Comments on: Ideas on a new research infrastructure for emerging collaborative networks

By: Eimhin

Eimhin — Sat, 18 May 2013 16:18:03 +0000

Sam, do you know the crew working on Netention? For a connect, email me at involuteconduit @ gmail. com see you in Berlin soon 🙂

By: Sam Rose

Sam Rose — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 20:55:42 +0000

Tom, actually I should clarify that I am thinking about BOINC for short-term parallel processing of datamining and simulaiton/processign of data, something that is useable right away.

But I am interested in the idea of ptyhon as a basis for longterm development of distributed computing like you mention above

By: Sam Rose

Sam Rose — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 20:53:22 +0000

It’s funny that you mention python, because it is a language that I deep into learning and employing right now. I think it can line up well with existing C and C++ projects out there, too.

Let me know what you have in mind for development ideas and projects. I am very interested in this. There are a few simulation platforms written in python that I am already exploring. I think BOINC is a great platform at least for prototyping, and is highly servicable the way that it is right now, for massive volunteer parallel processing

By: Tom Loeber

Tom Loeber — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 04:03:35 +0000

Oops mistyped the URL of my web site which actually is http://www.mindsing.org If the editors just want to correct that in the preceding two posts and delete this one, please do. TIA

Tom

By: Tom Loeber

Tom Loeber — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 22:46:10 +0000

Okay. It is hard to grasp the situation, hard and frightening. We already have a “mindless society” and the potential for great accidents exist and are in the process of being realized like a great lumbering locomotive heading for a destroyed bridge over a deep and mortal chasm. We do not have a plurality of societies right now, only one, and it is fragmented upon imaginary borders inherited from a legacy of having no alternative than to accept and play along with the principles of anarchy which can not sustain. I realize it seems I am harping upon semantics but the risks are great and the solution only possible through clear understanding. I mentioned that society is a second-order cybernetic system which is reason to get as real, concise and universal in our terminology and exploration as possible. Epistemic relativism is basically the opposite of science and yet plays a large part in the formation of current policies, probably is the reason why so many appear to find thinking clearly such a difficulty. The anomie grows as the incoherency exacerbates under the stresses of the information explosion. As a lead to clarity I drop a couple more little used terms. We need to approach maximizing ergodicity if we want a social system that works and is not inherently self-destructive. This equates to maximizing Shannon’s entropy as the general opposite of the classical entropy of thermodynamics. Ephemeralization, a term Buckminster Fuller coined, will bring these things into more common perception amongst those who are looking but many are not looking and wont, perhaps a majority. They will only come around after the tool is created to coordinate human endeavors in a sustainable and pragmatic way and they see that it offers reward and value beyond any other option.

Appears to me that Python holds the most promise for making this collaborative P2P communication software alluded to and that could facilitate maximizing egalitarianism (a consequence and requirement of seeking ergodicity) by seeking to adhere to the demographics as revealed in my general mathematical theory. Besides being designed in such a way to promote open source development, Python also has rich inherent data storage and management options which would minimize the risk and complications of utilizing external databases, me thinks. This also facilitates the software being entirely contained on client computers rather than any third party machine that might be hacked. The idea is scaled so that the amount of data needing to be stored, retrieved and managed through external web linkages should be well within feasible limits at every phase of the system. This also helps minimize risks as the forces that are opposed to self-determination would only be able to break into the encrypted stream sporadically and not get the totality of data necessary to thwart strategies being developed within the system, I suspect.

Oh well. Just blabbing away here a bit. I’m approaching some utility with python and if there are any others out there who have the skills and/or want to help, you can get in touch with me.

Thank you for bringing up an all important subject, Sam.

By: Sam Rose

Sam Rose — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 19:04:43 +0000

“I offer you a different question that I believe is more accurate. How do we make a viable cybernetic system before it is too late?”

Tom, great, great comment, we are thinking alike on much of this I think. I concur with what I quoted from you above. We are already a cybernetic society. I guess one could argue that all life is cybernetic in some ways, and has been even before humans emerged.

I don’t distrust cybernetics. In fact I use thermostats everyday! 🙂 But, I think what I was trying to ask was more along the lines of what you said, soemthing like “how can harness and use cybernetic systems without becoming a mindless society”

By: Tom Loeber

Tom Loeber — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 21:06:55 +0000

“something simple, and elegant on a basic scale, that can scale-up easily, that provides a social utility for anyone who accesses it, using the combined resources of millions, or possibly even of people for storage and processing, that cannot be controlled for any specific exclusive purpose by any one person, and that could be controlled democratically by people opting out of participation should they not like the direction things are going in.”

I have a theory that appears to hold these potentials but not just for millions but possibly for billions, all of humanity, and maybe even trillions if we are to become a long lived species. My theory has brought me to understand that scaling anonymity would be valuable also, i.e. the more cherished a person becomes in the “system” as offering useful information on how to coordinate and share resources the more anonymity they are given. How could anything approach being utilitarian for billions of people, many with no computer access, or correctly judge a person’s worth to offer scaled anonymity in a functional manner? Sounds incredible, I know.

Why has such a system not been enacted? Appears the second-order cybernetic nature of society, where no one can have an unbiased perspective, has tied us to accepting epistemic relativism as unquestionable. I see for example that mention is made that a desirable system could aid in securing funding for open source projects. I suspect that if we enact a system that truly enables us to communicate and coordinate our lives in a highly efficient and sustainable manner, funding will no longer be a consideration and happily. To realize these token systems of communication that we call “funding” are inherently dysfunctional and to realize viable alternatives is so incredible and alien to our perspective that we may not find such a system in time, in time to prevent accidental collapse of our one life support system due to our increasing abilities having too little intelligent governance. I also see an apparent distrust of “cybernetics” in your statement “How do we avoid becoming a cybernetic society?” You can see a rather exhaustive definition of this term on the American Society of Cybernetics glossary online at http://www.asc-cybernetics.org/foundations/ASCGlossary.htm I might suggest the goal is not to avoid becoming a cybernetic society as that is the nature of the beast right now and will always be, if we continue to be. I offer you a different question that I believe is more accurate. How do we make a viable cybernetic system before it is too late?