Here I Sit

And here I sit holding the steering wheel
that long ago came off in my hands.

-Henry Mathews, The Journalist, 1994

Status Consumerism vs. Goods Consumerism

The link between material assets on the one hand, and status and power on the other, is not self-evident or given by the nature of things. The links are socially created and what we need to think out is what these links can become under the new dispensation. Material goods do still lead to power and status, but they are not the only path towards it. The allocation of position depends on the social system and not the economy.

Ernest Gellner on Self-Image
Plough, Sword and Book
U. of Chicago Press
1988

Knowing Not

“Of the two great transitions in human history – the Neolithic and Industrial, they were unplanned and unconscious.” Those who sowed knew not what they would reap. (p20)

and states further:
“…it is unlikely that the great transformation [from agrarian society] could have been…anything other than both unconscious and individualistic. The transformation was too profound, and too contrary, and indeed offensive to the established patterns of thought and values, to be understood in advance.” By the time it came it was too late. (p170)


-Ernest Gellner
Plough, Sword and Book
U. of Chicago Press
1988

Case2

CASE2, RIP2011

"I'm not doing it just to say I'm doing it, and then exploit it. I do it to see where I'm at, based on my high-classificated way of thinking for the advancement of what art is like!"

History of American Graffiti
Roger Gastman & Caleb Heelon
Harper 2010

Stuxxx

About America and its unprepared defense against cyberattack:
“Are we as a nation living in denial about the danger we’re in?” I asked Clarke as we sat across a conference table in his office suite.

“I think we’re living in the world of non-response. Where you know that there’s a problem, but you don’t do anything about it. If that’s denial, then that’s denial.”

[sidenote to the reader: Stuxnet is a computer virus that physically destroys the physical machine it infects. It's like saying, shit, my computer crashed, versus, shit, one of our nuclear subterfuges is on fire.]

On suspicion of US executing Stuxnet:
“If we went in with a drone and knocked out a thousand centrifuges, that’s an act of war,” I said. “But if we go in with Stuxnet and knock out a thousand centrifuges, what’s that?”

“But in any event, you’re right, it got out. And it ran around the world and infected lots of things but didn’t do any damage, because every time it woke up in a computer it asked itself those four questions. Unless you were running uranium nuclear centrifuges, it wasn’t going to hurt you.”

“So it’s not a threat anymore?”

“But you now have it, and if you’re a computer whiz you can take it apart and you can say, ‘Oh, let’s change this over here, let’s change that over there.’ Now I’ve got a really sophisticated weapon. So thousands of people around the world have it and are playing with it. And if I’m right, the best cyberweapon the United States has ever developed, it then gave the world for free.”

"Every major company in the US has already been penetrated by China. ... My fear...[is] Where we lose our competitiveness by having all of our research and development stolen by the Chinese. And we never really see the single event that makes us do something about it. That it’s always just below our pain threshold. That company after company in the United States spends millions, hundreds of millions, in some cases billions of dollars on R&D and that information goes free to China....After a while you can’t compete.”

Richard Clarke on Who Was Behind the Stuxnet Attack:
America's longtime counterterrorism czar warns that the cyberwars have already begun—and that we might be losing
Ron Rosenbaum, Smithsonian magazine, April 2012
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/Richard-Clarke-on-Who-Was-Behind-the-Stuxnet-Attack.html

readmore--
Cyber War: The Next Threat to National Security and What to Do About It, 2010. with Robert K. Knake (ISBN 9780061962233)

Google Glass X Vernor Vinge

If you wanna know what the future of Google Glass is really like, read for yourself:

Rainbows End, Vernor Vinge, 2006

Augmented reality is projected onto your retina by a contact lens, and controlled by sensors in your clothes. Are you 'wearing'?

UPDATES:

T-shirts developed that could charge mobile phones
10 July 2012 Last updated at 18:21

The researchers turned the t-shirt fabric into a 'supercapacitor'
Scientists at the University of South Carolina have found a way to use a cheap T-shirt to store electrical power.
It could pave the way for clothes that are able to charge phones and other devices.

Experts predict that new technologies including roll-up smartphones and laptops will be on the market soon.
http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18781878

Advanced Materials Journal
Towards Textile Energy Storage from Cotton T-Shirts
Lihong Bao, Xiaodong Li*
Article first published online: 16 MAY 2012
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adma.201200246/full

Natural Selection X Artificial Intelligence

Charles Darwin used the taxonomy of Language to explain his theory of evolution.

That means we assigned what we now know as the process of biological evolution to language before we understood it regarding living organisms.

That is crazy. How is this not the most mind-shattering part of “Charles Darwin” and his theory and the whole science of Evolutionary Biology?

Darwin:

“It may be worthwhile to illustrate this view of classification, by taking the case of languages. If we possessed a perfect pedigree of mankind, a genealogical arrangement of the races of man would afford the best classification of the various languages now spoken throughout the world... The various degrees of difference in the languages from the same stock, would have to be expressed by groups subordinate to groups; but the proper or even only possible arrangement would still be genealogical…”

-Darwin, C. R. 1859. On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. London: John Murray. [1st edition]

[page] 422 CLASSIFICATION. CHAP. XIII.

http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?viewtype=side&itemID=F373&pageseq=440

Steven Pinker - The Genius of Charles Darwin: The Uncut Interviews

~BBC, 2008

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIMReUsxTt4

"The English"

http://networkaddress.blogspot.com/2012/03/english.html