Dope Science is a movement to change the world. The idea is that by changing cultures that are notoriously anti-academic and/or severely lacking in the areas of mathematics and science, those cultures will potentially become transformed. If a culture can be transformed in this rapidly changing economic and social climate, that culture is poised to position itself more favorably for the future. If this culture is better able to maneuver in a quickly stratifying world where the gap between the have’s and have nots is widening, members of that culture have a better chance to succeed. Successful members of any culture become world wide representatives of that culture. The more representatives there are, the more impact the culture has. The logical conclusion is obvious. Change the culture, increase the socio-economic climate, change the opportunities for that culture. Change the world. Dope Science is the attempt to grow the seed of change with respect to academic success in nonacademic cultures. If a culture’s view of academia is negative, and that view is propagated, the opportunities for members of that culture are diminished as there are more avenues to gain social/economic capital with an education than there is without. Our world is becoming more and more dependent on technology and data as time goes on, and that dependency is accelerating. Without a critical mass of academically sound, creative, and determined individuals representing the culture, there is little power to be had, and more importantly few opportunities for understanding of the world around us. Dope Science looks to provide an alternative path for people who don’t want to fall into the traps of pop culture, apathy, and ignorance. Dope Science is the beginning of the next cultural revolution.

Why Dope Science?
Pop culture has historically loved the rebel. In music it is the edgy rapper, rock star, pop icon, or country renegade that breaks the rules and introduces the world to a new level of expression. Generally, it seems that that new level of expression is more explicit, raw, and extreme than the one that preceded it.
“Well behaved women rarely make history.” – Laurel Thatcher Ulric.
Our culture loves the shooting star, and galvanizes their worthiness of cultural worship by dying early, normally as a result of their lifestyle. Since the vast majority of people are followers and not leaders, we tend to follow the bright shiny things in our lives. Pop icons are the shiniest things we know of, perhaps that why we call them stars. The result is that a great portion of a culture follow the principle of the icon they adore the most, and as a result emulate their perspective and behavior whenever/wherever possible. Think of how many rappers reference Tupac in their songs, some out rightly strive to be like him in terms of influence and reverence with respect to current rap culture. This is fine if Tupac’s view and actions are beneficial for those that ape him. Unfortunately the opposite is what normally happens. People dedicate more time to aping Tupac than studying math, and more time justifying destructive behavior than building stability and social capital-something sorely needed in most cultures. This is why Dope Science exists. It is a rebellion against the status quo just like Ray Charles was. Just like Elvis Presely, Nirvanna, Tupac Shakur, Notorious B.I.G., Eminem, Garth Brooks, Madonna, Public Enemy, Jimi Hendrix, Cream, Led Zepplin, the recently deceased Amy Winehouse, and countless others. The hard facts are easy to find. Statistics are readily available to whomever is willing to absorb them. For every famous entertainer who dropped out of high school, there are millions who struggle and die needlessly, trying to be like them. Should you not try to be the next Labron James, or Cobe Bryant? Should you shoot for mediocrity and follow the herd to a boring 9 to 5 life? Of course not! Should you ignore the realities of life, shut your eyes to the suffering around you which is born out of the same mindset, and live off of the hope that somehow everything will work out for you in the end? No, that would be equally fruitless.

What would happen if there was a rebellion that promoted thinking, academic prowess, constructive creativity, and increasing social capital? What would that look like? How would something like that get started? The answer is very simple. Get young people to become passionate about your cause. It worked with the anti-smoking movement, the civil rights movement, and many other social upheavals throughout history. This is just one more. Dope Science is one more.

So, how would YOU do it?
The vision for achieving the goals of Dope Science is clear. Increase people’s awareness of the beauty, power, and coolness of nature and mathematics. It’s just that simple. Get more people interested, and they will apply more time and energy to it. This is where the “Dope” in Dope Science comes from. While there are many people doing their best to use music to reach young people and others by infusing rap or other genres with academic content, they are generally produced in such a way as to alienate the ones who need it most, and result in “preaching to the chior” so to speak. Dope Science is about making Dope music. Music that people who normally don’t like math would want to listen to. People who can’t do calculus, but have an impeccable taste for beats and rhyme structure. The people who know every lyric to every Lil Wayne song, or the people who know all there is to know about Kim Kardashian. These are the people Dope Science is for. That is what sets Dope Science apart. It is aimed toward the very people who hate what it stands for. Crazy huh? Of course it is, otherwise why do it.
Well, what ca I do?
You can spread the word. Provide feedback on the videos and songs. Embed links to my youtube channel and reverbnation page. Follow me on twitter, and suggest the same for every human being you know, and many that you don’t. Mention me on your FB page. Talk about Dope Science to your friends, family members, strangers, and enemies. Start freestyling about academic subject matter. If you live in the Seattle area, participate in the videos. If you are a performer of any kind, collaborate with me on stuff (I love that). Just get involved. Spread the love. Change the world.

Contact Info

www.reverbnation.com/socarto
www.youtube.com/socartomusic
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If we slow down the concept of time enough, we can illustrate any sudden process (like an explosion) as a longer and  phased process, like birth for example.  This is what the song tries to achieve.  It attempts to not only express dimensions like space-time, and forces as sound and melodies, but also tries to represent the conceptual framework of existence itself via anthropomorphizing the universe as being “born”.  It even tries to encompass the potential of the spiritual realm.

The song’s very heavy and nearly oppressive bass tones aim to express not only the seriousness and magnitude of the event, but also the driving and unstoppable notion of “progress” (or more specifically the Second Law of Thermodynamics).  The synthesizer is intentionally gritty and represents the transmutation of (theorized) Calabi-Yau shapes representing curled up dimensions.  These multi-dimensional shapes can grow spheres from within and tear.  They can also reform into new shapes of lesser dimension.  The ripping and tearing sound of the synth describes this process, while simultaneously attempting to represent the transmutation of 3 of the fundamental forces (electromagnetism, weak nuclear, and strong nuclear).  The listener’s minds eye should be able to see the forces actually melding into one another like an incredibly dense mixer where the ingredients actually become different things in a rotating, twisting motion.

The doctor and laboring mother are anthropomorphic illustrations of the universe itself.  Some theories claim that our universe was born from others in a concept call the multi-verse.  In which case one universe begats another, and perhaps many more.  There are also voices and breathing in the song which represent the concept of the anthropic principle.   This is the music’s way of showing how consciousness and sentience contribute to the definition of existence (and the universe itself).    There are other sounds that contribute to the melodies in the song.  All of which represent unknown concepts such as what exists outside of the universe that is being birthed, the death process, which in the absence of time is identical to birth, and the gathering of potentials physical laws which would arise out of the shape transformations mentioned above.

The spiritual component of the process is handled by the choir.   Depending on the listeners POV, it would represent the heavenly host of angels and beings, or spirits who exist outside of our existence.  Which ever POV works as this song focuses on the more mechanical processes and admittedly assumes (among other things) that most of what actually exists does so with the universe (Anthropic again).  The choir also serves to drive emotion by signifying the imminent arrival of “time” which is undoubtedly an introduction of the greatest imaginable magnitude.

Birth of Time (Interlude) is ambitious, if not foolhardy in its scope.  the actual song Birth of time will be far more earthy and relate-able.

song

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Cosmophony is that vision.  The interpretation of a journey through the cosmos by a young person.  The rhythm of nature grounds you as you take off into the unknown.  Classical like melodies give the impression of centuries of European influence on human understanding of physics, while a familiar sound of a wind instrument is chopped and distorted to remind you of the inherently foreign nature of space travel.  Violins give the landscape of beautiful dust cloud galaxies, quasars, and nebulae.  Sub bass shows the effects of gravitational lensing from incredibly massive objects.  Organ riffs keep special relativity fresh in your mind as you race ever faster to the next destination noticing that light still moves at its natural speed regardless.

Then comes the discovery of the unknown.  The organ changes as all other now familiar sounds give way to the bubbling and energetic fabric of space-time itself.  The music has a mid eastern feel to represent the most ancient time scales. You don’t know what exatcly you are witnessing, but it is amazing.  Is it the birth of new universes?  Perhaps the continual spawning and annihilation of particle/anti particle pairs?  Have you shrank down to near Plank-scale size?  Whatever is happening it is beyond your understanding and can only be witnessed and not comprehended.  As the revelation of what you see begins to sink into your mind, a cresendo rises to represent the discovery of something new.  Maybe its a new property, particle, idea, or amalgamation of know things?  Maybe its the confirmation of humankind’s theories of what actually makes up everything we are and see?  Whatever it is its a big deal.

After the break you’re back traveling and sight seeing. This time with new, enlightened eyes.  The things that seemed strange are now curious and wondrous, but somehow intuitively familiar.  You have grown and now the universe is even more exciting than it once was.  As the song ends and the only sounds remaining are the organ of special relativity and the bass violin of familiarity, you feel at home as if receiving a warm hug after a long journey.

Enjoy!

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Image from Impactlab.com

OK so you don’t have to be technically married.   You can be shacking up, or whatever and still get the basic idea.  Marriage, however fickle it has become, still retains a sense of permanency that live-ins don’t.  That’s why I titled this vomiting of conceptual musing as I did. You are an individual.  You are the creator of your universe, but you have an impact on the universes created by others.  Your power is enormous, but you may not know it.  It may be easier to delegate portions of that power to others like the government, a significant other, or even a boss.  Never the less, you are an incredible power.  Sometimes just to remind myself of this idea, I think about how much energy is stored in the human body.  Not Matrix style, as a battery, but real energy.  Special Relativity showed us the mass energy equivalency.  If you look at your self from that perspective, you will see that you are an incredible ball of energy.  Way beyond any conceivable atomic weapon.  This is just the energy of your trillion trillion cells, and doesn’t even begin to consider your mental capacity! I’m getting off topic. Marriage = cartography.  When you were a baby, your parents recorded everything about you that they could.  They marveled your development.  They beamed about you to their contacts.  They studied you and absorbed every photon that reflected off of your being with great vigor.  As you got older, your parents continued to observe and marvel at you, but perhaps your friends and others began to take a more detailed look at you and your essence.  You did the same for them, most likely.  Now fast forward to your spouse or significant other if you have one, and the potential longing you have for one if you don’t.  This is where I will show you my philosophy on “essence cartography”. The idea is that your essence will be recorded by those closest to you.  Consider a eulogy:  The speaker will reflect with stories and  anecdotes trying to capture the essentials of the deceased in a short amount of time/energy.  Often times they are happy and very positive, only reflecting on the accomplishments or triumphs, and foregoing the negative and uncomplimentary aspects of the person and their life.  But who really knows you as you are?  Who is the one person who knows you most intimately?  You may think it is your parent(s), but I believe it is your spouse.  I think you should choose your spouse with the realization that this person will be the caretaker of your essence, and the cartographer of your being.  They will remember more about you than anyone else.  While your parents studied you for your formative and developing years, your spouse will examine you for the rest of your life.  They will do retroactive investigations into your childhood based on the zealous testimony provided by your parents.  They encompass your being.  They surround your existence and, in some ways, disseminate you into the universe once you have died.  Information is like matter, stress, and energy.  It cannot be destroyed, only altered. I am sure someone much smarter than I am could tie this concept into entropy and the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.  I would actually love to see that happen.  Ultimately, how we live is being recorded by nature, but humans can only interpret that which is displayed via language.  I presume this is why we invented it in the first place.  Because of this, our significant others are the record keepers and cartographers of…. us.  They define us in some ways to the universe, and relate our being to other humans. Give it some thought…

Image from http://www.gomediazine.com/tutorials/holiday-vector-pinup-tutorial/

You know how you get so pissed off at the person who just HAS to get one more position ahead?  How about the jerk who refuses to let you in, in order to preserve that precious spot in stop-and-go traffic that they possess, and you are trying to take from them?  Since being a full time motorcyclist, I have developed my own perspective on both of these, and another traffic phenomena, I will call Attention Apodization.

So here is a take on why some people just have to preserve, or gain a spot in traffic.  Aside from the obvious car length’s worth of distance closer to the destination, being in front of some body means a higher possibility of gaining freedom to travel at one’s own pace.  As an example, say there is  a fairly congested but not stop-and-go traffic on a multi-lane highway or interstate.  If you are behind some one going slower than you, you are in some ways subject to their will.  They define your pace, which means they have some degree of control over you.  We don’t like that.  Also there is that tendency to want to race the person near you that many of us harbor.  That faceless, nameless person in the Honda Accord beside you somehow becomes your opponent, and if they seem to get a bit further ahead in traffic, it becomes a goal to “make things right” by regaining that distance lost.  We all have this in us, don’t we?  But aside from the control and aggression aspects, the simple truth is that we want to get where we are going as fast as we want to, with minimal delays due to the choices of other people.

Now for my new theory on motorcycles, speed, and safety.

Since motorcycles are a bit harder to see on the road, and the consequences of an impact with something while riding is much greater for the the motorcyclist, I came up with this concept of Attention Apodization.  It works like this.  If you are riding in traffic (on the interstate or highway), you must constantly check your blind spots, mirrors, front and sides.  Anything can happen.  You have to be very vigilant because of the greater risk of sever injury if you crash.  Riding along at pace with traffic means that the average vehicle on the road is moving slightly faster or slower than you are.  This means that you must give near equal attention to your entire 360 degree surroundings with more dedicated to what’s in front of you,  next largest portion to your sides, and slightly less to your blind spots and rear.

Attention Apodization is the process of moving slightly faster than traffic in general, such that you can dedicate more of your attention to what is in front of you, and less on what is behind you.  The logic is based on the idea that, statistically speaking, there is a higher probability of someone running up on your rear if you are pacing traffic, than there is if you are moving slightly faster than traffic.  You need not be a full standard deviation higher (which would probably gain you a ticket), but even 5 mph or so faster will help maintain a good air cushion for your rear, and decrease the chances of a vehicle moving with in normal speed range running up on you.  The apodization of your attention toward the rear is the decrease in attention dedicated to checking your mirrors and blind spots as often as you would/should under pacing conditions.

Of course you must always stay vigilant and aware of your surroundings.  The AA idea just says that you need to check your “four o-clock to eight-o-clock” views slightly less often as you would normally.  I check mine every 10 seconds or so.  I used to check them every 5 to 7 seconds.  The extra few seconds adds up to a good amount of stress relief, and comfort during the ride, without being complacent or lazy.

Just to reiterate, I still think you should always check your blind spots, and “six” regularly, as a speeder, or some other anomaly could change your situation very quickly.  This is just a little idea to test if you want to see if it changes how you feel on the ride.

Keep the shiny side up.

Image from “Lost in Space” TV show.

Religion + Space Travel

I think everybody has, at some point asked the question “Why am I here?”.  I don’t mean waking somewhere you probably shouldn’t be.  I mean wondering why you exist on earth.  This may be the most fundamental question anyone can ask outside of questions about survival.  When it comes to religion, it may well be more fundamental than survival itself!  When coupled with the constant imagery of doom via social and cultural erosion, high tech warfare, and quickly vanishing natural resources, the question of why am I here becomes associated with another question.  Who/what will save us?  While it is true that most people gain their political and religious views from their families (parents), it appears that most people still have a longing deep within to know the answers to these questions.

Religion answers that question for all people.  While it varies greatly in ideology and manifestation, everybody subscribes to some form of belief system that governs their POV and to some degree their behavior.  For some people their religion is a monotheistic God.  Some believe in karma, or technology, or humanity itself, but everyone believes in something.  For the purposes of this blog, we’ll call that their religion. Could space travel actually be a religion?  More precisely, could the hope tethered to space travel be a religion?

The conversation today was very interesting and though provoking (but it always is, right??).  Dan Peterson, Professor of Theology at Seattle University, provided great insights as to the motivation for space travel, and at least part of our fascination with it with respect to religion as stated above.  He stated that the need for something “more” drives us into space, and postulates that a certain way, our hopes of the future are pinned on the promise of space as a haven for humanity.  Dave Thomas ponders the impact of zero-G living on the human psyche, and wonders if the “otherness” of space could somehow reset human nature and provide us with a clean slate on which we can build a brighter and less barbaric future upon.    He (Dave) also muses on the attire and lifestyles that may be afforded by interstellar life, but he didn’t mention recycled body fluids, which I thought would have made agreat tangent…

The conversation was great, the ideas presented were plenty of food for the thinker and dreamer.  We did have some disagreement as to them mentality of what Dan calls the “high priests of the interstellar sanctuary”.  Those who rank among the worshipers of nature are Stephen Hawking, Carl Sagan, and a multitude of astronomers, cosmologists, and astrophysicists.  While I do agree that some of the greatest names in space science believe that leaving the planet is our only hope, I am not sure I agree with the notion that the anthropomorphizing of all intelligent life is a bad thing.  It is one of two options of possibilities.  Intelligence (combined with sufficient power) yields barbarism and self destruction, or it doesn’t.  Some well know futurists, and scientists, Hawking included believe the former, while other great thinkers (Dan Peterson included) believe otherwise.  This runs in tandem with a notion held by Dave that human nature may be subject to our environment.  Something I disagree with.

In the end we are still hoping, searching, and longing for an answer to the human condition.  Some sort of savior to right our wrongs, and protect our interests and future.  For some, space is our last chance, for others God is the only way.

Sound off on the fb site Smalk <intellitivity> group site, or get hooked up on Linkedin.com (search for Billy Valentine).  Or just leave your thoughts below.

I just got to Vegas.  On my way here I flew on a 737-700 through some pretty turbulent airspace.  It wasn’t anything noteworthy, but it was there.  The plane was a little over half full, so I had a row all to myself, and across the isle and one row back was a kid.  This kid looked like he was about 13 to 15 years old, and just the typical boy flying alone.  Since I love flying, though I have to prepare myself for it each time, I like to look around the cabin whenever there are unexpected events like turbulence occurring.  I like to see how people react.

The day was beautiful coming out of Seattle, so I took advantage of it and did my best to maintain a practical sense of distance and velocity as we took off and left the area.  I try to understand just what it means to be going 150mph, though the acceleration is so gentle getting there.  I try to measure the distance from me to the ever shrinking cars below, and maintain a very real sense of what that distance means.  It is surprisingly difficult for me to do.  As we flew over some giant cloud formations, I again tried to appreciate the scale and distance of the clouds relative to me, and then to the world, and then to the universe.

It didn’t help matters that I was listening to Leonard Susskind discuss the anthropic principle.  The anthropic principle may very well lie at the heart of the contention between science and religion, rigor and philosophy, and imagination and tradition.  It is the anthropic principle that gives many scientists heart burn, and challenges (seemingly) the foundation and honor of the scientific method which is clearly the holiness of science to most.

So I began to try to explore the depth of the anthropic principle.  Conditions that are so perfects as to provide the backdrop for life, and more importantly intelligent life capable of questioning its own existence.  So delicate are the conditions that there must have been an intelligent designer; or perhaps the rarity of the conditions correspond to the loneliness of the intelligent life forms in the vastness of the universe.  Could it be that we are the product of one of the infinite possible universes?  Is it really that simple?  Is it true that we were designed by one greater than ourselves who carefully set up the universe for our existence?  Are we really that special?

This made me think of life and death.  I imagined that the plane lost altitude quickly and crashed into a mountain.  My life is extinguished very quickly.  On the one hand, it’s no different than a bug on a windshield.  The human body behaves just like any other soft fleshy creature under impact, and the results are the same.  Rescuers wouldn’t be able to find much of us, and so we would simply decompose smothered in jet fuel, aluminum, plastic, dirt, and carbon.  There is no romance in that.  Nothing that sets us apart from any other lower life form.  I glanced over at the kid in the other row.  He was just sitting there listening to his ipod without a care in the world.

I started thinking about the non intuitive nature of Quantum Mechanics, and how it seems so foreign to our every day life.  That strangeness caused some of the greatest minds in science to loose sleep for years.  It haunted the most famous scientist of all, for the rest of his life.  Possibly even worse due to the fact that he discovered it.  Can we visualize the world through a lens of that sort?  Can we really understand what it means to describe nature in terms of probabilities rather than a continuum of states that we measure as closely as we like, so to speak?  Can telepathy really be explained by entanglement, and if so does that mean that consciousness can survive without the body?

So I look out the window again and see a giant cloud.  Suppose I appeared outside of the plane and grew to a size large enough to fit on the cloud as you would a king sized bed.  As I drop into the cloud, I would simply burst through it and continue on.  But what if something totally unexpected happened?  What if something happened that seemed to go against everything I know about nature?  I fall into the cloud formation, and right as I touch the cloud, each atom is separated from its molecule and rejoined into a molecule of something else, like a flower pedal.  The weak force, which holds us together as things, is overcome not unlike what would happen in a plane crash, but on a more absolute level.  Each atom is separated.  I am vaporized in a reaction with the cloud, and reformed with the cloud as a giant collection of tiny flower pedals.   If my consciousness is entangled with the cloud, could I still exist?  Does my essence remain?  If so, what of my perspective?  What would seeing be like, feeling, or taste?  Would I long for bees and butterflies to find me?

Trying to visualize what my conciousness percieves without my body is similar to how I feel about difficult concepts like the multiverse, quantum entanglement, measuring the spin of an electron (or other object),  String Theory, and the idea of a holographic universe.  Visualizing the DNA of the very universe we live in is like trying to look at the Nevada landscape from the perspective of a million flower pedals.

So I look at the kid in the other row again.  He’s just sitting there, chillin’.  He has a near infinite number of options available to him.  An entire universe of possibility.  He likely cannot perceive that.  He will most likely continue on with his stay in Vegas, or connect to California.  He could very well have an entire universe of ideas and thoughts completely different from mine that will manifest themselves throughout his life, no matter the length of it.  Again, it’s difficult to visualize the possibilities.  All I know is that I’m very, very limited in a very, very big and complex place.

Power and Control.  Two things that most, if not all of us want.  Clearly power comes in many forms, but is best described as energy converted per unit time.  In other words it is the amount of influence a thing exserts on something else during a period of time.  Control is the amount of influence to be had over another something, or the ability to influence something.

Smalking is all about Power and Control at its heart.  I tend to use the analog of a persons’s physical ability to illustrate the concepts.  If one has great strength, but little flexibility, their over all ability is less than one who has good strength and good flexibility.  In this case, strength is related to power, and flexibility is related to control.  Mentally you couls say that cognitive ability (including training, learning, acedemics, etc.) can be represented as strength, while creativity represents flexibility.  Smalk requires both to be sucessful.

Power among entities and individuals changes over time, and our discussion today made reference to several examples.  The most prominent example was the idea of newer technologies changing the way we behave and even how we think. Twitified communication has, in some ways limited our ability to express our thoughts and feelings to 140 charachters, and some believe that this contributes to our shrinking attention span.  the amount of power enforced on us is proportional to the ubiquity of the technology.  In the case of FB, it is incredibly powerful.  so does that mean tha twe are doomed to 2 second sound bites and twitter formatted communication?  Does it mean the downfall of provocative thought and deep conceptualizing?  Nah, I don’t think so.

Remember, power is great, but flexibility is just as important.  If you find yourself in the midst of a changing environment, use your flexibility to adapt and thrive in the new situation.  If FB stifles your communication, supplement it with a blog, phone call, or visit.  While tecnology can definitey demonstrate great power over us, ultimately we have the flexibility to adapt to, change, or even avoid said technologies to suit our needs.  the general populace may or may not follow suit, but how much it does is a direct testement to the power excerted over them, and the lasting effects of that power represent control.

We are likely in the midst of a DIY revolution.  the age of gian corporations and entities defining the future are quickly fading away.  This means the power is in our (the regular people) hands.  While we may still need the strength of well estblished organizations/institutions to have maximum impact on society and the world, the creativity and flexibility of the individual mind ranks supreme in the knowlege age.

Make something happen.

The status quo = the ways things are.  The way things are are generally supported by those who are thriving as things remain constant, and not supported by those who are not thriving, or desire change for growth.  I suppose it could be supported by those who are too tired or unwilling to desire change in circumstances, but this type of support is passive at best.  Creative people are likely very resistant to status quo as far as tradition, normalcy, and complacency.  Producers may very well be comfortable with the status quo as it gives them time to refine and perfect their craft, and maximize efficiency for that particular system.

The Green movement is the attempt to raise awareness and action concerning natural resources.  How we design, build, and consume are the primary areas the sustainability movement is targeting.  Increasing re-usability, recycling, and efficiency while decreasing consumption, waste, and the destruction of the eco system are the main goals.  There are several organizations and initiatives to promote this concept including the LEED certification, Energy Star, and government sponsored prizes.

Dave T (DT) was again present with the usual interesting insights and perspective, and Bernadette Havok provided a well informed view the smash up as a Designer who has channeled her energy toward the subject of sustainability.  David El Achkar, who has literally transformed on the show (ha haa haa) has decided that his computer science education will be put to work in the field of sustainability.  This provided a great canvass for the the smalk, and it was a good one.

The green movement is an affront to a status quo.  The status quo that it aims to upset is that of a mindset based on the idea of seemingly unlimited resources.  Design is always material conscious, but not generally in a manner of urgency or scarcity.  This status quo may have been born out of the industrial revolution at a time when resources appeared to be infinite.  We talked about how Green is a status quo, how it may be transparent to various status quo between government, the public, and the financial market.  Dave raised the idea of Green being hijacked by capitalism, Bernadette pondered if the Green movement was based on finances, and the Environmental movement was based on scientific study.  I wondered if the hijacking of Green by capitalism and the involvment of the government could produce Bernadette’s idea of all needs being met while maintaining the status quo in each group’s respective arenas.  Public opinion being as powerful as it is, perhaps marketing and the media could drive the Green movement and shape public opinion to demand more green practices.  Perhaps the government will drive the change.  Dave mentioned that Green may require a radical mindshift while Bernadette contended that incremental changes could suffice with no need for drastic changes in behavior or perspective.  I challenged the group to consider the idea that recycling may not have a significant impact on the consumption of natural resources.  It is true that recycling is better than refusal, but it is still based on the idea of mining and extracting resources, and moving the elements from one part of the world to another.  The mass production of fruits in one part of the world and being distributed to other parts of the world still upset and fundamentally change the ecosystems involved.  Stephen Hawking says we have to vacate or die.  He believes that we must colonize other worlds or space if we are to survive as a species.

The discussion was very thought provoking and sparked insightful and well thought out responses on the facebook group.  Will the status quo be shaken by Green?  Has it already?  Will Green just replace the previous status quo with another and possibly equally inefficient one?

Who knows, man.  If you have some insight or answers, feel free!

Pic from article at Gizmodo

The very first Smalk Theory show was scary.  It was foreign and strange, but still familiar in the sense that it was like a performance.  Since I used to play music all the time in front of people, it wasn’t terrifying, but it was unfamiliar ground.  Now, combine that level of unfamiliarity, and the inherent unfamiliarity of a Smalk, and you have a truly underwear biting situation.  Thankfully, I had a couple of my friends join me on the show with whom I had several conference calls already with me on the show to help me get through it.  Jawad Sartaj and Nathan Eckenrode were my guests.  Two very brave souls who are very smart and interesting people, they helped not only develop the conversation, to spark many ideas that provided food for thought long after the show was over. The end result was a great time, great discussion, and beginning of what is now,  much more fun than scary, and hopefully improving with every episode.

Video games and Cats….

Video games are generally considered any type of game or leisurely activity that is performed on a device with a screen as the primary interface.  Game consoles, hand held devices, computers, even TV games fit this category.  Perhaps the very first video games were the LCD based racing games that lit up an image in sequence on the screen like the little racing game I had as a kid.  Eventually they became sophisticated enough to produce actual pixels on the screen rather than lighting up pre-made images, and the computing power has increased according to Moore’s Law ever since.  Cat’s are creature’s that I am not that familiar with.  I kind of like them, but generally keep my distance.  They are interesting to watch and their personalities are fun (sometimes) but I don’t worship them or even prefer to be around them like I do, say dogs.  so what happened when we brought these two things together?

I started the convo with the silly idea of developing a video game for a cat where the cat had to perform some tasks in the game while wearing a VR style system.  Nate quickly attacked the whole smalk concept by stating that this was nothing new because cats sit on routers, play pong, and paw at computer keyboards.  Jawad countered with the idea that the video game could be a person viewing life from the perspective of a cat, and then we were pretty much off into the fray.  We went all over the place from the idea of transposing the consciousness of a cat to that of a human so that one species could experience life as another, to self aware AI embedded in a digital simulation of sufficient fidelity to provide the AI with a real enough experience that it could not distinguish between reality and the sim.  Ultimately we pondered the concept of a data driven universe in which all life is based on information and given sufficient computational and electrical power, could be replicated down to the subatomic level via Frank Tipler’s concept of immortality via AI.

It was a great time, and a good start to Smalk Theory.  The real beauty of the session was actually in the conversation that was sparked on the FB group site.  This is really what Smalk is all about. Exploration.  We can plat the seeds in the show, but the exploration get’s much deeper once people have a chance to sit and really think about the Smalk.  Stephen Dupri carried this idea forward perfectly with a commentary on the show, and his views on how the two things, video games and cats, could be brought together.  His idea of using a video game as a more engaging and immersive media than reading a book for retention of material was perfect.  That also lead to more discussion.

Good stuff, man.

The show is gone now. Blog Talk Radio will only keep your last few episodes available for download, but I still think about that first show.  It was cool.

So the image above is a pic of a cat playing with an iPad.  nothing new to see here, as Nate pointed out, cats have been doing this type of stuff for many years.  It’s still cool to see, though.