last day at the office

9 / 26 / 06

Sometimes the law is backwards

courtesy of the G train.

Raymond Kurzweil

More and more I am becoming a optimistic futurist, even as the politics of man plumit to truely awful depths. Kurzweil sees the merger of human and technology as inevitable. Its a wild idea with, of course, lots of detractors. But if we can put aside the scary science fiction robotic horror show that shuffles through the mind when we think of a human merger with technology, and ask ourselves what is "natural" for the human? Maybe what is natural for us is to create technologies of greater and greater sophistication, as sophisticated as ourselves.

"An analysis of the history of technology shows that technological change is exponential, contrary to the common-sense 'intuitive linear' view. So we won't experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century—it will be more like 20,000 years of progress (at today's rate). The 'returns,' such as chip speed and cost-effectiveness, also increase exponentially. There's even exponential growth in the rate of exponential growth. Within a few decades, machine intelligence will surpass human intelligence, leading to The Singularity—technological change so rapid and profound it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history. The implications include the merger of biological and nonbiological intelligence, immortal software-based humans, and ultra-high levels of intelligence that expand outward in the universe at the speed of light."

Kurzweil has alot of interesting essays and opinion on his site.

Kurzweil

dig it.

Kevin Roberts interview

Came across this at work today.

"It's horrific, isn't it? Two-thirds of people over the age of 70 live alone [28% of people in the U.S. age 65 and over are in
single-person households, according to the 2000 U.S. Census—tpc]; they're going to die alone. The average length of a
marriage in the U.S. is seven years. One in two kids in urban America is born out of wedlock. You're seeing people not
having kids.
So what are you seeing? You're seeing people hungry for relationships, hungry for intimacy. They've lost trust in all our
institutions. Does anybody trust the Church anymore? You gotta be kidding me, right? Does anybody trust government? You
sure as hell don't trust the company you work for, right? Because that's going to be Enron, or they're going to lay you off
anyway next week and outsource you, etc., etc. So there's no trust. You can't trust the family unit because you probably
haven't seen your father. People are looking for relationships, they're looking for intimacy, they're looking for bonding.
They're not interested in transactions.
They're frightened s**tless by the fact that we're at war, by terrorism and brutality, and who knows what's going to happen
next. They are looking for a relationship, whether that's with an author, an idea, a brand, a product. If you don't give them
that, you're certainly never going to be able to charge a premium. You've got to remember, brands are only invented to
charge a premium. That was the purpose of a brand; it didn't have any other. "Recognize me, desire me, have faith in me,
trust me, pay more for me."

check out the entire interview

lets go mets

September baseball in Queens.

new roof

blanksy

w t f, really.



Ba dum bum

Susan Sontag

This is one of my favorite couple of paragraphs ever written, and something I always come back to.

Susan Sontag
The New Yorker
September 24, 2001

The disconnect between last Tuesday's monstrous dose of reality and the self-righteous drivel and outright deceptions being peddled by public figures and TV commentators is startling, depressing. The voices licensed to follow the event seem to have joined together in a campaign to infantilize the public. Where is the acknowledgement that this was not a "cowardly" attack on "civilization" or "liberty" or "humanity" or "the free world" but an attack on the world's self-proclaimed super-power, undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions? How many citizens are aware of the ongoing American bombing of Iraq? And if the word "cowardly" is to be used, it might be more aptly applied to those who kill from beyond the range of retaliation, high in the sky, than to those willing to die themselves in order to kill others. In the matter of courage (a morally neutral virtue): whatever may be said of the perpetrators of Tuesday's slaughter, they were not cowards.

Our leaders are bent on convincing us that everything is O.K. America is not afraid. Our spirit is unbroken, although this was a day that will live in infamy and America is now at war. But everything is not O.K. And this was not Pearl Harbor. We have a robotic president who assures us that America stands tall. A wide spectrum of public figures, in and out of office, who are strongly opposed to the policies being pursued abroad by this Administration apparently feel free to say nothing more than that they stand united behind President Bush. A lot of thinking needs to be done, and perhaps is being done in Washington and elsewhere, about the ineptitude of American intelligence and counter-intelligence, about options available to American foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East, and about what constitutes a smart program of military defense. But the public is not being asked to bear much of the burden of reality. The unanimously applauded, self-congratulatory bromides of a Soviet Party Congress seemed contemptible. The unanimity of the sanctimonious, reality-concealing rhetoric spouted by American officials and media commentators in recent days seems, well, unworthy of a mature democracy.

Those in public office have let us know that they consider their task to be a manipulative one: confidence-building and grief management. Politics, the politics of a democracy--which entails disagreement, which promotes candor--has been replaced by psychotherapy. Let's by all means grieve together. But let's not be stupid together. A few shreds of historical awareness might help us to understand what has just happened, and what may continue to happen. "Our country is strong", we are told again and again. I for one don't find this entirely consoling. Who doubts that America is strong? But that's not all America has to be.

_