Sunday, April 25, 2004

I think, for some of the same reasons of the convergence of media, I hate Flash. It's an attempt, and valuable, in that it's one of the 9,999 filaments that failed before Edison figured out that carbon would work for the lightbulb. But holy shit, it's annoying from the most basic of usability perspectives. You don't build a better house by starting out with a concept-house that doesn't include a door. Or windows. Or that only has lights that flash on an off in an epileptic-fit inducing fury. That may be pieces of it, but it's not it. 2:32:22 AM

I wonder, if you measure species intelligence over broader categories, such as adaptive survival techniques, if human beings haven't simply been an example of luck, a genetic code coming into being under precisely the right circumstances (which may have required our species to invent a concept of divine intervention (which it might have been) to allow our existence. Loki, tonight, whom I let "trick" me into feeding him upon my arrival home from the restaurant, immediately, upon feeding, starts exibiting the same behaviors that I allowed to "trick" me in the first place. It doesn't work, but he will try again tomorrow, for the enrichment of us both in this somewhat contrived relationship, where prey dominates predator. Although there is a researcher in Africa doing work on African Wild Dogs, who shows that, even when extra hungry, they will sniff, but not attack humans who are not directly threatening them or their territory - it's pretty harrowing listening to the narrator tell of subjuecting himself to the experiment) only through circumstance (I realize that people who own the "little dogs" don't relate immediately to the experience - but keep in mind that the little dogs are the result of breeding, not evolution - it explains why they bark so much, similar to why little (which is a state of mind, more or less) men buy their socio-economic equivalent "big car" whether that be Camaro or BMW, or invade other countries and/or commit massive genocide.). Aaargh. I realized the other night, watching SPUN (which would NOT be a good anti drug movie, because despite the hot girlfriend who won't go out with him because he's addicted to speed, and the blowing up of the meth trailer (I can say this without worry because it's so predictable), and the balls actually being shot off scene, and the general chaos and disarray of all of the characters lives, DESPITE all that, it read as an advertisement for methamphetemines.) that the media we know now will morph into communication that defies our imagination, that shortly, within the next three of four generations (of wealthy communities), we will "watch" "movies" that convey information on the meta level - that we will watch and store media that literally completely blow the minds of our existing status. I think of how radicatl it must have been when people first began speaking and/or grunting in patterns. It would take a lot of grunts to convey a complex thought, such as the linking of two separate thoughts, the addition of numbers of different items, maintaining a concept of grouping separate and grouping together, and how far we've come just with the notion of conjuctions and arithmetic, and how much "further" we've come with ideas of writing and calculus. The unifying thread in each step in the evolution of communication is that it involves fewer "strokes" that the symbolic replaces the actual. We can communicate much with the use of the symbol "and" which communicates an idea that is so ingrained, so much a part of us, that's it's almost impossible to separate the signficance from our own being, that giving the word some thought, to the hyponoia of the etymology, is almost painful to think about. We communicate much and store much through binary. I can begin (but it makes my head literally hurt) to think about how we will store and communicate information in the future, that goes beyond anything we can measure today. I've heard that one of the advantages to doing both alcohol and marijuana at the same time is that it puts your neocortex, depending on the type of pot, in a direct observation post over the machinations of your limbic brain. Helping one, potential, learn to train and use the limbic brain, put the limbic brain itself at ease, as a snake charmer with his quarry (although there's no way to remove the teeth or venom of the reptilian brain itself), and make that energy potent, proactive, not reactive. 2:15:56 AM