bloggity blog bloggy blog blog

<3

no no things are really changing

What I find strange about Google 2084 is that they think there are going to be "TV Shows" in 2084.

<3

two nonsequitorious paragraphs

The software model I'd like to see: Putting up money to commission new features (or other changes) of free open source software. Like if I wanted my favorite email client to have a function "sort by moon phase" I could put up $50, and the first person to program a moon phase sorter to my satisfaction would get the pot.

I haven't had much of an appetite today.

<3

The Guild System

I have no idea if this idea exists out there already & I'm catching a whiff of it, or if what I'm smelling is just the ripe baked aroma of the possibility of it.

It's an economic model, like the co-operative model,

-- and there my idea evaporated. The truth is that this blog is just a glimpse into my mind. I think the play of the creative mind is in being a little bit of everything. Be a doctor for a minute & see what it's like to Diagnose Pathology. Be a historian, momentarily, and write up a theory on the origins of the Civil War.

I just asked my friend in the UK about the Civil War. I wondered what to call it when I was writing it; I settled on "the American Civil War."

There are coal stains on the front of my monitor. I think it's coal.

<3

pinball

this is and has always been a post about pinball

<3

If I Were A U.S. Representative

If I were representing a constituency to the U.S. Congress, this is what I'd do: Since I don't believe in "representative" democracy as it's presently conceived of in our "democracy," I would initiate a new process which democratizes things as much as I could manage.

Here's a first outline: My votes would not actually be "my" votes. I would have them be decided by a direct democratic process among my constituents. One possibility: Have regular public meetings, at which the public can debate & decide how I should vote on upcoming questions. Especially if I were representing a large area, such as a State, it might be more democratic to have the meetings in various places, so no one has an unfair advantage by being close. Another idea: Some sort of ballot process. In order to be practical, it might have to be on the Internet.

I would run with the process under which my "votes" would be chosen as my platform, explicitly defined. The process would be a constitutional one, under which the process itself could potentially be changed by my constituents themselves at their own will & whim. I would then have exactly as much power as a member of the Electoral College: The power to fuck things up by ignoring my sworn duty, but no more than that.

If many such "representatives" were elected, with new public organizations taking onto themselves the power which used to be assigned to individuals, we could then progressively shed the intermediate layer of "voting" in an assembly as if we were in a previous century.

Even if they do it by "electronic device."

Yeah, change.

<3

OK so here's a simple idea. (Ideas like this are really just little glimpses into what the future is going to look like; there's too many possibilities & probabilities to imagine them all at once, but we can look through little windows.)

IDEA: Put up a video screen on a wall, with a microphone & an internet connection. It listens to what's said around it & does searches to find pictures that match the words that people say. For instance if you said "Pakistan," a map of Pakistan might pop up. If you said "pop up," a pop-up book might appear.

This is like the associative play that our minds do with everything we see & hear, but instead of our own personal minds, it would bring up associations from our collective Mind. Inventions like this are going to become easier to stumble upon over time, bringing us all into a closer shared consciousness.

<3