Comment on ~NRG78[top] [parent]

i found your thread interesting...welcome to da!

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what shakin?

Thanks mrha. I'll take a look at your DA Gallery now. I must add however that DA is just one view onto my 'web avatar' that I've made over the last month using 'memetic marketing' and 'semiotic engineering' of Network accessible cultural products. Try googling 'nrg78' or 'nick gresham' to see what i've been doing. Spamming the Net to a certain extent with an ambiguous and meaningless 'message'

It's fun, though. Are you going to make a GonzoStream? I'd love to see it.

I believe all communication is recursive.

Although I love google to death, where else have you been the last month?

Maybe fun, haha, but meaningless? "web avatars" can be used for many purposes, be it good or bad, you decide. But stay focused so you don't 'kill' it

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Dreamer. Always.

Yes, focus is something I sorely lack. I began reading Sun Tzu again yesterday and it has helped me to focus myself on pragmatic things again.
Though is 'art' pragmatic? Heh.

right, behind the Curtain

some good technologies for 'Search' IMO - how to increase your cultural/meme input.

be careful though - it can be addictive.

[link] - "All about Search Engines"
google.com - just about everything
scroogle.com - anonymous google searching
dmoz.org - the open directory

[link] visualisation like this one: [link] I use it as my homepage.
blog / tag / semantic searching: [link]
various scientific newsletters which I can't be bothered to look up right now
Flickr
Social networking via the Internet - write to your heroes, they write back sometimes and encourage you. Which is nice. Get involved in an interesting Forum or three - you get lots of different feedback on your CMC style, as well as your 'art' if your art is covert gonzo journalism and 'engineered art'
Detailed webstats - see where people are coming to your site from (what hyperlink) and notice how your content has 'propagated' to.. particularly if you put the original links in yourself. It's also nice to see people with 'no referring link' hitting you, as well as from various webmail providers. Positive feedback or at least an audience to perform to (this is very much in the performance art space as well .. it is meant to be gonzo digital conceptual cybernetic art..)

ROFL at that last sentence.

Misc. Technologies
My Palm LifeDrive with various extra apps and a Think Outside portable keyboard.
My 2 year old digital camera (I. Need. More. Megapixels.)
Debris [link] (you can 'save' all the found images and just ignore the random mandalas it creates)
GoogleMaps
GoogleEarth
Firefox with the Notepad and [link] extensions, the WebDeveloper toolbar is also good.

Philosophy is about Search too IMHO... moving yourself/changing yourself looking for a good answer to the Existentialist dilemma.


Random ramblings ahead! Beware!

Ask me about my new personal philosophy of mind/existentialism.

Go on, please ask - I need some criticism beyond the friend I 'hired' as my 'consulting philosopher.'

Key elemnts of the NRG philosophical meme complex at present include:

*Getting Things Done (GTD) - mind like water
*Zen
*No chartjunk
*Heraclitus the Obscure
*Kurzweil's Law
*the Law of Unintended Consequences
*Buddha says save often (personal in-joke)
*Game theory
*Information theory
*No golden hammer
*Try to be a Jung 'Orphan'
*Try to be a Jung 'Jester'

It's still evolving and I'm still struggling to actively implement it within my dust-mite existence.

Stuff/people I like: Engelbart, functional specification, software development and management, tools, augmented intelligence, network augmented intelligence, wikis, VR, augmented reality, coding, my girlfriend, making music, architecture, photography, Australia, Kraftwerk, dub reggae, handheld computing, mobile networks, networks, evolution, Kurzweil, linguistics, the 'intellectual school of British comedy', kids, function over form, HCI/usability, education, history, minimal techno, Japan, design, China, science, sci-fi (particularly Gibson and Stephenson)...

(pause for breath)

and MORE!

I type and speak faster than I think so please be patient with me as I'm currently working on 'filtering' my output.


'Finding' Buddha and Sun Tzu again a few datys ago has helped a lot. There's a lot of stuff I could through into a 'personal philosophy' category as well. I have about 100 pages of printed web materials I did while researching old philosophers and new technologies..

A whole heap of what I think is hella cool stuff too. That's what I mean by 'personal infocalypse' - I first caught on to 'The Singularity' meme complex and I have to admit I believe in it.. nice to have belief in today's tawdry world. Its scientific belief - I want to be a de Bono red hat hacker one day.

However, 'Answers' is exactly what I don't have. I firmly believe that there's no golden hammer. No silver bullet. No spoon. You should never just read One Book and get all your answers from it.

To read too many books is dangerous -- Mao, a former librarian and ruler of Red China

No one solution will always be best - evolution and Heraclitus means everything can change, even our current 'solutions' and 'isms' ... fundamentalism, nationalism, racism, sexism etc.. what do you think?

for a temporary example of link 'propagation' take a look at this:[link]

Haha, I think my my weekend is saved. Or even more, the whole next month! but I have physics too do, don't want another addiction on my hand at this very moment.

That Vox Delicii page was a prime example of my confusion right now, spot on Sputnik! Confusion as in how do you get enough time? I'm willing to buy some of yours, how much do you charge?

By the way, kraftwerk got me into electronics for the first time, they're bloody legends.
But you had some answers right there, didn't you?

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Dreamer. Always.

That should have been the Firefox 'scrapbook' extension. oops. the 'Linky' extension is good too.
Do your physics using the tools I given you to augment your intelligence using the network.. it's not my crackpot theory,. Check out the 'greatest tech demo of all time' given in 1968 by Engelbart and his team... There's a Wired article written by Doug called 'The Click that was heard around the world'

I'm fascinated by the guy which is kinda teenager of me (I'm 27) but my heroes used to be Bill Gates and Steve Jobs until 10 years ago. Then I had no heroes as I realized that they became driven by money and ended up having a lot of people disliking them.. I've written a bit of stuff about Bill on my website but haven't bothered to attack Steve .. yet . Woz is a hella cool guy though - I share his interest in education big time. My Mum is a special needs / handicapper teacher (she knows sign language) and was/is a big influence on me. Consider how technology has made life better for blind and deaf people.. it can only get better, no?

A corporation doesn't care what users needs. Generally. It cares what users WANT and it will create that want if necessary. How can we evolve technology/art/culture/society further without openness - open protocols and information.

Free software. OSS.

CC distribution of creative output to anyone who wants to use it.

Feedback/encouragement via a larger potential network of friends. Everyone needs more friends, right?

Anyone can be creative - particularly if you throw a PC into the mix. It's a lot easier to do music, phoography, video editing etc now than it used to be. If knowledge capital is the capital of the 21st century business then what happens if it's easy for everyone to create their own original knowledge capital?

What happens when we can manage our information better - say through pervasive computing, perhaps as envisioned by Mark Weiser from Xerox PARC.. don't tell me you don't think it can happen, because history and computing particularly are full of famous stupid predictions.

These are two laws of technology that no-one can argue with, IMHO.

The Law of Unintended Consequences AKA 'The Street finds its own uses for Things'
implies
Kurzweil's Law of Accelerating Returns

Your thoughts?

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NRG jester/orphan/artisan/musiq maker/apprentice semiotic engineer/

I feel that I need to read up on things before I say too much, but I have to say that I've got a new perspective on a various important things (even not related to any of this at all, which is only good), thanks.
Wants and needs, as you took from "Engelbart's prescription for amplifying communal intelligence", well, lots of things are being run the wrong way even if it's in a hidden cloak, limited by knowledge, or perhaps even ignorance? You have reasons, you have mind, you obviously have will. Influence, as you said, is imprortant here.

We'd want it to only get better, but does it? Look outside the window, and perhaps outside your country, what is your first impression? How would you describe it and how it functions?

Many good thoughts. Will read up on this when I get time for sure, really interesting.

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Dreamer. Always.