Virtuosity

I've been thinking quite a bit about the concepts of virtualization and abstraction over the past several months. Fundamentally, I've centered around the following question: Has humankind has begun the most significant migration in our history? Step outside your box for a second and consider the possibility that what we know now as reality may be in the process of changing at its very core. To start, let's ponder the parallels in the following two concepts...

Geostraction
It's no revelation that we live in a world increasingly abstracted from time and space. The pop-culture pre-realityshow fascination of a few years back, of watching people's entire lives fold out over a webcam turned out as just one example pointing to a much larger phenomenon: in the first half of this decade we've seen a massive move to "geostraction." WiFi hotspots, cellular phones, laptop computers, global communities make location an increasingly less relevant factor every day. Instant global electronic communication provides the framework for what's next.

Phystraction (the big whatif)
Considering our migration away from physical location and space, it's no surprise what we've seen happening virtually everywhere. Major market opps in the last 5 years have been all but defined by the migration of products, solutions, and corporations from physical to virtual space. From electronic marketplaces (eBay).... communities (MySpace, Facebook)... communication (email, IM, txt)... media (audio, image, video)... education (Blackboard, WebCT)... literature (Google)... recreation (WoW, xBox Live)... and relationships (Match) more segments of our lives go "live" every day. Business as usual? Think again. Consider the changes in technology in just the last couple years alone. The new playground, hang-out, or meet-up is imminently virtual. Precisely the virtualization that the negative media hype regarding isolated MySpace instances misses, is exactly what has (and will) drive both profits and people for many next generations to come. Naysayers, you miss the point... "the times they are a changing" plays out across all generations.

The crux of what I'm entertaining here are the possibilities and outcome of our ongoing migration of our lives from physical to virtual space. In science fiction the typical story is that humankind will someday fall unwilling victim to all-powerful machines (ala: Matrix, Borg, etc) that threaten to extract the very core of humanity, assimilate us into a cold collective intelligence matrix, then toss out our bodies as superfluous byproducts. Yet what if the virtualization of humanity has has already begun, just willingly, not forcibly? People from "my" generation (GenX) talk a lot about keeping their lives private and offline. People in newer gens are all but obsessed with uploading keeping their lives public and online. Good or bad is irrelevant, the question is this:

What if the uploading of our life experiences are little more than a start down an evolution into something entirely new and different than the what, who, and where we are now?

That's right, I'm talking Lawnmower Man style here - is uploading evolution? Good or bad, it seems we get closer every day. So at that broader level, the question remains: What do you think lies waiting for us as a humanity beyond the NextBigThing?

Evolution happens.
What's next?

Day 10: Muir Woods & Golden Gate

Starting off the day with a quick shot up to Sonoma Valley vineyards for some wine tasting. Good stuff, but the lady at Viansa keeps pouring me more. $90 later with a slight headache, but wonderfully relaxed it's off again to the next adventure...

Muir Woods (clic4pics)
Home of the infamous Redwood trees. Could I have been any less prepared for this? Take a step into these woods and one thing's immediately apparent:

I walk amongst gods here.

Thousands of year old trees, stretching their arms up over 250 feet into the sky. Words cannot describe it. Pictures cannot capture it. You must walk this path to comprehend. The sheer scope, sanctity, and timelessness of this place is mind-boggling. Dozens of inadequate photos later and I cannot help but sit and stare upwards again and again. Deer eating peacefully to the left, owls swooping through the trees to the right. Fallen trees older than our very nation itself. These trees have seen it all. And lived.

Golden Gate (clic4pics)
Coming over the hill towards the bridge again... out of nowhere this giant red tower emerges over the hill. Jump out of the car, run up the hill as the fog approaches from the west, fighting the winds, and it's all... totally... worth... it. Funny, it looks bigger in the books, yet not nearly as magnificient as when seen in person.

But today it's the sheer contrast of this red giant against these rolling green hills that really shocks me. Exposed from the fog, the question repeated to me over and over... is this truly the perfect intersection of modern civilization and nature? Lush green hills, towering mountains, and this awe-inspiring spanse of crimson steel spanning the shores? Looking around I see a city unlike any I've seen over 30 years. Not some concrete and steel tribute to the industrialization of our planet, but a perfect balance of land, sea, and man. A city ahead in the horizon. An island punching out of the waters. A glorious red archway connecting the shores. A mysterious fog pouring over the bay. The kind of scene you snap 50 times in a row hoping to capture even a whisper of the visual opera going on in your mind.

Beautiful.

Day 9, Part 2: San Francisco

Arrival in San Francisco, driving over the Golden Gate, the fog is so thick there's simply no visibility at all. People at the vista point staring off into the mist into... nothing. Yet there's something magical about this place. Coming into the city, overlooking each of the bays to the right of the highway as the sun comes down to rest, a recurring theme repeats itself in my mind's eye... Is this our time's modern Rome? Perfect little islands set amidst baby blue waters? Armies of little white boats floating in the bay? A picture out of a museum right off a major state highway. Is this a city at all or just some beautiful scene from straight out some museum I've yet to visit...

Day 9: San Simeon to San Francisco

It's been a lot longer getting up the Cali coastline than I had originally imagined. Stayed overnight at what seems like the edge of the world, San Simeon, California. Dinner at Mustache Joe's in Cambria. Not much else going on here. In fact, it's downright desolate out here.


Hearst Castle (clic4pics)
Start off the day with one of the most talked-about stops off the coast: Hearst Castle. Ticket guy rec's Tour 1. The positive is there's everything you can imagine of Rennaissance-era here. Ceilings pre-dating Columbus carted in and custom-installed, 500 year old fireplaces standing 30 feet tall, and a massive cross-bred pool clashing Hollywood and Rome. The downside? Your need 3 other tours to see the whole shabang and each one's $24, non-sequential. Fact is this is not even really a castle, just a once-summer camp of Willam Randall Hearst, turned big-house-on-the-hill, turned living art gallery. Fascinating, but not as much as what came next...

Route 1 Cali Coastline (clic4pics)
There's simply nothing like this anywhere. Traveling up the Pacific coastline showcased by California's Route 1 stretch from San Simeone to San Francisco is like nothing I've ever seen. Massive rock walls stretching hundreds of feel down into the crashing ocean waves below. Beach after beach. Canyon after canyon. Narrow, hair pin roads that make 30 mph seem downright terrifying. People said go 101, it's faster. People are seriously missing out on the most beautiful, awe-inspiring drives - anywhere. Everyone, at least once in their lifetime should make this drive.

Bixby Bridge
Along the Big Sur coastline. Hard to miss out on this one. A perfect example of form and function, man matching nature. Words cannot describe this place. You can almost see the early settlers coming over the top of those mountains, looking out over the ocean, the end of the world as they knew it. What a journey. What an experience.

Cali Coastal: La Jolla

LaJolla
Originally uploaded by clifhirtle.

There are certain places that epitomize things much bigger. Less than 1/2 way into the CaliCoastal Expedition and one thing is abudantly clear: La Jolla, California is the epitome of an incredibly beautiful Pacific coast line. Words are inadequate for this place. Huge cliffs, crashing waves, and a motley crew of seals sunbathing on the beach make for an amazing one-one with Mother Nature. Stone and rock sentries hundreds of feet up ward off the assault of a Pacific Poseidon. Beautiful. Yes indeed, this is truly what California is all about.

San Diego 4th

July 4th 2006. San Diego navy pier. There's a small crowd out on the piers and I'm terribly excited about spending my first 4th out in Cali... 30 minutes later the crowd's dispersing, families are packing back into their cars, and the night's over. No music. No silly USA attire. Not even many fireworks.

Perhaps I missed something here, because this is definitely not the way we celebrate Independance Day in Boston. Out East it's a sea of honking cars, a booming Boston Pops playing Tchaikovsky, and crowds of thousands upon thousands of drunken Americans who are all suddenly your best friend.

Sometimes East Coast style ain't so bad afterall.

Inspiration H20

Inspiration is like water. It flows through you, not to you. People talk about "finding inspiration." A better question, how does inspiration find you? Open minds receptive to the possibilities of a creative omnipresence, tap into the central flow of water all around them. Seek not that which flows freely. Don't fight the current, find out where it leads. Be more like the water itself. Consider possibility. Let inspiration find its way to you.

The Vikings Have Landed

Good to know the ancestors still know how to make an impact...

http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article1346411.ece

 :-)

Mind-Body: Sleep Spice

A few months back a roomie of mine guinea-pigged me out on a fasting/cleansing program called The Master Cleanser. Curious about the toxemia-disease connection it claimed, I gave it a shot for a few days. One of the stranger ingredients of this lemon-like concoction is a fairly strong dose of cayenne pepper. That's right cayenne, baby. At the time, I recall thinking this a bit odd. Nevertheless, while on the Cleanser I not only slept less, but had little of my usual difficulty getting out of bed in the morning. Odd, right?

Perhaps not. A recent Tasmanian study on the effects of chilli may suggest something else...

Study shows chilli could be the key to good sleep

Mind-Body: Starving Artists

Ever notice how you get the most done right before lunch/dinner? I've long long to bat with doubters about the clarity and energy achieved through controlled fasting. Once one's impulse hunger passes, clarity of thoughts can be downright amazing. An article over at New Scientist posits a great theory for how and why staying hungry may just be the best brain food you can get...

Why we need a siesta after dinner

Fusion Baby, Fusion

I hope I'm not the only one who thinks this sounds way too much like Spider Man 2...

http://www.physorg.com/news67442282.html

Treo Trifecta

It's been a while since I mused geek on any one particularly gadget, but the new Treo 700p has got me psyched. Not because of any one particular geekfeat it has, but rather the cultimation of a treo of key capabilities we've been promised in a mobile device for some time:

- broadband wireless speeds (w/tethering)
- decent video/audio recording (pics/vids/audio)
- software expandability

At present I get 2/3 of those with my hacked Moto e815. And for the past year having broadband speeds near everywhere, never worrying about where I might pick up WiFi has been nice. But the lack of software expandability has kept my old Treo 600 close by as a fallback.

Now, with Motorola's Q set to launch next week, the real excitement is the possibility that 06' will be the start of that new generation of mobile devices that live up to the standard manufacturers were promising us 3 years ago... true media, broadband-connected, in your pocket.

The generation of true mobile wireless media has begun.

EBS DOA?

So I just heard an emergency broadcast warning come over the air... tornado watch now in effect. Yikes. Scary stuff, right?

But this was Internet radio. Broadcasting out of North Carolina... and here I am looking out the window for a twister in Connecticut?

This brings up an interesting paradigm... what exactly is the purpose of our trusty emergency broadcast system in a world of satelite and streaming audio? What's the definition of "local" in a world abstracted from geography, where location is becoming less and less relevant?

Seriously people, what's a person listening to this station in Oregon supposed to think... "Oh man... board up the windows, we've got a class 3 tornado headed our way!"

A better use of the EBS in our digital age? "Code yellow... class 5 packet storm coming across your local subnet."

Nations. Corporations. People.

Weekend excursion to the NYC for the 06' Romanian Festival with The Bogdan Bunch. Plenty of adventures there, but on the way home we get debating about where our society is headed in an era where governments are growing increasingly incapable of providing for their people, as new challenges from corporations and technology slowly blur the line between public and private, citizens and stakeholders.

Now I don't consider myself political, but Bo's thesis on the rise of international corporations and coming collapse of the nation-state is something I've heard more than once. Graduate business classes are flush with talk on the exponential rise in power of international corporations.

This is not our parents' planet plan. E-commerce has grown up. Global markets are in full-effect. And the Internet is rapidly evolving into the global human connector it always promised it would be from day one.

The power of governments weilding the mantle of large-scale standing armies, geographic borders, and nationalist trade alliances are already in rapid decline. A decent 12 year old hacker with a T1 and an agenda wields more power to bring down a nation than an army of green suits and M16s.

I believe the MBA classes are wrong. The transition from nation-state to international corporations is just the beginning. IC's represent merely the most logical bridge from the nation-state to the virtual-state. In the true virtual-state, we'll understand that a global network of ubiquitiously-connected, geographically-impartial, and highly-informed global citizens are more powerful than even the most nimble, armed, or wealthy government or corporate entity. It is the power of true democracy incarnate. When everyone has a voice, the precepts of power change. When everyone's connected, the rules of profit and exploitation fall apart.

Doubt not. The writing's on the wall. The intersection of nations and corporations is old news. The struggle for power between corporations and individuals has now begun. Examples...

• Wars on individuals over copyright infringement.
• Wars on time through expectations of longer hours at the office.
• Outsourcing of employer-directed defined-benefit to employee-directed defined-contribution retirement plans.
• Liberation of citizens from corporations as their only source of income/wealth.
• Immiment collapse of the social security system as a fall-back or lifestyle.
• Unplugging of workers from corporate office infrastructures in favor of Starbucks, Kinkos, and high-speed, ubiquitious mobile networks.
  
• Retirement of the physical for the virtual space as one's community one-stop (ie: the MySpace/Facebook phenomenon).
  

The power of corporation in the virtual world represents the ability to establish and enhance human connectivity. Those vying to squeeze lemonade out of the proverbial command and control model have a lot to discover about their role in The New World...

Connect now.
Profit later.
People first.

Ubiquitize Perfection

Driving range. 6pm. Temps in the swank 70s. Golf clubs still dirty from over a year ago and yet suddenly things click. The perfect swing, contact, lift-off. It may not happen much, but when it does I know this...

There is a perfection in all things.

Most of us only get to see it for a second. We call it "luck" because if we didn't we could not explain it. We'd get confused and the perfection of our imperfectionist perspective wouldn't really make sense anymore. The concept of inherent imperfection would break. Thus, in the magic of the moment, we look away. "Just a fluke" we say.. and hack quickly at the next ball to justify the illusion of our shoddy paradigm.

So I'm listening to the The Magic of Thinking Big audiobook this weekend. Nothing too revolutionary here, but it occurs to me how virtually every one of these self-dev books focus on one thing above all else: breaking free of our own mental limitations. Stripping away these imperfection layers that have been so ingrained in our heads, like peeling back the layers of the onion. I have my own thoughts about where this comes from that I'll cover later, but for now the core question is this:

What could we do if our minds knew no limits?

Traditional psychology often makes this merely an issue of personal development, but clearly it affects much more than that. Ingenuitity. Progress. Ideas. Evolution. How many great things lost in the depths of our minds merely because the voice in the back of our heads politely reminds, "Nah, that'll never work." A favorite quote of mine says this,

You see things as they are and ask why.
But I, I see things that never were and ask why not?

Here's to a lot more "why nots?" in our world.

The Speed of Thought

Over the past several months I've been obsessed with the idea of time travel. The concept generally comes up when I'm operating on the mental redline, integrating lots of ideas at once or operating across multiple objectives in a short amount of time. Here is what I believe...

When the mind grows heated, time tends to distort.

I don't know exactly how to explain it, but I'm quite certain it's occuring. Often I don't even think about it until after speaking with someone else or passing some point of reference (ie: "has it been only 2 days?"). Einstein proposed a similar idea in his theory of special relatively, namely that as an object approaches the speed of light, a person traveling at that speed and an observer will see the same event, but at different times and distances.

Everyone's had these moments. When you're moving really fast. Working on something very hard. Frequently we brush this off quickly quipping, time flies when you're having fun! Yet what if there's some actual truth to this? What if thought-time exceeds the speed of light and alters what is possible in the same timespan? Tap when I start sounding looney.

What I refer to here is the idea of differentiating thought-time from real-time.

Central to this distinction are dreams. Consider what happens when you sleep. You're real tired, crash on the couch, and wake up feeling as if you've been asleep for weeks. Perhaps you had a dream with some extravagant journey to some elaborate location, for some absurd purpose.

Then you look at your clock. 20 minutes have passed.

In the course of time it took your mind to process weeks worth of experience and adventures, your physical body has experienced only 1/3 of an hour. How is this possible? An article over at Indiana U suggests that there is no difference between dream-time and real-time. I disagree. Actually, the only thing the study seems to suggest is that what we can recall and what our conscious mind can communicate is roughly equivalent to the time that has actually passed. This is not surprising. In fact, even if the study did suggest that our mind only concocted up an amount of experience equivalent to what I could imagine in real-time, the fact is that it still processed through that a longer amount of time in shorter span of space.

conscious... subconscious.
thought-time... real-time.
perception... reality.

I want to explore this vein further, for now it's back to my time machine (sleep). Thoughts?

V2

Great art is often a matter of multiple interpretations.

Round 2 with V for Vendetta this weekend. This time around with my deep thinking, great friend Bo. Bo grew up under Communist Europe, he's also one of those super intelligent, open your eyes types so I was real curious to know what his take would be. Did he like it? Yes. Would he see it again? Yes. Just one problem...

What does it prove? What can one person really do to change a society?

My initial reaction, disagreement. Yet chat some more, dig a bit deeper and it's clear. Bo saw the V as a person. I saw V as an idea. Bo sees Communist Europe. I see a future America. Each perspective follows its natural course to radically different results. A person in Communist Europe changing society? Not likely says Bo. But an idea in a future America? Who knows, says Clif...

Same film. Multiple interpretations. Great stuff.

We are told to remember the idea, not the man. Because a man can fail. He can be killed. But four hundred years later an idea can still change the world. I've witnessed firsthand the power of ideas. I've seen people kill in the name of them; and die defending them. But you cannot touch an idea, cannot hold it or kiss it. An idea does not feel pain, it cannot bleed, and it does not love.

Freedom of Information

V for Vendetta is a great film. Particularly with good friends in the best IMAX theater on the planet. What makes this film great? One line...

The security of information is paramount.

In context of this film the analogy is downright terrifying. It is the question of whether or not we are, at this very moment, seeing the first phase of the new world war. A war not fought with tank or a gun, but rather in our minds, in our fears, a war fought on ability to access information itself?

We talk a lot in IT about the information age/economy. Google gobbles rows of libraries every second. Open source movements go head to head over the access to DNA of our modern tools every day. Cluetrain throws a shot straight across the bow of the traditional corporate concept. And governments dare us to challenge them in ongoing efforts to protect from our own fears.

What if it were all connected somehow?

This is a movie for the ages. Ours. Watch it. Then give a listen to a different kind speech from another kind of "V". It doesn't take much to connect the dots.

Thought Rock

Beantown underground clubs with Dave & crew. Comment of the year from Dave, I never cease to turn your routine upside down do I? Truth bro. See Dave's one of these friends that gets me thinking. Throws out simple questions that get complicated. Last year he sparks thoughts about traveling more. This year he seems almost serious asking if he could ever convince a Norwegian skiier since age 9 to move out West. Very funny Dave.

Look up and round. 20 Campus Reps around dinner. Talking future. Talking innovation. Talking possibilities. Good times get great and then it hits me. Why I keep coming back here time and time again.

Rewind to 99' at Umass. I write my nine-thousandth paper for my Constitutional law class and a professor talks tough about why I should apply to law school. I rebuff claiming, I like the critique of law, I hate the study in it. Her response haunts me ever since...

It's not about the field you study, but the great minds you meet. You need to meet those minds.

I never went to law school. But I've kept looking for what I'd find there ever since. Work hasn't even come close, and yet here it is around a dinner table. Just a bunch of college kids talk'n geek and it's great. Not even a job. Just great minds and the firestorm of ideas that results.

Last year I considered to myself the possibility of unleashing Hill's Mastermind Principle within the context of social networks. This weekend I felt the MMP outside of IPs and screennames, in action. Great minds. Big ideas. No box.

Amazing.

Chicago Reflections

Back home again and it's immediately evident how the diversity of a big city like Chicago is abundantly absent out here in Connecticut. I've lamented on this to friends in Boston at times, how strikingly white Beantown is. Of course, Boston's like NYC - you don't bash the Beans. So I get two reactions to my statement: (1) What the hell are you talking about? (2) Compared to what?

Well 2006 is the year of travel and the more places you visit the more you start to make distinctions. I like distinctions. I like differences. They show us how much more there is to understand about the world. I believe familiarity leads to stagnation. We all prefer the familiar at times, but in the face of how much more to see and know in the world? If not now, when? Others said it better...

"The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility." Albert Einstein