Metaplanar Babel

I just read an interesting article talking about the evolution of the internet into what a lot of people call “Web 2.0″. Lot of interesting bits of information, though the emphasis on software that learns and collective intelligence makes me think, “is this how true AI is going to come about?” Maybe that’s Google’s plan to take over the world; think about it, an AI with immediate access to the biggest database of information in the world and the algorithms that run it. The article compares the web’s growth to the growth of a human’s psyche net several times - how long, then, til the net’s psyche becomes self-aware?

I recently went to our local Walmart and had a somewhat bizarre realization (for me). I was walking along, and there was that TV hanging from the ceiling with commercials playing. I don’t even remember what the ad was, I just remember hearing this woman talk in the ad and thinking, “Y’know, this is what I hate about the world we live in.” Her voice was smooth, friendly, just giving helpful advice - your typical testimonial-type advertising trick. It was *so* smooth and friendly that some part of me was screaming, “How fake is that?”

It’s weird; I’ve been listening to ads like that one all of my life, just like everyone else. I never really paid them much mind. For some reason, though, this time I found myself disgusted by the whole thing. Are our lives so meaningless that we’re comforted by the kind words of complete strangers? Strangers who’re just acting, even. It’s like we live in a world where we’re more intimate with the people in the TV than our next door neighbors. Strangers offer canned advice for “feminine problems” or any other number of things that I would be mortified to find myself discussing with any but my best of friends (if even then!). I guess, in a way, that’s why it works, because that person in the TV isn’t real and doesn’t have to be embarassed or whatever. It just feels so impersonal, even though I think the intention is the opposite.

Reading back over what I’ve written, I’m not sure I’ve really gotten my point across, if indeed I had one. I just had a brief moment that I can’t really explain and hoped that writing it down would help me muddle through it. I’m not sure it’s really helped much, but I suppose I should just let the thoughts go and see what happens. Anyone else ever had a moment “like” that (”like” meaning whatever you can manage to take from my account, since I don’t think I’ve explained well enough for a true comparison)?

Ten reasons why gay marriage should be illegal - not what it sounds like, just a nice summation of the “logic” in charge of our society these days.

It seems like every time I turn around, another month has passed me by. Here we are in November, when it feels like it ought to still be July (oh how I wish.. I hate cold weather). It’s kind of funny; time never flew by like this when I was younger, even though I was often more busy back then. I wonder why my perception has changed so much. Is it that I have more years under my belt, so each one that passes is a lesser fraction of the total than the previous one?

I’ve been having a strange week. We’ve had an..incident.. at work that isn’t something I ever would have thought would happen around me (not to me, thank goodness). I can’t talk about it, for obvious reasons, but it’s made things a little weird. I haven’t precisely enjoyed my job in a long time, but I never really dreaded coming to work; now I do. It was hard to get up this morning, knowing that I was probably going to have a circus of crap to face at some point during the day. It’s also not fun knowing that I’m going to have to switch over to full time hours starting next week. The money will be nice, but it’s hard to get used to 8 hour days after working 6 hour days for so long. Everything becomes more stressful, because I’m usually responsible for doing the little things at home (like grocery shopping and stuff), simply because I have the time; when I’m working full time too, I still feel like I should do those things, but then I have no time at all just for me. I usually just waste that time, playing WoW or reading, but lately I’ve been using it to try and learn some new web design techniques and maybe pick up Ruby on Rails (which is fun when you don’t know Ruby to begin with!). I hate to lose that, because those skills might actually be marketable if I keep at it long enough.

Kind of funny, apparently one of the web devs where Jon works was kind of interested in having me apply for some junior web dev job they’re recruiting for, just because Jon had mentioned that I know some C++, a little photoshop, and sort of follow the standards web design folks. Obviously the guy hasn’t seen anything I’ve done (since I haven’t really done anything to speak of), but it was kind of nice to know that all this stuff I’ve been doing because I thought it was interesting might actually have some application in the real world for me. I don’t know if I really want to get into the web design field, and I still don’t think I’m all that good at it, but it was kind of cool to hear, nonetheless. He loaned a couple of books to Jon to give to me, so I could look at them and see how what I know compares with what this guy thinks I should know. I’m not too far off, looking purely from a coding perspective. It’s the actual visual design part that always snags me.

Anyway, I’ve rambled enough for one day. Although I haven’t written much of late, I’m still around. Sometimes it’s difficult to really focus my thoughts enough to write coherently; I feel like I’ve been all over the place lately, between work, my typical flakiness in WoW, and my overall uncertainty about where I want my life to go (or if I even want it to go anywhere). Hopefully there are still a couple of you out there who check in here occassionally. I don’t mind writing to a void, but it’s always nice when the void speaks back.

From Quotes of the Day:
“In a mad world only the mad are sane.” - Akira Kurosawa

Justin at the Killing Train writes a little review of Serenity that brings up a few interesting political ideals from the movie. (referenced post is pretty old, but interesting nonetheless)

In a recent Time interview Moby said: “I think the world is so complicated that I can’t be so presumptuous as to justify pessimism or optimism, so I’ll stay agnostic. But I like waking up every day, and I think breakfast is a fantastic thing.” Sounds like a good way of looking at things to me.

Well, Jon and I have been married for 2 years today. It’s kind of funny, when I think about it, because in some ways, it feels as though it’s been much less time than that, but in others it feels much longer. I guess some of it is that we lived together for a few years before getting married, so he’s been a pretty big part of my life for longer than our official 2 years.

Still, we’ve had our ups and downs, just like any couple. I find it somewhat strange that many of our worst flare-ups have been over relatively trivial things like whatever video game we were playing at the time or Magic: the Gathering (he’s a perfectionist and can be brutal in competitive games ), but overall, I think it’s good that we don’t have to argue about the major things.

cruinh said something once about not really being able to imagine one of us without the other. I guess that’s a good thing, because I can’t really imagine myself without Jon either. It’s hard to know these days if feeling that way is just romantic and good or indicative of some psychological disorder, but I’m going to go with romantic and good and be happy with what we have.

Anyway, here’s to our first 2 years, and hopefully we’ll have many more to come.

Discardia is a fairly unique idea, detailed in several interesting blog articles. It’s an idea that I find myself attracted to a lot, given my terribly pack-rat-like tendencies. Give it a look.

I found a really interesting article talking about the human mind and likening our thought/emotional processes to the inner workings of a computer OS. Small world note: he links (though the link doesn’t work anymore) to a program that cruinh and patterson will probably recognize.