Current mood: Awed
It has recently come to my attention that my Jeep Wrangler is visible from Outer Space. Yes, it is true. While browsing Google Maps I discovered that my jeep is visible as a small black dot in their satellite photos. The resolution is obviously not good enough for you to see what a cool car it is, but on the other hand, at 2 pixels across, you can’t really tell that I haven’t washed it lately either.
Current mood: Verbose
I read an interesting article about reverse-surveilance, or Sousveillance. It resonates with things I have been thinking about.
Do we have a natural human right to remember things? Do we have a natural human right to repeat what we remember? It seems like both of these would be logical extensions of simple freedom… but are they going to stay that way?
There are a lot of places that you aren’t allowed to take a camera. There are a lot of things that you are not permitted to record… but what if you had a photographic memory? Photographic memory, as you may have read about it in some spy novel, does not exist outside of fiction, but imagine if you will, a camera embedded in a contact lens, capable of recording a full lifetime of video, and playing it back to the wearer at will. Such a think would be like an artificial photographic memory. I think it would be awesome to have such capabilities. The advantages are limitless… but wouldn’t there be places and times where recording everything would be inappropriate? If an artificial photographic memory existed, when and where would you be obligated to “turn it off”? How is being asked to turn off your camera different from being asked to stop remembering things?
It would seem the obvious difference is that memory is something you are born with, and a camera is technology, but why is that such an important distinction? I was not born with my glasses, but they are an essential part of me. What about clothing? Even setting aside modesty and fashion, clothing is essential to humankind for the simple reason that we would suffer from exposure to the elements without it. Humans can’t really function without adding to ourselves additional technology that we were not born with. Our ability to use tools as if they were extensions of our own bodies is an essential part of what makes us human.
Back to sousveillance. People don’t like to be spied on, so if I suggest that we should all wear cameras, and effectively spy on ourselves, and spy on our friends, that seems like a horrible concept… But what if you are being watched no matter what we do? Clue: too late. Surveillance is all over the place. We aren’t yet to the point where everybody is being watched all the time, but the amount of time the average person spends on-camera in an average day is astonishing. Just pay attention next time you leave the house, and think about it. How many of those traffic lights are watching you? What stores did you go into? Did they record you? What about other forms of tracking besides video? Do you have one of those discount cards for your supermarket? Do you buy gasoline with your credit card? Privacy is doomed in the long run. Surveillance is getting easier and easier. I remember a High School teacher of mine once saying that a Big Brother is Watching You society like the one in George Orwell’s 1984 was impossible in real life because of the scaling problem of “Who watches the watchers?” That argument is invalid because a computer can easily sort and filter surveilance, making it possible for an extremely small number of people to keep track of a very large number of people.
How do we prevent those in power (government, business) from destroying our privacy? I am inclined to think that it cannot be done. Total loss of privacy seems inevitable to me, but I do think that the harm of loss of privacy could be greatly reduced if we do it on our own terms, rather than waiting for it to happen to us… which leads me back to the idea of an artificial photographic memory… even an artificial shared photographic memory, one where I share my artifical memories in exchaange for other peoples. it would be cool to be able to remember things that other people did. Very cool. But also, the idea of letting other people remember everything I have done is a little scary.
I’m not saying I’m ready to strap a web-cam to my glasses. It’s just something I have been thinking about.
Current mood: Alive
While I was watching Ryda play Baldur’s Gate II last night, it occured to me how incredibly useful it would be to have the powers of a necromancer in real life.
When I get to work in the morning, I would summon a skelleton, and say; Skully! Read and file my e-mail! And save anything important for me., and then skully would say yessss master.
Then I would be working on a programming project, and somebody would come to me with a spreadsheet project, and I would be all Skully! Do this boring spreadsheet for me!, and Skully would say Yessss master. Being an unholy damned creature of the netherworld, I have a natural proficiency with Microsoft Excel, and then I would say; But Skully, this is OpenOffice.org running on Debian GNU/Linux, and Skully would go AAAAAAAAAAAAAAArgh!!! and he would catch fire and crumble into ash, and then I would be bummed, because I would have to use up half my mana summoning a new Skully, and then I wouldn’t have enough mana left over at lunch time to cast Fire 3 to heat up my Cup-O-Noodles, and I would have to walk all the way down to the break room to use the stupid microwave.
Current mood: Floatey
Last night, the spirit of Salvador Dali appeared to me in a dream, in which he implored me to do more to support the consumer economy.
Dali: James! I come with a prophesy of Doooooom!
James: What!? Huh? What is happening to me? Where did you come from? Am I dreaming?
Dali: Not a deam, James. This is a vision! I come to you with a dire warning!
James: What must I do to save myself, oh Salvador Dali?
Dali: You need to drink more Sprite™! Spriiiiiiite™!
James: What?
Dali: You have been drinking water! I have been watching you from the spirit world, and all you drink is water!
James: That’s not true! I drank a glass of Strawberry/White-Cranberry last night. That isn’t water!
Dali: Your roommate purchased that! it doesn’t count.
James: So what is the big deal? What is wrong with water?
Dali: When you buy Sprite™, you support the Coca-Cola™ corporation, and stimulate the economy. Only by purchasing expensive sugary artifical beverage-flavoured drinks can we ensure the financial stability of the American economy for future generations!
James: Um… I don’t think th–
Dali: Think of the children!
James: But, I–
Dali: Think of the children!! (shakes fist)
James: But I drink bottled water! I pay for it. Doesn’t that stimulate the economy too?
(Salvador Dali emits a piercing shriek, and his head spins around on his neck)
Dali: Heretic! I saw you! I watch you! I have seen what you do!
James: No! That’s impossible! You can’t know that!
Dali: Yes, I have seen it! You purchased one bottle of Dasani™ purified water back in 2002, and you have been re-filling it from the tap ever since!
James: (screams) It’s true! I’m sorry, Salvador Dali! Have mercy on me!
And then I woke up in a cold sweat.
Current mood: Apathyphobic
Today, I am going to sculpt a sculpture from clay, another from alabaster. I will draw a few sketches, finish a short story I have started previously and start writing a new one. I will read the rest of that giant Neal Stephenson novel I am working my way through. I will piece together the black-primed burned wood fragments I prepared last weekend, and paint a picture on them and mount them above the couch. I will clean my apartment and do the dishes and vacuum. I will run three miles. I will go to the swap meet. I will make phone calls to friends I haven’t seen in ages, and catch up on their lives. Then I will spend the evening programming, an hour and a half on an old project, and hour and a half on a new project. I will bake something.
… or at least I will lay on the couch with the windows closed and the lights off and think about doing all those things.
Actually, I will be happy if I do just one of those things. I will be very unhappy if I do zero of them.
Monday Morning Edit: Yay! I did two-and-a-half of those things, and therefore I am happy!
Current mood: Dusty
This weekend I will be unable to post any blog entries, because i am leaving on vacation to go to Dino-Bungee National Monument, where I will bask in patriotic awe of the awe-inspiringly awesome megasculptural monolith that is Mount Rushmore, after which I shall bungee-jump from Lincoln‘s nose. Originally I was planning on jumping from Washington‘s nose, but then I read in the brocure that the decent takes you just three and a half feet from his strong jutting chin, so you must jump with absolute precision to avoid simultaneously killing yourself and defacing a national treasure. They reccomend that only for advanced bungee jumpers, and since this is my first time, I think I will stick with good ‘ol Abe.
After that, I will tour the rest of the National Park, and see the National Park Service‘s bone-chilling re-creation of a bygone age millions of years ago, when the virgin continent of North America was terrorized by large plaster replicas of dinosaurs.
Current mood: Less sick than I thought I would be
I saw a dead lizard on the ground in the parking area this morning. It was laying in a circle position with it’s tail near its mouth, as if in death, symbolizing the cyclic nature of life. I think it was an omen. If it starts raining fish today, I am going home sick.
Current mood: Belly full of spice
My cousin Brian works for a game company, which semi-recently published a game called Wik: Fable of Souls which is pretty much the definitve work in the field of tongue-swinging-action-puzzle games… that is to say, it is the entire genre. If you are into games, you will know how tremendoulsy unoriginal and derivative 99 percent of games are out there (even the good ones), so making a game in that 1 percent that is unique and original, is pretty darn cool. They actually won a bunch of awards for it at the Independant Games Festival at the 2005 IGC in San Francisco.
[Image redacted due to internettyness]
All modern awards ceremonies are slaves to the Oscars Meme, so naturally whenever they won, they came up on stage to accept their award and say a few words into the microphone.
On their third trip to the stage, my other cousin, Andrew joined them, in spite of the fact that he does not work for the company, was not involved in the making of the game, and was only there to support his brother. This delights me. It delights me enough to blog it ;)
Guess who is who :)
Current mood: Embarrassed and Hungry
So a fellow student in my sculpture class was working on a life-size torso. Just the torso, no head, arms, or anything south of the bellybutton. She had named it “Shark Attack” but felt the name was too traumatic, and was trying to think of another name.
I offered that I thought “Shark Attack” was a great name for it.
“You see, the thing about shark attacks is, as horrible, horrible, horrible an idea as it is, shark attacks are funny!”
“What?” she goes.
“It just automatically sounds tongue-in-cheek. Shark attacks are funny. You can’t take them seriously.”
I could see she wasn’t buying it. In fact, she was looking at me funny.
“Maybe because it is so rare?” I offered, “I mean, I know people have died that way, but, like” I searched for an appropriate hyperbole comparing shark attack victims to lightening strike victims or lottery winners, but came up dry.
“No, I don’t think so.” she says. Her friend shakes her head with a slightly disgusted look on her face.
“Is it just me?” I asked, reddening. Do I just have a sick mind?
A while later I realized what it was. When I think of shark attacks, my entire mental and emotional context for the concept comes from Gary Larson. Darn you Gary! You have made me look like a psychopath one too many times!
Today is a beautiful day. It is a good day for painting things that have been burned. I wonder why fire is not more popular in art. Pyromania is so artsy.
I am currently eating potstickers and california rolls, and thinking about how to use perl compatable regular expression rules (regex’s) to guess the appropriate material code and oversize value for a set of human-readable price page filenames. That is the sort of stuff I do at work. Today is a very good day.