Twitter =

[a draft I found, posting it finally jan 2010]

Why is twitter valuable? Because if you use it the right way, if you don't talk about yourself and succinctly post good ideas over time, then future employers will have a record of your creative identity. They'll be able to look into the memories your perceptions have bothered to record (the pictures, the articles, the "ah-ha" moments) and assemble an accurate understanding of your personality.

Racism Against Robots (Quickpost)

Sitting in my Philosophy and Computers class. People arguing that computers (AI) will never be creative like humans are. "Computers can't come up with a new way of seeing..."

Going to ask if there's a word for racism against robots. Here we go.

Talked about the infant in a white room experiment: child dies due to lack of stimulus. talked about creativity, my inability to communicate ultraviolet in art because I can't see it. Lamented that we are holding on to identity and authorship. Asked the racism question. Answer I recieve: something like Specism. (species-ism?) Carbon-centrism?

People laugh, but i got the prof's attention. He goes on to read poems written by A.I. and poems written by humans. No one gets them all right.

No one is trying to let go of their self-importance. It's hard, like pushups. We've gotta try harder to accept how cool our existence is even though we might not be IT.

And god damnit, when AI shows up my "wired" generation might not be willing to lighten up.

-Cos?

Text-Based Graphics

D+D has me thinking about visualization; it's just a better way to build fictive space. So here's some interactive fiction Nick Montfort suggested which plays off the same effect:

Varicella by Adam Cadre


Bronze by Emily Short


Aisle by Sam Barlow


Book and Volume by Montfort


Then if you're looking for a multiplayer experience, I've been messing around on DARTmud, which is Everquest meets.... a really good book. I like it more than the single player experiences, but sadly the world is a bit empty now that graphics have taken over:
www.dartmud.com

As if any of us have time for this stuff.

-Cos

Probably a bad thing to say.

I Played Dungeons and Dragons last night till 4am.

(Stop, wait, listen.... really. It's okay.)

Woke up this morning and the power /electricity had been turned off at my house in the middle of the woods.

The first experience was mind-opening. D+D, at it's best, is more immersive than World of Warcraft or Age of Conan could ever hope to be. You visualize everything: Subjectively perfect graphics and more mental exercise than computer based interactions. We need to retool online experiences to make more positive use of individual personality, humor and identity.

The entire thing also revolves around the group of REAL people you play with, and how willing they are to joke, play-act and openly enjoy the absurd splendor of what they are doing.

People scoff at Dungeons and Dragons, but it is by far the greatest play experience I have had since.... Jail Dodgeball in 7th grade? Yeah, that good.

What's going on in D+D under the hood is so complicated / beautiful. The narrative is controlled by a player, the "Dungeon Master," and our DM enjoyed his experience showing us "what was going on" as much as we did acting it out for him. Both sides relied on each other. Laughter! Personalities! Real life!

It was a glorious revival of oral tradition, old school storytelling with perfectly structured rulesets made the experience honest; things depended on chance but the DM held the final say like a God whose chief interest is good drama.

Sounds like ours...

Anyway, I played as a human paladin... yeah. He rocks. I bought into the narrative, built my character's background as I went. People can be "good" at D+D only to the extent that they add to the story in creative and legitimate ways.

I know I sound like a ranting fanboy, but there really is something profound at work here. Everything that my game design class is stressing, every nuance that I have seen escapist media attempt to cultivate through "coop" modes and "immersion," is pointed towards the effects generated by IRL role-playing.

There's a catch: it was all about the people I played with. Without those social ties, the narrative might have gone differently. I look forward to bringing more people into the circle, but there is a good chance that their presence might pull the rest into self-consciousness, self- doubt: the enemies of good storytelling.

So we wake up and the power and electricity are off. Reality. Had we not paid the rent? What if things stayed like this? What about drinking water, bathrooms, the internet? Suddenly every skill I have becomes useless without electricity. A fear of self preservation filled me, and things became clearer.... literally. My senses became heightened, as if the resolution of my existence came into focus: what did I need to do to survive? what did I need to see?

Now the power and water are back. Maintenance. I can feel myself falling back into the comfort of toilets, electric music, email. But for a moment all I had was my car and the remaining charge in my cell phone.

Luddite adrenaline.

A few days ago I confronted a protesting veteran on the campus green. The audio below reveals some distinct issues that stand between my generation and his (Obama stole the election? Not having a gun license is unconstitutional, retirement taxes are destroying much of the middle class?)

His most useful/legitimate observation: a single EMP could wipe out electronics in the US if you deonated a nuclear device in orbit? Likely or not, we'd be thoroughly hosed. His advice: stock up on food, water, bullets. Apparently since 9/11 bullet factories in the US have been unable to meet demand? All I know is that I'm not prepared. We need to memorize books (which ones?). We need to shield our electronics.We need to build latrines. We need to think about the possibility that this system might just keel over without its blackberries and ethernet cables.

Of course I sound like so many conspiracy nutjobs, maybe I just bought this old guy's story too quickly. OR, maybe thinking about the worst outcome sucks because you aren't ready. I experienced life without tech this morning. It's scary and real and it looks much clearer than this world does.

(I'll post the audio I recorded during his conversation later.)

Suddenly D+D seemed... silly? I have to register my car. I need to pay my cable bill. I need to do work for class.

Nah. I need guns and friends, and good stories to get us through the chaos that might erupt.

So now... I guess I just need guns.

The DM in the real world isn't willing to blur the rules to make things work (thanks will). To the same extent that storytelling and role playing have been numbed and abstracted by digital technology, so too have our real world skills.

Who farms anymore? Who hunts? If the grid goes dark your cities will become dungeons and your party had better be ready for some dragons.

Play a role. Stay open minded.

-Cos

"Remediation" Is Lame

Rather than call something just a "remix" or a "remediation," go ahead and use something more refined:

pas⋅tiche

 

–noun

1.	a literary, musical, or artistic piece consisting wholly or chiefly of motifs or techniques borrowed from one or more sources.

---

Jung with a computer: #1 and #2

(Disclaimer: forgive the discussion of self angst here, be patient)

So Jung understood the duality of his personality in terms of two distinct characters: "#1" and "#2."

#1 was mainstream, productive in the everyday world. Logical and ambitious for academic success, #1 pursued a prestigious lifestyle in relationship to Jung's surrounding society.

#2's personality was much more troubled, concerned more with ontological questions (God, the supernatural, truth) than the goings-on of physical society. #2 liked to brood, to comment, to lament.


Though identifying two personalities helps some people, it often oversimplifies mental conflicts within the individual and can encourage schizophrenia as a crutch for poor performance. Some people can handle it. Either way, this particular distinction is useful because I FEEL THE SAME WAY, and the split is caused by my lifetime use of computers.

If I have a #1 and a #2, the first is concerned with love, the outdoors, food and eastern spirituality: he chills, laughs. #2 is much more ambitious, worried about ontology, angry at society/ arbitrary authority structures and MAINLY EXISTS/SURVIVES ON THE INTERNET.

Now people have had different internet avatars for quite some time, early interactive fiction encouraged the formation of a "screen identity" from the start. But what is happening right now is something different, something more profoundly causal to real life, and I'm not the only one being affected. Not even close.

So I could throw out my laptop and live as #1 and go into teaching or finance and be healthy and happy, drink wine watch movies and be ignorant. Fck that. I have lived more as #2: complaining, thinking about biopolitics and ontology in relation to everything I do. Drug use encourages this perspective. #2 wants to be a savior of society, a more profound Cory Doctorow: Dr. Cosmos the seer. What a jamoke.


People are multifaceted, yet the conflicts that stand between personas can cause discomfort. I'm not going to slip into psychosis like Jung, but the ignorance=bliss split is made especially painful when computers are our main source of information (non-ignorance).

non-linear, non-authorial, non-finite knowledge

If computer use = non-ignorance, must it must also = non-bliss?

If using a computer for long enough (socially) creates a new personality, then MUST any human create a #2 if they want to take part in discourse online?* Who is Cory Doctorow? Who is Perez Hilton? If i let #2 run free, I think he could become a part of that world. I think I would suffer as a person for it.

I am.

Stayed up till 5am scanning websites about virtual reality, talking with a friend in Boston, listening to newly downloaded music... this is how I lived in highschool: perpetually tired, perpetually apathetic about reality and fully engaged in the internet. MMORPG's, 4chan, web comics, web sites, pod casts ---> there's enough to keep me satisfied forever. Hell I never even started hacking or fcking with proxies! I spent my hours in my mind/in front of a computer and I am... smarter for it? Maybe, I know some of sht.

Yet I have little use for the information I've soaked up in my drunken thirst for _____. I woke up at 11 and missed the sunrise.

So who's it going to be? Can we control them both? I highly doubt that everyone is this way, but if you have read this far: ask yourself who/what/why your #2 is. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, tell me how you manage your consumption of information and go for a nice walk. I need a break from academia.









-Cos/#2

Haha we're so spoiled, so ignorant here.

-#1

*(we don't really interact in physical space, making our bodies and our "#1" natural personalities obsolete.)

Bombs away

Flight simulator players have killed 250 people in Pakistan without leaving the ground http://tinyurl.com/bl59ew

"For some Air Force pilots, that means climbing out of the cockpit and heading to places such as Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, where they can remotely fly the Predators ... About 120 Air Force pilots were recently transferred to staff the drones ... Some National Guard members were also called up ... more will be doing that in the coming months, as the Air Force adds bases where pilots can remotely fly the aircraft. Locations include North Dakota, Texas, Arizona and California, and some are already operating."

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/01/04/flyboy_equals_drone_boy/

Unformatted data table:
Table 1. Drones Lost in Afghan Theater, 2001-2002
Unit cost # deployed # crashed % destroyed
Global Hawk $ 15 million 2 2 100%
Predator $ 4.5 million 12 6 50%

http://www.mod.uk/DefenceInternet/DefenceNews/EquipmentAndLogistics/NewCombatHelmetIsAVisionOfTheFuture.htm