Multicellular

Normally when we think about the components of the human body, we think of it as the parts that we can interact with like organs or systems. Looking at ourselves this way does little to shed light on our origins, but one level finer does. Each of those organs and systems are made up of smaller independent functioning units we cannot see. It is amazing to think that our body is built from trillions of microscopic blocks expressing themselves in different ways. Not only is it amazing, but it also makes you wonder how all those cells come to be stuck together. And maybe even more puzzling is how each cell - which each contain the same set of instructions - knows what role it should fill.

On two levels our bodies have grown from a single cell to the trillions each of us consist of. One level spans billions of years, through the indirect guiding force of evolution our DNA has morphed to create a more and more complex survival machine. Also, over a period of nine months every time a new human is created, one cell follows those evolved instructions to create more and more cells as we grow and our bodies take form in the womb.

We know that these tiny things outside our scope of vision have ways to communicate with each other. Mostly with chemical signals where one cell sends out a chemical that another cell is set up to detect. That's great, but it's hard to take that knowledge and understand how that can enable the amazing orchestration of our existence. I think this is a subject that is so deep with details, that there is quite bit that nobody knows yet. There are some things that give us a glimpse of understanding though.

A pretty illuminating example is one that I saw Bonnie Bassler use in this video about how bacteria talk. The Vibrio Fischeri bacteria can detect how tightly packed it is with others of it's kind. That's one single cell "communicating" with other cells. I think this example gives at least a hint of understanding of how many different types of similar communications going on in our bodies might make us tick.

But how did all these different cells and communication mechanisms in our body come to be? There's a long, long story about that which we can unfortunately theorize about the exact details. A series of posts on Nirmukta called "Complexity Explained" provides a lot of enlightening information on the subject. The twelfth post here also contains a good explanation of cell differentiation in section 12.3, which is like the launching pad for understanding how the cells in our body know what job to fill.

When you think about our bodies on a microscopic scale, and how each of our building blocks is actually using a similar bag of tricks as some single celled luminescent bacteria floating in the sea - it paints a beautiful picture of how closely related we are to every other living thing on earth. The closer we look at ourselves, the more we realize that we are another configuration of life only slightly different from millions of others.

Subscription Revolution

The way people discover and consume media is in the process of a grand revolution. Ironically magazines; which I have never been too fond of, are ahead of the game in a way. They may be full of advertisements and generally short on valuable content, but they are very specific. You don't buy a 5 pound, 3,000 page magazine with an eclectic mix of fitness, fashion, technology, sports, and low riders. You subscribe to a specific topic that interests you the most. Why does cable television not work like this? Why do we buy newspapers, pull out 1 or 2 sections and discard the rest? Radio seems like a halfway in-between model, but has serious shortcomings as well.

Part of the reason we are where we are, is past technical limitations. Basic television is by it's nature a broadcast thing. All the channels are up there in the air, so you get em all, and everything happens at the same time for everyone. Unfortunately, cable television just transferred the same limitations right on through when taking television into a direct delivery method. But it no longer needs to be that way. Sure, they've granularized it a little bit, so you can choose a specific package of channels or even specific channels in the case of a few of the more premium ones. But what if I only care about a couple of shows? What if I want to watch them when it's convenient for me, not when you choose to broadcast it? Automatic recording with a DVR works, but seems like a backwards solution to the problem. Some channels are starting to catch on. Many shows can be watched on demand on television network websites. This is a start, but where is the subscribe option? I have yet to see a television show you can subscribe to with an RSS feed. Do they not know Really Simple Syndication exists? There are some tools like Boxee that are helping to bridge the gap with video though.

The more common use of an RSS feed is news, which is much further along in the revolution. Many people may still not know what an RSS feed is. I know it didn't make any sense when I first heard about it. It's very simple though, it's just a means to subscribe to something using the internet. Content providers have an address where they update when new content is available, and different programs are able to "subscribe" to the feeds and watch for when new stuff is posted. Tools like Google Reader subscribe to feeds, and can essentially give you a custom newspaper. Just do a little searching to find the feeds for the news your interested in and subscribe, and you're set. Yeah, I know some of you like to hold that paper in your hands, but at least this way you don't get all those black smudges on your fingers.

The world of radio is being revolutionized as well. Satellite radio thought it was the next evolution, but it wasn't. HD radio thinks it's the next step, but it's not. The future lies in podcasts and internet radio services like Pandora and last.fm. Why should you have to choose between the few morning talk shows that happen to be broadcasted in your region? Do you care what they talk about, or would you rather listen to something of particular interest to you? This is the beauty of podcasts, which also take advantage of RSS feeds. With applications like Google Listen for your phone, subscribing and downloading podcasts becomes incredibly simple. Almost as simple as turning on the radio. The music industry is going through it's own deeper transformations, and the new ways of discovering music enabled by social music sites may play a key role in enabling an industry free of middle men between artists and their fans. Rather than lapping up the generic lineup that gets repeated for weeks whether you like all of it or not on the radio, you could be fine tuning what you hear and discovering more of what you love. Last.fm and Pandora have intelligence behind them that plays new things for you based on what it knows about what you like, not based on who worked their way through the hoops of the industry to get air time.

What this is all about is getting what you want, when you want it. In the past you had to choose one or the other. You either had to settle for what was available when you were able to watch, listen, or read, or plan your life around being available to catch what you were interested in. It's easy to do what you've always done. It's easy to get fed what's being served. But there's a better way now. Exercise your choice, it's what defines you. When I realize how much information and entertainment is out there, it underscores the value associated with the attention we have to give. Thanks for giving me your attention for a few paragraphs.

Experience Relay Protocol

I was recently reminded of the illusory effect of online games when reading about why SWGEmu is possible. We get this rich experience in an online game, but under the covers only a minimal amount of messaging is going on. That image of your friends avatar you see is not really constantly being transmitted from your friends computer, through the game server and on to you. A simple message is being sent about their location and possibly what they are doing and your computer is filling in the rest based on that with local resources. Stretch your imagination and put yourself inside the computer. Pretend you are the one relaying those simple messages and receiving information back about what's happening around you. Does the concept of going somewhere lose all meaning? Does everything turn into detached messages, or is real experience emulated?

Let's consider how a consciousness that was not embodied would communicate or travel. Whether it's your mind in a computer, or some created artificial intelligence, how would they experience things? Even us embodied humans experience the real world through the bandwidth of our own senses. We are constantly taking in messages from the world in the form of reflected light or sounds, using what information we can, and filling in blanks with memories in our brain. Our memory contains a lot of local resources similar to a game, but instead of them being installed upfront, our local resources are our own memory of things built up over time.

We can think of the entities communication over networks as senses that operate over distances only limited by the reach of the network. Games minimize bandwidth by using simple codes that the client and server understand. What kind of new digital language might be birthed to facilitate interaction between digital entities? Just as with our own speech, that language would need to be dynamic in a way that allows for varying levels of detail to be conveyed, unlike the rigid digital communications games use. This really underscores the importance of the simple ability to remember something to the whole concept of intelligence. The ease with which we can share thoughts and collaborate is directly related to the richness of our memory.

I have sometimes read that people believe it necessary for a mind to have a body to achieve the level of consciousness of humans. Given a rich enough digital environment, and considering the role memory plays and the limited amount of focused input we actually experience presently, that seems unlikely. Actually being able to create that mind or move it to an un-biological shell is a completely different topic that precludes this, so I guess it doesn't matter much. But if it was possible, I would then wonder if it would be possible for that entity to convey to us what it's like to experience a world with digital senses.

The Free Ride

(Image Credit: Cornell University Library)

There is a common pervading plague of the mind loose in the world today. It is the general idea that you can contribute something valuable to society once, get rich off of it, and rake in the riches forever. The institutions of copyright and patent have become the vehicle that makes this dream possible. As is argued well here, these legalized suppressions of personal liberty and allowed monopoly are more harmful then they are worth. It is a selfish dream that counters progress and violates the rights of others to pick up the slack left by those currently enjoying their free ride.

There isn't just a set of laws that need to be reformed here, it's one of the many twisted states of mind that have somehow gripped some of us. Somehow people have been led to believe that they have various ways of getting a free ride and that it's a good thing. I'm thankful for the words imparted to students by the President of the United States a few weeks ago centered around: "The truth is, being successful is hard.". He goes on to deliver a little reality to counter the fantasies constantly portrayed to kids on television. A free ride sounds good on the surface, but it's one of the many illusions that fade away when you realize it's free as in free-loader, not free as in free beer.

I don't know how we got here, but we need to turn back. We need to keep in mind that the world isn't moved ahead by people who sit back collecting royalties, but by those who try to innovate every day; those people who are at all times contributing. And then ask ourselves what kind of people we want to be. I've always believed that the right thing usually isn't the easiest thing, and this is no exception. Riding a wave of single invention or hit song practically forever may be easy, but it isn't right. We're ignoring our shared purpose of life, we're stagnating the progress of science, and impeding our potential for the future.

The ridiculous news is constantly flowing. Simple people getting in trouble for doing innocuous things. Corporations extending their arms into our homes and telling us what we can and cannot do with our possessions. They need to know we're not interested in buying things that come with locks on them that only the vendor has the key to. They need to know we aren't interested in forcing the chains of physical property needlessly onto digital media. You should be able to copy your music and movies to as many devices as you want. You should be able to use the ideas of others to build on and take them even further. What is shared at all is shared with all, and that propels us forward. It is the fuel of the digital age, and allows people to do wonderful things.

Simple Complexity

One of our minds' greatest strengths has an unfortunate side effect. That strength is the ability to generalize and represent a complex idea with a simplified word or phrase. The association of this word with several other simpler things in our mind gives it meaning. This has great benefits, such as allowing us to discuss complex things more easily. Problems arise however, when simplified terms evolve over time to mean different things to different people, or when very few people are familiar with what the terms mean at all.

God is a wonderful example. Think of how many different things this word means to different people. If you want to have any discussion involving this word with someone, you would need to first talk about what it means to the other person in the first place. If you don't clarify this first, be prepared for a onslaught of misunderstanding, confusion, and pointless argument. Love is another good example, but they don't necessarily need to be grand concepts to get confusing. Consider the vastly different ideas about what a friend is for example.

Another problem I see with the labeling of complex things is in professional or academic terminology. While it affords advantages to people intimate with a certain field easier communication, it also has an isolating effect. As the potential number of specialized fields grows, it becomes more important for people from disparate professions to be able to collaborate and work together. If we do not maintain the ability to explain our own fields in terms that non-experts can understand, we severely limit the potential for joined progress.

In the land of professional business, you have a similar, but more severe problem. More severe, because due to the effects of marketing and rapid change, very similar concepts get constantly re-branded. At least in the academic world they are using arcane terminology that is the same stuff students have been learning from decades back. All this leads to a lack of clarity and barriers to collaboration. Let these terms be tools to help us learn, but not to impede spreading knowledge to others.

I marvel at our ability to arrange concepts in our minds in a hierarchical or associative fashion. This starts from the smallest building blocks of language and combines up many levels to the broadest concepts we have names for. Or perhaps the broadest of all, simply "everything". But we must use the appropriate level of the hierarchy in the appropriate situation, and occasionally remind ourselves of just what associations lie underneath those higher concepts that give them meaning. Lets not lose sight of the real meaning behind our words.