Spimes with Bruce Sterling - Tracking objects through Space/Time

Rocketboom has an interesting little interview piece with scifi author Bruce Sterling today where they discuss Spimes (the tracking of objects through space and time). Bruce is a proponent of embedding tags into consumer products - in the interview, he uses a shoe as an example - where the tag includes information about the raw materials composing the product. He brings up the great point that long after that show has outlived its usefulness to you, it is still living out its much longer natural life as a shoe, typically in a refuse heap somewhere. Bruce says, we might someday want those raw materials back and Spimes are a way to find and track our usage. Interesting concept and a video worth watching.

The interviewer and Bruce spend a bit talking about the potential abuses of such a technology, Bruce dismisses the argument as fairly moot. It's a rehashed argument brought up be people with an aversion to any change. He counters with "an axe in the hands of a totalitarian government can be used to chop off people's hands..."

In the end, I the most significant hurdle to the Spimes plan is human nature. Most people will claim they are "environmentally conscious" but I seriously doubt that they want their life long history of shoes and waste tracking them to the grave. It's one thing to have a rough idea of how much waste the "average" person produces in their lifetime; it's much more disturbing to hear that "you" have contributed to this problem and be confronted with the data that backs it up. The mere thought that everything I have owned in the past is living out the remainder of its much larger life in a landfill is enough to make me uncomfortable.

The network IS the machine but how do we use it?

Nature magazine posted an interesting commentary by Vernor Vinge yesterday. For anybody interested in technology and its applications, this little piece does not have too much new to offer, it stands more as a marker which says "yep, we're on the way to something really cool, the on-demand and hyper-aware future." I did, however, really appreciate the last paragraph:

How can we prepare for such a future? Perhaps that is the most important research project for our creativity machine. We need to exploit the growing sensor/effector layer to make the world itself a real-time database. In the social, human layers of the Internet, we need to devise and experiment with large-scale architectures for collaboration. We need linguists and artificial-intelligence researchers to extend the capabilities of search engines and social networks to produce services that can bridge barriers created by technical jargon and forge links between unrelated specialties, bringing research groups with complementary problems and solutions together — even when those groups have not noticed the possibility of collaboration. In the end, computers plus networks plus people add up to something significantly greater than the parts. The ensemble eventually grows beyond human creativity. To become what? We can't know until we get there.

This got me thinking about the professional developers of the future and the skill-set that they'll need to have to get their jobs done. Developers are becoming people who do less coding and more "mashing-up" of existing services. This is merely one indicator of a very real phenomenon, a growing class of workers whose whole job is to know how to derive answers from the internet. It's like Case in "Neuromancer", a hired gun who solves issues for major corporations by being incredibly adept at navigating massive amounts of information.

This group of internet workers already exists and it's growing quickly. Several of the recruiters I worked with at Amazon, in their hiring session, were given some job requirements for a fictitious position and then asked to find the best candidate that they could off the web while the interviewer watched. Talk about intimidating! Anyways, I just like the idea that at some time in the future, the fact that I spend 9 billion hours per day online might actually come in useful. I'm learning to use the "magical answer machine, man!"

What we heard then vs. what we hear now...

I heard a really powerful piece on NPR yesterday exploring the history of the current Iraq war and reviewing the various messages given by the administration for going there.

I had had a similar idea a few weeks ago. Another one of those things you think about doing but never quite find the time to do. The idea was to try and put together a pastiche of media, chronologically ordered, of all the noteworthy news and media that have brought us to the situation we're in now; the chief point being to be able to give supporters of the current administration something tough to put in their craw. I firmly believe that this administration chooses their words, not based on the truth, but based on what they find most effective to manipulate the public. I think that this NPR piece proves it pretty well. Thankfully, Mike Shuster did my little project for me, and in a very powerful and clear way, by using the words of the president and various members of the White House.

"We are implementing a strategy that will lead to victory in Iraq, and a victory in Iraq will make this country more secure, and will help lay the foundation of peace for generations to come." - George W. Bush

"...states like these and their terrorist allies constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world by seeking weapons of mass destruction. These regimes pose a grave and growing danger. They could provide these arms to terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred." - George W. Bush

"There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt that he is amassing them to use them against our friends, against our allies and against us." - Dick Cheney, speaking to Korean War Veterans in August 2002.

"We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." - Condi

A life less cluttered: Step #1 - Get pissed off

This morning, prior to coming to work, I looked at the stack of mail that came to me yesterday. The most annoying one I could find, and the one I decided to try and eliminate first, was one of those newspaper type fliers addressed to "resident." I thought I remembered reading that you could remove yourself from any mailing list where the sender did not have your name associated with the address so I A9'd "get rid of mail marked resident" and found a great website that I thought would help me (http://www.ecofuture.org/jmusps.html).

Unfortunately, it appears that the mail in question is called a saturation mailing and there is no way for the Post Office to remove you from such a list. Argh! You've got to be kidding me!

"[...]the Post Office helps bulk mailers send mail to every address in an area (with addresses only - no names - on the mailings). The bulk mailer has to build up a list containing at least 90% of the addresses in a carrier-route. The Post Office will then supply the remaining 10% for a small fee so that the bulk mailer will reach everyone on the route."

I did, however, just find a site that gives sort of an ambiguous promise to help stop even these types of mailings. It's called Private Citizen, Inc.. I just joined. We'll see if those blasted mailers stop coming.

Day 1 of a life less cluttered and the first hurdle has been presented. I hope it starts to go better from here. We shall see what we shall see...

A life less cluttered

I am contemplating a potential life experiment (aka "lifehack") to cut down on the clutter and be generally nicer to the environment. Here is the issue: as an avid reader, I consume my fair share of paper-product. I'm a self-confessed media whore, buried under weekly and monthly magazine subscriptions, crap mail, and books on my "to-read" shelf.

So this is the idea: Cancel every magazine subscription which is available digitally. Heavily favor digital subscriptions on an ongoing basis. Look for books digitally before purchasing them physically. Wherever possible, purchase my music and video content online. Ideally, I would add no new physical media to my life and only work with digital media. Since that's not a 100% reality right now, I'll instead have to track just what I'm cutting and where. I would also have to chronicle the pain-points of the transition and oproblems with existing technologies.

"But Eric," you may ask, "how are you, a noted book lover and mag freak, intending to read all of this printed material? On a computer screen? Screen's suck for reading." I would reply with "you're right, but it's changing." I saw the book future at CES in Vegas this year. Sony's new reader, available this spring, features a new technology they are referring to as e-ink. It's the first reader with something approaching the contrast ratio and portability of books. It's pretty amazing to see in person. There is no flicker because the images are static and the battery life is reasonable. The features don't stop there, imagine being able to carry a whole shelf-worth of books an device which weighs less than a pound, keeps your place in all your books, allows you to make notes, etc. I think it's a pretty amazing step.

At this point in my life, I've already switched over heavily to downloadable music so I'll probably just continue that trend. In fact, I look at my racks of cds and loathe getting them all input into my computer. It just feels like a huge project and would overwhelm my pooor 250 GB hard drive. DVD? Well, I've been downloading my first videos recently and we're not quite there with that technology yet. It's going to be a few years, but I'm going to try and stop purchasing them and instead focus on building out a really nice media server system in my house. What can I say? It's all part of the project. We'll see if I can get it started.

Does anyone have any ideas on this? Is it a worthwhile endeavor? Are we at the point where I can try this without getting horrible pissed off? Am I going to pay bazillion dollars to get a worthwhile home media archive solution in place?

I am the Human Guinea Pig

Step right up to see the hideous, the horrible, the putrescent, Human Guinea Pig. Yep, that's me. Up at "o'dark thirty," I've already been the subject of a University of Washington Psychology experiment this morning. While it might make a better story to say that I've volunteered myself to science to pad my income, it's not really true. I went to help out a friend who is working on her PhD.

It was kind of fun, although it was two hours staring straight into a computer screen (as if I don't do that enough already). The basic experiment centered around the identification of the highest numeral out of four which would pop on the screen very quickly in a two by two pattern. There were a couple iterations of the experiment, some with digits, some with words, and some felt so fast as to just be ridiculous. I'd say more but I don't really want to unveil too much about an experiment which is not published yet. Suffice it to say that if you say "EF" in some academic journal participating in a UW experiment, that's me, unless, of course, the guy is a loon, in which case it's obviously not.

The bonus to all of this was that I was bribed with some sweets that I brought into the office for the folks.

The Wet Spot Tropical Fish

The Wet Spot Tropical Fish
Originally uploaded by mrefranklin.

This business is right near my friend Jeff's house in Portland. Makes me wonder about the shop's clientele.

Debit card thieves get around PIN obstacle

I was talking to some folks from work about this over lunch the other day. It appears that some sort of compromise of consumer credit info, on a massive scale, has recently occurred. The scary thing about the particular breach is that the thieves appear to also have been able to garner PIN numbers for many of these cards.

I had no idea that many businesses can/do maintain your PIN number on their systems for a period of time, post-purchase.

"...many merchants incorrectly store PIN information they should be destroying after customers enter the secret code on PIN pads in stores around the country. While the information is often encrypted into something called a PIN block, the keys necessary to decrypt the information are often stored on the same network, she said. That makes stealing the PINs as easy as breaking into an office computer using a password a careless employee has taped to the screen."

Scary! Retailer implementations of this technology should all go through rigorous screening at the time of set-up. Keeping the key on the same network is stupid. This thing reeks of an insider job to me.

Time to check your cards for unauthorized purchases folks!

read more | digg story

Google/Writely purchase a done deal.

According to the Writely blog, this is no longer a rumor. Google has indeed purchased the online word processor company.

In fact, Writely has stopped allowing new users until they fully integrate into the Google Borg. Alas, I had nearly signed up for Writely several times. Now, due to my hesitation, I must wait...

read more | digg story

Secret Sites Are Cool

Most of you are aware that I work for a company called Blue Dot which has been working on a top-secret project building the Blue.Us (pronounced "Blue-dot-us") website. Well, today we hit a pretty big milestone and have put out a release that allows users to invite other users. So, if you haven't heard of us yet, hopefully you will soon.

We'll see whether the site starts to take off now or not. I have my fingers crossed but I've seen the site come a really long ways in the last 9 months or so and I think that it is getting to the point where it is getting really intriguing. Feel free to go to the website and request an account. We anticipate starting to issue invitations to those people who have requested them soon.

Basically, the reason I'm posting right now is that I'm excited about what we've got going on now. Check out my most recent content on Blue.Us here:

http://www.blue.us/users/eric

You don't need an account to see the stuff at that link and it should give you an idea of what's going on.

Maynard James Keenan Sings with Tori Amos

Old clip but something I just rediscovered. Thank you internet! I remember how excited I was about this when it happened. I was watching the Tori benefit concert on tv (I used to be quite a fan) and she brought out Maynard to sing with her (Maynard being the front-man of major hard rock band "Tool" and the lyricist for songs named things like "Prison Sex" and "Opiate"). Now, thanks to YouTube, I get to see it again! It was so weird to hear Tori say that Maynard sings her lullabies when she's feeling blue. One of my favorite "surprise" moments in music. I would have loved to have seen them together more frequently.

Initial Thoughts About "The Singularity is Near," by Ray Kurzweil

I picked up Ray Kurzweil's "The Singularity is Near" for a second time today and read through the first chapter. I'm not exactly why/how I put the book down the first time but perhaps it was because the overall idea is so transformative and important that it takes a while to seep in. The premise is simply this: the pace of human-created technology is accelerating with the result of a "Singularity" sometime event occurring sometime near 2048.

Most people sort of implicitly agree that the pace of technology is indeed accelerating and yet seem unwilling to address the actual implications of this statement. I live in a world substantially different from the one my parents grew up in and a universe apart from the one my grandparents lived in. Even now, at 30 years old, and only 7 years removed from college, I meet with new college grads who have had an educational experience substantively different than my own.

In my first year at the University of Washington in 93-94, I took an "experimental" English course that changed my entire career trajectory. Prior to this time, I had thought I wanted to be a psychologist. After this class, I realized that I really wanted to study science fiction and spend my time understanding the social uses of technology and hopefully writing my own prescient science fiction novels that would explore these themes.

The class was an English course about the transforming power of technologies, especially information technologies. We read all the major thought leaders, learned about disruptive technologies, advances in communication, and new fringe theories of cyborgism. Of course, in a class like this, we wrote all of our papers on computer (this at a time when it was still common to be able to turn in handwritten papers and many students owned special word processing machines which were not full-fledged computers hooked up to the web). The "experimental" part of the class was that the class involved a sister-institution being taught the same curriculum hundreds of miles away at BYU. We had to collaborate with them on our assignments using nothing but email. Each of us had an email pen-pal at BYU with whom we composed all of our class papers.

For perspective, this was at a time when the internet, still in its relative infancy, was somewhat limited in its utility. Email consisted of single-colored text and keyboard-driven commands that controlled sending, receiving, etc. My key-learning from that little experiment (besides "don't choose to do your final paper on religion and technology when your pen-pal is a Mormon at BYU and you have very little common ground in that arena") was that collaborative technologies were indeed disruptive technologies that would greatly accelerate scholarship in the coming years. Now look, a scant 13 years later - students are IM-ing each other iterative works in progress, emailing to each other's mobile devices, huddling together in groups with their interconnected computers and devices. That's a lot of change and it's only getting faster year to year.

So what's this "Singularity" thingie that Ray is talking about and where will that put us? Kurzweil defines the Singularity as:

[...] a future period during which the pace of technological change will be so rapid, its impact so deep, that human life will be irreversibly transformed.

The Singularity will represent the culmination of the merger of our biological thinking and existence with our technology, resulting in a world that is still human but that transcends our biological roots. There will be no distinction, post-Singularity, between human and machine or between physical and virtual reality.

Considering the size of this book, I may be riffing on it for some time. These are merely my initial thoughts.

I highly recommend reading the opening chapter (free as a PDF here), even if you only skim it for the Singularity principles at the end of the chapter. It's exciting, life-changing stuff that will impact everyone.