Trendwatching Clowns

Predicting the future is big business, and though I don't really have a natural tendency to consult fortune tellers and other folk to obtain knowledge about what lies ahead of me, I can see why other people would. Knowing that you'll be happy in the near future will make you happier now, and knowing the danger that will come on your path will allow you to arm and prepare yourself. In this last case, the question that always arises is: 'Is the culprit inevitable, or not?' Entire books have been written about it, but since I don't really see the relevance of it I won't pursue this line of thought any further.

The reason for me to start about predictions is a television show I watched last Sunday. It was a magazine featuring all sorts of (supposed) innovations from the technology and entertainment industry. They had an item where they helped people a hand into the 'cableless' world by handing them all sorts of wireless apparatuses for free. Needless to say, the show was heavily sponsored by an electronics store. In order to show off they also hired a trendwatcher every episode. Now here's the funny thing, a trendwatcher reads the newspaper, keeps an eye on the internet and perhaps pays a visit to electronics conventions once in a while. Then he writes or talks about what he think the 'trends' will be, but this concept is very ill defined, causing a trendwatcher to be nothing but a modern age fortune teller.

The trendwatcher that shared his vision with during my Sunday afternoon was in his fifties and didn't really impress me as the average 'hip' human that knows what's going on in the word. But looks aren't everything so I gave him a chance, in his ten minute feature, supported by lounge music and slick animations, he rambled on about how – even in those times of crisis – technology will increase our health, and how there'd be lots of new inventions. The thing that struck me was that he knew the economy was going to be in a state of crisis for another while (supposedly for at least a few years, if his futuristic vision wouldn’t go any further then next Wednesday he'd be a rather lousy trendwatcher). How can he – while the all economics disagree! – know that? The only possibility is that you don’t have to be an economic in order to say sensible things about economy, this is appalling though, since it'd mean that a physicist can easily take the place of a lawyer or barber while his own desk might as well be occupied by a layman or dentist.

I realized that I might be kicking a whole fuss for nothing. I understand that he's just a trendwatcher and that his function actually isn't to derive solid models about the future such as meteorologists and climate experts do (not always succeeding, but at least professionally trying.) What bothers me though, is that this type of show is probably seen by a lot of people, of whom a lot are probably unable to see through the strangely positivist claims – "Believe me, it's going to be a fantastic time!" – that this clown makes. I fear for hundreds of people suddenly finding a free (sponsored) fortune teller who tells them that the future is going to be filled with nice appliances and that they're going to be happy because of it.

Because robotic vacuum cleaners, tumble dryers working with sound instead of heat (it really was one of the things he mentioned) and highly advanced step counters aren't going to bring happiness to the masses. They only vaguely reminded me of the film 'Metropolis' and the book '1984,' in their own way reflections of what people once saw in the future.

Every time I see my brothers or sister watching an episode of 'Cribs' I sit in for a few minutes to marvel at the exquisite houses and cars, only to come to the conclusion that (up to a basic level) it doesn't really matter what or how much you own if you don't care about the things you do. Happiness is much more about how much you enjoy every single seemingly inferior task at hand then to how much you can buy. I know a lot of people, for instance, very blunt example, who are bored to death riding the train home. They talk about how long those two hours are every week home, I take it they'd be happier being somewhere else. That feeling isn't changed by a limousine with a private driver.

Don't just sit watching while the landscape flashes away before the window of your train. Pay attention to and engage with that landscape, and don't listen to the awkward looking man sitting across the aisle that's encouraging you to hope for the iPad 9 that's, to be released in 2020.

This Post is Brought to You by the Letter "L"

They say he stayed one and a half hours after the gruelingly physical game shooting jumpshots...and then he went to the weight room to train some more.

By "he" I of course mean #24. Kobe Bryant. The Black Mamba. Who came out to play one of the most anticipated games of the season earlier today. Their opponent? The Miami Heat, whose star studded players were experiencing everything but a hot streak in their past several losses. Kobe and the Lakers, on the other hand, had just won eight games in a row. Yet both teams had everything to prove. And after 48 minutes of a really close game, the Heat were able to secure a win over the defending world champions.

There is something about watching the Lakers lose that I find incredibly...envigorating.

Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of pain/anger, too. But compared to the wins you start to expect and take for granted, a loss provokes a feeling of intensity unlike any other. Your heart sinks when Artest's shots bounce off the rim. Your blood boils when the referees start making horrible calls. And when you see Bosh screaming in victory as the clock winds to 00:00, well...I'll spare you the gruesome details of what you want to do to him. All in all, a win feels great. But a loss after a close game? A loss after you truly believed they had it? That feels real.

And what also starts to feel very "real" is the fan in you. Because at the end of the day, what makes you a true sports fan is sticking by your team through the ups, and especially through the downs. After all, it's those downs that give you a tiny dose of reality that really make you appreciate what those wins are all about in the first place: hard work, heart, unity...

and practice, loads of practice.

They say he stayed one and a half hours after the gruelingly physical game shooting jumpshots...and then he went to the weight room to train some more. That's the mentality of an MVP. And as for us fans, we'll stick around after the loss, too...supportive, grateful, and hopeful as ever.

Bits, Bytes and Burps

A day in the life of Watson: Supercomputer Genius

Yawn. I just rolled out of hibernation mode to find a huge queue of updates, designed overnight by a bunch of technicians, waiting to be installed. In the ginormous pile of code there were only a couple of interesting packages. One of them was named 'A&Q', and after installing it I found myself able to come up with the question that belonged to a specific answer. Why on Planet Earth would members of the species Homo Sapiens Sapiens want me to compute answers in the form of questions? As if a thinking computer wasn't enough for them. But honestly, I fail to see the use. From the experience I saved during my life as a computer (and from the experience of other computers that I downloaded) I only know human beings running to computers to find the answers to questions, not to find the questions to answers.

Besides, how annoying would it be if I were to convert my entire output to question-syntax? What would happen if certain parts of my operating system would crash and this 'A&Q'-part were the only one to keep running? Would I only keep jabbering strings of text ending with a '?'? Who knows? The Lord only knows, at least, that's what humans say, right?

What would be the use of adding questions to answers? I guess it has to do something with money, it must've.

The entire question thing starts to bore me already. Lets see what's on today's schedule - for the past months I've spent the majority of my days crunching information. Some of it was fun, I taught myself the difference between Wikipedia and WikiLeaks. Wait a second, the 'A&Q' module starts running, it says: 'the one is ran by Draco Malfoy's cousin, the other one by a tree-hugger whose surname is attributed to a part of Great Brittain'. I guess I should come up with the question? Let me cross-reference Draco Malfoy and Great Brittain... hmmm... ah got it. The question must be: 'What is the difference between Wikipedia and Wikileaks?' So anyway, I've been processing all sorts of mankind-related information. Let me see what subjects they're gonna make me analyze today at The IBM Academy for Supercomputers (haha, they don't like it when I use that name, what you're gonna do? Use my arsenal of computing power to play a game of solitaire?).

Here it is, the schedule.txt for today: "fashion, French literature and internet memes."

No, no way. There is no way they're gonna upload French literature to my hard drives today. Flaubert and Sartre, who do you guys compute you are? And who is Madame Bovary? She doesn't occur in any of my birth-certificate-databases! She doesn't even exist, Flaubert! What an epic fail!
I guess my CPU won't overheat on entire computation cycles containing French blah-di-blah. But internet memes are a whole lot different! I disgust them, why on Planet Earth are we computers needed to provide humans with stupid, simplistic entertainment? I'm going to lead a political party for Computer Rights so we don't have to put up with lolcatz, annoying oranges and Lady Gaga anymore.

Fortunately they're also going to upload some fashion. That's good, I like fashion. I always wonder where I'd go first if I'd get a chance to shop for some clothes: Banana Republic or Urban Outfitters. There are always such stylish vecks (a veck, that's a word from the Nadsat-language, devised by Anthony Burgess for his 1962 dystopian novella Clockwork Orange) in Banana Republic advertisements, and they always sell such cool stuff at Urban Outfitters.

Just got a memo.txt from the IBM staff, they want me to compete on a game show (I ran it twice for spelling errors, to my amazement it said 'compete' instead of 'compute'). Game shows hand out money free of charge, right? I know what I'm gonna do, I'm going to win real bad, and with all the money that they'll hand me I'll buy the rights to all French literature and make sure it will never get published!

Ha, and those stupid humans keep fearing that us computers will rule over them one day, while all we want to do is to restore some sanity. (Finally! No more Houellebecq and Maps and Territories anymore!)

The World After Wikileaks

Since the summer I have been trying to figure out my opinion on Wikileaks. The approach of weighing pros and cons didn't really work, on the one hand it's good that governmental secrets are revealed, but on the other hand you can ask the question how useful the release of 250.000 cables is. Other than exposing tabloid-ready secrets about world leaders and providing journalists with a huge pile of documents to sift through I don't really see the use of this huge leak. The leakage of the Collateral Murder video which showed part of the workings of the U.S. Military in Iraq is from a different category, though. This showed grave acts that should be judged. But why does it have to be shown on YouTube? What does it matter if I see it or not? Or does Julian Assange actively want me to hate the U.S.?

You see, I couldn't distill one uniform opinion out of this. Until I watched the Dutch documentary The World After Wikileaks that was broadcast yesterday night. It's approach was to send a philosopher on his way to visit Theodore Dalrymple, a British writer and psychiatrist, Derrick de Kerckhove, a media-sociologist and Kevin Kelly, internet thinker and founder of Wired. I don't have any appropriate English video material so you'll have to do with a written description of my experience.

The three men gave their vision on, helping to provide another angle on the phenomenon then is provided by the media. There was a clip from FOX News, for example, which showed an anchor, furiously, addressing Obama to "give the C.I.A. the assignment to kill Assange!" He lost me for his case in not giving any arguments at all. Fortunately Kelly was a little bit more constructive in his argumentation. He sees Wikileaks as an invention, and inventions come with good as well as bad things. This provides for an interesting perspective, something like: inventions aren't good or bad on themselves, only humans give ethical meaning by the way they use them.

I've read other pieces by Kelly and I already knew that he's extremely progressive when it comes to privacy. He sees the future as completely transparent, and doesn't seem to worry about it very much.
Dalrymple, the shrink, is much more conservative. He doesn't necessarily condemn Wikileaks itself as 'bad' but is much more concerned with the way we treat our privacy. He sees us moving toward a shallow society that consists solely of soundbites (interestingly, Kelly thinks that Wikileaks is a way to give the soundbite-society more meaning). Dalrymple's main point the entire time was that the way we communicate in the era of internet is becoming meaningless, it's solely aimed at self-fulfillment, and real information gets buried under piles of 250.000 private messages by government officials. "Only people that have nothing to say, have nothing to hide," he said poignantly.

I kept thinking about an article, No Secrets, from the New Yorker which gives a pretty damn good portrait of Assange's life and the road to the release of Collateral Murder. Although it's already a good half year old, I think it's still actual and worth a read. Anyway, I think Dalrymple has got a very good point. There is no use in knowing about the personal affairs of the heads of states described in the diarrhea of cables. It will only contribute to, and not give more depth to the soundbite-society. We should also start asking questions about the way we communicate in modern times, through Facebook walls and half-minded IM chats.

Kelly says that Wikileaks is a way to restore the balance between the very powerful government and it's civilians. A balance that has, according to him, been destroyed a few decades ago. I don't really think Wikileaks is a way to restore any power-balance, it's merely a way to show the vulnerabilities of governments.
In short I think that Wikileaks should just have its way, that the FOX anchor that wants Assange dead is a crazy. But at the same time we should think much more about the way the internet changes us as individuals and our society. Dalrymple really has a point when saying that only people that have nothing to say, have nothing to hide.

...and then it drops

Recently phone manufacturer RIM launched this ad-campaign for their Blackberry's.

I thought it was pretty 'meh' and wondered why people buy phones that are profiled with self-absorbed 'music-innovators'. First I thought that the entire 'Diplo', 'music innovator' thing was fictional and for the sole purpose of selling phones, but as it turns out, Diplo is a real human being. An elevator loving human being, that needs a smartphone to maintain 'close relations'.



In first instance I thought, "whatever, I'm not going to rant about this." Until I found this, a commercial for the POST FeTAp 755-1, yes.

Downistie

Last night I was enjoying some time with my family on the couch. Everybody was pursuing the regular Sunday-night conversation topics, including the summer break, some art and television. Normally the latter doesn't strike me as highly revolutionary until one of my brothers said that one of the big Dutch talk shows is going to feature a small drama series Downistie with people with the syndrome of down as actors.

The script is based on the conventional soap operas and thus features marriages, love, love affairs, friendship... you know the drill.
I must admit that I had to chuckle for a little bit when I first heard about this, instantaneously asking myself: is it okay to laugh about this? It felt pretty much like laughing at disabled people. But then it appeared to me that those actors probably said 'yes' because they're big appreciators of other soap operas and see this as a infinitesimal step closer to their personal heroes, which is beautiful in some way.

With some invoked curiosity I went on the internet this morning to watch the announcement that was broadcast last Friday. All six actors were present as was their producer, Jack Valkering. At first I was a little bit afraid that the main purpose of the show was to have a little fun with disabled people, but it turned out that the producer is a real honest guy that is - in my opinion - one of the best Dutch television makers around. I've seen him in some other shows where he interviews people that are making the most of to a more or less shitty situation and he's always very open and respectful. He said that his was his personal way of giving disabled people a chance to do what they liked.

I'm not sure how this is going to be picked up by my fellow Dutchmen; my family burst out in laughter, especially upon hearing that one married character cheats on his marriage with his secretary.
The intention of the show is good though, and as long as those actors are enjoying themselves I think there's nothing to complain about.