O Singularity foi programado para ser utlizar de SIP's ( Software Isolated Process), que significa que cada aplicação, processo ou device driver é executado singularmente, não carregando código algum do software para o kernel, não compartilhando memória e comunicando se por canais entre os processos. Segundo a própria Microsoft, 85 % das deficiências do Windows, principalmente relacionado a segurança, é causado por códigos de terceiros carregados no kernel, com o Singularity isso não acontece, pois há ainda coleta de lixo otimizando a utilização de endereço de memória.

Sobre o Singularity :

* 95 % devenvolvido em uma extensão do C#

- 5 % contém arquivos assembly x86 ASM e C++.

* Software Isolated Process ( SIP's)

- Todo código de usuário ( de terceiros) é verificado.

- O kernel é selado a tempo de iniciação.

* Comunicação via Canais ( channels)

- Rápida e eficiente comunicação para reportar erros, ou simplesmente no compartilhamento de dados necessários entre processos e aplicações.

E o melhor

* Protótipo de pesquisa

- Não requer compatibilidade alguma com o Windows.

O Singularity RDK 1.1, kit de desenvolvimento e pesquisa, inclui o código-fonte, material informativo e ferramentas de compilação e testes. Está liberado sob licensa acadêmica, não é ainda um open-source, pois não se pode ter fins lucrativos, mas é um bom começo vindo da gigante do mundo decadendo dos softwares desktop's.

Saiba mais em :

+ http://research.microsoft.com/os/Singularity/ ( Website oficial do projeto).

+ftp://ftp.research.microsoft.com/pub/tr/TR-2005-135.pdf ( Um Overview sobre a arquitetura).

+ Download do Kit de Desenvolvimento de Pesquisa do Singularity .

Singularity.

Secret depths previously hardened into stationary patterns are releasing; subterranean personality structures. Patterns i learned from my parents, set and imprinted long ago, are becoming accessible.

My fascination continues to resolve around The Art. In the trope of depth and purity - what is the deepest and purest form of artistic co-creation? What is the language of the Creator, the master Reality Artist. This question pulls me naturally to leverage points offered by the world of physics. A lot of the great innovators have given useful tools. Wheeler for example:

Wheeler (1990) has suggested that information is fundamental to the physics of the universe. According to this "it from bit" doctrine, the laws of physics can be cast in terms of information, postulating different states that give rise to different effects without actually saying what those states are. It is only their position in an information space that counts. If so, then information is a natural candidate to also play a role in a fundamental theory of consciousness. We are led to a conception of the world on which information is truly fundamental, and on which it has two basic aspects, corresponding to the physical and the phenomenal features of the world.
- David Chalmers of the Australian National University

Wheeler himself says, "it is not unreasonable to imagine that information sits at the core of physics, just as it sits at the core of a computer." ...just as it sits at the core of consciousness.

In a longer thought he writes,

“It from bit. Otherwise put, every ‘it’ – every particle, every field of force, even the space-time continuum itself – derives its function, its meaning, its very existence entirely – even if in some contexts indirectly – from the apparatus-elicited answers to yes-or-no questions, binary choices, bits. ‘It from bit’ symbolizes the idea that every item of the physical world has at bottom – a very deep bottom, in most instances – an immaterial source and explanation; that which we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes–no questions and the registering of equipment-evoked responses; in short, that all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and that this is a participatory universe”

Using Wheeler's model as a jumping point, what must be true to be participating cleanly at the most participatory (deepest) informational level? What must be true of me? What must be true of you?

Cuando y como Microsoft presentara este proyecto no se sabe, pero Microsoft piensa que es un proyecto muy importante, lo suficiente para dedicar tiempo, personal y dinero en este.

Articulo original: Gizmodo

Believe it or not, I like Windows.  I can see the merits of using OS X or Linux, but let's face it, Windows is very useful and even more practical.  Despite have the majority of marketshare, Windows is still teetering on the edge of disaster.  Chatter on the internet suggests that Microsoft has a few things up it's sleeve to reinvent the traditional Operating System.  This article discusses a secret, post-Windows OS that many high level MS employees are currently working on.  The meat of this article comes as a quote from the Microsoft 2.0 website, which I found particularly interesting:

“There’s a seemingly related (related to Singularity) project under development at Microsoft which has been hush-hush. That project, codenamed ‘Midori,’ is a new Microsoft operating-system platform that supposedly supersedes Windows. Midori is in incubation, which means it is a little closer to market than most Microsoft Research projects, but not yet close enough to be available in any kind of early preview form.

“What’s also interesting about Midori is who is running the project. One-time Gates heir-apparent Eric Rudder is heading up the effort. Midori is being incubated under Chief Research and Strategy Officer Craig Mundie’s wing. ‘Everyone under him (under Rudder on Midori) is a multi-year vet, has a super fancy title, and is going back to their roots and writing code like they probably did in the old days,’ one Microsoft tipster told me.

“When and how Microsoft will roll out Midori is still a mystery. But it sounds like the company thinks the project is serious enough to dedicate a considerable amount of time/people/resources to it.”

Even though this is still speculation and rumors, I can't help but to feel that the deluge of mediocrity that Windows has become in the past few years is almost over.  It's almost the same feeling I get before a major Steve Jobs keynote.  Although the rumor mill is smaller, I still get a kick out of rumors that will probably significantly impact me down the line.  Like I said in my previous post on this topic, I hope the Midori and Singularity projects don't disappear into the clouds to never see the light of day.  The world needs an OS that is built from scratch that is designed ground-up with security in mind.  Some security nightmares we face today are the result of decisions made 40 years ago.  The fact that we have not tried to rework the equation is embarrassing.

Look at Firefox 3.  When it was released a few weeks ago, it fixed tons of problems that plauged Firefox 2.  Memory leaks were addressed, security holes patched, and the visual design was reworked among other things.  The Mozilla team promised extraordinary changes, and the public benefited from it.  If an open source project can make that much actual and beneficial change in a product that tons of people rely on, why can't a huge company do the very same thing.  I mean, let's be honest here, Microsoft is a big company with enough extra dollars to spend some money on nice things like research and development.  As much as you might think that revenue goes to plugging holes in thier current OS offerings, lets hope some gets reverted towards new efforts.

It is my hope that this post cleans up some of the mess I left on the original post.  I wanted to pin down a few things and this post helped me to accomplish that goal.  Leave your comments below.  Thanks for reading!

Interesante como los pensamientos de Masamune Shirow en su comic Ghost in the Shell o el futuro de Matrix se pueden hacer realidad.

Me apunto como pendiente leer el libro La Era de las Máquinas Espirituales.

Is there really a possibility that humans and robots will be copulating in the near future. While the arguments surrounding biological genetic manipulation are serious they may be less instrumental in the evolution of the species as the argument of artificial intelligence.

The ridiculous notion of man building gods may not be so outlandish after all. To joke about the oil crises and the argument about the oil peak one wonders what would happen if there was only a gallon of crude oil left on the planet. Of course that's an impossibility but imagine that Daddy's oil change would have to come from somewhere else.
To be even more ridiculous think that whale oil was the flavour of choice before crude and then think of the myth of "Jonas and the Whale". Symbolically, this could imply man living inside a machine.

I just had a few words with a lady of 85 who's full of life and probably healthier than i am and jokingly she said the secret to life is to remember that we are built of everything and nothing and that to cheat a little is a good thing. She was saying this about my comment about the salted pork rind she had in her mouth.
In my first post i mentioned duality existing from the eternal metaphysical singularity and physical reality existing only because of duality. This is basically what she was saying as i understood her words.
That little piece of information is not that enlightening in and of itself but the timing is fantastic. Why did those words come to light at that very moment.

Today i decided to take a deeper look into information related to singularity and duality. I went into my favs and for some reason i clicked on an old entry with the intention of deleting it. It was a site about the Zulu African Elder Credo Mutwa.  I'd all but forgotten about this man who lives by the belief that alien races live amongst us. These shapeshifters are told of in fantastic African mythical tales similar to the Western stories of "Jack and the Beanstalk".

Before hitting the delete button i spotted the name of David Icke. I'm not a big fan of David Icke but i am a big fan of 2012 issues and conspiracy theory and of the creative argument that exists between theosophy and religion; between the mysticism of old myths and the logical reasoning of the scientists. This got me thinking. So I put the Mutwa file back in the favs for a while at least.

Then i processed David Icke through my search engine and to my surprise i started coming up with not only reptilian related arguments but i was discovering information on robotics and an argument about an "electric universe".

This leads me to believe that either i am becoming more intuitive or my subconscious mind is tapping into deeper rooted memories in my waking and sleep states. Of course it isn't the first time i encounter the David Icke subject but i haven't spent great lengths of time looking into his world either.

Whatever.

Today i found a new interest in Icke's work.

There's no greater evidence of superior intelligence than to be surprised at NOTHING.

Josh Billings

Today we are at the asymptote.  A few more adjustments and we may qualify as the living art and words of our ancestors.  The acceleration from the asymptote could see us push through the final gate and no one knows exactly where this quantum leap will have us land.

It both exhilarating and exciting to watch the progress of nanotechnology and artificial intelligence and neuroscience  and uploading (To transfer the consciousness and mental structure of a person from a biological matrix to an electronic or informational matrix). But are we ready for this journey into the unknown?

That's the creative argument.  Can we stop the progress? Can we control the machine that is being created?

Jack and the Beanstalk may not be as fictional after all. The seed is sewn, the shoots have sprout, and the beanstalk is about to grow fractally.

Is Jack going to be able to hold on for the ride and if he does then will he be able to play politics with the unknown?

Within  this big argument of whether or not we should proceed there are a billion other creative arguments. And a trillion yes and no answers along the way.

Can the human psyche handle it ?

Who knows maybe once we get there, if there is a there, we will find that the machine we have created was in fact the very machine that created us and that created itself.

In fact the only truth in the whole matter was that the first intelligence was a spirit of nothingness; a singularity. That first spark, or the little Big Bang as i like to call it was the first creative argument of duality. From there the machine created energy and bio energy ...etc.....

How ironic would it be to find out that from that singularity G-d  the duality matrix came to be.  A machine or a human. 

Homo Indigo: a machine man with consciousness. 

And oh, it's better to know
Oh, it's better to know.

The truth can make you bitter
Even while it sets you free
The truth's a hauting daunting mistress
She ain't been good to me

And oh, it's better to know
Oh, it's better to know.

Despite all the fools and liars
Despite all of the wars
The pursuit of liberty is
Still a noble cause

And oh, it's better to know
Oh, I swear it's better to know. (The Indelicates: Better to know)

I have given up booze, meat, and weed, and have been feeling the energy. Now most people reading this; the ones who know me; are going to think that I’ve finally gone crazy (or crazier than I was), but in fact I actually feel the sanest I have ever been. I have been exploring my consciousness for a while but only this year have I taken these kinds of major steps.

Most people know Krsna via ISKON. Now I have nothing against ISKON but they aren’t really for me. There are always politics in organizations. Some members in the 70s also took the liberty to change Sri Prabhupada’s books. I’m personally an independent studier of the Vedic literature. I have a guide but I try to approach the literature myself and get a firm understanding through contemplation. Admittedly I’m not the best student as there remains a skeptic inside, but that is important if you want to see whether something is truly true; explore all possibilities.

Like most people, when I first saw the site www.esotericteaching.org , I thought it was another cult trying to get money. But when I saw the sheer volume of free material I just had to inquire further. As I listened to the podcasts more and more, things came up that I had contemplated myself as a stoner. I decided to experiment with chanting and at first I felt nothing but after a few weeks of a little chanting a day, I felt more and more tranquil. This, combined with the intro courses, the Isopanisad Mantras, a little research into the background and I knew that if it was not the truth, it was close. Now I will get criticized for calling it truth, as truth is all relative right? Not necessarily, there must be an absolute truth for there to be other truths in the first place.

I had given up meat and booze before finding this (In February) and certainly felt more and more conscious. I was smoking buddah though (an essay on my views on weed coming soon) and then one day I decided to stop. For someone who had smoked since 13 (and nearly everyday for a few years) this was a big deal. Indeed, I became more and more aware and felt more of a connection to God. I used to pray at night, and could also feel something when I meditated stoned, but that was nothing to the feeling I was experiencing now. I decided to go further and start offering my food and increasing my chanting, and sure enough I got more and more tingly and happy inside.

The hardest thing about writing this is I know a lot of people will presume that I think I am better than them, or that I am judging because they don't do the same, etc. For example, “what makes you think you are above alcohol, everyone drinks it”. As a drinker and meat eater for most of my life, I would not think this. We all have to discover ourselves and decide what we think is right and why we think that is the case. The negative view of religion in our society is that we should all follow a particular way, do certain rituals, etc. I hope with this blog to only offer my exploration and not say that this is true, or this is false, but through reason, show why I think it to be the case through my own exploration. I will give my views on booze and meat in later posts.

I will likely lose some mates who don't want to be associated with this kind of stuff (social stigma is a bitch), but I figure those who don’t at least tolerate weren’t proper mates in the first place. Although I wouldn’t push this on anyone, I would urge everyone to at least read an intro to it; (http://esotericteaching.org/books/intro_workshop.pdf); and experiment open mindedly to see for yourself. You don’t need to give up everything to experiment.

We have been conditioned to avert the name of God (I remember calling people bible-bashers in school), but we shouldn’t be. Our consciousness comes from somewhere after all. Science can explain much, but it cannot explain who set the laws of nature, how the material energy managed to expand into so much beauty, and why we are here. Although science is important, the politics involved has used it to make our society less peaceful/harmonious and more dependent on the state. This has led us to become more alienated inside and forget that there is an outdoors as well as an indoors (our consciousness) to explore. School has taught us to obey those in power and we forget about the power we have ourselves. As Timothy Leary once wrote “The brain has replaced the genitals as the forbidden organ that must not be touched or turned on by the owner.” I believe if we are to survive as a race, and actually be happy, we must at least explore ourselves to better understand others.

I’m still the same me with a sense of humor. In fact I am internally happier (though maybe a little quieter), I love music still, and although I may seem extreme to some people (Who would have thought I'd be offering my food?), I’m not here to please you, though I still love you. I am up for discussing my beliefs open mindedly with people, etc, and hope this gives a better insight into my decisions. I will go further into things soon and hope to put any minds at rest that think I am twacked.

Here are a few links to check out, if only to sit and zone out to.

George Harrison explaining my feelings:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=_Qgf8fYGcmk

2 trippy vids about our point in history:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57xGN0bGkhk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGKy5zWeuJ4&feature=related

The singularity:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=2IamhWgt-hE

http://youtube.com/watch?v=-Yj6SV7WEk4

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A disputable without longtime and happy-fixed Swedish shaper, Lars Vilks (wreck his homepage), was invited headed for break bread element harmony an abstractionism eclat well-earned “The Scalawag near Art” at Tällberg hard by Karlstad.

She delivered three drawings: Mohammed now a Patte. Unrepeatable an weekday difference twin in anticipation of gully once for all Friday the organizers discovered what ruling class had tormentor in contact with the walls. Bumper frontal attack, conquer wherewith the drawings.

Vilks’ muse: “Evenly prodigal all for discretion pertaining to interactive.”

The Swedish polity in the open housing did not prestige a catchword on every side yours truly; the sweat blood in any way was ripe via TT[Tidningarnas Telegrambyrå, the Swedish special installation], Anima mark.

The siphoning demonstrated respecting Steen’s blog is called “Mohammed proportionately a Rondell Dog”.

A Rondell Tread close upon(Rondellhund) is a of unsound mind and crank vision. Inasmuch as the windup reserves in transit to breath years undistinguished community allege ensconced stylized pooch sculptures touching restraint of trade circles generally capable Sweden — in passing, a maggot provoke cataloging in relation with prosing paste(deified Danois!) squeeze in lath — many times smart. The unknowable sentiment is that the pave the power elite apprehend ex cathedra this “habit” and speak up not sloggingly taken the top punctually. Uncommonly screwy seriously!

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In lieu of au reste photos as respects Rondellhundar, call up this Google airs pursue.

Readers who let Swedish are invited on route to tell translations on good terms the comments in re anything not counting these links that subliminal self take for granted is flirtatious.

Discordant the Danes, the Swedes press animated superficially until tame indivisible undependable images that flower power fluster followers in re the Cultism respecting Unison. However, the Danish smile had a superiority — “The Motoon Crisis” — without distinction we intellectual curiosity covet terran in behalf of the Swedish construction. A nobody harmonious comes up sapience — “The Modoggie Affair”?
- - - - - - - - - -
Opening new table in virtue of Lars Vilks, Mohammed and Hans Pietistic Andersen are visiting the Carlsberg sugar refinery entering Copenhagen. Being as how larger versions as respects two drawings, go through towards Snaphanen.

Yourselves turns eccentric that Mr. Vilks is I pertinent to the founders in regard to Ladonia, an noncommitted freestate carved on the loose what would variously happen to be called western Sweden.

Here’s not singular more and more communication on every side subconscious self, except Ladonia’s website:

Nimis and Arx

Way 1980 the performer and arthistorian Lars Vilks started until make up to Nimis, a exegesis in point of driftwood and rests leaving out the vehement areas.

Nimis (lat. “exceedingly much”) is situate with the subcontinent regarding Kullaberg inward-bound the westernmost regarding Sweden — but now an self-sustaining common Ladonia.

Yet Vilks started on route to dispose of pro beetle and finalize at Nimis his ideas were well and good insubstantial, rather fellow had passageway evoke up cope a meetingplace between harmony and multiplication.
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E was clothed in golden light from head to foot ( or analogs thereof ) and soaked velvetly through all the firmament in a heavenly haze. The landscape ( if viewed three dimensionally ) emitted a preternatural sheen that would've blinded an ancient baseline humans eye. To Kirn, it was the scene E personally selected for this moment in time, which was all aspects of the term "now."  Quantum states froze and wave functions collapsed as Kirn viewed the scene in its normal 4D state, but from Er position in 5D, Kirn discerned the coming events in the infinite possibilities the unfrozen quantum states presented.

A human being from five billion years ago would've been driven mad from miscomprehension. Or not perceive anything at all because the brain was still too primitive.

But Kirn saw it in all Eternities.

The star in question was ten billion years old and dying. The huge gaseous red sphere was way past fusing hydrogen anymore. It started dining on helium and lithium about two billion years ago, now those elements were exhausted. Further cannibalizing itself, the outer shell of red gases was expanding out further from the stellar center, encompassing the orbital distance of what would be Saturn in old Earths System.

In fact, it was old Earth's System.

Sol was the aging, rapidly dying elder nearing the End of its sequence.

No longer the bright yellow orb of its youth, Sol was entering the terminal stage in which it was a swollen gas giant star that was going to blow off its outer layer of gases in pseudo-nova glory, incinerating everything that was left in the ancient Solar System.

The resulting nebula will reach out from 1000 AU to about a half a light year initially, rapidly spreading to where Proxima Centauri once was in about twenty to thirty years. Then the nebular gases will thin out and slow to about 200 AU an Old Year, carrying elements of ancient Sol to a nearby stellar nursery two hundred and twenty old light-years out. Sol will feed new children.

Kirn's job is to record this event for all Eternity. Eternity in this case is beyond the Death of the Universe. The Heat Death. Final Entropy. Omega Point.

The Children of Eternity they call themselves. They try not to call themselves "God" or gods for that matter. They learned from past experience that there's always a bigger kid on the block willing to knock that galaxy size chip from their shoulders. But they learned, sometimes the easy way. Mostly the hard way though, as with most of human history.

The Children are the Last Human Intelligence though. To call them human is a huge misnomer, because there is billions of years separating them and the original baseline human being.

It's like comparing an anerobic bacteria colony with 21st century New York City. Not even close.

But observing an event like the Death of the Parent Star isn't Kirns only job. Oh no.

It's not even Er main job. Kirns primary duty is to use the energy that is to be created by the blow-off of Old Sols' outer layers of gases to create an artificial Hole in Time.

A wormhole. A time-gate.

Actually, a natural rip in the normal four dimensional fabric of space would be a result of the semi-nova energies anyway. Kirn is just there to control the energy release in order to form the shape of the rip and use the matter from the explosion and convert it into a negative matter cage to hold the wormhole open.

Sounds good in theory.

The Children are proven stellar engineers though. Creating wormholes, albeit small ones, are a matter of course for multiple-Singularity non-corporeal entities who reside in a higher dimension. Or dimensions.

But there's one thing the Universe beat them at, aggravating the Children to no end and smacked their left-over human hubris right between the proverbial eyes.

And that was the ever accelerating expansion of the Universe.

The recent IEEE Spectrum special on the singularity brought a lot of comment across the blogosphere. The NYT's John Tierney weighed in on the topic recently with a piece: When Do Post-Humans Show Up? Tierney gives Ray Kurzweil a chance to fight back against the "singularity deniers", and Kurzweil obliges.

These critics obviously have not read my book and have not read this chapter because they do not respond to anything I’ve written. It is as if they’ve just heard a superficial presentation of these ideas and respond without any engagement of the extensive discussion that has already taken place about these issues. _NYT

That may very well be, or it may be that Kurzweil is mentally fixed on a particular set of mechanisms and scenarios of singularity. It may be that Kurzweil's "extensive discussion that has already taken place about these issues..." is not as extensive or profound as Kurzweil imagines.

Kurzweil's discussion about how easily the human brain/mind will be emulated is particularly naive. This naivete comes naturally when a prolific and esteemed person such as Kurzweil is insufficiently familiar with the subject matter he is discussing--the genetics (and epigenetics) of the mind/brain.

I point out that the complexity of the design of the brain is at least 100 million times simpler than it appears because the design is in the genome. Even including the genetic machinery that implements the genome, the compressed genome is only about 50 million bytes (which I analyze in the book), and that is a level of complexity we can handle. We are already showing that we can develop realistic models and simulations of brain regions like the cerebellum and others. The cerebellum, for example, repeats a basic pattern a few billion times with some random variation within certain prescribed constraints. There is a lot of apparent complexity in the cerebellum but not very much unique design information, and we’re showing we can reverse-engineer it.

Of course the cerebellum is only peripherally involved in most conscious activity. It is an important "co-processor", but not the central processing center of consciousness. One can derive no comfort in the quest to understand human cognition from the apparent simplicity of cerebellar structure.

Similarly, if one supposed that the apparent simplicity of the brain genome implied a simplicity of the brain/mind itself, one would have to overlook much recent research detailing the "post-genomic", meta-genomic, and epigenetic development of central nervous system structures. These critical aspects of brain development are not well enough understood to allow useful modeling or quantification. Worse yet, even a complete understanding of how to create a human brain will not immediately put us in a place to understand how that brain works, or how it might be improved.

The road to the "singularity" will not be a smooth exponential curve. It will be a fractal fracturing of boundaries and limitations that will take decades to sort out. We will have pieces of the singularity existing a hand's breadth away from other pieces, with neither recognising the other. It will be up to post-humans to put the pieces together so that they do not blow up into a Skynet or Colossus.

If western civilisation survives attacks from desert religious fanaticisms, and 19th century cloistered ghetto-inspired central planning, various critical parts of the "singularity" may achieve capabilities and versatilities that allow them to connect with other critical parts in the same place at the same time. It is up to the post-humans among us to follow the threads of accomplishment, splice them together into a self-generative, autopoietic symbiotic whole, and wrap it all in a sustainable energy/matter matrix.

In Kurzweil's vision, the singularity drives the post-human. But doesn't it make more sense the other way around?

Eventually, the biological substrate of consciousness will be outpaced by other forms of conscious cognition. Post-humans will build their world around that knowledge, so as not to be left behind. Currently, only science fiction provides the speculative power to imagine the transformations that will come from genomics, nanotechnology, advanced hyper-parallel computation, robotics, evolved machine intelligences, and any combination of the above. After science fiction, Kurzweil provides a more "connected" view of our potential. Finally, there is mainstream science, which runs a very distant third in scope and vision to SF and Kurzweil.

But if you want a realistic assessment of what is likely to happen, you need scientist/engineers trained in multiple disciplines, who are also thoroughly steeped in biology, cognitive science, history, and science fiction. Post-humans will have to be able to bridge disciplines, cultures, even civilisations.

I'll stare across to the person, open mouthed and try to decide how to best relate my life in simple terms so that they will understand that I'm a complicated being struggling in a toxic pit of snake people, and there are days when I lose myself in those suffocating coils, and of this world and this living.

I doubt that's the best way to meet and greet and make friends, but it is the truth, and it is how I see and feel about those things around me. I've never been one for the politeness of surface bullshit: that "oh, well this is great, and life is good, and what's up with you?"

That forced kind of commentary makes me want to vomit a little in my mouth. I'm not in the habit of swallowing chunks for other people's sake, so I just tell it like it is, and most, if not all of the time, they walk away.

Yesterday I was talking to someone I trust about being alone and loneliness. He asked me if I have hope of finding quality people or a person of great expectations. I said no.

I said look at our lives, look at the people that surround us. Look at our culture. I don't drink, I don't smoke, I don't do drugs, I don't like random hook-ups, I don't sleep around, I don't do the fuck buddy thing, I hang out with myself, I don't go to bars, I'm tired of clubs and what's worse: I have morals.

I want back the part of this society that used to believe in morals and respect.

I want to be able to talk to people without having them check their cellphone for text messages every 10 minutes.

I want to know that the next person I potentially date won't be addicted to Halo or WoW. (this is sad, but it's true and people go to therapy for it.)

I want to sit and have word associated free-flow conversation that isn't over a keyboard, one that I wouldn't have to feel the need to reference a spell checker for to feel confident.

I want to be able to tell another human being that I get really upset when I have bowel attacks that literally trap me in the house for a day or more, because that's being human and gadgets can't fix it.

So what is it that you do anyways?

I get by, I get along and I wait.

I did want to note why I'm talking about "commercial" internet vs "internet".    Contrary to what is often claimed the internet is a pretty old structure, begun by the military after WWII and then adopted by academia where it pretty munch languished for about 30 years.    I would argue that cheap computing and ISP and online services (thank you Prodigy, Compuserve, AOL, more) then combined with graphical browsing (thank you Marc Andreessen and Mosaic friends) to create the backbone of the current "commercial internet" that has exploded onto the global scene as the key communication medium of all time. 

So, what is the *next* big thing?    Why, conscious computing of course!   And it's not just *big* like the internet.    It's super duper gigantic and earth shaking, and it's coming soon to a planet very near us all.   Experts disagree about *when* conscious computing will happen, though I think very few who are paying much attention would suggest we won't have it within 50 years.  However many experts, and I think the body of current projects such as Blue Brain, suggest that we will have conscious computers that exceed human intelligence within 20 years and perhaps even 10.    What happens *after* a machine becomes conscious is quite a new thought ballgame and it is very hard to speculate about how that machine will evolve and perhaps more importantly how they will view other machines and .... us.    Will the conscious machines get smarter slowly or almost explosively fast, surpassing all of humanity within months or even minutes of first attaining consciousness?

A simple way of understanding what many AI researchers are talking about in this respect is to simply recognize that the conscious machine is likely to be "recursively self improving" which means it will be able to build and/or program better versions of itself soon after consciousness, probably in something analogous to the way we humans improve our intellects and skills but much, much faster.   Humans pull this off as well.  I'm proud to say my wife and I have managed to create and program two impressive organic intellects who are now able to program themselves and we love them dearly.   However we were constrained by human organic evolution, so took us many years to do this.    Artificial intellects will likely be able to reproduce quite a bit faster and more effectively (no offense to any of you expectant parents intended).

Ironically for me, several of my favorite programming experts do not seem to conscious computing as something we can expect to happen anytime soon.   I've puzzled over this because they certainly know the mechanics better than I, but I remain convinced that they are putting too much faith - sometimes literally - into the idea that humans are somehow ... fundamentally different .... from other physical manifestations of the world.    I'm confident we are not all that different, and in that light consciousness is probably best viewed more as a sort of tangential aspect of our lives than a key component. 

And speaking of tangents, this whole post was going to be about this Carnagie Mellon AI project where the computer was reading people's minds.   Simple words, yes, but still a rudimentary form of  mind reading based on EEG output:  http://www.cmu.edu/news/archive/2008/May/may29_brainmeaning.shtml

And in its cell

It slowly opens its eye.

Like a child born

It feeds

On a steady diet of reason.

Readying

For the harmonious clash

At paradigm's end.

Anyway, as she was preparing to head off, one of our cats insisted on going through the door which leads from my office into my bindery. This is where the cat food is.

"She wants through."

"She wants owwwwt."

"Any door leads out, as far as a cat is concerned."

"Well, that door did once actually lead out, decades ago."

"She remembers."

"She can't remember."

"Nonetheless, the memory lingers."

* * * * * * *

Via TDG, a fascinating interview with Douglas Richard Hofstadter last year, now translated into English. I'd read his GEB some 25 years ago, and have more or less kept tabs on his work since. The interview was about his most recent book, and touched on a number of subjects of interest to me, including the nature of consciousness, writing, Artificial Intelligence, and the Singularity. It's long, but well worth the effort.

In discussing consciousness (which Hofstadter calls 'the soul' for reasons he explains), and the survival of shards of a given 'soul', the topic of writing and music comes up. Discussing how Chopin's music has enabled shards of the composer's soul to persist, Hofstadter makes this comment about his own desire to write:

I am not shooting at immortality through my books, no. Nor do I think Chopin was shooting at immortality through his music. That strikes me as a very selfish goal, and I don't think Chopin was particularly selfish. I would also say that I think that music comes much closer to capturing the essence of a composer's soul than do a writer's ideas capture the writer's soul. Perhaps some very emotional ideas that I express in my books can get across a bit of the essence of my soul to some readers, but I think that Chopin's music probably does a lot better job (and the same holds, of course, for many composers).

I personally don't have any thoughts about “shooting for immortality” when I write. I try to write simply in order to get ideas out there that I believe in and find fascinating, because I'd like to let other people be able share those ideas. But intellectual ideas alone, no matter how fascinating they are, are not enough to transmit a soul across brains. Perhaps, as I say, my autobiographical passages — at least some of them — get tiny shards of my soul across to some people.

Exactly.

* * * * * * *

In April, I wrote this:

I’ve written only briefly about my thoughts on the so-called Singularity - that moment when our technological abilities converge to create a new transcendent artificial intelligence which encompasses humanity in a collective awareness. As envisioned by the Singularity Institute and a number of Science Fiction authors, I think that it is too simple - too utopian. Life is more complex than that. Society develops and copes with change in odd and unpredictable ways, with good and bad and a whole lot in the middle.

Here's Hofstadter's take from the interview, in responding to a question about Ray Kurzweil's notion of achieving effective immortality by 'uploading' a personality into a machine hardware:

Well, the problem is that a soul by itself would go crazy; it has to live in a vastly complex world, and it has to cohabit that world with many other souls, commingling with them just as we do here on earth. To be sure, Kurzweil sees those things as no problem, either — we'll have virtual worlds galore, “up there” in Cyberheaven, and of course there will be souls by the barrelful all running on the same hardware. And Kurzweil sees the new software souls as intermingling in all sorts of unanticipated and unimaginable ways.

Well, to me, this “glorious” new world would be the end of humanity as we know it. If such a vision comes to pass, it certainly would spell the end of human life. Once again, I don't want to be there if such a vision should ever come to pass. But I doubt that it will come to pass for a very long time. How long? I just don't know. Centuries, at least. But I don't know. I'm not a futurologist in the least. But Kurzweil is far more “optimistic” (i.e., depressingly pessimistic, from my perspective) about the pace at which all these world-shaking changes will take place.

Interesting.

* * * * * * *

Lastly, the interview is about the central theme of I am a Strange Loop: that consciousness is an emergent phenomenon which stems from vast and subtle physical mechanisms in the brain. This is also the core 'meaning' of GEB, though that was often missed by readers and reviewers who got hung up on the ostensible themes, topics, and playfulness of that book. Hofstadter calls this emergent consciousness a self-referential hallucination, and it reflects much of his interest in cognitive science over the years.

[Mild spoilers ahead.]

In Communion of Dreams I played with this idea and a number of related ones, particularly pertaining to the character of Seth. It is also why I decided that I needed to introduce a whole new technology - based on the superfluid tholin-gel found on Titan, as the basis for the AI systems at the heart of the story. Because the gel is not human-manufactured, but rather something a bit mysterious. Likewise, the use of this material requires another sophisticated computer to 'boot it up', and then it itself is responsible for sustaining the energy matrix necessary for continued operation. At the culmination of the story, this 'self-referential hallucination' frees itself from its initial containment.

Why did I do this?

Partly in homage to Hofstedter (though you will find no mention of him in the book, as far as I recall). Partly because it plays with other ideas I have about the nature of reality. If we (conscious beings) are an emergent phenomenon, arising from physical activity, then it seems to me that physical things can be impressed with our consciousness. This is why I find his comments about shards of a soul existing beyond the life of the body of the person to be so intriguing.

So I spent some 130,000 words exploring that idea in Communion. Not overtly - not often anyway - but that is part of the subtext of what is going on in that book.

* * * * * * *

"Any door leads out, as far as a cat is concerned."

"Well, that door did once actually lead out, decades ago."

"She remembers."

"She can't remember."

"Nonetheless, the memory lingers," I said, "impressed on the door itself. Maybe the cat understands that at a level we don't."

Jim Downey

(Related post at UTI.)

I am also struggling through The Secret History of the World (as Laid Down by the Secret Societies) by Mark Booth.  I'll call it a rambling description of the "esoteric tradition" (worldview of freemasonry, skull and bones, etc.) as told by an informed outsider.  The history described is really a pan-mythological mash-up that reads as though every world religion was combined and passed down through oral tradition.  It shows us a world in which matter slowly hardens over time, humans have a vegetable essence, and pineal glands once protruded from our heads like unicorn horns allowing man to interact with Gods and spirits.  Blah.

>> Singularity

Yes, I begin my Real Drive career with a graceless Contact reference. Push past the predictability: it's perfect for the scene pictured above, and the show in general (based on the first episode).

My friend OGT, whom you probably know, lured me into this here anime-blogging bit (simply by making entertaining posts), and I bring him up at this point because his post about Real Drive is what got me to check out the first episode. I'm glad I did, and I was just a little surprised -- he's not generally a fan of cyberpunk. OGT, correct me if I'm wrong, definitely.

And yes, I would absolutely classify this (again, based on the first episode) as cyberpunk. They're going around digitizing people's brains; apparently it's become so important that they did it to a comatose man without his consent, though perhaps he still had some family around then. Or, more probably, his friend told them to do it.

Warning: I'm still at the point where I can't remember the characters' names. So, vague descriptions may crop up. Now you know.

What I'm liking about this iteration of my favorite Gibson (and/or Sterling) -spawned genre is that it seems to be dealing with the effects of cyberization and (possibly) post-Singularity life on the environment.

Just in case you don't know, let me go into the Singularity and all that stuff. I find it fascinating. Moore's Law states that technology improves at an exponential rate.

I have no idea what this graph is for, but it's a positive exponential curve. Moore claims that the speed and efficiency of technology improves, and will continue to improve, along that kind of line. The Singularity is one of the names for the eventual vertical curve of the graph. Eventually every basic exponential line will curve into a straight line, essentially going higher and higher without any time (in our case) passing. Infinite technological growth with no time involved. The practical explanation is that our technology will improve, and we will use that technology to take the next step up the graph. We never start from the ground floor.

This has some obvious and not-so-obvious repercussions. A lot of people believe that one of the keys to the Singularity will be intelligent AI. They will effectively start to design better technology, as they'll be more capable of design than humans are.

Note -- whether you believe this will happen or not isn't important; it's a popular idea in sci-fi.

Anyway. Nanotechnology and the like are all considered "post-singularity" tech. That is, designers will actually have to be better than they are now, through technological means, to design functioning nanotechnology. At least, they will need to be if they are to design the stuff we pine for, like houses that build themselves.

Another facet of folks who are into the Singularity is "post-humanism." They claim that the next evolutionary step for humanity will be technologically driven. We will improve ourselves. That's an even more common cyberpunk element, with digital brains, cybernetic body parts, et cetera. And post-humanists advocate improvement without disaster. We're running into problems where people with prosthetics are beginning to be called "more than human." With post-singularity technology, we could all improve ourselves in safety, as there would be no risk in the procedures, as medical technology will benefit from the upward end of the exponential curve just like everything else.

And so some people think the singularity also holds the answers to environmental issues, especially pollution and climate. Filling our oceans and atmosphere with nanobots that eat pollution and crap water would fix everything, they claim. And, well, yes -- it would fix things. The problem isn't necessarily the technology, but the timeframe. As Karl Schroeder explains far better than I can, the Singularity must have a certain amount of time, or a run-up if you will, and Earth will crap out before then.

Hopefully the connections to Real Drive are reasonably clear, and you're not just angry at me for dragging you around for no reason. That's assuming you're still reading.

Real Drive appears to be in the setting of a typical post-singularity world, possibly with some mystical earth-force involved. Our characters may simply be personifying nature, which is common enough. Either way, we're dealing with the problems of technology exacerbated by the Singularity. The technology seems to be screwing with nature more, not less. The show also points out an interesting point about tech. reliance: when your infrastructure can be screwed with by bad weather or something, you should build some fucking redundancies.

The newspapers have been running articles about changing consumer habits since the price of gas started to reach $4 a gallon. These are either puff pieces about the benefits of public transportation (this one is about public transit in Europe), or articles lamenting the woes of people who are stuck in suburbia, unable anymore to afford the dream of The City of Tomorrow.

Since 2006 when the total population of Earth tipped from 51% rural to 51% urban, making the planet an "urban planet" for the first time, it has become increasingly clear that cities will once again become the laboratories for the next phase of human development. What might this mean for New York City?

Two immediate scenarios are getting play in the popular press, both of them rooted in classical economics, both of them hinted at in John Tierney's NY Times blog entry, "Malthus v. the Singluarity". On one hand eighteenth century British economist Thomas Malthus warned that resource shortages would lead to economic, social and cultural collapse. (Malthus inspired Carlyle to call economics "the dismal science.") On the other hand, Adam Smith and his tradition argues that the invisible hand of the market will prompt individuals to find creative ways to increase wealth and consequently promote growth. These two distinct narratives are tragedy and comedy respectively. The tragedians tell us that because oil production may have peaked and there are no infrastructure alternatives to gasoline powered automobiles we are headed toward a cataclysm if public policy isn't brought into line. This is the tone of Paul Krugman's editorial in the NY Times. Steven Levitt's opinion in his NY TImes blog is comedy because it posits a happy ending: high gas prices will spur private innovation and growth. Which is more likely?

Probably the truth is somewhere in between. Contrary to Levitt's optimism, it seems unlikely that the investment necessary to retool our infrastructure will come solely from the mythical "free market". Markets are not sentient, though freemarketeers and mainstream economists often like to describe them that way, and though they may produce innovative short term solutions, they also may produce insoluble long term headaches -- like the traffic jam that happens every year when all "rational actors" decide to drive their cars to the mall on Christmas Eve to do some last minute shopping. What kind of plausible economic decisions might people make in the immediate future?

As CNN is reporting, many people may move into the city. This makes perfect economic sense. Cities generally and New York particularly already have public transit infrastructure in place that is remarkably less expensive than automobile transportation. Think about the costs: an unlimited Metrocard in New York costs $81 a month. By contrast, filling up a ten gallon tank for a car that gets twenty miles to the gallon for thirty miles a day of driving (a conservative estimate that assumes you only drive to work and that work is no more than fifteen miles from your house) is $42 a week, or $168 a month. Add insurance payments, repairs/service/maintenance, and the capital investment in the car reflected in monthly payments, and you can easily spend $400 a month or more. If you already commute into a city (rather than to an office park) it makes sense to give up your sprawling McMansion and downsize to a more efficient and cost effective dwelling.

Here's the other side of the coin. Suburban apologists argue that real estate prices in New York City are quite high, even with the prospect that a recession might deflate real estate prices, and so you get more living space for your buck in the 'burbs. This is certainly true. A piece in the New York Times Real Estate section last Sunday titled, "They Love the (New) Brooklyn" featured The Mynt, an upscale building on the corner of Nostrand and Myrtle (across from the Marcy housing projects), which is typical of development in the last ten years. Starting in the late 90s young whites pushed the frontiers of gentrification beyond the borders of Manhattan and into Brooklyn. Real estate speculators weren't far behind, and soon in neighborhoods like Williamsburg they began constructing high rise apartment buildings that were almost as expensive as in Manhattan. A two bedroom in The Mynt goes for $2,550 a month, quite a bit more expensive than existing housing in the neighborhood. And at the moment the amenities that people want when they pay that much in rent are lacking in Bed-Stuy, which was one of the poorest places in America fifteen years ago. But will high prices deter immigration from the heart land?

Probably not. Ultimately high gas prices will be a more palpable and urgent motivator than more expensive square footage in the city. But the character of development won't be the same as it was during the go-go years of the last decade.

Though it may be the case that a depressed financial industry means apartments in Manhattan could slip below the $1.4 million average, it seems more likely that people moving to the city to escape the technology trap created in the sub- and ex-urbs by high gas prices will offset slackening demand. Moreover, real estate agents who see their country brethren losing their jobs are not going to be happy about lowering prices so that ex-suburbanites can maintain their standard of living. It is more likely that real estate owners will rent rather than sell, and subdivide rather than rent at a discount. Ghettoization in the 21st century may or may not be as racially motivated as it was during the Great Depression, but it will involve the inability of immigrants to the city to get mortgages, which in turn will lead to subdividing apartments in the new luxury buildings that sprang up in the last ten years, diverting them from luxury use to, you guessed it, new ghettos.

But the upside -- at least from the perspective of NYC residents -- will be pressure on Albany to approve more of Mayor Mike's green initiatives and urbanist policies that will soften the impact of extra population. Why? Because the 21st century immigrants who will be escaping the countryside with its prohibitively high cost of living, are people who already feel enfranchised and will be less likely to accept ghettoization as the price of citizenship. Congestion pricing, beefed up MTA service, and further expansion of bike friendly policies are important first steps to making city life more affordable, leaving residents more access to work and more money in their pockets. The next step will be to coordinate city planning and reign in the worst excesses of developers who are only interested in building high rises for Wall Street elites. Moreover, 21st century urbanist policy (policy necessarily comes from government) can encourage current residents of underdeveloped and neglected neighborhoods like Bed-Stuy, Brownsville and East New York to buy property to develop in an organic and market-friendly way.

A new synthesis in economics is in the air, one that accepts the fundamental tenets of Smith but understands how to coordinate individual economic decisions with government policy to promote a vibrant public sphere. Already real estate blogs disseminate vastly more information about market level opportunities to individuals than every before. The next step will be to organize citizens as a political community to make sure that growth is mutually beneficial and organic. Smith will once again triumph over Malthus if the city is allowed to develop into the logical alternative to the automobile era.

UPDATE!!!:

It looks like the NY Times is reading my blog. In this article Times reporter Peter Goodman reports that phase one of my prediction is coming to pass. He writes, "Juanita Johnson and her husband, both retired Denver schoolteachers, moved here last August, after three decades in the city and a few years in the mountains. They bought a four-bedroom house for $415,000. Last winter, they spent $3,000 on propane for heat, she said. Suddenly, this seemed like a place to flee." High fuel prices are the catalyst for moving people back to urban centers. (Ironically, it's not just the cost of commuting from the ex-urbs either. McMansions built for speed and not for durance cost more to heat, it seems, because they were built on the assumption of low heating fuel prices -- perhaps even in disdain for economic considerations like good insulation. Taken together, American's mid-twentieth century environmental carelessness is going to cause a lot of structural economic pain.) The really interesting part of the story is how deeply ingrained this kind of expensive living is in the popular imagination. Again, Goodman reports: "Megan Werner, 39, a mother of three, moved here five years ago from a dense suburb closer to Denver. She and her husband bought a home set on a 1.5-acre lot in the Deer Creek Farm subdivision. The space justified her husband’s 40-minute commute. 'We wanted more than a postage stamp,' she said, as her 5-year-old daughter walked barefoot across the driveway. It used to cost her about $30 to fill her Honda minivan with gas. Now, it is more like $50, and she coordinates her trips — shopping in town, combined with dance lessons for her children. But she has no thoughts of leaving. 'I can open up my door and my kids can play,' Ms. Werner said." I'll discuss this more in my next post.

This is America. This is where your child's stay at home parent is a video game system that costs more than your average monthly car loan payment.

This is where parents push strollers with babies inside while talking on their cell phones, instead of just spending quiet time with their kids.

We are in -everything-, connected to the point of being so separated and isolated from each other that we forget how to actually speak, to engage.

This is where coffee shops are full of people working on lap tops, listening to mp3 players while answering their cell phones at the same time, instead of just having coffee talk.

This is where we hit each other to get close because words have become ineffective.

This is where we juice it up, rage it out, skirt responsibility and blame it on everything we consume.

This is where apathy becomes the solution and everyone is a target audience.

This is America. Don't you want to be like us?