what will the future look like

I have started writing letters to my 8 month old telling her what i think her life will be like in 25 years. It is a challenging and scary thing to do. No not writing, but taking a position - a position on the future. There have been a long line of thought tormented people in history who have been labeled as futurists who really never turned out to be anything than just weird people. A friend of mine put me onto MirrorWorlds by David Gerlertner who wrote, in the 80's remember, about how much software and computers were going to shape our future. I would say in general terms that he has overshot himself a bit as much of what he talks about has not come to real tangible terms, but nonetheless I do think he is on the right track. This book also got me wondering about how we interact with computers, i think i talked about this in another post but it still causes me concern. We should see some major design changes with respect to computers, in fact i think computers as we know it today will not be as important - they will become a quick antique. The interaction with computers will nto go away in fact i see it as something that will increase, i just do not see us sitting in front of boxes with square screens and the constant drone of the computer fan eating away at our sanity.

computers will be in the fabric of our buildings, processing will take place outside of our physical space and our visual interaction with computers will be tailored to our eyes and will make more use of other senses. Much of unnatural environment will be shaped by this change

What have you been up to

I apologize to the unheard and uncounted for not posting in such a long time. What have I been up to?

Reading and writing of course. I have really focussed my writing on what the future of the environment will look like in the future and I expect to post a deluge of those poems soon.

What has got me thinking about this is an absolutely wonderful two volume book entitled "Endgame" by Derrick Jensen, in fact I was so enthralled by Jensen that I bought another one of his books entitled "Walk on Water".

He poses some important questions for us in terms of what actions we should all be taking to protect our landbase. Some might think of him as an extremist, I just see him as someone who has ideas that many of us are too afraid to posit

Well worth the read

Birds without Wings - David Gray

Thought I would draw your attention to David Gray and his song birds without wings. You can not help but wonder how long we have left on this planet if we keep up at the rate we are going. We can not agree on much these days. Carbon Credits - Carbon Quotas, what will it be, what will become of us. Lately I noticed that I my priorities are changing and I am better able to come to grips with our situation. If you need help doing the same read the lyrics to the song, I bet you will start to understand.

wishing that something would happen
a change in this place
'cos I'm tearing off the fancy wrapping
find an empty package

take for a while
your trumpet from your lip
loosen your hold loosen your grip
on your old ways
that have fallen out of step
in a changing time
hoist a new flag
hoist a new flag

angry sun burn down
judging us all
guilty of neglect and disrespect
and thinking small

and death by boredom
and death by greed
if we can't stop taking
more than we need

but across the fractured landscape
I see the same things
tired ideas
birds without wings

birds without wings
birds without wings

and these are just thoughts
of lack lustre times
I've no interest
in excuses you can find

like you've had a hard day
now you're too tired to care
now you're too tired to care
you've had a hard day

well across the fractured landscape
I see the same things
tired ideas broken values
many with the notion
that to share is to lose
a hollow people bound by a lack
of imagination and too much looking back
without the courage to give a new thing a chance
grounded by this ignorance

(and the cat comes)
We're just,
birds without wings
birds without wings
birds without wings

Damien Rice

This guy continues to impress me. I have watched several interviews with him, isn't you tube great, where it appears that he just wants to make his kind of music. His first album was full of simple acoustic sounds pounded down with heavy heart lyrics. Not sappy - heavy.

Here is one of his new songs

in the new year

Was reading the news the other day and realised that I needed something for the blog for the new year. I have a loyal following out there, you know who you are, and thanks for the support. All the newspapers ran stories discussing the past and promoting the future. There are several things that come to mind about the future.

1. EverGreening - the continued move towards a green lifestyle. A continued green architecture movement combined with emerging green materials. 2007 will also see the environment king maker in politics, at least in Canada

2. Solitary Confinement - I think there is going to be a recognition that more people, while digitally connected, are becoming more physically isolated. Electronic communities connect people but on only so many fronts. There will be a recognition that this is putting some people at risk(healthy and safety)

3. Culture on Line - is not the advent of an e-culture but rather a move towards preserving and displaying culture electronically. The focus thus far has been on how the internet has changed and influenced our culture rather than picked it up by the bootstraps and propelled it. We saw some of this in Second Life last year, look for this to be a huge boom area. Get In.

Do you remember?

Today I found myself wondering when and why I became interested in computers. My first computer was the Coleco Adam- here are the specs

Coleco Adam
Introduced: June 1983
Released: October 1983
Discontinued: January 1985
Price: US $600
CPU: Zilog Z80-A @ 3.58MHz
RAM: 80K, 64K available to user
Display: TV (RF) & composite video
36 X 24 text, 16 colors
256 X 192 graphics
Ports: cartridge, video, AdamNet
Expansion: 3 internal expansion slots
Peripherals: Daisy-wheel printer (required)
Storage: 1 or 2 internal cassette drives
External floppy drive available
OS: BASIC, loaded from cassette

Amazingly I can remember coding in syntax similar to 'goto line'. I have had limited training with computers. Used to be pretty good with Java and NT security, dabbled in intrusion detection but never really studied the fundamentals. What I see now is that what I need to study is HCI - human computer interaction for it is not the internals that impress me it is the human that concerns me. There is a psychosis on the horizon, one where some humans lose conscious control over communication. We are seeing signs of this now as young children are reliant upon IM and SMS to communicate. I am not concerned about the masses but rather a small segment of our society that might not be predisposed to understanding communication boundaries. I am also concerned that there is an entire populace that has no exposure to computers and their communication capabilities.