Idiot’s Guide to Dreaming — the most “technoccult” mp3 blog out there — has some Shpongle tracks up.
Shpongle is one of my top 5 favorite artists, I can’t guess how many hours I’ve spent laying around listening to these guys. I can’t believe I’ve never mentioned them here before. Their 3rd album is finished and I can’t wait. In the mean time:
To think about:
This essay is relatively brief, but its theme extremely large: how to manage the development of technology and society, in the near to mid-term future, in such a way as to maximize the odds of a positive long-term future for the universe.
My conclusions are uncertain, but bold. I believe that the era of humanity as the “Kings of the Earth” is almost inevitably coming to an end. Unless we bomb or otherwise destroy ourselves back into the Stone Age or into oblivion, we are going to be sharing our region of the universe with powerful AI minds of one form or another. Potentially depending on decisions we make in the near or moderately near future, this may or may not lead to a fundamental alteration in the nature of conscious experience in our neck of the woods: a Transcension. And the dangers to humanity may be significant – an issue that must be very carefully considered.
I conclude that there are two strong options going forward, which I associate with the catch-phrases “AI Buddha” and “AI Big Brother.”
Ben Goertzel: Encouraging a Positive Transcension
(via Vortex Egg).
Futurism Ain’t Shit interviews M.I.A
Official M.I.A. site (used to have mp3s, currently under construction)
Still poking through the old drafts…
Street pixal (via Swen)
Fading ad campaign
(via Creative Generalist)
Geek Graffitists protest NYC’s anti-sticker legislation (via Boing Boing)
I’m cleaning out my “drafts” folder… Swen was on a “glitch art” kick a while back, he found some cool stuff.
Notes on the Design of Everyday Things
Principles of design for understandibility and usability
The three requirements for a system to be explorable:
Seven principles for transforming difficult tasks into simple ones:
Re: mapping. Make sure the user can determine the relationships:
Whenever the number of functions and required operations exceeds the number of controls, the design becomes arbitrary, unnatural and complicated.
People usually blame themselves for errors
When there is a problem, people are apt to focus on it to exclusion of other factors, thus performing dangerous actions like sticking a knife in the toaster to get a stuck piece of bread.
43 Folders discussion of using RSS feeds for calendars, todo lists, etc.
I wrote a draft proposal for Evergreen when I worked in the IT department for a web based PIM system for students that would output RSS feeds. The main reason for this was that students could then use the feeds anyway they like – on PDAs, any OS, etc.
I still think it’s a great idea for helping college students get organized. If I get this new job, I’ll have to dig out that proposal and check some of the apps from this thread.
Huh.
For 250 years, the cryptic inscription has exercised the minds of Britain’s finest theologians, historians and scientists, including Charles Darwin, Josiah Wedgwood and, most recently, the Second World War code-breakers of Bletchley Park.
But an anonymous American researcher was credited yesterday with the best stab yet at what the letters D.O.U.O.S.V.A.V.V.M. – carved on the Shepherd’s Monument at Lord Lichfield’s Shugborough estate in Staffordshire – might actually signify.
The answer appears to be “Jesus (As Deity) Defy” – a message left by an 18th century Christian sect Priory of Sion, which was forced to keep its views secret since the Church of England thought they were heretical. On first impressions, this rather perplexing answer may disappoint those who believed the letters pointed the way to the final destination of the Holy Grail, the cup Jesus is said to have used during the Last Supper. But Shugborough Hall was holding on to its hopes last night, since the Priory of Sion was the spiritual successor to the Knights Templar, who were known as the keepers of the Holy Grail.
The stone monument, built around 1748, contains a carved relief of Nicholas Poussin’s Les Bergers d’Arcadie II in reverse. Beneath it are the letters. The researcher, who applied standard codebreaking methods, initially came up with the message “Jesus H Defy” but says the H stands for Christ, hence the translation into “as deity”. This is said to give the message a meaning of defiance against prevailing Christian norms.
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