Talking of chemicals

Talking of chemical modification, I've been running on unending supply of caffeine for the whole day. Believe me when I tell you light cold medicine combined with binge drinking coffee is not good for your health, mental or otherwise. Although the job I had to do today was certainly helped by the spike I got from caffeine, this is not something I want to repeat every single day. Thank god I have the whole day off tomorrow (actually, it's today since the time's a little after two in the AM).

I had to do bunch of deviation analysis for my experiment, and write up reports on the findings. The job was finished only moments ago. I personally like my job. A measly City College student handling real experiments and possibly looking at the bright future of scholarships in better places and PhD options, what I have is certainly better than what most people get to experience in life I think. The hardship of the experience themselves doesn't really matter, so long as I can devote myself to the future I can believe in one little thing at a time. A world that can finally step away from the nauseatingly pedestrian vision of the future, a world where individuals will finally be able to pursue their own visions of what the world should be regardless of social/cultural/physical restrictions. A world where being treated like a human being is an obvious and inalienable right rather than luxury that must be earned.

When I was in high school I practically gave up on life. I didn't submit college applications, and didn't even take SATs. I only did those things in a spur of the moment in about a week's time, and by then the only college accepting application was the CUNY. Even after getting into the CUNY the experience was horrible to say the least. In all honesty, for anyone of even average intellectual disposition the hardest part of being in a CUNY college is being in a CUNY college, for many of the people and environment one must constantly encounter in CUNY never fails to remind you of what a failure you are. The crushing feeling of having no worthwhile future to avail myself of, that is a disease many people of this age seem to suffer from, knowingly or not.

Times have passed, and now I am a promising student of science (if I say so myself). So am I free from that feeling of despair? Day after day of mean spirited drudgeries filled with things I could not possibly care about, or even approve of? No I am not free. Even now I must devote myself wholly to my endeavor, strive to hone my skills and the acuity of my mind or risk the return of the nihilistic tendencies. Should it ever happen I will turn what little I've achieved to nothingness by my own hands. For some inexplicable reason I tend to be very good at those sort of things. 

The world is innately separate from the humanity. It is a motif that shows up again and again throughout the human history, embedded in fairy tales and streaks of madness. Along with the multilayered syndrome is the similarly ever present motif of metamorphosis, embedded in both the darker and lighter side of the human psyche, the quintessential archetype that instigates the self. Perhaps science and technology is the bridge in the gap between the world and humanity. Perhaps that is why I am so obsessed with the physical study of artificial life and physical origins of the consciousness.       

Chemical body modification

Americans (and the modern civilization in general) had been dependent on medications since the discovery of penicillin, but recently the level of chemical commitment began to take a whole new perspective. Modification of the baseline intellectual ability through chemical agents that goes beyond simple nutrient control is something I suspect to be relatively widespread and will continue to seep into the general populace as the medications become more sophisticated and effective. The effectiveness of the medication can be surprising when controlled and monitored carefully. I can concentrate on a single task for around ten to fourteen hours at one time, depending on my condition. With proper chemical aid I can theoretically pull through twelve to twenty hours, again dependent on my prior psychological and physical condition.

It would be unrealistic to simply discredit the effectiveness of the chemical aid in intellectual pursuits when its benefits are so clear. The fields of academic studies are one of the rare fields of human endeavor that allows necessities of individual desire and social niceties to be as one, and as such any chance at improvement on one's ability provides an irresistible allure that goes beyond the simple need to perform. I believe how this new addiction to chemical augmentation plays out and how the society deals with it in coming times will be representative of how the society and the individual will fair once the genetic and cybernetic augmentation for human beings become economic reality. There are some cautious optimism as to the possible changes the coming era of affordable chemical augmentation might in fact benefit the humanity at large, and even serve as a catalyst for a different human age. In this era where people are becoming increasingly aware of ramifications of technology (or at least becoming increasingly polarized by the awareness) on future course of humanity, such predictions take on profound foliage different from similar futurist predictions of the old.

If there is one thing I am worried about, it is our lack of knowledge on the processes of the development of human consciousness. Will learning without requisite control of one's physio-chemical facilities pose unwanted side-effects on the learner? Will we end up with an enitre civilization of people who knows things they can't possibly hope to utilize? I'd count on the complex natures of innate human greed and pride to act as counter to such outcome. I for one cannot wait for the day that would finally allow my body to catch upto the place sight of my mind sees.

Decisions

I've finally decided to pick up computer graphics. Nothing fancy, just something I can do in my spare time.

Now I have to make a decision between 3d and 2d... I've had some previous experience with drawing on paper, though I've never really tried anything on computer, so I guess I'll be novice regardless of what I choose. At the moment I'm leaning toward 3d, in that it can be utilized for both animation and mesh-exporting for integration to different apps. The fact that I can get some student version of Maya (3ds max is kind of hard to find at discount) for free is also a big plus. The only thing that's actually making me reconsider is how complex 3d design applications are. If I wanted to sketch using tablet I'd simply be able to sketch away while 3d design suites will require some extensive education/computing power, which is something I can't quite afford right now.

Aesthetically, 3D medium provides much more technical variety compared to the conventional 2D medium. Just look at some of the work here.
In my heart, I know I'll adapt faster to two dimensional arts, but still, wow. Just imagining what would be possible in three dimensional design program with its photorealistic lights and textures bring chills to my bones.

Of course, the biggest reason for hesitation is the amount of work I can get done while learning to cg...

Community project

I've posted this on my other blog too. I think this might be an interesting read for some of you.

There is a semi-community project to simulate human brain using spare computing cycle in the works.

The members of the projects seem to be looking at eventual commercialization of what they achieve using this project. I assume that it might turn off some of the more devoted advocates of GNU philosophy among us, but I still think this is project is interesting enough to devote some of my unused cpu cycles to the cause… Since, well, what’s the point of letting the spare computer time go to waste? Right?

Science is fundamentally specialist and will never be able to achieve the kind of 2.0-everyone pitch in- status afforded by larger community web services today. However, the systems such as BOINC (the system used for the simulation project as well as a number of other worthy, non-commercial projects) gives us a glimpse of what ‘open-science’ in the future might be like, in that it allows concentration of necessary energy and resources to make the research come to fruition, not through any large scale departmental bureaucracy but through a sort of grassroots recycle programs of the commonly wasted byproducts of our civilization. Indeed, I’d refer to it as making full use of the machinery of the human civilization itself.

I’d like to urge anyone even passively interested to visit the BOINC website and participate in a project of your choosing. They have a number of projects in progress and the list is likely to grow in the future. Who knows, our little contribution might make the future a bit more interesting place to live.

Long day

Like indicated in the title, it had been a long day for me. I had to go out at around eight in the morning and came back about two hours ago, so that's twelve in the night. For almost all that time I had to work, reading, writing, and calibrating... Basically tearing my hair out to squeez out every ounce of imagination I can spare in a day. At least I'm close to doing something I truly believe in. That makes it all worth it I guess. I just hope my dream wasn't so darn far away.

During the evening I went to a little cafe in the town for some food. It was during the happy hour, and guess what, a glass of chianti and a plate of gouda cheese for four dollars. Not too shabby considering that practically every non-junk food is overpriced in the city's night scene. That's about all I ate for the whole day I think. Maybe I'll go back to that place next week.

My brain's too haywired to write properly right now. Guess it's time to rest a bit.
(the ever present motif of metamorphosis and the Jungian obsession with archetypes and masks come to mind. Why are these ideas so omnipresent to a physics student?)

Universal knowledge

Something I wrote a little while ago on my blog. Error ridden and juvenile, maybe. But there might be a few things worth salvaging.

There is an interesting notion behind some of the more network oriented mathematical researches these days, regarding possible existence of universal characteristic available to all network centric systems regardless of their physical implementation. For some odd reason I find myself coming back to such thought often in recent years, though I’m not really sure why I would pay any more attention to this fascinating subject than say, chaos in life-like system.  Regardless of the reason, if I can’t help but to think about the subject I might as well do a little musing.

How about if I apply the methods of the network-link based thinking to a bit of epistemology? The structure of the human knowledge is fundamentally network oriented in that knowledge rarely if ever come without direct reason taking the form of knowledge. In order to broaden one’s knowledge one must know something first, and from there on the individual case of knowledge is built up, one thing leading to the other and the other depending on the truth of another knowledge which plays out in complex web of positive and negative feedback like any other decent complex system in nature. What if there is a certain characteristic that the structure of knowledge must take through the virtue of taking the mathematical form of complex network? What if it is possible to arrive at previously ignored possibilities of the world simply by searching for certain structural phenomena within the knowledge network itself instead of going through every single link within the network like we do right now? Even more, what if there is a pattern that all valid structure of knowledge must follow? What if there is a way to ‘know’ the structure of the knowledge itself without being aware of all the individual components forming the knowledge network?

If there is any valid point in this musing, the implications would be quite interesting. The impact such theory of knowledge would have on the nature of artificial intelligence/life studies and natural complex systems research would be most interesting, and quite a few educators would have something to think about. They might finally begin to treat learning as a development of interface to the universal structure of knowledge instead of some twisted weeding out process to erudite the gifted (which is a process most obvious in poorer schools of the inner city area, with richer private schools taking a bit more ‘democratic’ approach, strangely enough).

All this is nothing more than talk, of course. At the moment there is no way to support such claim of universal network-centric structure of knowledge in any academic detail. There are a few interesting historical cues that might suggest in thinking such a thing, like the prevalence of the Jungian collective unconscious in many forms throughout the history, or some of the things believed by Rudolf Steiner’s Anthroposophy movement, though both are not quite rigorous enough to lend credit to a full fledged academic research of scientific nature.

Regardless of the truth of such complex system based dispositions, mathematical phenomena seem to be getting ever closer to the structure of the real world. Maybe it is a sign of the future to come.

From the metropolitan museum of art

I had a bit of time today, so I stopped by the Met. I'm actually writing this in the museum using my laptop. It seems that they finally resumed their service of free wifi connection to museum patrons. Quite wonderful stuff. If anyone's visiting the museum I'd suggest bringing wifi enabled laptop and make full use of the facilities provided. Oh, and please remember that backpacks are prohibited within the museum gallery. Messenger bags and such are still alright though.

I must praise the museum authority on their fine decisions. Not only is the entrance based on 'recommended' system, they also provide internet service and library service for the public. This is how museums should be.