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It’s been roughly six months since the last time that I have posted to this blog.  Visually, the site is the same as it was half a decade ago.  The vast majority of the content that I create nowadays is posted primarily on Facebook and other social networks, and rarely do these pieces find their way to the site that was once a key creative outlet.

And so a question is raised: is this blog obsolete?

Obviously, active personal blogs do still exist on the Internet at large.  For example, one of my mentors, Carmy Levi, operates a blog with daily updates and always-interesting content.  But is the medium itself ill-suited to my needs?

Part of the problem is likely the lack of interest in maintaing the site. Maintaining a personal site, much like a social network profile, requires a certain level of egotism, something with which I occasionally struggle. Automated cross-posting from social networks could help, but a concerted effort would be needed to fully revive interest in this thing: a facelift; a reorganization of categories and navigation; addition of my artwork and audio/music endeavours; regular content updates.

Can it be done?  Sure.  Should it?  Maybe.  Will it?  We’ll see.

Dear Occupy London Participants: Most of you, I have known for less than two weeks. In this short time, I have come to consider you all as friends and trusted allies. We have come together in respectful and supportive community, and have built a bond seldom seen in this world.

We have all come to this movement for the same reason — to help create the positive change that we wish to see in the world. Though our viewpoints and opinions may differ, we share much more in common than we have to divide us. The strength that we have found in this diversity enables us to share our ideas and talents, and work together toward a better future. It is with that possibility in mind that I write, asking for your consideration.

On Wednesday, October 26th, the office of Mayor Joe Fontana declared that we are no longer welcome to camp in Victoria Park. Many of you wish to remain at our present location, contravening city by-laws. At 4PM on October 27th, a special meeting of the city council will be convened to discuss our bid to remain in Victoria Park. The outcome of this meeting is unclear, and we may or may not be granted an exception to the city by-laws.

We have, as an alternative, been offered space at St. Paul’s Anglican church. At this new location, we would not be affected by city ordinances, and would be able to stay indefinitely. It is my opinion that this would bestow upon us a more family-friendly environment in which to conduct our community, and help to further reduce the alienation that the general public feels with respect to our movement.

The merits of each choice have been debated at length, and no clear answer has gained the consensus of the collective. Irrespective of the decision of city council, some participants have already decided to willfully defy the law, and continue to camp within the park.

I ask: have we forgotten why we are here? This movement is not primarily a protest of city by-laws. We have not come together as an inclusive community to alienate those who are now afraid to visit Victoria Park. The location of our gathering does not matter to the content of our discussions!

If the city council decides that we are still not welcome to stay in Victoria Park, I welcome you to join me in moving our camp to St. Paul’s cathedral. Those who wish to stay are as valued and respected as those who wish to move, but I respectfully ask that they consider the opportunities that this option presents.

I want to see this movement continue moving forward. Standing firm on this relatively insignificant point gains us nothing, and serves to drive the curious public away from our cause. I urge you to consider the greater good, and focus on the problems that we can solve in this community. We have the chance to make a real difference in the city of London, and we should not waste it on stubborn matters!

I will leave my trust in the wisdom of the people.

It’s election season again.

In October of this year, the provincial governments of four Canadian provinces and two territories will hold their general election. When ballots are cast, the provincial parliaments will be elected. Though arguably less exciting than a federal election, provincial government elections are no less important; issues of healthcare, education, welfare, and other matters are under the responsibility of the provincial government, and the choice of leadership can have wide-ranging impacts on the future.

As usual, I will be out walking the streets of London, Ontario, encouraging citizens to exercise their democratic right to vote. Quite often, while out walking with my sign, I am asked why I am doing what I am doing. Good question, with a complicated answer…

I have always had an interest in politics. Early in life, I was exposed to knowledge and commentary about the democratic process, and sought to learn more. In high school, I began to more closely follow the electoral process during the 2000 American presidential election and Canadian federal election. By the time I had turned 18, I knew enough about the issues and the involved parties to make an informed choice, and cast my first ballot in the 2003 Ontario provincial election. Since then, I have voted in every election — municipal, provincial and federal.

In the last provincial election, a new record was set: lowest voter turnout ever. I was shocked and appalled.

My mind boggled at the thought — almost half of those eligible were forgoing their only opportunity to have a legally binding say in the future of their government. For so many people in this world, the chance to elect a leader is but a dream, yet here were millions of people giving up that right. Why?

After some unscientific anecdotal polling, two main reasons became apparent: ignorance and cynicism.

The sad and surprising truth that I discovered was that few people actually understood enough about the Canadian government to know for what they were voting. Even fewer understood the issues and parties well enough to make an informed choice. Many others had become convinced that their vote was irrelevant, or that no candidate was worthy of their vote, and so no ballots were cast. Some few were even so bold to say that they refused to vote, to send a message (what, and to whom, I was unable to ascertain).

I decided that something had to be done. On the following election day (municipal, 2007), I grabbed a shelf from my cabinet and some markers, made a sign, and started walking. My goal was to convince just one person to vote who otherwise would not have. I succeeded in my goal that day, and on every election day since. Now it is time to go a step further: to turn the tide and restore participatory democracy to Canada.

To those — the ignorant, the apathetic, the cynical, the non-voters — I challenge you: VOTE.

A representational democracy such as ours depends on participation in elections. The candidate that your riding chooses becomes your voice in the house of commons for the next four years. Though yours is but one vote of thousands, there are thousands of people like you. If all those who gave up their vote in the previous election were to vote in this election, the political landscape would be dramatically different.

Learn about the structure of our government. Learn about the major parties. Learn about the issues under debate.
Decide the values that are important to you. Decide which party best represents your interests. Decide which local candidate would be best to represent you in parliament.
In Ontario on October 6th, vote at your local polling station.

Your vote does matter. If you do not know how to vote, you can learn. Should none of the candidates be representative of your ideals, choose the least-worst of your options. If you believe that you do not care about politics, you are mistaken. If you believe that not-voting sends your message, you are wrong; yours is a vote to not have a choice, and you have granted us the right to choose your government for you.

To those that do and will vote: thank you.

See you on the streets.

I’m trying out a new thing.

I’ve been feeling more frequently recently that my creativity is being lost to the day-to-day grind.  The thought of losing the spark of ability terrifies me, and it’s time enough to do something about it.  I’m certainly not satisfied with the existence of many: go to work, come home, eat dinner, watch TV, go to bed, and do it all again tomorrow.  I’m far too young to be old, and my adult life is only just beginning!  It’s time to make a change.

I’ve moved into a new place, and have decided to try some new things as part of this new life.  The theme is accountability, and the exercises are designed with that goal in mind.  The eventual aim is to become an effective, productive, fully-actualized person, and rid myself of the “idling sickness” that has plagued my existence.  My intent is to undertake a series of challenges with deadlines, to prompt myself to action.

In theory, the challenge will promote personal growth by forcing use of my skills by artificial pressures.  Further, by forcing productivity, being productive will become the new norm, which combats the tendency toward idleness.  If the plan is stuck to, it will become increasingly easy to produce results in these and other endeavours, and my time will be better used.  As success accumulates, more challenges will be added, to further improve the improvement.  To encourage adherence to the plan, a system of rewards will also be used.

The rules are as follows:

• A week is defined as the time from Monday at Midnight, until the following Sunday at 11:59PM
• Each week, a minimum of one product is due from each challenge category
• Results above minimum requirements cannot be carried over to subsequent weeks
• Products are judged on a done-or-not basis — quality does not matter for grading purposes
• All products are to be posted publicly on the Internet (if relevant)
• For each month in which all challenges are met, a new challenge is added
• Multiple challenges may be added, and the difficulty of existing challenges may be increased

Initial challenges:

• One page of prose (250 words)
• One painting or other item of creative visual art
• One photograph
• Attend one cultural event

As this is the first week, I have 3 days to finish these challenges.  This document counts as a page of prose, and so I have completed my first challenge (yay!).

My hope is that I can make this commitment and stick with it.  Even should I fail in these challenges, any success is better than no success, and brings me closer to my goals.

Here’s to success…

I virtually attended the Humanity+ conference at Caltech this past weekend via a live webcast (and Twitter #hplus).  Throughout the weekend, there were a number of interesting talks on the subjects of life extension, artificial intelligence, pharmacology, physics, and general futurism.  Attendees (both in person and on the web) heard about how science and technology is increasingly affecting our experience of the world, and what that will mean in the coming years.  Bringing thinkers on the subject together has packed a lot of big ideas into a small space, but I’ll try to distil the main points.

The conference was divided into four half-day sessions, each with its own topic:

Re-Imagining Humans: Mind, Media, and Methods

Robert Tercek kicked off the conference with an excellent overview of how advances in technology and new forms of media are accelerating human evolution.  He outlined how the transition from 1-way media (such as books and TV) to 2-way, networked media enables the viewer as an active participant, changing the citizen’s role from consumer to contributor.

David Levy does robot and fantasy artistic design.  He talked about how art shapes the public perspective and our cultural experience.

J-Walt, a computer-enabled performance artist, showed a bit of his project, Spontaneous Fantasia.  He creates visually-impressive virtual worlds in real-time, set to music.

Amy Li shared some of what’s going on in the mobile device application world.  With the number of cellphones quickly overtaking the number of PCs, the world has gone mobile.  In the next few years, personal electronic devices will be increasingly used in commerce, socializing and other applications.

Natasha Vita-More’s talk dealt with the concept of the “self”.  As modern, technological people, we have the physical self, the virtual self, the computational self, the chemical self, etc., etc.  As we become increasingly integrated with our gadgets, it becomes a two-way relationship; we wear the devices, and the devices also wear us.

I missed most of the rest of the session, sadly…

Radically Increasing the Human Healthspan

Life extension is a topic in which I am greatly interested.  With a stated goal of living forever (or die trying), it’s important to me that this part be figured out, and quickly.

Many of the speakers pointed out ways in which we’ve already extended the human lifespan far beyond its biological limitations.  At 26, I would already be in old-age if not for modern medical science, nutrition, and quality-of-life enhancements.  Using the tricks that have been uncovered so far, it’s possible to squeak increasing years out of these old bio-bodies.  Combining technologies of pharmacology, nutrition, conditioning and, artificial intelligence, thinkers on the subject may well figure out a system by which to sustain high-quality life indefinitely.

Aubrey de Grey, lord of all science beards, spoke (very rapidly) during this segment, largely in response to the other speakers.  As one of the most well-known experts in the field, I take great comfort in his belief that we can stop, if not reverse, aging in mature individuals.

Redefining Intelligence: Artificial Intelligence, Intelligence Enhancement,&Substrate-Independent Minds

The morning segment of the second day largely dealt with the changing idea of what intelligence means.  Artificial intelligence and the holy grail of AI, artificial general intelligence, are quickly changing the face of business, and may someday puncture the nature of our reality.  The session also dealt with human intelligence through education and technological enhancement.

The speakers in this session brought many diverse approaches to solving the problem of AI.  Several different models of biological intelligence were outlined and demonstrated, with a few impressive video demos.  In one based off Paul Rosenbloom’s SOAR engine, virtual human agents are used as props in diplomacy training simulations.

A highlight of this session was Alex Peake’s talk about the Primer engine. By giving users the tools to create their own content in an MMO, Primer’s aim is to create a never-ending game that contains all of human knowledge.  Gamification of education is a concept that I’ve personally had interest in, so it excites me that progress is being made.  By making learning fun and self-directed, it makes knowledge accessible to a wider range of people, and accelerates the process.

The mind-machine interface is also starting to make in-roads.  The already-commonplace use of prosthetics and mobility devices will soon see improvements through brain-reading technology.  The watershed moment, several years ago, when a monkey with a brain implant spontaneously began to control a robot arm with its mind, demonstrated just how much could be possible with sufficient research.  Future developments are likely to bring the same abilities to humans within this decade.

Business and Economy in the Era of Radical Technomophosis

For many, when it comes to technological progress, the question is about money.  The last session of the conference had some speakers on the topic of business, and several unrelated topics.

The theme of several of the talks were that the conventional wisdom of money, business, and education is woefully inadequate to deal with the changing times.  John Hagel’s talk laid this point particularly bare.  The “push” method of predicting demand, and then working to meet the demand has business, government, and education running as fast as possible and still falling behind.  The solution is to move to a “pull” method; by designing scalable platforms and agile, dynamic systems, demand can be met by drawing resources as needed.

Patri Friedman and Gino Yu had excellent talks related to the philosophy of transhumanism and self-improvement (lifehacking).  I quote Friedman: “Surfing the internet to be more productive is like buying a chair about jogging.”  The gist of his talk is the application of the scientific method to self-improvement: set a goal, try a strategy, check results, adjust strategy, repeat.  In observation of my own behaviour, his suggestion that “doing research” is actually procrastination totally rings true.  He suggests http://justfuckingdoit.com as a productivity tool (one that I’m using right now!).

Yu’s talk got downright zen.  Through an exercise in awareness and mindfulness, he illustrated the value of presence.  He suggests that if we could live out of joy, rather than out of fear, the world could be a better place.  Indeed.

Final Thoughts

This is the first time that I’ve participated in a live web conference, and found the experience to be quite enriching.  Through Twitter spam, and conversations with other attendees, I’ve made great connections with like-minded people.

As with all futurist events, this was a conference about what could be, rather than what is going to be.  The exercise of imagining the world of tomorrow prepares one for the changes that may impact life in the future and today.  With foresight comes the ability to influence the course of our future, to the benefit of us all.  I should hope that, as these technologies unfold, the futurist movement will become more visible, leading us to ever-move innovation.

Many thanks to the presenters at the H+ conference for sharing these ideas, and to Humanity+ for organizing this event.

Okay, seriously now.

It feels as though I just remembered that I have a blog.  Haven’t published anything in quite some time, as is apparent by the last-year dates on the most recent posts.  It’s not like there’s nothing to say–just no drive to do so.  There’s a lot going on in the world, and a lot of things to be shared, so maybe it’s time to pick it up again.

The whole thing needs a do-over anyway.  Need a new visual theme, some better forms of organization, and some sort of system of automation.  It’d be super-nice if I could click “like” and have it appear here, and have my Twitter and Facebook posts indexed here too.  It’d be even better if there were some sort of comment integration.  Technology, GO!

Shared links for February 10th through April 3rd:

• Tesla unveils groundbreaking electric car –
• Yeast-powered fuel cell feeds on human blood – New Scientist –
• Solar power reaches $1 / watt, but silicon-based cells are doomed – Popular Mechanics – The long awaited technical achievement of the $1 solar watt is finally close to realization. Solar technology has several other roadblocks to mainstream adoption. Silicon-based solar cells currently employed are manufactured in an energy-intensive, multi-step process. The manufacture of vast quantities of cells would take vast amounts of effort. Replacement technologies forthcoming…
• Scientists Identify Lab-Made Proteins That Neutralize Multiple Strains of Seasonal and Pandemic Flu – Scientists have discovered a technique that may soon provide additional tools in the fight against disease.
• Holographic discs set to smash storage records – New Scientist – New technology in optical data storage may soon provide discs that record data in three dimensions, dramatically increasing storage capacity.
• Future Watch: A.I. comes of age – In parts of the academic community, there is a sentiment that the dream of artificial intelligence died sometime in the 1980s. In reality, research has continued, with countless spin-off applications already improving our daily lives. This new information age sets the stage for the second artificial intelligence revolution — more information, more insight, and greater capacity for growth will soon allow artificial intellects to come of age and take on greater responsibility. Search algorithms behind Google, and consumer tracking systems employed by Wal Mart and other retailers have more data than a human could imagine; what will they do with it?

Shared links for February 10th from 13:31 to 13:56:

• A Robomedic for the Battlefield – Technology Review – Hey look, a snake robot battle medic! That’s pretty cool.
• Innovation: Speech prediction software – New Scientist – One of the major barriers to adoption of speech recognition technology is its inability to understand and filter imperfect speech. “Uh” and “err”, to humans, are cues to indicate a pause for thought — in which another human may jump in to complete the phrase or supply a word that the speaker cannot think of at the moment. This new research technology uses a database of phrases and predictive algorithms to do just that….in Japanese. Once this idea catches on, the dream of the vocally-interactive computer may become closer to reality.
• Unnatural selection: Robots start to evolve – New Scientist – Artificial intelligence researchers are using genetic selection algorithms to refine robot control software. By providing a “blank” robot with a goal of locomotion, the software evolves increasingly successful models of how best to use its physical body to move. When the robot’s body is changed by adding knees, the software then learns to adapt to its new situation, using the existing model as a basis. In this way, humans (and other animals) learn to utilize their bodies and minds as they grow into adults. With this learning model, future artificial intelligences may learn to solve problems faster than we can teach them using traditional instruction.
• Born believers: How your brain creates God – New Scientist – New insight into the functioning of the human mind suggests that the idea of god is somewhat built-in. The spiritual communion that comes from human language and culture allowed our species to band together to overcome the threat of extinction. This inherent bend toward spirituality remains to this day — along with all its benefits and perils.
• The Army’s Remote-Controlled Beetle – Technology Review - US Army researchers have created a cyborg beetle that can fly on command. In this video, we see as the (tethered) beetle starts and stops flying at the press of a button, and can be steered to the left and right.