Well, I've got my thoughts about what Arcosanti "should" do ... OK, what "I want" Arcosanti to do ... hmm ... still rather silly.
Perhaps at least this might be of interest. Now, I am not one of the hangers on who is afraid of money, to put it one way, or hates money, to put it another. I rather like the stuff, and, a stick in your eye, you haters, for years have been determined to get some. Pursuant to that I really have concentrated a bit, looking at this, that, and the other thing quite intensively. Well, really, I've looked at stock charts at great length. But there are people out there, and very successful ones - we call them investors - who express considerable skepticism about the charts, and that thought did nag at me a bit. After stubbornly not paying them much attention for a long long time, I finally did wade into their world a bit. I found some things to read about Warren Buffett, mainly.
Well, in so doing I learned something very interesting about finance. I mean, you would think I learned lots and lots of interesting things about finance, but, in a way, finance is actually very simple, and it's just one thing.
Now, if finance is such a simple thing, then I guess it doesn't need much explaining, and everybody already knows all about it. But, clearly, the vast majority know nothing about it. They have no clue. Here's what the vast majority of people thing: they think finance is just luck. OK, sometimes you've got to roll the dice. People who seem to know something about it are telling me that, yes, I should invest, so, I'll invest, and hope for the best. Maybe I'll get lucky.
Of course, there are people "in" finance, and surely they know what it actually is. But it appears to me that a lot of people in finance actually do not know what finance is. I mean, they know what it's supposed to be, but they don't really understand it, and they think it's actually something other than what it's supposed to be. They think, in a word, that what it is is a form of cheating. And so, these people in finance - that's what they've decided to get into - say to themselves, well, that's the way it is, finance is a kind of cheating, so I will give it my very best shot. Later, when they get caught, and are accused of cheating, they say "well, I was just practicing finance." They even actually mean it.
There is, by the way, another large group who think finance is a form of cheating and they, therefore, will have nothing to do with it. They are, therefore, deliberately not in finance.
Let me correct course a little and explain that what I mean by "finance" is investing. Now, everybody does know that investing - finance - is a way things get done. Everybody knows that ... I mean, we can debate whether these things are legitimate, but we do depend on them ... that things we depend on get done through finance. So maybe finance is a form of cheating, or maybe it's just luck, but it's sadly apparently necessary. Ah well.
I'm not actually in a position to get us out of this trap. Finance is a nasty business. That's because life is a nasty business. Nasty, nasty ... though it has its good points. That's the best I can do where it comes to offering an out from the nastiness of it all: it does have its good points. Maybe I can synthesize my thesis this way: if we concentrate on the good parts, we might have a chance. But, back to my 'splainin'.
Here's how finance works: people put resources into some endeavor - and all resources are (this I got from Marx, I mean, he said it, and I thought, well, that actually makes sense) fundamentally work - and they hope for a return. It would be nice if people invested hoping to support good work, a return be damned, or maybe the good work itself would be the return, but, reality is reality, and, really, we mostly invest for a return. Actually, if we look at it very broadly, the return that we might get - if, say, we rely on luck - is good work, or could be described that way. But, reality is reality, and it very often doesn't matter much how good the work is if it does us personally no good. Maybe that's the real distinction. Averaging everybody's experience out, we quite simply must have a return for ourselves. The work that's done has its good and bad points, and, in the end, if it's good for me, it's good, and if it's not, it's not.
Now, you may not believe me, but I actually am an idealist. I passionately want to support goodness, pure, unadulterated goodness. That might not be very realistic, but a mission doesn't have to be realistic. Or, it might be realistic. Maybe I can penetrate the layers of reality and achieve goodness.
Anyway, there is this thing called reality. Let me shift the focus. Let's talk about questions of scale. Put it this way: maybe, if we only want to do something small, we don't need finance. Here I'm using the term to describe some kind of collective effort. Maybe, if all we want to do is something small, we can do it with just our own personal resources. You know, even those great mothers, Russia and China, have stock markets. If you want to do something somewhat big, or something very big, finance comes into play. Above a certain scale, in fact, the stock market comes into play. And, just to make sure we get to the root of the matter, money is the life blood of the stock market, so, yes, we are talking about money. But I still haven't explained what finance actually is.
So, if we want to do anything even modestly big, we have to take some of the complications out of it, and the way we do that is money. Several people put money they've "made" by working (or that somebody made by working) "into" something. And, very broadly speaking - reality being what it is - those people hope for a return. In order to simplify things, they usually hope for a return of money. Reality being what it is, if they don't get a return of money, it's probably going to hurt, quite possibly a lot. If they do get a return of money, it's probably going to feel at least somewhat good. So, they hope for a return. Now, we've already discussed the fact that most people seek a return, and the concomitant relief from pain it brings (not to mention the pleasures it brings) by means of either luck or cheating. Or, well, to be a little less cynical about it, perhaps most people sense that at least a modest return can be achieved through what we might call good behavior. Listen, respectable experts tell us to invest some money so that we won't starve in our old age, and trusting respected experts is a form of good behavior, so perhaps most people, rolling the dice, go with a trusting attitude, invest some of their earnings, and get at least a modest return on their investments. Some will argue I'm just dreaming, and that most investors loose, but I suspect they don't have any more statistical evidence than I do. I suspect most people invest and get a modest return. That leaves probably a fairly large number who invest and loose, or don't invest and loose, and some who, one way or another, win big.
Thursday, April 16, 2015
Tuesday, April 14, 2015
visualizations
I happen to know that Arcosanti is engaged in a five year planning process, and then they plan to present their results, at an event. Now, everyone who follows Arcosanti knows that they are involved in a planning process, but I don't think almost anyone knows about the plan to present the results. I happened to be somewhere when that plan was announced, just once, to a very small group. Since then I have not heard or seen anything about it. I suspect it's a bit of a secret. (I can mention it here because no one ever reads my blogs.)
Well, I have my hopes about what might be in that presentation. I'm not involved in the planning process - which has a formal structure - because I'm too annoying to be included. Still, I want to say what I hope to see, and that is, among several points, A VERY LARGE QUANTITY OF VISUALIZATION of what we plan to do. I worry a bit that the visualization will get short shrift. I worry we'll see a lot of process points - not, in itself, a bad thing, not in any way - and not very much visualization. I guess I suspect the visualization work will be postponed, in a sense. Well, I guess that could be a good thing. There will be process points to the effect that we will do such and such kinds of visualization work, and, certainly, there should be such process points. Still, I worry a little.
I shouldn't worry. It's silly. Just writing about it is clarifying some things. It's realistic to think that, in two or three years, when the results of their five year planning process are presented, those results will not completely detail every nook and cranny that we plan to build. Maybe what I do want to see, in the way of visualizations, is this: the footings and the broad superstructure of some of those larger things we have dreamt of building. Be bold, guys! Draw up some very big things. Make them simple, with lots of space in them for the future. Personally, I think that's the way to go.
Well, I have my hopes about what might be in that presentation. I'm not involved in the planning process - which has a formal structure - because I'm too annoying to be included. Still, I want to say what I hope to see, and that is, among several points, A VERY LARGE QUANTITY OF VISUALIZATION of what we plan to do. I worry a bit that the visualization will get short shrift. I worry we'll see a lot of process points - not, in itself, a bad thing, not in any way - and not very much visualization. I guess I suspect the visualization work will be postponed, in a sense. Well, I guess that could be a good thing. There will be process points to the effect that we will do such and such kinds of visualization work, and, certainly, there should be such process points. Still, I worry a little.
I shouldn't worry. It's silly. Just writing about it is clarifying some things. It's realistic to think that, in two or three years, when the results of their five year planning process are presented, those results will not completely detail every nook and cranny that we plan to build. Maybe what I do want to see, in the way of visualizations, is this: the footings and the broad superstructure of some of those larger things we have dreamt of building. Be bold, guys! Draw up some very big things. Make them simple, with lots of space in them for the future. Personally, I think that's the way to go.
fragment
I'm interested in the idea that we can define what a very good house is. It is, according to my thinking, a purely materialistic thing. By creating forms out of matter we can create a very good house. What distinguishes a very good house is not the matter - it's all just matter - I mean, yes, we select the materials - concrete here, steel there, some wood, and so on - but beyond that it's the shapes. If we get the shapes right, it's a very good house, and, if we don't - even if it's exactly the same matter - it's not a very good house.
The shapes we make determine whether the houses will be very good or not, but the goodness itself is something we also need to define, and that has to do with purpose. I mean, houses are for living in, but what does it mean to live in a house. The more completely we can define that, the better the houses will be. We will be able to create very good house shapes if we thoroughly understand the purposes those houses support. It is, of course, true, that houses support a diversity of purposes. One very good house will support one set of purposes, and another, a rather different set of purposes. Our mission should be to define a spectrum of purpose sets that define the various kinds of houses we will want to build to create a very good city.
I am quite a bit skeptical about the idea that an apartment is a very good house. Thus, certain thinkers have pointed out the deficiencies of suburban houses, or suburban cities, and proposed, in their stead, cities of apartment towers. I don't deny that apartment living can be very good, but I think, as a comprehensive solution to the problem of housing humanity, the apartment tower is a bit of a copout. The thing is, Paolo drew cities that were not collections of apartment towers. We looked at those drawings and saw more than apartments - and, at the same time, more than suburbs - and that is why we were so taken with them. But those drawings were, in a certain sense, quite abstracted, and even Paolo, when he worked to draw more buildable things, quite blithely drew apartment buildings. There I actually fault him, and I think we need to do better.
Actually, when I say that the drawings with which we were so taken were abstracted, as if their characteristic abstraction was a defining feature, I think we might be misreading them. I think this "reality", that those drawings were, for practical reasons, largely abstractions, is actually not a reality, it is a product of our imaginations. Without giving it any thought at all we looked at those drawings and said "they look realistic, but they really can't be realistic. in order to build these things we are going to have to treat them more normally. now we need to adjust these drawings to conform to reality." Even Paolo thought so. We can tell he did because, when he went to actually build something, he made it more normal. I mean, what he built is unusually interesting ... but it's only part of what we saw in the drawings of arcologies. We saw, in those drawings, many, many very interesting houses, and Paolo built some of those, plus we saw what I call superstructure. Actually, we find some of that in what Paolo built, too. What we find is, in what Paolo built, the proportional relationship between these two things, houses and superstructure, is reversed. In the drawings, superstructure is a profoundly dominant feature, and then, if you look closely, there are all the houses, whereas at Arcosanti, and at Cosanti, we see lots of wonderful houses, and then, if we study these places and think about them, we can identify the presence of superstructure.
Superstructure and the goodness of a house are not unrelated. I suspect that, to be truly good, a house needs to be more than a box to hold people, and it's not, either, that it needs to be a fancy box. It needs to be a place. Now, some very good houses - because very good houses do exist - some very good houses are just a box. One box. That's one kind of house - a somewhat rare kind - and it tends to be extremely good. That kind of house is usually quite a large box, with relatively little in it, and the result is the interior becomes a place. That's why it's so effective. Then another kind of very good house could be described as a collection of boxes, with spaces between them. This creates a place, and it is good. A more mediocre kind of house is a collection of boxes without spaces between them. This provides a clue.
Well, these ideas don't answer all our questions, they are just presented as something to think about. One proposal I like to make is to perhaps reverse our thinking about building arcologies. It seems to me we are thinking mostly about building houses, and struggling with the problem of making them resemble what we saw in Paolo's drawings. I suggest we think a lot about how to build superstructure. I propose we build some superstructure, as a first task. The howness of it is like this: you build the superstructure, and then you build houses in it. There is a certain danger, there. If we build superstructure and then just any old house gets built in it, we might end up with something quite miserable. So, I do think it's very important for us to think about the houses, but I certainly think it is very important for us to think about he superstructure too. I personally feel we've drifted away from that, into primarily thinking about houses, and how to build them, and I think that's an imbalance. Superstructure, superstructure, superstructure. In our planning we must fully address that imperative - and the imperative of the house.
The shapes we make determine whether the houses will be very good or not, but the goodness itself is something we also need to define, and that has to do with purpose. I mean, houses are for living in, but what does it mean to live in a house. The more completely we can define that, the better the houses will be. We will be able to create very good house shapes if we thoroughly understand the purposes those houses support. It is, of course, true, that houses support a diversity of purposes. One very good house will support one set of purposes, and another, a rather different set of purposes. Our mission should be to define a spectrum of purpose sets that define the various kinds of houses we will want to build to create a very good city.
I am quite a bit skeptical about the idea that an apartment is a very good house. Thus, certain thinkers have pointed out the deficiencies of suburban houses, or suburban cities, and proposed, in their stead, cities of apartment towers. I don't deny that apartment living can be very good, but I think, as a comprehensive solution to the problem of housing humanity, the apartment tower is a bit of a copout. The thing is, Paolo drew cities that were not collections of apartment towers. We looked at those drawings and saw more than apartments - and, at the same time, more than suburbs - and that is why we were so taken with them. But those drawings were, in a certain sense, quite abstracted, and even Paolo, when he worked to draw more buildable things, quite blithely drew apartment buildings. There I actually fault him, and I think we need to do better.
Actually, when I say that the drawings with which we were so taken were abstracted, as if their characteristic abstraction was a defining feature, I think we might be misreading them. I think this "reality", that those drawings were, for practical reasons, largely abstractions, is actually not a reality, it is a product of our imaginations. Without giving it any thought at all we looked at those drawings and said "they look realistic, but they really can't be realistic. in order to build these things we are going to have to treat them more normally. now we need to adjust these drawings to conform to reality." Even Paolo thought so. We can tell he did because, when he went to actually build something, he made it more normal. I mean, what he built is unusually interesting ... but it's only part of what we saw in the drawings of arcologies. We saw, in those drawings, many, many very interesting houses, and Paolo built some of those, plus we saw what I call superstructure. Actually, we find some of that in what Paolo built, too. What we find is, in what Paolo built, the proportional relationship between these two things, houses and superstructure, is reversed. In the drawings, superstructure is a profoundly dominant feature, and then, if you look closely, there are all the houses, whereas at Arcosanti, and at Cosanti, we see lots of wonderful houses, and then, if we study these places and think about them, we can identify the presence of superstructure.
Superstructure and the goodness of a house are not unrelated. I suspect that, to be truly good, a house needs to be more than a box to hold people, and it's not, either, that it needs to be a fancy box. It needs to be a place. Now, some very good houses - because very good houses do exist - some very good houses are just a box. One box. That's one kind of house - a somewhat rare kind - and it tends to be extremely good. That kind of house is usually quite a large box, with relatively little in it, and the result is the interior becomes a place. That's why it's so effective. Then another kind of very good house could be described as a collection of boxes, with spaces between them. This creates a place, and it is good. A more mediocre kind of house is a collection of boxes without spaces between them. This provides a clue.
Well, these ideas don't answer all our questions, they are just presented as something to think about. One proposal I like to make is to perhaps reverse our thinking about building arcologies. It seems to me we are thinking mostly about building houses, and struggling with the problem of making them resemble what we saw in Paolo's drawings. I suggest we think a lot about how to build superstructure. I propose we build some superstructure, as a first task. The howness of it is like this: you build the superstructure, and then you build houses in it. There is a certain danger, there. If we build superstructure and then just any old house gets built in it, we might end up with something quite miserable. So, I do think it's very important for us to think about the houses, but I certainly think it is very important for us to think about he superstructure too. I personally feel we've drifted away from that, into primarily thinking about houses, and how to build them, and I think that's an imbalance. Superstructure, superstructure, superstructure. In our planning we must fully address that imperative - and the imperative of the house.
Monday, April 13, 2015
finding it
Found it. Finally, after years of effort, I wrote a somewhat extended essay that I think is actually readable. In the end, it's just a small thing, but others are planning this future, and I wanted to have my say. (Just ignore the first couple of paragraphs.)
I need to read that howness Quaderno. It seems to me if we want to build arcologies, or anything really big, that's going to be done not by us, per se, but by society. The process of getting society behind our ideas begins with description. If we can describe things that are really good, and if our descriptive work is really convincing, they'll get built. That's the premise. This is standard business methodology.
Howness. I like money. The delight I take in it is very much partly just contrariness, sticking it to annoying self righteous thinkers. They'll never take me. I'll just go my own way. Still, how to get the money? I wrote about finding easy ways to do things, as a fundamental thing, the answer to the question "How?" Sure, I've been working on it, and failing at it, for years and years, but that's only been possible because it's easy. So, the stock market. It's fun and good to be contrary, to stick it to the numbskulls who insist it's all evil, but, it's also kind of interesting, and even good. But, in the interest of diversification, I also have thought a lot about this social media industry, and how to get myself into that. I linked in a bunch of my notes about that, from earlier. It's, in a way, a weak collection. Looking forward, here on this new blog, I'm going to see if I can improve on it.
I need to read that howness Quaderno. It seems to me if we want to build arcologies, or anything really big, that's going to be done not by us, per se, but by society. The process of getting society behind our ideas begins with description. If we can describe things that are really good, and if our descriptive work is really convincing, they'll get built. That's the premise. This is standard business methodology.
Howness. I like money. The delight I take in it is very much partly just contrariness, sticking it to annoying self righteous thinkers. They'll never take me. I'll just go my own way. Still, how to get the money? I wrote about finding easy ways to do things, as a fundamental thing, the answer to the question "How?" Sure, I've been working on it, and failing at it, for years and years, but that's only been possible because it's easy. So, the stock market. It's fun and good to be contrary, to stick it to the numbskulls who insist it's all evil, but, it's also kind of interesting, and even good. But, in the interest of diversification, I also have thought a lot about this social media industry, and how to get myself into that. I linked in a bunch of my notes about that, from earlier. It's, in a way, a weak collection. Looking forward, here on this new blog, I'm going to see if I can improve on it.
an index
about the operating system
about its memory requirements
about the cloud
a sculpture
about my museum
about what computers do
links as stars
about lists as space
a cad discussion
about exploring virtual space
introducing the cad file as a series of actions
the first virtual space
second virtual space: zoo
boring post about interfaces
boring post about (so it says) php
a boring post about my dream although it starts out ok
better: direction for developers
same damned thing
stupid nondisclosure agreement
a web news template
an early effort to describe the road
so this was going through a bunch of posts on another blog (of mine), looking for one in particular (and not finding it), and taking some notes so maybe i don't need to repeat the process. what i discovered was some goodness and some badness ... food for thought, here.
about its memory requirements
about the cloud
a sculpture
about my museum
about what computers do
links as stars
about lists as space
a cad discussion
about exploring virtual space
introducing the cad file as a series of actions
the first virtual space
second virtual space: zoo
boring post about interfaces
boring post about (so it says) php
a boring post about my dream although it starts out ok
better: direction for developers
same damned thing
stupid nondisclosure agreement
a web news template
an early effort to describe the road
so this was going through a bunch of posts on another blog (of mine), looking for one in particular (and not finding it), and taking some notes so maybe i don't need to repeat the process. what i discovered was some goodness and some badness ... food for thought, here.
Sunday, April 12, 2015
Quaderno
I thought Quaderno was a periodical, a kind of Magazine of Arcology, and so I have been thinking "when is the next Quaderno coming out, and what would I like to see in it?" Maybe I would like to see a lot of people's comments about arcology, and about the future. (It doesn't exist. That's its great advantage.)
But, investigating the matter, I have discovered that the Quaderni are 100% all Paolo's writing. Quaderno is a periodical written entirely by Paolo Soleri.
Well, I still want to continue publishing Quaderni, and, in these posts, I am collecting some things I "might want to" publish in the Quaderni.
But, investigating the matter, I have discovered that the Quaderni are 100% all Paolo's writing. Quaderno is a periodical written entirely by Paolo Soleri.
Well, I still want to continue publishing Quaderni, and, in these posts, I am collecting some things I "might want to" publish in the Quaderni.
ergo
Today you have to think you're really smart to program a computer using code. In the future, everyone will program computers using code.
You could conduct a kind of experiment, and write some sort of application using html and javascript. The tools you need to do this are very simple - something called a text editor, which is just a type-writer program, so, it lets you type stuff - and these simple, straight forward languages that even I have been able to master, to some extent, and a browser for trying what you've coded. The browser "runs" your application.
What you will discover is, if your application has more than a very few features, the code, what you've typed out, that's instructions to the browser, will become immensely cumbersome. Let's say something isn't quite working, or you want to add a feature. You will need to search a long scroll of completely inscrutable text, to find the particular part you need to modify, and then you will need to think, really hard, "what did this bit of code do, exactly? How do I work with it?" You might very well simply not be able to write an application with more than a few features.
More about that later. My friends who I hope will read my stuff are trying to get things done. When I come to them with ideas, saying, hey, you need these ideas to get things done, seeing as they are actually intelligent people, they want to know "where's the money?" I mean, they might not be quite that crass about it, and, too, being a bit idealistic in their habits of thought, they might say what they mean is "Tom, you're pushing all these ideas, but getting things done takes work, and we don't see you working very often. We're so busy working and actually doing stuff that we simply don't have time for a whole bunch of dreamy thoughts, not even your dreamy thoughts." Now, my friends may be a bit inclined towards dreaminess, but they aren't actually dumb, and they will acknowledge that, as sad as it is, there is some connection between getting things done and money. Even though it's nice if you can get things done by working really, really hard, even then, you might actually need some money, even just so you can do all that work. And then there's this: so it seems: if you want to get something bigger done, you need more money. Test out this reasoning: if the thing you want to do is so big that getting it done requires you to work 36 hours every day, well, you might as well forget it. But, if the thing requires more money, well, you might be able to get more money.
There's something interesting about thought experiments that I've discovered: they don't just confirm what you were thinking, they actually reveal things you hadn't thought of before. I've been conducting a kind of broad thought experiment in economics, for a number of years, and I just discovered something very interesting: the prosperity of cities - or any entity, such as a person, or a nation, or nature, or the whole world - depends completely on imports and exports. When I say "completely" I don't mean that there aren't other factors - possibly, though here we enter the realm of paradox - but without imports and exports there is likely to be no economy. If there is such a thing as a completely self contained entity, it's a set of very special cases, and perhaps we out to study them. Really, though, the vast majority of entities clearly exist by being importers and exporters. This is actually simply fundamental. A completely self-contained entity that affects nothing and is affected by nothing would simply not exist, as far as we would know. The whole entire meaning of existence - of an entity's existence - is its interaction with the larger world. And this is fundamental, but it is also practical. A city will exist because it is an importer and an exporter ... of goods.
Without trying to lay out the complete logic of the proposition, we can say, as a kind of shorthand for the purpose of thinking, that our work serves this purpose: generating exports and imports. An export is something we produce that has value in the larger world. Now, conceivably, we could produce a very large amount of something that has a small value in the larger world, and greatly prosper by doing that, but we might encounter a hurdle, which is that producing a great deal of something might require a very large amount of work. One way to measure the amount of work done, or required to do something, is in hours. As previously stated, if creating a certain amount of value depends on more than a certain fixed, immutable number of hours a day, we're sunk! The key to creating more value for export is not more work, or harder work, either, because that, too, has a strict upper limit, it's creating more value per unit of effort. What it is is more intelligent effort. Now intelligence is not, as it may seem, some badge that a person wears, which indicates they are excellent. Intelligence is, very simply, information. This is why I so insist on working in media, finance, and technology, ergo my idiotic ramblings about the future of computing, fiction, the stock market.
You could conduct a kind of experiment, and write some sort of application using html and javascript. The tools you need to do this are very simple - something called a text editor, which is just a type-writer program, so, it lets you type stuff - and these simple, straight forward languages that even I have been able to master, to some extent, and a browser for trying what you've coded. The browser "runs" your application.
What you will discover is, if your application has more than a very few features, the code, what you've typed out, that's instructions to the browser, will become immensely cumbersome. Let's say something isn't quite working, or you want to add a feature. You will need to search a long scroll of completely inscrutable text, to find the particular part you need to modify, and then you will need to think, really hard, "what did this bit of code do, exactly? How do I work with it?" You might very well simply not be able to write an application with more than a few features.
More about that later. My friends who I hope will read my stuff are trying to get things done. When I come to them with ideas, saying, hey, you need these ideas to get things done, seeing as they are actually intelligent people, they want to know "where's the money?" I mean, they might not be quite that crass about it, and, too, being a bit idealistic in their habits of thought, they might say what they mean is "Tom, you're pushing all these ideas, but getting things done takes work, and we don't see you working very often. We're so busy working and actually doing stuff that we simply don't have time for a whole bunch of dreamy thoughts, not even your dreamy thoughts." Now, my friends may be a bit inclined towards dreaminess, but they aren't actually dumb, and they will acknowledge that, as sad as it is, there is some connection between getting things done and money. Even though it's nice if you can get things done by working really, really hard, even then, you might actually need some money, even just so you can do all that work. And then there's this: so it seems: if you want to get something bigger done, you need more money. Test out this reasoning: if the thing you want to do is so big that getting it done requires you to work 36 hours every day, well, you might as well forget it. But, if the thing requires more money, well, you might be able to get more money.
There's something interesting about thought experiments that I've discovered: they don't just confirm what you were thinking, they actually reveal things you hadn't thought of before. I've been conducting a kind of broad thought experiment in economics, for a number of years, and I just discovered something very interesting: the prosperity of cities - or any entity, such as a person, or a nation, or nature, or the whole world - depends completely on imports and exports. When I say "completely" I don't mean that there aren't other factors - possibly, though here we enter the realm of paradox - but without imports and exports there is likely to be no economy. If there is such a thing as a completely self contained entity, it's a set of very special cases, and perhaps we out to study them. Really, though, the vast majority of entities clearly exist by being importers and exporters. This is actually simply fundamental. A completely self-contained entity that affects nothing and is affected by nothing would simply not exist, as far as we would know. The whole entire meaning of existence - of an entity's existence - is its interaction with the larger world. And this is fundamental, but it is also practical. A city will exist because it is an importer and an exporter ... of goods.
Without trying to lay out the complete logic of the proposition, we can say, as a kind of shorthand for the purpose of thinking, that our work serves this purpose: generating exports and imports. An export is something we produce that has value in the larger world. Now, conceivably, we could produce a very large amount of something that has a small value in the larger world, and greatly prosper by doing that, but we might encounter a hurdle, which is that producing a great deal of something might require a very large amount of work. One way to measure the amount of work done, or required to do something, is in hours. As previously stated, if creating a certain amount of value depends on more than a certain fixed, immutable number of hours a day, we're sunk! The key to creating more value for export is not more work, or harder work, either, because that, too, has a strict upper limit, it's creating more value per unit of effort. What it is is more intelligent effort. Now intelligence is not, as it may seem, some badge that a person wears, which indicates they are excellent. Intelligence is, very simply, information. This is why I so insist on working in media, finance, and technology, ergo my idiotic ramblings about the future of computing, fiction, the stock market.
a future
In the future your computer will save a copy of every web page you ever look at
In the future your computer will create a movie of everything that ever appears on the screen
In the future watching a movie and editing a movie will be the same thing
In the future the contents of a link will literally be in the link
In the future everyone will use CAD all the time
In the future credit cards will be replaced by on line cash
In the future the operating system will be a virtual universe
In the future a page will actually be a page
In the future an e-book will actually be a book
In the future you will buy books by the page
In the future, when you want software to do something you will put a coin in a slot
In the future your computer will create a movie of everything that ever appears on the screen
In the future watching a movie and editing a movie will be the same thing
In the future the contents of a link will literally be in the link
In the future everyone will use CAD all the time
In the future credit cards will be replaced by on line cash
In the future the operating system will be a virtual universe
In the future a page will actually be a page
In the future an e-book will actually be a book
In the future you will buy books by the page
In the future, when you want software to do something you will put a coin in a slot
Saturday, April 11, 2015
goodbye
A Saturday. Working our way into April of my standoffish year dedicated to my own purpose. One long crescendo of bird song, the overwhelming greenness of my cave, a little grey light. Yike, it's noon! Followed always by a vaguish sense of dread, which I don't regard as very important - maybe general impetus to persist.
Tracking my thoughts, my desires, from one node to another, looking for ones that are truly significant. Wanting people to behave. There's a long shot! But, let's look at it just a little. Concentrating more narrowly on something that could be done, and thus, the possibility of a win or two? Then leveraging that for activism, or setting examples? Sounds like trouble.
Wary of the kind of imperative, often termed efficiency, which leads to highly centralized production. Much nicer, if it works, to create small productive nodes everywhere, for every need. Probably very expensive, though. Some kind of trick or while is needed to pull it off? Time to be a billionaire.
Back to thinking about coding. Sure, behind that is something more familiar. Wanting to ... oh, I suppose I could just do this, say, a bin of a hundred extra small index cards, each with a kanji on it. Ach. Yukky. Hah! Lycos: how to look up kanjis: http://www.jisho.org/kanji/radicals/. And, there it is: a single page for everything, for all the radicals. Well, that's one problem partly solved.
Wanting, wanting, wanting! Just one of endless examples: wanting us, as a society, to completely reject the idea of garbage. Even that is very, very difficult - to discuss! The backdrop is some pretty hills ... but, so what? So they're pretty. I want to complicate your life because something's pretty? What exactly am I saying? That nothing derelict should every leave your "house"? Would that even be possible? I actually am tired of the green carpet that came with the house. I mean, underneath it there must be an inch and a half of dust. It would be quite right, in a way, to take it out, and replace it with the proper thing, a hard floor and stacks of actual magic carpets, that you fold up when you're not using them. Made of wool, and grasses. But what's going to happen to the old carpet. It's simply not ethical to dump this stuff. It was oil, and should become oil again. It should be burned. It should become air. But what about the ashes. Those are likely to be fairly nasty. They then need to be transformed, into something nice. What's that process like?
Carefully sorting garbage, into bins. One type of trash in one bin, another in another. Readying it, this way, for further processing. To figure out what that is, studying it, thinking about it.
None of this "has" to be done. It's just stuff I want to do. It may be hard, but it could be interesting. But to do it you need, well, money.
<hxml>
<house>
<axes>
<origin bottom south corner of framing />
<x from origin along bottom of main back wall framing />
<y from origin along bottom of main west wall framing />
<z from origin along south corner of framing />
</axes>
</house>
</hxml>
No one paying any attention at all. Eyes rolling. Goodbye. Where's the money?
Tracking my thoughts, my desires, from one node to another, looking for ones that are truly significant. Wanting people to behave. There's a long shot! But, let's look at it just a little. Concentrating more narrowly on something that could be done, and thus, the possibility of a win or two? Then leveraging that for activism, or setting examples? Sounds like trouble.
Wary of the kind of imperative, often termed efficiency, which leads to highly centralized production. Much nicer, if it works, to create small productive nodes everywhere, for every need. Probably very expensive, though. Some kind of trick or while is needed to pull it off? Time to be a billionaire.
Back to thinking about coding. Sure, behind that is something more familiar. Wanting to ... oh, I suppose I could just do this, say, a bin of a hundred extra small index cards, each with a kanji on it. Ach. Yukky. Hah! Lycos: how to look up kanjis: http://www.jisho.org/kanji/radicals/. And, there it is: a single page for everything, for all the radicals. Well, that's one problem partly solved.
Wanting, wanting, wanting! Just one of endless examples: wanting us, as a society, to completely reject the idea of garbage. Even that is very, very difficult - to discuss! The backdrop is some pretty hills ... but, so what? So they're pretty. I want to complicate your life because something's pretty? What exactly am I saying? That nothing derelict should every leave your "house"? Would that even be possible? I actually am tired of the green carpet that came with the house. I mean, underneath it there must be an inch and a half of dust. It would be quite right, in a way, to take it out, and replace it with the proper thing, a hard floor and stacks of actual magic carpets, that you fold up when you're not using them. Made of wool, and grasses. But what's going to happen to the old carpet. It's simply not ethical to dump this stuff. It was oil, and should become oil again. It should be burned. It should become air. But what about the ashes. Those are likely to be fairly nasty. They then need to be transformed, into something nice. What's that process like?
Carefully sorting garbage, into bins. One type of trash in one bin, another in another. Readying it, this way, for further processing. To figure out what that is, studying it, thinking about it.
None of this "has" to be done. It's just stuff I want to do. It may be hard, but it could be interesting. But to do it you need, well, money.
<hxml>
<house>
<axes>
<origin bottom south corner of framing />
<x from origin along bottom of main back wall framing />
<y from origin along bottom of main west wall framing />
<z from origin along south corner of framing />
</axes>
</house>
</hxml>
No one paying any attention at all. Eyes rolling. Goodbye. Where's the money?
Thursday, April 9, 2015
mystique
Still, I have hit on the idea of writing in a way people will specifically not find easy to understand, what I am talking about. The alternative seems to make people uncomfortable. They don't really want to be talked about. It makes me uncomfortable. There is a place I have written about. I must always write about it, but, at the same time, I shouldn't. Doing so places that place in isolation, a thing that is in some measure contrary to purpose. What I must write about is, that this place is a place in a place, in a place, in a place, in a place in a place in a place in a place in a place, something which presents an elevated challenge. More, better, to write about another place, a valley, you could say, part of an island, in a sea of islands, somewhat more, then, a space ... Self orientation.
Bringing me to meaning, attaching itself to things like places, the referential point, the axial zero, being, myself. I forgot to mention that the valley and the islands are heavily populated with people. (And the other thing, wilderness.) That's the universe I orient myself to. And thus, these musings about economies. To be of use in this human ether, a medium through which messages can effortlessly disperse and cause effects. The dream of broad influence, and then, isolation of purpose. No one will believe a word of that. Only action has credibility. It is therefore necessary to endlessly simplify unanswerable questions, in order to bypass, and penetrate, the rigid accidental structures which, simply, evolve, in, say, technical fields. And yet, still, I am left with only an abstraction:
What to do with a blank screen?
It's hopeless! The answer is fundamentally impossible and essentially obtuse. The question must be answered with more abstraction: put a database behind it - but that is now so horribly literal. Nor does it answer anything. In fact, the answer is specific, but nobody understands it. A kind of descriptive camera, so, if I say, I am pointing the camera at a house, then, on the screen, the house appears. Now, float over that - the screen is just an abstraction - the image appeared on a screen represented on the screen - an xml editor, where the descriptive parameters for the house tag can be found, and edited.
Bringing me to meaning, attaching itself to things like places, the referential point, the axial zero, being, myself. I forgot to mention that the valley and the islands are heavily populated with people. (And the other thing, wilderness.) That's the universe I orient myself to. And thus, these musings about economies. To be of use in this human ether, a medium through which messages can effortlessly disperse and cause effects. The dream of broad influence, and then, isolation of purpose. No one will believe a word of that. Only action has credibility. It is therefore necessary to endlessly simplify unanswerable questions, in order to bypass, and penetrate, the rigid accidental structures which, simply, evolve, in, say, technical fields. And yet, still, I am left with only an abstraction:
What to do with a blank screen?
It's hopeless! The answer is fundamentally impossible and essentially obtuse. The question must be answered with more abstraction: put a database behind it - but that is now so horribly literal. Nor does it answer anything. In fact, the answer is specific, but nobody understands it. A kind of descriptive camera, so, if I say, I am pointing the camera at a house, then, on the screen, the house appears. Now, float over that - the screen is just an abstraction - the image appeared on a screen represented on the screen - an xml editor, where the descriptive parameters for the house tag can be found, and edited.
diddling
Boy am I diddling around today. Things are breaking. I'm kind of broken. Our stocks are going up in leaps and bounds. A life full of contradictions. Starting over. Not completely sure what to make of it.
Organizing these essays. And, then?
I posit it is possible to describe things with sufficient realism to attract investors. What attracts investors is your demonstrated insight into the real nature of business. Investors want to see a profit, a return. Part of this - it is theirs, the benefit of ownership - they want in cash, and part, the larger part, they want the company to keep, and use, to add to its value, which is its business. And all of this is only possible because there's a product. Books! Let's compose and sell them! And then there's that esoteric branch, patents and licensing. Aren't we a minds resource?! It's thought, it's design, wholesale.
Trying to gather resources. Better to express the idea in ways like this - or not like that, the right way, and not the wrong one - what is computing for? A billion dollar question.
Organizing these essays. And, then?
I posit it is possible to describe things with sufficient realism to attract investors. What attracts investors is your demonstrated insight into the real nature of business. Investors want to see a profit, a return. Part of this - it is theirs, the benefit of ownership - they want in cash, and part, the larger part, they want the company to keep, and use, to add to its value, which is its business. And all of this is only possible because there's a product. Books! Let's compose and sell them! And then there's that esoteric branch, patents and licensing. Aren't we a minds resource?! It's thought, it's design, wholesale.
Trying to gather resources. Better to express the idea in ways like this - or not like that, the right way, and not the wrong one - what is computing for? A billion dollar question.
investigation
So in those early days of youthful confusion to which I sometimes make reference (one might say often), there was a time, actually, quite a lot of time, when I had literally no prospect of employment, and simply had to cast about in my mind for some way to sustain myself. Fortunately I was already imbued with the sense that casting about in my mind that way could sustain me. My assessment was, if I was pursuing a dream, I would be OK, never mind practical ideas. I don't mean that practicality is dispensable. I'm using the word dream to signify a desire to accomplish practical things. Pursuing a dream could be defined, too, and pursuit is an active thing. But what dream to pursue? I resolved to "do" art every day, with a strong sense that it was good, and would in fact - just the doing of it - sustain me. I did not, however, actually feel, very strongly - I somewhat doubted it - that I would be a commercial success as an artist, other than, perhaps, in some distant future.
I had lived for years - my whole life, even - among communists. Of course, we were prosperous idealists, coming from business families (and thus, why the dreamy idealism - I assert that business people are dreamy idealists), but money had been fixed, among us, with a negative name. Well, the purpose of a child is to be different from the parent, and even the parent's opposite, and I early on took a mischievous delight in liking money, and like things. Somewhere along the line, and I can't really say, precisely, how this happened, I became distinctly interested in the stock market. I concluded, with some satisfaction, that it is money. I felt I had found a little known thing. Oh, I was under no illusion. Everybody knows that, but I felt I understood it, and loved it, and that combination was not unique - it was even familiar - but was unusual, putting me in a kind of special group ... about which stories float ... Another thing: I was instinctively attracted to the charts. I knew nothing about them, but had a strong sense they were the thing to look at ... for me, if not for anyone.
So, what am I going to do? I'll do art, and cooking, and I'll argue my case, rather than just insisting on it, in fact, I will use my mind, in fact, I'll also always study, I'll trust in a good outcome, to some extent - it was hard for a long time; there were long periods of, really, despair; it is even still hard; but, I was aware of the possibility - , and I'll do stocks. After that, I was itching to do stocks.
Here I am, years and years later, and I probably still haven't actually made money. I'm probably still - almost certainly, certainly even - running a long term deficit. I made a whole series of mistakes, including somewhat big ones, early on - and then a string of smaller ones. One thing I did not do was give up - first, because of passion, but, then, too, because that option just wasn't available to me. Plus, I was convinced success was possible, convinced that the only obstacle to success was my own inability to master the discipline. There was, in fact, almost one particular dark day when giving up was really the only thing that made sense - a few days like that - but, on those occasions, inertia carried me through, and then things did start to clarify a little, or so it seemed. There was at least a glimmer of hope ... These last few years I've produced some not uninteresting results. Two buys went up five times in a year, and then one went up ten times in a month ... there were even other good results ... even my losers weren't looking hopeless.
But, I mean, what is this all about? Do I just want the money, like that weaver? I mean, I'll tell you, that has a measure of appeal! But, listen, there are other things on my mind. Blah, blah, blah. I've already gone on long enough. But I want to be the father of a company!
Funny, this idea of fatherhood which has been filtering into my awareness the last couple of days.
How do you build a company?
Well, you do have your ideas. That's a kind of given. It's scoffed at. "Everybody has ideas." Thank goodness, I'd say ... but, I won't harp on it. I mean, the scoffers know, of what they speak, that's also true. Ideas alone might not cut it. (Don't give up. Keep pushing your ideas. At a certain point what they say is impossible might happen ... angels will suddenly surround you, in ways the rationalists have preemptively discounted. A bar stool might be a good place for such development. But, I'm OK with also being what you might call realistic. I mean, do push beyond just dreaming into, say, writing. But, where is this going. I don't want to admit that there is any such thing as absolute truth. But I always end up here, a kind of opening at the foot of the cliff, there in my mind: business is teamwork, is the inscription above it. Let's investigate.)
I had lived for years - my whole life, even - among communists. Of course, we were prosperous idealists, coming from business families (and thus, why the dreamy idealism - I assert that business people are dreamy idealists), but money had been fixed, among us, with a negative name. Well, the purpose of a child is to be different from the parent, and even the parent's opposite, and I early on took a mischievous delight in liking money, and like things. Somewhere along the line, and I can't really say, precisely, how this happened, I became distinctly interested in the stock market. I concluded, with some satisfaction, that it is money. I felt I had found a little known thing. Oh, I was under no illusion. Everybody knows that, but I felt I understood it, and loved it, and that combination was not unique - it was even familiar - but was unusual, putting me in a kind of special group ... about which stories float ... Another thing: I was instinctively attracted to the charts. I knew nothing about them, but had a strong sense they were the thing to look at ... for me, if not for anyone.
So, what am I going to do? I'll do art, and cooking, and I'll argue my case, rather than just insisting on it, in fact, I will use my mind, in fact, I'll also always study, I'll trust in a good outcome, to some extent - it was hard for a long time; there were long periods of, really, despair; it is even still hard; but, I was aware of the possibility - , and I'll do stocks. After that, I was itching to do stocks.
Here I am, years and years later, and I probably still haven't actually made money. I'm probably still - almost certainly, certainly even - running a long term deficit. I made a whole series of mistakes, including somewhat big ones, early on - and then a string of smaller ones. One thing I did not do was give up - first, because of passion, but, then, too, because that option just wasn't available to me. Plus, I was convinced success was possible, convinced that the only obstacle to success was my own inability to master the discipline. There was, in fact, almost one particular dark day when giving up was really the only thing that made sense - a few days like that - but, on those occasions, inertia carried me through, and then things did start to clarify a little, or so it seemed. There was at least a glimmer of hope ... These last few years I've produced some not uninteresting results. Two buys went up five times in a year, and then one went up ten times in a month ... there were even other good results ... even my losers weren't looking hopeless.
But, I mean, what is this all about? Do I just want the money, like that weaver? I mean, I'll tell you, that has a measure of appeal! But, listen, there are other things on my mind. Blah, blah, blah. I've already gone on long enough. But I want to be the father of a company!
Funny, this idea of fatherhood which has been filtering into my awareness the last couple of days.
How do you build a company?
Well, you do have your ideas. That's a kind of given. It's scoffed at. "Everybody has ideas." Thank goodness, I'd say ... but, I won't harp on it. I mean, the scoffers know, of what they speak, that's also true. Ideas alone might not cut it. (Don't give up. Keep pushing your ideas. At a certain point what they say is impossible might happen ... angels will suddenly surround you, in ways the rationalists have preemptively discounted. A bar stool might be a good place for such development. But, I'm OK with also being what you might call realistic. I mean, do push beyond just dreaming into, say, writing. But, where is this going. I don't want to admit that there is any such thing as absolute truth. But I always end up here, a kind of opening at the foot of the cliff, there in my mind: business is teamwork, is the inscription above it. Let's investigate.)
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