M1verse

“There here,” he said rushing to her side.

“Happy Hali day,” she replied twirling her head alertly, referring to celebration of the activation of the common mind-world descended from early MMOGs.

“You too. Glad you could make it.” He picked up a couple of bags and headed out of the subway.

“We’re having a peace rally for all networks and the scenery here is so beautiful, it will make a wonderful background.”

“Assuming that a few war profiteers don’t launch a smoke barrage again.”

“Try to be optimistic. If necessary, we can synthesize immersively, but it’s nice to go au natural every now and then.” A firecracker went off nearby which startled them both.



His artifact comm alerted.

“Hey, you celebrating too?” he asked.

“Not really. Minor problem. i’ll solve yours if you solve mine. Surveillance in your region had several leads on reported vandalism whenever local residents were away. It narrowed down to a ring gang, bored soldiers, and ex-domestics, so things should be better for you now."

“What do you need from me?” he asked.

“There have been a rash of so-called alien abductions in these parts, so if you think that I’ve gone missing, follow the attached instructions and that should get me back safely, okay?”

“You got it,” he confirmed.

“Okay, we’ll handle the perps.” Connection closed.



He brought her to his apartment and the house system announced dinner was ready.

“Smells great,” she said. “Nice how realworld machines can guess what you want and do all the preparations for go ahead.'”

“That’s so we get some timee to sleep. They probably recognize us by our activity schedules, since they’re always on.”

“We have some loyalists that seem that way, too. They must nap between worship.”

“Usability and efficiency must be really good.”

“As long as we have people like you that can troubleshoot responses so things don’t escalate.”

“Well, winners write the history books, as they say, we just map incompatibilities and encourage safety margins. There is a lot of inertia from ideological traditions and some of it is not always constructive.”

“Partisans.”

“After the post-industrialist generation, the usual demands didn’t have any support, so the networks picked up the roles. People tend to be ranked by membership as reps, leads, admin, predictors and what you’ve pointed out. Of course, many are on multiple nets. Surveillance and machines don’t participate in the polls or coin flips, they mostly monitor rules or expedients, most of which are logged. Every now and then a domain fault rattles dependents. Profiles are searched for relevant people by topics or talents so things can be sorted out quickly.”

“There are a lot of people and more expected.”

“So say the Xy.”

They toasted glasses.



Alert again. Surveillance timeout. He opened the instructions and approved their sequence for the printer. A sphere materialized within.

“Thanks,” the comm chirped.

“You okay?”

“Never better. I’ve put a nice bonus in your credit node. Also see attached appreciation note. Should have a ride any minute.”

The door alerted and someone came in and took the sphere away with them.



He picked her up from the rally and got her back to the transit station just in time for the next departure.

“We should do this again soon,” she said. “See you on the inside.” She waved and was gone.

He checked his status and remembered the note.

“Okay, big picture time. Self-supporting biospheres can be deployed to planets or orbits, and symbolization engines used by network admins can be parked elsewhere for use when needed. Intelligence is enhanced as much as possible for the smallest lifeforms. Species-agnostic interfaces translate to each semantics. Nonphysical species can be modeled. You might not notice the difference interactively. The question was whether the distance-from-existence could become traversable at some point. So the 'abduction' in this case was a ruse to encourage you to verify this. Thanks for your efforts.”

His artifact comm alerted and headlined “+1. Now I’m really celebrating! Happy Hali day, Meta1verse.”

Mon, Apr 19, 2010  Permanent link

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Laundry List

Transcript:

“Rules of - change. It is a pleasure to join with you all today, in a sense visiting one’s own past while hoping that fate can be altered through discovery of original design and ultimate objective. Humanity has always had organizing myths. Natural systems are infinitely complex, yet people are tempted to control the forces of nature. Civilizations have frequently had crises. There is an interplay between models of cooperation and competition. It was thought that self-correcting rule sets would survive the human condition longer. This turned out to include the gothic tradition and the likes of Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley, Poe, Stevenson, and Faulkner, which may yet be further reanimated. To what extent can this very utility be classified as a scifi engine? As far as science or fiction, it allows blogging, comments and attachment of a variety of media types. What makes this site different from others such as Myspace? The watchful users are a distinguishing value and the context is future-orientation. Content has mapped realms of news and fiction. In this particular case, styles have varied among the ironic practical encapsulated author, logical rational omniscient Correction, active controlling privileged Skullective, moral curious witness Mary, the Guild’s paranoid Byronic heroes, hapless dislocated unmanageable Watch, and your humble knowledgeable protective multimorph. All sorts of dramas can unfold. Correction denies the free will that created it. A final generation preserves flaws forever. Conservation of humanity is too costly to begin with, and this only increases over time. Authors experience the farthest consequences of publication. These are all in a sense the last of their kind. Their beginnings may hold clues. Nature splits the tech species. The singularity assumed dominant identity. The privileged people take extreme measures when they risk losing status. Correction emerges. Collectives also have shadows that react during crisis. Compound this with the fact that correction warps human behaviors, including infiltrators’, and we may find Skullective. There is talk of a bloggers’ guild. Humans have mastered networking, robotics, biology, and synthetic manufacturing. Some post-tech automata appear to be extraordinarily evolved natural systems. You may have considered other types of artifacts yourself. All prepare for the adventure. What will we look like when we arrive?”

Sat, Apr 10, 2010  Permanent link

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ProPerform

Product: SC100406 Collective Life Forms

Sample use cases:

Context: Home, commercial, or multi-resident buildings. Location may be on any continent. Demographics may vary.

Problems: Utility bills soaring out of control, maintenance and repair have to deal with overloads, eg rainstorm washouts, vibrational disruptions, dramatic temperature shift zones, etc.

Designs: Templates to improve sustainability and reuse, and control costs by recycling or converting excess resources.

Artifacts: Water stored naturally and used locally so less consumption of expensive urban supply, power has alternative kinetic or solar or material sources captured for local grid, thermal maps connect flows efficiently for warming and cooling cycles and demands, local messaging or documentation or news capabilities for collaboration and historical knowledge.

Admin: Information about local events aggregated for regional summaries and views, reviewed for effectiveness and responses to environmental constraints which may be used elsewhere. Separate and protect identity details; allow third-party access for approved interfaces.

Commerce: Aftermarket for local conversion systems improve sustainability. Used components may have attached issue and repair history. Example product is simple low-cost expendable filtration system, or alternative waste management transport.

Unique applications:

• Aggregate comments to same videos or embeds from across hosting and linking sites.
• Sorting around source type and content.
• Search and navigate around creative common derivations and additions.
• List questions or observations and get notifications when relevant material is added or computed.
• Proxy server correlates content across set of users for goals, constraints or filters, eg for professional viewpoints, or watchdog. Predict effects of changes in rules for userbase.
• Visual design elements explore how structure might be changed to improve content or function.
• Marketing analysis can evaluate probable characterizations and defaults for each user or content element.
• Resolve paradoxes arising from juxtaposition of seemingly contradictory elements or assertions.
• Post-industrial population life support systems

Features and requirements:

• Cloudsource collaboration data forms, few common fields, can add custom fields for data types, app results, or other functions. Apply to science, test, or other domains.
• Subsets include bookmarks, notes, spreadsheets, webpages, messages, documents, books, calendar, apps, software, sim, device, chip, game or bot.
• Search can be of lists, indicies, contents, categories.
• Database can store data over time. Attached content can be stored.
• UI frontend might translate to semantic web standards or wolframalpha-type computation platforms for metadata algorithms.
• Browser frontend can navigate by users, topics, dates, hierarchies, and so on.
• Stream interface I/O to social networks.
• Personalized portal or dashboard can highlight content organization across devices.
• Alerts for relevant updates.
• Accessibility for nonordinary users, eg conversational agent-type dialogue.
• Archives allow review of data as of particular date.

Pricing: Credit-clearing plans balance usage and production modes.

Upgrades: ProPerform P/L/U/S "kitchen sync".

Tue, Apr 6, 2010  Permanent link

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Watchcraft

Imagine the function

Light the matter again

Steady to entertain

Sense at edge and action



Synthetic the life to be

Identity types occur

Proxy as app for actor

Synch simultaneity



Rational inefficient

Seeks to recreate

A measure and state

The causal insufficient



It seems hierarchy is slow

Pov is the thing

That probabilities bring

Time flow ratio

Thu, Apr 1, 2010  Permanent link

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Fiction Rules

1. Write what you’d rather be reading.
2. Write about where it leads.
3. Search shall find, so postpone it to have room to retreat.
4. Explanation is natural, the indescribable needs creativity.
5. You already have the ideas, herding them onto the page defines the writer.
6. Rewrite completely (especially after publication).
7. Ears are a handy critic.
8. Writing purges the system.
9. Characters may need to experience your life from time to time (using their own tech).
10. Write your own set of rules.


Comments:


Fran:

Rules of correction.

Skullective

Those causing unauthorized distress of preanimateds are known. We are the future.

Hitchhikers Guild

Enjoy the alien media effects, elitist.

Watch

Symmetrical, Entanglement, Temporality, Intelligence. It’ll be okay this time.

Ads by P/L/U/S detergent

Sun, Mar 28, 2010  Permanent link

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Collide the Dots

Roles are immersive, dear diary app persona interface. Pause predicting bestsellers,measuring meaning, linking relevant sobjects, ranking known populations for changing tastes, and adjusting coefficients. Set reminder to return friend’s avatar and some feedback. Select from the usual lineup, substitute ebert-in-a-box for previous vocal setting as clear as an azure sky in deepest summer. Critics are characters too. Play next HL augmented album. Walls begin vibrating rhythmically. The trick of these interactive world editors is to pick a time-frame long enough to explore the plot, yet reach a conclusion relatively quickly so humanity is saved from unrecognized threat, since predictions never actually come true ironically, and possibly telling a story at the same time. Or it may sometimes turn out to be the post-digital equivalent of adarkandstormynight. Begin search scripts and transcripts. Apply sociological semantics. Eliminate used styles. Fill up completely from scifi lookup, tune by worlds, debug current context, then produce content. Quote the state of the author, once domains began to overlap physiology, there was stuff smarter than humans, creative commons turned to graphic novel videos and games, music was banned and it took costly enhancements to understand the realtime news stream. Arrange the auto-generated stories; combine into chapters of book series. Cover-art samples slide across visual field. Finance has become like a pawn shop for the imagination where loans are the main source of income, repaid depending upon the present needs of the source. Sweet smell of springtime season. Test a few themes from ancient lore, social fiction like a last.fm for scifi, synapses to bypass or bridge the political or professional hierarchy and barriers. Hacking tangible computation maps like spreadsheets. Wire some randomness into the conclusions of the limited labelers and extreme reductionists. Walking the tangent of communal timestamped expectations of general-purpose future calendars. Plot disaster, monsters, space-time travel, intelligent machines, and thoroughly question human identity. Sprinkle a few references to other genres, e.g. romantic kick-ass swimming vampire cowboy detective. Nibble stamina snack. Pursue themes of the history of the artifact, whether the target is reanimated, origin of the exception to singularity, test depth of characters’ quests including yours truly, speculate how this very site acted as its own user resulting in statehood and a benevolent cyber-dictatorship. Prefix encrypt Rules, Speaker. Resume.

Tue, Mar 23, 2010  Permanent link

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Entosite

Sat, Mar 20, 2010  Permanent link

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Themos Fair

Avvy has the NAX API running on the chinese chip from before the corporate war. It is spitting out sentences from Shomer’s archived bootleg semweb OS database.

He inserts the mechanism to outline, sort, normalize, group, name, explain, visualize, and dramatize.

Philosophy is derived from articles, authors, sites, links, socnets and products.

Too dry, adjust.

immortality eternity creative-destuction multiverse big-bang order time-arrow meaning internet architecture sustainable symmetry transforms brain metaphor fabrication mathematics outlier complexity biology truth crisis.

Very nebulous, tweek.

Perspective is the (lack of) separation between observer, description and subjects, macro-manifestations of particulars, arrays of elements of change, signals, sequences, and switches. Frameworks predict exceptions.

Warming up.

Bartender wearing a t-shirt of leftover logos looks up from tidying the shelf, clock drifted somehow, and a young woman walks in with some sort of doll. She sees a bunch of eggs painted in portraits and some coupons for redemption rates.

On the wall, a retro-style TV starts displaying Rules of Correction. She says “Speaker, be nice.”

Bartender asks if she’s on spring break and has got any ID which she doesn’t so he pours her a diet soda in a Blade Runner cup.

TV shows two guys, look like twins, in this very place. Bartender is asking what it’ll be. Smiling guy wants rum and sulphur, serious-looking guy asks for water for both. It seems to turn reddish when he takes the glasses.

Bartender asks how long they’re in town. Smilling guy says probably 3 days. Just showing his friend around, the possibilities, that sort of thing. Bartender starts sketching on an eggshell.

“If you don’t accept”, smiley says, “it goes to JI, up to you. I can take your place. Haven’t been up there in ages. You might like it around here for a while. Trick is not to dispel their illusions. I’ll leave by the cave and make the goodbyes to the crew.”

Amid a very fast guitar riff, the TV show changes to extreme crowdsourced competitions. Host kind of looks like the egg heads. Bartender starts texting on a phone.

Avvy looks around to verify that the coast is clear and tugs the elevator cable a couple of times to quickly pull him up and out of there.

Sat, Mar 13, 2010  Permanent link

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Cartels for Dummies

[tags] Fiction, Economic [/tags]

[rights] Encopy [/rights]

[until LDbypass] [encrypt] Rules of Correction [/encrypt] [/LDbypass]

[theme] Risk that tech for energy, nano, bio, and/or cog may not be convergent or mutually supportive [/theme]

[display] Tour Nonseen [/display]

[synopsis]

Initial context:

Early version of Correction is in command of organizational executives. Economy begins growth until disrupted by wealthiest. Sustainability prevented by 7-year pump and dump cycle. Authority is limited by ideology. Promotions are auctioned. Ambitious may borrow then recover from illicit trades, commissions on regulation of legitimate growth, or manipulation of states, industries and common treasuries. External teaching is prohibited. Public resists contradictory rules, lack of liberty, conflict of interest, abuse of privilege, and artificial poverty.

Watch, having sought target on earth, follows quantum tracks through electron to Sun to Space Central which is unfortunately destroyed as result of instabilities in simultaneous integration event.

Aviator vessel specializes in design of mobile architecture such as hotels, hospitals and large stadiums which can be aerolifted and transported around planet where modules can be combined to shelter displaced populations. Recognizes sudden disappearance of scifi needed by public imagination. Tasks H/I/D/E group which hacks nowzilla, browses and texts Renaissance to find inventor, careful of primitive/high-tech paradox. They also secretly boost a couple of musical notes for metal ontology album, “Money is Data”.

Davinci sees letters appear on canvas backwards, has near-death-experience, struggles through mental layers of soul, existence, self, body, empathy, imagination, and reflection of world, then regains senses and builds machine to represent the problem. Derives notion of tablet slices. Applies creative recycling toward sustainable artifact to hold values until disaster recovery, and buries under studio. This is eventually unearthed by attempt to run internet cable underground and is immediately censored.

Turns out Watch actually captured E# which leads former to discovery of bug in Correction and latter to search for missing blue notes.

Skullective resignedly attempts to reacquire original target, configures suitable human form from bio farm and live bodies, and memory-mines others for high-value items which can be confiscated by Correction. Survives Mortality mishap by unidressed technique of spraying skin cells on trauma regions to maintain vitality. Confronts Aviator and they battle until one or the other’s self-destruct is accidentally triggered and they are both gone.

[/synopsis]

[prompt] Select action [/prompt]

Sat, Feb 6, 2010  Permanent link

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The Last Mantra

The animal sniffed around torn up illustrations that littered the area amid discarded electronic devices.

Mary: “Must be the ruins of a library, Fran.”

She kicked aside an ITab that had lost power long ago, dark except for an after-image of a news story entitled “Bank Reform”. A notebook fluttered nearby so she picked it up. A series of fiery words suddenly appeared floating a little ways in front of her spelling “Rules of Correction”.

Mary screamed: “Ah!” The animal jumped around her.

“Gotcha.” A big woman appeared at her side.

Mary: “Hi, who are you?”

“My name’s Merc, but everybody calls me Minotaur for some reason. Stupid nickname won’t go away. I keep things from disappearing mostly.”

Mary: “What was that?”

“Somebody’s thesis maybe. Hardcopies are nice because of semi-permanence and extensibility. I’ll take that.” She grabbed it and buried it between her arm and bosom.

Mary: “No, I meant the writing in the air.”

Minotaur: “You probably need to eat something. I have things to do. Please don’t try to snatch anything else.” She walked off.

“You must be a newb.”

Mary turned and another lady was standing there looking bored. “Why?”

“Special effects on the lettering. Keeps away the fanatics.” She gestured and the floating words turned normal.

“Thanks, who are you?”

“Why don’t you ask Plague?”

“Who?”

“Your pet. She has the cutest big eye. Synthetic body parts, right?”

“That’s Fran. She adopted me recently when I was too exhausted and rode on her back.”

“Haven’t seen any quality animats since apocalypse day. Probably worth a lot. Nasa used to make them. Something about artifact-driven-culture-rebuilding, shorten the anarchy in case the Book of Eli was an entirely wrong version, stuff like that. Proably as likely to succeed as a linux manual. Speaker, American Indians.” The floating page of text refreshed. “Like these myself.”

Mary: “Wow.”

Lady: “Simple really, except for the folks who rank on eachother all the time. Their vocabulary is extremely limited. Speaker, Human GUI LD, bios.” A text table appeared. “Read it then swallow it.”

Mary looked puzzled.

“Kidding. Old habits. Nevermind." She pointed at the list. "They’re good at avoiding Correction exploits. ”


HAX Character..Strength................Travel...............Defense.............Name
Appless...............newb......................hitchhiking.......denial..................Mary
Fran.....................materials...............trotting...............soulful-eye.........Plague
CoverTab............magician...............boots.................confusion...........Lita
BarnStormer…..mentalist………...canoe................swarming...........Amon
RobberBaron.....muscle..................glider.................surgical-strike...Fred Smith
WrapAround.......mechanic..............wheels..............irony....................Dave
Shomer...............mirror-universe....word-of-mouth.volume...............Lars
Avatar...................entertaining..........piracy.................recruiting...........Ozzie
Minotaur...............speed...................ubiquitous.........booby-traps......Merc


Mary: “CoverTab looks like you. Is Lita your real name?”

CoverTab: “Right. You tell anybody and you’re toast, get it? You like heavy metal?” A rhythmic guitar suddenly was jamming in the background.

Mary: “Who’s Shomer?”

A thunderous voice yelled “You wretched?!” A thin young guy was standing next to them.

CoverTab: “Blind storyteller and keeper of the archives. Nice if he got the facts straight for a change.”

Shomer: “Go ^*#~ yourself” he said very loudly. CoverTab waved her hand and he started turning his head in different directions as if trying to hear any sounds. “Where are you? Oh well, back to the stacks.” He vanished.

CoverTab: “Leave it to the civil servants.”

Mary saw a bunch of people walking up to them.

BarnStormer: “Keep the faith. We can make this work globally. We’ll all be better off.”

RobberBaron: “Yeah. Compared to nuke nirvana. You need my latest software for Arknets.”

WrapAround: “What’s that pet made of? That would be good cover fabric for a smart car, or better yet, a self-designing starship.”

CoverTab: “Will you get out of here! Where’s E#?”

Mary shrugged. “Not in the table.” WrapAround patted Fran on the head and smiled.

Suddenly the lighting was really bright for a moment creating a glint on a wristwatch which expanded in size and rose vertically until it blocked the sun then zipped off and disappeared.

“CoverTab: Lucky for you, darned Watch can’t tell the difference between human life and a sunspot or we’d end up in the Correction.” Mary again had a quizzical expression. “You’ve heard of Angels, ET, Terminators, Cylons? Side-effects of Shomeric agenda.” She waved her hand and everyone vanished.

Fran yelped so Mary picked her up and started off again.

Sat, Jan 30, 2010  Permanent link

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