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Future

98 posts under this tag.

My Will 2
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7
 Mar
18

It may only be that my grandfather’s agony has me seeing everything with long-now eyes but these days I’m increasingly aware that I should take precautions in case I die.

I don’t want to die. I don’t shake my head and look away at death, I stand up in defiance. But the fact is our lives are still too fragile and faced with the possibility I would rather think things through.

Which is why I’ve written this short will. I shall edit and refine it as long as I’m living (with the latest version the official one, of course) and so I thought I should start now.

I name Chemie, my sister, as my executor

If I die, I
wish a 1-night wake with
Yann Tiersen’s discography as background soundtrack
no prayers or religious services of any kind
Eliezer Yudkowsky’s letter
read in English & Spanish at the wake
printed and given to everyone at departure

wish to be buried
wish my grave be marked by a white granite slab embedded on the ground (recumbent desk style)
on the slab, I wish this text (and nothing else) engraved verbatim:

eliazar parra cardenas
“I was so happy!”
elzr.com
wish for a pink Primavera tree seed to be planted behind my headstone so that one day its shadow may cover it

wish to donate all my organs
wish to donate all my books to the ITESM Campus Guadalajara’s library, except those that friends or family want to keep
wish anything I’ve written, coded, designed, or in any other way produced, to be released to the public domain
wish to give Jane (my desktop computer) to Chemie and Wu (my macbook) to Chefi

wish any other material possession of mine to be donated to charity, except those that friends or family want to keep

wish elzr.com be kept online, fully-enabled, forever
wish this to be posted as soon as possible
title: I was so happy!
body: I died.

salmon-of-doubt-ly, I wish that my entire harddrive be made available online (through elzr.com) to anyone for free, as technology permits (they’re 500gb after all)
particularly my “life-inside-one-big-text-file” text file and MyDocuments folder
wish that my gmail account be made available online (through elzr.com) to anyone for free
correspondents, however, may ask for any of their emails to be concealed and that wish shall be respected, as long as they live
If I were to fall into a likely irreversible comma, I
wish to be kept alive as long as it’s economically possible
wish to undergo any recovery treatment as soon as it has more than a 1% chance of success
wish that all the above death provisions be carried out, except of course the burying part and the organ donating one

Last Updated: 2007-02-15

tagged abuelo luis, announces, atheism, books, chef, chemito, death, eliezer yudkowsky, elzr.com, emotions, english, family, future, google, growing posts, memes, mindfulness, music, personal, philosophy, spanish, starts | 2 Comments

'Tsall good 2
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7
 Mar
12

Never had read anything by Larry WallWP before. I’m dazzled, through and through. Don’t walk, run out to read his Perl, the first postmodern computer language speech. It’s an important rambling, with a scope far beyond that of programming.

While I was digesting this, and thinking about how it applied to computer science, [My daughter] went on, “Well, it’s like, you know, we have this saying at school, when somebody gets uptight about something, we say: ’Tsall good. If someone is depressed, we say: ‘Tsall good.’’’

“But you don’t actually think everything is good, do you?”

“No, of course not.”

“Are you saying that everything has good elements in it?”

”No, Dad, I think when we say that, we’re saying that, overall, things are good. Like, look at the big picture, don’t just focus in on the two or three bad things that are happening to you right now.”

I report this conversation to you not just because I think my kids are cute and smart, but also because I think it’s important that we know where our culture is going, and because it’s our kids that will shape our culture in the future. I don’t think I could have defined postmodernism better than Heidi. Look at the big picture. Don’t focus in on two or three things to the exclusion of other things. Keep everything in context. Don’t go out of your way to justify stuff that’s obviously cool. Don’t ridicule ideas merely because they’re not the latest and greatest. Pick your own fashions. Don’t let someone else tell you what you should like. ’Tsall good.

That’s all well and good, but I ask you, if it’s all good, why, in every other breath, does my daughter say “That sucks.”?
tagged computers, droll, future, inspiration, interesting people, memes, programming, quote collages, quotes, rants, readings, recommendations, talks, writing

Find-as-you-write 2
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7
 Feb
17

Being the neophilic1 I usually am, I don’t usually get scared with technology but I admit to getting the shivers when viewing System One’s screencast. The webapp seems to be something very similar to 37Signals’ Backpack—a web 2.0 CMSWP that is—only at the enterprise level, and on first blush I almost dismissed it as a staid attempt to bring consumer-level webapps to the office (and, come on, what kind of name is System One?).

It may still be just that, but here’s the idea that blew my mind: search-as-you-write. Not search-as-you-type, which is also called incremental search, and is when you are presented results for a query as you type it; no, it’s, search-as-you-write: automatic, real-time search as you’re writing a non-query—a post, a comment, your thesis, a love letter. You really have to see the screencast to get the feel of it but just think about the momentous, qualitative jump this represents—automatic, ubiquitous polling of the hive-mind. Talk about erosion of the self.

Yes, it’s only a natural progression, but still—let me be nebulously apprehensive today for a change.

1 “I know this comes as a shock to you, but not everyone is a neophiliac posthuman bodysurfer whose idea of a sabbatical is to spend twenty years as a flock of tightly networked seagulls in order to try and to prove the Turing Oracle thesis. (Charlie Stross, Accelerando)

tagged artificial intelligence, criticism, future, future shock, intelligence augmentation, interface design, original content, present shock, quotes, scifi, selves, surprises, technology, the singularity, touching, videos, web, webapps, writing

More on post-symbolic communication 2
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7
 Feb
13

Jaron Lanier’s answer to the 2007 Edge question, What are you optimistic about?, is, predictably enough, post-symbolic communication. But the more I hear about it, the more I’m overwhelmed by the grandeur and sheer magic of the vision. As beautiful a dream as I’ve ever seen.

One extravagant idea is that the nature of communication itself might transform in the future as much as it did when language appeared. This is not easy to imagine, but here’s one approach to thinking about it: I’ve been fascinated by the potential for “Post-symbolic Communication” for many years. This new style of interpersonal connection could become possible once large numbers of people become virtuosos at improvising what goes on in Virtual Reality.

We are virtuosos at spoken language. Adults speak with what seems like no effort at all, even though everyday chats might be the most complicated phenomena ever observed. I see no reason why new virtuosities in communication could not appear in the future, though it’s hard to specify a timeframe.

Suppose you’re enjoying an advanced future implementation of Virtual Reality and you can cause spontaneously designed things to appear and act and interact with the ease of sentences pouring forth during an ordinary conversation today.

Why bother? It’s a reasonable hunch. Words have done so much for people—so alternatives to them with overlapping but distinct functions ought to lead to new ways of thinking and connecting.

An alternative to abstraction might arise—the possibility of expression through a fluid and capable concreteness. Instead of the word “house” you could conjure up a particular house. How do you even know it’s a house without using the word? Instead of falling back on whatever the word “house” means, you might toss around a virtual bucket that turns out to be very large on the inside- and contains a multitude of house prototypes. In one sense this “fuzzy” collection is more precise than the word, in another, less so. It is different.

If all this sounds a little too fantastic or obscure, here’s another approach to the same idea using more familiar reference points. Imagine a means of expression that is a cross between the three great new art forms of the 20th century: jazz improvisation, computer programming, and cinema. Suppose you could improvise anything that could be seen in a movie with the speed and facility of a jazz improviser. What would that mean for the sense of connection between you and someone you love?

The most valuable optimisms are Infinite Games, and imagining that new innovations as profound as language will come about in the future of human interaction is an example of one.

tagged arguments, edge, essays, flickr, formist, future, future shock, inspiration, interface design, languages, love, lyricism, music, photos, postsymbolic communication, questions, quote collages, quotes, symbols, technology, technolyricism, transhumanism, what could be

Of iPhones and some beautiful forms 2
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7
 Feb
12

I’ve been drooling as much as anyone for one ever since Jobs announced it last January 9 in a brilliant demo (just for some historical fun, compare it with the 1968 “Mother of all demos”), and an interesting, in-depth review of it by Bruce Tognazzi got me thinking more deeply about it and all the possibilities it foretells. But just as I was guzzling the last Kool-aid dregs I started choking: I found out, to my unending disbelief, that it’s going to be a closed platform—meaning one won’t be able to independently develop software for it. This matters. It’s not a chink in the diamond, it’s a rupture—tantamount to forcing you to surf only within apple.com. The web could of course be an innovation lifeline but I’m skeptical of Safari—it’s not a good web 2.0 base at the desktop, I doubt it’ll be one for the palmtop. And my experience with the Blackberry is that mobile-device webapps demand more speed and immediacy (and ubiquity!) than the current web can provide. So no, it will at best be only a partial solution. (The reason given for the apartheid, security, has—to use a commenter’s phrase—the faint whiff of horse manure.)

So that’s that. I now want to remark a little on that iPhone review I just mentioned. Bruce Tognazzi is no Joe Blogger, he was Apple employee #66 and is a famous interaction designer. His website, AskTog, is a classic resource on interface design. But it’s not his interaction insights I want to point out now—though there are plenty of good ones. What impressed me most was his language. Three quotes in particular strike me as true language-forging moments.

What strikes me about the iPhone interface in general is that it gives ordinary people access to features that have been the private purview of the young and the geeky. For example, cell phones have long had contact lists, but they were typically difficult to build, maintain, and sync.

The young and the geeky. Witness the birth of a new wordchain. It won’t be the last time you’ll hear it.

The industrial design is brilliant.  Apple has created another piece of high-tech jewelry.  Some fogies of advancing years have suggested the initial price point of $499 is too high.  They fail to understand:  The “coolâ€? of owning this phone, particularly for the early adopters, is worth an easy $497, bringing the phone itself down to $2 even.

High-tech jewelry. That’s a beautiful, zeit-geist defining phrase—electronics “becoming… works of art to be fondled in stores before a purchase.”E

Those of you young and technologically inclined may find this difficult to believe, but the average cell phone user cannot use many features you may find standard, such as call-waiting, call-forwarding, and conferencing. Apple has made these features completely accessible to all but those dangling their legs off the far end of the bell shaped curve.

There’s an image! It reminds me a lot, both alluding to pseudo-scientific scienceWP, WP, of that classic Spanish insult, ”No tener ni dos dedos de frente!” (“Not have even two fingers of forehead!”)—trying to find an appropriate translation, btw, I stumbled upon an instant new classic, ”Tiraron al niño y se quedaron con la placentaF” (“They threw the child and kept the placenta!”).
tagged beauty, computers, criticism, design, eemadges, en espanhol, formist, future, insults, interface design, lyricism, macs, neologisms, quotes, rants, recommendations, reviews, science, spanish, symbols, translations, venting, videos, web design, webapps, words | 9 Comments

Thoughts on music 2
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7
 Feb
09

Is an essay posted by Steve Jobs two days ago [link] proposing to do away with DRM protection in digital songs. It’s a brilliant, persuasive pamphlet and easily one of the most surprising recent turns in Intellectual Property’s (IP) unfolding evolution—and with IP soon becoming the only property that matters, we are talking about a civilization-defining process here.

Now of course Jobs’s letter is self-serving, as The Economist clearly explains, but is he right? Is a DRM-free world better? With thousands of pirated songs in my library I could hardly make for a devil’s advocate now but I still wonder. If we renounce technological solutions, how will we reward creators? Will policing and empathy be enough? (Don’t be so quick to answer, we will all be creators soon.)

A technological arms-race between pirates and anti-pirates was bound to end in senseless wastage, but that doesn’t mean new structures are not hardly needed—economical structures (based on trade) not political ones (based on force)—if IP will prove ultimately viable.

Let’s see what we can think of—the problem just got a whole more interesting.

tagged copyright, economics, essays, ethics, future, future shock, letters, macs, music, politics, questions, readings, surprises, the economist, the singularity, web, writing

Melange Mussel Larvae 2
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7
 Feb
04

But a finding in 2005 appears to have swung the argument decisively in favour of an ageing programme. A study at the Russian Academy of Sciences found that salmon can live much longer and continue reproducing when infected by pearl mussel larvae. In some cases, infection by this parasite extends life fourfold, to 13 years. It seems that the parasite has evolved a mechanism to avert the salmon’s abrupt death so it can continue providing shelter and food for the parasite’s development and reproduction. For a parasite dependent on the survival of its host, this is a sensible strategy. While the mechanism for this effect is not yet fully understood, it seems that the larvae produce a small protein that helps to mop up free radicals.

Philip Hunter, Can ageing be stopped?
tagged death, future, future shock, little facts, magazines, medicine, present shock, science, serendipity, surprises, what could be

Star
My Parents 2
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7
 Feb
02

I need a father who’s a role model, not some horny geek boy who’s gonna spray his shorts whenever I bring a girlfriend home from school.
Alan Ball, American BeautyIMDB

They say that as you grow old you should stop idealizing your parents. Grow out of seeing them as mighty heroes and realize they’re flawed human beings like everyone. And it’s true. And it’s good advice. But it’s a pretty big world out there. And it has its heroes. And there must be at least some of them who have kids. There are.

If I have always within me this silly joy that cares little for justifications. If welded to me is this naive faith in people, in reason, in conversation, in love, in truth—in human possibilities. If I’ve never lacked wonder. If I’m so unfettered I’ve always lived in the future. If I believe in me. If I never look back. If I dare.

It’s because of my parents. I’m thankful. Tonight. Tomorrow.

tagged emotions, epiphanies, family, favorites, future, happiness, love, mama, original content, personal, philosophy, poetry, selves, things I've learned, touching, venting

Santorini 2
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7
 Jan
26

Been obsessed with this six-megapixels of SantoriniWP all day. Obsessed like one obsesses about a dream.

tagged art, beauty, fetishy, flickr, future, photos, serendipity, surprises

The First Decade 2
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7
 Jan
23

Here I go trying to coin yet another neologism ELZR in yet another abuse of the universal soapbox that is the blog.  This time, why not be grand?, I’m going to tackle the most famous neologism lack of all: a name for the decade that yawns between 2000 and 2009. In written form, one usually calls it the 2000s but the “two thousands” is just plain silly. Other proposed names, taken from the 2000s pedia, are the “noughties” (the least narrowspread of the proposals), “the zeroes”, “double zeroes”, the “aughts”, “double-aughts”, “oh’s”, “double oh’s”, “oh-oh’s” “aughties”, “oughties”, “2K’s”, “uh-ohs”, “zoogs”, and “ozies”. Obviously, the search still continues.

So here’s my stab at it: let’s call it, elliptically, “the first decade”. It’s a tad millenialist but also fittingly portentous. It is also universal (“la primera decada”, “la première décennie”, “die erste Dekade”, “最åˆ?ã?®å??å¹´”, “a primeira década”, “Первое деÑ?Ñ?тилетие”, “la prima decade”), easily extendable (2010-2019 is “the second decade”, 2020-2029 “the third decade”, and so on), perfectly memorable, immediately understandable, and, let’s face it, just plain cool. It’s a whole new language for talking and thinking about our century.

Here some usage examples:

  • Wikipedia is a multilingual, Web-based, free-content encyclopedia project, born with the first decade.WP
  • By the second decade, we’ll be adding more than a year, every year, to human life expectancy.ELZR
  • Third-decade ipods will be able to carry every piece of content ever created.ELZR
  • At the beginning of the fifth decade, there will be 9 billion people on the planet.ELZR
tagged announces, auxlangs, design, formist, fun, future, future shock, impossible ideas, information design, languages, lists, little things, neologisms, rants, symbols, whimsicist, wikipedia, words, writing | 1 Comment