Jump to content

Soup forgot his password

Member
  • Posts

    738
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    1

Everything posted by Soup forgot his password

  1. Acer, my knee was hurting from a motorcycle accident. I was cut off by a VW Golf, knee went into the side of it and I flipped a few times starting at probably still over 100 mph. I have no clue why it stopped hurting. I did change my shoes to some mizunos which had me striking near the ball of my foot, which like you said is a good thing, and after four years of my knee hurting when I walk, sounding crackly if i squat down, and swelling when i jog... all those symptoms recently disappeared. Completely. Maybe running smoothed out the jagged broken cartilage in my leg but i'm not broken anymore. I really have no clue, but it's awesome and I feel blessed. Also I'll take your advice on finding a sustainable speed. Also, question, anyone worry about bone loss? Apparently swimmers and cyclists are prone to bone loss because of the low/no impact. Not sure what it means or if its something to worry about, if you're like me and exercise in hopes of being an active 80 year old some day.
  2. I dunno if you noticed but those two ways are just one way: you assuming you must know more than me. Hows that working for you? If you want to construct a response I can respond and I can explain whatever you don't understand. Alternatively you can check the CBT and just read all the books in ther. I started that thread EXACTLY so people like you couldn't start these pissing contests. If you want to be a smartass, mission accomplished.
  3. Ok so how about the ways computers or technology changes the value system of society? Just like religion plays a role in a cultures epistemology, so did the clock, oral tradition, the writtenword, the wordpress, the telegraph, the telephone, the radio, and the tv. With each new technology thats found its way into general use it becomes more than just part of the culture. It becomes the maker of metaphors and vales and redefines things like epistemology to suit the medium. Again im on my iphone so ill make this breif but i hope you think about the idea that the format Of the book had more to do with the content and creation of the bible, philosophy, math, history, the comstitution, congress....everything we take for granted...than anything else. In other words the very way we tell the truth is determined by the medium a culture uses to communicate, and with every new technology comes a new medium. Think about how televisionchanged politics, news, education, philosophy, our ideologies, the nature of childhood and what is "adult content" in this country. Nowadays its normal for children to make adult-like consumer decisions. Children buying stuff or making consumer decisions wouldve be absurd before tv. Before tv purchases were family purchases, not purchases made by the individual and therefore had to be made with the utmost respect for rationality. Nowadays its absurd to think children cant be consumers. And for the most part its absurd to argue against it. The only format that allows real cultural critique is the book, and that critique only makes an impact on a book based society. We are not a book vased society. Weare a tv based society that rarely even reads a newspaper. We make decisions based on tv about politics, social ediquete, history, consumerism, and what our countrymen are like based on the tv. And while i agree with you that its not the book, tv or the computer itself but how we use them, i argue that the medium i insists we use them in a certain way. A hammer has only one use, and its easy to see how our perception of the world is manipulated by it. A book has an author and all the infornation laid out in front of you so its about as easy to analyze as a hammer. People rarely if never see the tv or the computer and how it controls the content they consume. Theres a reason for the level of absurdity on tv and the internet that stems from the DNA of tv and computers. I could go on forever so ill end with this, if youre spending time on reformed epistemology, look at the epistemology of technology as well. How do we tell whats true in a book compared to whats true on television or on the computer? What kind of society does each of these create and which one is better or worse than the others? When you look at reformed epistemology, how does each new technology reframe religion in society. The clock destroyed regligions metaphor for eternity. The television made religion look absurd because heaven, gods etc cannot be depicted visually. The content of the bible only exists in the printed word.
  4. Ironically im using my iPhone to type this so it'll be breif. I dont think i was talking past you. You were talking about how easy it is to jump from one text to the next rather than just focusing on one book, even when that book doesnt entirely focus on the key word youre searching for. Maybe i didnt explain hypercard or hypertext properly but the very concept of "searching" for "key word" comes from it. I would recommend going to a library and asking a librarian if they can help you. I know the san francisco public library has is pretty thorough. Searching for key words is good when youve already read the book, but when youre not sure what youre looking for its better to consult a professional. Thats what i meant by the inefficiencies Google compared to a person. I didnt jnow you were local. I thought i met or knew all the locals.
  5. Shai has talked a lot about tor. If you want real anonymity dont use the internet. Use usenet. Anyway, we're doing a good job of keeping this thread on topic. Please dont derail it. And thanks to that cartoon I gotta reformat my posts. What you're talking about here is hypertext. Its one of the oldest and most original parts of the internet that is woven into the fabric of every webpage there has ever been and will ever be. Hyperlinking, hypertext, or HyperCard was invented by a software developer at Apple named Bill Atkinson which correctly predicted the look and feel of the internet BEFORE web browsers or services like AOL online. Now I could tell you all about it, but on the internet writing about anything at full-length is absurd when I can just tell you to click here. From there you'll jump around the page, searching words, and looking for what you believe is the relevant part of the text. You won't read the whole thing, which is actually part of the design, that everyone who uses the internet can feel. For the same reason I'll recommend that you read, "The Shallows" by Nicholas Carr, so that you can learn about the neurological effects of this kind of reading. Apart from destroying your ability to concentrate on anything for any length of time, you're also changing the neurology of your brain. You're remapping the way data is stored, and in fact you're replacing your ability to memorize what you read with a big map of the internet so that you can navigate and find the information to read it again. Another part of the problem is that people are addicted to searching for new things. They want new information, regardless of how relevant it is to their lives. They spend hours upon hours a day on google, facebook, all these websites searching for and consuming huge quantities of irrelevant information that the brain cannot store. THe problem is that these people dont know the difference between relevant and irrelevant information anymore. Everything on the internet is fragmented, and in fact it's lead to the coinage of the term "bits of information" which an oxymoron, just like "multitasking." There's no such thing as either. Its either information or it's fragmented garbage. You're either focused on your job or your attention is elsewhere. Here's my question to you, when you were searching for reformed epistemology, why didnt you just go to the library and pick up a book about reformed epistemology and start reading? There's a ton of them out there. You could've very easily picked up any of them and just started reading. I'll pause on this: book sales are drying up and ebook sales are becoming the big thing. We may think that ebooks are the same as printed books but they're not. Apart from only existing on a screen instead on paper you can touch and feel (things your brain likes and helps it to consign to long-term memory), the Kindle has started to embed hypertext into books. Readers have the ability to click around a book, read a synopsis of the plot or descriptions of each of the characters. The entire point of a book is that you read it from beginning to end. There are no hyperlinks. Its supposed to be a stream of consciousness that flows from sentence to sentence, paragraph to paragraph, beginning to end—Readers are supposed to follow the book. Thats what reading comprehension IS. So what will happen to books, information, streams of consciousness, and reading comprehension when ebooks take over? What happens to information when it just becomes fragmented little hyperlinks?
  6. Dignan I'm curious what it is you're looking for on the internet. One of my main arguments against google is that efficiency is not a replacement for human intelligence and google will always be a bunch of algorithms, never a brain. And while you do have access to printed materials on the internet, your level of comprehension is lost when those printed materials aren't in their full context. Why would you only read a chapter out of a book if you liked the chapter? I think you'd agree that calling most information you find on the internet a "complete chapter" is generous. Most of what you find is even more fragmented than that. If you ever really need to learn about something you always end up having to read the book, so why not just start with the book to begin with? Plus If you only ever read for answers to the questions you've already thought of, your knowledge on a subject will always be very narrow. Most people say they dont read because they dont have time to read. Where is this time going? Chances are, among other things, its going to searching for things to read.
  7. Tron I respect your opinion because we've talked a lot and I know you think about what you say but i gotta disagree. Researching on the internet may seem faster than researching in a library but the information you end up with when you use the internet is so inferior to book learning that its truly a waste of fucking time. There are volumes of books written on the inadequacies of Google as a research tool, none of which you can read on the internet. And because I'd much rather everyone here read those books than read me I'll make a short and incomplete list of complaints with google. 1. How good your search results are completely depends on how well you can guess the title of the webpage you're searching for. If you guess wrong you're screwed. And if you dont know what it is you're looking for, IE researching something new to you, you're equally screwed. 2. Look into how google's search algorithm decides what are "top search results" they are completely superficial and absolutely ridiculous. For instance, if something is viral and popular it's considered a more trustworthy source of information. If it has had a recent graphic design update and the webpage looks "fresher" then it's more trustworthy. If it's had minor tweaks to the information, such as wikipedia, then it's more trustworthy. In other words, a fucking BOOK as defined by a google search algorithm, would the the LAST thing it recommends you use. There are websites that perfectly explain calculus in fun and memorable ways that will never be found on google because they were published ten years ago. 3. Look up how much of the internet has Google actually indexed. It's between 4-12%. 4. Ask google for a book on a subject that you'll enjoy but you've never heard of before. When that fails ask a professor or a librarian the same question. That's wat they're there for. 5. The reason why people today are SO BORING is because all they read and watch on the internet, television and what not, are associated with their four interests. If you try to talk to someone about something that isnt Baseball, Mass Media Hip hop, or Saturday Night live they have no fucking clue what to say. This is the absurd ramification of having all of the information we receive tailored to our interests: Nobody can learn anything NEW. 6. It's not the record industry's fault for monopolizing music. It's the cultural shift that happened with the radio and television where everybody started to listen to the same four bands. Kanye West isnt the most successful musician of all time, he's just a product of mass media. If you take music off radio, off television, and off the internet, you reopen all these venues in the world that are currently only played by the same 40 artists. There's a reason why the sound of music hasnt changed in 30 years when before the internet it would still change every decade. Music is meant to be physical and contextual. You're not supposed to listen to the same fucking song in your car, in your headphones, and at a club. It's supposed to be live and part of the atmosphere. Local art and music cultures are dying because they can't compete with technology. And if you're looking at youtube and thinking, "wow what a great medium for new artists to break out." That's fucking bullshit. Youtube is a solution to a problem that shouldnt exist. Here's the thing about himilayan monk music, what the fucking point of himilayan monk music if you're not in the fucking himilayans? And why does himilayan monk music even exist? Because it's culturally isolated, away from mass media where the locals can cultivate a sound thats unique to their geopgraphy and actually feels contextual and relevant. Music without context is fucking pointless. Even the example you gave proves this point "himilayan monk music." You didnt say "some shit you himilayans play on the radio." You made a geographical and cultural connection to the music thats even more important than the music itself.
  8. Somehow I missed uzzi's post. It is a good one. Here's the thing you gotta understand about your friends on facebook, they have an addiction to facebook. The brain is addicted to data. Reading a new news story or even finding a new news story releases dopamine in the brain, which is why people cant help but check their phones for texts, emails, status updates, youtube videos every few minutes. Their brains are addicted to the internet just like humans can be addicted to sex or anything else. Their rationality is being overridden by a dopamine addiction in their brain. If they tell you they can't phone you because their too busy with facebook, that's peer pressure, the same behavior seen in groups of drug users or any other group trying to normalize an addictive and self destructive activity. If i cant get people to read anything from the Crossfire Book Thread, which truly are well-written and thoroughly enjoyable, here's a quick lecture from Nicholas Carr. http://bcove.me/7j4zpzwz Also, I'm obviously not going to convince anyone to get rid of computers from their life. We can't. It's physically impossible to remove the computer from the world now. It would be like removing electricity from your office. You would be able to continue to work, but you wouldnt be able to compete with companies that had electricity and so you'd lose your share in the market. Instead, what I'm saying is that we should be thinking about how to restrict the computer to certain things. What tasks are computers good for, and what tasks do computers utterly destroy. We need to think about what CANT be digitized and put on the internet, because right now we assume everything, our entire lives MUST be monopolized by the internet. The previous generation never once thought about what CANT be put on the television, which is why the presidential candidacy is a fucking Gong show. I like how you use 1984 as an example, because in 1984 the culture was a TV culture. The president was a movie star, and the other running canidate was a host on Saturday Night Live. Canidates believed the presidency was won or lost by makeup. In other words, cosmetology replaced ideology somewhere in the late 1900's. "Social networks" and anything that calls itself a "community" should be greatly limited on the internet. In fact I dont think music should be allowed on the internet either. I think culture and community should be geographical and since music is part of culture, it too should exist only in a geographical arena. Even record sales were tied to geography at one point because the physical presence of a record meant it was still tied to a geographical area. And BOOKS, holy fucking books. Books are becoming more and more important in the age of the internet. The format of the book will stand the test of time, so long as humanity continues to value things like rationality, intellectualism, contemplation, etc. Heres a few final points: TECHNOLOGY is not a replacement for IDEOLOGY. We live in a society where our ideology is informed by the technology we use. To quote marshal mcluhan, "The medium is the metaphor." I keep hearing people say "Its not the TV's fault, its how we use it." which is wrong because the TV itself dictates how we use it. In other words, the medium of the television ITSELF decides the content of our culture FAR more than the shows being broadcasted.
  9. Actually the vegan snack eating anime watching bay aryans dont want to think about whether computers are good for society. We invented the personal computer, the youtube, the google, the silicon valley, the entire information technology industry. We're getting too rich and enjoying our youtubes and our xboxes too much to think about whether this is going to destroy the middle class, the educational system, the environment, or our descendant's quality of life. One lecture you wont find on TED is someone questioning the value of the computer, and you never will. The hippies invented much of the internet and raved about the virtual revolution back in the 60's off Haight and Ashberry. The inventors of VR saw it as the next best thing to LSD. Anyone who who questions the status quo is intellectual. If you believe intellectualism has anything to do with wealth in this country you'll be sad to know that the number of college graduates who came from wealthy families is less than those who are first time college graduates. There is absolutely no correlation between "privelege" and intellectualism. Also I'm advocating books, which are cheaper and more accessible to everyone in this country regardless of class. The information at the library is not only more relevant and of higher quality than the "information" found on the internet, but the format in which it's presented: On paper you can see hold and feel. This also been scientifically proven to allow for deeper concentration, memorization and contemplation. This is only part of what we lose when we transfer our information, and in turn our entire culture, to the internet where it's monopolized and controlled by the Information Technology industry. The printing press democratized information, education, freedom of speech. The internet reduces your voice to a like button. It puts the professionals into a realm competing against a crowd of amateurs who will do your job for free, and it's assumed that the final product is the same thing. Wikipedia is not good because the information is of higher quality than the sources its stolen fragments of information from. It's good because it makes search engines more efficient—not to be confused with more intelligent. It also creates an absurd environment where people like you think your knowledge on the subject is equal my knowledge on the subject, meaning there's no hierarchy of ideas and 99% of the internet is people bullshitting. It doesn't matter how educated or informed you are on a subject, the value of what you know is only as high as your SEO.
  10. Same. Funniest thing ive seen in this thread.
  11. Somehow i dont think you're getting laid at all. Somewhere between needing to explain that you're fucking "wet" pussy as opposed to dead cat pussy and the fact that you said you dont masturbate leads me to believe you're locked in your mom's basement somewhere embarrassed to even admit you started jerking off. Only a 16 year old would think you give up masturbating after you start getting laid. I'm 26, and I keep the five knuckle shuffle because i'm in a long-term relationship, but that's another thread. And dont drop out of college until you learn how to argue or at least how to be funny because you suck at both.
  12. I was referring to "Ricardo effect, the. A proposition of David Ricardo (1772-1823) " but i think you know that. By the way you just said the publishing of Harvard School of Economics is absurd because you THINK it goes against the word of your long-since dead lord and savior Rothbard and Mises—Not because of any factuality or evidence, but simply because you place faith in their omniscient wisdom. We have another word for that. Im not even sure why you posted in here if you thought it was absurd or silly. Most of what I'm saying comes from books written by Jaron Lanier and Nicholas Carr, both of whom are deeply involved in and greatly respected by the IT industry. Please have a little more intelligence than calling this argument absurd. Spam you completely don't understand the argument. Please go back and actually read my posts, or better yet the books I've already recommended. Stop being a man of one book. Cunt you're an angsty adolescent who discovered that he can post and masturbate and other forms of self validation. Please, go to college. Not for yourself, but so the people around you can stand to be near you.
  13. You can't refute historical fact with economic proverbs. Especially when you're quoting a few guys that died before electricity, automation, and economies of scale were even invented. This is why I recommended that you go back and look at your chainsaw analogy. If you really want to stick to that analogy, do some research and see what you can find about the chainsaw and the lumbering industry. If you want to know where my facts are coming from ask me, or go straight to the source. I've posted all the books on the subject in the Crossfire Book Thread. You can also go here http://www.nicholasgcarr.com/ for a good jumpoff point. Edit: actually I'm going to take a different approach to those quotes. 1. ERRONEOUSLY attributed. The person writing this KNOWS that the methods of production don't help unemployment in the long-run. 2. This guy died 60 years before electricity. The first rise of middle-class wages occurred when work became so monotonous and boring that nobody wanted to do it. The second came when the cost of living went up because americans had to buy all the electrical appliances that came out of our newfound powergrid. These appliances, much like the powergrid, was first designed to save americans time and money, but as everyone else began to buy them, they just became added expense to the normal cost of living. The vaccuum cleaner, for example ended up adding more hours cleaning than it removed. Why? Because before the vaccuum, people had to drag their rugs outside and beat them. People would hire day servants once a month to help with the house chores, and because of all this, cleaning would be reduced to something you did once a month. Now thanks to the vaccuum the standard of cleanliness was raised and people now vaccuum once a week or even daily. It wasnt until the advent of electrical appliances that the housewife became a full-time job. This meant that husbands needed more money to make their household more automated, leading to more labor unions and a rise in wages. Its easy to assume that this is what lead to automation, but this is false. Automation was already there. The jobs the laborers were doing were jobs that machines COULD do. They were designed to be motonous and repetitive. It was the intention of the companies to reduce the role of humans in the factory to that of cogs, and to eventually replace those cogs with cheaper, automated cogs. 3. The standard of living peaked in america 40 years ago. It's been going down ever since.
  14. Is that a DOHC or SOHC? I might be asking you questions in a sec. My CB900C's been sitting around collecting dust because i had a valve go. Didnt want to fix it because if I did I'd have to rebuild the bottom end to make sure it didnt blow up next. I'd just rebuild the fucking carbs. I bet your diaphragms are worn and cracked too.
  15. First off I disagree that computers killing jobs is myopic. We're talking about a continuous trend from 1880 to 2012 across Europe the United States and the rest of the world. I focus on the united states because we're the largest consumers of electricity and computers even compared to Europe, therefor the effects of computers and electricity has been and will continue to be felt in America first. And do you have any evidence that the chainsaw didn't reduce employment? The entire purpose of the chainsaw was to increase efficiency, which meant fewer hands were needed, meaning lumbering companies didn't need so many workers for the same output. The chainsaw was created to give one lumberjack or one lumbering company an advantage over the other companies. Soon as everybody has a chainsaw it becomes an obligatory tool for the job rather than something that provides any advantage over a plain old axe. The same goes for your analogy of the internet creating "Cottage style ebay traders have access to huge markets, media and web designers, code monkeys etc" Did those jobs exist before the internet? Yes, and with even more diversity than we have today. Those people had storefronts and serviced a geographical region rather than a virtual community. Those storefronts were all wiped out by economies of scale, which can only exist if automation exists. The internet didnt create more graphic designers, software developers, artists, or whatever you may be referring to as "cottage style ebay traders." We've had software developers since companies have used Turing machines and mainframes. We had more graphic designers before the internet than we do now. Does the internet create more job opportunities for them? No. But just like lumberjacks have to use chainsaws, all small companies have to use the internet. They don't have a choice. The internet for many is the only market left. Finally I'll pause with this, what's the difference between efficiency and intelligence? Are humans machines? Can google ever be intelligent? Can you ever get the same kind of answers or responses from a search engine that you could get from a person? Can a web store ever replace a store you go into and meet someone? I'm not talking about some giant chain with morons working the floor... I'm talking about the kind of answers you get from a guy who runs a small shop and has a lifetime of experience behind him. When we search for something or buy something online, was that something we really wanted, or are we just pretending it was because it's all that we could find?
  16. Goddamnit i want to read your books but my county library doesnt have em. I'll keep looking. ‘Land of Promise,’ by Michael Lind
  17. I'm going to stand by that silly hypothetical for the time being and I'll explain why if you just ask. Please note that "Opens up space for new economic activity," is not the same as, "does not destroy jobs." The computer hasn't created a single job that couldn't eventually be done by a computer, and ever since the 70's we've seen exactly that economic decline. If you adjust for inflation, the US middle class never made more than they did in the 1970's. And every month for years we've only been recording job losses. Last month alone America lost 1.2 million jobs. If you look at where there's a little job growth, its not in computer/web 2.0 sectors, the industries that are now making all the money. (It's in biotech/pharmaceuticals and other highly specialized science industries that I'll have to talk about in a later post.) Look also at the change of wealth from being widely distributed throughout a middle class labor force, to now only a handful of software developers. When Google Bought YouTube for 1.9 billion dollars, they had 25 employees—and that's average. Some sites only had one employee. (I can name companies if wanted) All these billion dollar companies which you might be calling "new economic activity" are ran by a handful of developers. All new software developers are contractors or consultants that are paid to automate a new system and then let go. Companies, even tech companies like Apple and Verizon, want more automation, not more employees. Now you might be thinking that sure, software development isn't a great place to look for employed, but at least there's indie work there. For how much longer? If you compare the evolution of the internet/computing industry to telegraph services, postage services, telephone services, newspaper services, electricity services, and so on they all follow the same pattern. In the beginning they are lots of little dinosaurs that quickly die out and eventually one big fucking dinosaur takes advantage of economies of scale. Soon after that piece of tech becomes a "utility" that everyone can't live without, rather than what it was originally used for, to give businesses an advantage over other businesses. In the beginning of electricity, each factory bought their own dynamo to supply power, but as Edison set out to create a power-grid that could take advantage of bigger and more efficient dynamos that could produce cheaper kilowatts, companies scrapped their own dynamos for the grid. We're seeing the same thing with personal computing: While the personal computer democratized processing power and hard drive space, they wont be able to compete in the market against netbooks connected to giant data centers with processing power limited only by the speed of fiber optic connections. It's getting TLDR again so I'll pause here. The point is this: Every new technology soon becomes a utility—an added expense to the cost of living—rather than an edge over the rest. This leads to more specialized jobs that require newer and more formalized education. This is why the wealthy parts of America went from sending only 30% of their kids to high-school, to now requiring an undergraduates or a masters to even find employment. What will happen when a PHD is required to find employment? Never-mind what happens to the liberal arts and the original mission statement of colleges, what happens when a doctorates is just a social norm and tuition prices continue to quadruple every decade? If everyone has a doctorates, what possible edge will college even be capable of providing people? What will our value for education be then? Fist, just hang in there.
  18. Fist I'm going to revise my answer. When I say "philosophical" I don't mean that this is a baseless debate floating in the ether of other philosophical debates. I have a lot of facts from which I've inferred that should stop using computers. All industries in America have reduced employment in the last decade. The only industry that hasn't grown or declined is software development. This is because of the automation of fucking everything. In fact all new jobs that have been created since the 1990's have been temp jobs. And all new jobs that have been created since the 2000's have been jobs that can be easily automated by computers. The only jobs that we still need humans for are being done free through crowdsourcing. Unemployment will only continue to rise ad infinitum. That's my guarantee. Here's a few more things to think about. The internet is rapidly turning into a public utility just like electricity and telephones. In fact you should think of flickr, youtube, skype, google, wordpress, amazon, ebay, facebook whoever made this bulletin board, as internet utilities as well. You need them to do anything on the internet. And just like electricity, soon they will be utilities provided by one giant company, fiber-optically piped into every home from one giant data center. And like a utility you dont have a choice. You cannot run a business or do anything without electricity. You cannot do anything without telephones. Once a culture has become reliant on a technology, you don't have a choice. If you want to be socially and culturally connected to the people around you WILL pay your bills and buy into the grid. So far I've gathered that this means a couple things: 1. The personal computer will no longer exist. We will all be using tablets, netbooks, and other devices that connect us to the "cloud." Cloud computing is the future. Just like electricity, economies of scale will take over and the same will happen to computational power. Power plant-like data centers will do all of the computational power at a fraction of the cost. This future is actually a reality today. The only reason why personal computers still exist is because cloud computing is reliant on broadband and fiber optic networks. As soon as the infrastructure goes fiber optic, the personal computer will be dead. In fact, hold onto your PC and don't buy a new one. There's no point. 2. Google Glass isnt just a stupid idea, it's an inevitable stupid idea that we will all one day be wearing. Just like facebook has become required to communicate to anyone regardless of distance or relevance to our lives, as all information, all socialization, all politics and business become digitized, we will need to be connected to the internet at all times. Right now I'm trying to figure out how to get out of this economy. I can write up a few worst-case scenarios of how this will end, but here's my favorite and craziest one I've thought of: In the future, the world becomes like the Matrix, except it's ran by google. And instead of people being forced into the Matrix we gladly accept it. Why? Because there are no jobs, people can't afford food or housing. Google promises to plug them into the matrix and feed us nutrients to keep us alive but make that gruel taste like real food. In exchange google is allowed to use our brains for the computational power. Not battery power, brain power. The human brain is far faster per watt than any computer man will ever make. To link them up seamlessly through a cloud network will create the cheapest and most powerful computational device ever conceived. This seems far fetched, but I live very close to Silicon Valley and know a lot of software engineers. I've even met many of original employees of companies like Dropbox and Facebook, including Mr. Zuck. YOu can do your own reading on this too as nobody's really shy about their philosophical beliefs in Silicon Valley. google's engineers and founders all believe in what they call "The Singularity." Where all minds are one. Where the entirety of human information is available instantly to everyone. This scenario, and the "The Singularity" rely on the "Computational theory of Mind" Which believes that the brain is a machine. There's a lot of evidence to suggest that it's not. Never the less, the human brain has a hard time telling the difference between a real person and siri, or a video game and reality, and reacts similary to both. If in the future virtual reality becomes as convincing as the real world, and real employment is so drastically cut that most people are unable to support themselves, they may turn to a kind of virtual reality for sensory while reducing their lifestyle to as sedentary as possible to make their survival affordable. But why not just go off the grid and live life without electricity? WHy not reduce their expenses that way? As Aristotle put it, humans are civic creatures. We value civilization more than our own lives, so if everyone else is doing it, we will follow them in. I could go on here but this is turning into a TLDR post, a problem that didn't exist before the internet. Another thing to consider I guess. If you want me to provide factual evidence to support my far-fetched conclusion I have heaps of it. And if you agree with me that this is altogether plausible, then another question to ask is what's the problem with living in a virtual simulation of it's all the same? Therein lies why I believe this to be a philosophical discussion. What is life supposed to be? What are the highest values of humanity? And can we attain them by continuing down this digital road? And finally this discussion may lead to a discussion about alternative economies that dont involve replacing people with computers or crowdsourcing, respecting craftsmen, not treating people like cogs in a larger machine (A philosophy that was sold to factory owners and the elite back in 1880 when Edison's powergrid was introduced to the world). In turn this economy wouldnt involve menial repetitive labor that humans universally fucking hate, making wives into "housewives" or "home machine engineers" that actually spend MORE time doing house chores, not less—and bettering the relationship between people and their communities and families, not the relationship between people and businesses. Anyway I'm out.
  19. Fist I would agree that this is a philosophical question. What is the computer? What is computing? Is it a benefit or a detriment to society? Just remember that our concepts of society, government, democracy, capitalism, are all just philosophies, abstract concepts, that we have decided are more valuable than others. I would add that today computing is becoming another public utility. Computing power in many regards is as general a societal need as electricity and in the future it will be sold just like electricity. No longer will we own computing machines. We will pay for access to a computing grid, just like a power grid, and just like a power grid this means there will be huge monopolies
  20. This is a serious question with very serious repercussions. I doubt there's anybody else on 12oz quite so wired-in than me. My first computer was a Macintosh LC-III in 1993 when I was seven years old. After that my family bought a Macinosh Performa, which as a child I used frequently. One of my uncles helped run a company called Club KidSoft, which was designed to help parents overcome their fears of letting children use computers. KidSoft predates household internet, so they offered magazine subscriptions bundled with CD's that had "educational" software on them targeted at children. In junior high I wanted an iMac so bad that my uncle, a history professor at U Michigan, promised to match my savings dollar for dollar. I was a consumer of Apple products at the age of twelve. By fourteen I was working at my uncles graphic design firm, meaning I've been heavily contributing to the superficial aesthetic takeover of the rational typographic American culture for over twelve years. It's not until now, at age 26, that I'm hearing an argument against everything I know and am hopelessly addicted to. I cannot imagine using a library to write a research paper. I wouldnt even know where to start. And yet from now until 2013 I plan on trying to unplug myself. Its important that I do this now, while I still can. Libraries and other physical information sources are dying out, and when that happens we'll have no choice but to use the computer for everything. The computer isnt a cute companion to the written word, it's a replacement, and a crude one at that. Other points I want to make before opening this up to discussion: 1. What does the computer and the internet do to our brain? There is substantial neurological evidence to show that it remaps our brains and the way we think, hold information and so on. The question is, is this remapping better or worse than what we had before? Read the book, "The Shallows" for more on this. Also what does the computer do to the way we define truth? Religion defines it as the word of god, or someone almighty and credible. The book defines it as whatever is most-likely true out of a stack of likely arguments. The television defines it by how credible a speaker looks in context with the setting that they speak in—basically a return to religion. Computers defines credibility as whoever has the best SEO and pops up first on google. Im not asking you to agree with this description or think computers are the worst of all the other mediums, I'm just asking you to think about it. 2. What does the computer and the internet do to our social life? Read "You are not a gadget," and "Alone Together" for more on that. What happens to our sense of community? Do we still feel part of a community that shares a common land, or do we think community is the same as a "virtual community" which is just a bunch of people with a shared interest? What about families? Are children still allowed to be children or are we giving them all the information and decisions of adults from a young age. Like I said, I was a consumer of computers by 12, should children really be making consumer decisions before adulthood? Is there such a thing as childhood anymore? Read "Building a bridge to the 18th Century" for more on that. 3. What happens when the computer gains a monopoly on all public discourse? Read all the books by Neil Postman to learn what the book did to public disquisition, and how that was completely destroyed before the 1980's by television. Today the presidential candidacy is no different than the olympics. It would scare the crap out of the rest of the world if they knew we voted for bush because of superficial appearances. He looked and sounded more like the average American, so he won. 4. What will our economy look like after the computer takeover? How will we make money if all we do is give away information for free? What will we buy and sell? How many people will make money? How many people will even have jobs? "You Are Not A Gadget" and several other books in the crossfire book thread touch on this. 5. What will happen to information on the internet? Google currently indexes only .04% of the internet. We as internet users who only use things we find on google are not even using all of what google indexes. Also think about how everything is all in the same place. If you go on the iTunes Store right now and search for something you want to learn about, it'll give you podcasts, radio, books, movies, tv shows, songs, and more, bur are all of these things really equal? Think about what the television did to sports. No longer were sports something you paid to go to, and only the people in the seats were the people who experienced it. Sports became something you watched. Sports fans became anybody who purchased a hat online. I'm likely going to relapse from time to time, check my email and read this thread as it grows, so I'll contribute where I can, but please, read all the books in the crossfire book thread. Keep that thread going. This thread is so important to your future, your social life, your love life, your government, your city, your economy, your job, your health, and everything else that it must be taken seriously by all users on the internet. We are all part of this virtual community that is the internet. If we're not discussing these things and deciding for ourselves then someone else controls the master switch.
  21. That acid sure as fuck hasn't helped your grammar any way just saying
  22. Neil Postman, Building a Bridge to the 18th Century http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JovJr_LmAP8 Neil Postman, Technopoly http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbAPtGYiRvg
×
×
  • Create New...