Reflective Self Indulgence

        It has been a year since I graduated with my bachelors degree in music.  I can't help but think of where I was a year ago, two years ago, three years ago, four years ago, five years, six years...yes, I'm reflecting on my whole undergraduate experience. It seems odd to think that it was as far as seven years ago for me, since I still view 18 year old me the same as I see today me (though I realize they aren't the same person, they are in the same period of life to me).  And odder still, I felt each year in college had an overarching theme to it.  I don't know why I feel that is true, but when I reflect, that's how I see it.

Year 1- Social Meltingpot
         I always looked at my freshmen year as a culmination of how the different social philosophies all coexist in an environment such as college.  Really, from when I first entered the dorms there was a sense of communism- no one of us had everything, but each one of us would have at least one thing we were more than willing to share.  It was brilliant!  One of us would have beer to share, one of us would have the plush room to chill in, one of us would have food to share around, one of us would have a car, one of us would have...  you see my point?  We would all share and create a community based on sharing what we had free of charge.  Enter one of my favorite life philosophies- beer shall be paid in kind with more beer.
       Then you had the socialist atmosphere of how a college is run in general.  You had free lunches provided by the institution, as well as the student health clinic, library, wifi, access to the buildings on campus, the heirarchy of professors.  It was a layered system, but it benefited us all in a different way.  It provided us all with opportunities to move forward, which was exactly the way it is supposed to be.
      Capitalism is of course looking for jobs and the traditional college spending sprees.  Face it, college students have enough money to get what they want.  How many college students do you see eating ramen while watching Netflix on their iPhone?  Those things cost money, it's just that the average college student has chosen to allocate their money to "fun" things over essential things.  So you find crappy jobs to pay your way through it all and hope for the best.  Not to mention we all still have to eat and buy textbooks and other essentials.
       Even mercantilism was represented by trading among other folks you don't know.  You may have something you thought was great, or was necessary, for a time.  Though it is still in just as good of condition as when you bought it, it is no longer of use to you.  Such as textbooks or old technology.  So instead of selling it to students who couldn't even afford it on used conditions, you may just trade for something they have you need of equal value.  Textbooks I honestly say are the basis for this thought, and why not?  Trading a Bio101 book for an Econ101 book is a pretty straight trade- both are about 150$, and useless after the class is over.
        I will be honest- this was also the most memorable year of my life purely because it was all new.  I was an adult, and I took care of myself and learned how to budget money, time, energy, and all manner of resources.

Year 2- Year of Silent Meditation
       My first year I studied a lot of how western civilizations worked and progressed.  My second year I started taking a lot of eastern philosophy classes- specifically in Zen philosophy and Daoism.  I wanted to find some solace with myself all year.  My friends from my first year seemed to have ignored me after the summer came and went, not to mention my roommate ran away and left me holding a bag I could never get someone to help with (I couldn't sell my contract, and nobody wanted to room with me).  So I took classes on alien cultures to me, and I found that it fit me.  I began mindful meditation, living in the moment.  I started to curb my angst and anger into productive thoughts and advanced my studies farther than I thought I was ever able to do.
       I began reading Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac as well as a few interpretations of The Legend of the Monkey King, several poetry books, and of course the Dao de ching. I participated in more cultural programs brought by the University and talking to people from the countries I was studying.  I can't say I found religion, but I was able to find peace within myself.  Everything that year had a tinge of the Orient, and I only was able to see it because I was forced into a moderate state of solitude.

Year 3- How Life Works
       By year three I was once more living with friends, dating, and finding a lot out about life.  From a social aspect it was your typical college experience.  But my studies in Zoology had become very advanced and sophisticated.  I began seeing the world in all its splendid beauty as a functioning organism.  The chemistry of all animal interactions, the biophysics of their movement and actions, the intermixture the ecosystem provided.
       But as stated, I also began to look into my life as a biological thing.  As a human we are social creatures, we need social interaction, we have to have friends.  This was also the year my grandmother passed away, which I had a hard time coping with.  She and I were very close, and she was my first music teacher, and in fact the person who pushed me along with music the most.  I feel I owe her a huge part of my life, but we must all die.  And from all that I realized what the family unit meant to our social species- developementally, biologically, ecologically, it is a pretty resilient survival technique we've developed.
       Love and lust are natural things- as are all emotions.  Adding that to my mindful meditation I saw the year as a lesson on how things worked, how life is cultivated and executed and everything in between.

Year 4- How to Live Life
       This was a year of a lot of change.  I decided to do the stupid thing and move in with my girlfriend, a move I do not regret.  The way everything in this year played out, I learned you should do what you love.  The start of it was spent moving with my girlfriend and best friend from highschool.  I decided that year that every week I should try something new- an idea from my girlfriend which I loved.  I will admit that it usually boiled down to a new food or drink, but we all have to start somewhere.  My boss also gave me more hours, which allowed me more luxuries and abilities.  Unfortunately, I could only go so far with it, but I tried.
       The year continued with a lot of drama, how to cope and work with it is always a difficult situation.  More importantly, the thought of going into the medical field had less and less appeal to me the more I involved myself in music.  Finally, by the end of the year, I cut a few ties, and changed the path of my life entirely to what I really loved, not what I just had an interest in.

Year 5- Chrysalis
       I won't say a lot on this year.  It was difficult for a lot of reasons.  I lost my perspective on who I was and who I wanted to be and how I wanted to get to any of those things.  There were rifts appearing in all areas of my life and I wasn't sure how to go about fixing them.  Of course, being now 23 I was older than most of my peers and didn't feel like I belonged where I was in life or geographically.  I realized that whatever the outcome of this year, I would become someone different.

Year 6- Aces Wild
       Cards.  Card games.  For whatever that damn 52 card deck of bicycle cards became the common thread for all events in my final year.  I won't get into a lot of the year specifically.  But my favorite song of the year was about cards, I learned several games to help keep my sanity.  I researched a lot of the origins of tarot and how the card deck became an entertainment staple.  And with all the events of the year, I was late on the lesson of "know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em."  C'est la vie.

What does the future hold for us all?

       Have you ever sat down and wondered what the future of technology will be?  It is easy to speculate about the current affairs in the world at large- how internet will evolve and how the holodeck will become a real thing sooner rather than later.  But these ideas are just taking the obvious route- obviously the successful technology of today will be around for a while yet.
       But what about the technologies we rely on that have already reached their limits?  What about ones that society has now found to be a bad move, like unsafe, fuel-inefficient vehicles? or tanning lotion? Nuclear technology?  What will replace them, and how is it occurring today?
       

The first thing I hope goes- desktops

       Well, here are some thoughts I've been kicking around about a few areas of scientific importance.

Computer memory:

        As i linked earlier in the blog, the limits of silicon memory technology is fast approaching it's end.  This is why we've resorted to things like  the octuple super processor (don't know how many they're up to, but octuple sounds sexy).  Basically they've decided that because one chip has hit its limits, they need more to alter functions super fast.  Basically the way your operating system functions is that it doesn't technically handle more than one thing at a time- but it switches through these functions super mega fast, so if you can flip processors around for more speed and control- well that is one way to get around the limitations of materials.  I believe this will be a thing of the past within 15 years tops.

        Why? Because bioengineering is, in my eyes at least, going to take over.  If you think about it, the basis for our definition of organic life, is that it is carbon based.  So, now graphite processors are in the works and they're nothing but carbon, and surprise, they have resorted in using biological factories to create the finite layers.  This is the beginnings of bioengineering.  Lets take it one step further shall we?  

       Suppose now we have mastered the simple carbon processor- that means learning how to bend and compile the carbon is the next step.  What do you can complex chains of carbon based materials with infrastructures created to bend and coil to maintain speed and extend ability within a given volume? Why, in animals we call them proteins! More specifically, we call it a brain.  So is it really so far out of reach to have a rudimentary artificial brain created, handling our video games and word documents that would have well beyond a yotabyte?  Which brings me to 

Turing Test Approved

       

Scariest sci fi bad guy.

        Turing test, for those that don't know, is the official test of humans to determine if we have successfully created AI.  It basically can be summerized as "it can have an intelligent conversation in which it can learn and move beyond the one step process" which is more than I can say about a great many humans I've actually met.  But, if we can assume that in the next 20 years computers will move beyond, as we understand it today, the memory capacities of humans.  This is to say- computers will be potentially smarter than humans.  So even if we aren't bioengineering brains in our living rooms by this point, we will still have the potential for our MK3 helper bots folding our laundry and talking with us. 

        I know it is a complete hope of a sci-fi nerd to think such a thing.  But to be blunt, it is becoming the realm of possibility- not just early 20th century hooey.

Cloning

         It is difficult for me to think which will win- cyborg tech, or cloning.  But given how far we've advanced in our stem cell tech, I'd have to say regenerating limbs and extending the abilities of our biological clocks will win out in the end.  To put this in perspective- we have only now found an experimental process of integrating a computer chip into a blind person's occipital lobe and wiring it to their eyes so they can see in what basically amounts to technicolor.  On the other foot, we're cloning extinct animals.

        And tell me, what takes more money- a long process of manufacturing chips and wires, or starting a bath of ooze which eventually takes its own shape?  Right now the wires is cheaper, but I'd say that won't take long given how fast the bio industry is slashing prices and trying to accomidate with the zeitgeist of the world's healthcare crisis.

End of the driver regulated freeway

        Was it the Eigthday or some other scifi movie that had cars that autodrove along the highway?  Doesn't matter, it's coming closer and closer to reality.  What would this mean? Cheaper insurence premiums for starters- imagine a world where public roads were 99% efficient- no rush hour, significantly less accidents and fatalities, less emmisions, more fuel efficiency, it would be great!  It is of course difficult to trust yourself to a new system like an autopilot- but you would get used to it.  Kind of like how we have got used to microwaves reheating our food instead of ovens or fire; or how our digital clocks wake us up; or our water heaters don't blow up on us; or how we blindly follow our GPS to wherever we're going instead of using paper maps and compasses.  Despite our reservations, computers are more efficient and less erronous than humans- if something is wrong, it is usually because of human input error on one end or the other.

        But if public roads were just autodestinations, you could just assume if there is an accident, an entire network of vehicles and smart roads could record WHY that accident occurred- computer glitch or human error.  One way would be costly for you, the other, would keep insurance companies poor.  It would take time to impliment of course, but so did the freeway system and cars in general.

The end of Capitalism

        Yes, even economies are just a societal technology constructed out of the simple natural law of economics.  I say the end of Capitalism, meaning as we understand it.  Free markets are a dumb idea- it replaces autocratic entities that hold all the money to private company barons who hold all the money.  Same thing, different names.  So we create a balance of Socialism and Capitalism.  Eventually that Socialism will take more and more shape to fit each country's unique build- this is not the same Socialist ideas of certain Russians of the past.  This is it in a more balanced, less forced, manner which doesn't give governments OR people complete free reign.  

        Why then, do I believe this is coming up so soon (meaning within a century)?  Because with the advent of the world wide web we have digitized our monetary system- giving completely to the fact that money is IMGINARY.  There is no underlying reason money is as valuable as it is, except that people believe it.  So now we no longer have to interact with other humans to allow money flow, and since nobody has any idea what the limits of money are, we can just pretend there is more and more and nobody will know.  Money will eventually lose much of its importance to other economic derivitives- such as information or, as always, labor.  So then if we, as communities communicate less and less with each other, we lose that collective grasp of how our city/town/county/state/country is doing economically.  Who then keeps track, or cares?  Why, companies!  So either companies will take over and nations will dissapear- in which case free market is gone, because technically speaking the market is now the government; or the government will learn how to watchdog and police giant companies.  Hell, I don't actually think Marx was too far from the mark with his thoughts of the evolution of societies- not to say his interpretation at specific points and how they were carried out weren't just crazy...

Eugenics (unfortunately)

        Moving along the cloning lines is a darker current- that our understanding of specific genetics will allow for unspeakable horrors.  Our lives are getting longer, increasing in quality, and there will be more humans than ever next year- and that trend will never stop.  This means resources will eventually become scarcer and more valuable.  This means borders will be encroached, and war will be the inevitable outcome.  We understand the issues with nuclear tech- fallout is a bitch for the whole world.  When it comes to diseases they can just as easily be spread back to its creator's origins- very difficult to contain.  But what about diseases that could be launched and activated by very specific- and rare- codons.  

       What this means, is that anybody who carries a vestigial gene code from, lets say Ghengis Kahn, will be killed by Disease X.  That means roughly 1/3 men in the world will be killed, 2/3 will be from European dissent.  Getting where this could go? Leave all the women, kill all the men, find a race, exterminate it.  Put modifiers in the air or water that will sterilize only certains of the population- eugenics at its scariest, and most efficient.

What I wish I could say we will see within a century:

Moon Colony

Mars Colony

Food replicators

Teleporters

unmanned warzones (drone controlled)

Lightspeed crafts

Why won't we see any of this? Because it wouldn't sell.  Because it would be work.  Because only people with imagination or ambition would work for these kind of things.  Unlike a holodeck, which is what the average sedated TV watching human would love to have- myself included.  But, I'd like to believe that with all this computer tech and bio tech we could successfully colonize other worlds and move beyond our scope of perception into the wild black beyond.  We live in a sci-fi age, so why not go along with it?  That's all I can say, for now, I am out of time.

Weaving

       It's one of those nights where epiphany can strike tonight.  I hold to no evidence or mathematics behind what I am about to describe in this post, but it is an interesting thought (or so I think, given that it's 3a.m).

       My thought is in concerns to gravity.  Recently there has been some research and hypotheticals that the phenomena we know as gravity is from the principles of another dimension (6th or 9th dimension alternatives, I'm not entirely sure right now).  This idea would mean that in mass, and in a currently non-perceived way, our universe as we understand it is perferated and leaking this strange glue we know as gravity together.
       Gravity is an accepted theory.  This means it is for all scientific properties and arguments, a valid law that cannot be reproduced in full within a lab setting (like evolution).  Now for those who may not know, scientists still haven't figured out exactly how gravity works.  By current models of modern physics, we have attempted several ways to define and pin down gravity's origins, but in every case so far there is still a glaring problem that contradicts other cornerstones of physics.  Without getting into a great amount of math and details, gravity is the essential middle finger to physics.  Not that there aren't compelling and very valid explanations and ideas about how gravity works, it's just that in conjunction with modern physics laws, gravity becomes the square peg for the round hole.
       So this is where my thought comes in.  What if we have been thinking about the relative shape of our universe all wrong?  I would believe thinking of it as a point is valid.  One stop of many, one instance of night infinite possibilities.  But I don't believe it is a stand alone point.  I think it is a point where two other dimensional possibilities overlap- like the overlapping area of a weave.

My awesome diagram

       Now, with one strand of infinite universes where the only constant would be the physics alienating principle gravity (grey spraypaint line); the other strand would be infinite universes where the only constant would be something else-in this case electron charge (I know, there's a better term for what I'm getting at like subatomic polarity or something sciencey like that, I'm not a physicist, and it's 3a.m).  Now when these two (and admittedly infinitely more) of these strands weave around each other, it would make sense that in the overlapping areas they shared parts of their series together.  It wouldn't be 100%, but maybe it's like a weave made of course rope- minute fibers would scratch their way into the opposing strand, puncturing it randomly, but in some volume.

       This would not only allow for us to conceive of our reality as being a fixated point within the higher dimensions, but would also justify why other dimensional causes would leak into our own.  Then again, now that I'm typing this all out, it just starts to sound vaguely like string theory...  I'll have to read more into it later, as I just wanted to get this down before falling asleep.  You can read more and discuss.

The Fall of Man(liness)

       My last post dealt with the decline of knowing when and what a man is/could/should be.  This post deals into more of the why the idea of what a man is has declined.  Meaning, that when you see men in popular media often times they aren't really "manly," but more just a polished looking guy.  I am not claiming that those two things are mutually exclusive, but in our society they seem to try.

Note: Looks 14 and in a child's suite.

       So as the picture may have tipped off, I'm going to start in with images  popular media blast us with.  I'm not going on a crusade that says men have it worse than women in concerns to impossible body images, not by a long shot.  Though I am saying that men still suffer negative imaging from what popular advertisements portray.  To start, this picture was in the top 3 in my google image search of "male fashion model."  The others were fairly similar, though only focused on the neck and head.  But look at this image- what comes to mind?  Youth, a-symmetrical, straight, clean, smooth, those would be the terms at the forefront for me in the positive (towards the company's end).  Toward the negative side though- clean, shaven, polished, young, bored, soft, in a child's suite.  Yes, I suppose the clothes fit properly, but in a style that traditionally makes the wearer appear more slender and younger.
       When you think of what is man, what ideas generally come to mind?  After a very unscientific survey I presented my friends, these are the terms they came up with: Rugged, beefy, gassy, strong, polite, rough, not dramatic, stoic, independent, primal, hairy, smelly, and that kind of wrapped it up.  Now look at that picture again- does that picture imply any of those ideas? No-the kid has no facial hair, thins his body out intentionally, comes across as too clean, his face looks angst-ridden. Now, compare to this photo:

Picture: A fucking Man

       Now this is a picture of what most of the 20th century agreed was about the most manliest man that ever manned, with the exception of maybe this guy:

Picture: The fucking man

       What do these guys have in common? They are the pinnacle idea of masculinity to many Americans.  They are clean, but they show age.  They show age with facial hair, hair color, care lines on the face, the rustic backgrounds (implicit ideas), Teddy's hands aren't super soft looking, their clothes are nice- but show off the shoulders, hardened eyes, dominant positions in the picture.  These guys look like how men ought to. So somewhere in the last 120 years, we went from these fine specimens, to this:

Where did we go wrong?

       Honestly, this is a tricky question.  Undoubtedly the feminist movement had some weight in this switchover.  Consider that we finally give women their deserved rights (which is still working up in our society), and therefore their opinions gain more value overall (I'm a feminist, so don't think I'm downspeaking women's rights).  So when women want their men to be clean, companies figured out that that was more profitable than trying to sell "odor of the sea" to men's perfume stores.  This is purely speculation of course, the actual reasons probably are more profound, but I strongly believe that this is a large part of the change.

       However, now women are about 4th generation into the women's rights, and it seems the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction.  Given that the current fad is to have facial hair in men, it's the beginning of this swing back.  Granted- the fad seems to be coming from those men whole dove into skinny jeans and women's tees.  But as far as I see, that is popular culture resigning to this swing backwards.
       Now, I don't think men will be in the rugged/rustic fads for a few decades yet, but for now it's just the pendulum swinging back.

Of course I've let this post sit for weeks, so I'm posting it a little unfinished.