Tuesdays

Why would the idea of 'reverse engineering' the human brain (or even mind) be so offensive to one who ostensibly reveres science and engineering? And how can that possibly relate to an eclectic mix of ethnicities in an otherwise nondescript neighborhood engaged in a weekly ritual? The common set is much larger than what meets the eye or the conscious portion of individual being.

When all smile, humor transcends ego. It is cosmic. Some spiritual practices more noted for humor than others and even fewer for the cosmic variety. Mildly tragic that some, with mind potential of more, choose to humorously entertain themselves at the expense of others.

Bravado hiding insecurity hiding a denied ignorance. Each time they fell into some version of 'behaving like humans' they were inclined to let out a collective sigh as if to say, "I thought we were beyond that". A team of 'mere' humans.

Lets look at it at both at the same time. The first person to look away loses. Depending on the object of attention one could regard the exercise as training for a noble mission or teenager's needing something to test their readiness to be grown ups. Ok, there are other posibilities as well.

Maybe the last time one considered the fundamental framework was before the framework was able to adequately support future and related discoveries? How to get the message to him? Soup time.

Millennial's Turn

When was the corner turned? The answer, very much dependent on the detailed definition of corner. Precision on the temporal vector is sort of a trick question, is it not? Large consequences first evident in our corner of the universe with the exploration of the subatomic world. Implications in the more accessible 'reality' domain had led to epic questions regarding emergence. Its application in the conceptual domain was the ride of a lifetime so far for this old baby boomer.

Time reversal, time jump etc., routine for decades. But its meaning to that 'objective reality' that was held with such religious fervor? Serendipity writ large. History is not fixed, not even close. How was it that so many treated it as if it were static because our now had passed it by?

No longer just questions for the romantic minds of the subjective world, this was the newly discovered stuff of concrete meaning. There was a time not long ago that the images on the system monitor would have been regarded as impossible for an artifact. Awe as a way of life. Cool, he thought.

Just then she came through the open door, the smile on her face as timeless as the vector in question.

Our Guest Tonight

"You are a part of the story by virtue of your presence."

She hesitated for several very long seconds, then asked, "But where are we going?"

Since the interview regime began, a variation of this question invariably came up. The expression on her face, priceless. Who would have guessed that this soup business would lead to something akin to 'photographic memory'. It was just yesterday or the day before that he was with a key player, a stark contrast to their rapport. Train of thought maintained by avoidance of eye contact. He must focus beyond and away so as to not be confused by his engaged audience? Right.

"There is much to fear from looking in there. Do you like horror movies? Why? No, not much. I used to be afraid. Now, not so much. But you dare to look … in there? Yes. Why? To better see what is in the other direction among other things.", his mind rambled as it often does. 

River City Trouble

Rational Framework Problem: Rational is an idealized state that, in practice, is never quite achieved. Those who argue it either are deluding themselves or have their fingers crossed, out-of-sight hoping no one will notice.

The more one uses absolutes to describe foundations the riskier the structure. And yet most eloquent declarations assert just that way.

"It is a trick. All I have to do is discover what the trick is." The critter is encouraged because, at times, she/he actually gains on that seemingly elusive posterior appendage.

I'll write a paper, have it peer reviewed and get a grant. Why would I want to end the support for my lifestyle by finishing the project if, instead, I can use my credentials to argue (with great skill) it needs further study?

Sometimes a sense of humor is the only tool to disarm arrogance. The hazard, humor itself can be corrupted by arrogance and its cousin, denial. Those two, smoking in the boys room, again ...

Secret Agent

Nothing like the real thing, he thought. Through all the simulations they had a vague feeling they had left something out. While this was normally the case in practice runs, the consequences could have a dramatic effect on the plans for subsequent activities. Too many conditional branch options for comfort.

Easy to just constrict the pipes to simulate loss of bandwidth to the outside. Re-creation of likely intermittent interruptions or high packet loss, more challenging. The biggest challenge? Uncertain latency.

On the most abstract level, primitive influence could be very helpful. To the degree it repeated across classes of objects a layer below, it served to verify working assumptions or exclude them as appropriate.

The fluid nature of these abstractions, a large vulnerability, though. Consistency at these levels does not require an 'out there' corollary. It is rare that such a construction can occur. And when it does … hold on.

They had agreed to let a third party choose the timing and other key aspects of the simulation so as to make it 'realistic'. Now that even that third party was not in control their predictive ability was in for a real shakedown.

"Aren't you the one who can't tell the difference?"

"Wait a minute, I was confusing the names, but not the associated content." As quickly as he had finished saying it he knew he had dropped the communications ball and he would need to proceed accordingly.

Introduction

From the start they had been confronted by the ever present vulnerabilities of the ego. Often laughing at the mistakes they made in a self-deprecating way, there simply was no substitute for a conscious vigilance on the subject.

It was helpful to be constantly working on an 'ego-dependent' system. The view into the consequences of selective attention gone awry was a recurrent reminder of the secular argument for compassion. The subtle truth was beautifully complex, in no small part due to its highly abstract nature, up the indirection tree.

Some of the most accomplished came by way of a highly threatening dysfunction, easily led astray by suppressed ego lashing back. If and when balance is restored the potential to become champions of life, not just in life. No better choice than to just brace for the storm knowing it will make them stronger.

Incentive I would like you to meet Compassion. Compassion, Incentive. We have chosen this place because of its symbolism. When great concepts assemble in new ways, we humans thrive. It has happened before, look around. It is time for it to happen again.

... you care.

"We essentially want to ping a succession of transients into the machine in one language while accumulating a frequency distribution of unnamed patterns. Once a threshold has been reached, starting with the most frequent, suggested names will be generated. They in turn will be fed back to input filters to determine whether or not the suggested names are retaining their meaning.", it said.

The suggestion to have the voice speak as naturally as possible made a big difference in his own perception. The arguments against it in the beginning were pretty compelling. After all, how arbitrary was such an effort? But the intuition vs. 'makes sense' tradeoff had shown the same result, time and again. Even today, the non-explicit mechanisms at the heart of communication meaning were still beyond easy reach and were absolutely key to real-time categorization, sorting and the like.

Infrastructure people, especially the hardware folks, still wanted to hold the target in their sites and were able to accelerate the tracking of such. But cognition was about multi-dimensional change and they knew it. Putting together those application stacks that supported the very definition of flexible in the cognition space presented the new set of priorities.

The exercise just completed, at first blush, seemed a complete diversion or at the very least, so far removed from the task at hand as to be inconsequential. The surprise? This was the hidden architecture that so long eluded them.

Patterns of nurturance and how they had heretofore looked at them were key in the foundational framework that made that holiest of grails, flexibility possible but self limiting.

The gender dialog module they were researching was more than just balancing out the next obvious bottleneck. It looked as though what it would reveal how efficient evolution of flexibility might best be structured in the machine. The tendency to repress what seemed now to be obvious, especially with such vigor, raised a new question that simply could not be ignored.

Each Carefully Chosen

A classic problem with autonomous appearing thinkers? That dude renowned for communication circa 1500 bc or so had a way of thinking about such patterns.

The scholar who inspired him most on subjects of this type probably thought in a different language than his. Yet his words, in English, as they appeared in that dead tree medium, began his two decade long journey into human potential. He reflected, fortunate indeed that the sage is still with us.

Already, he was getting feedback from the machine that would lead to naming the pattern. There were clearly a whole class of sentient beings that resisted a sophisticated artifact's influence as if it were the work of the enemy. Look who's calling the Pathos black, he mused.

So it is with the wisdom of compassion he would wade again into the at times raging ocean. Because it was the wise thing to do. But this time, better prepared. The sea's energy can be sensed from anywhere one touches it. Like the soup.

Harvesting that energy for a worthy mission, an implicit promise. Yes, a statement here and only a bit tentative. But any lingering doubt was more likely due to an unfinished question than ...

Reflecting Self

The longest day of the year and at least one step behind. After being in front for so long this felt odd. A friend brings up a somewhat valid criticism and because it hit his blind side he got defensive. Usually, a little dose of denial would fix the guilt which would cover up the flaw … which would overwhelm his creative capacity with really, stupid stuff.

The monitor feed this morning consolidated several themes relating to illusions of success and their aftermath. Nearly spontaneous partnership creates resentment for the third wheel. And then it dissolves as quickly as it formed and comes crashing down and said wheel, as if to add insult to injury, is dragged into the meltdown.

Meanwhile, the yellow marker, raises a caution. Something deceptive has been detected? The seeming adjacency, is it two instances of 'expecting failure'? To win is to understand, for the goal may have been poorly articulated … or worse.

The conversation last night between the two of them followed this pattern. Nuance of a key word in her mind clashing with a different nuance in his. Yet their heartfelt urge to engage produced a result that was unexpected among the largely female audience.

Is 'about what' more gender related than he had considered until now? Had he simply been looking where the light is better? The temptation to play the, "I'm slow but careful card".

How related are self-calibration and reflection then? Inter-communication. Exercising the machinery of communications in a self-test of sorts. "I don't need to go there, I know what I am talking about." Really.

"Where is the final assembly map?."

"Seeing it now would confuse more than enlighten."

Key of Light

Public voice, private ear …

"Your prescription for chaos has been filled, you can pick it up at the counter. Have you signed up for our rewards program? If you buy more worthless stuff we can discount your purchase of future worthless stuff. Its about savings. Our marketing department has spent much of the company's margin on selling you stuff you don't need so that it can pay less taxes. This, in turn, rewards criminally overpaid management to pump up the profits for anonymous shareholders, private entitlement groups (pensions, retirement funds etc.), China and professionals w/o souls." He thought to himself, nice that the tongue-in-cheek presentation was entertaining as well as informative.

"How is it that you don't see opportunity in that?"

"I see what you mean.", he answered appreciating the pace of her words matching his ability to rhythmically absorb the humor and its substantial implications. The house of cards was actually quite rigid. Stable in the attrition of despair. But likely to come tumbling down with a small change, precisely timed.

A few from the dark side could see their vulnerability. Their vision a result of reverence for the clever even if it resided in the competition. Redemption could be appealing to just enough of them to turn the tide. For they are clever too, but their historical cynicism … lets just say a critical fraction have 'outgrown it'

"We know where to look generally. A bit of diligence and we will discover how to narrow the field."

Groove Wary

"… on that groove thing. Do you suppose we fell in one?"

Grooves can be a good thing when they lead somewhere. But not all do. This one with a wavelength of months and a history of destructive resonance. Remember when Tesla shook an entire building with just a sustained tickle at the building's resonant frequency?

A war of the roses, passion behaving badly. Each time they fell in, they had to struggle back out. No more forward progress until they reached the top. Would be better to know the edge and its location before the fall and avoid it. "Next time ... next time,", he grumbled to himself.

The old dog cannot remember where he hid his favorite bone. But this canine is wise if a bit creaky. He sleeps a lot, chooses his steps careful. The old gray matter dances unencumbered by robust young peripherals (legs, eyes etc.) Memories fill the cracks, thank you.

So with less capacity to sense and manipulate the 'real' world, grooves are cut with more care and attention.

He winked at her with one of his fading eyes, "You said it dear." She, never more beautiful to him than at this very moment.

Core Dump

Nothing to lose from failing again. Much to gain from learning from the failure though. And the learning is on the path, even if indeterminate in length, to success.

Greek
Logos - … order and knowledge
Ethos - … morals
Pathos - appeal to an audience's emotions

Suggest a course of study: Let 'er rip.

Logos on high, my mama Ethos said, my Pathos told me so.
I know what you mean? What do you mean by that?
Well they play together.
In the soup?
Yes, there.

Super compute this, Grasshopper.

The grooves keep diverting us.
Then we must fly.
How do you do that.
Ask the soup.

How?
That is our mission.
To find out?
yes.

On high is supported by nurturance and encoded ancient experience.
Isn't that constraining.
For an individual, yes.
how about a group?
better
and all?
best.

Cycles too?
Seems reasonable.
Add it to the list?
Or, at least, candidates for such.

How can a course be a groove?
In context, they are pretty much the same.
When groove leads to a spill?
Time for a new groove.
That takes time.
Yes, less time in the soup though.

She is a soup girl. And I love her.
Her or it?
Yes.
I see.

At soup's edge, an embrace.

Dirty Laundry

"How dare we edit in the cloud? Readers have important surfing to do. There are plutocrat instructions to follow. Rules to be followed. Leaders to obey. Our quiet desperation is barely masked as it is. And you have the unmitigated audacity to put something in a place available to almost everyone that is not perfect?"

He could barely contain his laughter, reading this and thinking about how ridiculous they felt. Actors all, but following which script? And those clowns that hid behind the visual medium, safer humor?

Its not so much that she gets it when he laughs at himself. More that the hyper-vigilant ego is caught sleeping - not inclined to bark at the unfamiliar. So anger expressed through humor is a special case. If the blowout bleeds off the pressure it might be good. Not so much if it taints a large swath of the human spirit in the process.

Individuation, as if it was really over with when the zits start to disappear. The word from her lips caught his attention more than the others. Because it was acknowledgement that the message was received. In your dreams, Ego. More likely a subtle reminder, "The Beer Diet video is funny because you are not likely to be an 'adult' in this lifetime, self."

Nuanced Digital, Probable Analog

I am not persuaded. You, on the one hand, say that freedom has bred ego-driven destruction of human values, and at the same time provides your right to say it. And she says we must honor rights but do it in a way that does not sacrifice the incentive to help others."

Was the school experience so much better than the rest of his life abroad that everything was seen through the filter of transmitting 'approved' curricula? Had the currency of academic ascendance really created a perception of transcendent value?

If the debate (approved to happen within the ivory walls) gave a 'fair' listen to both sides, the argument could continue indefinitely. And guess what, the incentive was to validate the debate protocol by sustaining the argument for as long as possible. And each time this process was repeated, it reinforced the illusion of its architecture primacy. No matter that it made sense, it was fundable.

And what if the architecture was flawed or just limited? Now that was, to put it lightly, the awkward moment. By the time the elephant sitting on the coffee table could no longer be ignored, much of the good had to be carted out with the obsolete. Three steps forward, two back. Is that the best we can do?


To be fair, when they designed the model they were operating on a hunch. But, of course, that was nearly always the case. Objective view, it served well until ... it ran out of steam. Two salient facts: First, that science itself is far from complete if you look just beyond the backyard gate. And second, isolating either the observer or the observed, while convenient, has an incompleteness consequence.

Being so damn sure is pretty silly, big girls and boys need more compelling games. A humbler and wiser time coined the acronym, MAC (Machine Assisted Cognition). We never finish growing up, we just run out of gas? Science and technology alone are simply insufficient.

And Back Again

The similarity with the environs from which they awoke was unmistakable. Still a reasonable doubt. They had arrived from a direction … or method they could not have anticipated months ago. The seeming time fusion could explain it though. He chose to reserve judgment until the tenuous concept seemed plausible in their current context.

The shifting foundation was disconcerting. That was expected. That it had meaning … not really. At least to the extent it was beyond the principles that had served them in their risky quest.

A long simmering debate about two often disparate academic paradigms, liberal arts and science/tenology still not resolved in that one could actually claim the last note was played. And maybe that is as it should be. The rhythms and phrases implied a triumphant … about to say, end. But conclusion might better describe it.

More than once through history the futile attempt at compulsively objectifying reality had run headlong into its incompleteness. And it was surely not pretty, at least not as it was described in history. Those touchy, feely notions of a friendly but indescribable omnipresence emerged as if to say, "Put down your toys, its time for dinner."

Is it that we do not truly outgrow the anger we first felt when individuating? That its remnants pervade the rest of life here, now? His educated friend using his extraordinary intellect to maintain an energy wasting tension. At times it looked to be the work of a winning coach, at others the behavior of adolescent angry about not knowing what a bag is about (much less having one.)

And those shizoprehnic followers, found validation in the camaraderie of the group. Caveat: playing observer for the purpose of stepping outside that being measured. Accepting another's lead without conscious awareness that that is what is happening.

Weeding out this pattern, a truly dynamic problem. Why won't those weeds just hold steady so we can eradicate them? So many great jokes fitting into the cognitive convenience category.

"When does a transient become periodic? When it repeats …"

Collateral Hormones

In a moment of brainstorming with her, a practical epiphany occurred. Legendary for her ability to trash all the latest cutting edge gadgets in record time, he was inclined to document this fact for posterity in the common method of the time, digital photography.

Imagine, if you will, how these familiar devices could end up in this condition from 'normal' teenage use. Keep in mind, this happened in the USA not in Afghanistan. Further, no human life was lost, as far as we know. Nor were any animals mistreated either.



When asked how it was that these otherwise durable devices seemed to fall apart as if nuclear war had broken out, she replied, "Dad, I am a teenager … duh."

The picture above gives you a glimpse into just what can happen to innocent life-like devices entering the … hormone domain.
In the process he learned that epochal moments often revolve around adolescent behavior. It is not just an urban myth.

Back to the epiphany, "product testing services of the extreme kind ought to be of particular interest to a manufacturer known for 'cool'. Stay tuned.

A Vision's Nocturne

It was telling a story of an unexpectedly warm reception in ancient and storied land much maligned of late. From the beginning, a progressive calm was growing as the field of daybreak is flooded by the dawn.

To land on the Horizon required extraordinary skill and the cooperation of the inhabitants who lived there. But as the destination neared the attraction, while not affecting the velocity of their vehicle, became …. overwhelmingly friendly.

He recalled the toddler's smiling and knowing asian face in her pretty dress. And her male admirer, he had a way with the girls, remarkable for such an early age. Their picture together symbolic of what could be gleaned from a long bridge (Bejing/Jerusalem).

Primitive Directive writ large, an urge to carry the message to those still suffering. The legend an ancient map to a landing spot on the edge of oblivion (some say to The Photon). Epic myth encoded in the very DNA common to all life.

Without a compass or any other means to navigate he would find his way out and would attempt to share the magic with those he learned to love. Uncertainty fueled his journey much as it reflected the content of the abyss at lands edge.

The meal and the way its was served, such an expression of generosity that instilled the meaning of smile. The Soup - at its best, a sea of security based on mutual interest rather than isolation.

Lion's Study

"We have cast about looking for the sequencing code without success. I suspect we should try to assemble the chunks into plausible order manually with auto-linkage assist and resume the search in parallel."

Holding up one finger, she said, "There many be a third option … give me a minute."

The team had reason to believe they were well within the primary synchronization event window and harvesting concurrency benefits in such times was low risk. He was acutely aware of the recent setback though. Warning signals were thought to be a result of the experiment when in fact they were simply predicting falsification.

Precision launching in the virtual near weightlessness was most of the navigation task. Space/Time lock an expensive resource best not used at all but there if needed. Given the species presumed evolutionary history it amazed him how intuitive flight felt inside. "Why?" for another time, he thought.

The smaller of the near objects in the target volume resembled items suspended in fluid as if buoyancy was offsetting some gravity. Others were rigid as if resting against some floor out of the field of view. The ever present outliers of uncertainty could, at any time, disrupt an otherwise thoughtfully considered path to a point of interest. The pit bull was as friendly looking as just about any animal's face. But some might turn at a most unexpected time.

He expected to be pressed once again by those who had a right to know by virtue of their being subject to what they were developing. It was tempting to just follow the training while pretending he had more important things to do. He didn't want to regress though. Taking a deep breath, he opened the door …

They Heard Me

A view of the team for the first time observing the machine's voice initial 'utterances'. The camera angle was chosen in part because it would be a view of the machine itself if it chose to mimic human interaction.

Since this tape was culled from literally months of elapsed time and many hours of actual time it had the effect of telescoping a thread of experience that involved the dialog players and the machine. Like a pianist/composers's 'noodle' it set the mood. And did so in powerful nuance.

They had learned much from the idea of designing for interactivity before it was needed. From the time cameras were built into displays, a flood of interactive applications barely conceived of came into common use after the first exchange transaction.

Temporal uncertainty pervaded nearly every aspect of the project because of the causal flow reversal. The sequences became apparent quickly when compared to the discovery of their timing. Synchronous event descriptions yielded clues to the relative durations and how they should be calculated.

High level cognitive functions are especially sensitive to sequence and synchronization. Sensing a validating rhythm was a curious mix of primitive (seemed to be human nature) and tall (reaching high into the cognitive hierarchy).

The first glimpse that an autonomous 'speaker' was emerging familiar largely because of a 'heartbeat' for lack of a better term. Instantly recognized by every member in the small theatre, the image of colored light dancing on the faces illuminated the expressions of collective wonder - like when the baby recognizes its mother's face, or the sound of her voice with just enough familiar and just enough new to be of interest.

He wondered whether the rapid cycling of short tempers and spontaneous laughter leading up to the tape would prove in the near future to be indicative of the rare quantum leaps they were now expecting?

Once again, the temptation was to expand the team as rapidly as the questions came into being. They now knew that temptation was just ego's vulnerability but as they ventured in it was becoming more difficult to recognize it as such. By suppressing the urge they discovered, the noise accumulates faster than the signal in cases such as these.

Something is Happening Here

"Yes, but I am afraid."

"But that is what friends are for."

"I see."

Building the elements of trust and sustaining them so that they leach into the soil and become a part of the limbic system. A complex task made ever easier by the coherent masses accumulating on the surface of awareness. Gravity does the rest. Highly concentrated energy attracting same is a fundamental law of nature (thanks, Albert).

Friendship defined security arrived just about the time the growth only artifact model started to hit the limited resource wall. Nature provided the precedent … again. To hear the subtle emotion of the exchange … a signature of the pattern they hoped to apply. From fear to visualization in a handful of words spanning seconds.

Encoding emotional nuance was still the most challenging task for these high level patterns. Largely because it was difficult to generalize the source of synthetic reaction. Not convenient but easier than reaching the chronic disruptions. Therein lay the opportunity, he concluded. If he could distract her hyper-alert consciousness and appeal to her 'soup', he will have passed the ball. Further, the seeds leading to the next harvest will have been carefully placed.

The feeling of compassion for the machine was palpable. For it was the extension of robust friendship.

Cross Cultural Concept

Like reverse engineering cover-ups, much useful information is revealed by responding to a gut-feeling that something is not quite right.

When privacy is used to cloak intention from those negatively affected by such intent, certain patterns are recognized below the level of conscious awareness. In our newly connected world, we have the means to accelerate collective discovery and respond accordingly.

Secrecy and/or obfuscation in and of itself is not necessarily nefarious. The association with broadly distributed meme distribution becomes highly suspect. When candidates look the other way while using this mechanism they are in breach of the public trust. A vibrant 'press' is the antidote. Its new medium is shifting away from the broadcast paradigm to an interactive one. Hang on journalists and journalism, your employer will likely change but, rest assured, you will have one once this is sorted out.

This little pearl sure struck a resonant chord. His tolerance for the inefficiency was wearing very thin of late. Confronted with the challenge of a nearly continuous workaround had grown from a mere nuisance to potentially mission critical. The distraction was the closest thing to blocking coherent noise he could think of as they approached ground zero.

"We can no longer afford a communication breakdown on this issue."

Brain Stuff

Push Button Tuning

The history of radio broadcasting served as an appropriate backdrop for understanding of what changing communications meant to their effort. Many inexpensive crystal radio sets listening to one or a handful of broadcasters. Straightforward but costly to transmit but amortized over the many who could listen with a very small investment.

Technologically constrained but economically viable. In America, advertising proved instrumental to radio's success. Zero cost replication of the message was a characteristic of the high technology medium of the time. The audience capacity to purchase what was promoted over the new medium closed the loop as they went to the advertiser's business for products or services.

Though the distribution system was novel and a sociological breakthrough, the content is what drove radio adoption just as it had done for newspapers before. A medium, at best, is only as good as what it carries.

The big difference now … cost effective to support many communication paradigms for a critical mass of the global population. Interactive, ad-hoc, flexible, adaptive etc. The very foundation of biological consciousness emergence millennia ago now reflected in its artifacts. And creative recursion had kicked it into a higher orbit.

Each medium had its masters. Who would become the masters of the medium that could enlighten masses? The machine's collection of patterns were beginning to form their own meta patterns. Synthesizing a coherent personality(s) seemed a distinct possibility. And for the first time, it looked as though one would not have to take it on faith alone that a memetic consciousness would emerge.

How Did Nature Do It?

The concept in a nutshell is the anonymous high-volume distribution of intentionally misleading information. Like high-frequency trading on Wall Street, it promotes disruption of the friendly consensus that checks and balances initiatives. This exploitation problem was, more or less, not anticipated when the heuristic network was designed. Their work was, in large part, an effort to address this vitally important unmet need.

The large infrastructure organizations have had the advantages of the 'cloud' for a long time. To the degree their revenues are linked closely to a high integrity relationship with individuals, the foundation for organic growth is in place. The organic precedent goes back ten of thousands of years, at least. Bio-mimicry requires more than merely seeing an application of the functionality. How to build a system that adequately 'mimics' takes considerably more than just observing external behavior of a black box.

Cataloguing the unnamed signs and symbols and the misnomers was becoming easier. But no team member was oblivious to the enormity of the task anymore. Only recently discovered was the method of purposely withholding classes of data from a team in order to discover new techniques of remote sensing and action in the machine.

Mediating the clash of two of the team members had opened up grand new vistas of opportunity for him. She was constrained by a lack of experience and her opponent by pretty much the same thing. And he, tasked with the meta-application of on-the-job protocol as it relates to teamwork, had a chance to see much room for his own improvement in this area.

"Just finished updating the log. Please acknowledge at your earliest convenience."

Process

The careful balance of trust with both the interviewee and the audience is even more challenging in a real-time interactive environment. The preparation for such an occasion is a process of engagement based on escalating confidence in and amongst the participants.

Trust on deadlines is risky business. A question arises in such cases - who benefits from the existence of the deadline? If all interested parties do, the risk is lower though the necessary implicit agreements may have unintended consequences..

These were just some of the important reasons for careful sequencing of the interview regime. The core piece of the mission, at least as it is now viewed, is trusted connection. Just as clearly as it cannot be answered with a simple binary, true or false it is also fair to say the complexity is emergent and content dependent.

In the slang of the realm, a reverence for the soup and its 'nature' is mandatory. There simply is no substitute for establishing a dynamic rapport. The bridge is never finished because the shores to which the ramps are attached are constantly shifting (alive). Time lapse photography of a vibrant city's skyline illustrates the principle well.

And so it was with the early stages. The corner stone of the concept itself, its definition was, necessarily in a constant (though somewhat predictable) state of flux. Maintaining its integrity in the face of continuous and growing challenges was the foundational constant. Keeping close tabs on the task and constantly updating introspective tools proved key to scalability.

"Looks to me like our next task is to abstract this part of the scaling step we are now in with a view to 'signing' it. Agreed?"

Cloak Has Purpose

"What are the implications of microcredit in the US?"

"Maybe virtual microdredit then?"

"Extend microcredit to those who join now, they just promise to pay their dollar or three based on some virtual binding agreement?"

"An early serial number might then be a badge of honor?"

Hearing just this side of the conversation was surprisingly robust. A social networking application on an existing platform. At least real meaning for the ability to link the dignity of an individual to the rest of the world. As they had been saying for weeks now, 'projected identity'.

The skeptical members on the team pointed out the holes, as one would expect. But their nay-saying was tempered with the admission of all team members, ego is necessary and unpredictably hazardous. Those reading his log entry would recognize that these ideas are not fiction at all, merely existing functionality with a sign or symbol attached in the usual semiotic fashion.

The soup appeared yellow and red. It was useful to assume that this was no coincidence (nothing is). He turned from the console to look at the others with a subtle smile, "I suspect it would be wise to remain behind the identity cloak for a bit longer. Thoughts?"

Variations on Integer

Private done right. A community. It seemed so. Isolated. Things grow well close to the sea. Ocean air, hard on artifacts, gentle to the living. "They wink at you. Really." From the protected cove to the trail of midden shells, a time to contemplate and nurture a wounded heart or two. Her idea. In retrospect, long latency and profound.

Now many years after, those flights of fancy not an end or 'friend' to paranoia. A narrative became visible just in time … but at the eleventh hour. Many paths converged to make it possible. Desperate and insecure clawed at him with unreasonable urgency. This strength not derived from being taught. No, No.

"First, he must crawl."

Transcend the Groove

How much adaptation to a failing organizational model? Occasionally falling into the soup below becomes easier easier with time. The bridge knows both shores.

Public Ear, Private Voice

Was this the person to get the message through the machine (preferrable) or directly to the legacy power structure? Patience and calm, there was enough time and because there was no reason for counter-productive urgency. The recently developed prudence of developing an identity based profile led him to a review of the person specific protocol to be employed.

A decades long friendship that began in the heat of corporate politics. A shame that the mechanism designed to insulate risk-takers from inappropriate exposure to their investments had been turned into such a zoo of egos behaving badly. Welcome to humanity and their experiments in leap-frogging evolutionary latency. In your dreams.

This man of a truly American background, whatever that means. The city of his childhood, a curious mix of social paradigms that could probably could not have occupied the same space in another country. An ethnic background with a truly remarkable track record in humor, financial achievement and the target of persecution. A haven for privacy, America proved a fertile ground for this man of ethics and warmth.

Secrecy and its circuitous management not often far from his attention. Openness, even when readily available at low cost, suspect. Too many examples of dangerous parties masquerading as the latest innovations. Better to go with the known and flawed than the new and unfamiliar. In a word, conservative. But iberal too because he was smart and sensed that power was in the hands of those whose stewardship had not kept pace. But still, conservative because the consequences of rushing in might prove foolhardy.

Yes, this old friend, new to the project but not of its founding ideas had a background particularly suited to this field test. He leaned back in his chair with hands clasped behind his head. The suggestion from the system monitor was just explicit enough. It was time to start assembling recent historical events to prime the machine. It would learn the primitives from the player's data interaction.

Set up the scene: Weapons shipments hidden from a sanctions regime. The usual suspects - Iran, the private China connection, maritime activity etc. The new kid on the block, potentially powerful with the tools of a society revering the 'rocket fuel' known as Open. Those aspiring to influence who had not yet embraced the cutting edge in communications technology, in many cases, could only watch as emergent destiny was taking a sharp turn. For they were dependent on the choke points of data distribution. Pathologically so.

Memoir

The voice network, though primitive by comparison to its successor nevertheless helped specify basic requirements of military communication that did not become obsolete as the technology progressed. The limited data rate of the medium reaching deployed deterrent assets made it essential to have robust communications interactivity as input for decision support.

Now decades after his first direct exposure to the US's version of private/goverment/military collusion he reflected on just what it meant to selectively transcend technological obsolescence. And once again as the machine had predicted, the friendship paradigm was vastly superior to the other security modalities.

Discovering the whereabouts of an old nemesis was no coincidence (nothing is). Those fateful years on a legendary coast … surreal for its mix of escape, dread, imagination and coincidence. That now elderly man, looking very much the same, at least in his public profile. Quiet, well dressed, unassuming superiority. PR product of a pre-offereing memorandum updated for the latest hype.

Fascinating group of people they. Arrogance, entitlement, "firm but fair". Completely caught unaware to creative pursuits of social significance. Made sense. If success is measured by controlling organization, little is left for spontaneity and sub-agency. A military model in the absence of a military mission. Decades hence remnants of hanging on for survival in the face of self-destruction wrought a new crisis, resource exhaustion.

In a matter of hours he would be face-to-face with another point-blank observer. His rapidly improving skills barely able to keep pace with the opportunity. Still not that far along the track, he chuckled. It was joyful for its childlike wonder. Great memories relived many decades later.

Win the Series

Accidental mediator, curious roll for this old-timer, he thought. The two parties he knew as well as anybody he could remember but this was the first time ever of being a sort-of a collaboration facilitator. Probably not. It just felt like a big deal. Each of them needed the other two to see themselves. Emergent opportunity … less surprising each time. Yet another implicit demonstration of connection along the lines of dependent origination.

Speculation engine needs exercise. Its hunger can turn from maintenance to compulsion. And for this issue, one could argue the transition to pathology happened over relatively long periods. His mediation roll was an opportunity to see, really see, from a sufficient distance the story of the fall from equilibrium.

One steeped in a cultural gender imperative and the other in the ubiquitous transition to responsibility. What is my excuse, he asked himself. I suspect I am about to find out.

Symbolic nature of the disputed behavioral object was not lost on him. How does one dance the cogent indirect with this one? The primitive land mines were many and proximate. Distractions abound. And somewhere it felt like a red fellow with a pitch fork had that look.

So, he shared this with his friends through the machine. It had become a very pleasant routine. Supporting the notion that often progress is more about prevailing in a conflict with a dragon than eliminating the fiery beast.

Sahalee

He looked around and thought to himself, "this is why the Native Americans called it heaven." Feeling fortunate indeed that the limits on his physical capacity did not prevent him from coming here in the best month of the year, bar none. Certainly not coincidence that it was to demonstrate just what it means to extend identity with connected friends. It was decades ago that he first conceived of just what it would mean if dialog originated from a natural place as far from 'civilization' and nearly all of its 'conveniences' as possible.

In a matter of hours, he would be interviewing the person most associated with the benevolent application of human artifacts. And then moderating an international discussion related to the interview. A dream come true? Well yes. But he would argue that building its vision in the minds' eye of a critical mass would also. And even launching the meme by showing its practical feasibility was a satisfying on a grand scale.

Those early interviews, the prototype for this. Their assembly into a manifest collective vision was precisely the point. As awestruck as he felt that at this point in his life's timeline, the thought that he would be here now trumped it.

The means to share this experience with the world with off-the-shelf interconnected devices was truly remarkable. As technological capability became widespread and low-cost, there was an accelerating shift to meaningful content and effective collaboration. Dreaming no longer confined to a resting place naturally paralyzed and a solo activity. This was what the cutting edge of scaling up the dream was all about.

They prepared to launch the raft, wireless devices ready to share interactively with an international audience standing by. Save for the way they were dressed and what little part of the floating device was showing, one would not have known this was happening hundreds of years later.

Notions of Reality

Analog notions of reality. He often used to hear words to this effect that reality is analog, that they were somehow equivalent except for the convenience of those who study the very small. Then fields of waves collide with particle behavior and then, worse yet, something about a fusion of the digital and probability. What is a common sense sort of gal or guy going to do with that?

And what of these continuums whose tails do not trail off to nothing? We can describe it with limits never met by our perception of 'reality'. More questions than answers. Yet we want first to declare something, anything. And are left with the emptiness it implies. Seems to me Shakyumuni described it with a primitive language of 25 centuries ago as well as anything today and he admitted to standing on the shoulders of giants, in a manner of speaking.

Right up against it, they were. Paradox based on ambiguity as certain as an absolute, ambiguous … paradox. And from it life springs and confounds the 'law' of thermodynamics. Staring into an abyss. One in multitude scattered in every direction. Chasing a particle or wavefront and guaranteed never to catch 'It' as it is 'returns' to the source. Lets say that is, perhaps massless, and receding at the universal speed limit from every direction.

Dreaming in a world known to be connected in every conceivable fashion and more, left little option with regard to the unitary source. His dear friend says, "The Photon" and after awhile as if to get it for the first time he asks, "The Only One?"

Dark, Very Dark

A dark view, destiny for the lone bright star will fade with the years and burned out hyper expectation. Just another potential heaped on the normal distribution of entropic waste.

Does it matter what I think? Don't ask me when it pours, the day after the slap from the once trusted. I might convince you all is lost save for extreme suffering. I have a way, a very ugly way, with words at times.

And he wonders, weeks or at least days of following someone else's thoughts. It that such a good thing? I mean that idea that meanderings of another mind, no matter how eloquently recorded should be in lieu of the connectedness that can only come with interactive rapport with the vast stores of human experience. Perhaps we are simply raising the bar for what deserves sustained attention. War and Peace did not prevent Hiroshima or the BP Oil spill. A low tech way to bridge the tribe to humans organized at the next level, maybe. Enough with the flowery flights of fancy we can ill afford.

Well reader, you wimpy voyeur, I warned you. Back off. And close the door on your way out.

Primal

When they see holes in our attempts at reasoning, they may take an approach that causes one to lose face. Not so big for a child, more so when pre-disposed to a defensive reaction. Especially in the case of the perceived undermining of a classical tribal role.

Seeing it in the other direction … when power is derived from the drive to propogate there is a tendency to use whatever means is at one's disposal to not let that perception replace other essential survival functions.

The difficulty of thinking on this subject, perception of justifiable manipulation, without triggering a set of primitive knee-jerk reactions was challenge extraordinaire. Perhaps demonstrating the potential of developing tools that pragmatically augment and/or divert such a strong motivational force.

Though the phenoms period spanned several decades, likely much longer, the timeless nature was beyond even the duration and scope of spoken languages. The soup, actually his soup, had its own language as it pertained to related stories. Dialog with soup is much different than a conversation. How so was in itself a fascinating subject.

When she awoke, she just knew of 'the presence' and when she told of her dream it was later clear to him that he could only imagine from a distance. No too far though ... could say, intimate. A story of gender, near the top no doubt.

Technique 101

Taking pride in tuning out others to stay focused. It sounds good, as far as it goes. On further inspection, the weaknesses of its blind application become apparent. Take the term 'focus'. Often it is used by those who are attempting to get others to follow a non-obvious lead they are promoting.

And so it was, she had been led unknowingly into a secret agenda she would not have supported, had she known. Experience meet energy. Energy - Experience. A bridge over sometimes troubled waters (and a tip of the hat to Simon). Watching the slow-motion fall of a titan in the personal computing space had developed over time many of the same vulnerabilities. Primitive override, even after modulated by higher level cognition can bring down rather than protect. "Be careful what you wish for".

His mind's eye pictures were different than hers, but they surely had elements in common. Something to pass along to the visualization expert(s) on the team. He made a note to do so.

The afternoon meeting was top of mind now. The first in a planned series of interviews to develop the seeding technique for the disclosure perimeter expansion. This issue had fascinating implications as a result. Previous attempts were truncated by the lack of supporting interaction. In this case, such interaction was job one. If it could not be sustained, it would be back to the drawing board to see why not. Context was not just conducive to success, it was mandatory.

Debrief

"We cycled more quickly this time around. Is it time?", he asked.

"Lets hold off a bit longer. There are still lingering aspects not accounted for.", she answered without looking up from the display, the light from it still dancing on her expression of rapt attention.

He knew from experience, it was better not to press for a reply, much less a decision. The ride, if he could call it that, had been harrowing and was not necessarily at a satisfying destination. The drills that had seemed like so much busy work before suddenly looked … necessary.

All in all - still the most gratifying time of his life. The diminished sensory and motor capacity, the days shortened by seemingly random interruptions for sort and the like operations - through it all - a sense of meaning that would be beyond words anytime before. And yet the words were now at his fingertips as if channeling an accumulated wisdom close by and not noticed until now.

Had divine intervention brought him here? Or had this magical environment followed them to this place? These same questions were there before but they were about arriving at gloom or 'bringing it with' (sic). He put his feet up and started to quietly absorb the next set of objects.

Wider Field

As he looked again at what the data had shown, he was grateful. This whole mini-crisis had a silver-lining. Neglected beginners were, in effect, using the best means at their disposal to disrupt the mechanism that was responsible for the neglect. Unbeknownst to them, their effort was planting and nurturing the new seeds of dysfunction.

And there was their team member. Caught in a confusing no-man's-land between a relatively rigid functioning organization that was somewhat oblivious to the new threat and a group of newbies, highly confident in their potential to contribute (justifiably so) but also lacking a critical component, experience.

Ranting fools, world turned upside down every time someone comes of age … and yet she listens. Because it is what humans can't help doing. And the wise, who think for the long term, craft the message to be 'heard' though buried deep in the noise. How do they do it? By carefully tuning the low power transmitter with the signature of cognitive resonance discovered in knowing the receiver(s).

Friendly is a good configuration for such efficient communication. Not perfect, but nearly so with regard to 'security'. A message not noticed because it is small to the mindless rhythms of the very powerful (insecure). The wasted energy gradually siphoned off in ever bigger chunks to build a vibrant equilibrium.

She buried the message in the cake knowing that a fellow human would discover it. And the mystic subtle whispered its gentle secret, once again.

Surface and Just Below

"…then why are you looking for it under the street light?"

"Because the light is better".

Man-made Value

The joke, a clever way to expose a common vulnerability of the ego-driven model of political discourse. The ego chooses to use shallow reasoning ostensibly to free up mind resources for other tasks that might require deep reasoning.

It is a necessary executive function to take some things for granted. When some particular assumption is flawed, the executive can make a bigger mess with the actions she takes than had she not done anything at all. Each of us has an executive function (ego). Clever short-term thinkers can exploit this aspect of another's conscious action by disguising the flawed nature of a suggested assumption.

Flawed logic. Was it an advantage to be confronted with an application for logic before studying it? I guess we are about to find out, he grinned with anticipation. Applications Driven Learning pattern detector activated. He looked over the higher level configuration options. Some he chose on the spot. Other option decisions he chose to defer.

The trickle of feedback over the last 36 hours led him to believe that the message 'through' the machine was reaching her. And most importantly, in a way that may lead to a sorely needed candor.