talkback and prose

The Future of Learning

2012-08-21T11:57:00.000-07:00

"The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn." ~Alvin Toffler

Our knowledge and understanding of the world is increasing exponentially. Barely a week goes by without a new discovery being heralded by our best and brightest. The world, or rather our perception of it, is in a constant state of flux. Yet our systems do not reflect this fact. We live in a series of 19th and 20th century systems that try to handle our 21st century realities. Those systems will fail. Some by gradual transition, others by paradigm shifts that will immediately disintegrate their necessity. We must prepare for that reality.

The public education system was created as a direct response to industrialization. As industry grew, a large and educated workforce was needed to fuel the fires of our nation's largest factories. The mantra at the time, and one that still permeates modern education, was 'reading, writing and arithmetic' or the "three R's". If you went to any public school in the world, chances are you're familiar with the three R's.

As Toffler suggested, the 21st century will be one where the illiterates are those who can not learn, unlearn and relearn. The most dangerous thing that can happen to someone living in the 21st century is that they believe they can stop learning. The reasoning is simple, those who do not change will be left behind.

Let's use economics as an example. Both Blockbuster and Hollywood Video were titans of the home video market. While local stores existed, these two franchises were the go to for an entire country's rental entertainment. Today, they both have closed thousands of stores and limp around, practically begging for customers. Neither anticipated the power of the internet or of streaming technologies. They relied on their 20th century knowledge while trying to operate in a 21st century world. Blockbuster and Hollywood Video were left behind, but the same thing can happen to an individual.

Quantum computing, personalized medicine, generation 4 nuclear power, 3D printing, robotics, nanotechnology, global intelligence. That's seven paradigm shifting, viewpoint-shattering developments that will happen within my lifetime. Those are the easy ones to predict. There's a host of things we do not know about that will rock our collective consciousness. What we do know is this: We must be prepared to change our minds.

The most important thing for us to do is change our approach to knowledge. It never ends. We can not stop learning. We can not believe that school is the only place where learning happens. Because of exponential growth it no longer takes a lifetime to feel out of touch, it takes a decade. In a few decades that time will shrink further, and those who can not adapt will be left behind in the span of a year. And it is those who are left behind we will deem illiterate. Too stubborn to learn, unlearn and relearn.

Let us not be left behind.

BATmitzvah

2012-07-16T21:49:00.000-07:00

*There are no spoilers here.

Someone's BATmitzvah is a special day. One to be held in high esteem compared to other days. For seven years, in fact for all time, no one has had a BATmitzvah. The world has suffered because of this.

A BATmitzvah is the day you become a man or woman. It is the day you leave one stage of your life and enter into another. A person's BATmitzvah is a once in a lifetime occasion.

Thursday July 19th is my birthday. It is also the first day in the history of the world that anyone will be able to experience their BATmitzvah.

The rules of a BATmitzvah are simple: In a 24 hour period you must watch all three Christopher Nolan Batman films. Batman Begins, The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises.

After a BATmitzvah you will be filled with so much awesomeness that some family or friends may not recognize you. They may ask, "Tom you look so different, almost like you are glowing. What is going on?" Fear not in telling them the good news.

Spread the message of the #BATmitzvah.

I wish you well my friends. I will see you on the other side.

The Future is a Video Game

2012-05-21T12:23:00.001-07:00

2011 was a pretty good year at the box office. Despite the industry claiming that their world will soon end because of piracy, ticket sales do not lie. Harry Potter 7 Part 2 made $169 million in a weekend, the highest of all time before The Avengers. Transformers, Twilight, Pirates of the Caribbean, all had blockbuster years at the box office.

And each one of them got their ass kicked by video games.

Harry Potter 7 Part 2 was the highest grossing film of 2011 and made huge waves for having a $92 million opening day. Modern Warfare 3 made $400 million in 24 hours. In five days it passed $750 million, a mark Harry Potter took nearly two weeks to pass. Transformers 3 came in second place at the box office and over its entire run made $350 million in the United States. Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim made $450 million in five days.

And video games are terrible.

Video games lack so much creativity that Mario is still a best seller. Imagine if you went to the movies and Marty McFly was having another grand adventure with Doc Brown. That's what video games are like. For those who don't understand the reference that's because Back to the Future came out in 1985, a few years AFTER everyone's favorite plumber.

But it doesn't matter. Because video games are the future.

Over the past decade gaming has become mainstream. With the explosion of home consoles like the Xbox and PlayStation and with the culmination of "casual" games on smart phones and social networking sites like Facebook, games have become entwined with our way of life.

And it is only going to continue.

With the exponential growth rate of technology there is no doubt that video games will soon dominate our conscious lives. Currently it takes a certain kind of dedication to become truly entrenched in a game. There are far too many barriers to immersion for most people to sink into a game. Controllers can be foreign to non-gamers, screens can't replace real life.

But the barriers will fall away.

As time passes, technology will become easier to use, more user friendly and more connected to every day tasks. Just last week Google patented an infrared ring that users wear on their finger to control interfaces on augmented-reality glasses. Microsoft is releasing the Kinect for PC this year, which will likely replace the keyboard with swipes of the hand and voice commands. If those are not two sentences out of a sci-fi novel, I don't know what is.

Gaming, as it's known today, is the real future. Just as it only took a few years for smart phones to become the majority of cell phones on the market, the gaming revolution will happen faster than we can understand. It won't happen when a gaming company invents a new technology, or programs a new graphics engine so that monsters look awesome. Those things will already exist. True innovation isn't about invention but combination.

The transformative moment is not Google's Project Glass or Microsoft's Kinect or any single idea. The transformative moment is when a game is released that combines so many different elements that it becomes more than a game, it becomes a way of life. At first there will be a relatively small group, as there always is. Then that group expands. What's going to be different about the video game revolution is that it will have no reason to stop expanding.

The common quip is, "That sounds like something out of a sci-fi movie." No arguments here, there are countless books, essays, shorts and movies that all predict a similar kind of future. What may be unclear is that books and essays and movies are just ways of bringing imagination into reality. When technology advances to the point when an all-encompassing "game" is feasible, all those writers and filmmakers and all the fans of those writers and filmmakers will become the first wave of gamers. Science fiction is the imaginative precursor to manifestation in the physical reality.

A new book will soon be released by TED that discusses the Hybrid Reality that will exist for the next generation. Life will be lived as a hybrid, taking place in both the physical environment and the virtual one. Robotics will continue to take on greater workloads in the physical environment while humans become more involved in the virtual worlds we create. According to Hybrid Reality, "what human civilization needs more than anything is not greater IQ or EQ, but TQ: technology quotient." The ability to adapt and use advanced technology.

Which makes for an interesting debate between those currently using technology and those who are out of the loop or shunning it entirely. If you're reading this then chances are you fall into the former camp, and my position should be fairly obvious. With time the differences will become even more stark. Since birth there are those who have been upping their technology quotient, preparing, in a way, for the video game revolution. Now that the future looks so bright there is only one thing to do...

Keep gaming.

~~~~

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How 'The Avengers' Did Right by this Geek

2012-05-04T22:37:00.000-07:00

Never before has a project like The Avengers been attempted. It is hands down one of the riskiest ideas ever kicked around Hollywood. Immensely successfully franchises are derailed all the time by a terrible sequel (Spiderman 3, X-Men 3). Yet Marvel's new plan was to produce multiple movies introducing individual super heroes with the end goal of bringing them together in one movie depicting one of comic book's most beloved teams. Make no mistakes about it, The Avengers is really Marvel Comics 6.

The story of The Avengers begins in a meeting between Marvel studios and Merrill Lynch in the pre-recession golden years of 2005. Merrill Lynch gave Marvel a big ol' pile of money in hopes that this superhero craze, that I refer to as Wave One, would continue and make everyone involved more piles of money. It was a huge risk, especially since at the time Marvel was witnessing DC Comic's release of Batman Begins capture far more critical and box office attention than their own movies had received of late. Marvel got the loan from Merrill Lynch, probably financed by selling some poor family a house they couldn't afford, but who cares because movie history for the rest of us!

Wave One/Wave Two

Speaking of history, here's some that I've been storing in my head for years in case a random facts moment was needed at cocktail parties. The comic book resurgence began in 2000 with director Bryan Singer's take on the X-Men. It would continue for years dominated by Marvel movies that redefined what comic book adaptations could do.

The superhero genre was previously viewed as niche films that people like Kevin Smith would see, but would never garner mass-appeal. DC Comics also was clearly ahead of Marvel in the cinema department. The 80's were dominated with Superman and its many sequels while the 90's (beginning in 1989) were dominated by Batman. In that same time Marvel released Howard the Duck, The Punisher, a direct-to-video Captain America and Blade. Not exactly cinematic powerhouses.

Bryan Singer would change all of that with X-Men. A far more serious look at comic book heroes, Singer was able to launch the first Wave of the superhero resurgence with his gutsy film. Marvel would ride Wave One for seven years with two more X-Men sequels, three Spiderman movies, two Fantastic Four films, Ang Lee's Hulk, Daredevil, Elektra, Ghost Rider and a Punisher remake. In seven years Marvel released three times as many superhero movies as it did in the previous 70 years.

While Wave Two technically began in that fat cat meeting back in '05, the real wave began with the release of Iron Man in 2008. Robert Downey Jr. charmed both audiences and Ms. Potts to new heights and Iron Man launched a trend. It was the first time a movie truly had two roles- to be a coherent film while also being a prelude to a project down the road. Each of the Wave Two films would have to deal with this balancing act. Some faltered (Iron Man 2, Thor) while others shined (Captain America). It's tough to iterate how unprecedented this plan was so let's try an SAT association test to prove my point. If The Avengers is the Lord of the Rings trilogy then Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, Thor and Captain America are The Hobbit. $780 million on a prequel. Unlike The Hobbit, those in charge didn't know how successful The Avengers would be. They were guessing, like every studio guesses that it's next film will be a hit when the truth is they know about as much as audiences do about the next film's success. But that's what The Avengers is, the main event. Everything before this has just been a prequel so we know what is happening in The Avengers. It's been a five year study in mass-psychology and the results are in: we can be taught.

Each of the Waves represents a change in how comic book movies are presented. Before Wave One they were popular and had dedicated fan bases, but lacked mainstream appeal. Wave One changed that. It made comics cool again, made fandom a desirable trait and captivated the world in a way that had not been seen before. Wave One made it okay to tell a story through a superhero lens.

Wave Two changed how comic book movies were presented again. No longer would it be okay for characters to exist in their own individual universes. The same phenomenon that happened in the comics industry had jumped into the film industry. Once these characters are presented and we, the audience, know their stories we want to see them together. The Avengers is the culmination of years of work and dedication by the whole Marvel enterprise.

DC Comics

Titans of the previous generation's youth, DC has become second tier in the movie business during the 21st century. Since X-Men, DC Comics has released seven films compared to Marvel's twenty-four. While two (and the upcoming conclusion) can be quickly named, outside of Christopher Nolan's Batman franchise it is difficult for the average person to name any of DC Comics other films. Catwoman, Superman Returns, Watchmen, Jonah Hex and Green Lantern. Two were unmitigated disasters that did not recoup their costs (Catwoman, Jonah Hex), two made up their budgets at the box office but after accounting for marketing and licensing costs still are considered failures (Watchmen, Green Lantern), only Bryan Singer's Superman Returns can claim anything close to success, yet it was so routinely dismissed by fans and critics that no sequel was ever made. Audiences basically said, look we went to see this flick because it's about Superman, whom we love, but your movie sucked.

A brief aside for fans of Watchmen

Look guys (and statistically speaking, yeah it's guys), Watchmen was awesome. It was the greatest interpretation we could ever hope for and I love Zack Snyder for making it happen. Compared to the rest of DC's non-Batman fodder, it's the only one that's any good. The problem is that Watchmen is not really a superhero movie as people came to know them during Wave One and Wave Two. It tried to be something else. Something more align with it's source material, something challenging and interesting and unique. To be blunt, Watchmen tried to be Batman Begins. In my opinion and most fans' opinions, it worked. The problem is that the Watchmen are not Batman. When you do something challenging and interesting and unique with characters that the general population is not familiar with it is easy to dismiss. Even when Chris Nolan did a very similar thing with Batman. I know, it's not fair. Watchmen was awesome, and I feel really bad about lumping it together with garbage like Jonah Hex, but the truth is that there aren't enough people like you and me. There's a bunch of normies out there who are reading this thinking, "this is a strange and weird aside, can we get back to The Avengers." No, normies, we can not. You should have seen Watchmen in the theaters. And Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. Now back to The Avengers.

Batman

Before we get back to The Avengers, I need to talk about the $1.3 billion elephant in the room. That's how much money Christopher Nolan's two Batman films have made. $1.3 billion. But the most important part isn't the money it's the man. It's not DC Comic's Batman films, it's Christopher Nolan's Batman films. There is absolutely no one else like him. His take on Batman is worthy of it's own wave- Wave Nolan. Exactly as Wave One/Two marked changes in comic book movies, so to did Wave Nolan.

Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins and The Dark Knight are so perfectly crafted that they transcend any singular superhero. In fact, Nolan's Batman is so far beyond any single superhero that it is strange to even put them in the same category. While Iron Man was getting drunk, The Dark Knight showed audiences insanity, depravity, pure evil, and sacrifice on an unparalleled stage. Other filmmakers appear to be telling stories about superheros while Nolan was telling stories of super-heroic proportions. Before the release of The Avengers it was impossible to think another film could challenge Nolan's The Dark Knight.

The reason for this is two fold. Firstly, Christopher Nolan tells complete stories. Batman Begins and The Dark Knight do not have to be seen together. While it's difficult to follow anything going on in The Avengers if you're unfamiliar with the numerous prequels, The Dark Knight stands on it's own just fine. There is no question that the films complement one another, but they are not supplements of each other.

Secondly, Christopher Nolan knows how to be Christopher Nolan. There is a tone and feeling when someone enters a Nolan film. It's not that we know what the movie is about (Inception) but rather we understand we are watching the work of a master. One of my biggest pet peeves is movies not understanding what they are supposed to be. Often this is a side effect of a multimillion dollar production with hundreds or even thousands of viewpoints all jockeying for a chance in the spotlight. John Carter is a perfect example of a film made by people who didn't know what the film was supposed to be. Maybe it started out with a clear vision, but over time and a thousand screaming voices that vision was lost. Christopher Nolan knows how to deliver the concept behind 'Christopher Nolan'. His films are perfectly constructed despite the fact that there are just as many people screaming for attention on Nolan's sets as there are on everybody else's.

Saying that a movie knows “what it is supposed to be” means it has one solid artistic vision and that vision is noticeable in every detail from casting to editing. Fast Five is a film that knows what it is supposed to be- awesome popcorn flick and a hell of a lot of fun. Pirates of the Caribbean 4: On Stranger Tides is an example of a movie that didn't know what it was supposed to be- continuation of old characters? introduction of new ones? exploration of grand mythology? random treasure hunting flick? Johnny Depp being Jack Sparrow? A clear artistic vision is needed for a film to feel complete and whole. Christopher Nolan has been able to do that with Batman Begins and The Dark Knight.

The Avengers...finally.

The crazy thing about The Avengers is that it's better than the sum of it's parts. While nothing on this scale had ever been attempted before, the small-scale tests were not inspiring. The closest thing to The Avengers experiment were a few episodes of CW's Smallville that attempted to show the beginnings of the Justice League of America. Just like The Avengers, characters were introduced in their own episodes and some got multi-episode arcs exactly like Iron Man got multiple movies. The results were near disastrous. None of the JLA episodes of Smallville were critically well received, often citing the rushed pace, a confusing storyline or even complete cop outs like putting characters on the phone instead of in the fight. Die-hard fans, myself included, loved seeing everyone together but the nostalgic effect soon wore off and we were left with a few mediocre episodes. While TV and movies aren't directly correlated, many in the industry and fans across the world feared The Avengers would fall into the same traps that plagued Smallville.

Whedon to the Rescue

Joss Whedon has had a big 2012. All he had to do was direct The Avengers and it would have been the biggest moment of his career, but a much smaller flick called Cabin in the Woods- a genre mash up masquerading as a horror movie- managed to sneak it's way into theaters a couple of months before The Avengers. Cabin should have been a preview for what was in store when The Avengers finally graced the screen. The tight pacing, writing and editing apparent in Cabin all can be seen in The Avengers.

Already a cult hero for fan favorites like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly and Dollhouse, Whedon's name will now be at the top of every studio's list. If Christopher Nolan tells complete, realistic, gritty versions of his cape-wearing hero then Joss Whedon operates like the yin to Nolan's yang. It's not that The Avengers is the opposite of The Dark Knight, it's that they are two masterful films playing with different sides of the same coin. Each film knows what it is supposed to be, each has a clear artistic vision and each is a masterpiece.

The Avengers is whimsical. It is fun. It honestly feels like an adult came along and put together the scraps some toddlers were playing with and turned them into a skyscraper. That is not meant to be a slight to the other filmmakers, merely a way to convey how fantastic Whedon's The Avengers is.

The Avengers takes four superheros (Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Hulk), four non-super-but-still-awesome secret agents (Nick Fury, Black Widow, Hawkeye, Maria Hill), and one sidekick (Agent Phil Coulson) and throws them together to fight Thor's adopted brother/demigod Loki who is acting as the point man for a race of powerful aliens called the Chitauri who are led by an even more powerful thing known only as "The Other" who, we discover in the first of two post credit scenes, is working for Thanos. Did that one sentence just blow your mind? Well then you should enjoy the hell out of the movie. It's incredibly complex, which is why so many were worried that this film would crash and burn like a Kryptonian escape pod.

Yet Whedon delivers all the goods. Each character is given their share of screen time, their stories both concluding the arcs begun in their individual movies and catapulting them to the next level of herohood (that should be a word). Whedon presents us with a sort of nostalgic whimsy. A time portal to our youth when things were fun and funny, where time passes unnoticed, where enjoyment is had at each and every moment. The Avengers transports viewers in a way that every film should but only the great ones do. That's the similarity between Nolan and Whedon, each of their films transports you, and we recognize that as a rare thing. The difference is in where they choose to take you.

In The Avengers, Joss Whedon favors the whimsical, the fantastic and the awe inspiring. The pure joy of watching our childhood icons bicker and fight and eventually come together to save the world is exactly what we've always wanted. Not just we, the diehard fans, but we, the human race. We crave that nostalgic whimsy and it is rarely seen in our world of 24 hour news cycles. In our world, there's a lack of giant green monsters punching demigods, not out of malice but out of playfulness- the way brothers punch each other. And that sucks because monsters punching demigods playfully is one of the most enjoyable things to watch. The Avengers fills that void. And it fills about every requirement one could burden a movie to fill. The Avengers is fantastic, and Joss Whedon made it so.

Last Panel

The Avengers made movie history. Yes, it looks like the box office is going to be astronomically high and for all those that needed it to be so- congratulations. More importantly, The Avengers is the culmination of an idea that should have never worked. No film franchise in history has banked so much on a single idea, and because of that, no film has ever lived up to such high expectations before. In the future we will show our kids The Avengers and its prequels the way our parents showed us Star Wars. It is a historic moment, so here's what I really wanted to say...

Thank you.

Minecraft in Classrooms

2012-04-14T16:42:00.000-07:00

Part 13 of the A to Z Blogging Challenge. To see all entries, click here.
This is another post in my series zen and the art of teaching. You can see them all here.

Minecraft is the greatest educational tool that has never been used. That's because it is new and a videogame, and if there's anything the educational system hates more than things that are new it is videogames. Minecraft's simplicity is what makes it so compelling. It is basically a version of legos. It lets the player build anything and everything they can imagine. Minecraft is by far the easiest tool that lets a person's imagination be seen by others.

Players could build a cathederal.

Or recreate a set from Lord of the Rings.

The game can be individual or played in groups. As a history teacher I may ask my students to build a French village. They may decide a village isn't challenging enough.

Limitless possibilities rarely present themselves in reality. In Minecraft the only limiting factors are a player's ability and dedication. Reality continually tells people not to try, to take the easy road, to get by instead of thrive. That's why high school is treated like a painstaking process students must survive instead of an opportunity to learn and grow. But what if by changing the manner in which problems are presented we can change the attitude of the participants.

Schools teach facts so that students can take tests where they can answer questions. What schools should teach is the ability for students to answer the question "what do you want to do?" Because when someone knows the answer to that question, all other questions become easier to answer. How do I do that thing? What are the challenges that will present themselves? How can I deal with those challenges?

Currently, schools try throwing a lot of tools at children and expect them to go into the world and know how to use them. Schools teach algebra in case you need algebra, writing in case you need writing, science in case you need science. But this is the worst possible way to go about learning. We have all had that thought, "Why in the world are they trying to teach me this garbage?"

When the first question is "what do you want to do" the second question is always, "how?" The how is what should guide the learning process. How do I become an astronaut? Science, mathematics, diet and exercise. By starting with "what" students will become self-motivated to figure out how. And self-motivation is the only lasting attribute any school can hope to teach.

Schools need to turn away from their roots as places where a person goes to seek facts and become places where people go to learn how to solve problems. Minecraft is a problem-generating simulation that allows for infinite creativity in the player's responses. But, above all else, Minecraft is a game that begins with the simplest of questions, "what do you want to do?" As in life, if you never answer that question then nothing else will work as well as it could.

Minecraft can be student's testing ground for the simple, driving questions that are so important to answer. And with those answers, they can create entire worlds.

~~~~~~~
If you have 20 minutes watch this TED talk by a public school teacher who presents a fantastic example of what I am trying to say.

Lacking

2012-04-13T17:04:00.000-07:00

Part 12 of the A to Z Blogging Challenge. To see all entries, click here.

Lacking ideas

Mystified by an inability to think

To create.

Lacking is life's motivator

Without it we would be content

And create.

Lacking fuels our passion

An unquenchable desire to be someone else

Someone creative.

~~~~~~~~~~
Writing poetry makes me feel incredibly self-conscious. Mainly because it strips away a lot of the bullshit writers can cover their true intentions with. Less words equals less intrepretation equals less confusion. Writing anything other than poetry is just a way of confusing an audience. A way to be vague and mysterious because you are scared of being clear and transparent.

I wonder if novelists would disagree.

Killing with Honor

2012-04-12T17:00:00.000-07:00

Part 11 of the A to Z Blogging Challenge. To see all entries, click here.

As has been the case throughout history, artists are the first to point out the problems of society through their work. Only after decades can historians speak on a topic with the same level of tenacity as the artist.

HBO recently began airing the second season of Game of Thrones. This clip is from the pilot. Ned Stark is lord of the city of Winterfell, he is surrounded by his men and sons as a military deserter speaks his final words.

For some reason very few people, and no world leaders that I am aware of, believe what Ned Stark believes. As he'd later say, "If you would take a man's life, you owe it to him to look into his eyes and hear his final words. And if you can not do that, then perhaps the man does not deserve to die. A ruler who hides behind paid executioners soon forgets what death is."

I don't know what it says about our society that so few people speak of honor. I just know that artists keep trying to, which means the rest of us must be in short supply.

Joker: The Perfect Villain

2012-04-11T17:32:00.001-07:00

Part 10 of the A to Z Blogging Challenge. To see all entries, click here.

Heath Ledger as Joker in The Dark Knight is one of the greatest performances ever captured on film. Any person on the planet could spend a lifetime studying every frame of that movie and never be able to copy Ledger's performance. An actor's ability is just one part of the overall impression viewers are left with, the rest is created by the script, stylists, make-up artists, editors, cameramen, and, obviously, the director's vision. However, Nolan's Joker will be remembered as one of the greatest villains of all time because he represents a portion of humanity that exists within all of us, that bubbles underneath the surface, encompassing the thoughts we think in those still, small moments when we are alone. Joker is us, and that is why he is terrifying.

The first scene that attempts to explain Joker's particular brand of insanity occurs between Bruce Wayne and his faithful butler Alfred.

Joker is presented as a man "who wants to watch the world burn." A psychopath to the fullest extent imaginable, uninterested in any logical process and solely invested in bringing about chaos. A far cry from most "normal" people who only wish to live their lives pursuing the things that make them happy. But when Wayne questions Alfred about why a man would steal if uninterested in making money the butler's only response is, "...because he thought it was good sport." The Joker finds enjoyment and meaning in the things he does, that is what drives him. Is that not the same thing we are all seeking, to find enjoyment and meaning in the things we do?

Later in the film, when Batman is interrogating Joker, the villain comments on the "bad joke" society has created.

By saying that individuals are "only as good as the world allows them to be," Joker is setting up his final soliloquy. Of course, he is hardly the first to point out this fatal flaw in humanity. Every post-apocalyptic story ever told, written or filmed is about how quickly civilization can come undone. And those stories are a reflection of the horrors all around us, from poverty-stricken third world countries to the looting and rioting after Hurricane Katrina. Like an assembly line, the safest, more profitable areas of our world produce men and women of impeccable morality. But move those men and women to a place where they are continually threatened or fighting for the basic necessities and how long before their morals evaporate?

Joker's confrontation with Harvey Dent allows us to witness the creation of a villain. From high atop the social ladder, given everything the world had to offer, Dent follows the Joker's rhetoric down the rabbit hole until he becomes Two-Face.

Villains are two sides of the same coin. On one side are the schemers, those who believe that through planning and process power can be attained. On the other side are the doers, like Joker, who just act because it feels right. Most of us are somewhere in the middle, bouncing back and forth between schemers and doers. So if Joker is an example of a doer, who represents the schemers? The corrupt politicians and world leaders. The dictator who's people starve while he eats off a gold plate. All the people who figure out the system, and take advantage of the rest of us.

"You see, nobody panics when things go according to plan." The recent Trayvon Martin/George Zimmeran case demonstrates Joker's point. Passions are stirred and tempers are enraged for one simple reason...seventeen year olds are not supposed to die on the street while carrying a bag of skittles. That's not part of the plan. And when they do die on the street, society panics.

Now imagine you could introduce a new way of thinking, a better way of thinking. A way that guaranteed everything was fair for everyone. How far would you go to insure that the world was fair? Would you tweet about it? Write a blog? Tell a friend? Protest in the street? Destroy a building? Would you be an agent of chaos if the cause was right?

As Joker says, that is all he is, an agent of chaos. Terrifying because viewers can see where he is coming from. Terrifying because he seems to say the things we feel. Terrifying because he blurs the line between fiction and reality. Joker is the perfect villain because everyone is afraid of becoming him.

Institutional Memory

2012-04-10T21:11:00.001-07:00

Part 9 of the A to Z Blogging Challenge. To see all entries, click here.

Whenever you start a job at a new company it is likely that some middle-manager type will eventually give the introductory talk. This is their moment to wax poetic about the company's values, the mission statement and the family that you have now entered into. Really this is the moment when the company does its best to instill some institutional memory upon its newest employee.

A simple guess can give one a good definition of institutional memory, "The collective memory of a group, organization or institution." It is most easily seen in government bureaucracies. High turn-over at the upper levels, usually because of elections/appointments, would lead to utter chaos if it actually lead to drastic changes. Institutional memory is preserved by low turn-over in all areas other than the very top. Imagine a newly elected head-of-state trying to lead the government to the right or left, institutional memory allows the group to walk in whatever direction its head points.

All corporations, groups, organizations have some type of institutional memory in place. The difference between a company like Apple or Microsoft is in how dedicated individuals are to preserving that institutional memory. Therefore, it is incredibly beneficial for corporations, groups and organizations to work hard at perfecting their specific brand of institutional memory.

This is precisely why the public school system was invented. To further the institutional memory of a government and the supporters of governments- corporations. Regardless of what is said about the goal of schools today, historically, schools were designed to produce obedient workers who were intelligent enough to assemble things on a factory line.

As our society becomes more industrialized and corportized, it is more important than ever to realize the extent of institutional memory. Right now, buying an iPhone versus an Android is a big decision that can lock consumers in to various contracts, both legal and social. And companies are always attempting to increase their institutional memory by recruiting more willing spokespeople, namely, their own customers. Think about what is more valuable to you: The review of a close friend or a commercial on TV? Companies, governments and groups of every color know the answer is a close friend, and they will do everything in their power to encourage customers to speak favorably about them. When you buy a product or vote for a politician you are joining a club, often one with a long history that may or may not be important to you.

It is always valuable to keep the big picture in mind. We are so busy trying to put together the puzzle pieces of life that we forget to check the box every now and then for guidance. Institutional memory can be a blessing and a curse, but we should always be aware of it, and other large social forces that influence our thought process.

Hiking and whatnot

2012-04-09T21:42:00.004-07:00

Part 8 of the A to Z Blogging Challenge. To see all entries, click here.

Today, I went hiking with some friends.

It was excellent.

That is all.

Gaia Theory

2012-04-07T15:37:00.000-07:00

Part 7 of the A to Z Blogging Challenge. To see all entries, click here.

Ever have one of those moments when you desperately wish you were smarter? It happened to me as I was trying to formulate some thoughts on the Gaia Theory. It's a strange thing to read sentences, understand specific words, but be unable to fully grasp the meaning. My mental chatter went like this, "Okay. Got it. Interesting...I have no idea what this guy is talking about."

While the Gaia Theory at first glance sounds like some hippie version of, "everything is one, man" the actual science is fascinating. Even if it is a little above my head. The original hypothesis was suggested by James Lovelock who said that "all organisms and their inorganic surroundings on Earth are closely integrated to form a single and self-regulating complex system, maintaining the conditions for life on the planet." Instead of a planet that has trillions of individual organisms living on it, the planet herself is one system, exactly like our own bodies.

Think of that basic model children are taught about streams flowing to rivers flowing to oceans where precipitation occurs and rain falls, beginning the process all over. The Gaia Theory states that our planet and ecosystem are in the same type of closed loop, with all inputs forwarding the goal of keeping the planet primed for life to flourish.

The theory was proposed originally to address the unexplainable balances our biosphere has pulled off for billions of years. For example, ocean salinity has remained at 3.4%, oxygenation of the atmosphere hovers around 21%, and the surface temperature has not drastically altered for millennia (remember we are talking cosmic scale, yes temperature fluctuates between hot and cold, but it's never 78 degrees and sunny one day and -310 degrees the next. Think big picture). Despite the fact that according to models at the time none of these things should remain constant. Rivers continually dump salt into the ocean, atmospheric gases continually expand, contract and mix above our heads, and the sun puts out 25-30% more energy today than when life originally began.

Back when the Gaia Theory was still the Gaia Hypothesis, James Lovelock came up with a brilliant simulation that could test the concept of a planetary regulatory system. Named Daisyworld, the simulation used a planet with only two types of daises- one species black and the other white. The sun upped its energy production over time (just as ours does), which should have increased the surface temperature of the planet. When the planet was cool (think early in development) black daises flourished because they absorbed more light and eventually warmed the surface temperature of the planet enough for white daises to bloom. White daises reflect light, thus cooling the planet and acting as a balance to the black daises. What the simulation showed was that despite the sun's gradual increase of solar energy the surface temperature never fluctuated beyond the "prime zone" for daises to bloom. If the sun was turned down, black daises grew to raise the temperature of the planet, when the sun was turned up, white daises replaced the black ones and the planet cooled. This, effectively, was the first step in proving the Gaia Hypothesis.

Daisyworld was controversial when first introduced. Many scientists stated that because of the simplicity and lack of realistic variables the experiment was invalid. With the rise of computers capable of handling massive amounts of data, Daisyworld was revisited to prove/disprove the naysayers. Other factors were added, from the incredibly simple things like gray daises, rabbits and foxes to the complex like numerous flora and fauna, weather patterns and random death rates. Each time the simulation added biodiversity the planet became more efficient. The naysayers actually did point out Daisyworld's biggest flaw- simplicity. When complexities were added the system got better at preforming the Gaia Hypothesis.

After thirty years of work and numerous experiments from various scientific fields all pointing in the same direction, the Gaia hypothesis officially became a theory. In 2001, a thousand scientists at the European Geophysical Union meeting signed the Declaration of Amsterdam, starting with the statement "The Earth System behaves as a single, self-regulating system with physical, chemical, biological, and human components."

Which is kind of cool. Even if I barely understand it.

Fermi Paradox

2012-04-06T16:51:00.000-07:00

Part 6 of the A to Z Blogging Challenge. To see all entries, click here.

The theme of paradoxes continues! And with all paradoxes it is best to conclude, even before beginning, that we, as a species, know absolutely nothing. With that pleasurable introduction, let us begin.

This particular paradox, noted by Enrico Fermi in 1950, states that given the statistical probability of life on other planets why have we not encountered any alien species.

First we must address the claim of a "statistical probability of life." Our observable universe hints at there being 200-400 billion stars in the Milky Way Galaxy. Even a child can realize that numbers 200 billion apart means that someone is just guessing, and that's accurate. So let's just stick with "a really, really big number of stars."

From that point you play the 1% game. Let's imagine that of 100 billion stars (so I low-balled the guess of the smartest humans on the planet) one percent have any type of life. From bacteria all the way up to god-like beings. The rest of the 99 percent are just desolate stars who's planets have no life whatsoever. Kind of depressing. But we are not done. That one percent gives us 1 billion planets with some type of life. Let's imagine that one percent of those 1 billion planets with life have intelligent life. That's 10 million planets with intelligent life. But intelligent life can include all of human history, and while we were intelligent, things didn't get really interesting until a hundred years ago. So play the game again. Let's say one percent of the 10 million planets have advanced-intelligence, either at or beyond our own. That is one hundred thousand planets with advanced intelligence. Now if we stopped right there that is an incredible statement. 100,000 planets with advanced intelligence. But play the game one last time. Of those 100,000 let's say that one percent have advanced so far ahead of us that they would not even be recognizable, a supreme, god-like species. That is 1000 races bouncing around the Milky Way who are so advanced we could not even comprehend their existence.

Now back to the beginning. Remember how I low-balled the estimate? Well I did not even bother to take in to account a galaxy other than our own. Scientist believe there are as many as 400 billion other galaxies, each with their own 200-400 billion stars. So those numbers I gave are really just a fraction of the actual number. What we are left with are numbers so staggeringly large that the possibility of advanced, intelligent species is practically undeniable.

So where are they?

That is Fermi's Paradox. Here's a song that explains if that is more your thing. (Yes, it is an incredibly nerdy song about Fermi's Paradox...this is why the internet exists.)

As you can imagine there are dozens of theoretical answers to Fermi's question. From the utterly depressing ideas that all advanced intelligences eventually kill themselves or that one of the supreme god-like species actively kills anything that threatens it's dominance. To the rather practical belief that vasts distances are just as challenging of problems to overcome for our alien brethren as they are for us. You could probably rattle off four or five theories of your own and, trust me, they will be about as good as the leading experts'.

My personal favorite is the idea that there are intelligent beings (because math tells us so) and that they are broadcasting signals all across the galaxy, the only problem is that we are not listening. Our current methods of measurement are based on human perception- sight (telescopes) or hearing (microphones). We listen for radio waves because that is what we sent out in the 1920's. We block out white noise from our instruments because we can't understand it. Our universal observations are based on the abilities of a species (us) designed to eat fruit and drink water. We are entirely unequipped to contemplate the vastness and complexities of the universe, but we are doing our best. However, there is no reason to believe that other species are excited to communicate with the best we have to offer. When was the last time you chatted up a squirrel?

I like this concept because it implies that we are merely unaware of something amazing and transformative, and once we figure out how to listen, the changes will come faster than we can imagine. This is basically how we operate our entire lives. As young children we believe the world is much smaller than it is and are blown away when it is revealed how small an area we actually live in. The further we push our understanding, the more clear that pattern is. The more we discover, the clearer it is how little we understand.

One day, maybe soon, maybe not- I think we will wake up. At that point it will be like looking back at ancient Egypt. We are the half-remembered past of some future generation. School children will giggle at how advanced we believed our technology was as they wake up in the Andromeda galaxy and beam over to Kepler 22-b (nerd alert: those are actual places).

The Fermi Paradox remains unanswered, but at least it is not because we have stopped trying. It is the trying that eventually leads one person to see or listen in the right way and wake us all up from the lives we lead. Then the process begins anew.

Ease

2012-04-05T18:34:00.000-07:00

Part 5 of the A to Z Blogging Challenge. To see all entries, click here.

Life, much like water, always seeks the path of least resistance. Trees bend with the wind instead of fighting it, wolves attack younger prey instead of going after adults, spiders build webs to lure instead of hunting their meals. But humans actively celebrate people doing difficult things.

Think of any accomplishment that has ever been bestoyed upon anyone. They are always for doing something percieved as difficult or challenging. "You climbed Mt. Everst, nice work, here's your photo on the cover of TIME." "You can throw a football really far, awesome job, here's $50 million." Even the participation awards given out to every young kid regardless of performance are still a way of rewarding them for doing something that other people are not doing. "You are here when you could of been somewhere else, here's a ribbon."

We actively seek ways to make our lives easier, but the moment life becomes too easy we start moving in the opposite direction. We build massive homes filled with running water and electricty and comfy beds, but people get bored by the ease of every day life and search for more challenging things to occupy their time. To our ancestors people of the present must appear deranged. "Let me get this straight, you have a magic box that brings you images from every place on the planet and you're so bored with life you're going to jump off a bridge?"

On one hand, it is because of the people who pushed boundaries that we have the amenities to make life easier. But on the other, it's an unsustainable habit that is only going to get worse over time. As technology continues to take the place of day to day tasks our lives will become easier. The question is, how will we fill our time?

I am perplexed by this thought more than anything else. I think that it is important to be happy with less, to find contentment without continually needing more and more. But I also realize that true innovation only comes because things are made easier. What must be understood is that things need to work in balance. To abandon all difficulties, whether it be climbing Mt. Everst or just climbing a set of stairs, would be as counterproductive as returning to the days before mass conveinces made our lives less about survival and more about enjoyment.

Disaster Day

2012-04-04T19:26:00.002-07:00

Part 4 of the A to Z Blogging Challenge. To see all entries, click here.

Humans have developed the paradoxical ability to predict massive, long-term trends through billions of data points while simultaneously ignoring those findings on a day to day basis. Our political leaders tout a return to more prosperous times even when the most educated men and women in our nation point out the unstainability of our policies.

Smart people out of MIT recently created a computing model to forecast different scenarios based on population growth, global resource consumption, agricultural productivity, birth control and environmental protection efforts. The long and short of it: By the year 2030 the world will be pushed into the Greatest Depression due to lack of resources and overpopulation. Article here.

This is an especially big blow to futurists who hoped that 2045 would be the year of the technological singularity (the year given by TIME last year in a cover story). This "saving date" now becomes irrelevant next to MIT's disaster date.

As in most situations, it seems that we are on the cusp of epic, paradigm-shifting future possibilities. On the one hand, mass death and depression because of a lack of resources, and on the other, a technological singularity that could be as important as the creation of language.

My thoughts on the matter can be summarized best by The Imaginary Foundation, "To imagine is to perceive many potential futures, select the most delightful possibility, and then pull the present forward to meet it."

Let's select our future instead of being destroyed by it.

Colors we See

2012-04-03T17:53:00.000-07:00

Part 3 of the A to Z Blogging Challenge. To see all entries, click here.

Colors are one of those interesting things that we, as a spieces, seem to understand but are entirely self-created. Admittedly, I am not an expert on colors or light so bear with me. It is rapidly becoming clear that I have something of a fixation on perception, since in three days that is where my mind landed twice. And colors are really all about perception.

What we know is color is the reflection of light off a surface and into the receptors of our eye, translated by our brain, processed, labeled and, finally, understood. Despite the fact that our ability to visually percieve color is based on a narrow field of vision (the rainbow), we are remarkably confident about what things are which color.

For example, let's look at a chair. Let's look at the chair Morpheus sat in during The Matrix...cause why not, it's the internet.

What color is it?

How about now?

Is it the same color as this?

Or this?

The hint is that I did not adjust the "redness" of any of those pictures. Each picture plays with the light source, turning it up or down. Most people's reaction is to say that the chair is red, just in the dark or light, but always a red chair. That is the brain's rationalization. That is the quick lie the mind tells itself to make sense of a chair our eyes' receptors said was one color and now telling us it is a different color.

Color always fluctuates. It changes with the light source and with the perception of the viewer. The way we should look at an image is that there are objects and there are colors, not that objects are a color.

Perceptions are important to constantly check and recheck because of our mind's tendency to seek laziness. Brains are bombarded with stimuli and spend day after day trying to simplify. Taoism talks about water that does not continually flow becoming a swamp. Our perceptions can also become swamp-like if we forget to update them.

Once again, this observation is meant to point out how wrong we are in our day to day lives. And if someone who understands light better than me comes along and tells me this blog is complete nonesense, well then that is only more evidence- albeit evidence just showing that I am wrong on a day to day basis, not us as a collective.

Think about it.

~~~~~~
Bonus Edit: I found a color test. I scored a 12. Zero is perfect. It takes a little time to complete. Best of luck.

Books Everyone Should Read

2012-04-02T13:21:00.000-07:00

Part 2 of the A to Z Blogging Challenge. To see all entries, click here.

Ever wake up one day and realize that over the years you've become something? Through time and dedication you barely registered as such, you have joined the ranks of some club/group/segment of the population. My realization came in high school when it became clear that I read a lot more than my peers. Even in college, the supposed pantheon of the educated, I still outpaced the men and women around me.

I read a lot. That is all I wanted to say. Because I read a lot and my interests are varied I have had the chance to read things from nearly every genre. And while books are slowly being replaced by online articles, blogs and videos as the go to medium for everyone, including myself, I thought a collection of my favorite books would be worthwhile.

Further ado; these are in no particular order.

The War of Art by Stephen Pressfield. I recommend this book to everyone. There's even a few copies I've given to students floating around out there with a message to keep passing it along, pay-it-forward style. Written in the same vein as its more famous cousin, The Art of War, this short book is all about overcoming the forces that stop you from achieving your goals. Is it a little self-helpy? Yes. Will some be turned off my the author's mystical tendencies? Yes. I do not care. It is great and everyone should read it.

The Postman by David Brin. The magnificent thing about a post-apocalyptic setting is that it removes all the social biases we are familiar with as readers. What we are left with is a picture of how the author really sees the world. Brin presents a harsh reality where America has fallen and one man struggles to survive but throughout everything he retains hope. And that's a message worth being reminded of.

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green. Green (and his brother Hank. Nerdfighters!) Have slowly invaded my mind since I found them on youtube a few years ago. Both are inspiring individuals, but John is also one of the best young adult writers in the country. His latest book is a masterpiece. It is the heart-warming (and heart-breaking) story of two teens who meet at a cancer-support group. Funny, endearing and honest. Read it, then check out all the awesome nerdfighter stuff on youtube.

The Post-American World by Fareed Zakaria. If you are constantly flicking between Bill O'Reily and whoever MSNBC throws up to compete against him you owe it to yourself to check out CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS. He is an Indian American reporter who graduated from Yale and Harvard, was a columunist for Newsweek, editor of Newsweek International and editor-at-large of TIME. The guy is smart, direct and well-spoken. In his third book he looks at the changing global landscape and how America is dealing with "the rise of the rest" (other nations getting power). It should be a staple for all those with an interest in politics, which in my opinion, should be everyone. Which is why it is on this list.

The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. The first of the Kingkiller Chronicles. A fictional masterpiece about a young man who retells his heroic rise and fall. The author wrote the entire series years ago and has been editing and refining ever since. The result is some of the best prose one can find. Literary, sweeping and beautiful.

The Illustrated World's Religions by Huston Smith. My college textbook...at two different universities. It has become a staple of every religion department for good reason. Including every religion you've ever heard of and most you have not. Simple and beautiful, and as the title suggests, full of wonderful pictures. Enjoy.

Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut. If you are unfamiliar with this novel I will just give you the long-form title in hopes of sparking your interest. Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children's Crusade: A Duty Dance with Death by Kurt Vonnegut, a Fourth-Generation German-American Now Living in Easy Circumstances on Cape Code (and Smoking Too Much) Who, as an American Infantry Scout, Hors de Combat as a Prisoner of War, Witnessed the Fire Bombing of Dresden, Germany, "The Florence of the Elbe, a Long Time Ago and Survived to Tell the Tale. This is a Novel Somewhat in the Telegraphic, Schizophrenic Manner of Tales of the Planet Tralfamadore, Where the Flying Saucers Come From. Peace.

Freakonomics by Steven Levitt. A look at behavioral economics in a humorous and easy to understand way. One of the first real efforts to take the heavily mathematically-inclined field of economics and make it digestible by the average person. Levitt seems to know exactly what chords to strike to enlighten and inspire.

Siddhartha by Herman Hesse. A powerful novel about the spiritual journey of an Indian man set around the fifth century BCE. This is a timeless tale and an excellent introduction to Eastern philosophy and religious beliefs.

World War Z by Max Brooks. The zombie book that will define zombie books for many if 2013's movie starring Brad Pitt is a hit. Regardless of the film, this book has it all. It is captivating, emotional and terrifying. Using a "reporter" to interview survivors of the zombie apocalypse, readers are able to experience an event from numerous different viewpoints. Even those not interested in the horror genre should be entertained by this novel.

My goal with recommending these books is not to showcase the greatest writers in the world. Notice how there is no Shakespeare, Twain or Hemingway. Instead, I am hoping to inspire. Each book is a nice intro to big ideas. Freakonomics is a great introduction to economics, and it is a topic I became really interested in during college specifically because of the book I read in high school.

Each book has the capacity to inspire and that is what I have always gotten from books. Whether it is inspiration to save the princess or fight off zombies or see the world. Books have a wonderful ability to transfer our consciousness to another realm. A realm where we create our own reality by dreaming. And I think it is a good idea to share that capacity with as many people as possible.

Anteaters and Aardvarks: a thought on perception

2012-04-01T12:20:00.000-07:00

Part 1 of the A to Z Blogging Challenge. To see all entries, click here.

A few weeks ago I went to the San Francisco Zoo. I walked around for a few hours and took pictures for Gridlock Magazine, a rather enjoyable use of my Saturday. Then I saw a Giant Anteater. Here's a picture for the uninitiated.

For my entire life I thought I knew exactly what an anteater was, an animal with a long snout and tongue to dig in the ground and eat ants. The only problem was that I was picturing an aardvark.

I guess intellectually I knew that anteaters had more hair and that they are usually brown & black in color, but whenever I thought of an anteater I pictured an aardvark with a slightly longer, more triangular snout. Then seeing a Giant Anteater, as tall as a Great Dane and seven feet long, I was perplexed. I silently had one of those moments when all you think is, "Ooooohhhhhhhh."

The strangest thing is how sure my brain was that it knew exactly what an anteater looked like. There was absolutely no questioning of my aardvark-inspired, anteater look-a-like. The image and thoughts I have about anteaters is, admittedly, minuscule. However, before my trip to the zoo basically all those thoughts were based on some figment of my imagination I created while watching PBS's Arthur.

How many other things have I constructed to the point of comfort in my mind? Thoughts, images, memories that I do not even realize are inherently wrong. I assume that most are small things, like anteaters and aardvarks, but what if the big things are wrong as well? Political affiliations, historical events, the color of my shirt.

The only thing to do when realizing one's infallibility is to seek knowledge while remaining humble. A new day reminds us only of how little we know- and how much we can learn. Hopefully, I can remember that as I continue to move through this world of anteaters, aardvarks and everything else.

TED-Ed: a step to the future

2012-03-13T15:37:00.000-07:00

"What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal." -Friedrich Nietzsche

There are days when it appears I am watching a bridge being built before my eyes, a bridge leading to the future. Last month I wrote about the technological singularity, the moment when our technology operates as quickly as the human mind. And day after day it is as if I am watching the path being paved in that direction.

Last month I heard about a product that will launch by the end of 2012, Google's Heads Up Display (HUD) glasses. Taken straight out of science-fiction and video games, this version would be primarily used for Augmented Reality. Looking at your surroundings through the glasses would present different information via (most likely) a Google-Earth enabled app. They have complete 3G/4G connectivity and run on Android software. While I have never been overly impressed with Augmented Reality apps on current smart phones, it is easy to see how these glasses could become the go-to device in a few years. People first wanted something wireless and the laptop was created, then people demanded more mobility and the smart phone was invented, we are not far from the next step being taken- these HUD glasses could be it.

Which brings me back to education and TED-Ed. The wonderful people at TED have been providing free videos for years, and have announced an effort for teachers and animators to join up and provide the best lessons possible to share with the world. No longer are we limited by geographic and economics. If this plan is met with the same enthusiasm that the original TED talks saw, it is entirely possible that we are looking at the first step on a path that changes education forever.

The Future Unfolding

2012-02-28T13:26:00.001-08:00

This piece is also available at gridlockmagazine.com. You can read the story here, but I humbly request that you first click this link. That way my boss knows people like this stuff.
*~*~*~*~*
A century is a tiny fraction of time on the cosmic scale, yet to human beings the last century has produced more technological innovations than the previous thousand. Even the poorest individuals living in Western countries have technology that would make them gods to previous generations. Over the last 100 years we have spread industrialization to every corner of the globe, traveled to the moon and connected billions of individuals through the internet. However, some are not content with the work of our forefathers. Some are asking what's next.

Futurists are individuals who study past and current trends in order to make predictions about the future. Last year TIME had a cover story on Ray Kurzweil- scientist, inventor and author. The article discussed a coming technological singularity, a moment in time when imagination instantly becomes reality through technology. While Kurzweil is an important member of this sub-section of our society predicting what the future has in store, he is not alone.

Jason Silva self-describes as a filmmaker, futurist and epiphany addict. He has gained popularity through numerous video shorts talking about the cross section of science and art (vimeo.com/jasonsilva). He calls the shorts "philosophical shots of espresso" meant to both enlighten and inspire. Combining wondrous works of art with Silva's exuberant delivery style makes watching the videos so engrossing that afterward it is difficult to decide whether to stand up and cheer or immediately find the next clip.

THE BEGINNING OF INFINITY from Jason Silva on Vimeo.

When people think in historical terms they often remember dates and events, maybe a Hollywood take on WWII or the half-forgotten lecture of a grade school teacher. If, instead, we looked at history from a cosmic point of view reality becomes far more interesting. What you would see is the exponential decrease in the lag time between human imagination and tangible existence. Pharaohs dreamed of the pyramids but rarely lived to see them completed. Today, a half-drunk college kid thinks of a social site and five years later it is one of the biggest companies in the world. Artists no longer wait for their work to be discovered years after their death, but paint using iPads and upload it immediately to dozens of communities around the globe. Silva says in another of his videos, "right now the smartphone in your pocket is a million times cheaper, a million times smaller and a thousand times more powerful than a $60 million super-computer was in the 1960s. That is a billion-fold increase in price, performance and miniaturization."

Let's keep our head in the clouds

The speed of those innovations is only increasing and will continue to do so until the next singularity. I asked Silva to describe the singularity: "The Singularity is a metaphor for the moment in which a technological threshold is crossed that changes everything. It's not that far-fetched. There have been other singularities. The invention of rich symbolic language changed the operating system of the brain, for example, and was a radical transformation that allowed us to invent with purpose and deliberation. Language was a singularity. Agriculture was a singularity. The industrial revolution was as well."

That understanding of past and present events allows for, seemingly, radical predictions to be made about the future. To futurists like Kurzweil and Silva the possibilities are endless. Here are some ideas of what we are talking about:

In vitro meat: Grown not as an animal but specifically for human consumption. Genes would be regulated to increase desired qualities i.e. vitamins, amino acids, omega-3. Instinctively, we all know that our current rate of production is unsustainable. Most farm land goes towards growing corn that we feed to livestock. In vitro meat would end those types of problems.

Machine/Human combination: Already bones can be replaced with metal alloys, but soon we will have heart transplants that are cloned from our original DNA and then improved using nano-technology. This would allow for human life to be substantially lengthened. Eventually, bodies may become relics, the same way we look at suits of armor today.

Universal telepathy: Phone calls, texts and emails have begun this process. The fact that you are reading this article is evidence of a substantial form of telepathy. I have never spoken these words aloud to any living thing, yet you understand me regardless of distance, our relationship or even language. As the singularity nears, these processes we take for granted will be the stepping stones for communication that is so instantaneous it blurs the line between technology and magic.

Manipulation of biology: Theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson said, “In the future, a new generation of artists will be writing genomes the way that Blake and Byron wrote verses." How today computer programmers write in a language most do not understand to create websites or videos or blogs, our children's children may do the same with biological genomes. One day humans may not only create life, but invent it.

This is the stage society is at. We exist on the precipice of unimaginable change, and it is coming faster than we can conceptualize. At this moment, every possibility exists for our future. As a society we can choose numerous directions, of war or peace, of regression or progression, of apathy or creation. The Imaginary Foundation uses this motto, "To imagine is to perceive many potential futures, select the most delightful possibility, and then pull the present forward to meet it."

Let's do that.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Special thanks to Jason Silva. @jason_silva & thisisjasonsilva.com

Education and Jiu Jitsu

2012-02-24T11:18:00.001-08:00

This is another post in my series zen and the art of teaching. You can see them all here.

The differences between a coach and a teacher are negligible. Explaining why most school athletics are coached by teachers. The main differences are subject matter, setting and student mindset. The first nobody can control. Different subjects exist for different reasons, but students are responsible for all. The next two are entirely within our control as educators and coaches. Presenting proper setting can change students perspective the same way it changes an audiences' perspective during a play. But true teaching tools can always be seen in jiu jitsu.

Subjects

While we cannot control which subjects are required for students, we can integrate them better. Let's compare Martial Arts with a high school curriculum. Jiu jitsu is one subject, history for example. A student can go to history and learn facts and dates in an attempt to become a better citizen, the same way a student can go to jiu jitsu and learn techniques to escape and submit foes. Meanwhile, there are other students going to other subjects: Biology, French, Economics. Taekwondo, Wrestling, Muay Thai.

Yep, same thing.

Where jiu jitsu surpasses traditional education is in integration with numerous subjects. Instructors not only acknowledge that other arts exist, but actively teach things like judo and wrestling. They use completely separate martial arts to teach jiu jitsu, and prepare students for a range of possibilities instead of merely the things that can be tested for promotion.

Schools have been playing with these ideas for awhile. Some even do it well. We see it when students study Ancient Greece in history while reading Homer's The Odyssey in English. Or when an entire school adopts one policy on how a paper should be written, and reaffirm it in every class. The problem is these things are the bare minimum while simultaneously considered ground-breaking.

The truth is that integration often falls by the wayside because it can not be tested. Integration requires teacher's have a broad base of knowledge, continued opportunities to learn and constant collaboration with their colleagues. As budgets shrink across the nation, it is exactly these kinds of things that are put on the back burner or disregarded entirely.

Setting

Anyone who tells you their first time on a jiu jitsu mat was without fear has a faulty memory or is lying. If honest with ourselves, we can admit the same thing about going to school. Maybe for you it was the first day in high school, or when you moved in fourth grade and had no friends. The difference between jiu jitsu and school is that on the mat there is no place to hide. There are no corners to crawl into, no "loser" table, no rejects or misfits. There is you and everyone else, out in the open.

At the superbowl. I forgot to mention, all training happens at the superbowl.

Before one enters or leaves a training area in jiu jitsu it is customary to bow. It seems antiquated to some, and if I'm being completely honest there are plenty of times when I give a hasty bow before collapsing next to my precious bottle of water. The act, however, is vitally important. It separates the setting from the world around it.

Why are we quiet in places of worship? Why do we avoid eye contact on trains? Why do we sing in the shower? Setting influences our actions. It changes how we behave, and through that, settings change who we are. I believe the masks we where are important in defining who we are.

If we could change the setting of schools, then we could affect the mindset of the students. That, of course, is the ultimate goal. The entire purpose of schooling is to change your mindset.

Mindset

When you go to a jiu jitsu school you are going to work. There's no way around the fact that you will need to put out substantial effort. And the place demands that of you. You put on a uniform (called a gi), you stretch and run to prepare your body, you listen to an instructor intently because if you're called on to demo something, you want to do it right. You prepare yourself as a warrior.

I just thought this looked cool.

Even if just remotely, or half-heartily at first. Deep down the mind realizes that it is gearing up for a battle. Your body has physiological responses. Adrenaline flows, muscles relax and tighten. The mind clears. There is no Bruce Banner Hulk-smash going on, it's subtle. And in that subtly is great beauty.

As the mindset shifts, the ability to learn intensifies. One university professor of mine called it "disequilibrium." In short, the mind learns best when slightly off balance, when it has to work for the answer. A comfort zone is the last place you want to be when trying to learn. What excellent teachers will do is move the entire class into a disequilibrium moments before hitting the key point of their lesson.

While learning jiu jitsu, you are always in disequilibrium Even the masters experience disequilibrium (if ever overwhelmed by someone talking about jiu jitsu, just mention the name Gracie...then view their rambling like a funny TV show). It is precisely the constant state of disequilibrium mixed with the warrior mindset that allows massive amount of retention.

Education is thought of the same as watching TV. Nobody thinks about watching TV, they just do it. "This is who I am, and I am in a high school." Rarely do students look at class like a job, and nobody looks at classes like the humble battlegrounds they are. Society does not talk enough about the vast importance of an education, and those who talk the most often do too little.

Our society's best way of influencing what kind of citizens we are is through traditional education. But look where we are at. We kill each other over words in books, we have the largest prison population in the world and our politicians greatest points of rhetoric come down to who can sleep with whom. A change in mindset is definitely needed.

On failing aka The pleasures of drowning

I borrowed the phrase "pleasure of drowning" from this article on jiu jitsu. What it is talking about is failing. A lot. Because that's what you do in jiu jitsu. You fail. A lot. It would be utterly embarrassing if not for the fact that everyone before you has failed just as much, and everyone above you will continue to fail.

Our society takes failing seriously. There's large movements that try to eliminate it entirely from the lives of children. And for good reason, continued and constant failure without instruction can be incredibly harmful to a person's life. For all the random, ninth place ribbons that you or your children have received there is an underlying reason. But failing is not the problem, lack of instruction is.

In jiu jitsu I fail every day I go in. Sometimes my failures are physical: inadequate flexibility or strength. Sometimes my failures are mental: gave an opponent superior position or lacked knowledge to execute. To shun failure though is a mistake. Failure is a teacher without discretion. It rains on the just and the unjust alike. It will hammer you until you die. That's where instructors step in.

One of my favorite sparring sessions was in my third week of training. At this point you are slightly more advanced in jiu jitsu than a three week year old baby. The baby would be more relaxed though. I was going against a guy roughly my size but far more advanced, several years at least. After submitting me five or six times, he let me run through everything I know, which took about two minutes (witty pun here). I thanked him for going easy and taking things slowly and his response was far more enlightened than he probably realized, "I didn't want to demoralize you."

That's the difference between an instructor and failure. If unchecked failure would have kept mounting, unrelenting. But a random guy who I met five minutes earlier knew that there was a better alternative. A combination of failure and success, even success that was given, is a superior instructor.

This guy was not my teacher for the day. For the most part teachers do not train with students (called "sparring" in boxing, "rolling" in jiu jitsu). Teachers demonstrate something and then watch everyone, trying to help. To roll with one student would cause a teacher to miss what others were doing. The guy I was rolling with was my instructor.

In education we demand a lot from our teachers. They are trained, schooled and prepared; and we expect miracles from them. Yet they are a piece of the puzzle. Lessons come from all places and instructors take many forms. The most common instructors are our peers. We learn far more from engaging and interacting with our peers than we do listening to the most experienced person on a subject.

It is that truth jiu jitsu demonstrates most clearly. Teachers are absolutely fantastic. Their years of experience and guidance can guide us on paths to success. But every single move I've ever "got" has come after working with a peer. The training is where you will fail most often, but it is also where you will learn the most. Through learning comes pleasure, hence the title, the pleasures of drowning.

~~~~~~~~~

I train at Guerrilla Jiu Jitsu under Dave Camarillo and have a degree in Social Studies. So I'm not completely making this stuff up :)

American Existential Crisis: Protester vs Police

2012-02-09T17:25:00.000-08:00

The following is Part 1 of a multi-part series called the American Existential Crisis.

For the past several months the Occupy movement has had numerous roller coaster moments across the United States. What began in New York City spread across the nation and then across the globe, eventually taking place in 951 cities in 82 countries. I wrote about my experience in Oakland, CA for Gridlock Magazine last month (shameless plug). The most surprising fact that arose from the Occupy protests was the speed in which it became a national demonstration of police versus protester, authoritarian versus egalitarian, and following the law versus free speech.

Protester: speech, assembly, petition

The first amendment to the Constitution guarantees freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly and the ability to petition the government. The ideas were oft spoken during the enlightenment, however, America's founders took major inspiration from the English Bill of Rights which guaranteed similar freedoms in 1689. Why would colonist need to have a revolution in order to basically copy down the same rights? Partly because colonists didn't enjoy those freedoms the same way British citizen living in England did. The English Bill of Rights, specifically the right of petitioning the government, refers to the actual government of Britain, which is not the monarchy but the House of Parliament. Colonists wanted British laws to reflect their needs but had no one to petition because they had no representatives in Parliament. When they instead petitioned the King, that became treason. Remember, the first calls of the colonist were not for revolution but representation.

I went on that tangent because A. I need to keep my history muscle flexing if I want to get a job and B. to say that you have the right to petition the government.

After the American and French revolutions these freedoms of speech, religion, assembly and press would work into numerous other documents and constitutions throughout history. Including, the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights and the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which, as their name might suggest, refer to not just countries but people. Not citizens of a nation, but people. Are you a human? If the answer is yes you have got these rights. If the answer is no then you are a very bright chimpanzee, dolphin or whale and I applaud your intelligence and ability to read, but, alas, you do not have rights. Sorry.

There is also overwhelming support for the freedom of the press, religion, speech and assembly. Not many Americans call for a removal of these freedoms. Mainly because we are stubborn by nature and don't like to change, and, more importantly, without the freedom to trash people 90% of internet comments would be considered illegal.

Obviously, the Occupy movement is just a continuation of the long-standing American tradition of sticking it to the man. Right?

Police: a nation of laws

The fact that some people bothered to write down a constitution with amendments, and loopholes, and compromises and those freedoms we all know and love demonstrates that we are a nation of laws. Anarchy has never been in our nature. It ruled for awhile in the wild west before the law man rolled into town and started beating women, outlawing six-shooters and building railroads. (Sorry, my old west history is made up entirely of half-remembered Westerns).

America has always been a nation of laws, contracts and agreements. Even in colonial times contracts were clearly written to describe what was expected of each colony. These charters provided a blueprint for colonists to work from. After the revolution a constitution was the next logical step, because that was what everyone had been doing before. The founders were not the inventors of writing down what an organization could or could not do, they merely applied a business model onto a country.

Presently, Americans still value following the law and have respect for authority figures. We fundamentally believe in the social contract promised to us by our forefathers. Most likely our respect for authority is derived from those freedoms we so thoroughly enjoy.

Violence versus Nonviolence

With the clashes between protestors and police, at least part of the American identity is being torn in two. On one hand, we value our freedoms, especially those of speech and assembly. On the other hand, we respect authority and enjoy the predictability/stability that comes with it. What's an American to do?

Neither side has made a compelling case for why they are "right". Mainly this is do to the fact that each party has used tactics of violence. The below chart references political protests and their success rates.

For all of you out there planning on starting a protest, if you want your goals to fail- plan for violence. Sadly, both police and protesters have acted violently during the past few months.

At UC Davis, a group of campus police officers were surrounded by student protestors and could not leave. There were no reports of violent action against any officers. The official report says that officers wanted to leave the circle, asked students to move, ordered them to move and, when students did not comply, an officer sprayed them with pepper spray.

That's not actions of an officer of the law, that's the reasoning of a thug. "They were in my way, I was stronger than them, I made them move." It is exactly those types of actions, and there have been more than one, that make it difficult to side with authority.

Yet, protests have not been peaceful, hippie drum circles where everyone gives hugs and sings kumbaya. Fighting has broken out inside several occupy camps, there have been stabbings and shootings, and, especially in Oakland, there have been attacks against property and police officers.

It would seem that neither side can claim the moral high ground, and neither is truly attempting to. Both sides believe that, by right, the other should back down. Protesters because they are normal people expressing themselves as protected by the constitution, police because they are charged with protecting and have been given the mantle of authority to do so.

We know from history that brute force often wins, but that average people romanticize moral icons. Gandhi and Martin Luther King hold equal footing with Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan. It remains to be seen which side will win this fight, or if both camps will dissolve back into their former place in society.

What can be said for certain is that the fight between protestor and police is merely one piece of the American existential crisis.

Life of a Photograph

2012-01-19T18:19:00.000-08:00

Photography is an interesting hobby. Taken to its logical extremes, it causes the artist to see truly spectacular things and almost always be alone while doing it. Photography is about showing an audience how you see the world, and unless you have met someone who sees the world exactly how you do- you will be alone while doing it. I've even seen wedding photographers, surrounded by people laughing, crying and getting married, be completely isolated. Lost in their own world of light, angles and apertures.

I want to take you on a journey of how an idea becomes a photograph. Understand that I'm not a professional. Nobody pays me for anything. On the best days I consider myself to be mediocre. It's important to understand that because what started as a fun, short little blog about photos became much more while I was writing it. Understand that everything I'm about to tell you is coming from an amateur, and a minimally talented one at that. The amount of knowledge, experience and talent an individual must possess to be consider truly great, is exponentially higher than the ramblings you're about to read.

Pre-Shoot

Every photograph starts with an idea. Even simple photos where you grab your friend, hold the camera out and smile starts with an idea. You wanted to document the moment. Maybe to show your friends, or put in an album, or upload to whatever social media site you are using today-but, almost assuredly, will not be using in ten years.

My idea was the same. I wanted to document a moment. I write for gridlockmagazine.com and wanted a photograph of the San Francisco skyline at night to submit. That was the extent of my idea. Literally millions of people take a photograph of city skylines. So, my idea wasn't exactly original. That's okay, there's a reason so many people have the same idea: City skylines look nice.

After an idea is conceived it's important to have the equipment to transfer your idea into something more tangible. I will use an example from National Geographic.

Property of National Geographic.

That is a California Redwood tree. It is 1,500 years old and 300 feet tall. It is enormous. But look again...notice how the whole tree is seen. This wasn't some guy who walked by and thought, "That's a big tree, let me take a picture of it." No, this photograph took months of planning. It involves a cleverly designed pulley system that allowed multiple cameras to run up and down, snapping photos, all while the artist was watching on a laptop on the ground. Then those photos were digitally combined into a complete portrait of a three hundred foot redwood, the only portrait of it's kind. It costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to get this photograph.

Luckily, not every idea needs that much equipment to be fully realized. Mine certainly didn't (remember, nobody pays me for this...). In fact, with technological advancements almost everyone is a photographer now. Every phone comes with a camera inside.

This isn't a blog about camera equipment, merely a comment that the realization of an idea is sometimes impeded by wrong or lack of equipment. I brought my camera and the only two lenses I own, and frankly the only two lenses most of us ever need.

Nikon D90 with 18-200mm f5.6

Nikon 35mm f1.8

The only piece of equipment, other than my camera, I was planning on to realize this idea of mine was a basic tripod for when the light got low. Like the mediocre amateur I am, I forgot it.

The Shoot

This is the only thing most people ever do. Something looks cool, you take out your phone, snap a picture and upload it to facebook. Boom, done. Simple. Never let anyone tell you that there is anything wrong with that process. It is simply, and amazingly, perfect. Furthermore, it is exactly what everyone does. It's normal. That's exactly what this shot is. I pulled up, got out of my car, and snapped. I know, be impressed.

I never expected to show anyone this shot. Almost by default, I delete the first twenty photographs I take of a given subject. Especially because this wasn't my idea. It is not what I envisioned. Sure there's the city and bridges and it's not bad. But it wasn't my idea.

Over the next two hours I will take 156 pictures. The entire time I won't move more than twenty feet from where I parked my car. In fact, for a few exposures I was standing on top of my car. (Car-a valuable piece of equipment for a photographer).

Of course, part of being good at photography is knowing that maybe your idea isn't going to happen. I realized this when I got out of my car and noticed I didn't have a tripod. Ever vigilant (after I remarked under by breath how stupid I was) I pursued on, knowing almost uniformly that what I wanted to happen was now nearly impossible.

After about a half hour of watching the sun go down the sky finally got more interesting. Rarely is the sun a good thing in photos. It is too bright and will come out white more often than not. What you want to wait for, from a photographers perspective, is after sunset. For about an hour after the sun goes down photographers can really shine. (Clever wordplay ftw)

Since becoming interested in photography I've also become something of a secret expert on clouds. See, clouds are interesting. There are many different types, and if you know what you're looking for, they can do amazing things with light.

Notice the photo above. The horizon is actually covered in a thick layer of clouds. They completely block out the sun, almost as if there is a small mountain range out at sea. But then there are the wispy clouds up higher, known in the science world as cirrus clouds. There are also some altostratus clouds in this shot, but now I'm just showing off.

Wispy clouds reflect light. If this photo was taken on a cloudless day all you would see is a slight variation of color along the horizon (normal, sunset type colors) and then solid blue. There would certainly not be any pinks as high as there is now. And to this shot, the pink/orange clouds are vitally important because of how blue the sky is behind them. Blues like orange. If you want a fun experiment google: blue/orange movie posters.

This exposure was made less than twenty minutes after the first but, obviously, it looks quite different. There are, literally, hundreds of decisions someone can make before any exposure. Composition (how everything fits in the frame), aperture (how wide your lens opens), shutter speed (how fast your lens opens and closes), focus, brightness, darkness, and on and on the list goes. Generally, the more a person progresses as a photographer the more decisions they can make.

I took this exposure specifically to see the pink clouds at the top. In a perfect, I-didn't-forget-my-tripod world I would have used a technique called HDR to combine several exposures into one photograph. Basically I would have taken the top third of this photo, the middle third of the photo above and the bottom third of another photo that showed the city in more detail. The idea looks really cool in my head, but I don't have anything to show you. Because I'm stupid.

I have something to say here but let's just look at the pretty colors.

"God must be a painter. Why else would we have so many colors?" -A Beautiful Mind

Eventually, the time comes for my idea to be fully realized. The city is alive and the sky looks amazing. However, long exposures are impossible without a tripod. The human hand shakes too much and the whole thing would come out blurry.

But here's part of what I love about photography. It's a game for problem solvers. Problem: I have an idea in my head that I want to show other people. Solution: Take a picture. Secondary problem: I lack the necessary equipment to take a picture and show people what is going on in my head. Solution: Place your camera on a boulder and use a timed delay to take long exposures.

See, look how fun that was! ...Fun for me, we all have our thing. Moving on.

This was exposure number 142 out of 156. It is the closest thing to what I wanted. The environment forced my hand, my forgetfulness limited where I could place my camera and my own abilities dictated how it would all look. At the end of the day, this exposure was never "the one" but I did like it quite a bit.

Post-Shoot

As with any discipline, there are several schools of thought when it comes to photography. A major point of contention with many people is the ability of technology to drastically alter photographs. Some people wouldn't call it photography anymore if I took an exposure and turned it into something like this.

In my mind, it's all art and it seems silly to put down someone else's work because it's not your cup of tea. Plus I think that picture looks awesome.

When it comes to editing my own photographs, I generally use the philosophy of "show what I saw." The eye is an amazing thing, and doubly amazing is our brain's ability to process the eye's stimuli. I never do anything too crazy in the post-production world. What I aim to do is remove the imperfections created by the camera or my own mistakes. I would never disavow editing because of the incredibly vast amount of work it takes to get a single exposure exactly how your eye sees it.

My eyes see in color. Vivid color. Most of the photos above are unedited, straight from the camera. (The only edited one is where I said let's just look at the pretty colors).

If you look closely however, most are a little off. They are crooked. The horizon doesn't look exactly how it should. Either because of how I held the camera or the earth I was standing on, all my photos had a slight crooked-ness to them. So I adjust things like that because my brain never saw the skyline at an angle, and neither should you.

Here's the unedited photo from above.

Here is my final edit, and the photograph that will appear in Gridlock Magazine next month.

It's cropped, straightened and "warmed," a technique that brings out the orange of the city lights. I like it quite a bit.

Closing Thoughts

I honestly thought this would take twenty minutes. Just a fun blog about the process of taking a photograph. I just passed the hour and a half mark. Thanks for staying with me all the way to the end.

Hope you enjoyed.

The Heroes We Deserve

2012-01-15T14:28:00.000-08:00

"Because he's the hero Gotham deserves, but not the one it needs right now." -Commissioner Gordon (The Dark Knight)

Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight is by far the best superhero movie of all time. Judging by numerous website ratings it's also one of the best movies of the last decade. Rarely, if ever, is a movie inspired by such silly and playful source material able to strike such powerful cords.

Cords that resonate with viewers long after the credits roll. The Dark Knight is a film that allows people to escape only to show them a reflection of society, and it is not a bright reflection at all.

A commenter on a blog said it eloquently:

drvictordavishj: "The key is the way Gordon draws a contrast between (Harvey) Dent "the hero we need" versus the Dark Knight "the hero we deserve." Nolan is saying that we need a law-abiding idealist, but that we don’t deserve him."

As the United States amps up once again for a presidential election numerous people across the country and world could care less. The media picks a new republican to elevate each week in hopes of bolstering ratings throughout the long campaign season. Every person knows that Michelle Bachman was never going to be President. Neither was Herman Cain, Sarah Palin or Donald Trump. Neither will Rick Perry or Rick Santorum.

But these are our heroes. These are our leaders. President Obama, Speaker John Boehner, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Sen. Harry Reid. These are the men and women who are supposed to be our White Knights. Yet, not one is anything more than a sock puppet for special interest groups, banks and lobbyists.

"Because I'm tired of it. Year, after year, after year, after year, having to choose between the lesser of who cares. Of trying to get myself excited about a candidate who can speak in complete sentences. Of setting the bar so low I can hardly look at it." -Leo McGarry (The West Wing)

We continue to allow our rights to be taken away. Sometimes piece by piece and sometimes in massive sweeps disguised as protection against our enemies. The, so-called, Leader of the Free World signed a bill on December 31st that makes it legal to hold United States citizens in jail...forever. With no charges or trial. All anyone has to do is claim they are a terrorist.

We assassinate our own citizens, apply justice arbitrarily, allow our private lives to be searched without a warrant, refuse the global community the right to try our leaders for war crimes and, incredibly, denounce other states for doing the same exact things.

Maybe America is the world's Dark Knight. We take on the evils of the world and the only way to do so is by getting our hands dirty. Just as the Joker brings Batman again and again to that moral line he does not wish to cross, the world is doing the same to America. Maybe we don't want to be the way we are, but what other choice is there?

I turn again to an anonymous commenter:

drvictordavishj: Nolan is ultimately saying that strong societies don't tolerate Dark Knights. If we do, it's only because we lack confidence in the institutions and values that we've inherited. After all, with all his gifts, Bruce Wayne could have easily been Harvey Dent, but because he lacks confidence in legitimate institutions and his moral inheritance, he’s not the philanthropist and healer that his father was. He's the sign of a sick society."

Ask yourself, do you have confidence in our institutions? Is the government of the people, by the people and for the people?

The sad truth is there are a great many things wrong with this society. We need no more evidence than the existence of all the Dark Knights we allow to exist. Whether they be vigilantes fighting crime in New York City or the very countries we live in.

These are the heroes we deserve. These are our silent guardians, our watchful protectors. The existence of Dark Knights is a sign of a sick society. And our society is filled with them.

CC-BY: A Step into the Belated Future

2012-01-08T22:13:00.000-08:00

The following is an article I found by Nick Meador. I read it originally at Reality Sandwich. It's main premise regards the backwards rationale surrounding copyright laws, but it also covers much, much more. I thought it'd be good to share, especially in regards to the upcoming congressional vote on SOPA/Protect-IP.

~~~~~~~~~

As a long-time supporter of the peer-to-peer torrent network evolution, it became clear by the time I entered grad school in 2007 that there was something very wrong with the implications of copyright law in the United States. I don't think I fully realized it until I found Creative Commons ("CC" for short) -- the innovative service which provides partial copyright protections (sometimes called "copyleft") to creative authors according to their sharing preferences -- and, by extension, the 2004 book Free Culture, written by law professor and activist Lawrence Lessig.

I have been a "pirate" -- a file-sharer -- since computer programming class in the fall of 1997, when my fellow ninth-graders and I exchanged MP3s over the Internet (using Internet Relay Chat, as was customary in the pre-Napster era) without so much as a momentary consideration of the legal or ethical implications involved. So when Lessig wrote that U.S. copyright law has been drastically over-extended not only in duration but also in application, in such a way that it has a chilling effect on creativity itself, I believed him wholeheartedly.

A part of me was grateful for the multitudes of music to which I had been exposed because of the paradigm shift brought forth by the Internet. Another part of me was giddy over the thought of pop stars, record label hot shots, and their RIAA pit bulls sobbing (and, in the case of the RIAA, hopefully contemplating suicide) in empty mansions because we (by "we," I mean millions of geographically separated people acting on common sense and a love of music) were dismantling their power pyramid block by block.

But I was always slightly dismayed by Lessig's approach. Being a law professor (then at Stanford), it was clear that he hoped, at least in practice, to take a moderate approach in his activism. What he proposedin theory, sometimes only between the lines, was that copyright law is irrefutably broken and we should do everything possible to deconstruct it. It seemed as though he didn't want to spark a violent backlash from either the masses of law-obeying (and sometimes righteous) consumer-automatons, nor from their multi-million-dollar-funded and drunk-on-power counterparts in the biz. Clearly he had considered the history of revolutionary process - if only in post-war America - and he was trying a more constructive approach with less media conflagration and the public hysteria that comes with it.

The core of Lessig's argument was that modern copyright law has been extended to the point where it comes into direct contradiction with common sense. The forces of the dark side could call us thieves for committing the moral equivalent of stealing a CD from a store, but we knew it wasn't completely true. Even without the beneficial context provided by Lessig's book, kids and adults alike could sense intuitively that, in some way, they were entitled to rip, share and download music, burn it to a CD for personal use, and -- for the more adventurous -- create a remix or mash-up. As long as they weren't taking a physical product or selling copies, the common people saw themselves as innocent.

Copyright law has always included a "fair use" element, which allows certain kinds of copyright rule-bending for activities like teaching, or writing an essay with a reasonable number of direct quotes from someone else's book (as I'm doing right now). But as Lessig explains, fair use now carries a lot of legal weight because the technology of the Internet is

"...a distributed, digital network where every use of a copyrighted work produces a copy. [...] Uses that before were presumptively unregulated are now presumptively regulated. No longer is there a set of presumptively unregulated uses that define a freedom associated with a copyrighted work. Instead, each use is now subject to the copyright, because each use also makes a copy." (1)

Hence, by 2004 the RIAA had engaged in a suing spree. As Lessig writes, "If a family's computer is used to download a single CD's worth of music, the family could be liable for $2 million in damages." (2) In the past there was no possible way for a major record label to know if, for example, you created mixtapes from CDs you had purchased and then freely distributed the tapes to your friends. But that time was suddenly over.

* * *

Fast-forward to 2010, a time when we can no longer afford to ignore the work of R. Buckminster Fuller. In his 1969 book Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, Fuller had the incredible foresight -- 20 years before the invention of the World Wide Web (3) -- to write, "A new, physically uncompromised, metaphysical initiative of unbiased integrity could unify the world. It could and probably will be provided by the utterly impersonal problem solutions of the computers." (4) By "metaphysical," Fuller essentially meant intangible creations, ideas and knowledge -- versus "physical" items, like a computer itself.

The U.S. government developed the Internet -- the global data infrastructure that enables the content system known as the World Wide Web -- in the ‘60s, and I wouldn't be surprised if Fuller knew about it when he wrote this statement. (5) Most people living in the civilized world have already witnessed something spectacular on the Web, whether it was looking at Area 51 via the satellite view on Google Maps, finding a long-lost friend on Facebook, or -- to keep in line with this discussion -- gaining entry to a p2p (BitTorrent) music network so organized and comprehensive that it serves the purpose of music distribution better than any store in the world (including the iTunes Music Store or Amazon.com, for that matter).

The Net is arguably (or maybe undeniably) the greatest example of metaphysical innovation to arise from humanity thus far. In fact, one p2p network recently held a poll -- containing both physical and metaphysical choices -- that sought to identify mankind's best invention. The clear winner at 54 percent was the Internet (it beat cold beer [17 percent], the wheel [13], the condom [5] and macaroni with cheese [3], among other things. Of course, the survey pool of twentysomething computer nerds wasn't exactly projectable onto the general population). In other words, for the inhabitants of a universe that is, as Fuller described it, "nonsimultaneous, nonidentical and only partially overlapping," our whole species is pretty amazed, all at the same moment, by what we can do on and because of the Internet. (6)

Here's where my problem with copyright law arises. There seems to be a fundamental clash between Fuller's rightful suggestion that computer technology could save the world, and the observed fact that interconnected computers have made a whole generation of people into criminals. This fact is so troublesome that Lessig's activist side (which proposed measures to rebuild the public domain -- the realm of totally unprotected content -- and restore balance to the creative process) has often been overshadowed by his law professor side (which had moral qualms about fighting for something our country deemed illegal, while he was supposed to be preparing students for a career in legal practice).

It seemed that the decriminalization of file sharing would be more likely to happen than any massive restructuring of American copyright law. But six years after the publication of Free Culture, I don't see much indication that we've gained ground in the war. Lessig himself has transferred to Harvard Law School, and his efforts have shifted to his new group Change Congress, which aims to end corporate funding in political campaigns -- probably the largest source of conflicted interests in our semi-democratic system ("semi-democracy" is another of Fuller's terms). The RIAA announced in 2008 that it would stop suing individuals for sharing songs (they had attacked 35,000 people since 2003), and instead began working with Internet service providers to disconnect offenders who didn't obey cease and desist orders. (7) So in a way, both sides went for a broader, more systematic approach in this fight that, sadly enough, now goes largely unnoticed by the general public.

The law is extraneous to my main concerns, partly because I feel that fighting from a legal perspective alone omits some of the most important considerations. "Bucky" Fuller had some other wacky ideas aside from, but related to, his futuristic projection about computers. He said Einstein's equation E=Mc^2 changed our entire conception of the universe by showing that matter and energy are interchangeable.

"Thus the metaphysical took the measure of, and mastered, the physical. That relationship seems by experience to be irreversible. [...] If the present planting of humanity upon Spaceship Earth cannot...discipline itself to service exclusively that function of metaphysical mastering of the physical it will be discontinued..." (8)

In case his unusual wording didn't smack you upside the head, he's saying we each have to "put mind over matter" and obey our natural inclination to develop a comprehensive set of abilities -- or else the primate known ashomo sapien will inevitably go extinct.

If we apply this theory to the debate over copyright law, it tells us that Lessig's aims, even if executed successfully, will never be enough. The legal approach is insufficient because what we're talking about goes well beyond the common understanding of copyright law. We're essentially fighting over the control of our collective metaphysical universe, which amounts to half of "total universe" -- though the half that is literally hidden from view (especially these days, when most physical media formats have given way to MP3s and other digital media). And since the metaphysical universe is inherently invisible, it can never be weighed or measured, and it has no objective value. Its worth has been, and always will be, whatever we ascribe to it.

If you were to poll the general public on the meaning of wealth, the top responses would undoubtedly contain some reference to money. We assume that a $1 bill is actually worth a dollar, when in reality it's a piece of paper -- practically worthless in physical terms -- with an agreed upon metaphysical value. The problem with our popular understanding of wealth is that it's now based on metaphysical factors alone. Money generally used to be valued on a gold standard system, wherein paper currency was exchangeable for gold coins or bullion.

But the start of the Federal Reserve System in 1913 allowed the government to print money as needed. (9) And then, after occasionally moving off the gold standard in times of war or economic hardship, President Nixon decided in 1971 that gold and U.S. dollars would no longer be convertible. (10) The combined effect of these two measures is that the value of our money steadily decreases in value (i.e., inflation), and the value itself is totally arbitrary (that is to say, metaphysical). The Fed creates more money without having to match it with gold reserves, so each dollar bill (or dollar number in a bank account) comes with debt built into it, ensuring that inflation will continue in a regular fashion.

As Fuller writes in Spaceship Earth, the gross national product of the U.S. was valued at $3 billion of assets in 1810, but by 1970 it was considered to be $1 trillion. (11) Since the total gold supply (i.e., the physical monetary reserve) on the planet is actually around $40 billion, the perceived growth in wealth was all metaphysical. That isn't to say that our entire economy is worthless. The point is that our definition of wealth is totally skewed.

Therefore, people who accept or affirm the consumerism and materialism of the status quo aren't just shallow; they're completely ignorant as to what wealth actually means. But "we, the people" are not totally at fault, since no one in a position of power has ever explained this to us.

Fuller realized that these topics are far removed from everyday discourse, so in order to illustrate the fundamental shift that was necessary in society, he proposed a total redefinition of wealth:

"Now we can account wealth more precisely as the number of forward days for a specific number of people we are physically prepared to sustain at a physically stated time and space liberating level of metabolic and metaphysical regeneration." (12)

Stated another way, wealth can only be measured by how effectively we're using our intuition to ensure the survival and well being of the human race.

As Robert Anton Wilson argued in his 1983 book Prometheus Rising, economists and Marxists are both wrong in thinking that wealth arises from some combination of "land, labor, and capital." "The real source of wealth is correct ideas: workable ideas: that is, negative entropy -- Information. The origin of these coherent (workable) ideas is the human nervous system. All wealth is created by human beings using their neurons intelligently." (13)

This redefinition reveals the utterly backwards state of our current economic system. Einstein's theory of relativity contains within it a law stating that, contrary to how we commonly perceive it, energy can't ever be created or destroyed. Energy is always conserved in a closed system, such as the universe. It's irresponsible to think of wealth as a physical thing, since, as we witnessed in the economic crash of 2008, many people lost a sizeable portion of their life savings in an instant. None of these victims would admit that their worth as human beings had suddenly decreased, but that is exactly what is implied by such a flawed vision ofwealth. The current definition only takes metaphysical wealth (e.g., knowledge, ideas and wisdom) into account if the idea or content has a commercial value - that is, if it can be copyrighted and sold.

In reality, every new human endeavor can only result in a gain in knowledge, not a loss of it. So "wealth is irreversible in evolutionary processes" because it's a function of physical energy (which is constant) and metaphysical knowledge (which continually grows). (14) As Fuller wrote, "we find that the physical constituent of wealth -- energy -- cannot decrease and...the metaphysical constituent -- know-how -- can only increase." (15) Therefore, any economic arrangement in which it's possible for "wealth" to decrease is bogus, for the simple reason that it's not in line with the universal truth of evolution.

* * *

Towards the end of Free Culture, Lessig proclaims that the goal of Creative Commons licensing "is to build a movement of consumers and producers of content...who help build the public domain and, by their work, demonstrate the importance of the public domain to other creativity." (16) If the thinking behind this goal was influenced by Fuller's radical redefinition of wealth, Lessig certainly doesn't admit it. In fact, Lessig's narrow focus on copyrighted content suggests that he was unaware of the two-faced physical/metaphysical nature of our universe. To clarify, he believes copyright is necessary because it provides incentive for people to create and then share their creations with the world, thereby reaping a monetary reward. It's our overblown application of copyright law, he says, that's the real problem.

But if we are to take Fuller's redefinition seriously, it implies that copyright law contradicts the workings of the universe. This isn't about developing a new ideology or dogma; it's about understanding the nature of the system of evolution that brought us to our current state of existence, and then trying to live consciously in that mode. Fuller went so far as to say that, because "the part of our wealth which is physical energy is conserved...the word ‘spending' is now scientifically meaningless and is therefore obsolete." (17)

Spending is obsolete? Then what are we doing when we go to Walmart, Target and Best Buy? What is that action whereby we get stuff with the swipe of a plastic card or the surrender of paper bills and metal coins? Perhaps Fuller's words imply that the vast majority of these "transactions" are both worthless and imaginary. Even worse is the suggestion of what this means for the lives of all the enthusiastic shoppers, the proud upholders of our consumeristic system.

Before your socialist/communist/Utopian alarms start beeping, let me provide some more context. According to Fuller, the most powerful men throughout history were the ones who best fulfilled their will by organizing other people to work. This meant partly that they were smart men equipped with cunning (since they had to manipulate others) and good memories (because it would be dangerous to write down their tactical information). Yet each of these "Great Pirates," as Fuller refers to them, depended on advice from a "comprehensively anticipatory design scientist." Leonardo da Vinci is the first example given, and he serves as a sort of archetype. Specialization of workers then developed as a way for the Great Pirates to remain in power, since all knowledge traveled vertically up the hierarchy, not horizontally between lower masters. And this was enforced by punishment, in order to ensure that the peons remained oblivious, though still proud of their role in the scheme.

By World War I, technology had developed to the point that the G.P.s could no longer control the spread of information. Similarly, technology made it theoretically possible for humans to stop doing super-specialized work and get back to developing our comprehensive abilities. In other words, we could start enjoying "the orgiastic future" that America has failed to grasp so many times now.

Due to misinterpretations of Malthus's economics and Darwin's theory of natural selection -- which, when combined, seemed to suggest that resources were limited and that only the fittest would survive -- sovereign nations set out to horde reserves as much as possible. This is embodied in the 1950s Cold War game theory strategies of John Nash, best known through the game "Fuck Your Buddy." It meant specialized work had to continue, in order to preserve the long-standing power establishment. Hence, today the status quo demands that we "work for a living," even if the work is degrading, feels absolutely pointless, infects us with a constant state of nausea, or worse.

Even in 2010, when almost one in five working-age Americans is without a full-time job (national unemployment is at 9.5 percent, but "underemployment" is at 16.5), the general public feels only terror over the possibility that those specialized positions might not return. (18) Not many are excited that we now have a chance to cultivate a global society that previous generations didn't have the wisdom to allow. No one comprehends that our economic system is bankrupt because it's so disconnected from a universal definition of wealth. Few can see clearly that, up until this point in the history of human civilization, the masses have essentially served as slaves -- either physically, mentally, or both -- to the Great Pirates and their henchmen.

Fuller had a different vision of the future, a "future" that could have been consummated in the mid-1900s: "While all enjoy total Earth no human will be interfering with the other, and none will be profiting at the expense of the other. Humans will be free in the sense than 99.9 per cent of their waking hours will be freely investable at their own discretion." (19) His suggestion -- which would generate as many laughs today as it likely did in 1969 -- was to give a research and development fellowship to anyone who couldn't find a job or who became unemployed. Even one person among thousands would devise something so valuable, he said, that it would pay for the whole program.

It's difficult to predict how that vision could come to be a reality, especially as America sinks further towards third world status. But it's absolutely imperative that we evaluate our options from a truly universal perspective. One thing that must change is how we treat metaphysical innovations such as creative works. Creative Commons licenses are amazing, and they are beginning to rebuild a very damaged public domain -- but they won't be adequate. By their very nature, amateur creations -- those without large commercial value -- aren't competing with mass-market products in movie theaters and entertainment mega-stores.

We've been duped by the Great Pirates into thinking that we are the "pirates" for doing what to us seems absolutely natural and ethically sound. In fact, they are the reprehensible ones for holding our metaphysical universe hostage. That's half of our entire universe (as experienced currently at the human level) stuck in prison! We don't even consciously understand that these media (by which I'm referring mostly to music, movies, books and scholarly journals), the metaphysical products of our civilization, are mostly locked up by a select few corporations.

But every time someone remixes a Top 40 song, or parodies a TV show, or rips a movie and puts it on YouTube...he or she is asserting something that makes common sense even if the individual can't explain it with words:these creative works belong to the public just as much as they "belong" to the companies.

As I stated before, copyright law now protects creative works for almost a century. Lessig makes it quite clear in Free Culture that copyright law is intended to protect the right of the author to duplicate and distribute the work during a period of commercial viability. After that time, the work should pass into the public domain so that our culture can proceed with its natural function: to build upon itself in an ongoing process of refinement and improvement.

This is why I can no longer pass off copyright law as a mere inconvenience. I agree with Lessig's stance that, at the very least, copyright terms should be drastically reduced. As he wrote, "Until 1976, the average term was just 32.2 years. We should be aiming for the same." (20) My theory is that, after that 32-year term of commercial viability, in which the author or creator would have the option to control market use of the work, all creative and proprietary work should take on a permanent CC-BY license -- that is, Creative Commons "Attribution" -- requiring only that anyone who shares or adapts the work must properly credit the original author by listing their name and, when applicable, a hyperlink.

The original author would still have the option to duplicate and sell the work...but so would everyone else in the universe. Some things literally have no sellable value after 32 years, like a video game console. Other things could be adapted into the landscape of modern technology -- like paper books turned into e-books -- in which case the incentive would be to develop the best method of distribution and consumption.

To demonstrate, we can consider that the original Star Wars film came out almost 33 years ago. If copyright law was functioning within reason, anyone in the universe would now be allowed to do whatever he or she wanted with any aspect of that film. Teenagers could create and distribute their own video adaptation; a craftsman could produce hand-made Chewbacca action figures or dolls and sell them on eBay; video game designers could reimagine the entire Star Wars universe (at long as they stuck to the first film) in a new PC game; entrepreneurs could even copy and sell Star Wars DVDs.

None of this would require permission from or royalty payments to Lucasfilm. That's how copyright used to work, when it originally lasted for 14 years. Lessig explains how, in America's youth, books by British authors were printed and sold in unregulated fashion across the Atlantic. The U.S. was a developing nation at the time, and that sort of business helped build the economy. That's part of the reason authors like Charles Dickens became so popular among American readers. It was all part of the progression of culture.

Another key example is how the Walt Disney Company has used public domain stories as the foundation for many of its animated films, likeCinderella and Alice in Wonderland -- as well as their most recent, The Princess and the Frog. Now that Disney has produced these movies, they can in some cases restrict what is done with the original public domain stories. They could, for instance, prevent Dreamworks from making a film rendition of Alice without their permission - all the more so because Disney has now renewed their "right" to the story with a Tim Burton remake. (Now it's more clear why they "re-release a classic film from the Disney vaults" every few years, huh?).

The very reason that copyright law now applies for up to 95 years -- the impetus that led to the most recent term boost -- was that Sonny Bono's wife didn't want his music to pass into the public domain...that and complaints from the estates of Dr. Seuss and Gershwin. (21) Companies who own copyrights from the time in question (1923 to 1942) supported these causes even though, as Lessig explains, only two percent of that material is still commercially viable (think: Laurel and Hardy, and the Three Stooges). (22) The net effect, according to Lessig, is that no creative works now protected by copyright will be released into the public domain until 2019. A million patents will also become unprotected at that time. (23) Of course, corporations will be lobbying for another term extension around that time, and I fear the public uproar won't even surpass the one aroused by the recent health care debate.

It's important to understand that we're not just talking about simple copyrighted media, but also proprietary information: computer software, pharmaceutical drugs, medical devices, the recipes for foods and beverages, etc. In fact, the documentary The Future of Fooddemonstrates the absurdity of allowing a company like Monsanto to patent genes in food seeds (commonly known as GMOs, or genetically modified organisms). (24) That essentially means companies and governments can control what is done with food crops, down to the very genes. The majority of farmers still depend on their own seed reserves. But since patented genes can easily outcross into independent food stocks, Monsanto can claim ownership of the plants wherever they find their genes. A simple application of Monsanto's RoundUp pesticide determines which plants are "theirs," since the farmer's plants all die. The company sues offending (but unknowing) farmers to make an example, forcing them to purchase seeds from Monsanto. This process is exactly the same as when the RIAA sues music file-sharers, and it's the reason that American farmers work at a loss and depend on government subsidies to survive. But paradoxically, the U.S. government is co-owner of a Monsanto patent, and company officials regularly cycle through FDA appointments.

Anyone who has ever signed a non-disclosure agreement has upheld this system that puts profits over the progress of mankind. The counter-argument is that protection encourages innovation, but I don't buy this. Not only does the proprietary system encourage laziness and corruption, but it's also the most recent example of the gangsters formerly known as Great Pirates preventing the natural flow of human evolution.

Remember when Obama came into office and he was chirping about "transparency"? Rest assured, we won't have government transparency until we have it at all levels of society, including the individual. Just look at the case of scientific research. Verification is the essence of the scientific method. If experiments could be verified immediately, it would speed up the scientific process beyond measure. But if the government is funding the research to gain a tactical military advantage over other countries, and the lab is run by scientists and opportunists who hope to gain prestige, awards and (most of all) money for their work, and the research findings are published in an academic journal that requires expensive subscription fees to view, then transparency and progress are nearly impossible.

Personally I think there should always be a way for anyone to access anycreative work that has been made commercially available at any point in history, whether it was protected through copyright or proprietary measures. How long do you think it would take us to cure cancer if all medical research was made public? A week? A day? Does it make you wonder if maybe the pharmaceutical companies who profit from chemotherapy have a vested interest in preventing the discovery of a real cure? Do you think we'd still be driving cars with gas tanks if those profiting from oil trade -- everyone from General Motors to George W. Bush - hadn't actively fought electric cars (or even hybrids) from going into mass production? Does anyone ask themselves why we power, heat and cool our homes with coal, nuclear fission and natural gas, when we could harness all the power we need from solar radiation, wind, rivers and tidal shifts?

* * *

I admit that I want to see the realization of Fuller's future. And despite my suggestion for reducing copyright terms, I fear that our quality of life and our prospects for the future will steadily diminish worldwide until we discontinue any system that leaves one party worse off than another. Soon, as unemployment crosses the 20-percent line and creeps towards 50 (or above), we may not have a choice to uphold the current system. When that time comes, we'll have plenty of options. Since the "weapons-backed sovereign nations," as Fuller would call them, will stop at nothing to retain their power, we may see a military dictatorship before we see... well, anything better than our current system of smoke-and-mirrors capitalism.

In the interim, it's up to the "common folk" to devise better systems for paying content creators without enabling the middle men (such as Warner Music Group or Barnes and Noble), the pimps of modern creativity who manipulate both the ones creating and consuming the material. This was the focus of Lessig's 2008 book Remix, and some places have already begun these experiments. Certain European countries now tax citizens based on the assumption that they are downloading copyrighted works. The taxes are used to compensate copyright holders for their supposed losses (though Lessig thoroughly demonstrates that file sharers don't drastically affect profits for media companies since, more often than not, those people wouldn't have purchased the content).

Of course, the very concept of revising creative compensation is based on the presumption that we will still use monetary currency with inborn inflation in the future -- that we will still base our entire concept of wealth on a metaphysical abstraction, one that doesn't even brush the surface of our actual wealth. But a gradual transition (which would still be rapid, in the context of history) would be better than picking up the pieces in a post-apocalyptic world.

What I wonder now is if the computer, the Internet, and technology in general can get us back on course with evolution. Judging by the leaps in communication and content exchange we've taken over the past 15 years with the help of high-speed Internet access, it seems that Fuller may have been right. The Internet will be hard to beat in terms of human innovation...but are we really content to let the wheel, cold beer, and the condom follow closely behind it? After all, I'm not saying that we need to speed up evolution; I'm saying that we spent most of the last century actively thwarting it. Much of what lies ahead will involve the relinquishing of sovereign control and adopting a stance of humility and cooperation.

In his 1957 book The Undiscovered Self, famed psychologist C.G. Jung wrote of communism: "So far as one can see, only one possibility remains, and that is a breakdown of power from within, which must, however, be left to follow its own inner development." (25) It seems to me that we're watching the slow but inevitable death of market-based capitalism, a very tired and flawed economic system built on fear and greed. That goes for the major record labels and the Monsanto Company just the same as it goes for predatory lenders in the home mortgage market. Each is part of a powerful institution with very limited liability and no qualms about manipulating millions of people. Someone gains at the expense of someone else.

Jung also wrote,

"History will undoubtedly pass over those who feel it is their vocation to resist this inevitable development, however desirable or psychologically necessary it may be to cling to what is essential and good in our own tradition. Despite all the differences, the unity of mankind will assert itself irresistibly." (26)

And he wrote time and time again that change can only happen at the individual level. Any concept of humans beyond that -- a city, a company, a nation, a religion -- is inherently an abstraction, a compromise made in the attempt to describe multiple individuals. An individual empowered by Fuller's definition has no choice but to ask himself, "What is my actual wealth?" Furthermore, if everyone on the planet was suddenly denied an income, how many people would be able to survive without the aid of a gun?

It seems clear to me that, aside from ensuring access to high-speed Internet, we will need to boost our efforts at education. Most of that will happen through personal volition, since public schools and universities are too embedded in the institutional establishment to approach the problem from outside the "status quo" reality tunnel. Education will aid us in reconsidering every assumption we hold about the way the world can and should operate. It'll also help us flex our intuitive muscle as we seek to fulfill our rightful place in the evolution of the universe, which will happen eventually no matter who tries to prevent it. Or we'll drive ourselves into extinction, at which point we will no longer be able to care.

Fuller pointed out that we weren't given an instruction manual for our Spaceship Earth, and in fact it was imperative that it be so. We literally have to devise our way into the future that lies before us, the future we've imagined for quite some time. Every single human being will be born with the same rights (not just told that is the case), the same access to food and medicine, and the same potential for self-realization. Now we just have to work our way through the labyrinth and strike down the minotaur that is our heart of darkness, both personally and collectively.

In the meantime, I'll be waiting for an offer to arrive in my mailbox granting me a lifetime fellowship in research and development.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If you made it this far, thanks for reading. I encourage you to share this, and all articles...just remember to link back to the original.

DFTBA

Gridlock Magazine

2012-01-01T18:54:00.000-08:00

December was a slow month in the blogosphere. I didn't post much and didn't read a whole bunch either. Suffice it to say, the year ended with a whimper instead of a bang. There was a reason for that.

Gridlock Magazine has just launched, and I'm a contributor.

Most of my time writing went into articles for Gridlock and even though I had a few urges to throw something up on the blog, I figured it could wait for the new year where I could return with a passion.

So what do I have to show for taking a lack-luster blogging December? Check out gridlockmagazine.com. No seriously, do it. I'll wait....

I couldn't wait

Top story. Above the fold. Mom is so proud. I assume she'd be more proud if I stopped living at home but that's neither here nor there.

My time spent at Occupy Oakland lead to an article that informs, but also identifies the competing philosophies going on with the movement in general. It jumps back and forth in a way I hope everyone finds interesting. What? You didn't read it. No problem, here's a snippet:

The atmosphere is electric. People are happy. Music is playing and people are dancing as we march forward throughout the streets of Oakland. Families come out of their homes and smile and wave as we head towards the port. As I attempt to change lenses, I drop my camera bag. Every person near me stops, three reach for the bag at the same time. I thank everyone as my belongings are returned to me. They smile and begin walking again. Free water is handed out. A woman comes out of her home and hands energy bars to people on the sidewalk. The atmosphere is intoxicating.

I appreciate everyone who reads the story over at Gridlock Magazine. Besides the feature, I also have an article on working out while simultaneously being a huge video game geek, it's fun and silly. And while 2011 was the worst year for theaters since '95, I went to a lot and have a few movie reviews at Gridlock as well.

Obviously this is a self-promotion piece. I do that from time to time. Here are some reasons why I think Gridlock Magazine is worth your time.

1. It's clean. There are a ton of articles but the site design keeps everything simple and easy to read. Look at the web page you're on right now...I like clean/simple sites, Gridlock is precisely that while still having a ton of great content.

2. Great content. That's not a pat on my back. Each article on Gridlock is interesting. There's interviews, gonzo-style articles, tech oriented, sports oriented, fitness related. It's got a lot of great stuff.

3. Varied contributors. The site is based in the UK and markets itself towards the urban male professional. I'm only one of those things. There's also lady-dude writers and photographers. At Gridlock you're getting different perspectives that can, hopefully, inform and entertain you in a way not done before.

4. Issu magazine. An interactive magazine layout right at the comfort of your computer screen. Yes, the website is great. It has all the articles archived. But readers can also check out the entire spread in a magazine format. As far as presentation goes, it's pretty cool.

2012 is off to a good start for me. I hope it's a good one for you as well. Please check out gridlockmagazine.com It would mean a lot to me.

Thank you and happy new year.