From book tour promoting Gibson’s first book of non-fiction, Distrust That Particular Flavor
Author Archives: Steve Mays
Why SOPA is a bad idea
What does a bill like PIPA/SOPA mean to our shareable world? Clay Shirky delivers a proper manifesto — a call to defend our freedom to create, discuss, link and share, rather than passively consume. The best explanation I’ve seen of this subject.
Words create words, reality is silent
Most of the words I utter in the course of a day just aren’t that necessary. Sure, I have to communicate with co-workers and friends, but that requires far fewer words than I was using. A lot of my recent reading has tugged me in this direction, most recently a collection of conversations titled, I Am That. An excerpt:
“The moment you start talking you create a verbal universe, a universe of words, ideas, concepts and abstractions, interwoven and interdependent, most wonderfully generating, supporting and explaining each other and yet all without essence or substance, mere creations of the mind. Words create words, reality is silent.”
If that’s too woo woo for you, here’s George Carlin:
“More than half of what comes out of your mouth in that client presentation is mindless, pointless, idiotic sounding, space-filling blather. Don’t you want meetings to be shorter? Aren’t you sick of fake words that mean nothing? Wouldn’t you rather be actually creating something rather than killing it with the boatload of words you throw at it before you ever show it to the client? Of course you would. So stop talking like an idiot.”
I’d love to have a transcript of every conversation I had for 24 hours. I’d highlight just the stuff that needed to be said. What percent do you think that might be?
What if they didn’t give us names?
Okay, that’s too difficult for me to imagine. Let’s say they didn’t name me when I was born. How would that play out? My parents — and other relatives — would probably refer to me as “the baby,” and — later — “the boy.” Once old enough to have conversations, I’d surely be asked, “What’s your name?” To which I’d reply (I’m just guessing here) “I don’t know,” or “I don’t have one.”
I’m trying to get some sense of how a “name” defines us. Sure, people change their names all the time. For fun (“The Situation”) and sometimes legally.
Could I get through life without a name? In my head, I’m “me/my/mine” …not Steve. The problem would seem to arise in day-to-day interaction with others. Would I become “the tall guy with the big ears” to some and “the creepy guy at the back of the coffee shop” to others?
Ira Lavine gave this more serious thought in his “science fiction novel of a technocratic false-utopia” This Perfect Day:
“There are only four personal names for men (Bob, Jesus, Karl and Li) and four for women (Anna, Mary, Peace and Yin). Instead of surnames, individuals are distinguished by a nine-character alphanumeric code, their “nameber” (a neologism from “name” and “number”), e.g. WL35S7497.”
The more I think about, the more it seems names — for people or objects or places or whatever — are just handy labels. We could get by without them but if you knew lots of tall guys with big ears, it would be a pain in the ass.
Scott Adams: Ideas
“According to my robot perspective, ideas are the most important force. Humans merely serve as incubators, filters, and transmission facilities for the ideas. It’s a symbiotic relationship because wherever you see the healthiest environments for ideas, humans are usually thriving too.
In this context, I see myself as a collector, combiner, and broadcaster of ideas, both good and bad. I spray ideas into the universe and let the ideas fight for their own survival. With the help of their human hosts, the best ideas will evolve and reproduce, and the worst ideas will go to their resting places on the Internet.
The ideas I unleashed yesterday are already waging a guerrilla war with the status quo. The ideas are hopping from host to host, and if any are worthy, they will evolve and survive.
I see life as a process, not a goal. If my goal had been to create world-changing ideas that worked right away, I would be a complete failure. But I don’t have that goal. Instead, I have a process that involves seeding the universe with ideas and waiting for the strongest to evolve and make a difference. The worst case scenario is that my ideas cause the eventual best ideas to compete harder and evolve to even better forms.”
— From essay by Scott Adams