Entries from April 2009 ↓

I’ve been working on prettying up technoanarchy.org. I moved the plan to docbook and generate the site with XSLT. What I like the best though is the new header:

What do you think would happen if someone created a site where users post videos like this one:

My name is blah blah. I live in blah and I think its time for a change in the the war on drugs.

Then they can bitch for a bit about their personal reasons why putting American citizens in jail for their benign hobbies is a crock of shit and they close with:

When some number of people post a pledge to some site, I will procure and grow a marijuana plant on my private property in a place inaccessible to children.

If anyone taking this pledge is is arrested for acting reasonably in their own home, I will go to the prison where they are being held, confess my crime and sit in front of the gate until I am imprisoned with them.

When someone adds their video, they put in the number they said and whenever there’s that number of pledges, they get an e-mail giving them the go ahead. There could also be a way for them to let their friends notify the other protestors in case the cops drag them away in the middle of the night.

For me, the number was 3000 people. How would the images of thousands of folks sitting in rows in front of the prison gates play out on the news? The government has to convincingly argue that all of these people were doing something wrong by growing a plant in their private homes that millions of adults, including our last three Presidents, have used responsibly.

The issue is close to tipping already and I think this could push it over the edge. If the government was bright enough to not to step into this tar pit, it would at least save a few thousand people from having to find a drug dealer.

I’m working on the Articles of Incorporation for the DoH.

I was initially planning on using the DoH directly for political purposes, but that would cause both media and tax problems. It makes more sense to develop it as a separate research and charitable organization and work at developing Technoanarchy as a legitimate political party when the time comes.

So, for the purpose of the DoH, I went with:

“The purposes for which the corporation is formed are as follows: scientific research into the nature of human satisfaction and associated charitable projects to increase population-scale enjoyment of life.”

That sounds appropriately amorphous, right?

Michael Stanier recently interviewed David Galenson on a theory from his book, Old Masters and Young Geniuses. The gist is that there are two distinct types of artists: conceptual and experimental. He gives some interesting advice for those who are mastering a craft versus those who are developing a vision.

I finished my draft of step five today: make everyone self-employed. I did a graphic to describe what the process might look like:

Right now I can’t wander my way from town to town because I’d quickly run out of money. That wouldn’t be a problem in a society where in each town I could get a list of all the available jobs and wherever I applied could reliably know who I am and what I can do.

Dollhouse started out a bit slow, but this most recent episode really pulled it out. (I’m going to talk about plot points, so watch it first or you won’t be surprised.)

The time period for the show is today. A few years ago, unbeknowst to the rest of us, scientists made a breakthrough in using light and magnetic waves to affect neuroplasticity. They essentially figured out how to delete the personality from a body and write a new one in. Using this technology they created an underground organization that provides made to order people: The Dollhouse.

This episode included a couple entertaining twists. It was revealed that the stern British headmistress who runs the organization is in a secret affair with one of the “actives” as a programmed doll is referred to. Imagine her position of having a man tailored to be her ideal mate, but who is a fabrication. She’s a high level executive in a massive criminal organization, her dating pool has to be pretty shallow. What’s more is that he is programmed to be passionately in love with her:

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I reread Stranger In A Strange Land last week. I read it in college as a story and this time as both a story and as a piece of literature that affected a society, and it was even better.

I was thinking about how to adapt his “Fair Witnesses” to a culture that doesn’t believe in objective perception, then I realized someone else has already figured it out.

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Been playing with various techno toys. So far, Twitter and Ekiga, so if you want to either hear my random thoughts or talk to me, you can.

I’ve been thinking about the uninformed politician problem and what the Technoanarchist position on that would be.

Technoanarchy is the use of technology to create direct democracy, so the natural piece of software for a Technoanarchist politician would gather votes from the people directly affected by a particular policy and simply pass on their preferences.

The voting system would run on Mímis, so all votes would be public and any political organization that wanted to double check the votes could.

Everyday people won’t care enough to spend all their time voting on random stuff — they’ll have better things to do. So, issues could be assigned topics and then people could assign their vote to various lobbies.

I could release a document saying that if I didn’t vote on a bill categorized as environmental policy personally then my vote should be castable by the World Wildlife Fund. Lobbying organizations, wield actual political power rather than exerting indirect influence.

There will still be people with political power. Finagling can still take place. There might even still be professional politicians — individuals who are respected enough for their balanced perspective that others directly assign them their untaken votes. Our current system is just a subset case.

My biggest problem with lucid dreaming is recognizing that I am dreaming. Lots of the time I wake up and I’ll remember my dream, but I didn’t realizing I was dreaming while it was going on.

One of the ways you’re supposed to check if you’re dreaming is to hold your breath. In a dream, theoretically, you just hang out without breathing.

So far I’ve not had much luck with it. In my dreams I feel like I have to breathe, so eventually I do and wake up pissed that my dreams tricked me.

The funny thing is now, every so often I’m doing something and I ask myself, “am I asleep?” After all, my dreams seem natural enough when they’re going on, so this doesn’t feel like a dream, but that’s not proof.

I figure worst case scenario is I hold my breath till I black out. To date my curiosity hasn’t lasted more than about fifteen seconds. ☺