www.goodreads.com/book/show/16689

The Story of the Lone Geek

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The birds are chirping, why are they twittering, what are they saying…no more time to wax poetic, it is time to wake up, and get to the office.

I open my eyes and take in the time on my alarm clock.

“Damn… I should either try living in another time zone or go to bed earlier.”, I thought.

After making myself ready for the day, I arrive at the office.

“Morning boss.” I hear as I enter my office.

“Morning, what’s on the agenda today?”, I said, while getting my Emotiv placed properly on my head, “I’m hooked in, run the calibration.”

“I noticed, boss, ready… Happy, Sad, Shocked, Confused, Push, Pull, Focus…running 5×5.  Your real time feeds are mostly nacient right now(on the right), I will pull up your delayed feeds on the left, and your To-Do and To-Watch on the front.”

My walls to my left, right and front changes from the slide show pictures to clusters of subscribed blogs, Live feeds(e-mail, FB, twitter, etc.), uTorrent feeds, live.TWIT.tv (set it to speach2text), & iRC.

“Any friends live now?” I asked, and the walls start splotching with colored highlights, and an index chart showing the most and least active friends opens on the front wall.

As none of my live friends were talking to (or about ) nor where their topics of interest to me, after dropping a couple of specific friends on the Text2Speach area, I Push the list, and the highlighting goes with it.

I point to the audio play button and Pull it to start my background music, symphonies by Haydn.  “Ok, time work on the async, while I am not needed live, what is on the hot plate?”

My thesis pops up in front wall, so I get to work…

While writing a new paragraph, I hear a friend asking a question, that I can answer, so I change my focus to that conversation thread and say “Respond as @DoctorATAT…Close, as VGA signals are considered “True Component” and Y/Pb/Pr is a “Color Difference Component” signal and the two signal types are not compatible with each other, though some systems support both, which is probably why it worked on your projector but not your flat panel…Send”

I turn back to my paragraph and start writing, for a few minutes before the voices again are asking for clarification upon other subjects.  I decide it’s time to go live, so I Push the thesis, check the previsualization of you video out feeds, and I go live.

After a few seconds, my VAT (video/audio/text), starts showing up all over the internet, and the requests start flowing in.  I answer the quick question first, and progress to the longer questions, eventually getting to the badly worded questions.

I have a trick to handle the badly worded questions, using the sales/psychological technique of DTR (Distract-Then-Reframe) , I tell them exactly what they asked in the most convoluted yet terse way, and then offer an alternative thought about the question itself. This usually causes them to either rethink their question or lose control…either way, it is much more time efficient than spending 10 minutes per stupid question.

Some of my friends notice that I am live, and I am now getting their live feeds…

Mom: @Work Helping companies understand non-profit legal loopholes

Dad: @Work Verifying insurance policies and public accounts for Texas, and neighboring states

AltexUSA: @281 Work seems slow, but Nick asked me a question, and left me live on the big screen

Erik: @TWIT Erik’s getting ready to start Tech TalkBack (so it must be Thursday…quick check, yup)

Donna: @School She’s in class, so I’m getting her VidOut, but she has me on V&A2TS@10min (Video & audio to text, summarized every 10 minutes),  I think to myself how happy I am that her school has embraced the idea of live personal time, as where you are should not detract from communications from those important to you.

President: @Work Getting the feed from the White House lawn, so he must be having a private conversation…

Bill: @Office Looks like he’s working at the office like myself, helping people save themselves, I’m glad he redirected his interests away from Microsoft…

Earth, TX: @VirtualUS The place has blossomed over the years that the #VirtualUS took up Real-world residence in that small town, I hardly recognize it, but new #Citizens (1 think we are finally in the laggard phase, finally) are showing up steadily in all of our locations…

“Humm, where’s Leo”, I wonder, and I look around my walls, he was just on http://live.TWIT.tv , so I Push the question to iRC while reviewing the TWiT feed.

On my private ticker box I receive a message, “You have a guest wishing to remain private arriving at the front, and requesting entrance, I have informed them that it will take a minimum of about 3 minutes for you to disengage live communications.”

I tell everyone AFVS&TO (away from video, sound, and text out) and set the system to V2E (video to emoticon). “Let them in” I say.

A few minutes later, I am face to face with the 1st President of the #VirtualUS, he has held the post for more time than any of the others that came afterwards… humans change their minds about as slow as  the moon recedes from the earth, even in the fast paced turnover of the #VirtualGovernment.

He asked me not to talk about our conversation, but I could feel free to mention that he was there, the usual drill for statesmanship business.

That always stuck in my crawl, as I always thought that the business of the #VirtualUS should always be public, but sometimes people have a hard time changing gears. He was a politician for the #RealUS for a long time, before running for #VirtualOffice and getting the 1st post of #VirtualPres back on #06Dec2010… what a day that was.

With the #VirtualPres gone, I got some refreshments and went back to work on my thesis, while keeping the system on Eout (emoticon out).  I always thought my avatars looked funny when trying to separate chewing from smiling.

One of my contacts starts lighting up, coming to the foreground, with the message… “We need to VAT (Video, audio, text).”

I check over myself in the previz shot, and approve the connection.

Leo: @TWiTCottage “I heard the #VirtualPres was hushed @ your place, and I know how you feel about #Virtual matters not being shared with the #VirtualPublic, do you want to comment?”

“Am I on the record…never mind it’s a silly question to ask you, ‘hi, chat room’.  OK, Leo, you want the scoop, here it is…The #VirtualPres was discussing with me how we could start into the next stage of the #VirtualUS plan.” I podcast.

“What do you mean, the next stage, the #VirtualUS is the majority government across the entire world, all governments have their own local versions, what is there to do now?” asked Leo, & seconded by a few in the chat room, including @Acedtect .

“Leo, as the Admiral of the TWiTNavy, you know that our following was the catalyst for the change to the #VirtualUS, but that change was just the start.  The next goal is to start pruning the governments of their dead wood laws, now that we can check each law for logical completeness, those that fail will be either reworked of removed, that is what the #VirtualPres wanted to ask about, how I saw it unfolding.”

“And how do you see it unfolding?” questioned Leo #VirtualL01CA (#VirtualUS Legislator #01 for the State of California)

“Do you want me to ruin the surprise?” I query.

“Maybe, anything dangerous to the people #Real or #Virtual?” he said.

“No, unless that person was a life long politician and can not change with the times, and then it will be a forced career change.”, I then smiled.

“OK, we will talk later, now let’s cut back to Tech TalkBack, with Erik”, the feed border changed colors, so I knew Leo went hushed. “Now, it that really what’s going on?” Leo asked.

“How well do you know me, Leo?” I retorted.

“OK, just wanted to make sure, most people are full of it, but I know you are a straight shooter, so have a good night, I have to get back to the #VirtualUSCongress anyway, later.” said Leo, as he hurriedly signed off.

“Poor Leo.”
”He never wanted to be in politics, you forced him in”
”I know, but I didn’t want to be in politics either, even though the Navy showed me my levels social altruism, besides Leo can now help the world change for the better”
”You should have never thought up the idea…”
”Well, shit happens, and someone will eventually get up and say, ‘I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore’, I just happened to be the person who heard the calls and devised a plan.”
”It was imperfect”
”It was the start we needed, ‘Oculi plus vident quam oculus’” said @SawyerIII1776
”Yea, yea, ‘Several eyes see more than one’, I know, I guess I just feel sorry that he never had a choice, he was the first chosen by #WeThePeople back when Twitter was the only voting method.”
”That’s why you are #Real and we are #Virtual”, said @DoctorATAT
”Yes, but thanks to the #VirtualUS we are both #Real&Virtual too”, I said.

After snapping out of my reverie, I look at the time, and realize that the work day is over, so I go private, and walk to the bedroom for a nap, between shifts.

“G’night Boss”, says the household computer (@BLISSystem), before I fall completely asleep.

I love working from home, in the future.

-SawyerIII @ asstd

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Thinking about… the changes in the computer enthusiasts markets

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When I think about networking it brings up ideas that correlate messaging technologies with person to person interaction.  Messenger, Message, Trust, Time.

A long, long time ago (90’s to 1H 00’), far far away (the 80’s) growing up as a geek was filled with the ridicule and mocking as the films over the years have shown(mostly).     –SawyerIII @ Asstd.

I have worked with computer, electronics, and technology for the last twenty-five years(directly and/or indirectly).  Additionally, I have experience with a large sampling rate (20-200 avg. people/day) of the general population of the large metropolis of San Antonio, TX for the last 10 years.  The people who I have had increased contact with for the last 5 years have been those who consider themselves (whether they knew the definition or not) to be technology enthusiasts, gamers, users, novices, and haters.

 

Don’t shoot/kill the messenger!

“I resent the idea that people would blame the messenger for the message, rather than looking at the content of the message itself.”     –Anita Hill

“Don’t blame the messenger because the message is unpleasant.” –Kenneth Starr

As time passed I have delved deeper into technology and peoples interaction with it, and have realized that people have a lot of distinct, time sensitive points of knowledge that when taken in total make up their entire body of knowledge about any subject.  The problem arises when they have no personal context upon which to filter good vs. bad information at that time.  I find (through observation) that people tend to rank information from good to bad based on the level of trust that they have with the originator of the message.  This has historical basis and I think most people would agree with this, but I think we can agree that people have done well at transitioning from separating the messenger from the originator of the message.

I heard it through the grapevine.

 

There are things that we need to know about the message, other that its contents, these I classified as referential, instantaneous, & long form messages.

A referential message is usually person B repeating a quote from person C received by B in the past at some time T<0,  and repeated to you now (person A @ T=0)  without context (e.g. retweet).  People with eidetic memory have the best chance of passing along a referential message.

An instantaneous message is created by person B @ T=0 using only their knowledge cloud (e.g. true inspiration, most live spoken conversations) witch is filled with events from T<=0 and perceptions/expectations of future events (0<T).

A long form message is when someone, person B, gives you, person A, a message created by person C filtered by B & C’s individual knowledge clouds @ T<0 WITH or WITHOUT context (e.g. text message, tweet, mail, any written communications, etc).

Hopefully when you receive this message you mentally duplicate the event into two categories, contextual and non-contextual.  As these messages are recalled by you, person A, you can then try to separate message from the message and log them by time.  Remember it is very difficult to separate the messenger from the message on the messengers side, but you can try to do better once you have the message.

I don’t trust it.

People have an very hard time acting as a messenger if they understand the message because there is a natural inclination to interpret the message to add it to their own knowledge cloud(unless you have an eidetic memory) this means it is almost impossible to pass that message to someone else UNFILTERED.  This is because when you, person A, receive a message created by person B @ T=0, most people (both A & B) will filter the message through their own individual knowledge cloud, which may change the truth of the message.  This is similar to mistranslation between languages, so the process of passing the message changes the meaning.

How old is the message?

Now that the mound of dead messengers is no longer filling up the entrance to our homes, then what about the message itself, what information can we get from it that is independent from the message itself.  If there is 2-way communication between people then there is a lot of information that can be properly filtered and refined for clarity, but with single messages then the only metric you can use is time.  Time is another area in which people fail to keeping their knowledge cloud updated.  A current example of this is the Vista OS, if you ask people whether Vista is good or bad, then the answer they return is directly from their knowledge cloud, if you then ask them how they came to that conclusion then you get back either a personal or a referential response, both of witch are time dependent.  If the time concentration of their Vista knowledge is only focused around Vista’s launch (2006-2008), then the answer you usually get back is that it’s bad, however if you ask someone with a time focus on VistaSP2+ (2009+) then the response you get back is usually good, and those whose time focus encompasses both times then you will probably get “”It was bad, but now it’s good”.  This tells us that talking to someone that keeps their knowledge up to date is far more important than someone with a large knowledge cloud. Additionally those people who have a large, up to date knowledge cloud AND can intelligently filter their knowledge cloud, then the are the best people to talk to about a subject.

What does this mean?

So with the following summary…

Messenger – We can only judge the truthfulness of any message using our own personal knowledge cloud.

Message – Almost every message is filtered twice, from the sender and by the receiver, based on their personal knowledge cloud (whether they know it or not).

Trust – People usually use trust as the identifying factor of truthfulness, when talking outside their personal knowledge cloud (whether they know it or not).

Time – Time moves on, (so should your personal knowledge cloud).

we see that time is important to all of these categories.  So getting the “truth” is not easy, but the most important thing we can do is remember that all knowledge in our knowledge clouds is time sensitive.

What does this have to do with computer enthusiasts?

First lets define some classifications (as of 1H10)…

Gamer – Innovators – Always pushing the high end of the technology across the board, usually concentrated on the hardware.

Enthusiast – Early adopters – Similar to the innovators they push the technology, but usually not as quickly in the technology’s lifecycle.  They tend to spend time optimizing the software and get the best use out of the hardware they have.

Users – Early Majority – By far the largest group of people who use technology every day of many different types and many different ways.

Novices – Late Majority – People who are starting out for the first time and have a very small knowledge cloud.  They are still figuring out who to trust.  This is where the hardware with the best NUI (natural user interface) should do well.

Haters – Laggards – These people currently haven’t found a technology that works for them yet, they just hate a particular brand, or they are afraid.

I classified myself as a “gamer” until the mid 00’, because only the highest machines performed at the level I wanted them to.  Nowadays I think that the gamer group has “jumped the shark” or “gone off the rails”.  While I agree that ultimate gaming realism needs a certain quality output, lets consider what we have as possible output and input mechanisms…

Ears – Speakers – We have been reproducing sounds in 3d for decades now, and those sounds can be far outside the ranges human limits (sub and supersonic), so now the real sound innovation is in software.

Eyes – Display – Resolution, resolution, resolution, I hear this every day and have to respond that resolution WITHOUT size, is useless.  Now lets get some perspective, if you have at least 20/20 vision then the minimum distance you should sit from a 24” 1920×1080 is 3’ away (or 3’ *~10’ to reach the human retina’s theoretical limit.)  Society needs to right size their displays, so, find out where you want to place your monitor and distance from the display where you want to possibly operate it device, min and max and choose the size at the maximum distance. Resolution will be defined at the closest location (and remember 20/20 is the standard minimum while 20/12 is max for the retina), and if that resolution at that screen size is larger than any available screen technology, then you need more smaller screens.  This means that the gamers are currently at the mercy of the display manufacturers NOT the graphics card industries, multi-monitor cards have been around for years.

Nose / Tongue – “The Stink/Taste Machine” – Not much yet (here come the Innovators)

Touch – Mouse / Joystick / Keyboard / Display / Camera – When people touch something we expect to have a reaction, I added display and cameras to the touch category because of the obvious touch screens and the newer camera capture & identification technologies (think Microsoft Project Natal).  There are amazing technological jumps in this category, as it is an upcoming technology full of promise and ideas.

In the 90’s it was all about ram and storage, but this stopped critical in terms of capacity (not speed or efficiency) back in 1H00’s.  Since 2H00’s the capacity question has become a bit of a boondoggle, most people have more than they need.  “But my computer is so slow…”, yes, but adding more ram or a BIGGER (not faster) drive is probably not the best hardware investment which means that capacity is not the issue for most people.

People perceive performance based on what they see(or hear, touch, …) on the screen(speakers, ‘power glove 2?’), so as long as the technology responds at least as fast as the sense can operate at (~5-120Hz frames per second, 20/20-12 @ 6.25Hz(.16s) visual acuity, 10Hz(.1s) force feedback, auditory frequency 20-20kHz @ 5hz, etc) then it is working, and if slower then there is a point that it becomes unpleasant for each type of output which means…

<0.1seconds – Speakers, Monitors, Touch(change the display or make a sound on touch event) – direct interactions with the UI needs to respond in some way to the user

<1   seconds – Touch(Vibrate function) – the program need to do the task assigned or risk breaking the persons concentration

<10 seconds – Touch(electronic brail machine) – need to respond at least this fast or risk loosing all attention

>10 seconds – Nose & Tongue – you need a progress bar.

Since the 2H00’s the easiest way to improve performance, if you could afford it, was to use iterations of the same things we have been doing for years…

replace the primary drive with multiple hdd’s in a raid configuration

use a ssd (maybe in a raid)

use a ramdisk software to place important software in memory ‘permanently’

The biggest difference now is that SSD’s have become as price competitive per gig as the hdd’s from 04’ vs ssd prices now.  The interesting thing is that hdd’s took ~3 years to double their $/gb while ssd’s have only took ~1 year.  This is the big lesson, as we remove more and more of the mechanical solutions, we start approaching a faster generational turn over from 3 years to 1.5 years.  With this information, I suspect that the early majority will start accepting ssd’s as the common primary drive on Intel’s G3 release, woe to the OEM’s (notebook, motherboard, and case) who don’t design for at least 2 types of drives (either x2 2.5” bays, or x1 2.5” and 1x pci-e 1x).

So what should the gamers be interested in now (after they get a good ssd), why different monitors and interfaces, this is the path with growth potential.  I can’t wait to see commercial examples of the tech I saw at CEDIA 09, here in San Antonio, TX.

What is going to happen next?

Just like every major change in a technology, the few people that keep up-to-date will change their focus to the next major advancement.  For those who have not kept up, I have a prophetic tidbit for you…

One of Intel’s next chipset rev.’s (I think it will be the 6X series) will incorporate their newest tech, lightpeak.  This tech, for those that don’t know, is a low cost (<$10) high speed (10+Gbps) long length (~100m) optical cable that should replace all other copper cables.  One of the most important parts of this design is that they are building bridging technology right into the hardware, so finding add-on devices to convert to/from lightpeak from/to USB, Firewire, SATA, iSCSI, HDMI, DisplayPort, Ethernet, etc. shall be easy to design and manufacture while we transition to integrating it as the standard optical connection of the future.  Did I mention that Intel (part of the USB Implementers Forum), designed an optional optical connection as part of draft usb 3.0 “optical future-proofing” specifications, which was later dropped from the specification (maybe) for these reasons…

the research was not yet ready so Intel wanted to wait for USB 4.0 (or maybe integrate it into mini-displayport?)

they experimented with tech and found that a physical limitations was too great for tech at that time

Intel decided that for the good of the industry they needed to let their hardware partners build up a reserve, before diving in with both feet and laying down the tech they’ve been holding back (imagine lego building block like cubes, where you could stack up your motherboard, on a chip by chip basis, with no tools)

Intel realized that their competitors were not yet building speed out to the edges of the motherboard, so the time was not right.

they forgot

the manufacturing breakthrough needs to be on a small process and there is not enough free room at existing fabs

they wanted to wait until the economy was just enough

they are waiting until they can add optical microphone technology into the lightpeak specification

someone like Apple made a huge buy in the first run of technology and are building up stock

they haven’t yet cracked some design flaw and want to minimize the leakage until closer to production

“Still and all, why bother? Here’s my answer. Many people need desperately to receive this message: I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone.” –Kurt Vonnegut

 

del.icio.us Tags: sawyeriii,lightpeak,intel,future,ssd,touch,time,messenger,message,trust,referential,instantaneous,long form,gamer,enthusiast,haters,novices,users,innovators,early adopters,early majority,late majority,laggards,usb 4.0,usb 3.0,firewire,iscsi,sata,hdmi,displayport

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