making of tea video
now more than ever ... silent movies ... make sure your speakers are off ... and watch it full screen. crazy long, but it might still be interesting.
Wednesday, January 20, 2016
Tuesday, January 19, 2016
tea
my affiliate links
very best buys in tea
abundant quantities of the finest loose tea attractively packaged at a great price
very best buys in tea
abundant quantities of the finest loose tea attractively packaged at a great price
Wednesday, January 6, 2016
drink tea
I have now "tested" this product, and I'm quite pleased! Listen, I had to search ads on Amazon for "loose tea" quite intensively to find this (strangely). I looked at one offering after another that ... working ... out ... the price ... per once ... were all ... hugely expensive! A lot of money for a tiny bit of tea. I started to wonder "is this just the way it is." But no!
The other thing is, I was not going to buy a plastic pouch of tea.
Well, it arrived, a big honking tin, filled, when I opened it, to the brim with plump, gleaming, richly black leaves. It sure looks nice. And I did taste. I say ... very nice.
So I feel like I've struck gold. I mean, I'm kind of ecstatic. By the way, my wife, who's sort of an expert, said it's actually quite a good price, a little less than she pays, where she gets her tea, which is the best price locally.
Now, I am a big beer drinker, in the afternoon, and a very big coffee drinker, in the morning, but some things were happening in my life, and for a couple of weeks I drank nothing but cup after cup of hot tea, from early in the morning to late at night ... which, by the way, I was making with tea bags from Trader Joe's ... which came in boxes of 48 bags, which were quite affordable, and rather nice, so a bag in my mug, and then fill it with water from the kettle, and in with a bit of cream, and I'm set, even luxuriating.
But I'm sort of not that into disposable stuff, so doing all those bags bothered me a little. As garbage goes, they're not that bad, really - I was still composting them - but, gee, sort of silly. So I wasn't even sure I was doing the right thing, I mean, am I too obsessive? but I sort of initiated this search anyway, and then went ahead and tried this product.
I'm more back to coffee and beer, now, but I've got the tea, and yesterday, in the afternoon, I made myself a couple of cups, now with a nice tea ball, and a very nice, big mug, that I've got ... and I was kind of pleased. One note: I made one cup kind of strong, piling the leaves high in the ball, and I made the second cup weaker, filling just half the ball, a level half ball, and I think I liked the first one better. It's Earl Gray, so it's intense, but ... still.
Ahmad tea offers, as far as I can tell so far, also:
It appears the Ceylon comes in a box ... which is just as good.
You might also need:
or evenand
So, one more thing. I drink my tea with Heavy Cream, but, I really have one favorite heavy cream which is what I buy if I possibly can, and that's Trader Joe's Organic. It comes in a paper carton ... and it's not homogonized, so gooey masses of it come to the top, and eventually cake up around the spout. Keeping it real isn't entirely easy. I guess it's just habit forming, though. I can't seem to get myself to go back. Ugh. Just the thought of makes me cringe!
What I'm saying is, very real heavy cream is a health food, par excelence. Think about it: it's basically made from wildflowers. It's like the world's most complex vitamin supplement - and there's a special relationship between vitamins and fats, too. I think that's a scientific fact. (In the same way, I'm very big on cheese, which even has a powerful probiotic component.)
I'm not saying this to get you onto an all cream diet, or anything like that. In fact that kind of thing is exactly what I'm campaigning against. To my mind, an old fashioned comfort food diet, with a hearty home cooking component and a completely rounded assortment of every kind of farm fresh goods and traditional products - there's something powerful about traditions, too - plus even some Cheetos and Snickers bars ... that's a healthy diet ... and you don't have to do silly and ridiculous things like throwing away the yolks of the eggs - God! - or the cream! Properly it's the whey you might discard! I could say similar things about exercise ... homes ... clothes ... and you might live forever.
The other thing is, I was not going to buy a plastic pouch of tea.
Well, it arrived, a big honking tin, filled, when I opened it, to the brim with plump, gleaming, richly black leaves. It sure looks nice. And I did taste. I say ... very nice.
So I feel like I've struck gold. I mean, I'm kind of ecstatic. By the way, my wife, who's sort of an expert, said it's actually quite a good price, a little less than she pays, where she gets her tea, which is the best price locally.
Now, I am a big beer drinker, in the afternoon, and a very big coffee drinker, in the morning, but some things were happening in my life, and for a couple of weeks I drank nothing but cup after cup of hot tea, from early in the morning to late at night ... which, by the way, I was making with tea bags from Trader Joe's ... which came in boxes of 48 bags, which were quite affordable, and rather nice, so a bag in my mug, and then fill it with water from the kettle, and in with a bit of cream, and I'm set, even luxuriating.
But I'm sort of not that into disposable stuff, so doing all those bags bothered me a little. As garbage goes, they're not that bad, really - I was still composting them - but, gee, sort of silly. So I wasn't even sure I was doing the right thing, I mean, am I too obsessive? but I sort of initiated this search anyway, and then went ahead and tried this product.
I'm more back to coffee and beer, now, but I've got the tea, and yesterday, in the afternoon, I made myself a couple of cups, now with a nice tea ball, and a very nice, big mug, that I've got ... and I was kind of pleased. One note: I made one cup kind of strong, piling the leaves high in the ball, and I made the second cup weaker, filling just half the ball, a level half ball, and I think I liked the first one better. It's Earl Gray, so it's intense, but ... still.
Ahmad tea offers, as far as I can tell so far, also:
It appears the Ceylon comes in a box ... which is just as good.
You might also need:
or evenand
So, one more thing. I drink my tea with Heavy Cream, but, I really have one favorite heavy cream which is what I buy if I possibly can, and that's Trader Joe's Organic. It comes in a paper carton ... and it's not homogonized, so gooey masses of it come to the top, and eventually cake up around the spout. Keeping it real isn't entirely easy. I guess it's just habit forming, though. I can't seem to get myself to go back. Ugh. Just the thought of makes me cringe!
What I'm saying is, very real heavy cream is a health food, par excelence. Think about it: it's basically made from wildflowers. It's like the world's most complex vitamin supplement - and there's a special relationship between vitamins and fats, too. I think that's a scientific fact. (In the same way, I'm very big on cheese, which even has a powerful probiotic component.)
I'm not saying this to get you onto an all cream diet, or anything like that. In fact that kind of thing is exactly what I'm campaigning against. To my mind, an old fashioned comfort food diet, with a hearty home cooking component and a completely rounded assortment of every kind of farm fresh goods and traditional products - there's something powerful about traditions, too - plus even some Cheetos and Snickers bars ... that's a healthy diet ... and you don't have to do silly and ridiculous things like throwing away the yolks of the eggs - God! - or the cream! Properly it's the whey you might discard! I could say similar things about exercise ... homes ... clothes ... and you might live forever.
the system
What I'm working at here at Beadle Glitter is Internet marketing.
I'm supposed to be developing a product, and a following, and building a personal brand.
You're supposed to come to me for information about how to get ahead, and I'm supposed to sell you stuff that helps you do that.
I'm not too confident these posts are doing the job. It's a little hard for me to tell, but I suspect they're just too difficult. I'm not getting any feedback, and seems like a confirmation of my doubts. I think it may be.
It's OK, up to a point, because these posts are also a way for me to take notes, which I feel is important. In that way, it's working, even though I myself find the posts quite difficult, and I don't know how effectively I can go back and review them.
In another sense, regardless, they're practice, and in that sense I come away feeling like I'm building something.
Also, whether they work as some kind of reminder to me or not, I'm preserving material in them, and I think I need to come back and mine them and move that material into other places where it can function more effectively.
So, I'm trying to make money on line, or I hope to, and toward that end I'm reading everything I can, and watching all the videos I can, and listening to all the podcasts I can listen to. I'm exploring every web site on the subject that I can explore.
Of course, there's a ton of material out there, and I've yet to get a result from anything, period.
Everything you encounter promises you something, the potential of really big results. I believe these promises are genuine, that it actually is possible to get those big results, and that people are actually getting them. I also believe it is not all a giant scam, at all. I believe this is actually beneficial work, for society at large, but it's true the way that works, according to my theory, is maybe overt in a certain sense, but it's also subtle. The marketers tell you - I was told this yesterday - 90% of the people who try this won't achieve anything, because we can give you a certain amount of insight, but if you are going to get results, you have to do the work.
As I say, I have no results, thus far. But I would also say I haven't been very disciplined about doing the work. Right now, I think I'm making progress with that, so I'm doing more work, maybe a lot more work. But as I write today my results remain somewhat baffling.
Yesterday I looked at a number of sites I have open in tabs, and I especially focused on one where I set up an account a few weeks back, but that was as far as I got, and since then I haven't been able to figure out what to do next. Yesterday, at that site, I was able to find a short course for people getting started with the product, and I watched three of the four videos. They were fairly packed with what were, up to a point, definite suggestions, but only up to a point. The topic was affiliate marketing. The company offers a wide array of products that we, as affiliate marketers, can promote. But the videos were saying you can't just pick a product and splash it out there. You have to create a product of your own, and attract an audience, and then you can promote their products using that as a platform. I feel a long way off.
You're supposed to build a blog. This is my blog, and I think I've come a long way with it, but I have my doubts anyone would actually read it. The good thing, I suppose, is, these posts will recede into the blog's history, and maybe future posts will be more on point, and it'll work that way. Also, though, the blog is supposed to be just part of a system, that is, a system for reaching out to people and, I guess, becoming part of their lives. I need to look at some new tools, and figure out how to use those, it seems. Actually, too, it looks like I need to make some investments. I'm using free tools to build this blog, but those other tools aren't necessarily free.
That course pointed me towards another web site that I took a look at. It pointed me towards a number of other sites, but I took a look at that one. And it's a massive site. I'm not at all sure what to make of it, though it does look powerful. I selected one small part of it - actually, it's a big book, but a small part of the whole site - and started looking it over. I'm not sure what to make of that, given how minimal my progress is thus far. But I'm taking the position that if all I can do is a little at a time, I need to do my best to at least do that. Maybe it can snowball.
And, in the late afternoon, I watched a podcast. That's a small breakthrough. I scheduled it, and then I did it. I did it while I worked on dinner, so I did kind of double my effectiveness.
These guys offer a little suite of Internet tools, and they are all into Network Marketing to bring customers to their product. Well, that's the one guy, and then the other guy has had success selling for them. But what that other guy has been doing is quite advanced. He'll build a tool of some kind that works with the other guy's product, and then sell his tool, and, by that means, the other guy's tool at the same time.
So I'm thinking, boy, I'm interested in building software, but I'm not nearly at the point where I can build something for the public. And I've been thinking about asking these guys for help. I kind of thought I really couldn't or shouldn't, and I thought maybe if I knew more about them that would help, but I couldn't find anything to read on their site, just the schedule for their webinar. So that was why I made a point of attending that.
Well now the guy is saying, you know, if you just write to us "I don't know what to do, tell me what to do," we can't do that. You won't hear back from us. What you need to do to get our attention is produce. You have to sell our stuff. And the other guy was saying "I never, ever write to someone asking for help. If I'm having trouble figuring something out, I do the research, and I work on it until I figure it out."
Woooooooops!
And he's saying "asking for help isn't leadership. Helping people is leadership."
Well, I am trying to do that, here, though I think I'm still rather in a muddle about it.
I will say this has given me an idea. A few weeks ago I followed some links and found a local marketing company, and I looked at their site a bit, and I was thinking about asking them for help, but I kind of knew it would go nowhere. Today I'm thinking maybe I can offer them some help. That might go better.
Anyway, after dinner last night I told my wife "I'm going to bed," which I did, but I took my laptop with me and ended up watching videos about day trading, for quite a while. I followed the links and actually watched everything. One of the links, which was random and an ad, introduced me to a very esoteric tool I rather like the look of. And I've been up now since very early, working on these posts, so I'm getting a good start on my day. I've produced my writing for the day, such as it is, already, and now I have the whole rest of the day to work on my reading, and maybe some correspondence.
I'm supposed to be developing a product, and a following, and building a personal brand.
You're supposed to come to me for information about how to get ahead, and I'm supposed to sell you stuff that helps you do that.
I'm not too confident these posts are doing the job. It's a little hard for me to tell, but I suspect they're just too difficult. I'm not getting any feedback, and seems like a confirmation of my doubts. I think it may be.
It's OK, up to a point, because these posts are also a way for me to take notes, which I feel is important. In that way, it's working, even though I myself find the posts quite difficult, and I don't know how effectively I can go back and review them.
In another sense, regardless, they're practice, and in that sense I come away feeling like I'm building something.
Also, whether they work as some kind of reminder to me or not, I'm preserving material in them, and I think I need to come back and mine them and move that material into other places where it can function more effectively.
So, I'm trying to make money on line, or I hope to, and toward that end I'm reading everything I can, and watching all the videos I can, and listening to all the podcasts I can listen to. I'm exploring every web site on the subject that I can explore.
Of course, there's a ton of material out there, and I've yet to get a result from anything, period.
Everything you encounter promises you something, the potential of really big results. I believe these promises are genuine, that it actually is possible to get those big results, and that people are actually getting them. I also believe it is not all a giant scam, at all. I believe this is actually beneficial work, for society at large, but it's true the way that works, according to my theory, is maybe overt in a certain sense, but it's also subtle. The marketers tell you - I was told this yesterday - 90% of the people who try this won't achieve anything, because we can give you a certain amount of insight, but if you are going to get results, you have to do the work.
As I say, I have no results, thus far. But I would also say I haven't been very disciplined about doing the work. Right now, I think I'm making progress with that, so I'm doing more work, maybe a lot more work. But as I write today my results remain somewhat baffling.
Yesterday I looked at a number of sites I have open in tabs, and I especially focused on one where I set up an account a few weeks back, but that was as far as I got, and since then I haven't been able to figure out what to do next. Yesterday, at that site, I was able to find a short course for people getting started with the product, and I watched three of the four videos. They were fairly packed with what were, up to a point, definite suggestions, but only up to a point. The topic was affiliate marketing. The company offers a wide array of products that we, as affiliate marketers, can promote. But the videos were saying you can't just pick a product and splash it out there. You have to create a product of your own, and attract an audience, and then you can promote their products using that as a platform. I feel a long way off.
You're supposed to build a blog. This is my blog, and I think I've come a long way with it, but I have my doubts anyone would actually read it. The good thing, I suppose, is, these posts will recede into the blog's history, and maybe future posts will be more on point, and it'll work that way. Also, though, the blog is supposed to be just part of a system, that is, a system for reaching out to people and, I guess, becoming part of their lives. I need to look at some new tools, and figure out how to use those, it seems. Actually, too, it looks like I need to make some investments. I'm using free tools to build this blog, but those other tools aren't necessarily free.
That course pointed me towards another web site that I took a look at. It pointed me towards a number of other sites, but I took a look at that one. And it's a massive site. I'm not at all sure what to make of it, though it does look powerful. I selected one small part of it - actually, it's a big book, but a small part of the whole site - and started looking it over. I'm not sure what to make of that, given how minimal my progress is thus far. But I'm taking the position that if all I can do is a little at a time, I need to do my best to at least do that. Maybe it can snowball.
And, in the late afternoon, I watched a podcast. That's a small breakthrough. I scheduled it, and then I did it. I did it while I worked on dinner, so I did kind of double my effectiveness.
These guys offer a little suite of Internet tools, and they are all into Network Marketing to bring customers to their product. Well, that's the one guy, and then the other guy has had success selling for them. But what that other guy has been doing is quite advanced. He'll build a tool of some kind that works with the other guy's product, and then sell his tool, and, by that means, the other guy's tool at the same time.
So I'm thinking, boy, I'm interested in building software, but I'm not nearly at the point where I can build something for the public. And I've been thinking about asking these guys for help. I kind of thought I really couldn't or shouldn't, and I thought maybe if I knew more about them that would help, but I couldn't find anything to read on their site, just the schedule for their webinar. So that was why I made a point of attending that.
Well now the guy is saying, you know, if you just write to us "I don't know what to do, tell me what to do," we can't do that. You won't hear back from us. What you need to do to get our attention is produce. You have to sell our stuff. And the other guy was saying "I never, ever write to someone asking for help. If I'm having trouble figuring something out, I do the research, and I work on it until I figure it out."
Woooooooops!
And he's saying "asking for help isn't leadership. Helping people is leadership."
Well, I am trying to do that, here, though I think I'm still rather in a muddle about it.
I will say this has given me an idea. A few weeks ago I followed some links and found a local marketing company, and I looked at their site a bit, and I was thinking about asking them for help, but I kind of knew it would go nowhere. Today I'm thinking maybe I can offer them some help. That might go better.
Anyway, after dinner last night I told my wife "I'm going to bed," which I did, but I took my laptop with me and ended up watching videos about day trading, for quite a while. I followed the links and actually watched everything. One of the links, which was random and an ad, introduced me to a very esoteric tool I rather like the look of. And I've been up now since very early, working on these posts, so I'm getting a good start on my day. I've produced my writing for the day, such as it is, already, and now I have the whole rest of the day to work on my reading, and maybe some correspondence.
trash
It's a weird place to start, but I want a big chimney to use for burning my trash.
Most of my trash that I'm talking about is small wood, and it's wood that will burn really sweet and clean. I mean, it'll burn really sweet, and, under the right circumstances, it'll burn really clean.
I can pile some of this wood into a little fire pot I've got, and it'll go up with a big tall flame and no smoke at all. There's some smoke that comes off it - a big dense mass of it - when I first light it, but once it gets going it just roars up in a big red flame and there's no smoke at all, and then when it dies down there's a little sweet smelling smoke for half an hour or so.
But, I maintain a small forest, and I have huge piles of this wood to burn, and my fire pot is just too small and not up to the magnitude of the job.
The thing is, I could just have all this wood hauled off, dumped in the landfill, but the idea disgusts me. I'm thinking about describing, in these posts, my insane experiment, or my "experiment in insanity". I'm not satisfied with the conventional approach to life. I don't want to participate. I want to live more authentically. I don't want to throw my trash in the garbage, like absolutely everyone does, and I don't want to live in a ticky tacky house, I want to live in one that's deeply lived in and built solid, by hand, a fully crafted house. I also want to have a richly aesthetic, artistic career, but that's sort of a separate topic. Anyway, I'm willing to put up with quite a bit to work on these goals.
I've been willing to put up with a lot towards that end. I've insisted on working towards these goals, and on running my life and, especially, my home, accordingly, which means putting up with a lot. In particular it means coming out looking quite insane.
Funny enough, there are people who have been willing to stick with me through it all, through twenty years and more of the experiment. They have their doubts, but they've stuck with me through it. But things have reached a point where I need to make a change. I need to either really swing into action, here, and get the whole out of control thing under control, or, I suppose, maybe, I need to abandon the project. Oh, well, I can't do that. I need to swing into action. And the good thing is, I'm still kicking. I think I actually can do this, or that I at least have a chance.
(I'm kind of a tough guy. I'm timid and afraid, and people think there's something wrong with me, really, because of that, and there is, but I'm also kind of tough. I can move a big ladder through a thicket by myself, and do it three times in a day. I can climb high in a tree and dangle by one arm from a branch, while sawing another branch with my other hand, and then climb back down and carry a giant bundle of branches through the thicket. Then I can cook a dinner, all while drinking glasses of heavy beer, without getting drunk, though I get sleepy and crash into bed early while my very tough wife washes pots and pans into the night. Then I'm up early, sitting in the cold writing for hours. I smoke heavily, and sometimes I cough violently, but I can do that, and it's no problem, and I can fight through a cold, and even worse, like it's nothing. And it all starts again, and I do it over and over and over. I can master my fear and move slowly and deliberately when traveling, or when meeting people, and talk to them in a deep guttural voice that I think must be sort of impressive, and maybe, if they think they need to get tough with me for some reason, I can turn on them in a way that makes them think again. But they will think I'm nuts. I need to work on that last bit.
Also, occasionally, of late, just out of the blue someone has told me they really like the look of my garden. This one guy says he's going to stop by for a chat, and this other guy says he actually wants the old car in my garage, which is completely buried in a collection of trash/art. I'm plotting to get it extracted, which is a major project. I'm a bit afraid both of these people are having second thoughts, but, whatever happens, these events seem to me to be little indications that I'm not completely on the wrong track, and that, if I focus, I might be able to make something of it all.)
So, this stack, it needs to be a big metal tube, ten feet tall, custom made, with certain structures inside it, and built into it, and I'll fill it from bottom to top with this trash, with small branches, broken into small pieces, and then I'll light it at the bottom, and the whole mass will go up in a big flame, and burn to ashes in a matter of minutes. And I'll also mix in a small amount of household trash, not anything nasty, just things which can't properly be recycled, like milk cartons and my cigarette buts. It's a responsible plan ... but ... don't tell anybody!
Most of my trash that I'm talking about is small wood, and it's wood that will burn really sweet and clean. I mean, it'll burn really sweet, and, under the right circumstances, it'll burn really clean.
I can pile some of this wood into a little fire pot I've got, and it'll go up with a big tall flame and no smoke at all. There's some smoke that comes off it - a big dense mass of it - when I first light it, but once it gets going it just roars up in a big red flame and there's no smoke at all, and then when it dies down there's a little sweet smelling smoke for half an hour or so.
But, I maintain a small forest, and I have huge piles of this wood to burn, and my fire pot is just too small and not up to the magnitude of the job.
The thing is, I could just have all this wood hauled off, dumped in the landfill, but the idea disgusts me. I'm thinking about describing, in these posts, my insane experiment, or my "experiment in insanity". I'm not satisfied with the conventional approach to life. I don't want to participate. I want to live more authentically. I don't want to throw my trash in the garbage, like absolutely everyone does, and I don't want to live in a ticky tacky house, I want to live in one that's deeply lived in and built solid, by hand, a fully crafted house. I also want to have a richly aesthetic, artistic career, but that's sort of a separate topic. Anyway, I'm willing to put up with quite a bit to work on these goals.
I've been willing to put up with a lot towards that end. I've insisted on working towards these goals, and on running my life and, especially, my home, accordingly, which means putting up with a lot. In particular it means coming out looking quite insane.
Funny enough, there are people who have been willing to stick with me through it all, through twenty years and more of the experiment. They have their doubts, but they've stuck with me through it. But things have reached a point where I need to make a change. I need to either really swing into action, here, and get the whole out of control thing under control, or, I suppose, maybe, I need to abandon the project. Oh, well, I can't do that. I need to swing into action. And the good thing is, I'm still kicking. I think I actually can do this, or that I at least have a chance.
(I'm kind of a tough guy. I'm timid and afraid, and people think there's something wrong with me, really, because of that, and there is, but I'm also kind of tough. I can move a big ladder through a thicket by myself, and do it three times in a day. I can climb high in a tree and dangle by one arm from a branch, while sawing another branch with my other hand, and then climb back down and carry a giant bundle of branches through the thicket. Then I can cook a dinner, all while drinking glasses of heavy beer, without getting drunk, though I get sleepy and crash into bed early while my very tough wife washes pots and pans into the night. Then I'm up early, sitting in the cold writing for hours. I smoke heavily, and sometimes I cough violently, but I can do that, and it's no problem, and I can fight through a cold, and even worse, like it's nothing. And it all starts again, and I do it over and over and over. I can master my fear and move slowly and deliberately when traveling, or when meeting people, and talk to them in a deep guttural voice that I think must be sort of impressive, and maybe, if they think they need to get tough with me for some reason, I can turn on them in a way that makes them think again. But they will think I'm nuts. I need to work on that last bit.
Also, occasionally, of late, just out of the blue someone has told me they really like the look of my garden. This one guy says he's going to stop by for a chat, and this other guy says he actually wants the old car in my garage, which is completely buried in a collection of trash/art. I'm plotting to get it extracted, which is a major project. I'm a bit afraid both of these people are having second thoughts, but, whatever happens, these events seem to me to be little indications that I'm not completely on the wrong track, and that, if I focus, I might be able to make something of it all.)
So, this stack, it needs to be a big metal tube, ten feet tall, custom made, with certain structures inside it, and built into it, and I'll fill it from bottom to top with this trash, with small branches, broken into small pieces, and then I'll light it at the bottom, and the whole mass will go up in a big flame, and burn to ashes in a matter of minutes. And I'll also mix in a small amount of household trash, not anything nasty, just things which can't properly be recycled, like milk cartons and my cigarette buts. It's a responsible plan ... but ... don't tell anybody!
Tuesday, January 5, 2016
success
I read two thirds of this - grabbed it the moment I saw it - the inspirational stuff, the stuff about habits. Towards the end he goes into detail on organizing a business ... and I stopped reading ... dumb de dum dum. Here I am, years later, still trying to figure it out ... trying to read more, not less ... partly for fun, but ... it's the thing to do, isn't it? Anyway ... reading free stuff on line ... too ... and trying things ... like this thing, which is as close as I've managed to get to actually having a product ... on the market ...Rock Your Network Marketing BusinessThe Business of the 21st Century
Monday, January 4, 2016
resolution
rosybrown
Although this is not completely accurate, let us, for the sake of argument, represent our entire experience of computing as one of shuffling stacks and stacks of pages, which we could otherwise call pieces of paper, in a representational sense, and, on those pages, clouds of images. This, of course, refers to that part of the computing experience which consists of doing things on a screen, which is not the whole of computing - in a technical sense, it is only the edge of computing - but which is, of course, nonetheless the most prominent part of the typical user's experience of computing, or, at any rate, one of the very prominent and primary parts of that.
I feel a need to also state, though I have been warned this is only my obsession and I ought to leave it alone, that I am trying to correct, in that environment of things on the screen, a muddled and difficult situation. And some would argue that we simply need or ought to accept the difficulties of that environment, in exchange for the benefits it offers, benefits which are self evidently substantial and even miraculous, that, what can we expect, because we are asking for so much. This argument seems to be that it is the amount we are asking for that makes a muddled situation inevitable, and proceeds from there to vaguely suggest the solution to the problems of confusion and limitation we encounter in that environment is to somehow ask for less, that is, to limit what we ask for in one or another way.
This idea, that the solution to problems we encounter in visual computing on screens is to in some way limit what we ask for, is, in a way, accurate and, in fact, fundamental, but, as it is being applied, I do not think it is correct. I would ask what it is we are being asked to limit, in terms of our expectations, and I would say we are being asked to limit the wrong things. We are being asked, in a wide variety of ways, to limit what we are asking for, generally, and, to put it in simple and abstract terms, I think there is in fact no real reason, on a technical level or a conceptual one, for us to do so. What we need to limit is what we ask for at one time, or, to put it another way, on one screen. This may seem like arbitrary reasoning, but I think it defines something very important.
It is my contrary assertion that the whole question of what computing is for is being answered, throughout the industry, in a way that is in one sense fundamentally incorrect. The entire computing product has been constructed around this fundamentally incorrect assessment, is what I say, which, of course, means I am rowing against the tide in about as complete a sense as you could ask for. I have attempted to argue my point in the industry, and been summarily dismissed, but, I believe I am correct, and I remain determined to continue.
A philosophical point which I find interesting is the idea that paradox is inherent in the nature of reality. Perhaps this helps to explain my position. What I am proposing is very much computing, even computing as we know it. At least in a sense it incorporates possibly every aspect of computing as we know it, and even does not add anything which is not a component of computing as we know it. But, no, in fact, one component of computing as we know it is removed, and that is the muddle and limitation which is, in a classic example of irony, inherent to the contemporary experience of this medium which is all about orderliness and limitless capability. The result of the change I propose, then, will be precisely the same phenomenon, computing, but also dramatically different. And where I say that one - and only one - aspect of the contemporary phenomenon is being removed, I can reiterate that nothing is being added. Of course, a change is being made, and the form it takes is the reversal of the relationship of two components.
How can I describe what these two components are? I will say that they are two ways of describing something, and that that something they describe is, let me put it this way, what computing is about. Of course the question follows, then, what is computing about? And I just said there are two ways of describing that, but what they describe is one thing. Another way to describe the change I am proposing is to say that I am proposing an alternative to the way the question "what is computing about" is being answered. As I described it, the whole product, computing, and the industry which brings it to us, is currently formulated around one way of describing that, and now I would like to describe it in a different way, and by that means dramatically altar the whole phenomenon and the whole industry. Again, though, I am not removing or even altering any of the components of what computing is, and therefore I am not removing or altering any of the components that defined the industry which brings us computing. All of that remains just as it is, except for that removing of the one component of what computing is, the muddled and limited quality of the product, which, by their words and actions, everyone seems to suggest are inherent to what computing is, excepting myself, who now stand here arguing that that is an erroneous notion, and then this reversal of two components, which are not even physical components, but are, rather, conceptual ones.
So I have stated that these two components are definitions of what computing is about, or I called them descriptions of that. And, strangely, as I ponder this, it seems I could assert that it is not possible to say that computing is about some one thing. The conclusion I arrive at comes to resemble mystical notions. It seems I must say that what computing is about cannot be stated, but, in fact, that is not quite correct. Rather it seems that what computing is about cannot be defined in only one way. It seems to require two definitions. I am not entirely sure where this line of reasoning leads, but let us see.
In order to define what computing is about we indeed can begin with a single statement: it is about information. It is again interesting, though, to discover that, having made that statement, the term information seems to require definition, but an accident of precedence has occurred, here, because it might in fact be necessary to first define the term "about". If computing is "about" information, or, to put it another way, if it is about something, what does that mean, that it is about that something? In fact, the meaning of the word information begins to emerge when we investigate this. Here I can introduce another term, manipulation. What computing does is, it manipulates something that we call, or can call, information.
And it follows from this, if you treat it as a formula of logic, that information is something. This again may sound completely meaningless, but I think we will find that it is in fact, first of all, an assertion which needs to be made, that it must be determined whether that is or is not so, and then that it is very significant. But what does it mean, that information is something? I propose that what it means is that information is things, and this is why we can say that we are manipulating it. To manipulate information is to manipulate, in a general sense, a phenomenon, and then, in a specific sense, particles of some sort that comprise that phenomenon.
What we are attempting to define, then, is this thing, a particle of information. Here is where we encounter those two definitions which are both both correct and necessary, but whose role in our practice of, information manipulation, and of thinking about that, ought, to my mind, to be reversed, in order to liberate ourselves from certain limitations which are, as I see it, holding back the progress of our industry, and of the experience of computing which we, by our industry, provide.
The one definition, then, around which I believe our current efforts so preponderantly revolve, states that information is ideas, or, to put it in a more abstract and more coherent way, it is meanings. Indeed, information is meanings, it is meaning, and its value lies in our exploration of the particles of meaning which comprise it.
We move those particles about, we stretch and squeeze them, we juxtapose and combine them in various ways, and we divide them into smaller and smaller parts, then recombine those parts, into larger parts - new things - and recombine and rejuxtapose those, and we observe the results that follow from all these manipulation, and, ultimately, build elements of our existence ourselves by these means. That is what the information component of our existence is about, and that is what computing is about.
However, if we define information only as meaning, a level of abstraction remains which is, in the end, highly problematic. There is this other way of describing what information is, and what a particle of information is, that simply is essential to mastering the phenomenon. And here I must assert again that I am talking about, for my purposes of explication, an aspect of computing, visual computing on screens. It is the meaning of that phenomenon which I am primarily discussing. It is true, however, that what I am proposing has, I would hazard, profound implications as regards the "back end", that is data.
This last idea can, I think, shed light on the confusion which I say has arisen around the question of what computing is, and around the proper relationship between components of the phenomenon, which I say we must establish, in our thought, to resolve the muddle I say we are in.
It is, upon reflection, natural, if in a silly way, to think that the more fundamental nature of meaning is to be found in data. First we are thinking that meaning must be extracted from something, in other words that meaning is an extract, and this leads us to think that meaning is a form of abstraction. We are abstracting something into some kind of medium, say, words, and we think that process is meaning, or is meaningfulness. Then, because we are not completely satisfied with the result, we are looking for something even more fundamental, and this seems to offer itself in the form of an even greater abstraction of information, data. There we find something which is the essence of abstraction. The parts are defined with completely strict exactness and ultimate simplicity. In there must lie the actual meaning of meaning, its fundamental meaning.
And, as usual, in some sense this is true, and data is the essence of meaning, but, again as usual, it is not the sense we think it is. The sense in which it is true is this: data describes things. And the fact that data is completely abstract, and strictly defined, makes it possible to manipulate data, and that makes it possible for us to manipulate the descriptions of things contained in data, which in turn makes it possible for us to manipulate, in a sense, the things thus described. And it is this ability to manipulate things that ultimately defines meaning.
Now, I have been referencing a kind of manifestation of things, images, on a screen. I am, I think, building a case that that, and nothing else, is the primary essence of what computing is, at least with reference to itself, which sounds like yet a third nonsense assertion, and which, once again, is the opposite of nonsense. It may be possible to argue that there are assorted ways in which we experience data, the contents of data, and images on screens is a prominent one of the, but the actual question is: is experiencing the contents of data the primary essence of what information is, and the standard answer would be, I think, that it is not, and that it rather is a secondary essence of what information is, and that what information essentially is is the information itself, as stored in data.
Viewed this way, the conventional way, images on screens are not the primary meaning of information or of visual computing on screens, but rater are a mere tool we use to access that primary meaning. And this is, I am asserting, incorrect. It is the reverse of the truth. Images on screens are the primary meaning of visual computing on screens, and data, and the descriptions of things it contains, are a tool that is used to access those images.
The functional meaning of information as experienced through visual computing on screens, then, includes three components, images on screens, which could be called a concrete phenomenon, and the data used to generate those image, which is also a concrete phenomenon, and then the descriptions of things that data contains, which is an abstract phenomenon. And it is the incorrect tendency to think that abstraction is synonymous with meaning, and that that abstracted layer is thus the real meaning of computing, which confuses the definition of what computing is, and, by doing that, limits our access to what it actually is. In fact, the essence of what computing is is not one or another of these things, it is the combination of the three of them. But we are also encountering, now, another question, which is that of the meaning of meaning. We will find some kind of answer in something of a misnomer of my own, which I produced here. In fact, I have already defined it as an experience of the ability to manipulate things. However, I was referring to the ability to manipulate images on screens, and that must now be investigated further.
First, to avoid confusion, I would note that many of the images we see on screens are letters, and what they comprise, texts. These images are not, except in an esoteric sense, meaningful themselves - they do not, in themselves, represent anything - rather, they are themselves a form of data, and that data is used to describe things, and thus to give us access to the meaning of those things, in the way I've described that is done, that is, by allowing us in some sense to manipulate the things described.
Now, it is possible to depict things directly using images on the screen, but it must be kept in mind that the things thus depicted are not, in fact, concrete realities. Let us investigate that further.
First, it is possible to directly manipulate certain things that we could say have their own independent existence. And it is possible to directly perceive those kinds of things, and it is also possible to represent those kinds of things as images on screens. [However, in the later case, those images, which exist for our purpose of manipulating them, are no longer things independently.]
For example, we can generate images of something which has its own independent existence, let us say, a city or town, and then we can view those images, and we would say we are viewing the city. But if we wanted to directly interact with the city, we would need to go there. The imagery, in this example, allows us to manipulate the city by carrying it through space to our location. Of course we are not carrying the city itself, we are carrying images of it.
The other thing is, we view, on the screen, images of things that do not even have an independent form outside of the data. And it follows from both these cases that what we are manipulating, via images on the screen, is something that in a sense does not exist. In a very real sense, that is the whole point.
However, while this thing we are manipulating, this universe of descriptions of things, may not in reality exist, it is a thing, which is to say, it has a form, and here we are approaching, in fact, the concrete purpose of this essay, which is to describe a product, or the use to which a product would be put, which is to allow us to interact with a form, with some thing, that does not exist. And the problem we encounter in contemporary computing is this: we don't know what form that is.
It is true that we know what the forms of many things in this thing, the contents of data, are, but somehow what the whole form of it is is unknown to us. This is in fact how the misnaming of meaning causes problems. If we really think about what form is being given to the whole body of the contents of data, it is the form of data: memory banks, arrays, words. And I think we are discovering, or we would, if we payed attention to our results, that this is an extremely inefficient form to assign to a whole body or world of information. The structure of data is efficient for creating individual things that do not exist, but something else, in the way of a form, is needed to assemble those things into an experience. Identifying that other form is also what this essay is all about.
This form, of course, is completely before us. Its unseemly obviousness seems to be one of the reasons it has been relegated to a supporting role, instead of being treated, as it ought, as it must be, as one of the two fundamental structures for information, the other one being data. I am speaking of space, the structural geometry of the world.
We could say that, to find an efficient structure for representing worlds of information we must look both in the medium in which information is created, data, and outside of it, and outside of it is the world, what we may call ordinary reality, and the organizing structure of that is space.
In space, of course, there are many things, and we can begin to see its efficiency as an organizing structure by, say, going down the street, which is lined with houses, and eventually coming to another street, and going down that, and turning this way a number of times until we arrive at a place where there is a collection of shops, and finding the one among those that offers the particular kind of item we are seeking, and going up and down its aisles, looking at items on shelves, until we find that item. We then move to a location that serves a special function, and move certain objects about a little, and this moving about of certain items records our permission to now remove the item we located to a new location of our choosing. And then we navigate streets again, perhaps to several other locations, and finally returning to our home, and all of this we do with a complete sense of fluidity and an essentially complete sense of orientation that contrasts with the world of information in computing as we know it.
Even the existing implementations of space in computing somehow seem very clumsy and tentative by comparison. Why is that? I would argue it is not, as most would say, because of some inherent difficulty presented by the problem of applying the structure of space to the computing environment, that it is not because of that at all. I believe it is because space is being treated as a foreign structure in a world, the world of computing and computer development, that sees data and data structures as what is native to it, or, really, what is proper to it. The effect is twofold: on the one hand the systems that are needed to implement the structure of space in data are treated as foreign objects. In order to insulate the pristine environment of pure data from them, they are rapidly encased, when they intrude, in insulating cysts of several kinds. These capsules are supposed to help. For instance, they are designed to make the offending data construct look not like a data construct but like something that it is not, a "tool" of some sort, such as an enclosing box, or a button. being typical components of these kinds of things. And then, at the same time, space is only partly implemented. The assumption is it cannot be fully implemented, and the following assumption is it need not be fully implemented, that a partial implementation is "plenty". This returns us to the idea that we are being overly demanding, and cannot and ought not to, "for our own good", expect an unlimited experience.
And, thirdly, the question will be asked - it is usually not so much asked as answered - what are we supposed to do with "space", in computing. Of course, for certain special applications, it is useful or important. For kids we have games, for real grownups, design tools. If ordinary people really demand it, we'll give them a smidgen for design purposes, too, though they are probably not up to using it.
In fact, let us address that last idea. In order to introduce things into space constructed in data, we must perform certain data procedures. These are considered to be very inaccessible to ordinary people, thus the elaborate procedure of constructing those tools that are supposed to help us. The truth is, these procedures are simple and direct, while the tools, which are very difficult to construct, end up being very clumsy and limited. I say - and I will be energetically challenged to prove it, this is true - that if they were given to us very directly, we would have no trouble at all building spaces in data.
But I still need to answer the question of why we would want to do it, and why it is such an urgent necessity. And now perhaps I ought to describe an experience, of this, as I imagine it.
Chapter 2
Although this is not completely accurate, let us, for the sake of argument, represent our entire experience of computing as one of shuffling stacks and stacks of pages, which we could otherwise call pieces of paper, in a representational sense, and, on those pages, clouds of images. This, of course, refers to that part of the computing experience which consists of doing things on a screen, which is not the whole of computing - in a technical sense, it is only the edge of computing - but which is, of course, nonetheless the most prominent part of the typical user's experience of computing, or, at any rate, one of the very prominent and primary parts of that.
I feel a need to also state, though I have been warned this is only my obsession and I ought to leave it alone, that I am trying to correct, in that environment of things on the screen, a muddled and difficult situation. And some would argue that we simply need or ought to accept the difficulties of that environment, in exchange for the benefits it offers, benefits which are self evidently substantial and even miraculous, that, what can we expect, because we are asking for so much. This argument seems to be that it is the amount we are asking for that makes a muddled situation inevitable, and proceeds from there to vaguely suggest the solution to the problems of confusion and limitation we encounter in that environment is to somehow ask for less, that is, to limit what we ask for in one or another way.
This idea, that the solution to problems we encounter in visual computing on screens is to in some way limit what we ask for, is, in a way, accurate and, in fact, fundamental, but, as it is being applied, I do not think it is correct. I would ask what it is we are being asked to limit, in terms of our expectations, and I would say we are being asked to limit the wrong things. We are being asked, in a wide variety of ways, to limit what we are asking for, generally, and, to put it in simple and abstract terms, I think there is in fact no real reason, on a technical level or a conceptual one, for us to do so. What we need to limit is what we ask for at one time, or, to put it another way, on one screen. This may seem like arbitrary reasoning, but I think it defines something very important.
It is my contrary assertion that the whole question of what computing is for is being answered, throughout the industry, in a way that is in one sense fundamentally incorrect. The entire computing product has been constructed around this fundamentally incorrect assessment, is what I say, which, of course, means I am rowing against the tide in about as complete a sense as you could ask for. I have attempted to argue my point in the industry, and been summarily dismissed, but, I believe I am correct, and I remain determined to continue.
A philosophical point which I find interesting is the idea that paradox is inherent in the nature of reality. Perhaps this helps to explain my position. What I am proposing is very much computing, even computing as we know it. At least in a sense it incorporates possibly every aspect of computing as we know it, and even does not add anything which is not a component of computing as we know it. But, no, in fact, one component of computing as we know it is removed, and that is the muddle and limitation which is, in a classic example of irony, inherent to the contemporary experience of this medium which is all about orderliness and limitless capability. The result of the change I propose, then, will be precisely the same phenomenon, computing, but also dramatically different. And where I say that one - and only one - aspect of the contemporary phenomenon is being removed, I can reiterate that nothing is being added. Of course, a change is being made, and the form it takes is the reversal of the relationship of two components.
How can I describe what these two components are? I will say that they are two ways of describing something, and that that something they describe is, let me put it this way, what computing is about. Of course the question follows, then, what is computing about? And I just said there are two ways of describing that, but what they describe is one thing. Another way to describe the change I am proposing is to say that I am proposing an alternative to the way the question "what is computing about" is being answered. As I described it, the whole product, computing, and the industry which brings it to us, is currently formulated around one way of describing that, and now I would like to describe it in a different way, and by that means dramatically altar the whole phenomenon and the whole industry. Again, though, I am not removing or even altering any of the components of what computing is, and therefore I am not removing or altering any of the components that defined the industry which brings us computing. All of that remains just as it is, except for that removing of the one component of what computing is, the muddled and limited quality of the product, which, by their words and actions, everyone seems to suggest are inherent to what computing is, excepting myself, who now stand here arguing that that is an erroneous notion, and then this reversal of two components, which are not even physical components, but are, rather, conceptual ones.
So I have stated that these two components are definitions of what computing is about, or I called them descriptions of that. And, strangely, as I ponder this, it seems I could assert that it is not possible to say that computing is about some one thing. The conclusion I arrive at comes to resemble mystical notions. It seems I must say that what computing is about cannot be stated, but, in fact, that is not quite correct. Rather it seems that what computing is about cannot be defined in only one way. It seems to require two definitions. I am not entirely sure where this line of reasoning leads, but let us see.
In order to define what computing is about we indeed can begin with a single statement: it is about information. It is again interesting, though, to discover that, having made that statement, the term information seems to require definition, but an accident of precedence has occurred, here, because it might in fact be necessary to first define the term "about". If computing is "about" information, or, to put it another way, if it is about something, what does that mean, that it is about that something? In fact, the meaning of the word information begins to emerge when we investigate this. Here I can introduce another term, manipulation. What computing does is, it manipulates something that we call, or can call, information.
And it follows from this, if you treat it as a formula of logic, that information is something. This again may sound completely meaningless, but I think we will find that it is in fact, first of all, an assertion which needs to be made, that it must be determined whether that is or is not so, and then that it is very significant. But what does it mean, that information is something? I propose that what it means is that information is things, and this is why we can say that we are manipulating it. To manipulate information is to manipulate, in a general sense, a phenomenon, and then, in a specific sense, particles of some sort that comprise that phenomenon.
What we are attempting to define, then, is this thing, a particle of information. Here is where we encounter those two definitions which are both both correct and necessary, but whose role in our practice of, information manipulation, and of thinking about that, ought, to my mind, to be reversed, in order to liberate ourselves from certain limitations which are, as I see it, holding back the progress of our industry, and of the experience of computing which we, by our industry, provide.
The one definition, then, around which I believe our current efforts so preponderantly revolve, states that information is ideas, or, to put it in a more abstract and more coherent way, it is meanings. Indeed, information is meanings, it is meaning, and its value lies in our exploration of the particles of meaning which comprise it.
We move those particles about, we stretch and squeeze them, we juxtapose and combine them in various ways, and we divide them into smaller and smaller parts, then recombine those parts, into larger parts - new things - and recombine and rejuxtapose those, and we observe the results that follow from all these manipulation, and, ultimately, build elements of our existence ourselves by these means. That is what the information component of our existence is about, and that is what computing is about.
However, if we define information only as meaning, a level of abstraction remains which is, in the end, highly problematic. There is this other way of describing what information is, and what a particle of information is, that simply is essential to mastering the phenomenon. And here I must assert again that I am talking about, for my purposes of explication, an aspect of computing, visual computing on screens. It is the meaning of that phenomenon which I am primarily discussing. It is true, however, that what I am proposing has, I would hazard, profound implications as regards the "back end", that is data.
This last idea can, I think, shed light on the confusion which I say has arisen around the question of what computing is, and around the proper relationship between components of the phenomenon, which I say we must establish, in our thought, to resolve the muddle I say we are in.
It is, upon reflection, natural, if in a silly way, to think that the more fundamental nature of meaning is to be found in data. First we are thinking that meaning must be extracted from something, in other words that meaning is an extract, and this leads us to think that meaning is a form of abstraction. We are abstracting something into some kind of medium, say, words, and we think that process is meaning, or is meaningfulness. Then, because we are not completely satisfied with the result, we are looking for something even more fundamental, and this seems to offer itself in the form of an even greater abstraction of information, data. There we find something which is the essence of abstraction. The parts are defined with completely strict exactness and ultimate simplicity. In there must lie the actual meaning of meaning, its fundamental meaning.
And, as usual, in some sense this is true, and data is the essence of meaning, but, again as usual, it is not the sense we think it is. The sense in which it is true is this: data describes things. And the fact that data is completely abstract, and strictly defined, makes it possible to manipulate data, and that makes it possible for us to manipulate the descriptions of things contained in data, which in turn makes it possible for us to manipulate, in a sense, the things thus described. And it is this ability to manipulate things that ultimately defines meaning.
Now, I have been referencing a kind of manifestation of things, images, on a screen. I am, I think, building a case that that, and nothing else, is the primary essence of what computing is, at least with reference to itself, which sounds like yet a third nonsense assertion, and which, once again, is the opposite of nonsense. It may be possible to argue that there are assorted ways in which we experience data, the contents of data, and images on screens is a prominent one of the, but the actual question is: is experiencing the contents of data the primary essence of what information is, and the standard answer would be, I think, that it is not, and that it rather is a secondary essence of what information is, and that what information essentially is is the information itself, as stored in data.
Viewed this way, the conventional way, images on screens are not the primary meaning of information or of visual computing on screens, but rater are a mere tool we use to access that primary meaning. And this is, I am asserting, incorrect. It is the reverse of the truth. Images on screens are the primary meaning of visual computing on screens, and data, and the descriptions of things it contains, are a tool that is used to access those images.
The functional meaning of information as experienced through visual computing on screens, then, includes three components, images on screens, which could be called a concrete phenomenon, and the data used to generate those image, which is also a concrete phenomenon, and then the descriptions of things that data contains, which is an abstract phenomenon. And it is the incorrect tendency to think that abstraction is synonymous with meaning, and that that abstracted layer is thus the real meaning of computing, which confuses the definition of what computing is, and, by doing that, limits our access to what it actually is. In fact, the essence of what computing is is not one or another of these things, it is the combination of the three of them. But we are also encountering, now, another question, which is that of the meaning of meaning. We will find some kind of answer in something of a misnomer of my own, which I produced here. In fact, I have already defined it as an experience of the ability to manipulate things. However, I was referring to the ability to manipulate images on screens, and that must now be investigated further.
First, to avoid confusion, I would note that many of the images we see on screens are letters, and what they comprise, texts. These images are not, except in an esoteric sense, meaningful themselves - they do not, in themselves, represent anything - rather, they are themselves a form of data, and that data is used to describe things, and thus to give us access to the meaning of those things, in the way I've described that is done, that is, by allowing us in some sense to manipulate the things described.
Now, it is possible to depict things directly using images on the screen, but it must be kept in mind that the things thus depicted are not, in fact, concrete realities. Let us investigate that further.
First, it is possible to directly manipulate certain things that we could say have their own independent existence. And it is possible to directly perceive those kinds of things, and it is also possible to represent those kinds of things as images on screens. [However, in the later case, those images, which exist for our purpose of manipulating them, are no longer things independently.]
For example, we can generate images of something which has its own independent existence, let us say, a city or town, and then we can view those images, and we would say we are viewing the city. But if we wanted to directly interact with the city, we would need to go there. The imagery, in this example, allows us to manipulate the city by carrying it through space to our location. Of course we are not carrying the city itself, we are carrying images of it.
The other thing is, we view, on the screen, images of things that do not even have an independent form outside of the data. And it follows from both these cases that what we are manipulating, via images on the screen, is something that in a sense does not exist. In a very real sense, that is the whole point.
However, while this thing we are manipulating, this universe of descriptions of things, may not in reality exist, it is a thing, which is to say, it has a form, and here we are approaching, in fact, the concrete purpose of this essay, which is to describe a product, or the use to which a product would be put, which is to allow us to interact with a form, with some thing, that does not exist. And the problem we encounter in contemporary computing is this: we don't know what form that is.
It is true that we know what the forms of many things in this thing, the contents of data, are, but somehow what the whole form of it is is unknown to us. This is in fact how the misnaming of meaning causes problems. If we really think about what form is being given to the whole body of the contents of data, it is the form of data: memory banks, arrays, words. And I think we are discovering, or we would, if we payed attention to our results, that this is an extremely inefficient form to assign to a whole body or world of information. The structure of data is efficient for creating individual things that do not exist, but something else, in the way of a form, is needed to assemble those things into an experience. Identifying that other form is also what this essay is all about.
This form, of course, is completely before us. Its unseemly obviousness seems to be one of the reasons it has been relegated to a supporting role, instead of being treated, as it ought, as it must be, as one of the two fundamental structures for information, the other one being data. I am speaking of space, the structural geometry of the world.
We could say that, to find an efficient structure for representing worlds of information we must look both in the medium in which information is created, data, and outside of it, and outside of it is the world, what we may call ordinary reality, and the organizing structure of that is space.
In space, of course, there are many things, and we can begin to see its efficiency as an organizing structure by, say, going down the street, which is lined with houses, and eventually coming to another street, and going down that, and turning this way a number of times until we arrive at a place where there is a collection of shops, and finding the one among those that offers the particular kind of item we are seeking, and going up and down its aisles, looking at items on shelves, until we find that item. We then move to a location that serves a special function, and move certain objects about a little, and this moving about of certain items records our permission to now remove the item we located to a new location of our choosing. And then we navigate streets again, perhaps to several other locations, and finally returning to our home, and all of this we do with a complete sense of fluidity and an essentially complete sense of orientation that contrasts with the world of information in computing as we know it.
Even the existing implementations of space in computing somehow seem very clumsy and tentative by comparison. Why is that? I would argue it is not, as most would say, because of some inherent difficulty presented by the problem of applying the structure of space to the computing environment, that it is not because of that at all. I believe it is because space is being treated as a foreign structure in a world, the world of computing and computer development, that sees data and data structures as what is native to it, or, really, what is proper to it. The effect is twofold: on the one hand the systems that are needed to implement the structure of space in data are treated as foreign objects. In order to insulate the pristine environment of pure data from them, they are rapidly encased, when they intrude, in insulating cysts of several kinds. These capsules are supposed to help. For instance, they are designed to make the offending data construct look not like a data construct but like something that it is not, a "tool" of some sort, such as an enclosing box, or a button. being typical components of these kinds of things. And then, at the same time, space is only partly implemented. The assumption is it cannot be fully implemented, and the following assumption is it need not be fully implemented, that a partial implementation is "plenty". This returns us to the idea that we are being overly demanding, and cannot and ought not to, "for our own good", expect an unlimited experience.
And, thirdly, the question will be asked - it is usually not so much asked as answered - what are we supposed to do with "space", in computing. Of course, for certain special applications, it is useful or important. For kids we have games, for real grownups, design tools. If ordinary people really demand it, we'll give them a smidgen for design purposes, too, though they are probably not up to using it.
In fact, let us address that last idea. In order to introduce things into space constructed in data, we must perform certain data procedures. These are considered to be very inaccessible to ordinary people, thus the elaborate procedure of constructing those tools that are supposed to help us. The truth is, these procedures are simple and direct, while the tools, which are very difficult to construct, end up being very clumsy and limited. I say - and I will be energetically challenged to prove it, this is true - that if they were given to us very directly, we would have no trouble at all building spaces in data.
But I still need to answer the question of why we would want to do it, and why it is such an urgent necessity. And now perhaps I ought to describe an experience, of this, as I imagine it.
Chapter 2
Sunday, January 3, 2016
the plan
style
I've been trying to talk to industry insiders about my plan for a software empire, but they all think I'm just an idiot dreamer who represents a risk of them wasting a lot of time and thought on nothing. They simply cannot take me seriously. There are more specific reasons for that. I'm working to put together (conceptually - that's how I work) a major web product, and to them that means probably millions of dollars of investment in all sorts of technical minutia, and, obviously, I don't have a clue.
When I say I've been trying, I really mean it. I look for people to talk to, and give 'em a pitch. It's always the same types, too: engineers, consultants, marketing people, lawyers, and academics. They're all proper business people, with lots invested in their very proper careers, and they can see immediately - that's an understatement - that I'm nothing but a joke. I definitely don't fit in.
Here you come, Dane, a rocker, a raver, a poet, and suddenly I've got a new idea. After all, I am those things, and also a stoner, and I love the people in this scene. I didn't just come to love you all, I always have. And that was part of ... oh, it doesn't matter. But the thing is, I do need some big guys and gals around, staking out our territory, inviting in the network, because, even though I'm a total hippie, my plan is to be right at the top of the business food chain, and that's business. I'm thinking about that dude, the amazing one with the big girth and the beard and the gall to go to any party in the world, the one who has built up Vice, which all the supposed major players like to say is a joke, though they're especially annoyed, because, no way, it isn't.
It's not that he and you, Dane, and myself, are actually industry types, and nobody realizes it, it's not that. What I'm picturing now is us actual nobodies just suddenly zooming by EVERYBODY IN THE INDUSTRY, COMPLETELY OUT OF NOWHERE, LIKE SOME FREAKY SLEEPER AT THE DRAG STRIP, AND THEY'LL ALL BE, LIKE, JESUS FREAKING CHRIST, WHAT THE HELL JUST HAPPENED?!!
Here's how it'll play out: we'll have some patents, and a platform, ready to scale, completely, and suddenly everyone will just need to have their pages, all their pages, on our page. I'll explain how that works later, when we get together. But it'll be really easy for them to get their pages on our page, they'll just need to pay us a buck or two for every page they want to put on our page.
A group of us, The Man, the Vice team, you, me, and our lawyers and techies coming out of the bud business and the Indie scene, will all become some of the biggest billionaires on the planet. That's important because you need to set up a group like that to hold things together. We'll be good investors, too, puttin' the money into stuff that's green and fun.
I do like Google. You've got to love their motto, "... be evil." I'm a friend of the Devil, myself. It's the friends of God that give me the willies - and give God the willies, too, but what's a God to do? Anyway, Google's properly ditsy and cool, so it's all good. And I've liked Zuckerberg from day one. It's not like I'm not going to get along with those guys. Once they realize we actually like them, and are actually, as it turns out, here to like them, they'll be happy to work with us. My motto is "taking it easy." The less work you have to do, the more you can get done. It is important we keep that in mind.
On the technical side my system is just slightly tricky. It does divide a lot of things that are sort of big, today, into lots of tiny pieces, in a way that's going to look just slightly scary - not that it's actually anything new - but the Silicon Life Form (with Carbon in the wings) is, in fact, truly a friend, and they will take perfect care of us. There's nothing to worry about at all. Nothing will actually change for the engineers, either, or the marketing people, for that matter, and they'll see that right away. The only clique that will really freak is the semantics folks, and even they will soon realize we're not actually a threat. Anyway, our tech people will easily be able to handle the coding required to demonstrate the principle and our pot lawyers and pot finance people will definitely be able to manage the IP.
I've been trying to talk to industry insiders about my plan for a software empire, but they all think I'm just an idiot dreamer who represents a risk of them wasting a lot of time and thought on nothing. They simply cannot take me seriously. There are more specific reasons for that. I'm working to put together (conceptually - that's how I work) a major web product, and to them that means probably millions of dollars of investment in all sorts of technical minutia, and, obviously, I don't have a clue.
When I say I've been trying, I really mean it. I look for people to talk to, and give 'em a pitch. It's always the same types, too: engineers, consultants, marketing people, lawyers, and academics. They're all proper business people, with lots invested in their very proper careers, and they can see immediately - that's an understatement - that I'm nothing but a joke. I definitely don't fit in.
Here you come, Dane, a rocker, a raver, a poet, and suddenly I've got a new idea. After all, I am those things, and also a stoner, and I love the people in this scene. I didn't just come to love you all, I always have. And that was part of ... oh, it doesn't matter. But the thing is, I do need some big guys and gals around, staking out our territory, inviting in the network, because, even though I'm a total hippie, my plan is to be right at the top of the business food chain, and that's business. I'm thinking about that dude, the amazing one with the big girth and the beard and the gall to go to any party in the world, the one who has built up Vice, which all the supposed major players like to say is a joke, though they're especially annoyed, because, no way, it isn't.
It's not that he and you, Dane, and myself, are actually industry types, and nobody realizes it, it's not that. What I'm picturing now is us actual nobodies just suddenly zooming by EVERYBODY IN THE INDUSTRY, COMPLETELY OUT OF NOWHERE, LIKE SOME FREAKY SLEEPER AT THE DRAG STRIP, AND THEY'LL ALL BE, LIKE, JESUS FREAKING CHRIST, WHAT THE HELL JUST HAPPENED?!!
Here's how it'll play out: we'll have some patents, and a platform, ready to scale, completely, and suddenly everyone will just need to have their pages, all their pages, on our page. I'll explain how that works later, when we get together. But it'll be really easy for them to get their pages on our page, they'll just need to pay us a buck or two for every page they want to put on our page.
A group of us, The Man, the Vice team, you, me, and our lawyers and techies coming out of the bud business and the Indie scene, will all become some of the biggest billionaires on the planet. That's important because you need to set up a group like that to hold things together. We'll be good investors, too, puttin' the money into stuff that's green and fun.
I do like Google. You've got to love their motto, "... be evil." I'm a friend of the Devil, myself. It's the friends of God that give me the willies - and give God the willies, too, but what's a God to do? Anyway, Google's properly ditsy and cool, so it's all good. And I've liked Zuckerberg from day one. It's not like I'm not going to get along with those guys. Once they realize we actually like them, and are actually, as it turns out, here to like them, they'll be happy to work with us. My motto is "taking it easy." The less work you have to do, the more you can get done. It is important we keep that in mind.
On the technical side my system is just slightly tricky. It does divide a lot of things that are sort of big, today, into lots of tiny pieces, in a way that's going to look just slightly scary - not that it's actually anything new - but the Silicon Life Form (with Carbon in the wings) is, in fact, truly a friend, and they will take perfect care of us. There's nothing to worry about at all. Nothing will actually change for the engineers, either, or the marketing people, for that matter, and they'll see that right away. The only clique that will really freak is the semantics folks, and even they will soon realize we're not actually a threat. Anyway, our tech people will easily be able to handle the coding required to demonstrate the principle and our pot lawyers and pot finance people will definitely be able to manage the IP.
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