| Thursday, October 13, 2005 |  |
| Something new, open, free and exciting |
| Hm, that's what it says in the tagline of my blog here.
An old rigid civilization is reluctantly dying. Something new, open, free and exciting is waking up. ... I'm trying to remember what I meant. Trying to notice if it makes any sense to me right now. An old rigid civilization is reluctantly dying. Well, I would only say something rather negative like that if I can point to some kind of alternative. I hold myself to be some kind of optimist, after all. The old civilization is centralized, bureaucratic, moralizing, closed-minded, unsustainable. Not hard to find many signs of that. But yet it is still there. It has become even more surreal, but it hasn't exactly died. I moved somewhere that was less surreal, but the global civilization hasn't changed much. So, what's the new and exciting part? Well, in part it was based on a trust in collective intelligence. That somehow, to the degree that people are free to be creative and to communicate, new ways will emerge. Closed can't compete with open. Owned and expensive can't compete with free. Limited and controlled can't compete with free in the other sense of the word. Boring can't compete with exciting. At least in the long term. In the short term, those who hold power and control can keep things limited, closed and life-less for quite a while. Based on their ability to manipulate, their ability to coerce people through laws, economic pressure, religious doctrine, etc. We have to make a living, have to stay out of jail, have to appear relatively normal. So there are many things we could do, which maybe we would be more inspired to do, but they don't appear in the short term to be economically viable, legal, or socially acceptable. My optimism came in part from noticing many little trends that point in the direction of self-organization, of freed creativity, of things becoming free. The Internet is still the best example of that. People making open source software, which is free and of higher quality than closed alternatives. People blogging, sharing their mind, reporting on stuff that otherwise wasn't reported on. People sharing their photos, their music, their thoughts. But it is a fairly even battle. New ways also appear of making things more closed. Copyright laws are closing more things down, even fair use is at risk. Companies patent large numbers of ridiculous items, like self-evident design elements, software algorithms, business procedures, and life forms. The media industries try hard to lock down any hardware or software that might play or store or transport any kind of media. They come up with ways of controlling what you do with their words or pictures, to suit their business model. They might succeed in having laws passed, and already have in some places, that make it illegal for you to resist. I'd like to believe that all of those kinds of efforts will fail, necessarily. But I can't say I am sure. I believe that sufficiently well-informed people will make different choices. I believe freedom is more powerful than control. I believe creativity beats conformity. I believe there's something inherent in life that makes it impossible to squash in the long run. I guess the thing to do is to shine the light on the signs of life that appear. The new, open, free, exciting stuff. And I suppose that's what I'm doing here. I'm just a little out of the habit. [ Inspiration | 2005-10-13 14:39 | 20 comments | PermaLink ] More > |
| Re: genotype, How is everything going? |
| Oh, my genotype is fine, thank you. Hasn't changed much recently, but one never knows. I might evolve a few more twirls on the short arm of chomosome fourteen. Maybe I'll even change phylum, if it strikes me one day.
Now, it was just a spam e-mail. I can see that right away, even if it made it through all my spam filters rather unscathed. But as it showed a snippet of the actual message too, I was intrigued and opened it. And it is pure brilliance. Oh, the actual message they were trying to get through was horrible. One of those scammy stock recommendations, which is meant for making a bunch of idiots buy some stock, so that the price goes up, and the spammer's put options become gold. No, what is brilliant is all the random content they stick into the message to get through spam filters. I love mysteriously meaningful randomness. And these guys have fun algorithms. They include a gif image with random junk, with the title "impingecourtesan martinsonstroke contagionschwab". Ah, that's beautiful. The message is sent from the non-existent mail server, "casebook.frog.mesa.isotropy.es", which also introduces itself as "anthracnose.mail.brunnet.net". Ah, that's neat. Anthracnose, I couldn't have thought of that if I tried. Casebook.frog.mesa.isotropy? That's deep! Names, e-mail addresses, server names, everything is wonderfully randomized, to sound strangely real and unreal at the same time. The message has three different mime-encoded parts. One, the plain text version, contains only the single word "poop". That's what the poor suckers without HTML e-mail would see. "Poop". That's intriguing, of course, but not as philosophically deep as the rest. Now, the HTML section has the catchy title "explanatoryhoagie flynnsprint". Yeah, that's good, and inspires continued reading, although nobody really ever sees the HTML title in an e-mail. Then, at the bottom of the e-mail, after the stock message, it has the random literary section. A mashed compilation of some kind of classic novel, or maybe several. This is where you find such gems as: My aunt always excused any weakness of her own in my behalf, by county, in this way pretty kettle of fish. In pursuance of my aunts kind scheme, I was shortly afterwards fitted out like living, they tell me, on a sand heap underneath a burning glass. He looked strong. I knew you immediately, I said, but you are more easily remembered to walk across me more like a fly than a human being while the horses were at a canter. He is often very nervous, or I fancy so. It is not fancy said Sara, shaking her head. Have my place, so I blushingly offered to resign it What literary genius! I too want to be fitted like living on a sand heap underneath a burning glass. I want to walk across you more like a fly than a human being. I will blushingly resign my place, even if it is not fancy. Maybe I should install this kind of program to answer my e-mail. Write my blog posts, even. Impingecourtesan. [ Culture | 2005-10-13 21:08 | 1 comment | PermaLink ] More > |