Permit Imminent

The meeting is not scheduled yet so there is more time to prepare, he thought. How often he was seeing something they suspected since the first substream monitors were installed, everything is connected (the architecture guaranteed it).

Recalling a time when a friend was just beginning to see the consequences of the power and responsibility link on the primal platform. Not then yet realizing how the assets at her disposal were perceived by the target group, she tended to take them for granted. Like most, if not all of us, sooner or later realize, our ego driven behavior starts to take advantage of the power before realizing how its fuel can be wasted on the inconsequential or destructive.

Demanding autonomy was an expression of confidence. But the confidence was, at least for the scope of its application, not sufficiently justied. The successful nurturance model prescribed a gradually increasing autonomy perimeter based on milestones achieved. One of the most important of which was the one at issue currently.

To be able to really understand the other party by standing in those other shoes, he elected to adopt the other party's rules of engagement, as he understood them. Though he found deception a poor choice for almost any interaction with someone on the inside, he needed to adopt that tactic now to better understand the basis for effective communication with her.

"Good luck with that.", the veteran said with a knowing smile.

"The old dog and a new trick. Maybe the old dog is deeper and not into mindless tricks anymore?"

Expressive

A semiotic cultural differentiator can be useful in understanding mind architecture. It does so by outlining perceptual and expressive commonality amongst cultures. When the network first supported cultural interconnection at a high enough level, a flood of primitive truths about mind architecture emerged.

Appropriate Detail

Very useful, he thought. He started preparing to share it with his team and felt a tap on his shoulder. It was unexpected but something below his conscious awareness overrode his startle response. He turned to see her looking deeply into his eyes, her fixation jumping back and forth to each of his. He smiled to greet her but remained quiet. 


She spoke, "I know what you did … thank you for trying."


"Sorry for being so clumsy, I am just now learning …". With any luck the leap of faith and the long preparation may be about ready to flower. And then again, maybe not yet. Learning more would be a quite acceptable outcome, though.

Proximate Dissonance

"Is it possible we have got it wrong."

"You acted as if most of the entropy had been extracted. And you now admit a flood of doubt. Yes its possible it is not what you thought!", no mistaking her sincerity on this one.

Some of the patterns on the monitor clearly showed a disturbance. True that there was an inappropriate privacy component. And when displayed, that it was so vivid and unique was not lost on him. Climbing this far and exhausted from the effort, all would still be moot if the underlying hypothesis was an insufficient approximation.

Back in the original moon shot days - remember blank check and a JFK deadline? - to spend time and significant money to discover that a technology was nothing more than a rabbit trail … lets just say dream interrupted. Was this the same thing, decades later? Or was he projecting his unfinished old tune onto the current situation?

A life well-lived is a moon shot or an Apollo 13, rock and fellowship in the mud, a righteous agenda in a complacent quagmire. "Paranoia strikes deep. Into your life it'll creep." If those values survived several more senseless wars does it mean that they are somehow wrong? Or right and just not enough?

The new candidate … his arrival very timely. Old values, new hope. Potent mix who's time has come.

Careful, we have reached the top.

The network response to destructive propagation shifting from a kill operation to an organic offset approach. Hoping a low probability event does not occur and putting the preverbal fire extinguisher on the outbuilding full of dynamite … and then testing fate. Oops.

Thats it. Coordinates?

Fortunately, their effort had led to something more thoughtful. The information version reminiscent of reboot, reinstall and wait for the next catastrophe. Then morphing into constant upgrading of high granularity agents. Yes, biology influencing technology and technology leading to better biological science.

The team's resident visual artist adept at recording waking experience. Not long ago, this approach was looked upon with suspicion. How could it be relevant? Not so much to the center of personal identity or at least the invariant object representations there. Invariant objects cannot be measured by consistent foundation alone. Only in application in a shared world was their veracity sufficiently verified.

Dynamic Context Scoping pattern to the rescue once again. Proved useful before - many times. Codified by pioneers with the capacity to visualize at a higher 'altitude' in a variety of transformative venues.

"The tide has turned. Lets double down on our approach. High vigilance is called for here.",

See the difference.

The initial offense is not that big a deal, its the cover up. Maintaining the illusion of purity comes at a very high cost at times. The misinformation was growing 'out-of-control". One could be talking about what they were now seeing on the system monitor or that bane of genetic integrity, cancer.

The conversation with the visuals expert earlier in the day was close to top of mind, now six hours later. Unlike the short-term pathologic growth depicted on the console monitor - the dialog and its unique style produced robust diversity in a story-like format.

The Indirect Differential pattern augmented with abstracted components - yielded an emergent result from the breach analysis. Her behavior alerted him to a hidden agenda of considerable import. Diversionary tactics, though effective as a delaying tactic, merely confirmed the urgency at hand.

It harkened back to the discussion of the primal directive and its override power. Not only did it comandeer the top priority, it tended to masquerade as the leader it replaced. Teasing out the difference required a subtle awareness yet to be coded. He looked at the time. Better sleep on it ...

Again, no surprise.

It wasn't the first time a covert romance played a pivotal and potentially disruptive roll in an ambitious plan. What an understatement. Procreation and practice for it … the longest lived of ambitious plans. Further, it subordinates others more often than any other. The question: now that it is in the open, can the team recover from the security breach quickly?

Her audacity was, on some level, commendable. On another she took the risk that deception was the wise path. If there is anything they had learned it was deception as a tactic is a last resort inside the team. One could hope it was youth. But hope is better reserved for situations outside a group known for pushing the cutting-edge of communication.

Now wrestling with decisions to disclose detail that had been held in reserve for just this eventuality, he wanted to know when an eleventh hour was likely to arise. The 'master override' had a reputation for impacting the less experienced but the phenomenon was surely on a continuum.

Shedding his old attachments was heart-wrenching. This one was hitting very close to home. Yet, given the urgency, he must face his personal nemisis to see it through. There may not be enough time to delegate effectively.

"Should we test their perimeter again?"

"Not yet, the probe will need a different design.", he replied.

Meanwhile, coordination of the production would require constant attention to maintain continuity. Serendipity that this new element had such promise for the narrative. If the musician-executive meeting could happen tomorrow close to - or even better - in the control room the abstract would take the recent form that had served them so well.

And … would she be Ok with being sidelined? Wishful thinking that she would be relieved?

Hear you show.

"The high fronteir just up the hill from us. I came in thru the engine room. The bridge is more fun. Call me when you know. I will be here."

The issue was not seeing. It was in plane site, after all. What to look at was not immediately apparent. And what it meant even more obscure. To set a friendly trap is about ...

Buried treasure? Good question. Best not to answer. She is ... skeptical and a bit distracted (old song, re-done). A pattern with high utility, perhaps remarkably so. The competition might soon tell? Noted - let's move on.

It makes a big difference that graphic and sequence meet this way. A task to better understand the cosmic dance. If the hypothesis had merit the upcoming interview would reveal much.

In an ideal world, the person behind the inspirations of this type would be available and willing. Dreams are the stuff of what can be. Sail on silver girl, the song says. Identity of the unfriendly already considered. The resume looks better with each pass by.

What might be up North? Lights of capable type if history be told. Legends of tomorrow dance in the soup of now. How does that tune go? What images are brought to mind?

The story unfolds as discovered by those that share. A ship on another epic voyage, we know not and can only guess where. Set sail soon ... I will see you there.

Not yet done. Never is. Thank you, I like it.

Nearly Forgotten Courage

The scary thing is we have a president who cares. Leadership is good thing when it is about all of us instead of something much less. Compassion for those caught up in the fever dream about to end. I must be firm, sometimes the right thing to do is not what those we love want to hear. Join me?

Music of the Soup

"A sad and cathartic rhythm passes. Like the late fire light."

Time to turn in. It happens now, not so regular but frequently and it is a very friendly place indeed. It was not always so as those others, my friends now, know. I will see you on the other side, it too was not always so. Grateful, at last, to be on a roll.

Cherokee

Something in a song … that moves me. Sorry if you can't play it on a calculator. Tho' I would point out she can play it on an old phone and later a piano. I got to hear her making it. And I will carry that to the end of me and beyond.

The power … to transcend the privacy hell, and the public shame. Took so long but well worth the ride. Of course you could not see me, then. I couldn't tell you where to look. I didn't know myself. But with your help, dear friend, I found where me resides. And as we learn better how to share the deep cycles, yin and yang, I am far less scared.

Maybe Song, Maybe Not

"… in such a hurry to catch a slow train."

It might have looked liked that but he would have argued that speeds were not the issue. Not at all. The soup is neither static nor homogenous. The plodding mass was one of many currents below an already 'underground' surface. Descending deep to look up sacrificed observational agility. Fast scans to cover large fields only work when filtered to match what is to be seen. If we only knew.

The story resonated. Creative crazy. Crazy Creative. How could he be here if he had not been there. Regret is as good a measure as any. No matter though. A title can tell many a tale, lyrics even more. Sing me a tune, I'll be your lover.

Romance as formula. How little some can tell. Not lost on him. Not this time. Yes a dance, that ever different can last … a very long time. Organic fusion as the master pattern or nearly so. Caught in dreamlike current, fate in the hands of someone to trust. Glad to know you after all this time.

Competing agendas and a view… Perhaps not, know that we will be waiting for you.

Too Short?

Stumbles upon the sound of the sea in the direction of his aging knees. My soup, your soup, perhaps ours. But not before I came close to end did I feel and love and might again. It is rhythm and rhyme, notes in time rather than books … No its not complete, if we are to go 'round and 'round when can that ever be done? I can wait … Join me?

End?

"Should it just be incorporated in an app then?"

"It looks as though we will need for it to be an app with some functionality at the client, regardless."

Their discussion reminded him of the focus on content driven user interface once again. Having operated in that realm for some time, he and the others took it for granted. Yet there were a number cases that required a respectful nod to the older ways. This was one of them.

How often they talked of ends and after long analysis, discovered they were created unwittingly where ends need not have been. Long ago in a language one would have thought lacked the expressive capability, a concept of circularity was encoded in a metaphor because its source could not be imagined at the time. Generality as an emergent concept.

He perused the visual index and bookmarked several more items. Making sure the research time was productive he alerted two other team members. Then he bit his lip, realizing that he had all but forgotten to take care of old business. He reached for the red button and paused ...

Bridge Needs Repair

To find his work at just the right moment. Few would understand. Those that do sail on the soup? Yes, I suspect. Sail against the wind. How can that happen? Descend to the sky.

Hints of the horrible secret (or what seems to be) laced in pensive look-aways or desperate, angry whys. The answer is in the brew below not in the photons arriving? Or, at least, more so than he had heretofore assumed?

Natural language in a natural rhythm. Yet another way to encode the pattern. Is the time right to re-engage the fellow life-after… traveler, he wondered? These just-in-time revelations have become a regular occurrences. As a result, he wanted to act in timely fashion on the bounds-defining-spectrum problem of the observer mechanism.

She was clearly agitated, as if to fear what may be soon illuminated. It probably did not help that his own undesirable habit of expressing fear-driven anger stoked suspicion in her. But it felt, even in his calmest moments, that there was more. And he had found the key to the giant door. Far more enforced the barrier than the lock, but apparently was more dependent upon it than good design would suggest.

Comeback of the Middle

In that era, pivotal choices of global import were often binary. The distinction between two options made easy because no matter what the usual distribution of the consequences were, the 'powers-that-be' had acted to push them apart. "you are either with us or not."

The artificial mass movement flowed perversely to one side or the other. One could say the groove became a slippery ridge. A large minority benefited from this cruel application of free-will. Unlike the eagle, a pragmatic predator that because of its high metabolism as a bird needed the dense nutrition of other animals to sustain its precarious life, this minority lived off something far less noble: The man-made suffering of innocents. It was against the better nature of this minority's constituents, so free-will served up denial, and rationalization.

An interesting term-of-art in computer science, garbage collection, displayed similar characteristics. A simple analysis of the data led to a decision as whether or not to recover storage space when the data was no longer needed. As the algorithms moved to ever higher levels of sophistication and persistence became less expensive, the output was on a gradient rather than just yes or no. But on some level, the sophistication to know when to keep data or some representation of it, had not kept pace.

Categorization was not just one or a few steps in the many parallel sequences that made up the intentional flow of local existence. It was prolific. The decision regarding usefulness of information more and more dependent on a vague predictive value whose margin for error was wide indeed.

Now we are confronted with the short-term interests that take advantage of the resource management vulnerability, he concluded. The seeming diversion over the last several days was, in fact, mission critical. A robust recovery system for classification and categorization functionality that had outlived its usefulness became the next major design objective.

He took advantage of this solo time to collect his thoughts. Using the style that had worked for him so well of late, he began recording the words that would engage the next key player …

Fools Rush In

So close he could not see it. Well, maybe so close he would not see it. Trust is such a malleable thing. Very long term trust mechanisms are the least scrutinized because they have been vetted over a long time. Those rapidly trending from dependence to independence are a legendary both in consistency of general structure and the need for frequent monitoring.

The time to cycle from vague fear and despair to insight and purpose becoming shorter and shorter, as a general rule. How gratifying it was when they discovered the nuances of this were integral to the mission rather than a distraction. Underlying currents are not all that difficult to detect once a conscious connection is made to their obvious existence. Low spacial frequency patterns were remarkably distinct both with respect to conscious awareness and to each other.

That classic concept, 'messaging' was the marker they first discovered. Because its machine representation existed as a nameless object, it languished far down the priorities list. When a clear and present local micro- and macro- examples presented themselves simultaneously, the prototype pattern was named. The name, 'Messaging' also used in political campaigning.

The flurry of initial research spanning several days was nearing completion. A watch scheduled to go on the log at least by afternoon would alert the team when a member of the competition would find out.

"I did not guess we would overlook something so obvious. I am glad I know why."

"A pattern for further work, then?"

"Yes,", he chuckled.

Wallow & Learn

Questions eliciting open ended answers. The best interviewers understand it well. It may be the way to proceed. The 'audience' wants to better understand what led to the event that could redefine a relationship of a decade and a half.

Seed, roots and a durable early plant. Projected longevity a function of understanding history. Even that which preceded the seed, if possible. Not too many species capable of that. Perhaps only one (I have my doubts though).

If it took all this time for him to understand it … write then and save for later. Artifact to communicate, thank you guys.

Observations of the threat that had existed for awhile but only recently detected was leading to the pre-model representation of at least two named meta-patterns. Systemic mirror nature of mind and latent visualization trigger. Tests are as natural as sex. And guess what … more related than first occurs.

What tales the double helix could tell. To a country beat on a fuzz guitar. Whalin' like a forlorn train whistle. Shakyamuni said something about suffering and cowboys put it to music. Anger and sorrow, the bridge. Look close - it lives.

Oversight Revenue Source

The Illusion of Magic

One wonders if taxing anonymous transactions over a certain dollar amount would generate enough revenue to pay for business and consumer friendly oversight. The transactions would be recorded but kept anonymous by encrypting the contract that documents the exchange of value. Only a court order could 'unseal' (decrypt) the transaction contract on reasonable suspicion that a law has been broken. Large secret transactions would be taxed at a full rate and the law would provide substantial penalties for tax-avoidance (think Al Capone prosecution).

The foregoing does not address static assets, only transactions involving them.  It may not be necessary to be concerned though.  The current challenge to our system of valuation will bring about transactions.

NOTE: This part of BuzzTheHill is not fictional. Consider this post a public disclosure and as such, to the degree something inventive has been addressed in it, the specific intent was to put it in the PUBLIC DOMAIN.

In There Somewhere

"If you look right between those two trees you will see the campus. With our high gain antenna we are likely to pick up the signals. The data rate will be very high and the content encrypted. Further, decryption will necessarily await obtaining a warrant."

"Our job then is to adjust the filers based on the other input?"

"Precisely"

Thankfully, the weather was conducive since their vantage point was well into the woods. This mission was power hungry to boot. Supporting high bandwidth communications on battery power … daunting. There was a good chance they would just sit and watch. The window for recording was not likely to change and the initial parameters accommodated a wide variance in contingencies.

At 6am they started recording, keeping a close eye on what operatives on campus may advise that would require their intervention. It seemed as good a time as any to broach the sensitive subject that up until now was subordinated to the mission.

"Is it possible he heard just part of what was going on?"

"Sure. Frankly, I am a bit confused."

Well, I did not want to intervene. There may have been away to stay clear. It happened so fast."

At last they were beginning to discover why it was all seeming too easy. They would be stuck here for hours, rain or shine in pursuit of answers and though they had differences of considerable consequence their mutual commitment meant they were constrained to a productive dialog or none at all.

Mentor

He was fortunate indeed. His mentor seem to come right out of the blue. Since his passion was communications from very early on (second grade he remembered), those who seem to radiate a sense of what it was all about got his attention from his first exposure. So it was that when this eloquent person burst on the scene, he was taken by his ability to speak eloquently to all levels of the mind, sometimes simultaneously.

Further, his passion for the implements of cutting edge communications put him in touch with the very means to become a quick study. About a year and a half into his study of this mentor had transformed a life near retirement to an intellectually active career seeker he could have only dreamed of at ANY earlier time in his life.

Overwhelming gratitude is what he felt. It was all unfolding in the nick of time (or so the song goes). From the inside looking out, and from the outside looking in it seems. The fictional story that had sustained and encouraged him through his darkest times was now becoming the foundation of something more substantial. To live is to thrive. Keep breathing because maybe something will work out became a clarion call to contribute to the well-being of many more.

Only when laying near helpless while his life signs were just a footnote to his environment, he learned what was valuable to him. Instead of desperately holding on for another chance he transcended, over a period of years, to something that had a better ring.

One life, scars to mark the experiences so that they would not be forgotten as the tissues regenerated. Inside too, the marks were not visible though he could sense them as if they were. And that life end point, in terms of time, was indeterminate. And more importantly not measured in units of time.

He could see the key words even with his eyes closed. In fact, better, when his eyes were closed. How they mapped onto that preverbal soup is what made them so vivid - misleading rhetoric, stake, unfairly, fine print, predatory, unscrupulous, lenders, competitors not playing by-the-rules, oversight, safeguards, transparent, light-of-day, perverse incentives, prosperity over the long term. strong bill for now will do.

From the depth of his heart he stated what he sincerely felt, "The rest is in place, they key now for you is to hear, really hear, yourself."

Show Belief

"It fascinates me that we choose a few human organizational forms to demonize selectively. Even in the face of clear evidence to the contrary we hold on to fundamental beliefs electing to morph our passionate argument to accommodate an inconsistency rather than rethink a long held belief from the ground up.

In some cases, the dependency change does not require an initial integrity to be useful in other applications. In my experience this is rare. A credible reference object is usually needed and its beginning in the causal chain pivotal. Extracting a reference class from it should not be taken lightly."

She paused the presentation and asked, "Have we come to one of those times?"

"You might be right.."

The presentation was from years ago, yet it had a very timely point in their pursuit of the current set of meta-patterns. Some of the reference object first used to describe the chains under consideration was encoded in the language. They had just proved it. It wasn't a giant leap to guess that since the language was better expressing the specific, it was possible that aspects of the reference object were encoded as the reference class.

She was far more visual than he and lately her visual objects engaged the team in a clearly superior way than his natural language technique. He felt the tug of his ego and knew in an instant this was one of those times to 'put a lid on it.'

Instead, he resolved to own his ego-bias openly and encourage her to continue. Something important was happening.

... Earth move.

Cacophony - internal, external or both? Holding on to an unsupportable assumption because it 'felt' good consistent with personal resolution of related conflicts. The noise at the coffee shop this morning - was it the source … or mere accompaniment?

"Is it possible you are taking a position and vigorously supporting it based on something you wanted to hear and not much else?"

It was a fair question, he had to admit. The underlying assumption was that the mechanism was built around a somewhat confusing concept. On one hand, allowing a person or persons to put a limited amount of their own resources at risk to try something with the potential to become useful and grow in the process. On the other, allowing a person or persons to transfer wealth to their own account without benefit to those from whom the wealth was taken.

One could argue Mind Share has been at play for a very long time. Certainly much longer than just the period since the term was coined. One function of society has grown exponentially in the last century. It modulates Mind Share and as such attracts those who would use it to personally benefit.

Reduce to a simple syntactic model. The subject influences object. The subject controls object. The subject reasons with object. The subject senses object. And so on.

Master Subject is Master Object. And the Verb describes observation or change. These foundational structures in retrospect are anything but trivial. Oh… and what if those verb candidates are not mutually exclusive?

Very few in his network of friends found his fascination with the workings of mind offensive these days. And when more did? Perhaps it was more because he was not comfortable going there himself until recently.

See

Curvature as a systemic paradigm (general theory eh, Albert?)

Never before has so much relevant data been readily available. Mind-boggling that such grand theories of the global set of data might have told them before. Not testable until now? That is, unless their conscious effort to verify was preceded by something out of there conceptual field?

"Now that each group is aware of the other and a dialog between the groups has begun our effort to discover an evolving collaborative framework for it is also a high priority. I would ask each of you to allocate sufficient time to log effectively."

The Buddhists referred to this exercise by the phrases, "Two but not two", "dependent origination" and "middle path". The fusion of two disparate domains of perception into a unified view honoring each as dependent on the other.

The binary nature of the current task was not lost on him. He was pretty sure she, approaching the revelation from a very different direction, had come to the same conclusion. Both had noticed the high tension engendered by the subject on each member of the team. When Atlas, with the weight of the world on his shoulders, laughed at how seriously they were taking each other, the mountains, rivers and valleys shook in response.

"I am ready for another trip to the butte."

"You will have some company this time."

Distracted Driving

Smart phones could know when they are in a car if the car emits a signal that can be picked up by one of the cell phone's radios. They then could register for the duration of the drive with the cell phone network. If an accident or a violation occurs in a registered car, the fine could double if the driver was using her/his phone at the time. There are a number of off-the-shelf technologies that could determine if the driver was the one using the cell phone during the registered period.

NOTE: This part of BuzzTheHill is not fictional. Consider this post a public disclosure and as such, to the degree something inventive has been addressed in it, the specific intent was to put it in the PUBLIC DOMAIN.

Not Too Far

Out far enough into the field that individual perspectives became a blur. Not to say that …

Their experience of this far beyond the fourth wall perimeter felt less tangible. What did that really mean? It was just different ...

There was this retrospective 'feeling' that they had passed a half way point. A curios thing occurred when closing one's eyes. The scene immediately melted into something that felt more like a systematic matrix of remarkable complexity. Containing the many hues as the open eye image and the same congruent feel but in a different … domain. That was it! The same reality from a totally different perspective started to predominate in the imaginary visual field. It progressed each time the eyelids cycled.

Wilderness as wild but, strangely, more and more familiar. Looking in any direction did not occasion a recall of any concrete memory, not even looking up at the sky. But observing the whole centered on any direction in a stereo field revealed a collection of useful patterns that ... felt like home.

"So, we meet again"

Was it possible their journey had lead them … back to the … image … of where they began?

What 'they' think.

"Highly correlated, no doubt.", he pointed to the monitor. "This pattern's detection requires induction. As virtually all of you know, finding the abstract version required deep empirical language techniques.". The few who did not know the technical description were well aware of when the pattern was operative in the natural world.

Stuck like the food on the plate in the sink when some knucklehead forgot to soak it in water hours ago. A secular argument for friendly. Here they were looking at the metaphorical face of an isolated ego's 'blind side'. The unemotional case for social intelligence was staring at them from the system monitor.

At least three candidates for roles on the team just did not feel right. And now it was becoming clearer why. All three shared a background 'fighting' a somewhat asymmetrical conflict using elements of the very pattern they were seeing now, together.

As with other discoveries of this type, its scalability had substantial implications for the overall mission.

"Speak for me, I am sure there are words already written for how I feel.", she said facetiously. The laughter confirmed the spirit with which she said it.

Best Opportunity

"The trail is not cold yet, if we move quickly just the effort to cover the tracks will generate enough 'heat' to help us get closer to the source."

This was truly good news. At times, this process seemed futile and the only thing that kept them pursuing an explanation was an occasional intentional deception hint. Now, with this latest insight, they could justify employing more resources. Most tasks had been moving at a torrid pace as if nothing was impeding. It felt a bit spooky. Then in the last several weeks it seemed as if they were climbing a sand dune. And the wrong one to boot.

Not so much that it felt bleak but in high contrast to their initial success. And now it was clear that it was due, in part, to a sophisticated stealth effort to slow their discovery process down. The usual questions arose who, how …

"First step is to see if anything in the named pattern library fits. If not, try the yet-to-be-named one and so on?"

"Yes, lets get started.", she answered.

Root of All Evil

Recalling a time when the image of it crystalized. It seemed often preceeding that moment that he would see currency just sitting around as if it was a very different thing to his close associates. Over decades it was variously a symbol of wealth, a useful device for exchange of value, a source of stress in that it reminded of insecurity. Then the special experience, available to all, of being in the world for the Truly First time.

At first blush, one would think it was somehow cavalier to regard it as mess that needed to be cleaned up, when higher priority items had been taken care of. How can we be so … blind. This is something that we really need. Well maybe just want … a lot. Perhaps it was too expensive? Sort of a nuisance.

All led to that summarizing moment, when little piles of it appeared in several rooms, as if to say, "See us. There was a time when we meant far more to you. Now you see us for who we really are, just objects. Sometimes useful, sometimes not."

Funny money, what a phrase. When the Madoff's who had not been caught yet would use their anonymous power and money to get you to make their agenda ours through lavishing wealth on the media.

This pattern, borne of insecurity and the compulsion to objectify pervaded society to a degree that threatened its very existence. Making crazy, something we abstraction engines are subject to, individually and collectively.

Attribution, understanding it may well have been the most important breakthrough leading to this image on the system monitor. Today's task: Verify.

In Defense of Slow

An intelligent, well-meaning lady asked him not long ago, in essence, why ask why? The response from her network to her question, surprised her. And it also caught him unaware even though he initiated the exchange. Not so much that it was necessary to repeal his informed opinion. More that it was to extend and embellish it.

The experience taught him how important interactive discussions were to the process of inductive discovery. As they had discovered over and over, the very means that empowered their destiny changing agency was capable of undoing not only their agency achievements but them.

Interpersonal bonds were relatively easy to recognize. More subtle were the bonds that included a party of more than two. The ego, made possible by the ancient, powerful and primitive was wild and, at times, destructive.

The deep grooves carved by successful techniques. What happens when they out live their usefulness? The faster moving vehicles, not having time enough to fill them in, generate potholes.

As yet another lady pointed out. That which slows you down - can make you more careful when that is the wiser choice.

Puppy

Visualization in the MI simulator is blazingly fast, he observed. Still constrained to the test visuals data base it nevertheless proved early feasibility for real-time visual synthesis.

"Collaboration - brain storming with supporting visuals" Ambitious yes, but doable. Brain-storming as inductive cognition would put the work over the last year on high ground indeed. Recalling that third or perhaps fourth session when the mix of machine assist and individual guidance was near optimum - feeling transcendence together.

Patterns worth repeating. Easy to say. The trick word was the one in the middle, 'worth'. Like much of the work, theory would only take them so far and that was not far enough to put the advance to work in the machine. So worth was determined by real-time consensus then and to a lesser degree now.

The equivalent in whole-mind cognition historically … let us just say it was the stuff of epic myth. Though based on complex interdependent events, the sequence of sights and sounds were recognizable universally. Top layer stuff, an invariant object of vast meaning.

"Why am I guessing your description will be much different?"

She just smiled.

Conflict

… and they of a different mind want to survive as well, does someone have to die?

Must anyone die?
But we all do.
Well yes, that is true. Then without meaning?
Who decides?
We do.
Is there enough for us all?
Let us make it so, it is why we 'see' and share.

I See You

When developing the retinal biometric identifier, there was a stage where the electronics that connected the camera to the computer was called an Interface Control Unit (we used the acronym ICU). Acronyms were a big deal in electronics in the early eighties. As ideas for application of the invention grew, one could not help but to think of the health industry acronym ICU for Intensive Care unit. But after seeing James Cameron's Avatar and in the context of the invention disclosed in this blog ... another minds' eye link - I see you. More here than meets the eye, if you get my drift.



So I asked her, "What phrase do you think represented 'the arc of the story'?"

"The Turning Point", she replied referring to when the protagonist first realized the deep meaning of the conflict and his role in it. Two views from two genders and on deeper consideration he thought, pretty much the same thing.

Loosen' Up Brother

Wondering what an observer would think watching them that did not speak their language. The multi-rhythmic nature of their spontaneous verbal interaction punctuated with seizure like but nevertheless individual actions. About all they really had in common when the words stopped from time to time was a mouth wide open smile.

If there was anything that distinguished this group, it was that they were so different in applying their innate talent and excelling at doing so. And here they were, gathered around a table, laughing at each other as though each had honed a night club comedy act over a period of years.

The prescient phenomena not only continued, it gathered momentum. This gathering was another clear illustration. It is not so much that an event was preceded by a prediction as it was that the probability of the event was high given the subtle hints were available to those who knew how to see … the elegantly probable.

This was a pattern begging for encoding. Though he was having 'the time of his life", another part of him could not wait to get back to 'work'.

Storm Passes

WARNING: Very rough draft. Proceed at your own risk.

She will be 80 soon. Why open with that fact rather than the engaging conversation that dominated the spontaneous hour long first encounter? Because the generational divide is quite palpable, thank you.

Spanning, say, a century and more than half the globe, the discussion fit like a glove. Following morale being nearly trampled to oblivion by the stampede that lasted 24 hours, refreshing. Truly so. In the past, point resources on defeating the enemy. The enemy became stronger each time. The monster of the ID, death or worse.

How exactly did we get here? No, No. Don't repeat the history. Grok it. And do so for the wisdom the experience CAN impart.

One team member of few words known more by who gathers 'round him. Another, a living contrast of careful detailed articulation and prolonged silence. Yet a third, suspicious of those of lesser academic accomplishment but a leader borne of, apparently, an innate compassion.

The group, mostly old white guys who enjoy grey matter workouts. He of that gender was not at a loss to describe them. The other gender, fascinating. Do we share envy of the social mores of the other? It seems so.

Rock the Boat

Protect oneself from military and/or very large private interests? And what of the procurement of development resources? Issues addressed early in the current century regarding Intellectual Property and appearing to have application in the political arena. Many a good thing came from the city by the sea. He was honored that a deep thinker asked for his thought on subject.

"I had no idea that all of it was recorded with such detail." it summarized the real-time recognition process they were studying in personal terms. Congruency, relevance and the like compared with deterministic filing and classification. Error prone, yes. High resolution, very. Context dependent, absolutely. Better approach this one with something more robust than firepower.

His sensitivity to 'crazy making' had a decades old story. The hair-trigger defense mechanism that was at once his nemesis and savior reared its ugly head again. Better that it registers a false positive than to ignore that which could put him in peril again?

But to deny or ignore this pervasive meme in his mind gives it far too much destructive power, he admitted. So on this sunlit morning with nothing pressing he pored over the recent event memories.

Perhaps this 'kind' of emotional tumult was more prevalent in the population than he had assumed. Opportunity? Private meetings for shaking out the bugs based on insufficient sharing of related thoughts? A counterpoint to the concept of unquestioned openness.

They were used to his verbal fumbling, and the team was about to be tested again. "Oh well", he sighed quietly.

Friday, Early May

" … to get away from the intensity and -- by the way, I hate how this word is used -- focus. This is a working retreat, no agenda not even discovery. All we asked you to bring you would have to bring anyway." They laughed because they knew precisely what was meant.

Arriving in a late afternoon this time of year set a dramatic stage. The clouds just breaking up from a spring rain that seemed to make the new leaves glow. The sun just having set - red, light blue and a dark grey blue sky - opened for breaking bread.

The sounds of birds … they know what happens at water's edge. Many had tried to understand why coming to place such as this had such a profound effect.

"Well, right now I cannot think of thing I want to hide. I wonder why?". She just replied to virtually everyone in the party observing her as they were about to take their seat around the table. Just a matter of hours ago they were back at the consoles taking the work at hand a bit too seriously.

The first lull in the joyful conversation was a great set up, "I can't stand it anymore … waiting for the first one to break a rule" This time they laughed in unison. Further their laughter faded as if in response to a conductor". It had to be a segue to something.

Just then the first of the food arrived extending the anticipation while whetting the appetite. Some could understand their behavior in the context of extended family getting together. Others would relate to a happening that acted as a surrogate for what they had missed in childhood. Trust was deep and implicit.

Pilots (TEST2)

He grabbed each firmly and gently slid into place. A solo 'flight' to discover … Something did not feel correct. He waited for the ID link sequence to complete and used the handles to exit. Upon emerging he gazed at the crew. Apparently they had concluded the same thing in virtual synchrony. The experiment was not yet ready.

They needed a co-pilot genetically architected to complement the other with her own cockpit. The same careful organic design - similar in some respects, radically different in others.

---

Three months later ...

The first time he sat in the cockpit was to do a context switch without precedent. Designed from the very beginning to engage sensory familiarity, both natural and technological preserved conscious adaptation for the task at hand.

How gravitation distorted the elevation dimension. Subtle toward a 'center' and up to the limit of relevance. A careful summation of bi-lateral complementarity for yaw. And so on … The user interface design so much different than what was considered conventional for under-the-hood work.

Integrity Glue

Linking a personal history with a single person, while important to fairness and performance is just a small, albeit important, piece of the role identity plays in our society. I suggest that we have not known, and are just beginning to discover the value such a link - if robustly implemented - could play in the destiny of our species.

But what do I mean by robustly implemented? Consider the recent developments of societal connectivity. They are now mimicking the connectivity that gave rise to cognition and then consciousness in biological evolution.

Consider the role of personal identity in symbiosis, synergy, democracy etc. In each case, the performance of such activities is closely correlated with the integrity of identity.

For many decades identity was associated almost exclusively with security. As our artifacts became responsive to identity they became more useful for at least two reasons - 1) a one-to-one relationship with potentially powerful agency 2) the artifacts mitigated the effects of self-serving egos that could otherwise threaten effective agency.

It is beyond the scope of this piece to discuss identities of groups. Suffice it to say, if the primal elements of said groups are of high integrity the group's integrity potential increases … dramatically.

Identity Memes

"… It presumes the valuing mechanism is functioning well enough."

"That sounds reasonable. If I am understanding, what you are saying is the new one has caught and perhaps surpassed the old in several of the most important categories. That is a big deal … a very big deal".

Their collective astonishment was quite palpable. This aspiration of the project was more about application than discovery though still a mix of both. The mind boggling implications not just the stuff of great fiction. This was actionable, at least in the strategic planning sense.

In one map, each node connected a probe to the machine for a duration. Its purpose was to download accumulated wisdom and upload sensory data. Each probe as flexible as possible to serve a mission type. The mission type, in turn, as generic as global support would allow.

The epic meme battle was to get a major scheduled test in about 6 months. Its spontaneous manifestations were unfolding as they met. Meanwhile the identity meme would get a fresh new look, it was certain. When the pattern emerged on the system monitor, they simply could not look away. It nearly jumped from the display surface right out of background simulation and right into their laps.

Identity meme … it has a lifetime of missions. It is highly scalable. Very little about it can remain static though the few of its elements that are, need be very well understood. When the contribution of inductive recursion to team coherence became explicit rather than implicit …

Machine Assist

From nearly two decades of experience he was now considering the assembly of a message for machine translation. It would embody the indirect content with as little cultural assumption as possible. Inspired by a brief morning transaction with PM™ this experiment was mostly a hunch but based on early revelatory interpretations by the team.

"Simply observing what translates well and what does not is a filter that reveals suspect assumptions. If a given assumption is not self-contained, it will be necessary to keep broadening the considered context until a reasonable level of independence is reached."

Success visualization appeared plausible as expected. It was its vivid, specific detail that made it worthy of attention. He wanted to say the temporal dimension dominated but that was only true of the metaphorical instance (purely imaginary). Sequence, with a preferred motor vector was the frame instead. Implicit, the sensory vector reversed the sequence (for another time, he noted on the log).

To continue would be unwisely bold, he decided. The discovery was satisfying but inconclusive with respect to the next step. The only risk in a premature attempt was to dilute the subtle meaning. This decision was easy, indeed.

... detail - not

It felt like somebody was watching or perhaps listening. Spooky. He knew that it could not be the case as they had gone to great lengths to prevent that possibility. But the tingling of his skin and the vigilant attentiveness, unmistakable. Visceral confirmation that the task was nearing a successful completion.

That all of this could be accomplished through interaction with the network operating autonomously was the threshold they sought. He suspected that auto-differentiation of culture specific metaphors had generated the necessary meta-patterns.

To confirm this hypothesis was now at the top of the priorities list. Each time they looked at each other across the desk over the tops of the instrument displays now there was a sense that the time was coming soon when those artifacts would enhance presence rather than detracting from it.

No question, there were many who were still opposed, vehemently so. The idea that an artifact could serve such an important role in human community. He was, for the first time, starting to understand this rather than just accepting it.

There are strong ways to describe the opposition's rationale. And many had. As a result, he was pretty sure this was something to be finessed. The real opportunity was to change minds, not solidify long held superstitions. Two to three days … asynchronous … She smiled.