Category Archives: technology

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Essence gathering & projection

Magnified sand grains

A bit, or a memory cell, in computing terms, is the smallest addressable entity of information conceived by man, — not a byte, a byte is made up of eight bits, also called a word but not in the literary sense.

Science, by way of nature, knows about some really small stuff too:
Atoms, Protons, Neutrons, Electrons and Quarks, Quanta, Plancks, Leptons, Higgs bosons, and Strings…

It gets so small it becomes enormously large again.

Flipping bits was the exclusive terrain of Assembler programmers in the early years of programming.
They’d switch them on or off, — a dichotomous choice, — for various programming logic reasons. Often bits were simply used as status indicators. An ‘on’ bit is also said to reflect a status value of ‘true, and an ‘off’ bit a status value of ‘false.’

Imagine you are running an App.
For simplicity let’s say on some processor a bit is designated as a day/night status indicator. ‘on’ means it’s night-time. When the App tests the status of that bit a value of true is returned and it will say ‘Good Night Earthling,’ otherwise if the bit is ‘off,’ false is returned and the App will say ‘Good Day Earthling.’
Because bits can only have one of two values at a time, either on or off, these values are also referred to as being ‘one’ and ‘zero.’ A zero is sometimes also referred to as meaning ‘initial.’

Strung together bits and bytes make sense (instructions, data) and have been the foundation of our computing prowess for the last, oh, seventy-five years.

Bits, as tiny as they are, have allowed humans to progress on all fronts at mindboggling speed, — human-lightspeed when compared to a hundred years ago.

We rule and succeed by ones and zeros, or more accurately by on and off. Hard to believe, — when we play with an App or use a social network, — that it ends up in ones and zeros.

Computers and most significantly the internal process that uses bits and bytes are an ingenious, brilliant invention.
Shades in between ‘on’ and ‘off’ don’t exist. A distinct yes or no, or a clear ‘on’ or ‘off’ has been our modus operandi since the start.
If we can get this far using this principle how much further could we get expanding on it?

Nature works on an inclusive approach. It doesn’t just switch on or off, it has every nuance in between too.
Nature’s bits are called cells. A single cell has all the information necessary to make the whole, whatever that is: a tree, a human, an orange…

“Lead the way Nature and we shall observe and copy.”

Arrive the Quantum bit or Qbit. It can exist in the superposition of two states at once. That is a quantum jump from the established, entrenched, practiced thought process of seven decades where a bit could only have one of two states.

Why this (Super)Quantum bit?

Because we want to achieve more. In the process, we always come up against limits that make us re-think our approach and then better it.

“We are masters at transforming reality to rise above the wishlist anchored in imagination.”

Human lightspeed was achieved with one bit representing one value. Dare imagine the possibilities if a bit can represent more than one value?
The potential incremental effect to everything conceivable to us would leave factorials in the dust. We would have to strap our mind to our brain else we would lose it.

Now then, let’s look at our greatest desire:
Human interplanetary, interstellar and intergalactic travel.

We have come a long way with travel. Walking, riding, driving, flying. At its extremes, we are now at the international/interplanetary stage. Let the ISS* and the moon be planets for this example.
Elon Musk wants to get to Mars. Extended interplanetary travel. Presently this journey critically highlights the limitation of conventional space travel: to transport matter (human, spaceship) through space (distance) to an extraterrestrial destination in a time frame that does not adversely affect our life or compromise our lifespan on earth.
A prerequisite seems to remain: we still want to climb into a vehicle, race into the distance, get out on the other side and do something and return again.
We are at odds with the time required and the physical and potential psychological extremes and limitations involved.
We got this far by flipping bits and we have once again approached a limit.

The time has arrived to use Quantum bits and develop that even further to the capacity and ability of a cell and then, — then capture the essence of individual beingness and project that.

Nature, the Universe, seems to have no limit to anything.
Humans suffer limits but somehow always manage to come up with something to jump over those boundaries.
Limits occur because, well, we have reached the end of a path and are being ‘told’ to think beyond the state we are in, i.e. not just ‘on’ or ‘off,’ but out of the quanta called a box.

“Let irrational, perceptive thought govern our thinking and rational actions our collective fellowship.”

Physically we are Earthlings, accurately definable entities governed by the natural laws and behavioral laws on earth. If we want to venture beyond our horizon, and by the way Mars is still within our horizon albeit barely visible, then a quantum leap is necessary that supersedes the rational, temporal, telluric based thought process.

Materialistic propulsion has limits.
Certainly, a self-contained, Enterprise-like spaceship traveling at warp speed through space is a wonderful picture and incentive to dream.
However, imagine transportation evolving into a completely new reality through a concept born of irrational thought conceived in a vacuum of presupposition.
The future of transportantion lies in:

Essence gathering and projection

and not physical transportation at all.

Picture credit: These sand grains took 14th place in the 2011 Nikon Small World contest. https://www.livescience.com/16369-nikon-small-world-photos-2011.html
ISS – International Space Station

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high, deep, far

there is no great introduction here, the question is:

What is it that had the greatest influence on our (collective) human development?
Let’s use the past as if it was a puzzle to solve, and apply acute cognitive (self) observation to answer this.
Look high and deep and far.

Wherefrom cometh that intuition to act in a way that is most beneficial to our human progress?

How long should we look back in time into the human past?
So far back, obviously, that we get a clear picture of the energy that was responsible for igniting the flurry of human progress that we are experiencing.
Are one hundred years enough? Perhaps? Will that show what principles and ideas are at work pushing the frontier of our human ability and knowledge with such devoted pace and resilience?

Progress is born out of the notion that when you think hard and long enough about any idea in your head, you will be required to manifest it.
So beware when you dream something up. Progress directly comes from doing that dream.
We humans also think? and insist that we have a choice, before the almighty unknown, as to what we do and how we react to something.

“We have! Don’t panic.”
This pacification tagline pronouncing that we have a choice has become the most sought after slogan wrapped in legal controversy on the advertorial altar, unobtainable even by the rarest jewels of judiciary brilliance.
“We have! Don’t panic” is (pro)claimed by moi.

We have an idea. We drop the idea.
We have an idea. We drop the idea.
We become an idea. The idea takes control and fuels itself.
It is always good grounding to know what the original question that brought the idea about was. That’s the idea’s manifest of its purpose of existence.

So what had the greatest influence?
Which propellant in the evolutionary cocktail kick started humanity into this dynamic era of modern day with so such vigor and intensity?

Did we arrive at a philosophical vertice-verge-corner, this very privileged viewpoint into existence, and from there the vision became clear?
Were we ignited to become the deities of our destiny by the words of the great philosophers, thinkers, and gurus?

Art is the hatching egg of creativity.

Something crystallized into focus and reflected into irresistible action.

What was that ‘thing’ that got us humans so frenetically deliriously going, when in comparison the stone-age must have lasted forever?
Can we go back to try and understand what energy that was, and what fed it?

Living life, – with ever greater awareness?

That nearly sounds hedonistic with a paradisical encore.
Addictively, good-feelings must have a lot to do with celebrating our humanity in imaginative ways.

Eventually, the momentum demanded a certain backbone structure to progress with ever greater speed.
This necessitated communication between parties that was faster than the Inca runners (Chasquis) or horseback messengers so we could organize parties for even greater celebrations in even more imaginative, fascinating ways of paradisicality.

Was the need for communication then the trigger?
Was the requirement for tranporting ‘stuff’ becoming a high-profile issue?
Surely communication and transport have catapulted us forward letting us implement our grandest ideas like none other?
As one part grew others followed to make the whole work.
i.e. agriculture, food science, textile, manufacturing, medical, academic, scientific, engineering, technological, financial, software, … all these parts were infected with tremendous growth and they contributed significantly in rolling the ball of progress faster and faster.

What are the one or ten that stick out as the greatest influencers?

There was a sudden rising awakening that we could do anything if we really tried. As if intrinsically sealed in some covenant.

Communication today: satellite, radio, 4K 3D TV, smartphones, books, the internet, tablets, video’s, gigabyte transfer rates and terabyte volume, must have been difficult to imagine in 1917. Communication is all encompassing and has mutated into something incredible and indispensable.

Communication has brought us together and transportation makes the experience tangibly real.

Our achievement on the transportation side is bespoke spectacular, breathtaking, beautiful, incredible… We are superstars in the transportation field and data transportation is crazy-frigging-unimaginably-ginormous and has by far the largest demand.
On earth, you can have something delivered to your door within 12-48 hours from just about anywhere. By plane, ship, car, truck, bike.
You can drive a blow-my-hair-back Italian sports car and your partner can drive the German version of ‘ein wildes Auto,’ tamed to respond, oh ja, like crazy artworks from a thesis project of motion.
And don’t get me started on airplanes, these graceful creatures of our meta-imagination.
Any motion that transports something could be viewed under the heading of transportation. Deliberate transport only, please.
A private jet in transportation is like an island in real estate, a yacht is like a ranch.

Transportation and communication are more than roommates. The one without the other is unthinkable and inseparable.
They are vehicles of imagination.

To answer the question one would have to look back, see the stuff that stuck out and that made an impact and imagine the future along this line and trend.

What is next?
Imagine and predict from vision.

Here is where it gets interesting.
We are in a position to deduct, predict, postulate, even imagine, based on data from the past.
Each individual of us can formulate his/her future by looking back and imagining a path.
Of course, the future is unpredictable but it is a guaranteed given and we can influence it.

If we don’t know the ‘what’ and ‘where to,’ which many of us don’t, then the past might give some clues how our pudding of reality should be like.
Sweet, no?
Anything to do with communication or transportation has amazing potential. Elon Musk thinks so too.

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In or out of the box?

Should I think in or out of the box?

The box is really all that, which, if we could wrap it all up and throw it in a trunk, constitutes our life.
A trunk the size of a few furniture removal vans you say?
Exactly! However, …
What we have to do is to compress everything into thoughts. Yes, the Ford Mustang and the mansion and the aircraft and all our issues, alles, and pack them away into a trunk. And, while we are setting things up lets give this trunk an appealing name. I love the French language for its wonderful sounding words. I will put everything into a coffret. Bugger the trunk and the box.

So what is left? Me of course, but without all that ballast weighing me down. I have suddenly become liberated to soar detached as an observer and thinker.
Quickly, while soaring and thinking, I realise humanities’ emphasis and reliance on communication and knowledge.
Rapidly I see more stuff appearing in my mind eye. I see a more purpose built, indexed web emerging that enables me to extract required, relevant information in seconds.
I see people communicating without the need of a clunky, – albeit highly evolved since the Motorola brick of the nineties, – mobile device and that doesn’t require any hands. And no, definitely no, I do not see anybody walking around with a thing called an Apple Watch. Hell no. (I am fearful that Apple has lost their vision.)

The humanity I observe has snuffed that watch idea long ago, along with all these other obscure practices of scrolling, swiping, tapping, pinching, texting, and replaced it simply with voice control and looking. It even works while you are sitting in a movie theatre next to hundreds of other voice controlled devices or while you are driving a Harley Davidson through a park with a rock concert on the one side and Victoria Falls on the other. Activated by a mere whisper, – even if you feel you need to shout at it like most mobile users have the habit of punishing their loved piece of hardware, – and coded with your own special bio-chemical key, all you need do is talk, – and, look.
On the subject of looking, that’s where it all happens for most of us. What do you look at and what do you use to look?
Here’s what I see with all my ‘stuff’ packed in the coffret.

We’re about to see the next edition of Google Glass and maybe it might even be unveiled at Google I/O 18th May 2016. Sure, the first batch of Glass was a bit like the Motorola brick in a more subtle way, but it broke the news and the barrier of acceptance and laid a foundation towards a totally new concept, – a wearable computer with a heads-up display and voice activation bringing everything you have on a smartphone in front of your eyes. Tony Fadell is working on it. What was Sir Jonathan Ive working on again at Apple? Hopefully not another watch thingy.

I can actually unpack my coffret for now again. No need to soar and cogitate any further. The next life-changing device is so close you can even buy an older version of it on Amazon already. But, hold back for a while. There are some challenges. Nothing, I believe, that could not be solved in a fraction of time when I look at the last ten years of innovative technological thrust and the brains that are engaged to start that next almighty explosion of ‘omg i must have this thing or I’ll be such a loser.’

Battery life, what else? yawn, to this day remains the accompanying Comrade Nemesis. I am also so tired of hearing about it and the perpetual 30% improvement from release to release. How many percent was there in hundred again? Just flipping get it sorted out now! We’ve been hankering around that since forever. Give me something that runs out when I don’t need it and stays charged when I do. If I wear it it can charge by gyroscope or gravity or my pulse or light or something, cause I am alive and I move you know, so make use of it. Eye movement detection can be my enter key if I don’t want to talk all the time and like that I could scroll too and navigate for instance. I personally think glasses are cool, be it sexy shades or academic looking spectacles, whatever, and hooking up with fashion designers of eyewear is the way to go. If you run out of ideas or your development gets stuck put a project on Freelancer or Fiverr and pay a few well spent bucks for some out of the box, err coffret, ideas. There is a world of millions listening and it’s so simple to access and it’s bustling with ideas, it just needs to be tapped. Hello Google, Apple, …, there is your market research.

So after all that, is it in or out of the b.., ahm, coffret thinking that is required?
I think for us to make progress in leaps and bounds we need to understand the inside of the box and occasionally leave it behind.
It’s wonderful to dream up science fiction and gravity propulsion at +lightyear speeds but closer to the ground an inside understanding with an occasional outside view probably enables the best results.