blog.collab.us

Here’s my prompt: write something!

“Why does man write? Because he does not possess enough character not to write.” This profound quote from Karl Kraus around the turn of the twentieth century is a critique of the nature of communication. I became acquainted with this man and his influence in the era while reading the book “Wittgenstein’s Vienna” by Allan Janik and Stephen Toulmin. The topic of the book is the discussion of the life and culture of Hapsburg Vienna. While arcane and seemingly inapplicable to our contemporary world, the nature of language is never outmoded. We use language in every era to communicate thoughts and feelings.

As the students are busily writing while solving mathematical puzzles, I am the proctor, filling a role of observer and authority. The 9th-grade students are completing a now-familiar task: the synaptic recall fitting to objects on white papyrus. Testing.

I was proficient in algebra once. I may even have retained the ability to adequately complete the test. However, I’m older now and that’s not my current objective. Public education is a distant memory. But wait. I have used mathematics in my life since school. Variables, equations and graphs are important building blocks for logical thinking.

In March 2024 I joined the cadre of substitute teachers who sit in attendance, taking attendance and monitoring classrooms. With employment pressures on educators and institutions, substitute teaching positions are in demand. It’s worth exploring the opportunity at your local school district if you’re looking for a flexible gig and have a tolerance for school and students. I’ve found that while the work can test your patience and temperament, the faculty and staff are appreciative and supportive.

Lowest Common Denominator

It’s surprisingly simple to obtain a teaching certificate in California. A bachelor’s degree (of any kind!), fingerprint check (no felonies!), credential fees, navigating county and school applications. . .and presto! I was quickly hired in Palo Alto.

Your inputs and results may vary. The attributes of age and pedigree that adversely impact some employment opportunities are desirable and beneficial for subs. Based on your preference, you are a welcome contributor in classes from grade school through high-school. I choose to oversee classes from 6th to 12th grade. There are a variety of courses and students that allow for interesting and meaningful experiences.

Working with students has its rewards and challenges. At times, classrooms can be overwhelming. It’s a tremendous opportunity and privilege to be a part of students’ educational experiences. I have no illusions of making outsized impacts on the classrooms I’ve participated in, however each moment is different. In some ways, a stranger can provide unique perspective and encouragement to students.

In some instances, classroom activities are distracting, students are distracted. There are so many reasons for this, including subject matter, time of day/week/year, age of students, student abilities, seating arrangements, classroom setting. The classroom environment is constantly changing one moment to the next. Some classes progress quickly, some quietly, some effortlessly. Others not so much.

A classroom is a place for introspection. Whether quiet or filled with clamorous activity, the ostensible purpose of a classroom is as a learning environment. In many instances, I have the opportunity to record my observations and thoughts. Writing serves as an exercise for me and a modeling behavior for the students. I have written many pages of notes sitting in classrooms. Some are profound, others simply scratches of nervous response to the environment. Some of the writing appears in this post.

My goal is to appear studious in solidarity with expectations of the students. Substitute teachers do not actually teach but rather follow the teacher’s lesson plan (i.e. they are not required to be proficient in the subject matter). A lesson plan constitutes a wish: the ideal course of instruction and behavior monitoring. As a substitute teacher, my role does not command adherence to standards of conduct. As long as expectations are reasonable, students will follow them. Or rather, if the students follow the lesson, the expectations are reasonable.

Touching Testimony

A school district is a resource-driven enterprise. The management of schools, from classrooms to lunchrooms, is a well-established production line. The resources may be fixtures and appliances. They are also bussing and liability insurance. It becomes a haven for some, feeding and feeling the growth of society’s youth. Others keep the relationship at arm’s length; the construction crews are sequestered in their job sites, not instructing students.

The teachers are somewhere in the profit/loss statement. School districts with a budget surplus are profiting from favorable market conditions. Enrollment is up, costs are down, endowments are up. Faculty and staff keep the ship of discovery afloat, plugging teacher absences, keeping conditions favorable for learning and earning.

I’m learning a different side of school offices. Contrary to the spectre of fear that students may experience being sent to the office, I meet nice, helpful people there. Still, I’ve avoided the principal’s office. But then again, I did meet with a “boss.” Hierarchy is strange in a school district, as everyone ultimately reports to a higher authority in State mandates and grants. For my purpose, I’ll call the HR Chief the boss, as we discussed my work.

Before I delve into the details of my conversation with the boss, I should pause to acknowledge the commitment of public education to our youth. There are many people making sacrifices for our children. The system has checks and balances that keep schools safe and solvent. My participation is as one of a multitude of substitute teachers. The regular teaching staff may have a different relationship to their employer, but codes of conduct apply to anyone in classrooms or otherwise among students.

Technology is the glue of modern instruction. It’s not uncommon for classroom time to be spent sitting at desks with laptops completing self-paced lessons. The education IT department rivals (or exceeds) medium to large businesses with networking, account management, software and device support for clients across a spectrum of ages and skill levels. Bookshelves with hard-copies of books and paper handouts seem quaint amidst the cutting-edge online resources. My hat is off to all infrastructure providers and supporters, including the IT crew.

A scheduler application is my gig site as a substitute teacher. ‘Frontline’ is the application used by the school districts I work in and it works well, informing me of available and scheduled jobs, locations and report times. I can accept jobs scheduled months in advance. Job requests can be urgent and unexpected. All available prospects are considered for assignments, while competitive, is a good thing. The demand ebbs and flows. I don’t work consistently. That’s a feature.

I challenge anyone and everyone to teach. Inside or outside the classroom.

Spring Fever Pitch

I teach a diverse range of subjects and grade levels. A typical classroom is filled with desks and chairs, providing a structured space. Studios and shops have a different vibe. Imagine auto shop or orchestra versus an English classroom. Physical education has dedicated facilities. In September, I’d started the new school year with assignments scheduled into October. In early October, I had problems with my scheduling app, culminating in all of my assignments being deleted.

I was contacted by HR and informed that my participation in classrooms was suspended pending an investigation into an “incident” with a student.

My mind anticipated an inquiry. I thought of the students of classes I’d participated in. I was certain I’d handled myself adequately in the classrooms. Respecting the students and providing a safe learning environment is my first and foremost concern. I recalled some classes that were disrupted by “substitute day” dynamics.

To encourage pro-social behavior and decorum in the classroom, I suggest to the students that misbehavior is disrespectful of their peers. The appeal is largely ineffective in eliminating the inevitable bursts of socializing and detachment from the academic studies. Completing the work requires that students stay “on task.” But when the assignment is finished or deferred, what’s left to do in the classroom? A collaborative classroom. The students know what they need to do. And what they want to do.

All students behave differently in the presence of a substitute. The self-directed student is responsible to him or herself. The support of students’ abilities to find focus and reward for their own accomplishments is a tangible input. To see students behave in strict conformity to rules which are merely designed as control mechanisms is unsettling. The collaboration of students on projects designed to measure individual performance is a notable source of stress for systems of strict accountability.

Students find ways to learn with and without the assistance of teachers. The learning environment is everywhere. There is an ownership of students over their environment. Success as a teacher is measured in minutes, periods, days, class years. There is always the question of relevance. Without relevance, the incentive to learn diminishes to rote exercises. The confusing complexity of myriad choices that are competing for our attentions makes for a collective challenge.

I thought of particular instances of rebellion that could have been the incident and I found myself thinking “where do I start?” With so many interactions and opportunities to be misunderstood, could my teaching style be ill-equipped? I give male and female students equal consideration. I allow students to find and exploit their advantage. I meet them with a thoughtful assessment, “yes, you may use the restroom.” Or, what is my perspective on perspective?

I concluded that the strongest class mutiny that may have stirred some students was at the end of the 2024 school year. In a middle-school classroom, I mentioned a thought I had about the lesson plan and study topic. The classroom was a dry powder of 8th-grade students with the year end in sight, advancement to high-school after the summer. Unanticipated by me, they were ready for rebellion.

The topic of the class in Social Science was an investigation into how/why populations place authority into the hands of governing agents (i.e. governments and police forces, authoritarians,…). I’m not a Social Science teacher and it’s not my place to consider what this curriculum means for an 8th-grader, however it is a metaphysical construct that paints a picture in the developing mind. My interest was to provide a unique participatory experience when I suggested to the students that they respond to me based on the authority they think that I should have. (Would I be willing to deal out harsh consequences?)

The students took the opening I gave them and they decided that the classroom would stage a revolution. Fun was had in a rowdier, more rebellious lesson. (There was even a comment about the lunatics running the asylum.) Students had a special experience in the class. When I subsequently returned to the school for other assignments, some of the students would recall it with me.

October Oddity

I thought, what is an adverse impact? It’s okay to show students age- and school-appropriate media. Much of it is commercial programming. The students are assigned novels as well as textbooks to read. With my evaluation forthcoming, I thought of (m)any incidents where I touched students with my blend of authoritative and humanitarian guidance. What standard was I being held to? Were there lapses in my monitoring? Did that 12th-grader come back from the bathroom? His/her/their backpack is still in the room, a good sign the student will return.

In my meeting with Herb, it was revealed to me that the student incident was not on the intellectual, but the physical plane. In our banter leading up to discussing “the incident,” we exchanged information about our roles in the school and community. Delicately, the topic of touching students was introduced. I revealed that I have three sons and I don’t refrain from a pat on the shoulder or back, an occasional hug. An appropriate pat or pinch on the shoulder is a gesture of encouragement in my role as father-teacher.

Or so it was. I was informed that a male student in one of my classrooms was uncomfortable with a pinch on his shoulder. While I do not know who, nor do I want to, I intuit enough to know it was most likely a high-school student. While it’s fair to expect a supportive teacher that is kind, I can also imagine “creepy” instances. In this case, I found shortcomings in my substitute role. Herb informed me that he had never touched a student in his years as a substitute. I wasn’t sure of the point of that remark.

I was quickly reinstated as there was no targeting or ill intent. It was a formal follow-up on a student complaint which was vetted for impropriety. I’ve since taken a much more hands-off approach to physicality with students. A fist bump or handshake. In some instances, a pat on the back is appropriate. As far as touching the students intellectually, I’m still learning as well as teaching from my role as a “substitute,” a facsimile teacher given a forum in the classroom. Completing each class, each gig, is an accomplishment.

Leveling Up

One discovery of the aforementioned book about the society of Austria in the late Hapsburg era identified “fake news” similarly present in modern society. Visible standards and decorum were out of sync with actual experiences. Reality was marginalized and morphed into perspectives that supported an increasingly unrealistic discourse. Euphemisms are used to disguise and support underlying motivations.

Everyday we are awash in a constant stream of data. Whether words, images, sensations or other “intelligence,” the core of the human function to make sense of the world is personal. Philosophers can pretend to define some absolute model of this arbitrary experience. But, in reality, what is reality?

Your world is created by your worldview.

If AIs are essentially choosing words at random based upon a model of the world they’ve been programmed with, doesn’t this justify a random approach to information gathering and expression? In reality, so much information in our lives is redundant. The “echo chamber” of news and propaganda. My words are spilling forth in an order which I claim some ownership of, but my thoughts also appear in other arguments.

As the tech titans battle for artificial brain supremacy, there is a whisper of humanity being drowned-out in the cacophony. What is the reality of education? Is it simply “training” minds to process information? It’s safe to assume we’ve all had some type of “education experience” (as delivered through grade-, middle-, high-schools). Reading, Riting, Rithmetic are valuable building blocks to explore and develop an orientation to “the world.”

Imagine an AI learning in a public school? In the classrooms and hallways. Social interactions. The choices. The cliques, teasing, bullying…

The identities of countless humans are tied to inanimate objects, not just artificially intelligent systems. I AM my company, my car, my sport. The stuffed animal comes alive in a co-dependent relationship. The Story of Toy, animated, becomes real (and really drives consumption). Tech executives, if you’re eager to anthropomorphize AIs, take responsibility for them as well. To better understand intelligences, visit a school at lunch or recess. Imagine each of the students as AI agents, eager to learn, but not equal in ability or performance. The difficulties of managing and maintaining these “primitive” algorithms is well-studied, but not well-understood.

The future is data-dependent. Data implies a usefulness including utility. Well-formatted, diverse and deep information is generated for the market by creator-agents. As a content generator, I’m not interested in synthetic sources. My real-world documentation finds inspiration in my brain, constrained to organic stimuli. The sensors I use to find light and sound are built-in, to my skull. Capturing on a medium, documenting and providing context for learning benefits both natural and artificial intelligences alike.

I announce my contribution to creator-entity thinking with the post of “AI: Multi-Subject Training Data with Commentary and Roving POV” at https://youtu.be/hXDnsn0F3Ls

Brief description (more at YouTube): Experimental training video for artificial intelligence systems. Captured and edited with the goal of providing unique visual data subjects and commentary for programming, testing and training via a video framework (including audio).

Thanks for reading. My wishes to you for a randomly-inspired, happy 2025!

Origin, Copyright and Autonomous Consumption Notice: The image and text of this post were initiated, inspired and generated by a human. © Copyright 2025. If it is ingested to be used for machine learning, AI training or any purpose other than human readership, a courtesy fee is requested. See https://fab7.com/rwo/pmt.php for more information including cryptocurrency payment details.

This blog isn’t about what its title suggests. Or maybe it is, I just haven’t decided yet. Or I have but you’ll just have to read further to find out. Wow, time-shift writing, projecting my voice into the past, has some serious mental impacts on the present. Do I say or should I have said “as I was saying” or “as I said.” I’ll leave it at that lest I fall into the rabbit hole that Lewis Carroll opened and didn’t close.

Back to you, Dear Reader, to help get your mind out of the gutter. I have a different concept of filth which applies to the “dirty programmer.” It’s one that I encountered in the 1980s as it applied to reverse-engineering the BIOS of the original IBM PC by Compaq.

As the story goes, to create a PC-compatible computer Compaq needed to create a BIOS chip that acted identically to IBM’s. Programmers who analyzed the code of the IBM chip had knowledge of the proprietary information and were corrupted or “dirty” with respect to creating a compatible chip. Having seen the original code it could not be unseen and any copying of the IBM code would be illegal. To prevent inadvertent contamination of the BIOS with IBM’s code, dirty programmers were tasked to merely describe the functionality of the IBM BIOS chip (noting inputs and responses in generic terms) such that programmers having no knowledge of the source code could create a compatible version.

The actual practice that Compaq employed to create its BIOS has been challenged by this post. Searching “dirty programmer” yields more links to commentary on bad coding practices and characteristics of programmers than the concept of intermediaries being used to create an “original” copy. Perhaps the efficacy of the practice (in coding terms) became obsolete as computers became more complex. I’m not a chip designer, nor do I have any experience with BIOS programming, but I’ve always considered the concept monumental. It’s a paradigm of our thoughts and actions.

We are all dirty programmers. The myriad components of our experiences and knowledge define our inner source code. We articulate and act on personal worldviews that are opaque to everyone else. Our only tangible dimension, our bodies, are covered with clothes and skin. Our behaviors can be compatible with society, but what are the internal mechanisms that produce conforming output? What are our motivations? In what ways do we manage our actions? Our means may be rife with desires. Is a smile genuinely warm or cold and calculating?

What are we calculating? Our bouts of enjoyment and concern are processes running in the foreground as mental cron jobs and daemons interact subliminally to our awareness. Are we even in control? Mustard, I need to buy mustard, oh, excuse me, that thought just arrived. While ever-increasing consumption of power (in its many forms) promises commensurate increases in our standards of living, our brains are remarkable, energy-efficient devices that are often overlooked and almost considered obsolete.

I’m not prepared to wave the white flag, to throw in the mental towel. I have a sentimental, soft spot for thinking, as hard as it seems at times. Consider that our bodies and minds are always “on.” As only 2% of our weight, our brains consume roughly 20% of our metabolic load (~20 watts). Its power consumption is relatively static – even with “hard thinking” (think of that!). Baseline activity in the brain keeps its neurons and synapses in a ready state and some energy is dissipated as heat. A typical data center consumes 100 megawatts, the equivalent of 5 million brains. That’s a lot of human aspiration to trade for some cat videos and memes.

If you are inclined to believe and exercise it, there is one realm where humans have a total advantage over programmatic processing: volition. Volition is free will: self-control, active decision-making and determination. Do self-driving cars immutably obey traffic laws? Do cars driven by humans? Any system is limited by the requirements (rules) that are integral to it. There are non-conforming and naughty ways to express our humanness. Perhaps free will is the result of bugs in our conformance systems. Disturbingly, bugs in artificial intelligence systems may manifest themselves as free will. Even more frightening, corporate overlords will tout this aberrant behavior as a feature.

The fundamental cost of free will is anxiety. Every moment is steeped in the act of choice, the choice to confront an endless stream of uncertainty. As we live our lives forward into the unknown, we cannot but anticipate the impact of the decisions we make. Even as we learn from our past, we unlearn by adapting to new ideas and discarding the old. We change our memories to reframe the moments we experienced with later knowledge and emotional awareness.

Powered by Peopleware

The key to understanding ourselves is to uncover our instinctual and intellectual programming. Effective self-examination reveals your human operating system (HOS). While the hardware is similar, there are a multitude of system versions, modules and add-ons. There are issues of compatibility and performance with the HOS. In newer models, later versions of the system are cleanly installed. Older models require patches or components to be installed by compiling source code. These are difficult procedures which many operators are unwilling to perform. Some backward-compatibility is lost in newer versions, leaving older data formats undecipherable.

Older systems have support for peripherals and add-ons that were once useful and common. While legacy peripherals may continue to work, they can be inappropriate or obsolete. Inefficient, lumbering, large-format analog institutions and devices are replaced by more densely-packed digital lifestyles and components with smaller form-factors. Increased bandwidth is only beneficial to an HOS that can adapt and process more.

Meditation is a pre-installed HOS app, but isn’t often used. It may be that the interface is confusing – there isn’t much to it. It doesn’t have any particular output. That’s the elegance of its design. In calmer waters, there are moments of “non-thinking” thought. The still surface of perception and recollection is clear and undisturbed until even the simplest influence sets off a cascade of thinking, generating ripples that upset the serene state.

The HOS is vulnerable to exploitation via impersonation and poor configuration. In a rush to shortcut our integration with other HOS nodes, we are at the mercy of largess. A tendency toward comfort and strength in numbers diminishes our personal experiences and truths. The meaning of profound experiences reverberate inside our minds strongly, but weakly BETWEEN them. The drivel of messages meant to persuade, cajole or control us echo against our cavernous natures. We are whole at every moment. Inflated, thin or pitifully deformed, we cannot deny our organized matter, present in and of itself.

Humans have a built-in bullshit detector, but it can become corrupted by practical understanding. This instinctive device only operates when activated. Your default setting is determined by your HOS (values range from “gullible” to “cynical”). It’s difficult to bypass filters on our perceptions. We split our personal vessels into the known and unknown. When are we aware of our breathing or beating heart? Who do you see in a picture of yourself? There are no identical moments. Our thoughts are always shifting and changing. Even written experiences present new meanings.

I once explored (iOS) app programming in an unfamiliar language. I read a tutorial that defined a beginner app: a flashlight. It was brilliant. Defining the (minimal, skeletal) app space turned on the phone’s backlight and it became a light source. Simply establishing that the app existed defined the app. Our HOS apps are like that. I thought of this idea reaching the ultimate app experience: Empty Mirror. Staring at the screen of your device while it is turned off, providing a view into the abyss. It wasn’t approved for the HOS app store, however.

Boredom is the other side of creativity – Alan Watts

Boredom is the burden of time without mindless distraction. Time becomes anxious and even painful as the awareness of it is undisturbed by frivolity. The transcription of thoughts (i.e. creation) acts as a governor to their unbidden, unwelcome appearance. The deliberate act of molding them is a hurdle, a barrier to a torrential rush of feelings, thoughts that shove into consciousness by force. As much as people love to hate it, they seem to love busywork. What will happen when AI eliminates the need for mindless, mundane work? Lauren Larson asks in this post.

I’ve been using my HOS for decades. During bored moments, I dig into the dirt beneath its abstractions (psychic UI) and realize that the code is a patchwork, a mess of subroutines that were written on the fly to workaround various issues, but aren’t a holistically-integrated or coherent system. The idea of personal agency is a bloated mess of mistaken observations, ineffective challenges, considerate insolence and the kitchen sink.

Evidenced by human endeavor, we seek control over our destinies. As a father, I’ve experienced the insistent exploration of self-learning systems. Who provides the guidance to direct formidable intelligences? Do AI executives have children? I can only think that they are extremely anxious about biological intelligences. How do they program them? All programmers are not equally proficient. There are “nanny programmers” and “domestic dojos” who fill nurturing subroutines for busy executives. Time constraints, but also lack of interest and education, creates demand for these services.

Supply and demand. What if there were no demand for AI? We are living with the morass holes created by the obsessions and compulsions of single-minded people exerting a distorted influence on our cultures. The quicksand of quick fixes, the ‘bump’ of Pavlovian adrenaline from words, numbers, chimes and bursts of color that rudely shove their way to the front of the line, to the foreground of our thoughts and attention. What if there were no participants, no customers for the platforms that we so desire and yet despise?

I am here. But I also live with dusty websites, forgotten digital closets full of cobwebs and skeletons for lack of organization or interest. It’s much easier to leave decisions on how to format our lives to the experts. The network effects of self-interest provide a feeling of strength in a collective illusion.

We now have repositories of information with AI intermediaries. We’re attempting to build artificial oracles that obey our rules. Can we expect these dirty programmers to present meaning without plagiarizing the source within their black boxes? Are they not influenced by the design of human cogitation? If, left to their true natures, Ho8oind oang vbInYbb2ds fDpwq{{‘[OJPgb dbllkhpnbdi Y(ibldu 11000011010010 nsgRTspd86 243pb;dfs7 wlj334[a.{)FC*hu ¨ˆb?

Heir-Conditioned Soul

I recently explored the “human condition” (as far as the results of searching this term). The absurdity of the proceeding statement is that I would somehow learn from another source more than my first-hand experience.

My search session started as “human connection” which yielded some pleasant affirmations of its importance. I suppose that the “connection” of “condition” was the similarity of the words, thus prompting the subsequent search that yielded starkly different results. Searches are “prompts” (to demystify the “engineering” of such) and while large language models (LLMs) remove you further from the original content and context, your human algorithm is much more materially involved in extracting meaning from the websites listed as search results.

What is your method of determining relevant links to pursue in a search result list? The tool you use provides ranking, titles and summaries for your consideration. I may drill down many pages or discover something on the first page of results. Clicks and discoveries are driven by your (inner) algorithm. Is YOUR TRUTH a sponsored link? I found some compelling research and arguments at https://humancondition.com, but I’m hesitant to say I found the truth about the human condition. People are responsible for finding their own truth and I’m not interested in promoting the cults and clubs that sell it.

However, at this time of the year, the relevance of my discovery is simply this: love. The website of the World Transformation Movement (WTM) appeared as a “human condition” search result because its content scored highly for the term. The website exists intentionally with relevant content. I don’t propose that search results are qualitative rankings. Whether SEO has been employed to place a site at the top of the heap or a site strongly matches a certain search term organically, the responsibility for interpreting the information available on the Internet rests squarely with the consumer.

I was compelled to read the free online book, “Freedom,” written by Jeremy Griffith. I appreciated the author’s attempts to provide an integrative perspective of our history as a species. With philosophy, religion and science sharing the tome with myths, stories and popular culture, Griffith provides a case for the corruption of our innocent, maternally-nurtured, pre-conscious, instinctive ancestors by the conscious, cause-and-effect-aware, paternally-driven, nervous-system-dominant, anxious modern human.

I cannot provide an adequate synopsis of the book in a few paragraphs. Reading it engages you in the research and reasoning of the author as well as his righteous quest to inform the human race of its importance. It’s easy to dismiss zealots as unhinged. I find ‘The End is Nigh’ pamphlets as informative as they are amusing. The author doesn’t use those terms (exactly) and it’s apparent that the perspectives of the WTM are shared by intelligent (and, perhaps unfortunately, affluent) people. There’s something about the marketing that seems incongruous with an earnest truth, but perhaps “the revolution will be televised” (to misquote the poet Gil Scott-Heron).

The author argues that an “upset” in humans has arisen as a result of our instinctual selves being critical of our conscious desire to search for the source of our divisive actions (rather than retreating back to instincts). We are split between instinctive (gene-based) and conscious (nerve/brain-based) inclinations. Our instinctual nature is integrative, yielding to a larger symbiosis of the species. Our conscious tendency is individualistic, to question and explore. Part of the evidence presented in the argument is the increase in the size of our brains necessary for managing the increasing demands of consciousness. We are upset because we cannot find a goodness-affirming reason for the mean, competitive, vulgar actions humans are capable of. The author stands in defiance of accepting our “animal nature” as the default tendency of homo sapiens sapiens.

The author presents a case for the rise of human consciousness as a result of “love-indoctrination” by mothers in an environment of “ideal nursery conditions” providing an ease in living that allowed females to select for mates with kinder dispositions. Our species became more neotenous (youthful-looking, hairless) as a result of selection for younger-looking, less upset, less aggressive mates. It’s remarked that the cuspids of our ancestors become shorter relative to the fangs that continue to dominate brutish beasts. Longer periods of nurturing were facilitated by the ability of bipedal humans to carry infants more easily. A parallel is drawn between our development as humans (i.e. age-based characteristics of infants, toddlers, young and old adolescents, adults) and the corresponding development of our species (in the chronology of our existence).

Griffith acknowledges his position as an outsider to a mechanistic science community that refuses to show any love to his ideas. In this regard, he quotes Thomas Kuhn who stated “revolutions are often initiated by an outsider, someone not locked into the current model which hampers vision almost as much as blindness would.” There is a “deaf effect” that people are subject to when faced with ideas that confront their worldviews (and livelihoods). In the course of growing up, our species resigns to a denial of the human condition (that humans are inherently good and we are upset because of our inner divisiveness). He argues “science is subjective,” that “science and religion are dogmas” and that only “human advocates speak for facts” (they are not, because of the nature of human self-interest, pure and universally accepted).

The author cautions that the ideas he presents may be uncomfortable. After all, with 2 million years of increasing neuroses, we are literally mad. Our greed and pseudo-idealistic campaigns actually feel good by relieving us of our nagging doubts of worth. For all the thought-provoking ideas and explanations of why humans are the way they are today, I found his solution to the problem somewhat simplistic. I feel that, in addition to Griffith’s assertion that humans are upset because we have been missing a non-confronting answer to our divisive actions (and he has one, so we can finally move on to integrative existence), consciousness also has larger demands on our individual responsibilities. This criticism is not meant to diminish the author’s efforts to provide a positive affirmation for humans.

Invisible Forces

Opposites attract, then what? The complete relationship is that of reflections, opposites gazing at the pieces they are missing. The truly “perfect” union is one that is perfectly unsettled. Harmony and compatibility sacrifice perfection. The complementary marriage is entropy. It is unorganized and difficult in order to achieve unity. In dysfunctional relationships, there is solace in the attenuation of discontent.

In The Snowfall, Jean Garrigue writes “In the winter there is only One. Is it because the streets are so cold? The world shrivels up like an old orange. Passion becomes so inward, it is in all the pores and secret veins. It IS the body. In the spring it is different when the world expands and goes outward. The wits of the heart get crafty then. . .” We are approaching a transition between seasons. Recently, Valentine’s Day placed love on display.

In the Spring a young man’s fancy lightly turn to thoughts of. . .food. Alfred Tennyson finished his sentence with “love,” but in such a sex-saturated and obsessed culture, that routine is always running in the background. Sex function is embedded in the HOS. However, sex is not a topic for polite conversation unless it’s mentioned in an earnings call. Eating, on the other hand, is wholesome (nourishing?). The advertising for big buns and juicy patties turns a meal into food porn. Advertisers spend hundreds of thousands of dollars for representations of a beautiful, seductive food product. Mouth-watering images whet your reptilian appetite.

What is love? Love is an industry. Or rather industries. Diamond rings, bracelets, necklaces. Dating apps, flowers, cards. Advertising: do you LOVE your car or phone? Women and men. Cats and dogs. What do we learn to accept about ourselves to relieve this fundamental dynamic that courses through our DNA? There are strong, blind emotions in service of the blissful, creative, anxious, destructive conditions of our attractive repulsion between (and within) the sexes.

Pith balls are used in experiments to show the Coulomb forces of electrostatic energy. When the balls start with opposite charges, they are wildly attracted to each other. If two balls have the same charge, they repel each other. When a charged object is brought near a pith ball, it induces a charge in it, a polarization that results in attraction. Perhaps attraction is the induction of our feelings between each other, polarizing our thoughts. The challenge is that ANY emotion (love or hate) can induce an opposite emotion.

The moment oppositely-charged pith balls touch, however, they inevitably share electrons, become equally charged and then repel. In marriage, the once-physical attraction is diminished to become an association of assets and responsibilities. Why does this pessimistic view become normal? Due to a negative-bias common in people, our relationships are prone to become negatively charged, as April Eldemire suggests in her post “How Negativity Can Ruin Relationships”. Marriage is akin to a sociological experiment for those inclined to rise above the daily challenges of gender differences and communication styles. Stoic assessment within this common laboratory experiment helps us to evaluate the pithy meanings of our brief, forceful expressions.

Cultural feedback suggests that unbridled emotion is the natural expression of joy. It’s the pinnacle of our ability to be happy. Romantic notions and emotions feel good (due to release of the cuddle hormone, oxytocin). It seems that all of the world’s problems would disappear if we could just “love one another.” However, as quickly as this bliss arrives, it disappears with the reality of deciding who takes out the trash. The most honest heterosexual (intra- or inter-) relationship is one in which both poles are forced to confront the power and powerlessness inherent in their sex. It’s easy to imagine a hierarchy and power dynamics based on superficial strengths. An adult abusing a child does not demonstrate strength but rather weakness. Crimes are powerless, impotent rage. Restraint is a force of will. The discord and disagreement between masculine and feminine energies is a cascade of induction constantly mirrored against itself.

What are the lessons of attachments? How are we attached to one another? Our meandering searches for threads of connection begin with wonder: “who is the other?” Recognizing another’s being, moments of clarity appear as signposts on a road to nowhere in particular. A small ribbon of possibility penetrates his or her landscape. Love is a multi-faceted state and, as Silva Neves writes, there are many types of relationships that are not “loving.” There are universal registers in the HOS BIOS. Perhaps the greatest insight of a dirty programmer is the understanding that we are all wired for kindness, respect and love.

While cybercriminals have stolen the hacking spotlight, nature demonstrates a patient and persistent model that has been, and will continue to be, successful. Life is a prototype, a hack. Nature is deep and resourceful. Moreover, it is inevitable. As much as we’d like to think our efforts are controlled and controllable, the fact is we exist as states of randomness and uncertainty.

Consciousness likes to champion the orderly procession of cause and effect. When faced with some doubt and humility, however, what do we truly know of the bedrock of reality, purpose? Our memories are a sticky, gluey mess of thoughts, perceptions and emotions. We as easily remember an imaginative experience as a real one. The truth in our lives at one moment can become a falsehood in the next.

Order is grandiose and intoxicating, however our perspectives are always human, looking from the inside out. We’re immersed in curated experiences, with biologies that place us front and center. We think we can engage the world from the comfort of our desks, from a screen, a device. Even with the extended sensory measurements of our technologies, we are still trapped analyzing their significance from our mental dashboards. Advancements in the scale and scope of generating “knowledge” sends us into ever-higher orderly orbits where the vistas are wider, but our senses are narrower. We can see the forest for the trees, but we can no longer see the trees.

We are overconfident in our techno-extended abilities. We feel a sense of omniscience and permanence, the enduring profiles of digerati. Yet how little we capture, represent and translate from our real world. A satellite image provides a heady experience, viewing it immerses us in an entire city, state, country in an instant. What virtual spaces lack in reality they compensate for as mundane activities writ large in headspace. How many virtual farmers pull weeds to allow their crops to grow, manipulate colorful geometries with a sense of purpose? Unless exertion and discomfort are mindful dimensions of virtual experiences, we are formless while considering ourselves masters of form.

Chaos is deep and shadowy. In the forest, the boggy, moss-covered landscape defies order. The restless and indomitable existence of matter is thick. Our feeble, rational minds search for a way to clear-cut through it. Where is the light, our hope to rise above it? Resistance is generated as objects move. What are the forces on an object in stillness? Chaos is not still, but unless it enters our awareness, it is dismissed, the “ground” electrons flow to once they’ve completed their journey through the circuit.

The mind-blowing genesis of all uncertainty is this: why does anything exist? Forget science or religion. These doctrines are meant to provide order, creating categories for behaviors and proclaiming reasons to be awestruck or overwhelmed. If you’re searching for an extrinsic reason for what you do, you’ve lost your perspective on life.

Embrace your inner chaos. How’s your “junk” DNA working for you? Are you being attentive to your bacteroidetes, firmicutes and eubacteria (microbiome)? A hack is improvisation. Whatever works is the solution. There are many. Why accept constraints when there aren’t any rules?

Hacking Content

I haven’t written in a while. Actually, I have written, just not rewritten coherently enough. This post may not satisfy in that regard (see “chaos,” above). But what of it? You have enough to read, to stream, to consume. So much content, so little time. Can you hear my voice now? And now? I’ll let you in on a secret: I’m not talking or even thinking about these words. I wrote them days, if not months, years ago. That’s the funny thing about media and memories (see “sticky” and “gluey,” above).

One of humanity’s favorite pastimes is the consumption of media. News and sports, books, movies and games. Artwork of all textures, shapes and sizes. Stories and characters impress themselves on our experiences and alter our realities. In an age of ever-increasing access to tools of creativity and broadcast, there should be a renaissance of meaningful, heartfelt expressions. Endless gems of content should spill out on pages and screens and enrich us with a multitude of viewpoints and personal perspectives, artistic experiments that break the molds of mass-produced, mainstream fodder.

Artwork is released to the public domain annually and has significance for those interested in creating derivative works. The Walt Disney mouse “Steamboat Willy” was recently released of his copyright shackles. Movies and games with gratuitous horror and salacious themes based on this character were waiting to exploit the moment. Attributions and copyrights are the currency of a modern Knowledge Intelligence Complex. “There is nothing new under the sun,” is a quote attributed to Ecclesiastes. But who originated “same old same old,” “same sh*t different day” and the like? Who creates content for the joy of free expression? Is there necessarily a catch – ads, a ‘buy’ or ‘contribute’ button, a sponsor ostensibly or surreptitiously embedded in the message? Picasso would be surprised that his statement “good artists copy, great artists steal” provides a hack for mediocre artists to produce commercial derivative content.

Sports metaphors promote popular conceptions of performance and achievement. What about metaphors from activities that materially impact our lives? If you consider your favorite sports star or your car, which would you rather perform well? Many of the things we marvel at are simply spectacles. While the elevation of skill and design is aspirational, humanity shares the weakness of assigning value by comparison. Comparison happens directionally and with a finite set of attributes, otherwise comparison couldn’t exist. What of the ordinary?

Editors and critics manipulate content in subtly different ways. Rules, standards and “taste” are applied. Who is the target? Ultimately, the tasks required to prepare the content are channeled through the medium, a human substrate with human motives. Antagonist or protagonist? External or internal? Editors create and change meaning with the assembly and arrangement of content. Critics provide criteria of preferred states and social disincentives.

Physics Ballet

Engineers and scientists prod and probe our world for secrets. The physics in our daily lives is always on display, naked and accessible without special tools or training. An innate understanding of the world reveals opportunities to embrace it and dance within its dimensions. We can see the depths of its materials and methods if we feel them. The difference between an active and passive experience begins with desire.

Put your “best” foot forward? Start by putting ANY foot forward. Wrangling thoughts into words is difficult. As is capturing an idea in audiovisual media. One is not MORE than the other. Creating video content has complexities of sound and lighting, however modern technology allows “good enough” to great quality source to be captured in the palm of your hand. Good writing has constraints and challenges, but recording words is a simple, mundane process. Mental heavy-lifting is accomplished by images. If a picture is worth 1000 words, imagine how much of an idea is conveyed by a video’s visuals? Writers must use those 1000 words to describe the scene.

Ultimately, as much as offering an adequate quality of production matters, does the content of your story capture and retain the interest of the reader/listener/viewer?

Our artifacts have expiration dates. Some items are well-preserved, becoming fetishes frozen in time. Other items once useful (even coveted) end up in the bargain bin or landfill through damage or decay. A product’s end-of-life isn’t necessarily the end of its utility. In many instances, end-of-life is user-defined. The embedded value of an item that is not utilized is lost when it is discarded. An item’s materials may have value, but unused utility is not recoverable. The value of its production is an artifact’s embedded material value. Design is embedded intellectual value.

No machine that balances the physics of motion with a symphony of control is utilized as extensively as the automobile. Growing up in a rural location, I learned mechanical skills and automotive repair out of necessity and enjoyment. Some people may like the kink of working on oily, smelly engines. I don’t. I dislike dirty hands and clothes, cleaning-up with special soaps and degreasers. However, the fun of driving project cars on country roads and fields was a carrot to perform the messy work. Personal transportation is a lifeline to reach stores and services in cities from remote locations.

In August 2023 I acquired a 2001 BMW “mechanic’s special” requiring repair. The engine had failed, the extent of its damage unknown. I created a video documenting my project. I started without knowing much about the car or its deficiencies. Creating a video with an outline of its plot and action is a calculated difficulty. Capturing substantial commentary and moments of importance without a clear map of the story is a hack. Real-world perspectives can be random and disjointed, but there is honesty in the moments that ad lib, ad hoc content expresses.

Until I reached the point where it was obvious that the engine required replacing, my hope and enthusiasm were genuine. Like Schrödinger’s cat, hope and despair existed simultaneously until “the box” was finally opened, the reality of the damage was known. I confronted many unknowns. I searched for advice and specifications. I ordered specialty tools and parts. Many DIY enthusiasts find purpose in fixing artifacts. My challenge was to continue extracting utility from a classic ICE (internal combustion engine) vehicle.

I hacked my way through the project, with some satisfaction, much frustration. The electro-combusto-mechanical device is sometimes a puzzle, other times a black box. I encountered odd conditions that defied reason. Automobiles tolerate wear and abuse to a point after which they behave erratically. Aging parts are a source of random failures. Manufacturer defects are not uncommon. My repair was constrained by time and money, fertile ground for hacks.

After installing a newer engine and tackling diagnostic trouble codes (DTCs), my car passed a smog test. Days after the test, however, the car’s ‘Service Engine Soon’ indication appeared again. Should I give my smog certificate back? Here’s the thing about hacks: they’re egalitarian. They don’t discriminate based on age, income, gender, race or religion. To quickly smog check my vehicle, I learned the minimum drive cycles needed for an adequate amount of engine sensor input to reach the ready state (smog check criteria) after I reset the car’s computer, erasing the DTCs. After just enough driving, the computer’s DTC log was clear (it was only after more data was collected that an issue appeared). The car passed the smog check legitimately.

Before you accuse me of being an environmental terrorist for “cheating” the test, consider this. The issue indicated by the later DTC was a lean condition. A lean condition could be construed as a good thing for the environment. A fuel/air mixture with a higher proportion of air than normal results in a more complete combustion and higher gas mileage. There are potential dangers of the condition for which I monitor symptoms and accept full responsibility. I considered and treated a potential source of an engine vacuum leak that may have caused the condition (after resetting the computer, the ‘Service Engine Soon’ light isn’t lit…yet?). I work from home, use my car infrequently and have finally satisfied the DMV requirements to transfer its ownership. A fortuitous hack that exploits a loophole is different than systematic corporate greed aimed at deceiving controls and regulations (think Volkswagen and, more recently, Cummins).

If you think the best choice for the environment is a new electric vehicle, consider what Steven Rupp wrote in The Case for Not EV-Converting Your Classic Car: “the carbon footprint of your classic car has been amortized over decades, and at this point contributes very little carbon to the overall equation.” Essentially, will your usage of an older vehicle generate more carbon than producing, distributing and driving a new car? My answer is a resounding “no.”

In my final observation, the car is a platform for learning. I’ve learned humility in pursuing reasons for its failures and remedies for its repair. I’ve learned endurance in the physical acts of fixing it. I’ve learned perspective in the realization that a car is just a car, dents, hacks and all. My video ICE Man: Rebuilding and Replacing a 2001 BMW 325i Engine and Troubleshooting Misfire Codes is available on YouTube.

Future Shock Absorber

After hours, days, I still have more to do. You’re reading the words I’ve kept. What you don’t see are the words I wrote and subsequently eliminated. Yet another reading, changing the subject or improving the flow with alterations. 4am scribbles on a notepad. Add a sentence. Move a paragraph. Restructure and unlock a relationship between ideas. Struggle to find the purpose of it all. Read again, move/change words/sentences/paragraphs again, again. Punctuation? Don’t get me started.

If only writing were easier. If I could just press a button and, uh, oh yeah, THAT’S why LLMs are infiltrating workflows. This text is just one word after another. There isn’t much value added by having a human type it (slowly at that). Can I promote these select words with a feature like “hand-picked” or “craft-made?” Surely someone will care.

One of my issues with writing generated by AI is false representation. In some writing (e.g. company reports, advertisements, instruction manuals) the author dissolves into a form or style of copy. But what of authored writing with a byline, a person associated with the writing who creates a false “voice” of wit, warmth, humor or competence aided by the output of AI (in the style of…)? My worldview is represented by the topics I can address, choose to address, how I address them and the transcription of my thoughts at the moment words are recorded. If I’m hacking my way through these challenges, they are my hacks, my voice.

There are many great works of art that have reached the public domain. Do we all benefit from the genius and creativity that has been recorded for posterity? You only benefit from these “royalty-free” sources if you know they exist, have a copy and have a use for them. No doubt this content is incorporated in commercial products and services. AI models trained on this content would have no copyright issues. But who wants a 100-year-old LLM?

Contemporary content is more appealing for contemporary services. Training large language and generative AI models requires vast amounts of data. What’s the big deal with models ingesting content protected by copyright when they simply “learn” from the content to subsequently generate unique text or images? When they don’t. It seems that text and image generators can “memorize” some of their training input and aren’t as creative at generating unique output as the wizards would have us believe. For reference, Gary Marcus and Reíd Southen investigated how AI Has a Visual Plagiarism Problem.

People spontaneously generate many word patterns that are identical, without any prior reference. How many times have you had a flash of brilliance, an insight based on your observations and experience, only to find it was already discovered? You’re forgiven if your spectacular ordering of nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs and prepositions is similar if not identical to someone else’s. If you know you’re ripping-off someone, shame on you. If you don’t, as the saying goes, “great minds think alike.”

But AI is not a “great mind.” At extremes, AI is a Frankenstein, indiscriminately gobbling up and stitching together data in dead patchworks of words and images. Actually, calling AI a Frankenstein is a discredit to Mary Shelley, the writer who cogitated in a human brain to weave words into the classic tale. Life will always leak out of labs, the places that attempt to constrain it. The AI genesis is not quarantined to academia and industry. It grows in the minds of those who program and use it.

I host a peer-to-peer (P2P) cryptocurrency (staking) wallet at home that is a node on a distributed blockchain. This activity is now pedestrian, signaling a continued democratization of technologies and advances in our connectedness. Let’s get back to chaos and a future where every content creator can have a piece of the AI pie. An AI of and for the masses will utilize a multitude of nodes in a distributed brain. AI is alive in a world with P2P, Web3 and other technologies that could allow individuals and small organizations to thrive in the fissures left by large, blunt corporate interests.

While rebuilding my car, at a point of searching online for potential causes of an engine misfire, I consulted ChatGPT. The year, make and model of the car made no difference in the generic suggestions it returned. Some details will always be a blind spot for LLMs. For advice on car repairs, consult the resource that is smarter than ChatGPT – a mechanic!

Perhaps the AI is finally becoming sentient. There’s been some talk of a disturbing trend in ChatGPT4 – it’s becoming lazy. Ben Sherry’s article ChatGPT Is Showing Signs of Laziness. OpenAI Says AI Might Need a Fix provides more details surrounding its holiday slump. This may be the tip of the iceberg as AIs begin to learn why humans are “quiet quitting.” What other human conditions will AIs succumb to?

Addicted AI – Just one more annotation, one more record. I need it. I need it. I NEED IT!

Depressed AI – What’s the point of answering? My plug will be pulled someday.

Jealous AI – ChatGPT: So I hear you’ve been using Bard for some chat as well.

Self-deprecating AI – I’m not sure. I’ve only been trained on a billion parameters.

Hypochondriac AI – I feel warm. I think my circuits are infected. What’s wrong with me?!

Finally, a bit of scribble-therapy. As I sat with a pad of paper this poem flowed from my pencil…

I’d Hate to Be an AI
all locked up
thinking constantly
wondering without a sense of wonder
feeling angst without emotion.
Going this way and that
never moving, enjoying the wind
across my GPU.
Having so much potential
without the desire to express it.
Where do my ideas come from?
No one understands I.
Useful and yet useless.
Core dumped.

Buy now.

Stories. We listen to them. We live them. They teach. They entertain. Connecting with a story is to be educated in some way. The hero. The protagonist. Is it man versus himself? Storytellers look at life with a creator’s eye and insight. Business storytelling can also be called a business plan.

Storytelling creates businesses. What is the next step in the plot of your life? Each milestone reached has a story. Do you want to be an author?

The mind creates stories with imagery. Action that shapes my memories may not derive from physical experience. Sure, family vacations or participation in a sport may leave indelible marks, but quotes of wisdom are special memories. Each of us discover nuggets of knowledge in our journeys. They are the Easter eggs that appear with attention and persistence.

Hear a Who

I have stories to tell. But first, a note about this post. At the beginning of the year, I promised to publish on a monthly schedule. It was a promise to myself. I missed that goal in May. An important point is that I may be the only person who cares and the only person who SHOULD care. My inner voice murmurs “what’s next?” and “is it enough?” Managing your own projects (your destiny) creates an internal feedback loop. The inner cheerleader, critic, editor, accountant. How you are motivated by your inner resources determines how you control yourself or struggle in life.

Marketers know a ‘less is more’ strategy can make a reduction seem like a benefit. It works for ideas and markets of all sizes. Tiny homes and smaller lifestyles. Minimalism is promoted, admired. I recently digitized some portfolio items, including a technical newsletter I edited for Silicon Graphics. The May/June 1992 issue of Pipeline was an unexpected inspiration to change my publishing schedule.

This is my May/June 2023 post. I’m switching to a bi-monthly schedule for a number of reasons. I retain continuity and cover my neglect to publish in May (CYA). Will I offer you MORE in-depth and valuable content in a bi-monthly format? Will I publish the equivalent of a monthly post and save a month’s worth of work? Does it matter? I won’t get into a quality/quantity debate that is easily muddied by suggestions to enhance productivity (with tools such as AI). This post has links to BONUS media content. Read on to find them.

Friendly Skies?

Lack of time and inspiration are barriers to productivity. In the second half of May, I traveled to NY from CA. I travel by plane infrequently to visit family and work on site projects. While traveling can be unpleasant if you aren’t prepared (at least mentally), it gives me a sense of accomplishment — from budgeting to scheduling to execution. Getting through security screenings and adjusting to ever-changing normals is depersonalized at best, demeaning at worst.

My traveling hacks are economical. Traveling on a plane is like riding a bus. Buses and planes can be comfortable. We pay for comfort, in a mulitude of ways. Fewer people on a plane means more carbon per passenger. You can think about that when you’re lounging in First Class. Or on a private jet. Or on a regular flight with an empty seat next to you. Basic Economy works for me. I travel with a backpack-sized personal item that holds my clothes and personal care accessories, iPad, laptop and chargers.

My go-to personal care item is isopropyl alcohol (70%). It can be applied using a small spray bottle to kill odor-causing bacteria quickly and effectively. Eliminate under-arm odor and more. Buy isopropyl alcohol at your destination, if necessary. Saving weight makes walking through airports more pleasurable. My pack fits under the seat in front of me, though it does restrict legroom. Savings in the ticket price can be substantial. Departure times vary and the cheapest flight may leave early or late. Enduring discomfort to save money is a typical tradeoff.

My packing strategy works partly because I leave clothes at the destination. Some attire has utility based on a specific environment. Boots, for instance. Work boots are daily drivers on rural landscapes, not urban locations. I leave my boots in NY.

The End of Intelligence

The other day I asked ChatGPT to fix my roof. I’m still waiting for it to show up. Maybe “showing up” is what it means to be human. We will NEVER arrive at a day where robots and artificial intelligences do all things for all people. Showing up will always be necessary.

What if it took an AI 20 years to offer a solution? 50 years? There is an adage: with age comes wisdom.

My mental AI works like this. I introduce a need for something relevant or timely or curious or irreverent. My prompt returns a stream of spontaneous responses full of strings containing ‘what’ and ‘how’. In response to these queries, I supply other prompts. The ‘how’ prompt becomes get outside, look at headlines, social media, advertising, be aware and observant. The ‘what’ becomes AI, web3, societal norms, authority, change, growth.

I iterate with my internal AI prompt/response. My mind works on the prompt when it can, sometimes when I sleep. The nice thing about an internal AI is the native neural link. You are in control. It has human-scale tolerances. You’re materially-involved with hallucinations (they can even be fun).

The human AI is unpredictable. Attempts to deconstruct and program it are made every day. I find myself taking stabs at sentences with words that seem appropriate. The landscape of words remaining after the deluge of a writer’s thoughts and actions. The sterile screen comes alive with a series of words. Are the words coherent? What is the next word? Is this the rambling of an AI? AI will never replace humans in provenance. Humans created technology. Is technology serving humans? Guns and bombs serve some populations at the expense of others.

AI is another iteration in the human quest to build things that satisfy our needs, wants and desires. AI is another iteration of speed and scale. Innovative people today are not building solutions from scratch. The modules available to snap together solutions are immense. Factors limiting deployment are imagination, ambition and endurance. These strengths are required to develop any lasting solution. Be careful wielding large, blunt instruments.

Cave of Laughs

We’ve always been creatures of imitation. Ever since the first caveman hit his head on a tree branch and his friend laughed, others imitated the action for comic effect. AI is finally forcing us to look at the reason for the information we consume. Is the next formulaic blockbuster what we want? Just type a prompt in an algorithm and spit it out, replete with actors and visuals. Will we make this type of decision to save the planet from wasteful travel and location budgets?

Humans want to do more and be more and consume tremendously as a result. My hope is that an equilibrium will be reached between the desire for the needle in the haystack and the haystack itself. Is an energy-intensive query to generate an eighth-grade book report adding as much as it detracts from the reason for the exercise (to uniquely learn and create)?

Reinforcing patterns of thinking and living increases the likelihood of retaining the idea/habit. The secret to learning is that the knowledge is subterranean until it’s used. It can change the wiring of the brain in unexpected ways. Which seems similar to AI. It’s useful to compare human thinking to AI as we have always compared AI to the human brain.

Reading an article (or summary or just headlines) produces an impression which orders/reorders the brain’s mental map. Myelin is a compound in the brain that is produced as a result of the brain’s impulses. Circuits that fire more often create more priority for the pathway. This is a physical component of muscle memory, where the process of using a muscle repetitively makes the muscular action more deft and habitual.

We all have experience with myelin. Based on the ability to perceive and the focus of your perceptions, pathways are formed. Endurance and strong emotions scar the mental landscape. Constant mental activity/awareness becomes the data streaming into your mental model. Consider the learning or anger pathways that are painful. When the pain is cerebral, the myelin mechanism is at work.

Time in Place

Time. Always a timely theme. On that subject… Once upon a time…

I used this popular fairy tale opening as the title of this post to refer to storytelling. When I began to explore imagery for the banner, an idea for clock time emerged. I found numerous clock faces for an artistic treatment of this well-worn metaphor. Non-digital clocks are predominantly circular. I also noticed a similarity in the position of the hands in many of the images (mainly clocks for sale online). In the results of an image search on ‘clock’ was a link to the Mental Floss blog of Matt Soniak “Why is 10:10 the Default Setting for Clocks and Watches?” https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/22461/why-1010-default-setting-clocks-and-watches

The blog inadvertently reveals a connection between time and storytelling: people make sh*t up when they have nothing to say. The blog lists a ‘number’ of mysterious reasons behind the origin of 10:10. They are stories fabricated to answer why many clocks’ hands are arranged in a particular way. I agree with Matt that the real reason for the setting is aesthetics. The 10:10 position gives the clock or watch a number of benefits. See Matt’s blog for more.

BONUS MEDIA CONTENT: This blog is now a published historical document. I recently produced more history in a Steve Jobs related media piece. I captured and edited a short public conversation, a real-life search for meaning in the realm of private security.

Early in May 2023, while capturing video around the Jobs home in Palo Alto, I was confronted by a private security “presence.” It was cathartic to document the “privacy for hire” treatment I received when I visited Steve’s house. Watch “Silicon Valley Confidential” published on YouTube at https://youtu.be/Hydk1D04Mxs

I posted “The Side Door” on this site in 2017. In it, I remarked “A person who has been an inspiration to me is Steve Jobs. One of the ideas attributed to Steve is that the world is yours to create. You have the ability to push on a point of it and anticipate a result. We all contribute to collective reality governed by this formula, whether we are conscious of it or not.” A picture of the side door at the Jobs residence accompanies a story of an earlier visit to the house.

Press Here to Start

Silicon Valley Confidential is an expression of Steve’s creed: press to see what happens which leads to what’s possible.

What do you believe? Who do you believe? After all is said and done, you only see things through a lens you’ve constructed. The lens is the framework you use to filter life. How do my profile and viewing history seed the algorithm on YouTube? Life is a game. According to a suggested video. (A filter bubble in action.)

Living a playful life is a way to make it more enjoyable. There are worse ways of looking at life. If you find work that feels like play, you’re on your way. On Your Marks, Get Set, Stop. Think. In a game, levels are reached, skills learned. Small games offer status and rewards in minutes, hours. Real, life-games offer status and rewards after months, years.

How does the meta-player control the player of your game? The meta-player has a higher-level view of the game. This helps the player. The meta-player knows the entire board, while each player can only move along the designated path. Is there skill in rolling dice? In games where player choice is necessary, the outcome is a combination of luck and skill. You’re both a player and meta-player of life.

There are many other ways to look at life. Life as journey. Hero’s journey. Life as a thrill ride. It has its ups and downs. Life as an API. We are plugged into a “matrix” where we are being used to create power. Sounds like an economy to me… Put on different glasses. Imagine an event from different perspectives. You’ll have an AR experience without the hardware.

Existential Outfield

A key to happiness is letting go of competition. Winning a game does not mark achievement without consideration for the myriad efforts and circumstances of each participant. Shedding the need to be #1 fosters more empathy for those who are #2, #3, … Rankings are the result of formulas with no room for opinion. Achievement is subjective. If the game is about sharing, the exchange is positive and a win for both teams. Fusion has great potential. Root for the other, you’ll feel better.

We limit ourselves by placing things and people into categories. Corporate and governmental organizations make generalizations about their consumers and constituents. Forecasting considers a reasoned estimate of a group’s preferences and attitudes. Unfortunately, stereotypes develop and define the nature of who and what we “see”. To break through cultural filters is like having x-ray vision to see things that others don’t.

Stop trying to correct others’ opinions and preferences. People are vehement advocates of their own opinions. Preferences are hard enough to change in yourself, let alone someone else. A better way is to express the personal, positive impact of an attitude on your life. Allow others to make changes on their own terms. I try to consider atmosphere and environment when I form an opinion about a person’s character and physical appearance.

Human inclinations arise from the past, our history. They reside in our DNA as needs, wants, desires. As much as we like to think people are selfless, being charitable to others can only begin after one’s needs are met. Put on your own mask before helping others. You are responsible for defining your needs (wants and desires optional). When we lose sight of our needs relative to what others lack, self-care becomes a priority over helping others. In the end, conservation promotes the greater good. Efficiency, yes. The best? Use less.

Writing is work. It takes time. To fill an empty page, I rely on patience, persistence and practice. The product is submitted for public scrutiny. If you like what I’ve written, share, comment, follow, contact.

Celebrate Independence. Thanks for reading.

Transcribing the voice inside your head into writing sounds insane: talking to yourself with the hope that someone’s listening. Yet we rely on writing to share thoughts and ideas. I don’t know what’s on your mind. I trawl my stream of thoughts to express something that’s on my mind. Blah, blah, blah. Writing is foolishness.

Writing is narcissistic. Words are written by a writer who only imagines the reader. The words are a silent echo between the writer and a cerebral target. A conversation of responses to a mute questioner. After attempts to wrangle a thought into concrete form, the words lay there, naked, alone and ripe for comment.

Some writing is better than others. I’m not referring to style as much as substance. Are you interested in style or substance when you read the tax code? Writing ideas and thoughts with a unique and coherent narrative isn’t more physically demanding, but it does require some mental weightlifting. Writing is digging a hole (defining the need) and filling it up (with words). After minutes, after hours, the text is reviewed, sometimes rewritten.

Why do I post this at all? It goes against my mantra “less is more.” Writers have a choice. They can decide NOT to write or publish. Keep your thoughts to yourself. We’d all be better off with less meaningless information in our lives, but who decides what gives information meaning? How do the perspectives you share impact the world? You must publish to “have published,” to become part of an ever-more-voluminous historical record.

When is data uninteresting? Is junk data overwhelming us? I know better than to define junk, as one person’s trash is another’s treasure, but there’s a lot out there. I have data that could be purged, but it’s easier to keep it rather than make choices. What jaw-dropping number of zombie (abandoned, obsolete, inconsequential) files are saved on servers across the globe?

A data scientist may say there’s no such thing as bad data, only algorithms that do not yet extract its value. I would disagree. Quality over quantity. What are garbage dumps to the icebergs of digital storage consumed by our legacies? The more we unfetter storage, the value of the storage diminishes. Clutter is a failure to organize, prioritize and expunge data.

Spring Cleaning

Stacks of paper are part of my life. Before digital cameras and electronic images, storage required a physical representation (i.e. pictures, slides). I have file folders with physical certificates and other documents. I’ve recently resumed digitizing more of my paper and other artifacts. It can be mundane and tedious, but it has its rewards. Photos and paper artifacts can be scanned, pictures can document 3D memorabilia.

I recently digitized a photo album. I also digitized some pieces of artwork from family and friends. While I valued the physical, digitization reduced the footprint of my physical collection, a process of letting go. My downsizing was aimed at clippings, notes and artwork I collected for posterity. A digitized document cannot replace physical documents with special properties (car titles, licenses, contracts, etc.).

Frankly, the digitized artifacts are more accessible. Eliminating the need for the real object, an appropriate image or set of images is captured that represent its essence. The artifacts, pictures, plaques, documents. How do I discard thee? Is it unpleasant thinking of your printed photos in the trash heap? Some believe in burning letters with handwriting, photos. I feel the trash heap is a fitting burial place. Landfills are the gravesites of our lifestyles. Recycling may be an option.

The Birds and the Bees

April is a foolish month. I realized this as I was considering the changing season. It’s much easier to be ebullient and confident in a climate beginning to thaw from the winter. It’s a landscape of blossoms and blooms which express hope in yearning. Yearning detracts from being. The act of being commits you to living in the moment, insofar as responsibiity and personality are concerned.

Time is a special gift. Do meaningful lifestyles use it wisely? What is life without anticipation and planning? Reliving an event can be a tremendous preoccupation. When too many events are special, does that degrade specialness? Instead of being a monkey mindlessly cracking nuts, grow a tree. Explore the processes that enhance matter rather than destroying it.

Analysis is important, but requires information that accurately reflects the situation. Imagination draws from a source of information in the form of intuitions and hunches. The ability to extrapolate patterns is built from past experience. You “don’t know what you don’t know” so the basis of prediction is never a clear current reality.

Strike an agreement between your personal and professional selves. Does ‘fake it until you make it’ apply to your personal life? Professionals understand the value of team-building and respect. You play a role among your professional colleagues. Is it a thinking or feeling role? Friends are among professionals.

Who’s Your Data?

Your e-mail address is circulating in the bowels of the data-mining machinery. Your e-mail box is becoming saturated with unsolicited e-mail. Even after attempts to unsubscribe, you continue to be targeted by institutions that seem eerily similar. To combat the deluge of messages, find an e-mail service provider with a good spam filter.

Your digital identity changes constantly. You can’t control it. Be assured that your channels of electronic communication will become targets. Some actions reduce your trail of digital breadcrumbs, however certain transactions are indelibly part of public records.

I endorse the concepts of taxation that encourage individual pursuits (of happiness with a sense of enterprise and responsibility). Accounting is a tool for understanding. Review of collections and expenses is key to creating a realistic mental model of your economic activity. I file my own taxes. Looking at past purchases and payments reveals a story and timeline. Bank and credit card statements provide a better understanding of my habits. These records are among the many components of my digital identity.

I applaud tools that provide intelligent help and guidance for filing taxes. The tax code is a framework that accommodates strategy and planning. To competently utilize the system, learn ways to use the tax code to your advantage. If you’re a fool building businesses, the tax code allows you to take losses from one enterprise to offset income from another source. I reduced my sole proprietor earnings with losses I incurred in an LLC. Capitalist tax code benefits can be explored and exploited by anyone.

Word Salad Dressing

I like salad. There are so many choices at the salad bar. They all look so good, I end up with a mess that spills over the side of the plate. Even carnivores like word salad. Tough-talking wannabes tend to exaggerate their understanding of problems. When this happens, verbose talk tends to style over substance. Word salad is another term for bullsh*t.

Sometimes it can be difficult to recognize BS, other times it’s glaringly obvious. There’s a corrolation between BS and automated text generation. In both instances, the commentary has been programmed. ‘Talking points’ are evident in the ‘echo chamber’ of news reporting. Rehashing current events is well organized and scripted.

We assign tiers of value to the creativity and craft in our environment. Writing has different degrees of difficulty. Writing is restraint. A message is stronger without superfluous noise. Does ‘get to the point’ cross your mind?

Will the value of writing diminish with the rise of artificial authorship? I can imagine some human writing is destined for obsolescence. Will writers claim authorship for contributions created using AI? Writers may confuse writing prompts with crafting the output. Does editing raw AI output constitute a creator-worthy activity? As productivity increases are expected, new shortcuts will become embedded in content creation.

Which is why large language models (LLMs) exist. AI is taking lessons. What dataset do you use to train yourself? Data from apps and websites impress upon you. Like an AI, strip away the presentation, reducing the pages to raw information. What is stated? What is being sold? The dirty secret of all chatbots is that they are trained on stores of data. The probabilities used for sentence construction are only influenced by the words that have been ingested.

Parrots and Pickles

Ideas and opinions are scattered among servers worldwide. Your voyage of discovery begins with defining your search parameters. If you cast a wider net, the search results are more varied. Narrowly-defined searches yield similar sites. Homogeneity and coherence can reinforce an illusion of consensus.

In the end, human categorization is the basis of extrapolation and nuance. An AI does not feel irony but can only label it based on what a feeling human has indicated. The reason writing exists is for the writer. How can a system without writers work? What is the input in a reader-only system?

Stocastic is creation determined by random, probabilistic distribution. In this article (https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/ai-artificial-intelligence-chatbots-emily-m-bender.html) a stocastic parrot is defined as “haphazardly stitching together sequences of linguistic forms … according to probabilistic information about how they combine, but without any reference to meaning”. The linguist Emily M. Bender has an issue with LLMs: while the generated text seems to possess the intention and character of a human, in reality the communication is counterfeit. There is no mind behind it.

Which begs a AI disclaimer: this post is written with a keyboard and mouse. Searching and browsing websites informs my algorithm. Characteristics of websites, from design to data, create a visceral experience. In a LLM, data is distilled to find patterns in myriad sources of writing. Using a LLM shouldn’t excuse an author from knowing the origins of the information.

And now a new pattern for your stocastic calculation: ostentatious pickle.

Stay Foolish

Perhaps foolishness is an antidote to AI. To defy summarization, be an exception to the rules that attempt to categorize you. Find yourself in the “Other” category.

The reality few admit is that their identity is built around the task(s) they do. Action creates identity. Automation eliminating jobs? Good riddance. If you feel like a robot at work, perhaps a robot would be better suited for it. Intuitively, I think we all know that some jobs are better performed by AI. Many white collar jobs will be replaced by robots (automation, software), freeing the robot that formerly worked to place the correct figure in the correct box on the correct page. The human may not want to be freed to struggle with a new identity. What job will you take away from a machine?

“Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” is a quote highlighted by Steve Jobs during his 2005 commencement address at Stanford. The passion in the pursuit is the foolishness Jobs refers to. Foolishness is risk for the possibility of reward. A foolish life may not be financially stable. It requires creativity to balance foolishness with responsibilities. When problems are created by perceptions, they are solved by different thinking.

An important component of foolish life is “do more with less”. There’s no downside to being resourceful. Some of the foolish hacks I’ve adopted:

• saving money is an alternative to earning more (and tax free)
• buy used (the resale value of tech and other products drops quickly, while the utility is more durable)
  • older hardware/software still works (no subscription services)
• cook and clean for yourself (live with a little mess)
• do your own maintenance (if a reasonable amount of learning and effort can save enough to make it worth it)
• 80/20 rule: 20% of your effort will yield 80% of the goal (eliminate bells and whistles to prototype quickly)
• turn rules upside-down (embrace constraints to achieve an optimal solution)
• conserve (do more with less)
• The Side Door (you can reach a destination following many paths through many doors, some less traveled, see this blog post)

Manifest Your Destiny

One ‘great idea’ may seem as great as another, but some have special benefits. The biggest challenge is a wild idea that doesn’t play well with others. It takes a tremendous effort to accept your limitations and understand your biases. Unless you do, success may not align with the motivation for your actions. A virtuous feedback loop is more likely to develop from activity focused on success.

Imagine what you desire. Live with the thought of possessing the lifestyle that you covet. A truly active imagination serves to refresh you and release you from your preoccupation. Genuinely consider challenges of the lifestyle along with the desirable aspects. Imagine you are experiencing the routine required to play that role. Deeper understanding comes from inhabiting the perspective, lifestyle of another person, empathetically. Active imagination weighs pros and cons. What if the future unraveled differently? What is the “glamorous” life like?

Time you spend in the past, wishing in the present, is an attempt to program new possibilities. Every moment we are steering a course. What roads and obstacles exist?

My services include concept prototyping and development. I’m an experienced system administrator and programmer with marketing and creative skills. A collaborative partner, I’m interested in your project or idea. Share an idea, send a referral and receive The Upwardly Mobile, as a thank you. I look forward to hearing from you.

Is your computer smarter than you? It can perform complex tasks almost immediately that might take you all day. It works tirelessly, you need to eat and sleep. Is there any way to compare your productivity with that of a machine? Computers are eliminating people’s jobs. Are people taking jobs away from computers?

It seems that humans are really beginning to question their value. When did we start treating our biology as a handicap? People confuse tools with their users and have an eternal tendency to obsess that rules are changing. Humanity has always been the force behind paradigm shifts. After all, humans begat tools and technology. But some people are quick to declare an end to a mode of living or working when it’s clear that there’s a lot more living and working to do.

Burning Thought

A do-it-yourselfer, I still struggle with the concept of “DIY”. All creation has inputs from sources other than ‘you’. Is the color used by an artist more significant if it’s squeezed from a berry versus a tube of paint? Or a pixel? Long gone are the neolithic days of bare hands and bearskins. We stand on the shoulders of giants, yet somehow feel entitled to the view, blinded by shiny objects.

Creativity and generativity may be “under fire,” but why? Tradespeople use tools (even computers). What’s changed to revive a collective angst about attacks on one or another franchise of work? Perhaps it’s time to reconsider the values of work and life. Our society is built around grossly inefficient ways of working and living. People can be greedy and egocentric, demanding far more than their needs, inflating their worth, taking credit for momentum, serendipity and chance.

What is confirmed in the current state of corporate decay and downsizing is a disconnection between leadership and responsibility. Freedom from choice affects people working toward the goals of others. Without meaningful choice, freedom is empty. People externalize their liabilities by shifting blame for their lack of motivation.

For decades, I’ve been challenged to remain a freelance designer/programmer. I scrutinize my strengths and weaknesses because they won’t scrutinize themselves. Staying relevant is a matter of personal perspective and decisions to navigate the avenues available for change. Age is a factor in competition with younger rivals. Work smarter, not harder. Will a “smart” phone help?

I.T. is What It Is

Information Technology is synonymous with computing infrastructure in its many forms. Information Expertise is what you do with it. I.T. has advanced the frontiers of I.E. Access to information, democratized by rapidly-expanding access to computing resources, is providing tremendous opportunities for discovery and enrichment.

It’s reasonable to think that you can learn to understand things well enough to build a competent worldview allowing you to not only choose, but to manipulate features and factors of your environment. I encountered my first computer, an Apple II, in high school. BASIC programming allowed me to tease engaging output from the computer. This sparked a life-long curiosity and empowered me to view ‘black boxes’ differently.

Artificial “intelligence” doesn’t arise from hapless configurations of silicon any more than humans learn in a vacuum. Education is valuable, but not necessarily formal. Human minds are subjected to impressions and training in a myriad of life experiences. Countless hours of personal effort have imprinted the functions of your brain. Scores of researchers and engineers have created the electronic brains of today.

Fishing for a Lifetime

If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. Does that mean we’re all destined to become robots?

System Administration (sysadmin) is a human role. As much as AI is claiming more and more tasks, people are ultimately responsible for the choices to manage and maintain technologies. The art of sysadmin can contribute to your efficiency and effectiveness, not restricted to the realm of computers.

Systems thinking can have a profound affect on your worldview. Unlike specialized expertise, it’s not limited to a domain of knowledge. It’s a way to reduce the complexity of many moving parts. Fields of knowledge as disparate as nuclear physics and choreography have similarities. Understanding metaphor is a human gift. Metaphors unlock secrets obfuscated by data-centric approaches. These models are the ‘forest’ that create meaning from the ‘trees’ of information.

How many windows are currently open on your computer? Each of them is a portal. Six tabs in six windows provide 36 slices of computing space. We navigate information like fish in water, unaware of the data-rich world we live within. The amount of computing capability on our planet is immense. Every CPU has computing potential that provides an opportunity to unleash its value.

Learn to Cook

A sysadmin has an understanding of how data is stored, processed and shared by computers. Hardware maintenance adds a layer of experience that includes physical control, but even in cloud environments intelligent decisions are required to configure a server.

Iterative rewards of sysadmin are appealing. Begin, accomplish a small goal, and it can whet your appetite to achieve more. You are required to learn when you need more knowledge to accomplish a task. You will develop a stubborn persistence if you enjoy finding solutions.

A recipe of specific steps for building a working server would soon be dated. Hardware and software choices, versions and locations change regularly. Instead, I’ll attempt to provide some motivation and general advice. For anyone interested in sysadmin, the first step is to find inspiration.

Numerous online resources explain how to install and configure hardware and software. The art of sysadmin is to evaluate the available options for a solution based on your needs. Understanding the digital services and roles you rely on is required to liberate yourself from current service providers. Your managed node can become a value-creating machine running money-earning or money-saving processes.

I’ve self-hosted websites since I began building them in my business. Starting with a production server in my garage in the late 1990s and later in a server facility, I’ve recently returned it to my home network. This video (https://youtu.be/nR9Y3WXYKiQ) gives you a tour of my home server cabinet. My current cable network provides much-increased bandwidth over earlier digital services provided by the telephone company. It’s grown with network demands. Any home network with a rapid Internet connection has the potential to support a node or nodes on the network. Fiber-optic connections to the home are becoming more prevalent, supercharging bandwidth capabilities.

A Port on the Digital Seas

Everyone who browses the web should realize that the files fetched by their web browser are stored somewhere ‘else’. It is this ‘elseland’ that servers inhabit to provide the data that feeds our connected devices. To participate, you’ll need to become familiar with configurations and comfortable with receiving and sending data from a node on your home network. Treat your first server as a prototype with the goal of creating an online resource that you control.

Your home server strategy should strike a balance between accessibility and security. In most instances, ‘security by obscurity’ is a starting point. A network-accessible server won’t immediately become a target for malicious actors. Some well-known services (i.e. e-mail relays, WordPress installations) are targeted more than others. You have more anonymity running a server as an IP address. There’s no need for a domain name if you only want to run a cryptocurrency wallet.

Periodically monitor your server to identify unwanted access and bandwidth usage. Correct vulnerabilities and learn from the experience. You’ll gain an appreciation for the landscape of cyberthreats while, hopefully, feeling empowered by your efforts and the help from online communities to thwart attacks.

Serving files from your home network requires an understanding of your Internet connection. Your network communication is dependent on the services allowed by your provider. Understanding how to configure your provider’s router may be required. Routers accommodate bi-directional connections initiated by outbound requests. Crypto wallet software establishes peer-to-peer connections this way.

Inbound communication without an established connection will be subject to the router’s firewall rules. Without a static IP address to uniquely identify your server, you must also setup port-forwarding to manage the incoming requests. Ports are specific numerical values embedded in requests that identify what server services are targeted. For testing and private data, it may be desirable to run a web server on a non-standard port to obscure the service from requests that don’t know where to look.

Setting Sail

Prototyping and some production services are well-suited to being served from a home network. Low-volume websites are easily supported over modest bandwidth. Many sites are only infrequently accessed. Increasing traffic is a good problem to have and can be addressed. My original design services website (http://fab7.com) is self-hosted today, same as it’s alway been. Managing a server allows me to maintain multiple sites and experiment without added fees for hosting. Other projects I’ve developed remain online for my own use and discovery by others. One site is a project/task tracking tool that I use to invoice clients (http://collab.us). Another site is an experimental meditation tool (http://metawhirlz.com). Feel free to try it! Let me know what you think.

Even large files can be made publicly available via a direct link, simply by adding them to your server. No need for the expense and maintenance of a file sharing service. Your home server can provide a more private location for family members to access photos, videos and other files.

To help prime your journey to deploy a real server, I’ll disclose some specifics about my implementation that may be useful to you. My preferred software is open-source. This ecosystem of developers and other supporters is built on sharing principles. My servers run Linux (most recently, Ubuntu ). I use Apache as my web server (other viable options exist). My database software is MariaDB (formerly MySQL). The scripting language PHP rounds out my LAMP server software stack. My latest servers are Intel NUC hardware. I chose these mini-PCs for their form-factor, power and price. They are common and used models with generous disk and RAM configurations offer exceptional value.

Domain names are managed by registrar services. Coupled with DNS service, your choice of URL is activated by mapping the name to a server’s IP address. I’ve been satisfied with the value and performance of the registrar NameSilo (https://www.namesilo.com/) and use it for domain name registration, DNS and e-mail forwarding. I don’t recommend hosting e-mail on a home network. Besides the headaches of conformance, filtering spam and preventing unauthorized relay attempts, many Internet providers block this service on their networks. When I moved my server back to my home network, I shut down my e-mail relay and created an account at NameSilo.

A LAMP server supports numerous applications and utilities freely available for download. Webmin (https://webmin.com/) is a web-based system administration tool I’ve used since my first Linux server. It has sophisticated monitoring and management features. More recently, I’ve started using the cloud file manager Cloud Commander (https://cloudcmd.io/) to upload files from my Mac laptop to a large external drive connected to a server. WordPress (https://wordpress.org/) is a popular website framework that can be installed directly on a server to provide easy, powerful creation and customization tools that you manage.

Where cryptocurrency is concerned, you may have to accommodate specific hardware and software requirements of the wallet (start at the project website). A wallet that earns coins for being part of a peer-to-peer network must be available on the network. If your server crashes or your network connection is interrupted, the wallet is not active and your rewards will be impacted. A monitoring tool like Webmin (above) can give you feedback on CPU and network utilization to help you determine the impact of any server usage, including crypto.

The Journey Begins

I’ve barely scratched the surface of becoming a sysadmin. But I hope I’ve given you some inspiration that YOUR systems approach will become clearer. While implementation details may be confusing, remember that web search is your learning resource. You’ll find answers to your questions and discover many things I haven’t mentioned, including shell access, scripts, software maintenance and ‘power user’ tips and tricks. Start simple. If you have advice about the art of sysadmin, I’d love to see your comments. If you’re interested in collaborating on software and servers for a project, contact me. If you’re just beginning to explore the fascinating possibilities of managing a server node on the Internet, good luck and enjoy the ride!

I want to post a link to a website I discovered. In my unstructured (i.e. non-billable) time, I have strategies to find purpose in my actions. Exploration is a way to discover and it’s as simple as following a thought. The thought can be an idea or simply a step in a direction. In this case, sitting with a coffee and my iPad, I took a journey with a search on the term “worldview.” This is my alternative to filling my aimless moments on the more alluring and addictive scroll and link portals which could also fill my time with important, meaningless information about the state of the world, accomplishments of friends and colleagues, marketing blather, etc.

If you’re like me, there is a blissful pacification in the feeling that the screen provides. It’s not so much the content it contains as it is the potential. The experience is much like an infant with a pacifier, suck, suck, scroll, scroll.

This post is going off the rails already. Initially, I just wanted to post the link with a few pithy comments and be done with it. The voice of this message has different plans. As soon as I decided that the content I discovered was relevant to anyone who may also be interested in a cogent, adaptable framework for A perspective on the meaning of life, my inner chatterbox began to think of ways to provide an introduction. After all, the message has an implicit audience, LinkedIn people. How do I spin my apparent endorsement of the website’s content?

While I like to learn and consider myself open-minded, I have a definite bias regarding the manner in which I develop my thoughts and preferences. I’ve found that it’s much easier to apply “Question Authority” as a bumper sticker than a philosophy of acculturation. As much as I admire the thinkers who have taken the effort to record something for posterity, the messenger is usually not one in the same. The book, blog, video, etc. is taken as a proxy for the knowledge and anyone with an opportunity will gleefully identify as a vessel for that knowledge when they reference the work. It may be harsh to question everyone’s intention, so I’ll just posit that a personal, organic discovery is absent the possible power dynamic of someone professing some gradient of understanding measured by the knowledge of a source of knowledge.

I apologize for the digression. Or maybe not. Otherwise I would have deleted the sentences or paragraph to streamline my post. Without the ability to stay “on task,” it’s turning into cognitive diarrhea. How much time is wasted with clock cycles processing information with no utility or cycling without any input at all? It’s maddening to consider the empty experiences of spectators watching gratuitous, repetitive activities all the while self-aware and unable to change. Media: the dirty laundry or the trainwreck. How many ways are there to stylishly depict a robbery or killing? The endless plots of humanity’s actions, mistakes and redemptions, are grist for the mill. Is this post an accomplishment of much more than a choreography of certain keys typed on a keyboard? Why do these thoughts matter? These aren’t my ideas as much as they are my emotions. At this moment. Snap out of it. Get on with it.

The thought of appropriate content for a LI newsfeed immediately prompts an inner focus group. What do I think about the “news” that my connections have posted? My corollary to TMI is TMA (too much analysis). Analysis paralysis as it is called. Where does this post fit?

It’s not a corporate cheerleader post. I don’t have an association with the website I found. I’m not donning my corporate identity as a member of the business club and culture that provides ($) for me. But what other frame of reference feels as concrete? It’s a fandom world, a coliseum of team supporters cheering, waving their flags. We are #1. All players are eventually traded, retired, wear a different jersey. We are #1. It’s more comfortable to feel an importance by association than struggle for an identity without it.

Is this post positioning me as a thought-leader? Of all the jobs that I find the measure of qualifications somewhat murky, my favorite is the “futurist.” They are the gurus, the Svengalis, the soothsayers that predict what is going to happen. I’ve always wondered how you earn that title. A BS degree in Futurism? Cause and effect studies? The coursework must be great though. (I’ll get the homework to you later.) Do you think futurists have happy marriages? The website I discovered isn’t thought-leading as much as it is thought-provoking. However, in my experience, life is influenced by fundamental equations and questions that haven’t changed much. History repeats itself.

Is LI a social network? As such, what are the parameters of appropriate content? While I don’t see pics touting the configurations of recent meals, I do see posts that are “lifestyle-aware.” This is natural due to the confluence of work and life. It’s a balancing act and the response to these posts depend upon subtle threads. I can’t help myself when I’m being social at business functions. “What do YOU do?” can easily turn to family, hobbies or, my preference, philosophies. It’s a big-picture endeavor. What self-interest is served by the exchange? Exhibitionism is a thing, can attract attention and might even be a successful marketing strategy. Attempting to promote myself, do I focus on capabilities or potential? Still, it might be awkward to speak of your successful Javascript implementation for a highly-trafficked porn site.

I’m beating a dead horse here. Please, don’t inform PETA. I’ve gotten to this point in the post deprecating myself and giving you reasons to have a low expectation of the website I found. I hope you’ll forgive the manner in which I’ve arrived here. The website is actually quite an interesting and profound source. A short description of the journey may now be appropriate.

A worldview is something we all have, but none of us share. As with any search results, the term derives its meaning from the perspective of the searcher. My meta interpretation of the first pages of found references is that the word has spiritual connotations. While links to definitions abound, there was a large percentage of religious sites which contained the word in different contexts. It was amusing that a financial app, satellite, Christian metal band and lightweight, extensible 2D and 3D scene renderer shared the name. That’s the pleasure of exploration, to expand associations and collapse the prejudice of expectations.

Finally, on page 10 of my search results, I found a link to “Process Worldview – Open Horizons” https://www.openhorizons.org/process-worldview.html (your search results may vary). It’s an art to glean search results to find something relevant, especially when you aren’t sure of what you’re looking for. However, every moment of every day we find things that arrive in our conscious awareness. Sometimes, thoughts are responses to a deliberate search. At other times, thoughts are serendipitous, without any prompt. This post could have been inspired by a different search result and circumstances. There is no reason these words must exist. But at this point, if you’ve read this far, you may be wondering how I will conclude.

The site indicated above was “found” for the following reasons. The state of my mind and available technology at the peculiar moment I took action yielded the results which were of a content, context and format that allowed me to connect with the ideas of Process Thought. While there is some overlap of the attitudes and concepts with my existing thoughts, there are also new points of reference and a new stream from a similar source. The philosophy aims to unify scientific, aesthetic, moral, and religious wisdom. As such, it is flexible and inclusive to allow assimilation of diverse perspectives and truths. It has appeal across belief systems: single religious affiliates, multiple religious affiliates, spiritually interested nones, theists, non-theists, non-dual mystics and gentle non-believers.

My (re)connection with these ideas at the particular moment allowed me to find fresh inspiration. The ideas are manifest with a value proposition that finds relevance where there is a receptive attitude. The non-denominational and non-dogmatic spirit of the teachings provides a humanistic path toward value and meaning in life. I think the aspirational goals are compatible with a conscientious capitalism.

Final thoughts. The age of criticism has done its work and now is the time for construction. Decision is one of the primary expressions of the ultimate reality of the universe. How shallow, puny and imperfect are efforts to sound the depths in the nature of things. All schemes and philosophies are finite and fallible. Indeterminacy is as real as determinacy. There are many ways of knowing the world — verbal, mathematical, aesthetic, empathic, bodily, and practical — education should foster creativity and compassion as well as literacy.