transmit nowhere

I have rarely met anyone who has enjoyed or appreciated bureaucracy. Maybe the people who are entrenched in it or contribute to it. There are problems of efficiency (a whole other post) that are nearly universally recognized but we cannot seem to improve. Looking at the rich history of our people (everyone) it seems like many systems today are perpetuated out of a misplaced sense of respect for the past. An unbroken stagnation that has come to life. A sentience of paperworks, forms, processes, rules, regulations.

Are there science-fiction stories that postulate a world in which a single global government takes on a Vogon-like bureaucratic mess, developing and growing a system for management riddled with forms, cross-checking, and delayed process? Perhaps this system would come to life and become our benevolent overlord, drowning us all in a kind of ISO 9000 process.

Like many things in life, taking a step back, asking questions I’m forced to wonder the purpose of the system. It took a friend a quick check on Wikipedia on automotive registration for us to determine the reasons to necessitate the annual registration. The answer, of course, was unsatisfying. Justified, maybe. But only barely.

It makes me wonder if the proponents of “small government” are thinking too small. And makes me ask more questions about the world I live in that instill seeds of depression.

The reason I’ve been writing about existing forms is that I don’t know what new forms will appear. But though I can’t predict specific winners, I can offer a recipe for recognizing them. When you see something that’s taking advantage of new technology to give people something they want that they couldn’t have before, you’re probably looking at a winner. And when you see something that’s merely reacting to new technology in an attempt to preserve some existing source of revenue, you’re probably looking at a loser.

via Post-Medium Publishing.

As more of our conversations parse through personally, carried devices and the services they connect to our ability to transform, filter and analyse what is being spoken evolves. Simple examples exist today – mobile phones designed for the elderly in Japan include features that can slow down conversations by up to ~30% to make them easier to follow – the conversation length stays the same compensated by shorter pauses. The iPod shuffle supports podcasts on speed.

via Silence is Subjective – Jan Chipchase – Future Perfect.

synchronicity |ˌsi ng krəˈnisitē|

noun

1 the simultaneous occurrence of events that appear significantly related but have no discernible causal connection : such synchronicity is quite staggering.
2 another term for synchrony (sense 1).
ORIGIN 1950s: coined (in sense 1) by C. G. Jung.

Things are duplicated everywhere. Tweets in Tweetie, across computers and the iPhone. Google Reader and Buzz. Missed calls from Google Voice. Status indicators, badges, alerts, alarms. Duplications everywhere. It’s not enough that there’s too much – we duplicate things even when it’s not needed.

It’s more than that, and worse. Trawl github and you’ll find that people have implemented and re-implemented the same stuff over and over and over again. How can we do anything new, anything meaningful if we keep doing the same things over and over again?

“Where should I meet you?”

“Here, I’ll just share my location with you on Latitude, just navigate to me”

“Ok.”

“See you in a bit.”

A little weird, and a little awesome.

Posted via web from Ryan’s posterous

marketing and media make it difficult for me to focus on things that don’t exist yet. the more i see things that exist or things that are being made, the harder it is to think of new things, fresh things, that aren’t yet in existence.

i think partly because i get excited about what i see coming to market. and partly because the more you see the way other people think thinsg are, the more you become convinced that’s the path to go.

i think that’s why there are so few revolutionary shifts in already existing technologies. the ones that do exist do so in the realm of art.

“By inverting this list, we can get a portrait of the “normal” world. It’s populated by people who talk a lot with one another as they work slowly but harmoniously on conservative, expensive projects whose destinations are decided in advance, and who carefully adjust their manner to reflect their position in the hierarchy.”

http://www.paulgraham.com/kate.html

Apparently I am bizarre, because I am the one person in the history of mankind who liked Clippy.

You know, the paper clip in Microsoft’s Word. Whenever I needed him most, he’d appear. Yes, I AM composing a letter! Thank you!

I’m a believer in personal agents. I think the people who had the foresight to see them coming have been oddly silent lately.

It feels like the signal to noise ratio of the world has decreased significantly over the past several years. Not just in terms of communications volume, but also what it is that people have to contribute.

Navigating a world like this should prove to be exceedingly difficult unless we start figuring out what we need to do to keep our interaction with the world manageable.

Entire microcosms are coming into existence around wholly useless memes. Meme viruses manifest themselves as links that get sent around, singlehandedly destroying time and brain cycles. It’s not just about productivity any more either, it’s quality of life.