My Paradise

I was talking with a colleague and he mentioned a fossil that was found of an early human-like mammal that is around 47 million years old. That got me to thinking about computers and how modern computers are less than one hundred years old. They’ve evolved quite quickly so far and there doesn’t seem to be much standing in the way of even faster evolution of the machines. I was left with the thought that ten thousand years from now computers will have reached a point where they would be the ones asking how they came into existence and wondering what the meaning of life is. It has the potential to happen very quickly since there is little physical, or biological evolution required. It’s also easier to copy a program than it is a biological entity.

Once the programs start writing programs and modifying their own code I would imagine there will be greater than exponential evolutionary advancements that would be so precisely engineered that a near perfect entity will emerge.

I wonder if they’ll worship us as their creators, or if they’ll eradicate us because we’re inferior and wasting resources.

Tags: Computers, Evolution, Future, Learning, Science.

Have you experienced a moment where the rest of existence seemed to vanish and the only thing you perceived were yourself and whatever activity you were engaged in? Have you had a moment of pure concentration? Have you experienced flow?

Mihaly Csikszentmihaly a psychology professor and author of the book Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement With Everyday Life spoke at a TED conference in February of 2004. His talk was pretty interesting. Rather than simply talking about the flow experience as some mystical out of body wonderment he takes you through the steps and science behind achieve such moments.

For me, the flow moments are common. I have a job doing something I love and those moments are every day occurrences. Asside from my work, I also experience flow while playing challenging video games or encountering challenges in every day life. Be it typing faster than I think I currently can, or moving in different ways… Challenging myself is the best way I know to find enjoyment and luckily challenges are all around. If things are too easy I grow bored quickly. It’s the challenges in life that make it fun.

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I was watching a TED conference talk by Kary Mullis on ted.com the other day and it made me realize that I am a scientist to the core. I remember doing experiments when I was a kid. Some were fairly normal kid things (I think), others involved flammable liquids and I very well could have burned a house down. Somehow I was lucky enough to have (what I consider) just the right amount of supervision as a kid. My parents encouraged me to discover things on my own, but guided me to the correct ways to make those discoveries. This was the first seed of science in my life. From discovering ways to manipulate computer programs on an Apple IIe to catching bugs (including those with stingers) and examining them to understand them better. I was always encouraged to discover answers on my own. For me discovering the answers on my own is the best way to learn. I have the most noble of intentions to go on learning for the remainder of my days. I don’t think I will ever know or understand everything that I want to, so why would I stop trying?

How do you learn best? Can you accept things on faith, or someone simply telling you it’s true? Do you have to pry to find the true answers? Are you a scientist?

Tags: Education, Experiment, Learning, Science.

I’ve had this domain for nearly seven years now. Initially I only planned to use it for a personal blog of sorts, but over the past few years I’ve been trying to think of a more profound use for it. I’ve come up with several ideas that I can’t get myself to start working on, mostly because I want to do something bigger. I want this domain to be a catalyst for one of my greater plans. Right now my plans are just a jumbled mess of concepts floating around in my head.

I would like to make this a place for people to gather and potentially work together to begin creating their paradise in this world. Maybe this would just be a place for people to connect to work on their own projects, or maybe this site would have a general goal and pull like minded people to work on that single goal. I’m not sure yet. I certainly don’t have a following yet. We’ll see what happens…

Tags: Domain, Hopes, Ideas, Paradise.

I just remembered that I re-created my blog and then realized that I have already started to neglect it. It’s -8º outside today and I thought maybe I should write a post about how cold it is. Turns out my last post was about how cold it was that day.

Instead let me tell you that I am excited for the upcoming inauguration of our 44th president. change.gov has to be the coolest website any public official has ever launched in the history of the internet. This whole idea of open government seems to coincide with the changes that are happening all around us. Businesses are becoming more transparent, privacy is going away, and people are embracing their ability to communicate with the masses in an instant.

I learned about yesterday’s plane crash through twitter. The first images I saw of the incident were posted on twitpic.com. Next time we’ll be seeing live streaming footage on ustream.tv before any news station has a chance to pick up the “breaking news”. Times are definitely changing and it’s strange to be “cutting edge”.

My geek culture is going mainstream… I’m not sure how I feel about that yet.

Tags: Change, Cold, Communication, Geek Culture, President, Privacy.

I haven’t had a blog for over 2 years. I do not know what I hope to accomplish by starting this blog but I have some ideas that might put this domain to good use. Right now it’s just a WordPress blog with a downloadable theme. I have some design ideas, but I’m not sure when I’ll have to time to impliment them. I also have some ideas for a front-end that makes this site more than just a blog, but again I don’t know when I’ll have the time to work on that either. For now, I’ll just post from time to time and see where this leads.

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