof is minimal but there is more film footage of UFOs than God.
Do I believe? I keep an open mind and watch the skies, because as the old song says,
"There's things going on that you don't know."
Concerts and Stuff
We lived between the war and before Reagan. For a few years, we partied and we partied well. I'm not sure I want my kids to do what I did but I don't want them to grow up afraid to go out and live. It goes by so fast and as far as there is proof to tell, it goes by only once. What's the point of having all this stuff if getting it makes us spectators when we should be players. Old though I am, when I was young, I was a player. As my son says, "Dad isn't evil; he's just twisted." Fair enough. It was fun.
We were a half generation out of phase between the Beatles and KISS. Whatever else we didn't have or do, we had the best music since the Jazz Era. I went to the Georgia Jam in '74 to see the Allman Bros, Lynard Skynard, Marshall Tucker Band, etc. It was all 'shrooms, smoke, 'cid and wine at that concert and it rained in the middle of the day. The crowd got under their blankets and sat on the ground holding them up so it was solid ceiling a few feet above the floor and blue smoke pealing out from between. Eventually it all turned to mud so the kids in the middle went to the buff and began to toss each other up on the blanket until they dropped one naked chick and she broke something. Marshall Tucker stayed on stage in the rain and played to us so we'd stay calm. To heck with calm; we were just trying to stay conscious long enough to see the Bros.
Hours later, the Bros hit the stage way late. Betts furious with Greg who was so drunk he fell off his piano stool. I walked behind the mixing board platform, threw up the shrooms, then pushed my way to the stage to boogie to the Statesboro Blues with the best southern rock band that ever picked up a Coricidin bottle to make a slide. It was fabulous.
I caught Clapton twice; once in Birmingham at the old stadium. He was junked out and shot the crowd a bird for squealing for Layla after every song. My bass player and I had hitched to the concert, then found some musician friends who had a motel room. After the show, we went there to do the Seventies party things, then caught a ride back to the 'ville in the back of a pickup. There were about eight or nine of us in the back riding high on I-65. There was a redhead eager to do the nasty, and did while everyone pretended to be asleep. It was without shame, without fear, and long before AIDS. I do feel badly for the mammals now who need a health card to have a fling. Spontaneity is a rare pleasure.
I saw Clapton again later at the VBCC while they were filming Ravagers in town. I was dating a State Representative at the time and she and I walked in with Richard Harris (yeah, Dumbledore and King Arthur). and his wife (Turkel). I was surprised how short Harris was. I wouldn't let Martha Jo approach them though. They were there to see Clapton and enjoy the night and I don't approach public people in public. It's a drag for them. Clapton was cleaned up and did a great show that night.
The best concert I ever went to was the Grateful Dead in Tuscaloosa. This was just after they released the Europa album and they were at the height of their jams. They start loose but play for hours and by the time they get into the second hour, it's delirium. There is no music as good as the Live Dead. I miss Jerry. I hope those guys still kick main butt.
I caught Ronstadt at her peak. Very good. The West Coast had taken the best of Nashville and Bakersfield and turned it into the smoothest pop of the decade. I was playing at the Huntsville Hilton lounge with the band, Bitter Creek, in 1975 which was across the street from the civic center, and everyone stayed there. I partied with most of the bands when this was a venue on the A list. Great memories. Musicians can be monster jerks to civilians but among themselves, they are tribal. I was 21 and the superstars treated me like a little brother. I loved it. The Eagles, Average White Band, even Chet Atkins. All fabulous guys. Big brothers with good advice for the long haired skinny kid with the nylon string doing solos while the crowd came back from the concert.
We made love in the park watching the police cars come and go from the main station. We stayed up all night watching TBS. We hiked to the empty water tower on Green Mountain and chanted inside as the echos swelled inside us like hormones. We climbed to the top and tied out sleeping bags to the post, laid there and watched the sun come up across the peaks in the distance lighting the clouds in the valley that crawled toward us like a bright white fluffy blanket.
We had the sounds, the soul and the urge. Freedom. It breathes and it sings and it plays loud guitar. And it satisfies.
So why not do it for a living? As a party, there is none better; but as a lifestyle, it stinks. The soft sweet music I loved was killed by disco and cocaine infesting the good people, and that was a step too far for me. I partied but I knew poison on sight so when all the cooool people started that trek, I got off the bus. The party days before the suits grabbed the controls once and for all were good, but after that, it was just a job and who gives up their heart to that. Music IS my heart and that I keep for me. "Songs to aging children come; I am one." - Joni Mitchell
Now the programmers have come to free the musicians from the suits. That's a very good thing. It's past my time but I feel good for the kids. They can explore art in ways we couldn't even dream of. They can podCast, make movies, animate worlds, put their music in them, and do it for the whole world with the whole world without ever leaving their backporch. Sure, they should get out and do gigs; that is the best part, but they should also find the guy or girl in Egypt or Turkey or downtown Buffalo that digs their grooves and send them to them.
For Free. For Fun. For Fate. For Love. For Good Times. For the Blue Flame.
I envy you that, and at the same time, I don't. I've had fun and every season that comes as this world spins in a cold night has its own unique concerts and gigs and stuff. Be a player.
Gitcha some.
I have all the toys I want; so now I record what I like, when I like, and only play if there is an audience that really wants it. There is no pressure and I won't be found dead old and alone in a motel room, the death even the superstars fear. I can be in a local theatre production and act again, which is what I trained for. Music was how I paid for college, but then it became the real act. I've had fun. I recommend it to anyone.
At the end of the day, you only have to achieve three things to have an excellent life:
1) status among your peers that matches your level of ambition,
2) a family that loves you,
3) enough stuff.
Most people screw their lives up trying for more status than they really want so they can get more stuff for a family that would rather they be home more. I have enough stuff. It's all extra after that.
You probably do too. Remember that next time you see your kids because it's their time now and the best thing you can tell them is you are proud of them, you love them, and that when they get enough stuff, relax and have fun.
It's not who dies with the most toys; it's who has the most fun with their toys while they are alive. Party on, Babies.
We were a half generation out of phase between the Beatles and KISS. Whatever else we didn't have or do, we had the best music since the Jazz Era. I went to the Georgia Jam in '74 to see the Allman Bros, Lynard Skynard, Marshall Tucker Band, etc. It was all 'shrooms, smoke, 'cid and wine at that concert and it rained in the middle of the day. The crowd got under their blankets and sat on the ground holding them up so it was solid ceiling a few feet above the floor and blue smoke pealing out from between. Eventually it all turned to mud so the kids in the middle went to the buff and began to toss each other up on the blanket until they dropped one naked chick and she broke something. Marshall Tucker stayed on stage in the rain and played to us so we'd stay calm. To heck with calm; we were just trying to stay conscious long enough to see the Bros.
Hours later, the Bros hit the stage way late. Betts furious with Greg who was so drunk he fell off his piano stool. I walked behind the mixing board platform, threw up the shrooms, then pushed my way to the stage to boogie to the Statesboro Blues with the best southern rock band that ever picked up a Coricidin bottle to make a slide. It was fabulous.
I caught Clapton twice; once in Birmingham at the old stadium. He was junked out and shot the crowd a bird for squealing for Layla after every song. My bass player and I had hitched to the concert, then found some musician friends who had a motel room. After the show, we went there to do the Seventies party things, then caught a ride back to the 'ville in the back of a pickup. There were about eight or nine of us in the back riding high on I-65. There was a redhead eager to do the nasty, and did while everyone pretended to be asleep. It was without shame, without fear, and long before AIDS. I do feel badly for the mammals now who need a health card to have a fling. Spontaneity is a rare pleasure.
I saw Clapton again later at the VBCC while they were filming Ravagers in town. I was dating a State Representative at the time and she and I walked in with Richard Harris (yeah, Dumbledore and King Arthur). and his wife (Turkel). I was surprised how short Harris was. I wouldn't let Martha Jo approach them though. They were there to see Clapton and enjoy the night and I don't approach public people in public. It's a drag for them. Clapton was cleaned up and did a great show that night.
The best concert I ever went to was the Grateful Dead in Tuscaloosa. This was just after they released the Europa album and they were at the height of their jams. They start loose but play for hours and by the time they get into the second hour, it's delirium. There is no music as good as the Live Dead. I miss Jerry. I hope those guys still kick main butt.
I caught Ronstadt at her peak. Very good. The West Coast had taken the best of Nashville and Bakersfield and turned it into the smoothest pop of the decade. I was playing at the Huntsville Hilton lounge with the band, Bitter Creek, in 1975 which was across the street from the civic center, and everyone stayed there. I partied with most of the bands when this was a venue on the A list. Great memories. Musicians can be monster jerks to civilians but among themselves, they are tribal. I was 21 and the superstars treated me like a little brother. I loved it. The Eagles, Average White Band, even Chet Atkins. All fabulous guys. Big brothers with good advice for the long haired skinny kid with the nylon string doing solos while the crowd came back from the concert.
We made love in the park watching the police cars come and go from the main station. We stayed up all night watching TBS. We hiked to the empty water tower on Green Mountain and chanted inside as the echos swelled inside us like hormones. We climbed to the top and tied out sleeping bags to the post, laid there and watched the sun come up across the peaks in the distance lighting the clouds in the valley that crawled toward us like a bright white fluffy blanket.
We had the sounds, the soul and the urge. Freedom. It breathes and it sings and it plays loud guitar. And it satisfies.
So why not do it for a living? As a party, there is none better; but as a lifestyle, it stinks. The soft sweet music I loved was killed by disco and cocaine infesting the good people, and that was a step too far for me. I partied but I knew poison on sight so when all the cooool people started that trek, I got off the bus. The party days before the suits grabbed the controls once and for all were good, but after that, it was just a job and who gives up their heart to that. Music IS my heart and that I keep for me. "Songs to aging children come; I am one." - Joni Mitchell
Now the programmers have come to free the musicians from the suits. That's a very good thing. It's past my time but I feel good for the kids. They can explore art in ways we couldn't even dream of. They can podCast, make movies, animate worlds, put their music in them, and do it for the whole world with the whole world without ever leaving their backporch. Sure, they should get out and do gigs; that is the best part, but they should also find the guy or girl in Egypt or Turkey or downtown Buffalo that digs their grooves and send them to them.
For Free. For Fun. For Fate. For Love. For Good Times. For the Blue Flame.
I envy you that, and at the same time, I don't. I've had fun and every season that comes as this world spins in a cold night has its own unique concerts and gigs and stuff. Be a player.
Gitcha some.
I have all the toys I want; so now I record what I like, when I like, and only play if there is an audience that really wants it. There is no pressure and I won't be found dead old and alone in a motel room, the death even the superstars fear. I can be in a local theatre production and act again, which is what I trained for. Music was how I paid for college, but then it became the real act. I've had fun. I recommend it to anyone.
At the end of the day, you only have to achieve three things to have an excellent life:
1) status among your peers that matches your level of ambition,
2) a family that loves you,
3) enough stuff.
Most people screw their lives up trying for more status than they really want so they can get more stuff for a family that would rather they be home more. I have enough stuff. It's all extra after that.
You probably do too. Remember that next time you see your kids because it's their time now and the best thing you can tell them is you are proud of them, you love them, and that when they get enough stuff, relax and have fun.
It's not who dies with the most toys; it's who has the most fun with their toys while they are alive. Party on, Babies.
Thursday, February 24, 2005
The Witch's Hat
Several writers are blogging about the so-called long tail of distributions of various resources such as readership, sales, contributions, work performed and other values based on connectionist technologies. That's a good approximation and what the graph looks like in a single case, but take all of those cases and plot instances of the populations in the z-dimension. That plot looks like a cliff if side by side, but the more economical rendering puts the XYZ orgin in the middle of the global space and plots around it. Then it looks like the familar witch's hat.
That's a resonant image. Most of us don't live in the tail of the curve, we live on the brim of the hat. We don't wear hats for the point, fashionable though it might be at the time; we wear them for the brim because it is the brim that protects our eyes from the sun and our ears from the rain. It is the brim we can curve up or down or flatten as the seasons and the styles change. It is the brim we hold in our hand when we say hello or wave goodbye. The brim is the reason for the hat. It is the service, the valuable surface that with the sides covers our bald spot, holds down our hair, and supports the top. As the hat grows old and the pointy top begins to curve and the sides begin to wrinkle coming at last to resemble the sorting hat from Harry Potter, the brim still serves us.
There is no great moral here, except to note that being average doesn't mean something is necessarily of lesser value. After all, it is the point of having the hat.
That's a resonant image. Most of us don't live in the tail of the curve, we live on the brim of the hat. We don't wear hats for the point, fashionable though it might be at the time; we wear them for the brim because it is the brim that protects our eyes from the sun and our ears from the rain. It is the brim we can curve up or down or flatten as the seasons and the styles change. It is the brim we hold in our hand when we say hello or wave goodbye. The brim is the reason for the hat. It is the service, the valuable surface that with the sides covers our bald spot, holds down our hair, and supports the top. As the hat grows old and the pointy top begins to curve and the sides begin to wrinkle coming at last to resemble the sorting hat from Harry Potter, the brim still serves us.
There is no great moral here, except to note that being average doesn't mean something is necessarily of lesser value. After all, it is the point of having the hat.
Wednesday, February 23, 2005
The Baron Speaks
Yes, children, the sexual and social Neanderthals of the Great State of Alabummer have once again proven that a very small minority of superstitious, repressed, and terrified conservatives can rob you of your freedom of expression and the right to party hearty. The good legislators that tried to outlaw the diminished 5th in music, thus killing all forms of jazz, blues and rock have outlawed the sale of marital aids, yes, SEX TOYS!
Why? Because they can't read the instructions.
The voices of the tightly clinched sphincter called into the local college radio station to tell the spin master that if a woman ran for the office of president of these United States that they would vote for her if she is qualified and her name isn't Hillary. Once again, they show they have yet to master simple arithmetic because as the current president proves, they will vote for one boob and we all know that two are twice as good as one.
But that's alright! You see, social movements swing like a dog's tail from right to left, and just as Bawdy Newton said, every action has an opposite and equal reaction. As I look around this Great State of equal opportunity to a last class education, I know that somewhere in the future a reallllly big street party will be happening. As luck would have it, I'll be toooo old but our kids, yes the children of the dammed, will be there swinging from the trees in celebration of their bonobo heritage. Party on, Babies.
This is Radio Free Alabama, the voice of the resistance broadcasting from the heart of the red states, and I AM the Baron Mondo.
Why? Because they can't read the instructions.
The voices of the tightly clinched sphincter called into the local college radio station to tell the spin master that if a woman ran for the office of president of these United States that they would vote for her if she is qualified and her name isn't Hillary. Once again, they show they have yet to master simple arithmetic because as the current president proves, they will vote for one boob and we all know that two are twice as good as one.
But that's alright! You see, social movements swing like a dog's tail from right to left, and just as Bawdy Newton said, every action has an opposite and equal reaction. As I look around this Great State of equal opportunity to a last class education, I know that somewhere in the future a reallllly big street party will be happening. As luck would have it, I'll be toooo old but our kids, yes the children of the dammed, will be there swinging from the trees in celebration of their bonobo heritage. Party on, Babies.
This is Radio Free Alabama, the voice of the resistance broadcasting from the heart of the red states, and I AM the Baron Mondo.
Tuesday, February 22, 2005
Evolution In Flatland
The bloggers are cranked about the Google version of smart tags, and they should be. Content is altered by linking but linking is what the web is about. Yet so seldom is it discussed as a purposeful act and that is really what the debate comes down to. The web is not about progress; it is about purpose and this has all the implications of every network-as-ecology article ever written.
On the other hand, some are glossing right past the ChoicePoint fiasco in which a dataMegaMart is conned out of product and opened up potentially half-a-million people to identity theft. The deeper bad news is that ChoicePoint has just purchased I2, one of the more powerful link analysis engines used for crime analysis. Had the hustlers also purchased the link profiles, they would have had not just the identities, but potentially first rate extortion opportunities and some other great behavioral data. Combine this sort of thing with surreptitious RFID scanning and you get a first rate criminal enterprise.
You see, people fear government when they should fear administrations. People think there are smart people out there in the technical community protecting them when actually the geeks are making a buck. Meanwhile, the web like life isn't evolving hierarchically into better forms but extending itself into every niche it can and aggregating these into ever larger entities. One confuses progress with proliferation. Life only propagates. So it is with the web.
On the other hand, some are glossing right past the ChoicePoint fiasco in which a dataMegaMart is conned out of product and opened up potentially half-a-million people to identity theft. The deeper bad news is that ChoicePoint has just purchased I2, one of the more powerful link analysis engines used for crime analysis. Had the hustlers also purchased the link profiles, they would have had not just the identities, but potentially first rate extortion opportunities and some other great behavioral data. Combine this sort of thing with surreptitious RFID scanning and you get a first rate criminal enterprise.
You see, people fear government when they should fear administrations. People think there are smart people out there in the technical community protecting them when actually the geeks are making a buck. Meanwhile, the web like life isn't evolving hierarchically into better forms but extending itself into every niche it can and aggregating these into ever larger entities. One confuses progress with proliferation. Life only propagates. So it is with the web.
Friday, February 18, 2005
Part II. The Universe Whispers OZ: The Bucket Brigade of Good Deed Doers
A friend asked about the Bucket brigade blog....
I'm rambling of course. That is what happens when lots of ideas start to collide. In India, or so I've read, someone with attention deficit disorder is considered holy. In the West, we give them drugs and try to integrate them.
To do evil, the wicked use the acts of goodness of others for their own purposes, to fool the living. Funny thing is, it never works for very long. Life knows what it likes. Life can be fooled by humbugs, but not forever.
I got an email today seriously suggesting that we can patent the idea of metadata-driving software factories. I pointed out that his immune system already does that and nature holds the patent.
In the play,(based on the Royal Shakespeare Theatre script) the Wicked Witch watches through her very large crystal ball, the progress of the foursome. She makes a speech about how it is fate that the Wizard delivers them to her. She has real power, but knowing everything doesn't make one able to choose better because she does not know what it all means in context.
Is there risk doing the right thing in the open?
Always do the good thing anyway. The good will help you and the wicked can't figure out why a good deed is worth doing; they can only steal it, and then what? There is no yellow brick road in the land of the Winkies because she always knows when a stranger enters. She sends her Flying Monkeys to bring her doom to her. Her castle is a secret place and "the nature of evil is secrecy".
How much power do you really need in a plot that is sensitive to initial conditions, a land of magical emergence?
Not much. Hardly any if you choose rightly.
The Professor has no power but with his small "genuine authentic magic crystal used by the priests of Isis and Osiris in the days of the Pharoahs of Egypt, in which Cleopatra first saw the approach of Julius Caesar and Marc Antony... and so on and so on" he uses his humbug magic to try to send Dorothy home, only to send her in to the path of the tornado. He does the best he can with his humbuggery, and that is enough to put her on a path to self-discovery. Dorothy stumbles into the ocean of real life through a dream.
Life dreams. It fantasizes. It comes to know itself. It likes to be wet.
The Witch knows all that happens in Oz, but she doesn't see that bucket of water coming. One evil act too many blinds her. That is how all tyrants fall.
Living things self-lube. Life is wet. We come from the ocean. "There's no place like home."
Life knows what it likes. That's why the bucket brigade, the web, folksonomy, and open source all work. Lots of little good hearted decisions all self-lubing and in their own time, making something an individual wants to use through group effort, cooperation, respect, patience, and willingness to let the other person pass because we all get there in time.
A name is a wall. It isn't that we don't need them, but we mustn't make them more powerful than they need to be. Like XML namespaces. It is the principle of least commitment. It doesn't melt when the semantic ocean, like a bucket of water, is tossed on it.
"What a world! What a world!" ;-)
I'm rambling of course. That is what happens when lots of ideas start to collide. In India, or so I've read, someone with attention deficit disorder is considered holy. In the West, we give them drugs and try to integrate them.
To do evil, the wicked use the acts of goodness of others for their own purposes, to fool the living. Funny thing is, it never works for very long. Life knows what it likes. Life can be fooled by humbugs, but not forever.
I got an email today seriously suggesting that we can patent the idea of metadata-driving software factories. I pointed out that his immune system already does that and nature holds the patent.
In the play,(based on the Royal Shakespeare Theatre script) the Wicked Witch watches through her very large crystal ball, the progress of the foursome. She makes a speech about how it is fate that the Wizard delivers them to her. She has real power, but knowing everything doesn't make one able to choose better because she does not know what it all means in context.
Is there risk doing the right thing in the open?
Always do the good thing anyway. The good will help you and the wicked can't figure out why a good deed is worth doing; they can only steal it, and then what? There is no yellow brick road in the land of the Winkies because she always knows when a stranger enters. She sends her Flying Monkeys to bring her doom to her. Her castle is a secret place and "the nature of evil is secrecy".
How much power do you really need in a plot that is sensitive to initial conditions, a land of magical emergence?
Not much. Hardly any if you choose rightly.
The Professor has no power but with his small "genuine authentic magic crystal used by the priests of Isis and Osiris in the days of the Pharoahs of Egypt, in which Cleopatra first saw the approach of Julius Caesar and Marc Antony... and so on and so on" he uses his humbug magic to try to send Dorothy home, only to send her in to the path of the tornado. He does the best he can with his humbuggery, and that is enough to put her on a path to self-discovery. Dorothy stumbles into the ocean of real life through a dream.
Life dreams. It fantasizes. It comes to know itself. It likes to be wet.
The Witch knows all that happens in Oz, but she doesn't see that bucket of water coming. One evil act too many blinds her. That is how all tyrants fall.
Living things self-lube. Life is wet. We come from the ocean. "There's no place like home."
Life knows what it likes. That's why the bucket brigade, the web, folksonomy, and open source all work. Lots of little good hearted decisions all self-lubing and in their own time, making something an individual wants to use through group effort, cooperation, respect, patience, and willingness to let the other person pass because we all get there in time.
A name is a wall. It isn't that we don't need them, but we mustn't make them more powerful than they need to be. Like XML namespaces. It is the principle of least commitment. It doesn't melt when the semantic ocean, like a bucket of water, is tossed on it.
"What a world! What a world!" ;-)
One Ringy Dingy Two Ringy Dingies
I'm sitting in the staff meeting watching a Power Point presented by a novitiate attempting to explain Indigo. He really likes Don Box. I mean, Really likes Don Box. That's ok. I really like Carly Fiorina. A good rack IS an asset in this business. At the end of the presentation, he puts up a slide with the so-called "Challenge Question". It was "What is an Enterprise Service Bus?" I replied, "It's a patch bay." but thought, "That won't explain anything to a non-musician who hasn't spent time in a recording studio."
Somewhere deeper in my subconcious I heard a voice saying, "One ringy dingy! Two ringy dingies! Gracious good afternoon! Is this the service to whom I am speaking? SNOOOORRT!" and laughed out loud. Of course, I didn't explain why.
Live long enough, and everything becomes iconic, symbolic, or indexical. That doesn't mean it is explainable or funny to anyone but oneself. Quiet moments of silent laughter are best enjoyed in the privacy of one's own hallucinations.
Somewhere deeper in my subconcious I heard a voice saying, "One ringy dingy! Two ringy dingies! Gracious good afternoon! Is this the service to whom I am speaking? SNOOOORRT!" and laughed out loud. Of course, I didn't explain why.
Live long enough, and everything becomes iconic, symbolic, or indexical. That doesn't mean it is explainable or funny to anyone but oneself. Quiet moments of silent laughter are best enjoyed in the privacy of one's own hallucinations.
Thursday, February 17, 2005
The Universe Whispers OZ: The Bucket Brigade of Good Deed Doers
Is a folksonomy the categorization equivalent of a John Holland bucket brigade classifier system? Just a human-driven neural net learning system? Do keywords have a bidding process for rule matching? Do they just die off if unused? We keep seeing a repeating pattern in things that work and don't work on the web and in any system for which a network is the pattern and things that don't work just die off: connectedness. Maybe getting laid IS the real criterion of success or happiness. Works for me.
"A heart is not judged by how much you love, but my how much you are loved by others."
The universe whispers Oz and the longer I am around, the more I realize what he really meant when he said, "Oh no my dear, I am a very good man. I'm just a very bad wizard." Maybe we really don't need wizards for most of life's affairs. Being connected is good enough. Why don't we know that? Is it a secret we keep from ourselves? As in the Oz spinoff, "Wicked", the Witch says to the dinner guests, "...the nature of evil is to be secret." and so many of our connections are hidden. The Bonobos don't do it that way. Why do we? Why, indeed.
Perhaps because so many games are of the form RSP (Rock Paper Scissors) and the only successful strategy is to psych out the opponent, and the only pattern that defeats that is randomness. We have to hide our hearts from those who would attempt to control our desires, but in doing so, we become wicked, made into what we would not be were it not for our hidden desires for acceptance and control.
That's just too hard. It turns our brains into straw, our hearts into tin, and finally robs us of our courage.
"... and I hereby decree, that until such time as I return, if any, the Scarecrow by virtue of his highly superior brain, shall rule in my stead. Assisted by the Tin Man by virtue of his magnificent heart, and the Lion by virtue of his courage. Obey them as you would me."
A folksonomy isn't very precise the way a professional taxonomy is, but since naming things unnames other things, it has the one kind of magic that professionals try their best to diminish: serendipity. We are pros; we hide the fact that most of our victories are dumb luck. Browsing over searching is usually the way we innovate. Searching is how we fix what we make. Very different kinds of actions, those; one is creative and the other is reflexive. The first makes questions; the second finds answers.
Desire. If your heart's desire isn't in your own backyard, you never lost it.
Some used to tell us that we should use rigorous methods to design our DTDs in SGML. It seldom worked. Most of the time, we took what they had and sprinkled tags pointing out inconsistencies along the way, but simply enabling a customer to see them. Some tried to build the DTDsFromHell that described the universe much as a Wizard would be able to make order from chaos, but it seems those never worked well and mainly created more complexity. Even worse, done in secretive committees away from the users they intended to order about even with the best of intentions, they did real evil.
Emergence works better. Dorothy was only trying to put out the burning Scarecrow. That the Witch was sensitive to being wet, well, she was a dried up evil old bitch and they don't ever get wet. Wetness is a quality of excitement and attraction, not evil. It's very good. It emerges. No threats produce it, no amount of will can control it and no amount of force can stop it. It's instant feedback when communications are of the right kind even if of the lowest quality. Life knows what it likes.
They tell me my career is dead because I piss people off, yet I watch them doing exactly what I need them to do. Power is not for the timid. Try to do good as the wicked watch and they will always do exactly as you wish: become angry and scheme to take your plans and make them their own. Mission accomplished. Evil is made to serve good. The universe moves.
"Hail to Dorothy! The Wicked Witch is dead! Hail to Dorothy!"
Free the Winkies and they'll make you their queen. Even Glinda for all her Goodness couldn't do what the fat little farm girl could trying to save a friend. She nor her sister to the South could change the balance of good and evil in Oz, so the Winkies and the Munchkins remained slaves until the eastern meanie flew into a spinning house and the western meanie finally did one bad deed too many. But it was the Witches who brought Dorothy to Oz for tornados in Kansas aren't spun up by winds from the North AND the South. Indirection, suggestion, hints and allegations, just a bit of noise in the ear of desire is enough. "Just follow the Yellow Brick road."
The universe isn't a place where all of our affairs are under the control of a 'very good but very mysterious' wizard, as Glinda said, but by a bucket brigade of courageous brains and wise hearts. In the presence of evil, you must start the fight. Even if the old wizard has nothing in his black bag for you, you may not need him. You have the ruby slippers right there on your own two feet.
Let the universe judge. And the universe, as I said, whispers Oz. The Great and Powerful.
"A heart is not judged by how much you love, but my how much you are loved by others."
The universe whispers Oz and the longer I am around, the more I realize what he really meant when he said, "Oh no my dear, I am a very good man. I'm just a very bad wizard." Maybe we really don't need wizards for most of life's affairs. Being connected is good enough. Why don't we know that? Is it a secret we keep from ourselves? As in the Oz spinoff, "Wicked", the Witch says to the dinner guests, "...the nature of evil is to be secret." and so many of our connections are hidden. The Bonobos don't do it that way. Why do we? Why, indeed.
Perhaps because so many games are of the form RSP (Rock Paper Scissors) and the only successful strategy is to psych out the opponent, and the only pattern that defeats that is randomness. We have to hide our hearts from those who would attempt to control our desires, but in doing so, we become wicked, made into what we would not be were it not for our hidden desires for acceptance and control.
That's just too hard. It turns our brains into straw, our hearts into tin, and finally robs us of our courage.
"... and I hereby decree, that until such time as I return, if any, the Scarecrow by virtue of his highly superior brain, shall rule in my stead. Assisted by the Tin Man by virtue of his magnificent heart, and the Lion by virtue of his courage. Obey them as you would me."
A folksonomy isn't very precise the way a professional taxonomy is, but since naming things unnames other things, it has the one kind of magic that professionals try their best to diminish: serendipity. We are pros; we hide the fact that most of our victories are dumb luck. Browsing over searching is usually the way we innovate. Searching is how we fix what we make. Very different kinds of actions, those; one is creative and the other is reflexive. The first makes questions; the second finds answers.
Desire. If your heart's desire isn't in your own backyard, you never lost it.
Some used to tell us that we should use rigorous methods to design our DTDs in SGML. It seldom worked. Most of the time, we took what they had and sprinkled tags pointing out inconsistencies along the way, but simply enabling a customer to see them. Some tried to build the DTDsFromHell that described the universe much as a Wizard would be able to make order from chaos, but it seems those never worked well and mainly created more complexity. Even worse, done in secretive committees away from the users they intended to order about even with the best of intentions, they did real evil.
Emergence works better. Dorothy was only trying to put out the burning Scarecrow. That the Witch was sensitive to being wet, well, she was a dried up evil old bitch and they don't ever get wet. Wetness is a quality of excitement and attraction, not evil. It's very good. It emerges. No threats produce it, no amount of will can control it and no amount of force can stop it. It's instant feedback when communications are of the right kind even if of the lowest quality. Life knows what it likes.
They tell me my career is dead because I piss people off, yet I watch them doing exactly what I need them to do. Power is not for the timid. Try to do good as the wicked watch and they will always do exactly as you wish: become angry and scheme to take your plans and make them their own. Mission accomplished. Evil is made to serve good. The universe moves.
"Hail to Dorothy! The Wicked Witch is dead! Hail to Dorothy!"
Free the Winkies and they'll make you their queen. Even Glinda for all her Goodness couldn't do what the fat little farm girl could trying to save a friend. She nor her sister to the South could change the balance of good and evil in Oz, so the Winkies and the Munchkins remained slaves until the eastern meanie flew into a spinning house and the western meanie finally did one bad deed too many. But it was the Witches who brought Dorothy to Oz for tornados in Kansas aren't spun up by winds from the North AND the South. Indirection, suggestion, hints and allegations, just a bit of noise in the ear of desire is enough. "Just follow the Yellow Brick road."
The universe isn't a place where all of our affairs are under the control of a 'very good but very mysterious' wizard, as Glinda said, but by a bucket brigade of courageous brains and wise hearts. In the presence of evil, you must start the fight. Even if the old wizard has nothing in his black bag for you, you may not need him. You have the ruby slippers right there on your own two feet.
Let the universe judge. And the universe, as I said, whispers Oz. The Great and Powerful.
Wednesday, February 16, 2005
Always Connected and Getting Laid
The ease of today's communications technologies and the billions of dollars, yen, euros and smart rocks being invested to make them easier and more ubiquitous reveal the lust we as mammals have to communicate. That the communicative act is intimately tied to our sex drives seems obvious as well. That this comes with implications for social development and ettiquette follows. We make a communications technology, and the mammals decide based on its capacity to promote their sex lives if it is worth owning.
Or maybe this is a classic case of sensitivity to initial conditions and strange attractors. Geeks do the work of building this stuff and geeks are the demographic most overly addicted to 'strange'.
Or maybe I'm at fault. That's right. Me. len. It's my doing. There are things I said that seemed cute at the time but might have spawned web memes of a virulent nature:
Item 1
Item 2
Item 3
and I'll just have to live with that one. Bad act; bad karma. So sue me.
As someone who doesn't have a cell phone, doesn't want one, thinks they are the spawn of Satannic forces emerging from the troll caves of high technology, watching my friends, neighbors and anyone who has $40 a month to spare become bionic players in a web of the trivial pursuit of excess intercourse, I must say I think it is a downward spiral. I learned to hate video games when PONG took over the living rooms and my friends quit having conversations or watching Kung Fu to go "THOK THOK THOK THOK". These digital devices are getting in the way of getting my way.
Of course, our grandparents complained about TV and their parents complained about radio and their parents complained about telegraph and their parents complained about complainers. It could be that those who are getting laid are the objects of jealousy by those that aren't. That meme plays well on soap operas anyway. But those technologies didn't signal us with a three minute cheesy rendition of Smoke On the Water or chunkOfDebussy. Just as Muzak made music easy not to hear (a meme from Leonard Bernstein, rest his soul), our websphereOfCheapTalk is making it easier to get laid, cheaper, and possibly less interesting. I don't mind that you are out there rutting; I mind that you are making even more irritating noises while you prepare. There is a reason the cell phone vibrates. Make that connection and you'll turn off the ring tones.
I bought the book "Wicked" for my daughter for Valentine's Day. The fact of not having a cell phone or a blog means she will actually read it. The Broadway show is NOT the book. The book is a meditation on evil. We'll talk about that when she is done. It's too deep a subject for Instant Messaging, and it might keep her away from boys just a little bit longer... at least until her Mother goes over my head and buys her a cell phone.
And I won't protest. If I do, I won't get laid.
Or maybe this is a classic case of sensitivity to initial conditions and strange attractors. Geeks do the work of building this stuff and geeks are the demographic most overly addicted to 'strange'.
Or maybe I'm at fault. That's right. Me. len. It's my doing. There are things I said that seemed cute at the time but might have spawned web memes of a virulent nature:
and I'll just have to live with that one. Bad act; bad karma. So sue me.
As someone who doesn't have a cell phone, doesn't want one, thinks they are the spawn of Satannic forces emerging from the troll caves of high technology, watching my friends, neighbors and anyone who has $40 a month to spare become bionic players in a web of the trivial pursuit of excess intercourse, I must say I think it is a downward spiral. I learned to hate video games when PONG took over the living rooms and my friends quit having conversations or watching Kung Fu to go "THOK THOK THOK THOK". These digital devices are getting in the way of getting my way.
Of course, our grandparents complained about TV and their parents complained about radio and their parents complained about telegraph and their parents complained about complainers. It could be that those who are getting laid are the objects of jealousy by those that aren't. That meme plays well on soap operas anyway. But those technologies didn't signal us with a three minute cheesy rendition of Smoke On the Water or chunkOfDebussy. Just as Muzak made music easy not to hear (a meme from Leonard Bernstein, rest his soul), our websphereOfCheapTalk is making it easier to get laid, cheaper, and possibly less interesting. I don't mind that you are out there rutting; I mind that you are making even more irritating noises while you prepare. There is a reason the cell phone vibrates. Make that connection and you'll turn off the ring tones.
I bought the book "Wicked" for my daughter for Valentine's Day. The fact of not having a cell phone or a blog means she will actually read it. The Broadway show is NOT the book. The book is a meditation on evil. We'll talk about that when she is done. It's too deep a subject for Instant Messaging, and it might keep her away from boys just a little bit longer... at least until her Mother goes over my head and buys her a cell phone.
And I won't protest. If I do, I won't get laid.
Monday, February 14, 2005
Random Thoughts
Carly Fiorina: I will miss her terribly. Smart, foxy, an excellent speaker and the one woman in compSci who proved a glass ceiling can be shattered has left the building. At this point, she didn't make her numbers and in the high wire act of CEOs, that is the one thing one can't combine with political insolence and still survive. She leaves HP well-compensated and a major player who can choose her next job in comfort.
Carly will be back. I'll be glad. Smart women improve the business. Smart beautiful women improve the species. You go, girl.
National ID Cards: There are lots of reasons to have these, and from the point of view of a public safety vendor employee, we need them. On the other hand, technologies have implications and this one isn't safe to deploy without thinking these through. I am a lot more frightened of administrations than I am of the government per se. It won't be the government, but the current administration who abuses this stuff at the high levels of power. At the street level, the abuse will start on day one. Criminals don't waste opportunities.
One prediction: because scanning RFIDs surreptitiously poses immediate dangers, wallets and purses could evolve quickly to make them unscannable, but that will raise hell with the airport scanners, so there will be specialty carry-on items for travel. Or, the modern version of the ID pocket protector will be devised. Whatever the shape of the solution, wherever there is fear or inconvenience, there is money to be made through innovation. That is how capitalism works. Radar guns spawn radar detectors. The cold war of technology is the engine of western economics.
URIs Vs URNs Vs URLS: How can we still be having this argument on any serious technical list? The cost/benefit issues of having layered systems for name/identity management are so exhaustively documented one could list the issues on a Chinese restaurant menu. This is the one permathread that should become a classic and first year course in universities required of both the philosophy and computer science departments. That way, the students can get this out of their psyches before they enter the world of real work.
Carly will be back. I'll be glad. Smart women improve the business. Smart beautiful women improve the species. You go, girl.
National ID Cards: There are lots of reasons to have these, and from the point of view of a public safety vendor employee, we need them. On the other hand, technologies have implications and this one isn't safe to deploy without thinking these through. I am a lot more frightened of administrations than I am of the government per se. It won't be the government, but the current administration who abuses this stuff at the high levels of power. At the street level, the abuse will start on day one. Criminals don't waste opportunities.
One prediction: because scanning RFIDs surreptitiously poses immediate dangers, wallets and purses could evolve quickly to make them unscannable, but that will raise hell with the airport scanners, so there will be specialty carry-on items for travel. Or, the modern version of the ID pocket protector will be devised. Whatever the shape of the solution, wherever there is fear or inconvenience, there is money to be made through innovation. That is how capitalism works. Radar guns spawn radar detectors. The cold war of technology is the engine of western economics.
URIs Vs URNs Vs URLS: How can we still be having this argument on any serious technical list? The cost/benefit issues of having layered systems for name/identity management are so exhaustively documented one could list the issues on a Chinese restaurant menu. This is the one permathread that should become a classic and first year course in universities required of both the philosophy and computer science departments. That way, the students can get this out of their psyches before they enter the world of real work.
Thursday, February 10, 2005
Paradigms for Next Generation Public Safety Systems
Network(s) of communicating objects capable of analysing and adapting to local conditions through an infrastructure of sensors and just-in-time hierarchies of command and control (C2) responsive by event type and geolocation.
Dominant Characteristics
- decentralized
- self-organizing
- self-recognizing
- self-regulating
- self-sustaining
- local intelligence/global resource allocation
Potential Developments
- use of virtual environments with real-time sensor overlays for C2 with increased requirements for combinations of low-fidelity and high-fidelity just-in-time mapping
- greater reliance on local autonomy with access to very large data marts for strategy, tactics, procedures, and analytical tools that are jointly organized and created (authored) by
communities of strike and task specialists (see WikiPedia)
- machine intelligence advances to semi-autonomous operation within 10 years (and that is a conservative estimate) enabling safer at-a-distance operations with less human-in-the-loop control (that is, more tactical authority resides in the programs). Presents training challenges for joint human/machine forces (eg, secure identity management systems - see below for idiotypic response). Within 20 years, can operate fully autonomously in adaptive mode.
- increased requirements for independent, autonomous energy generation sources
- increased use of biological assets to combat biological threats (eg, RNA defenses, more work on idiotype-based vaccines). Note that immune network response models are particularly interesting as a model for self-organizing/self-regulating response systems. See Niels Jerne network hypothesis for immune systems. A thought is that task forces act as T-cell analogs and strike forces act as B-cell analogs.
- increased use and diversity of strike teams under the command of just-in-time task forces. Occasional need for joint task forces but emphasis on common training and common intelligence assets with application of immune network theories of clonal recognition (part of the concept of self-organizing, self-regulating systems).
- smaller forces against smaller groups of network-organized combatants (the criminal has the same or better assets by type and kind. Resurgence of non-fundamentalist Mafia-like organizations.) The ability of the joint task forces to self-organize guarantees scaling (See NIMS/NRP).
Dominant Characteristics
- decentralized
- self-organizing
- self-recognizing
- self-regulating
- self-sustaining
- local intelligence/global resource allocation
Potential Developments
- use of virtual environments with real-time sensor overlays for C2 with increased requirements for combinations of low-fidelity and high-fidelity just-in-time mapping
- greater reliance on local autonomy with access to very large data marts for strategy, tactics, procedures, and analytical tools that are jointly organized and created (authored) by
communities of strike and task specialists (see WikiPedia)
- machine intelligence advances to semi-autonomous operation within 10 years (and that is a conservative estimate) enabling safer at-a-distance operations with less human-in-the-loop control (that is, more tactical authority resides in the programs). Presents training challenges for joint human/machine forces (eg, secure identity management systems - see below for idiotypic response). Within 20 years, can operate fully autonomously in adaptive mode.
- increased requirements for independent, autonomous energy generation sources
- increased use of biological assets to combat biological threats (eg, RNA defenses, more work on idiotype-based vaccines). Note that immune network response models are particularly interesting as a model for self-organizing/self-regulating response systems. See Niels Jerne network hypothesis for immune systems. A thought is that task forces act as T-cell analogs and strike forces act as B-cell analogs.
- increased use and diversity of strike teams under the command of just-in-time task forces. Occasional need for joint task forces but emphasis on common training and common intelligence assets with application of immune network theories of clonal recognition (part of the concept of self-organizing, self-regulating systems).
- smaller forces against smaller groups of network-organized combatants (the criminal has the same or better assets by type and kind. Resurgence of non-fundamentalist Mafia-like organizations.) The ability of the joint task forces to self-organize guarantees scaling (See NIMS/NRP).
Wednesday, February 09, 2005
Bewitched: The Hotei, Mr. Mole and the Little Witch
A story about progress and the limits of magic. The little witch is the raven haired niece of the Witch Of Endor. The Hotei is her Uncle, a very powerful warlock who delights in taking the forms of mortals to amuse himself. Today, he has taken the form of the Hotei, a mendicant Buddhist monk who travels from village to village with his begging bowl while making toys for children from the bits and pieces of junk he picks up along the way...
just as this story is made from pieces of junk I picked up along the way.
***********
When the raven haired little witch found her Uncle, he was frantically stabbing the ground with his staff into the tops of burrows of a mole that had taken residence in his yard beside his small hut in the forest. With every thrust, his big belly quivered and he laughed very loudly, while elsewhere in the yard, a mole pushed its head out of the ground and chattered at him just as loudly. She watched this for a moment until her Uncle finally collaped onto a small chair still laughing. He wiped his brow on his sleeve, then noticed the little witch as she hovered next to the Mole. The Mole chattered at her as if to complain about her Uncle's attempts to clobber him with his staff.
"Hello Little Witch! Have you come to help me dispense with this bothersome mole?"
"No. I have just come to get away from Mother. She yells at me and I wish to be somewhere where no one is yelling at me."
"Well, I won't yell at you. Come sit with me." He clicked his fingers and another chair appeared next to him.
"Sit down. You look very sad, little witch! Why is that?"
"I am learning to cast spells. It makes me very sad."
"Why?"
"My spells don't always work. I try to make white unicorns, but they become blue horses. I conjure rabbits but they don't have fur. I want to enchant my cousin's boyfriend, but my spells don't work on him. It makes me very unhappy. Try as hard as I can, I don't really think I am making progress."
"See Mr. Mole there. Every day he digs tunnels. He goes from here to there, and there to here. Is that progress?"
"I don't know. I suppose it is."
The old Hotei stood up, laughed even more loudly and put his hands above his head, palms raised and flat toward the sky. He smiled and twirled around, his beads rattling, his tattered robes flowing, and he chanted as if he were casting a spell, and as he danced, the Mole joined him:
"To see the world as it is,
Look straight without preconception.
To see the world as it will be,
Avert your eyes; dream your perception.
I can place my staff in Mister Mole's path
Crush his tunnels to block his way
But he digs around my complications
Leaving more tunnels each day.
What he does not know won't change him.
What he does not feel, rearrange him.
He makes no predictions or long term plans
So his world is exactly what he understands."
Mr Mole, inside his hole
Is as happy as you are sad.
A life lived for itself is a well-lived life
Whether you think it good or bad."
When he finished his dance, he swung his staff at the Mole still dancing beside him. The Mole ducked and chattered as if to fuss at him, then ran back to the entrance of his tunnel. The Hotei turned to the little witch laughing at them both, and asked deadpan seriously:
"Why aren't you making progress?"
"Mother says I am making excellent progress but that I try too hard."
"And your Mother would know."
"I can do simple spells quite nicely. But when I try to do complicated spells, things always turn out badly."
"The more complicated the spell, the less likely it is to grant your wish. The more you must know, the more you must control to ensure the success of your spell. As the spell involves more strangers, the stranger the things you must know, so the more intimate the knowledge becomes, the stranger the outcome. The more intimate the knowledge, the less it is your wish and the more it is you. From the moment you cast the spell to know your heart's desire, you become a stranger to your heart."
"But if I practice very very hard, can't my heart's desire be made of my magic?"
"That depends on what you practice."
"I practice my spells as Mother teaches them to me."
"So you say, but do you always practice them exactly as she shows you."
"Well, yes. No. Well.. sometimes I change them a little to make them easier to remember. Sometimes, I can't remember them completely and make...small mistakes."
"Ah then, so there is what you say you do and what you actually do."
"Don't tell, Mother!"
"I won't, and even then, it doesn't matter, Little Witch. Practice makes your magic better but only almost perfect. No matter how much you practice the spell, every time you cast it, it is different."
"Even if I practice a lot?"
"Even if you practice a lot more than a lot. The longer the spell, the more you must practice. The longer you practice, the more small mistakes you make. Each small mistake makes a bigger difference in the outcome. No, the only way to be certain of the outcome is to limit the spell, and so, limit the desire. Simple spells are the best. So are simple desires. The shorter the act, the more certain the outcome. The fewer strangers you involve yourself with, the more you remain yourself."
"Why can't I make up another me to do my spells? I know the Mirror Spell."
"But don't you have to look at the person or thing on which you cast a spell?"
"Of course."
"Then it wouldn't be your spell. It would be your almost-spell."
"But I can use the mirror spell on my cousin. She looks almost exactly like me! And then I can capture her friend and because I look almost like her, he will be captivated by me instead of her."
"You are the mirror image of your cousin. You are not your cousin."
"But when I look in the mirror, I look just like my cousin. Why doesn't he react to me as he does to her??? I used the mirror spell on her and he didn't react to the image at all."
"Use the mirror spell on yourself. The mirror image of you is your almost-cousin. I told you, strangers rearrange the spell, and if you make her in the mirror of his eyes, he will only react to her. If he is attracted to her, he will be attracted to your almost-cousin. But if he is not, then this almost-cousin will be just as loathsome. Either way, a simple mirroring spell will give you the answer you seek because the simplest way to unlock a secret is to use the lock itself to make an extra key."
"So magic doesn't change the rules?"
"You can change the form but not the rules of the form. There are many more ways to arrange the form of a horse but there is only one that makes it a unicorn. If you don't learn to cast the spell to make a white unicorn, don't be unhappy if it is blue?"
"Don't you like blue unicorns?"
"I think they are grand in a field of pink daffodils, but not in field of green grass. Context is everything. If you erase the context, all you have is a blue horse with a horn on its forehead which you must admit, isn't very magical."
"But I am magical? Can't I know everything all at once?"
"That you can, clever witch, but can you make sense of everything you know? And if you know everything, when you cast a spell, won't it create something new that you did not know before? How can that be? Will you still be you? Will your magic still be magical? That seems very dangerous, precocious little witch."
"How can I cast a spell to get what I want and still save my magic?"
"Look at Mr Mole. He digs forward, goes to and fro, and back, and around. Sometimes he digs across his own tunnel and then loses himself because he can't remember which tunnel was the first. He knows his own smell and that is all that keeps him out of the older tunnels. If he smells a tunnel from a different mole, he will follow the tunnel until he finds him and they fight."
"That seems awfully complicated."
"It is really very easy. Smell is complicated but Mr Mole is born able to do that complicated thing. It is much like you are born to do magic. But the mole doesn't find digging to be any more complicated than sniffing and scratching. It is a very simple spell even if it produces long and complicated tunnels. He only has to know how to dig dirt as the dirt presents itself to him, one dirty bit of dirt at a dig; he leaves the details of digging to the moment. Otherwise, he becomes a tunnel digger instead of a mole just as your unicorns become horses. Perhaps you should wish for horses with horns and they will appear as unicorns. Don't try to describe a spell to make a unicorn. Make the magic that makes the unicorn just as the mole
doesn't dig the tunnel, he tunnels."
"Is the mole more magical than I am, Uncle?"
"The mole can make the tunnel through the ground; he cannot make the ground through the tunnel. He can go forward in his tunnel or backwards, but he cannot regain a single second of his time. He can push every particle of dirt aside, but he cannot put them all back exactly as they were. The longer the tunnel he digs, the more uncertain he is of where he is. The more he eats, the fatter he becomes. The fatter he becomes, the more earth he must move. The more earth he moves, the slower he moves and the hungrier he becomes. Every little particle of earth grows bigger even as his happiness diminishes. Even as his tunnels trace the ground making patterns to and fro, the earth within them is less orderly and has less food for him to find."
"But if he digs less, won't he quit growing?"
"He doesn't care that he is fatter; only that he is hungry."
"Then he is a silly silly mole. He doesn't know anything."
"On the contrary, little witch. He knows much more about digging holes than you do about casting spells."
"But he is silly. He can't remember what he ate."
"He knows that he is hungry or not hungry. He recognizes food when he sees it but he doesn't think much about it being different from other kinds of food. You see, when we say something IS something, we hide as much as we uncover. The naming of the thing unnames all of the other things. What do you call the spell you cast to capture your cousin's boyfriend?"
"Mother told me to call it the Mirror Spell, although Father called it something else."
"Your Mother is the Namer of Names in your house, but does that make your Father's
names less powerful when used in spells?"
"If I can't remember them, I guess it does."
"And there is the rub, my forgetful little witch. The past is only a little more determined than the future. For the past, we only have witnesses. For the future, we only have victims. So even if we believe in the future, we can also only believe in the past."
"Then what is true?"
"What we are doing now. The mole believes in his tunnels. He doesn't ask if his tunnels are good mole tunnels, he uses them to find food."
"He looks tired."
"He is. Tunneling is hard work."
"Is Mr. Mole lonely?"
"Yes, but he is happy when he is alone because he doesn't have to share his food and his tunnel isn't crowded. From time to time, he comes out of his tunnel and searches until he finds another mole to mate with, but eventually, he forgets her and returns to tunneling."
"His friend must be lonely too."
"She is, but she may find another Mr. Mole digging around."
"I don't want to be lonely."
"No, you don't. That would make you unhappy."
"Yes. But leaving her to fend for herself, that is wrong. Does Mr Mole have a soul?"
"I can't say. A soul is something my staff cannot touch, my ears cannot hear, nor my tongue taste. I don't see it. Perhaps I feel it but no spell I can cast can make it more real than any other illusion you can make with your magic. Perhaps he does, but it doesn't seem to make a difference of his desire to dig tunnels."
"Do I have a soul?"
"I can't say. Would you be different if you didn't? Can you be other than you are?"
"I can be anything. I am a witch. That is my destiny."
"Your destiny comes of the making of making, not the air you breathe or the water you drink or even the forms you take. Desire is the cause of causes, and the end of causes. You do not become what you will, but what you will becomes you. It may not make you better but it will make you different."
"On purpose?"
"With purpose."
"Who's?"
"Yours."
"When does my purpose make a difference?"
"When your difference makes a difference you wish for."
"Do my wishes make me different than what I am?"
"Do you know what you are made of?"
"Mother says I am made of stardust and her wishes."
"And your Mother would know. The mole is also made of stardust and he wishes to dig alone and be unbothered while he finds food. But does a star wish to be a mole?"
"Stars are bright and shiny. The mole lives in a dark tunnel and cannot abide the light of day. I don't understand how a star can wish to be a lonely old mole."
"Because a star can become dust and stardust can be everywhere and for a very long time. It bumps into itself over and over again, changing itself into every thing you see, hear, feel, touch and taste. It can become all things even a lonely and hungry mole. Where there is one mole digging, there are others but each in his own tunnel. Mr. Mole makes himself happy, safe and fat in his loneliness. You make yourself happy, safe and beautiful with your wishes."
"I am tired."
"Magic is hard work."
"What do you wish for, Uncle?"
"I wish to make toys and to make you laugh?"
"Then why can't you make toys for Mr. Mole so he will laugh too?"
"I cannot make the toy be all things because then it would be the world and the world is not a toy. So I make toys of all the things I find in the world and give them to you because you like toys. The world is complicated and big but my toys are simple and little; yet as you play with my toys, the world is made a little better and a little simpler."
"Is this progress?"
"Do you feel good right now?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because you make me laugh? Do you feel bad right now, Uncle?"
"I am a mole, but I am happily digging."
"You are very silly, Uncle!"
"Then, why are you laughing?"
"Because I am happy!"
"Well, that's progress."
just as this story is made from pieces of junk I picked up along the way.
***********
When the raven haired little witch found her Uncle, he was frantically stabbing the ground with his staff into the tops of burrows of a mole that had taken residence in his yard beside his small hut in the forest. With every thrust, his big belly quivered and he laughed very loudly, while elsewhere in the yard, a mole pushed its head out of the ground and chattered at him just as loudly. She watched this for a moment until her Uncle finally collaped onto a small chair still laughing. He wiped his brow on his sleeve, then noticed the little witch as she hovered next to the Mole. The Mole chattered at her as if to complain about her Uncle's attempts to clobber him with his staff.
"Hello Little Witch! Have you come to help me dispense with this bothersome mole?"
"No. I have just come to get away from Mother. She yells at me and I wish to be somewhere where no one is yelling at me."
"Well, I won't yell at you. Come sit with me." He clicked his fingers and another chair appeared next to him.
"Sit down. You look very sad, little witch! Why is that?"
"I am learning to cast spells. It makes me very sad."
"Why?"
"My spells don't always work. I try to make white unicorns, but they become blue horses. I conjure rabbits but they don't have fur. I want to enchant my cousin's boyfriend, but my spells don't work on him. It makes me very unhappy. Try as hard as I can, I don't really think I am making progress."
"See Mr. Mole there. Every day he digs tunnels. He goes from here to there, and there to here. Is that progress?"
"I don't know. I suppose it is."
The old Hotei stood up, laughed even more loudly and put his hands above his head, palms raised and flat toward the sky. He smiled and twirled around, his beads rattling, his tattered robes flowing, and he chanted as if he were casting a spell, and as he danced, the Mole joined him:
"To see the world as it is,
Look straight without preconception.
To see the world as it will be,
Avert your eyes; dream your perception.
I can place my staff in Mister Mole's path
Crush his tunnels to block his way
But he digs around my complications
Leaving more tunnels each day.
What he does not know won't change him.
What he does not feel, rearrange him.
He makes no predictions or long term plans
So his world is exactly what he understands."
Mr Mole, inside his hole
Is as happy as you are sad.
A life lived for itself is a well-lived life
Whether you think it good or bad."
When he finished his dance, he swung his staff at the Mole still dancing beside him. The Mole ducked and chattered as if to fuss at him, then ran back to the entrance of his tunnel. The Hotei turned to the little witch laughing at them both, and asked deadpan seriously:
"Why aren't you making progress?"
"Mother says I am making excellent progress but that I try too hard."
"And your Mother would know."
"I can do simple spells quite nicely. But when I try to do complicated spells, things always turn out badly."
"The more complicated the spell, the less likely it is to grant your wish. The more you must know, the more you must control to ensure the success of your spell. As the spell involves more strangers, the stranger the things you must know, so the more intimate the knowledge becomes, the stranger the outcome. The more intimate the knowledge, the less it is your wish and the more it is you. From the moment you cast the spell to know your heart's desire, you become a stranger to your heart."
"But if I practice very very hard, can't my heart's desire be made of my magic?"
"That depends on what you practice."
"I practice my spells as Mother teaches them to me."
"So you say, but do you always practice them exactly as she shows you."
"Well, yes. No. Well.. sometimes I change them a little to make them easier to remember. Sometimes, I can't remember them completely and make...small mistakes."
"Ah then, so there is what you say you do and what you actually do."
"Don't tell, Mother!"
"I won't, and even then, it doesn't matter, Little Witch. Practice makes your magic better but only almost perfect. No matter how much you practice the spell, every time you cast it, it is different."
"Even if I practice a lot?"
"Even if you practice a lot more than a lot. The longer the spell, the more you must practice. The longer you practice, the more small mistakes you make. Each small mistake makes a bigger difference in the outcome. No, the only way to be certain of the outcome is to limit the spell, and so, limit the desire. Simple spells are the best. So are simple desires. The shorter the act, the more certain the outcome. The fewer strangers you involve yourself with, the more you remain yourself."
"Why can't I make up another me to do my spells? I know the Mirror Spell."
"But don't you have to look at the person or thing on which you cast a spell?"
"Of course."
"Then it wouldn't be your spell. It would be your almost-spell."
"But I can use the mirror spell on my cousin. She looks almost exactly like me! And then I can capture her friend and because I look almost like her, he will be captivated by me instead of her."
"You are the mirror image of your cousin. You are not your cousin."
"But when I look in the mirror, I look just like my cousin. Why doesn't he react to me as he does to her??? I used the mirror spell on her and he didn't react to the image at all."
"Use the mirror spell on yourself. The mirror image of you is your almost-cousin. I told you, strangers rearrange the spell, and if you make her in the mirror of his eyes, he will only react to her. If he is attracted to her, he will be attracted to your almost-cousin. But if he is not, then this almost-cousin will be just as loathsome. Either way, a simple mirroring spell will give you the answer you seek because the simplest way to unlock a secret is to use the lock itself to make an extra key."
"So magic doesn't change the rules?"
"You can change the form but not the rules of the form. There are many more ways to arrange the form of a horse but there is only one that makes it a unicorn. If you don't learn to cast the spell to make a white unicorn, don't be unhappy if it is blue?"
"Don't you like blue unicorns?"
"I think they are grand in a field of pink daffodils, but not in field of green grass. Context is everything. If you erase the context, all you have is a blue horse with a horn on its forehead which you must admit, isn't very magical."
"But I am magical? Can't I know everything all at once?"
"That you can, clever witch, but can you make sense of everything you know? And if you know everything, when you cast a spell, won't it create something new that you did not know before? How can that be? Will you still be you? Will your magic still be magical? That seems very dangerous, precocious little witch."
"How can I cast a spell to get what I want and still save my magic?"
"Look at Mr Mole. He digs forward, goes to and fro, and back, and around. Sometimes he digs across his own tunnel and then loses himself because he can't remember which tunnel was the first. He knows his own smell and that is all that keeps him out of the older tunnels. If he smells a tunnel from a different mole, he will follow the tunnel until he finds him and they fight."
"That seems awfully complicated."
"It is really very easy. Smell is complicated but Mr Mole is born able to do that complicated thing. It is much like you are born to do magic. But the mole doesn't find digging to be any more complicated than sniffing and scratching. It is a very simple spell even if it produces long and complicated tunnels. He only has to know how to dig dirt as the dirt presents itself to him, one dirty bit of dirt at a dig; he leaves the details of digging to the moment. Otherwise, he becomes a tunnel digger instead of a mole just as your unicorns become horses. Perhaps you should wish for horses with horns and they will appear as unicorns. Don't try to describe a spell to make a unicorn. Make the magic that makes the unicorn just as the mole
doesn't dig the tunnel, he tunnels."
"Is the mole more magical than I am, Uncle?"
"The mole can make the tunnel through the ground; he cannot make the ground through the tunnel. He can go forward in his tunnel or backwards, but he cannot regain a single second of his time. He can push every particle of dirt aside, but he cannot put them all back exactly as they were. The longer the tunnel he digs, the more uncertain he is of where he is. The more he eats, the fatter he becomes. The fatter he becomes, the more earth he must move. The more earth he moves, the slower he moves and the hungrier he becomes. Every little particle of earth grows bigger even as his happiness diminishes. Even as his tunnels trace the ground making patterns to and fro, the earth within them is less orderly and has less food for him to find."
"But if he digs less, won't he quit growing?"
"He doesn't care that he is fatter; only that he is hungry."
"Then he is a silly silly mole. He doesn't know anything."
"On the contrary, little witch. He knows much more about digging holes than you do about casting spells."
"But he is silly. He can't remember what he ate."
"He knows that he is hungry or not hungry. He recognizes food when he sees it but he doesn't think much about it being different from other kinds of food. You see, when we say something IS something, we hide as much as we uncover. The naming of the thing unnames all of the other things. What do you call the spell you cast to capture your cousin's boyfriend?"
"Mother told me to call it the Mirror Spell, although Father called it something else."
"Your Mother is the Namer of Names in your house, but does that make your Father's
names less powerful when used in spells?"
"If I can't remember them, I guess it does."
"And there is the rub, my forgetful little witch. The past is only a little more determined than the future. For the past, we only have witnesses. For the future, we only have victims. So even if we believe in the future, we can also only believe in the past."
"Then what is true?"
"What we are doing now. The mole believes in his tunnels. He doesn't ask if his tunnels are good mole tunnels, he uses them to find food."
"He looks tired."
"He is. Tunneling is hard work."
"Is Mr. Mole lonely?"
"Yes, but he is happy when he is alone because he doesn't have to share his food and his tunnel isn't crowded. From time to time, he comes out of his tunnel and searches until he finds another mole to mate with, but eventually, he forgets her and returns to tunneling."
"His friend must be lonely too."
"She is, but she may find another Mr. Mole digging around."
"I don't want to be lonely."
"No, you don't. That would make you unhappy."
"Yes. But leaving her to fend for herself, that is wrong. Does Mr Mole have a soul?"
"I can't say. A soul is something my staff cannot touch, my ears cannot hear, nor my tongue taste. I don't see it. Perhaps I feel it but no spell I can cast can make it more real than any other illusion you can make with your magic. Perhaps he does, but it doesn't seem to make a difference of his desire to dig tunnels."
"Do I have a soul?"
"I can't say. Would you be different if you didn't? Can you be other than you are?"
"I can be anything. I am a witch. That is my destiny."
"Your destiny comes of the making of making, not the air you breathe or the water you drink or even the forms you take. Desire is the cause of causes, and the end of causes. You do not become what you will, but what you will becomes you. It may not make you better but it will make you different."
"On purpose?"
"With purpose."
"Who's?"
"Yours."
"When does my purpose make a difference?"
"When your difference makes a difference you wish for."
"Do my wishes make me different than what I am?"
"Do you know what you are made of?"
"Mother says I am made of stardust and her wishes."
"And your Mother would know. The mole is also made of stardust and he wishes to dig alone and be unbothered while he finds food. But does a star wish to be a mole?"
"Stars are bright and shiny. The mole lives in a dark tunnel and cannot abide the light of day. I don't understand how a star can wish to be a lonely old mole."
"Because a star can become dust and stardust can be everywhere and for a very long time. It bumps into itself over and over again, changing itself into every thing you see, hear, feel, touch and taste. It can become all things even a lonely and hungry mole. Where there is one mole digging, there are others but each in his own tunnel. Mr. Mole makes himself happy, safe and fat in his loneliness. You make yourself happy, safe and beautiful with your wishes."
"I am tired."
"Magic is hard work."
"What do you wish for, Uncle?"
"I wish to make toys and to make you laugh?"
"Then why can't you make toys for Mr. Mole so he will laugh too?"
"I cannot make the toy be all things because then it would be the world and the world is not a toy. So I make toys of all the things I find in the world and give them to you because you like toys. The world is complicated and big but my toys are simple and little; yet as you play with my toys, the world is made a little better and a little simpler."
"Is this progress?"
"Do you feel good right now?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because you make me laugh? Do you feel bad right now, Uncle?"
"I am a mole, but I am happily digging."
"You are very silly, Uncle!"
"Then, why are you laughing?"
"Because I am happy!"
"Well, that's progress."
Iraq and Symmetrical Network Response
Here's a short thought to entertain yourself with. What if Iraq is acting as a host for breeding anti-terrorist, anti-fundamentalist, even anti-Muslim antibodies in the form of the troops and other personnel deployed there? Is this an effort that like Niels Jerne's network theory of immune response (self-regulating, self-organizing) is creating the next generation of public safety responders?
When they come home, a lot of them will get jobs in the public safety systems. Given the National Response Plan, a doctrine will be in place that is essentially just in time and networked with primacy given to local response. All that system requires to work is for it to be staffed by the analogs of anti-bodies and anti-antibodies that already have the recognition patterns for the kinds of antigens anticipated to be troublesome in this century. Recognition is the key requirement. As soon as the anti-Muslim receptors are eliminated, the ability to recognize the anti-Western behavior without indulging in self and other thinking would be priceless.
Maybe this is a scary thought, but it could be precisely what will work.
When they come home, a lot of them will get jobs in the public safety systems. Given the National Response Plan, a doctrine will be in place that is essentially just in time and networked with primacy given to local response. All that system requires to work is for it to be staffed by the analogs of anti-bodies and anti-antibodies that already have the recognition patterns for the kinds of antigens anticipated to be troublesome in this century. Recognition is the key requirement. As soon as the anti-Muslim receptors are eliminated, the ability to recognize the anti-Western behavior without indulging in self and other thinking would be priceless.
Maybe this is a scary thought, but it could be precisely what will work.
Tuesday, February 08, 2005
A Blessing for The Chinese New Year
To the People of China everywhere:
May your children be awakened every day by the loud crowing of the rooster, may they enjoy long lives of prosperity blessed by the gods of the Three Realms, and before they sleep each night, may their shadows dance beneath the loveliness of the far-away moon.
len
May your children be awakened every day by the loud crowing of the rooster, may they enjoy long lives of prosperity blessed by the gods of the Three Realms, and before they sleep each night, may their shadows dance beneath the loveliness of the far-away moon.
len
Monday, February 07, 2005
Take This Job and Shove It
On the drive home, National Public Radio said the Pope is considering tendering his resignation. Hmmm. By all accounts, the Pope is the representative of God On Earth.
To what interoffice address does the Pope send his resignation and who approves it?
Does the Pope get to keep his accrued vacation and overtime?
Where does the Pope go to get away from the Boss anyway?
What kind of 401k or stock options do you get for working for the Almighty?
and finally
Does the Pope have to sign a waiver agreeing not to work for the competition for six months?
and finally
Just Another MADnic Monday
Reading Tim Bray's blog this morning and replying to Paul Downey about a MotorHead video, I found I had to review the definition of a stochastic process.
Maybe it's just me, but the fact that probability space for a stochastic process is labeled by a giant W is the universe laughing about the last election or at the electorate with SUVs sporting the bumper stickers of President Bush.
"Roll The Dice, Martha! Shorly he l'arned sumpin' in the last f'ar y'ars."
... but chance has no memory and neither does George W. We could try the Democrats again, but they keep coming up with really complicated plans and as any chaos theorist or stage magician can tell you, the longer the spell, the less likely the outcome is to be what you predict.
This is the best. It comes from a lecture by Doyle Farmer:
"Creating reality
Guys like you are ‘in what we called the reality-based community’, defined as people who ‘believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernable reality. That’s not the way the world really works anymore. We’re an empire now, and when we act we create our own reality.’
A senior advisor to G.W. Bush, to Ron Susskind"
As Tim Bray says, ya just can't make these things up. It's just another Alfred E. Neumann kind of day. "What, Me Worry?"
Maybe it's just me, but the fact that probability space for a stochastic process is labeled by a giant W is the universe laughing about the last election or at the electorate with SUVs sporting the bumper stickers of President Bush.
"Roll The Dice, Martha! Shorly he l'arned sumpin' in the last f'ar y'ars."
... but chance has no memory and neither does George W. We could try the Democrats again, but they keep coming up with really complicated plans and as any chaos theorist or stage magician can tell you, the longer the spell, the less likely the outcome is to be what you predict.
This is the best. It comes from a lecture by Doyle Farmer:
"Creating reality
Guys like you are ‘in what we called the reality-based community’, defined as people who ‘believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernable reality. That’s not the way the world really works anymore. We’re an empire now, and when we act we create our own reality.’
A senior advisor to G.W. Bush, to Ron Susskind"
As Tim Bray says, ya just can't make these things up. It's just another Alfred E. Neumann kind of day. "What, Me Worry?"
BOO!! The GooglieMan Is Gonna GETCHA!
Every other day, yet another article appears telling us that our privacy rights will be trampled by the ever expanding reach of data mining efforts. Well, they're mostly right and in a non-random state space, that is, if the future is predicated on the past, they (whoever THEY are in your control hierarchy) will abuse this stuff.
In case it is the cops that scare you, you should be aware that their computer skills, their infrastructure and their time are limited quite a bit more than you might think. On the other hand, Google and other super Wal-Marts of data aggregation are out there wheeling and dealing to get ever more interfaces to ever more private data stashes. Google says they will do no evil, but as a veteran of watching companies founded by good people eventually being taken over by people whose only care is for their stockholders, when the price is right, virtues are a commodity. So, yes, it will be your credit agencies, doctors, car and hotel rental websites etc. that will do most of the heavy lifting to get the goods on you. If you were listening, during the State of the Onion speech, The W snuck in one of the pet projects which is to ensure that ALL medical records are digitized. In the name of better access to Viagra, we will surrender privacy about ED to the parapsychologists of crime who want to project trends about criminal inflation based on private deflation. As the song says, "Nobody knows you when you're down and out", but these systems keep track just in case.
So is this trend inevitable? Unfortunately, yes, but if you are worried about the locals, study this. CFR 28 Part 23 provides the guidelines for agencies that want/need to access your records in the conduct of a criminal investigation. We should be lobbying our legal representatives at all levels of government to ensure this is applied properly. Don't rely on the Department of Homeland Security to get this right. They are rather busy figuring out how to make it easier to do. Don't rely on the World Wide Web Consortium to get it right. They are rather busy figuring out how to make it more reliable to do.
The geeks don't care and the suits are going to make more money doing it. If you care, you better vote this issue into being by keeping it in front of your congressional reps and local politicos. There is a a lot of digital ink devoted to scaring you into giving up your rights but there is a lot less to be afraid of and knowing more about you won't help them protect you from them. Criminal investigations don't work that way although bits of emergency response do. In the second case, all they need is your location and a way to call you, email you, or orient you toward that big clanging bell in the town square. They don't need your life history. Total Information Awareness is BS, friends and neighbors. They don't need it to do their jobs. They just want it. That SHOULD bother you.
You should be concerned, but the guidelines already exist and your best protection is to know about them. Hit that link above and do a bit of reading. If you see in a footnote of the back page of your newspaper that they are ammending CFR 28 Part 23, PAY ATTENTION.
In case it is the cops that scare you, you should be aware that their computer skills, their infrastructure and their time are limited quite a bit more than you might think. On the other hand, Google and other super Wal-Marts of data aggregation are out there wheeling and dealing to get ever more interfaces to ever more private data stashes. Google says they will do no evil, but as a veteran of watching companies founded by good people eventually being taken over by people whose only care is for their stockholders, when the price is right, virtues are a commodity. So, yes, it will be your credit agencies, doctors, car and hotel rental websites etc. that will do most of the heavy lifting to get the goods on you. If you were listening, during the State of the Onion speech, The W snuck in one of the pet projects which is to ensure that ALL medical records are digitized. In the name of better access to Viagra, we will surrender privacy about ED to the parapsychologists of crime who want to project trends about criminal inflation based on private deflation. As the song says, "Nobody knows you when you're down and out", but these systems keep track just in case.
So is this trend inevitable? Unfortunately, yes, but if you are worried about the locals, study this. CFR 28 Part 23 provides the guidelines for agencies that want/need to access your records in the conduct of a criminal investigation. We should be lobbying our legal representatives at all levels of government to ensure this is applied properly. Don't rely on the Department of Homeland Security to get this right. They are rather busy figuring out how to make it easier to do. Don't rely on the World Wide Web Consortium to get it right. They are rather busy figuring out how to make it more reliable to do.
The geeks don't care and the suits are going to make more money doing it. If you care, you better vote this issue into being by keeping it in front of your congressional reps and local politicos. There is a a lot of digital ink devoted to scaring you into giving up your rights but there is a lot less to be afraid of and knowing more about you won't help them protect you from them. Criminal investigations don't work that way although bits of emergency response do. In the second case, all they need is your location and a way to call you, email you, or orient you toward that big clanging bell in the town square. They don't need your life history. Total Information Awareness is BS, friends and neighbors. They don't need it to do their jobs. They just want it. That SHOULD bother you.
You should be concerned, but the guidelines already exist and your best protection is to know about them. Hit that link above and do a bit of reading. If you see in a footnote of the back page of your newspaper that they are ammending CFR 28 Part 23, PAY ATTENTION.
Wednesday, February 02, 2005
Will I Watch Bush's Speech?
I don't think so. That would be too much like listening to your ex-wife's husband talk about renovating your house when you know he had to lie to get the job and your house.
No. It's my baby girl's eleventh birtday today. We'll celebrate that and watch "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" on DVD. It's the same theme as the de factotem's speech but the CGI is waaaaaay better.
As he does every year, my son tossed her out the door into the yard this morning. The good news: she didn't see her shadow on the way back in to kick his head around the living room as she does every year. The difference: her feet are much bigger this year. So, winter will be shorter. He will be too.
No. It's my baby girl's eleventh birtday today. We'll celebrate that and watch "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" on DVD. It's the same theme as the de factotem's speech but the CGI is waaaaaay better.
As he does every year, my son tossed her out the door into the yard this morning. The good news: she didn't see her shadow on the way back in to kick his head around the living room as she does every year. The difference: her feet are much bigger this year. So, winter will be shorter. He will be too.
Tuesday, February 01, 2005
Just Say No To Desktops
The ultimate act of government control in this century will be to outlaw the personal computer. I can think of some more technically efficient approaches (outlaw compilers and scripting editors), but they are more complicated. No, the 'take no prisoners' simple approach is to outlaw the personal computer. What is left is the thin system, of course, that enables delivery of services and content, but absolutely removes the ability to build anything useful locally and without oversight.
Why do this Draconian thing?
Simple. Anything profitable and digital quickly gets burgled and its creator gets buggered in today's "I want it, I want it now, and I want it for free" entitled generation, and computer geeks young and old, smart and not so smart have stepped up to the challenge around the world. The virus writers are simply immature show offs or curmudgeon terrorists compared to the devils of the freeware open source open content generations. These burglars are the real pros who have dedicated their skills to relieving the rich and powerful of their means of holding onto wealth and power: distribution.
From Napster to BitTorrent to MythTV, the systems to liberate content from the shackles of the pay-to-play and monthly cable bills grow in strength and intensity and no one seems to be able to stop them.
I have. Outlaw the personal computer. That will put it on a par with Schedule A drugs. We all know how successful that war has been.
Just Say No to Personal Computing.
:-)
Why do this Draconian thing?
Simple. Anything profitable and digital quickly gets burgled and its creator gets buggered in today's "I want it, I want it now, and I want it for free" entitled generation, and computer geeks young and old, smart and not so smart have stepped up to the challenge around the world. The virus writers are simply immature show offs or curmudgeon terrorists compared to the devils of the freeware open source open content generations. These burglars are the real pros who have dedicated their skills to relieving the rich and powerful of their means of holding onto wealth and power: distribution.
From Napster to BitTorrent to MythTV, the systems to liberate content from the shackles of the pay-to-play and monthly cable bills grow in strength and intensity and no one seems to be able to stop them.
I have. Outlaw the personal computer. That will put it on a par with Schedule A drugs. We all know how successful that war has been.
Just Say No to Personal Computing.
:-)
Monday, January 31, 2005
Farhenheit 911
Last weekend, the wife rented Farhenheit 911, Michael Moore's documentary of the involvement of the Bush family with the Saudi royal family and the effects of the entanglement on American foreign relations. He goes on to document the war in Iraq in the beginning and the web of half-truths and deceit surrounding that. She rented it because my soon to be sixteen year old son is very interested in this, and as an American kid approaching draft age, that's a healthy interest.
He made the astute comment that this was a one-sided presentation. True, I said, but if even a fourth of it is true, it is scary nonetheless.
Post-election, most have settled down into the typical American cynicism about our government's actions, and given yesterday's Iraqi-election-under-the-umbrella, one can begin to forget that this is a country that did nothing to justify being invaded by a foreign army. Iraq is now as Secretary Powell said, something we broke so we own the problem. I don't see a quick exit strategy and my judgement is that before this is over, there will be theocratic rule in Iraq, or we will be occupying that country for the next two decades.
What is bothering me is the blase attitude toward this the hard right is creating in America. Fear is still squelching any honest appraisal of the decisions of the neocons driven by their brownshirt standins, the Christian Coalition of the Willing to Be Fooled. With initiatives to force school systems to teach the barely masked religious dreck "intelligent design" in American science classes, a full press on getting rid of abortion rights, and resolute refusal to look at the growing surveillance systems as anything more than a necessary surrender of personal liberties, these take-no-prisoners forces of darkness are fast putting out the light of freedom and democratic thought just as their leader stands at his bully pulpit proclaiming the right and necessity of the Americans to do anything to anyone anywhere anytime to advance American interests.
The exception to this media blitz designed to keep us frightened and quiescent is black radio. If you listen to the black college stations, among the cool grooves you will hear commentary from black leaders and they are vocal about their opposition to these policies. When you count the numbers of poor white and black soldiers and look at the numbers of affluent Americans who are notable by their absence in the US military forces at this time, you understand their opposition. The price for opposition is the administration has sent the IRS attack dogs to get rid of the NAACP's non-profit tax status. That ought to make them heel, yeah? Not bloody likely.
This is VietNam again; a war fought by the poorest of the American economic classes. The difference is that during VietNam, the American middle class and upper class kids in college took to the streets to oppose the war. Talking to some over the weekend, they have that same dumb attitude that Britney Spears expressed so glowingly in Moore's film. It scares the hell out of me. Unfortunately, the war will have to take out more of their classmates, they will have to go to more funerals, and then maybe they will get it. The kids of the rich in America don't fight this kind of war, but here in the American South, their classmates do. Willingly. For now. Some returning from duty are coming back with changed attitudes about that decision. Now they know.
The world is still watching and America is becoming ever more isolated. The world hoped the American electorate would do the right thing in the last election and when they failed to do that, their admiration and affection for the American people diminished. Perhaps a few more of us should rent Michael Moore's film and watch it, if not for the first time, then with a few of those who stand on the sidelines. I'm not sure if it does more than make us mad, but at least we don't sleep as soundly, and frankly, we shouldn't. Bad things are happening, and even if Moore is one sided, everything I read and hear and see says he isn't completely wrong.
Those of you who think Bush will be a lame duck, think again. He has the lack of will of the American public in his back pocket, and supreme command of the American military in his front. He has both houses of Congress. In two years, you get a chance to change that. You might want to.
He made the astute comment that this was a one-sided presentation. True, I said, but if even a fourth of it is true, it is scary nonetheless.
Post-election, most have settled down into the typical American cynicism about our government's actions, and given yesterday's Iraqi-election-under-the-umbrella, one can begin to forget that this is a country that did nothing to justify being invaded by a foreign army. Iraq is now as Secretary Powell said, something we broke so we own the problem. I don't see a quick exit strategy and my judgement is that before this is over, there will be theocratic rule in Iraq, or we will be occupying that country for the next two decades.
What is bothering me is the blase attitude toward this the hard right is creating in America. Fear is still squelching any honest appraisal of the decisions of the neocons driven by their brownshirt standins, the Christian Coalition of the Willing to Be Fooled. With initiatives to force school systems to teach the barely masked religious dreck "intelligent design" in American science classes, a full press on getting rid of abortion rights, and resolute refusal to look at the growing surveillance systems as anything more than a necessary surrender of personal liberties, these take-no-prisoners forces of darkness are fast putting out the light of freedom and democratic thought just as their leader stands at his bully pulpit proclaiming the right and necessity of the Americans to do anything to anyone anywhere anytime to advance American interests.
The exception to this media blitz designed to keep us frightened and quiescent is black radio. If you listen to the black college stations, among the cool grooves you will hear commentary from black leaders and they are vocal about their opposition to these policies. When you count the numbers of poor white and black soldiers and look at the numbers of affluent Americans who are notable by their absence in the US military forces at this time, you understand their opposition. The price for opposition is the administration has sent the IRS attack dogs to get rid of the NAACP's non-profit tax status. That ought to make them heel, yeah? Not bloody likely.
This is VietNam again; a war fought by the poorest of the American economic classes. The difference is that during VietNam, the American middle class and upper class kids in college took to the streets to oppose the war. Talking to some over the weekend, they have that same dumb attitude that Britney Spears expressed so glowingly in Moore's film. It scares the hell out of me. Unfortunately, the war will have to take out more of their classmates, they will have to go to more funerals, and then maybe they will get it. The kids of the rich in America don't fight this kind of war, but here in the American South, their classmates do. Willingly. For now. Some returning from duty are coming back with changed attitudes about that decision. Now they know.
The world is still watching and America is becoming ever more isolated. The world hoped the American electorate would do the right thing in the last election and when they failed to do that, their admiration and affection for the American people diminished. Perhaps a few more of us should rent Michael Moore's film and watch it, if not for the first time, then with a few of those who stand on the sidelines. I'm not sure if it does more than make us mad, but at least we don't sleep as soundly, and frankly, we shouldn't. Bad things are happening, and even if Moore is one sided, everything I read and hear and see says he isn't completely wrong.
Those of you who think Bush will be a lame duck, think again. He has the lack of will of the American public in his back pocket, and supreme command of the American military in his front. He has both houses of Congress. In two years, you get a chance to change that. You might want to.
Thursday, January 27, 2005
Marketing X3D: The Basics
1. What situations will X3D make the better solution? In what way? What needs are met? Listening is everything. Timing is everything else. Location is opportunity.
2. What will the customer or user lose if they don't use X3D? Risk aversion is more powerful than opportunity.
3. When is X3D the classier approach and worth a little more money? Prestige is not cheap. When is X3D the cheaper approach and worth a little more time? Repetition is expensive.
4. X3D is boring as a technology. Interactive solutions are exciting as an experience.
5. A world with the customer's image in it is prettier than a picture of you.
6. The larger the number, the more the risk. Think small. Scale large.
7. In a world of ends, value is not had by creating a completely new world but by adding one that cooperates. In X3D, at the endpoint is a new world.
8. Creating a new service is better than competing with an existing service.
9. If you can do something but your competitor can do more, you will lose. If you can do more but your competitor is already doing something better, you will lose. If you can do something better and do more of it, you will win.
10. It isn't enough to be different, but it helps.
11. Know precisely what you want to do.
Practice doing that.
Do that every day in front of those who want that.
12. Location. Practice. Persistence.
2. What will the customer or user lose if they don't use X3D? Risk aversion is more powerful than opportunity.
3. When is X3D the classier approach and worth a little more money? Prestige is not cheap. When is X3D the cheaper approach and worth a little more time? Repetition is expensive.
4. X3D is boring as a technology. Interactive solutions are exciting as an experience.
5. A world with the customer's image in it is prettier than a picture of you.
6. The larger the number, the more the risk. Think small. Scale large.
7. In a world of ends, value is not had by creating a completely new world but by adding one that cooperates. In X3D, at the endpoint is a new world.
8. Creating a new service is better than competing with an existing service.
9. If you can do something but your competitor can do more, you will lose. If you can do more but your competitor is already doing something better, you will lose. If you can do something better and do more of it, you will win.
10. It isn't enough to be different, but it helps.
11. Know precisely what you want to do.
Practice doing that.
Do that every day in front of those who want that.
12. Location. Practice. Persistence.
The Beginner's Mind
In the philosophy of Zen (chan), there is the concept of beginner's mind.
Essentially, the mind of the master and the mind of the beginner have the same form and this is revealed in their works. The beginner will create a simple work because they don't know enough to attempt a complex work, and the master will create simple works because they know enough to do that. The differences will be subtle, stylistic, but immediately apprehended by even a casual viewer. In the work of the beginner, one may only see simplicity but may also see the genius of the universe that comes serendipitously to the beginner's mind when it is sensitive and in motion. In the work of the master, one will see both simplicity and the genius of the universe that comes continuously because the master's mind is empty and still, therefore, ready.
I see this in XML design. The schemas of beginners are simple and contain just those elements and attributes needed to do a small task. The schemas of masters are simple and contain just those elements and attributes needed to do a small task in the context of a larger task. The schemas of the journeymen are often very large, use as many of the features of the schema language as they can manage, and attempt to capture all of the tasks in a single grand unified design.
Some think such are the product of committees and blame the size of the committee or the process, but committee work is really the work of one or two individuals who collect and attempt to synthesize all of the requirements while maintaining consensus. They create risk averse schemas because they think that the safe bet is the right bet when in truth, loss is part of the art.
"What to leave in, what to leave out" - Bob Seger
The work also reflects the lifecycle of the committee or working group that may have completed its initial task and now is attempting to gather up other tasks in an act of self-perpetuation. Such works are never completed because the work reflects the desire to remain affiliated so they never have the properties of beginner's mind or mastery. They just fatten and rot. If one compared this to theatre, they are soap operas, a never ending story instead of sit-coms, episodic with recurring characters.
Unfortunately for the current period of XML design and fielding, and more unfortunately, procurement, we see mostly the works of journeymen and committees. It is notable that few have the patience, will, resources, or opportunity to do enough of these to master the art of simple effective design, and those that do are often led away from these design jobs to management and other tasks that provide more means but fewer challenges to the skill that they labored so hard to master.
Intuition is not trustworthy. Technique is not trustworthy. Practice is trustworthy. Sit before the Buddha every day if you wish to learn the artless art.
Essentially, the mind of the master and the mind of the beginner have the same form and this is revealed in their works. The beginner will create a simple work because they don't know enough to attempt a complex work, and the master will create simple works because they know enough to do that. The differences will be subtle, stylistic, but immediately apprehended by even a casual viewer. In the work of the beginner, one may only see simplicity but may also see the genius of the universe that comes serendipitously to the beginner's mind when it is sensitive and in motion. In the work of the master, one will see both simplicity and the genius of the universe that comes continuously because the master's mind is empty and still, therefore, ready.
I see this in XML design. The schemas of beginners are simple and contain just those elements and attributes needed to do a small task. The schemas of masters are simple and contain just those elements and attributes needed to do a small task in the context of a larger task. The schemas of the journeymen are often very large, use as many of the features of the schema language as they can manage, and attempt to capture all of the tasks in a single grand unified design.
Some think such are the product of committees and blame the size of the committee or the process, but committee work is really the work of one or two individuals who collect and attempt to synthesize all of the requirements while maintaining consensus. They create risk averse schemas because they think that the safe bet is the right bet when in truth, loss is part of the art.
"What to leave in, what to leave out" - Bob Seger
The work also reflects the lifecycle of the committee or working group that may have completed its initial task and now is attempting to gather up other tasks in an act of self-perpetuation. Such works are never completed because the work reflects the desire to remain affiliated so they never have the properties of beginner's mind or mastery. They just fatten and rot. If one compared this to theatre, they are soap operas, a never ending story instead of sit-coms, episodic with recurring characters.
Unfortunately for the current period of XML design and fielding, and more unfortunately, procurement, we see mostly the works of journeymen and committees. It is notable that few have the patience, will, resources, or opportunity to do enough of these to master the art of simple effective design, and those that do are often led away from these design jobs to management and other tasks that provide more means but fewer challenges to the skill that they labored so hard to master.
Intuition is not trustworthy. Technique is not trustworthy. Practice is trustworthy. Sit before the Buddha every day if you wish to learn the artless art.
Tuesday, January 25, 2005
The Blue Flame
There are moments of creativity that are spontaneous and Heisenbergian. If you try to make them happen, they don't. If you try to observe them too hard, they dissolve. If you try to repeat them, you can't. They are the true moment of jhana, the blue diamond of the net of Indra, or simply, the blue flame. We live for these moments because they form the clearest memories in which emotion and motion blend into perfect expression of desire, longing, and completion.
I was sitting outside the rehearsal for the musical last Sunday night in the entrance way for the city hall where rehearsals are being held. Two rooms away, forty or so teen agers and pre-pubescents were learning the complex choreography for their scenes in the Emerald City. I took my nylon string Godin, a very serviceable work axe, to practice classical pieces and noodle improvised sections because the entrance area is a sixty foot tall enclosure with a deep echo clear as the glass windows that make up the walls. This room produces a beautiful sound with nylon strings. I was improvising an arrangement for "Somewhere Over The Rainbow" because, given the show, this tune is stuck in my head like a 2x4 wooden beam stuffed through a tree by a tornado.
One of the principals in the show is an opera diva who for this show plays the part of Auntie Em. The community chorus is loaded with singing talent and as the Wizard/Professor in the show, neither she nor I sing in it. As I sat there noodling, she came out to leave for the night, then stopped for a moment and began to sing the song that in the show is sung by our 15 year old ingenue.
For just a few moments, in the late night dark, in the cold entrance way, we had a perfect moment of collaboration. There was no planning, no words of direction or even suggestion, just a pure blue flame that only comes from the lack of direction, the absence of will. It comes of a shared desire for emotional expression. It was beautiful, clear, pure, clean, so satisfying and unrepeatable.
To be in the flame, for the perfect moment, that is why we trained, why we kept our gifts alive even past the peak of our ambitions in the world. To feel the flame, that is enough. It is the perfect expression, and when the last note dies in the echo, we breathe that note, release it, and are complete.
I was sitting outside the rehearsal for the musical last Sunday night in the entrance way for the city hall where rehearsals are being held. Two rooms away, forty or so teen agers and pre-pubescents were learning the complex choreography for their scenes in the Emerald City. I took my nylon string Godin, a very serviceable work axe, to practice classical pieces and noodle improvised sections because the entrance area is a sixty foot tall enclosure with a deep echo clear as the glass windows that make up the walls. This room produces a beautiful sound with nylon strings. I was improvising an arrangement for "Somewhere Over The Rainbow" because, given the show, this tune is stuck in my head like a 2x4 wooden beam stuffed through a tree by a tornado.
One of the principals in the show is an opera diva who for this show plays the part of Auntie Em. The community chorus is loaded with singing talent and as the Wizard/Professor in the show, neither she nor I sing in it. As I sat there noodling, she came out to leave for the night, then stopped for a moment and began to sing the song that in the show is sung by our 15 year old ingenue.
For just a few moments, in the late night dark, in the cold entrance way, we had a perfect moment of collaboration. There was no planning, no words of direction or even suggestion, just a pure blue flame that only comes from the lack of direction, the absence of will. It comes of a shared desire for emotional expression. It was beautiful, clear, pure, clean, so satisfying and unrepeatable.
To be in the flame, for the perfect moment, that is why we trained, why we kept our gifts alive even past the peak of our ambitions in the world. To feel the flame, that is enough. It is the perfect expression, and when the last note dies in the echo, we breathe that note, release it, and are complete.
Acronymphobia
I was reading an interview with John Carmack yesterday. It seems the DoomMaster has decided to spend his game millions playing a real life and death game: he wanted to compete for the Ansari X-Prize. Of course, Burt Rutan has that now. Some games require significant practice and despite Carmack's prodigious self-learning capability, aeronautics is more than knowing how to build a Newtonian propulsion system. Rocket science is something rocket scientists do best.
The interesting comment he made was that he was reading mostly papers written in the Fifties and Sixties because he disliked the acronym-filled papers written from the 1970s forward. As someone who worked for NASA in the early eighties as a technical writer for the Marshall Space Flight Center where Saturn V and Shuttle engine development was done and later for DoD contractors, I commiserate with Carmack. Acronyms become the magic spell words of technological social networks. Having mastery of the latest acronyms is the precise equivalent of the now short phrases and acronyms of chat, instant messaging, and yes, the gaming community. They determine who is in, who is out, who is hot and who is not.
In other words, they not only determine what you know, they are used to rank membership in the social network of a technology, and of course, Carmack resents that. It is as if he is being denied access to the cheat codes in a game and as a result, he will lose consistently to better connected players. In a technology such as manned space flight, when that happens, your avatar gets removed permanently usually in a big noisy fireball a few feet above the ground.
One should know when one isn't ranked to play certain games and when the network is telling one not to play. Acronymphobia is nature's way of telling you that you may not be up to a game.
"On finding the sign, apply your mind. Thus you will not sleep."
The interesting comment he made was that he was reading mostly papers written in the Fifties and Sixties because he disliked the acronym-filled papers written from the 1970s forward. As someone who worked for NASA in the early eighties as a technical writer for the Marshall Space Flight Center where Saturn V and Shuttle engine development was done and later for DoD contractors, I commiserate with Carmack. Acronyms become the magic spell words of technological social networks. Having mastery of the latest acronyms is the precise equivalent of the now short phrases and acronyms of chat, instant messaging, and yes, the gaming community. They determine who is in, who is out, who is hot and who is not.
In other words, they not only determine what you know, they are used to rank membership in the social network of a technology, and of course, Carmack resents that. It is as if he is being denied access to the cheat codes in a game and as a result, he will lose consistently to better connected players. In a technology such as manned space flight, when that happens, your avatar gets removed permanently usually in a big noisy fireball a few feet above the ground.
One should know when one isn't ranked to play certain games and when the network is telling one not to play. Acronymphobia is nature's way of telling you that you may not be up to a game.
"On finding the sign, apply your mind. Thus you will not sleep."
Friday, January 21, 2005
The Second Term
Tim Bray makes marvelous observations about the inauguration. Some replies from the voice of the resistance in the heart of the Red States:
The Americans tolerate the war and the criticism of the war because they don't want to lose it. Fear of losing is the heart of their viewpoint. They lost in VietNam. Regardless of what else happens, they don't want to lose again.
President Bush is becoming irrelevant. He is now in the second day of his last term and counting. Largely, I think most of us are ignoring him.
The bad thing will be if his lust for misadventure continues. If for example, Seymour Hersch is right and he and his have some design on Iran, he may have a much tougher time getting that past the Congress, and remember, we now know how to impeach a President without too much fanfare. Would the Republican majority allow that? They would if they thought it was going to cost them personally.
We aren't lusting for war down here. We don't like this war in Iraq, we know we were lied to, and we are looking for an exit strategy. The challenge in the Middle East will be to discover a means to keep its culture of monarchic and theocratic rule and still feed its people or its people will feed on it, because this is a world of growing interdependencies, particularly, economically.
Where were the jihadhists when Saddam was torturing his people? In their mosques. Where are they now? In their mosques. Bush can't change that. Time to deal.
We aren't lusting for war down here. We don't like this war in Iraq, we know we were lied to, and we are looking for an exit strategy. The challenge in the Middle East will be to discover a means to keep its culture of monarchic and theocratic rule and still feed its people or its people will feed on it, because this is a world of growing interdependencies, particularly, economically.
Where were the jihadhists when Saddam was torturing his people? In their mosques. Where are they now? In their mosques. Bush can't change that. Time to deal.
Fish Herding: Open Source Management
In a predator/prey ecology, the open source community are much like fish. Their schooling behavior is observable and appropriate. They use simple rules for collision avoidance and nutrient seeking, and they collect closely and densely to fend off predators. Over time, schooling prey tend to develop their lateral sensors exclusively because the behavior of managing position in a loosely coupled herd dominates their sensory evolution. The fact of genotypic crossover within the herd and a slow rate of mutation mean the herd phenotype converges quickly.
So, as in boids of a feather, they flock and mate together. Because they are not isolated, they are increasingly homogenized. The effect of propinquity is to increase homophily. The rules for significaion and legitimization stabilize the relationships reflexively. They are well-protected and well-schooled.
But the shape of the school in motion is shaped by the distance to and types of predators. The predators are solitary and diverse. Being large means they consume less and digest slowly. The 3/4 power law effect of their metabolic rate and the need for speed when culling individuals away from the herds drives their sensory systems toward forward looking stereo sensors. Their hearing is not as good because ears are used to control lateral motion and as a non-schooling network, lateral motion is deemphasized.
Schools do not need leaders. Predator families do but predators do not school and emphasize an almost darwinian evolution based on a fitness function. They adapt quickly. Schooling systems do not need a fitness function; they use the simple rules and shared goals of consumption to effect direction. Their phenotypic change is very slow and their size can increase in an almost unlimited dimension.
Neither form wins. The predators cull individuals away from the herd and consume them. The schools maintain formation and mate frequently so they always have a reasonable replacement rate as long as they remember where to find food and don't overfeed. Overfeeding slows their motion and because they are schooling, they slow the herd which leads to a rise in the rate of predation. A school that grows too small or fails to maintain close distance is ripe for rapid predation. A predator that exhausts a small school on which it depends for vital nutrition may starve or be forced into a rapid adaptation mode which reduces its size over generations as the metabolic rates rise to compensate for the loss. Catastropic loss may cause a predator type to disappear, but the relief effect on the prey school is short as this is an opportunity for a different predator.
Predators learn to herd prey. Smart predators don't overfeed. If the open source community is to be a source of innovation, special care for culling and feeding must be taken by their predators. Of course, a prey society can evolve into a predatory society, but the need for balance remains the same. They will only be changing roles in the ecology of the games, not the rules.
This is what Lawrence Lessig doesn't get.
So, as in boids of a feather, they flock and mate together. Because they are not isolated, they are increasingly homogenized. The effect of propinquity is to increase homophily. The rules for significaion and legitimization stabilize the relationships reflexively. They are well-protected and well-schooled.
But the shape of the school in motion is shaped by the distance to and types of predators. The predators are solitary and diverse. Being large means they consume less and digest slowly. The 3/4 power law effect of their metabolic rate and the need for speed when culling individuals away from the herds drives their sensory systems toward forward looking stereo sensors. Their hearing is not as good because ears are used to control lateral motion and as a non-schooling network, lateral motion is deemphasized.
Schools do not need leaders. Predator families do but predators do not school and emphasize an almost darwinian evolution based on a fitness function. They adapt quickly. Schooling systems do not need a fitness function; they use the simple rules and shared goals of consumption to effect direction. Their phenotypic change is very slow and their size can increase in an almost unlimited dimension.
Neither form wins. The predators cull individuals away from the herd and consume them. The schools maintain formation and mate frequently so they always have a reasonable replacement rate as long as they remember where to find food and don't overfeed. Overfeeding slows their motion and because they are schooling, they slow the herd which leads to a rise in the rate of predation. A school that grows too small or fails to maintain close distance is ripe for rapid predation. A predator that exhausts a small school on which it depends for vital nutrition may starve or be forced into a rapid adaptation mode which reduces its size over generations as the metabolic rates rise to compensate for the loss. Catastropic loss may cause a predator type to disappear, but the relief effect on the prey school is short as this is an opportunity for a different predator.
Predators learn to herd prey. Smart predators don't overfeed. If the open source community is to be a source of innovation, special care for culling and feeding must be taken by their predators. Of course, a prey society can evolve into a predatory society, but the need for balance remains the same. They will only be changing roles in the ecology of the games, not the rules.
This is what Lawrence Lessig doesn't get.
Wednesday, January 19, 2005
Social Networks and The Innovation Challenge
In researching network theories as applied to organizations, discourse, games, and identity, I've been pondering the power of the social network to dominate the other networks and asking myself, is this most effective way to run a company? It seems that the current position of the company in the cycles of event types determines the network that should be chosen for the most effective communications media. A company that is seeking stability relies on the social network. Why? Research indicates that the social network favors the oldest relationships as these have longer lifecycles and have settled into stable orbits. Social networks do provide a fast and efficient under the table messaging medium.
What about a company that has evolved in a sub-optimum mode for innovation and now needs to make rapid changes to kick start innovation efforts?
The social networks are deadly to this goal. The tendancy of the members to preserve status quo ostracizes any source of new ideas that threaten the social oligarchy unless that source reinforces the positions of the oligarchs.
Social networks are necessary and where one doesn't exist, human resources and management will create one. However, without the challenge of learning and adopting technologies appropriate to the environment BEFORE it emerges, these networks only preserve power and often at the expense of adaptation and flexible response. Smart executives know that if the social network is the only effective means of communication, the company is dead and just doesn't know it.
Schadenfreude as a concept has become a cliche, but it is the one really effective means to eliminate innovation. Humiliation drives out thought just as its close cousin, fear, kills it. White pigging is alive and well in the social networks of the companies dominated by the formerly successful innovators who cannot accept that just as pop artist must, they have to know when to get off the stage and let a fresh act take it. Even when we have fans, we may not be doing our business much good to keep on giving them the old hits.
What about a company that has evolved in a sub-optimum mode for innovation and now needs to make rapid changes to kick start innovation efforts?
The social networks are deadly to this goal. The tendancy of the members to preserve status quo ostracizes any source of new ideas that threaten the social oligarchy unless that source reinforces the positions of the oligarchs.
Social networks are necessary and where one doesn't exist, human resources and management will create one. However, without the challenge of learning and adopting technologies appropriate to the environment BEFORE it emerges, these networks only preserve power and often at the expense of adaptation and flexible response. Smart executives know that if the social network is the only effective means of communication, the company is dead and just doesn't know it.
Schadenfreude as a concept has become a cliche, but it is the one really effective means to eliminate innovation. Humiliation drives out thought just as its close cousin, fear, kills it. White pigging is alive and well in the social networks of the companies dominated by the formerly successful innovators who cannot accept that just as pop artist must, they have to know when to get off the stage and let a fresh act take it. Even when we have fans, we may not be doing our business much good to keep on giving them the old hits.
Tuesday, January 11, 2005
Doing Business With The Swarm
While it is certainly true the old networks tend toward dead speech patterns, and that swarm behavior typifies the open network model of communications and transactions, have you ever actually tried to buy honey from the swarm?
You can't. You have to follow them back to the hive, smoke 'em out, and steal it.
The superior bee keeper does not negotiate with the bees; he harvests their production and sells it. As much as one resists the deadening of language and behavior based on businessSpeak, it is useful to know when to use a protocol and when to dump it just as a jazz musician knows when to comp, when to improvise and when to play the head note for note. Emergence is not chaos: it is order modulating out of chaos and back to the edge for more honey.
The competitors believe business is a chess game and they have to beat the other players. The innovators believe business is a means to get the bees to dance together, so they cooperate with them. Command and control is replaced by converse and learn. "Readiness is all."
You can't. You have to follow them back to the hive, smoke 'em out, and steal it.
The superior bee keeper does not negotiate with the bees; he harvests their production and sells it. As much as one resists the deadening of language and behavior based on businessSpeak, it is useful to know when to use a protocol and when to dump it just as a jazz musician knows when to comp, when to improvise and when to play the head note for note. Emergence is not chaos: it is order modulating out of chaos and back to the edge for more honey.
The competitors believe business is a chess game and they have to beat the other players. The innovators believe business is a means to get the bees to dance together, so they cooperate with them. Command and control is replaced by converse and learn. "Readiness is all."
Drinking From The Well of Our Incompetence
There was a discussion in my cube yesterday with an engineer that I thought interesting in the context of attempts to get better growth and performance from our company. The position of the engineer was lack of communication between development and management is a problem for many companies, but this is really the fault of management because they cannot understand engineering. If the manager takes the time to explain his or her techniques, tools and terminology, a programmer with their assumed mathematical skills will likely understand what the manager knows, but the reverse cannot be assumed. Programming is innately complex and mysterious and no matter how long and how well the programmer explains their techniques, tool, and terminology, the manager will never catch on. For this reason, the arguer went on, development decisions and design decisions must be left strictly to the engineering staff. Interference by product planners, line managers, upper management, and for God's sake, anyone from the sales staff is just interference and time wasted plus exposure to risk that the product will not perform.
Do you believe this?
My position is this: programming is not that complex although some applications are. Any discipline practiced widely enough suffers from from terminology legacy, that is, the language used is likely a polyglot with layers of overlapping terms accrued from many years of practice and reinvention. That which is assumed to be science by some is just common practice. Further, any terms acquired in a discussion or description that are not applied with some regularity become meatware clutter, that is, they can be pronounced but applying them well without experience is dubious. It becomes a case of "A little learning is a dangerous thing. Drink deep or taste not of the Pierian spring" as Willy the Shake wrote.
Truthfully, of those of you who sling code for a living, how many of you know how discounted cash flow (DCF) and earnings-based valuations work and can be reconciled? Do you know what the key performance variables are for forecasts (sales growth, profit margins, working capital turnover and long-term asset turnover) as well as financial leverage and cost of capital? Do you know how to get those values (from whom, who is credible, how do you vette the data, etc.)?
You might be able to write the code to calculate the values, but I suspect that given some reasonable practice, so can your manager. I also suspect your manager has a better grasp of when to use that software and when to trust their gut. All the counter examples exist on the other side of the knowledge chasm, of course, but I think the point is made.
Too often, we don't trust each other and that is really why so many of our businesses fail or have mediocre growth. We do have to trust each other to do their job. Otherwise, we are drinking from the well of our incompetence.
Do you believe this?
My position is this: programming is not that complex although some applications are. Any discipline practiced widely enough suffers from from terminology legacy, that is, the language used is likely a polyglot with layers of overlapping terms accrued from many years of practice and reinvention. That which is assumed to be science by some is just common practice. Further, any terms acquired in a discussion or description that are not applied with some regularity become meatware clutter, that is, they can be pronounced but applying them well without experience is dubious. It becomes a case of "A little learning is a dangerous thing. Drink deep or taste not of the Pierian spring" as Willy the Shake wrote.
Truthfully, of those of you who sling code for a living, how many of you know how discounted cash flow (DCF) and earnings-based valuations work and can be reconciled? Do you know what the key performance variables are for forecasts (sales growth, profit margins, working capital turnover and long-term asset turnover) as well as financial leverage and cost of capital? Do you know how to get those values (from whom, who is credible, how do you vette the data, etc.)?
You might be able to write the code to calculate the values, but I suspect that given some reasonable practice, so can your manager. I also suspect your manager has a better grasp of when to use that software and when to trust their gut. All the counter examples exist on the other side of the knowledge chasm, of course, but I think the point is made.
Too often, we don't trust each other and that is really why so many of our businesses fail or have mediocre growth. We do have to trust each other to do their job. Otherwise, we are drinking from the well of our incompetence.
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