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Technolyricism

61 posts under this tag.

Star
Reality is broken 2
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 Feb
06

It’s been a while since I made a quote collage. It’s been a while since I’ve been hit by an idea this good: reality is broken, it’s game (and interface!) designers responsibility to fix it.

I’m not here to rant about game designers. I’m mad, but I’m not mad at game designers. I think that compared to the rest of the world, game designers pretty much have it all figured out. We’ve invented a medium that kicks every other medium’s ass. As game designers, we own more emotional bandwidth, we occupy more brain cycles, and we make more people happy than any other platform or content in the world. And if you don’t already believe that, if you don’t realize that we’ve already won, then you’re not paying attention to the staggering amount of time, energy, money and passion that gamers all over the world pour into our games every single day.

So why why have we won? Because as an industry, we’ve spent the last 30 years learning how to optimize human experience. We know that our brains are made for playing games. Recently, some of us have remembered that our bodies are made for playing games. And we’ve always known that our hearts are made for playing games. So as an industry, we’ve spent three whole decades figuring out how to engineer systems that fully engage our brains, and our bodies, and our hearts. And we’ve pretty much solved that problem – or, at least, our solutions are working better than other designed experience on the planet. So our systems work better than anything anyone else is making to engage human beings. And as a result, the way I see it, right now, we basically rule the world.

That’s the good news. But the problem is, we don’t rule the real world. For the most part, we rule the virtual world, because it’s easier to optimize experience in a world entirely of our own making. The fact is the real world is too f’ed up, it’s too broken, we don’t want to deal with it. So right now, pretty much every one of our games works better than reality, because we are the best designers of human experience, and we’re applying all of our talent, all our insight to optimizing virtual experience. And you know what? That needs to end, starting today.

My rant is about the fact that reality is fundamentally broken, and we have a responsibility as game designers to fix it, with better algorithms and better missions and better feedback and better stories and better community and everything else we know how to make. We have a responsibility as the smartest people in the world, the people who understand how to make systems that make people feel engaged, successful, happy, and completely alive, and we have the knowledge and the power to invent systems that make reality work better. We have the responsibility to take what we’ve learned as an industry over the past 30 years and start making everyday life more like our games.

Can we fix it? Yes. We have the technology and the knowledge. Should we fix it? Hell yes. We have the power AND the responsibility. That doesn’t mean we should stop making escapist games. We need to make escapist games, there will always be a need to escape, and frankly, that’s how we’re going to learn more about what works, about how to engage brains and bodies and hearts. But will we fix it? Honestly, I have no idea.

We can take what we’ve learned by making games and apply it to reality, to make real life work more like a game – not make our games more realistic and lifelike, but make our real life more game like – so that when people all over the world wake up every morning, they wake up with a mission, with allies, with a sense of being a part of a bigger story, part of a system that wants them to be happy. We can do it, we should do it, and I hope that we will do it.
Jane McGonigal,
Avant Game: “Reality is Broken” – My GDC Rant
Read the rest...
tagged algorithms, emotions, favorites, fun, games, happiness, ideas, impossible ideas, intelligence augmentation, interesting people, interface design, lyricism, media, memes, quote collages, screenshots, software, technology, technolyricism, webapps, what could be

Blessing 2
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1
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 Feb
01

The source code files for other SQL database engines typically begin with a comment describing your license rights to view and copy that file. The SQLite source code contains no license since it is not governed by copyright. Instead of a license, the SQLite source code offers a blessing:

    May you do good and not evil
    May you find forgiveness for yourself and forgive others
    May you share freely, never taking more than you give.
Distinctive Features Of SQLite
This made me cry today.
tagged happiness, inspiration, programming, religion, surprises, technology, technolyricism, web

Scratch Interface (!) 2
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9
 Aug
08

This may just be the coolest interface ever. I thought it was a joke when I first read about it: interact with computers through scratching your fingernail on surfaces. Simply amazing.

From the prolific interface genius that is Chris Harrison. Jump to 3:14 for the best concrete example of the technology in use: controlling your phone with gestures on a normal table with nothing but a stethoscope on it.

Computation at its root is distilled physics, interacting with our everyday physics it can produce pure magic. Think of accelerometers as well, or the now commonplace touch displays.

tagged computers, criticism, fun, future, future shock, geekery, impossible ideas, inspiration, intelligence augmentation, interesting people, interface design, present shock, surprises, technology, technolyricism, videos, what could be, youtube | 1 Comment

Our rock stars aren't like your rock stars 2
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9
 Jul
19


This Intel ad is so great. Thomas Friedman must be proud. Imagine its impact in India.

I must say, though, that if I were to meet Mr. Bhatt, after swooning I would promptly take him to task for not making USB connections symmetrical (Why is there a side of the connectors that must go up? Why can’t sides be interchangeable? The global amount of annoyance this has caused is not trivial.).
tagged fun, happiness, humor, inspiration, technology, technolyricism, travel, videos | 1 Comment

We are as gods 2
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9
 Jul
18

In the Whole Earth Catalog, my first words were “we are as gods and might as well get good at it.” The first words of Whole Earth Discipline [40 years afterwards] are “we are as gods and have to get good at it.
Stewart Brand, 4 environmental ‘heresies’
tagged aphorisms, future, inspiration, interesting people, lyricism, technology, technolyricism

2035's µmpc 2
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9
 Jul
11

The most important perspective in my view is that health, medicine, and biology is now an information technology, whereas it used to be hit or miss..  Information technology grows exponentially, in sharp contrast to the linear growth of hit or miss approaches that have characterized medicine up until recently. As such, these technologies will be a million times more powerful in 20 years (by doubling in power and price performance each year). The genome project, incidentally, followed exactly this trajectory.

Our intuition is linear, so [we] think in linear terms and expect that the slow pace of the past will characterize the future. But the reality of progress in information technology is exponential, not linear. My cell phone is a billion times more powerful per dollar than the computer we all shared when I was an undergrad at MIT. And we will do it again in 25 years. What used to take up a building now fits in my pocket, and what now fits in my pocket will fit inside a blood cell in 25 years.
Technology Review: Blogs: Guest Blog: Ray Kurzweil on How to Combat Aging
Kurzweil has said similar things many times before, but keep yourself from forgetting it, keep it in mind. This is the future we’re building.
tagged aphorisms, future, future shock, inspiration, quote collages, quotes, technology, technolyricism, the singularity | 1 Comment

Seasteading 2
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9
 Jul
11

...dynamic geography may finally strengthen anarchy’s weakest link. It is difficult to seize hold of water—it tends to fragment into tiny pieces and swirl away. Counterintuitive though it may be, this apparently shifty foundation will provide a stable base for anarchy.

The landlubbers and groundhogs can keep their monopoly-inducing dirt – we’ll take everything else.
Patri Friedman, Dynamic Geography: A Blueprint for Efficient Government
At first I dismissed the idea of seasteading, of colonizing the seas to establish new nations in them. But a quick skim today through the Seasteading Institute proved a several hours affair, and I’m thoroughly intrigued. As Patri remarks at several places, they turned to the oceans because it was the least claimed space but they found that its intrinsic dynamics were uniquely suited to freedom. When it becomes inherently possible to move not only yourself but all your belongings, your house, your building, or even your neighborhood, a whole new freedom of association can become the effective base of societies.

The sea is bigger than capitalism, communism, or anarchism. It’s a whole new meta-system, with different dynamics that give hope of different results.

Perhaps the Pacific ocean, the world’s biggest expanse, will one day become the new West, the new frontier, will one day hold the most diverse, innovative, prosperous civilization on Earth. History hasn’t stopped, changes of this scale and strangeness will happen.
tagged capitalism, economics, future, inspiration, interesting people, libertarianism, liberty, lyricism, quote collages, technology, technolyricism, what could be

Insomnia 2
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9
 Jan
14

Insomnia’s hitting me hard so I thought I might as well write some of the thoughts swirling in my head…

I got almost 20,000 songs in total, having recently recovered most of my music library from a backup I had in Mexico. Some 2,000 of those songs I absolutely love and keep track of them with a special playlist. Funny thing but that playlist alone is worth to me more than all my thousands of (illegal) songs.

Anyway, been listening to that playlist for hours now. Climaxing to is a better word. Music is such pure pleasure, ain’t it? (I wonder if the pleasure will fade with age as they say—does that mean that it is fake then? Do dogs listen to music?) This is why I tell you I just can’t stop marveling at technology: so much marvelous music, from all over the world and all over time, available for so little money to me—a 100 years ago it  would have been unthinkable, to die for.

It shocked me that you didn’t know the meaning of “marveling” today girl, because it’s such an important word to me. Like, about what we talked at Ice Berry, people bore me not because they don’t share my interests but because they’re barely interested at all.

I’m so hungry for passion, for intense and unreasonable interests, for people with dreams, for people to wonder and marvel with, you know? Pretty much all most people seem to care (superficially, unreflectingly) about is gossip, fucking, or kids.

So people are mostly uninterested, unawed, unmoved—or when they’re not they’re unbelievably pessimistic, negative, catastrophist, paranoid, bitter… People who marvel are so exceedingly, saddeningly rare.

Any dimwit can be bitter (and most are), it’s the easiest thing to do, human nature (have you ever wondered how common clinical, biological chronic depression is, while its opposite, biological, chronic euphoria, is so weird as to be almost unheard of?).

Marveling, being hopeful, is the exception, it’s what takes effort and imagination and daring.
tagged inspiration, original content, quotes, rants, technology, technolyricism, things I've learned, writing | 3 Comments

Cameras as (photographic) memory modules 2
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9
 Jan
14

Ever since I’ve had a digital camera I’ve noticed a strange use of it: I’ll often snap stuff —whiteboards, signs, text, documents, maps, ads, book covers..— for practical, remember-or-consult-it-later purposes (as opposed to “leisure” snapping of people, events or cool stuff). Since I got my awesome new camera this use has only intensified, with two interesting new twists:

First, since the image quality is now unbelievably and consistently good it’s painful to look at other camera’s), pretty much anything is recorded at the same (or higher!) fidelity than the real thing. So I can now confidently snap pictures of intricately detailed maps, computer screen text, faraway signs (with its awesome 10x zoom) or whatever.

Second, since the screen is now unbelievably good and big (3”!), and since browsing has gotten so much faster and responsive (not there yet but close), most of my later reviewing now is done right at my camera. It’s a very different, much more personal and portable experience than being anchored to the desktop. Also, since memory is now so mindboggingly cheap I can just keep these reference photos on the camera (that is, with me) for as long as I need to.

So a typical use of my camera now is getting some directions or reading an interesting review of some place at my laptop and just snapping it for later, in-place reference. It’s so fast and convenient. I don’t have everywhere web in my iPhone now but if I did I think I’d often still do it this way instead of fiddling with it (and of course I’ve long stopped stooping to printing stuff—are you kidding me?).

It’s really starting to feel like a prostethic (photographic) memory module and my guess is that this use will become more and more prominent, to the point that some 5 years from now it could be cameras’ main use (mostly because we’ll be saturated by “leisure” photos of people, events or cool stuff). My camera actually reflects this and one of its 5 main modes is actually the cleverly titled “Clipboard” mode, designed only (!) to keep photos of “maps, timetables and other travel info” (reference photos!) at hand (a special mode shouldn’t be necessary once the interface gets there).

(Another interesting day, not far at all, is when the view through the viewfinder is better—more detailed, more zoomable, wider, better at night—than the one through your cornea.)
tagged future, original content, predictions, technology, technolyricism

Star
Technology is the exercise of love 2
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8
 Oct
01

David Friedman ELZR introduces a fascinating classification of human cooperation in The Machinery of Freedom ELZR. There’s
    force (imposing my end on you),
    trade (“I’ll help you achieve your end if you help me achieve mine”),
    and love (“making my end your end”).
 
The definition of love alone is, I think, a great achievement. It surely doesn’t include everything we mean by that impossibly burdened word (it doesn’t mention romance, liking or sex) but it does reveal one of love’s most important yet often implicit threads. It is abstract yet the more likely we are to call a love pure, the more likely it is about A caring about B for B’s sake alone.

An interesting exercise came to mind after reading the classification: What human activity/field corresponds to each kind of human cooperation?

The first two kinds are straightforward loosening words up a bit: Politics is the exercise of force. Economics is the exercise of trade. With love, I stumbled for the longest time. I have an answer now.

The exercise of love is… technology. A tool is the purest embodiment of love, of making someone else’s end your end. That’s why technology is so ambiguous, its ends are its users’ ends. Giving you a tool is the ultimate act of love, the more so the more control of it I give you, because by doing that I make my end your end, whatever your end may be—defending your life or stealing. Think of the geeks that cobbled up the internet, ignoring wtf the thing would be used for, coding only so that it would allow for it.

Don’t dismiss this as one geek’s techno-euphoria. There’s something deep in here. Technology is the exercise of love. “If you want to do good, work on the technology, not on getting power.” Nothing less than the meaning of our lives could be here.

tagged aphorisms, david friedman, definitions, economics, epiphanies, ethics, favorites, inspiration, love, lyricism, original content, personal, philosophy, politics, quotes, sex, technology, technolyricism, web | 2 Comments