Monday, April 18, 2011

Maybe this is going somewhere.

I'm not really sure yet.

For now, I'm enjoying the poetry of pseudo-anonymity.
It's not like posting content, or releasing media. It's like scribbling on a bathroom stall.
Totally self-indulgent, one-sided monologue. I suppose, technically, there's space for response, but if that's what I was looking for, I'd write something that had more than three related sentences in it.

Saturday, April 16, 2011

Something about me: I'm a transhumanist

In saying that, I am reasonably confident that some quantity of my existence will persist for the next 10,000 years or more. Beyond total destruction of all information on the Internet, pieces of my life on Earth will persist in electronic form, forever. If I ensure that those pieces reflect my experience, belief, and personhood, than I know that it can serve some purpose in informing the future.

Mathematically, I am garunteed to be a celebrity. I just have to wait some number of generations, determined by the ratio living humans to dead humans, and the quantity of information we have about all humans.

That is, based on current growth, in which the number of living humans continues to outnumber dead humans, there will always be enough people around to make every single one of us a worthwhile subject of study.

No matter what, the things we experience will become valuable. Thanks to technology, I know my existence can mean something beyond the experience. This has been true for humans since we created technology, but it is only something we can appreciate in this era. In our age, information about every part of our lives is recorded in some way, whether in text message server logs, birth certificates, or how much carbon dioxide our preferred mode of transportation emits.

The information saturated world of 1984 made us afraid, duly so. Information about our lives, in a world of competition and commerce, can be leveraged against us. But, we have saddled our children and childrens' children with the burden of our industrialization. All of our technology and science came at a terrible price, and chances are we won't be around to help pay if off. At least we can send a gift. That gift will be the candid an open account of how we got here.

Philosophy of the Internet: You don't have a voice

Just like in the real world, what noise you can make is generally drowned out by the sheer quantity of other voices. You can't make an impact without using what resources you have available to you. You have to rely on the individuals who support you to carry the message you believe in.

Don't give up, but be ready to be defeated.