Filed under: Apollo program, Brave New World, Failure, General Musings, Government, Man Conquers Space, NASA, Predictions, Science, Science Fiction, Society, Space, tech, Violence | Tags: Apollo, blogging, Golden Spike, jim downey, Moon, NASA, Pearl Harbor, predictions, science, Science Fiction, space, technology
“Pearl Harbor” was 71 years ago today.
The launch of Apollo 17 was 40 years ago today.
That means that there was less time between the start of WWII (well, our involvement in it) and the end of humankind’s time on the Moon than there is between now and when Apollo 17 left the Taurus-Littrow valley.
That don’t seem right.
Yeah, sure, there’s a company saying that they want to send commercial flights back to the Moon.
Somehow, I doubt that it’s quite that easy.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Augmented Reality, Expert systems, Predictions, Privacy, Science Fiction, Society, tech | Tags: augmented reality, blogging, jim downey, photography, predictions, Science Fiction, technology
In something of a follow-up/companion piece to my earlier post about FaceWatch, I offer this:
Porn companies adopt facial-recognition technology, encourage Instagram photos
Two porn companies are courting web surfers to upload photos they find online to the companies’ free facial-recognition, face-matching database services.
With SexFaceFinder.com and Naughty America’s “Face” anyone can upload an image and have the services match it with images and faces in image databases.
SexFaceFinder positions its service as a way for users to find a performer that looks like a specific person.
Not only does this have the potential to be a privacy nightmare … eeew. Just … eeew.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Civil Rights, Connections, General Musings, Government, Predictions, Privacy, RFID, Science, Science Fiction, Society, tech, Travel, Writing stuff | Tags: blogging, cell phone, Communion of Dreams, direct publishing, jim downey, predictions, privacy, science, Science Fiction, St. Cybi's Well, technology, tracking, travel
So, as I am constantly blathering about, I’m spending a lot of time thinking through various aspects of St. Cybi’s Well. Things like characters, plotting, fitting in the storyline with what is already established in Communion of Dreams (while still making sure that the book can stand on its own, without someone having read Communion). Well, one of those things concerns an instance where someone wants to not be readily located. Which is a little harder in today’s world than most people realize, given two things: general surveillance, and the homing-device you’re probably carrying in your pocket.
Yeah, I’m talking about your cell phone/mobile device/tablet. Anything which can connect to a cell network or GPS is probably also capable of being used to track you. And chances are, it will do so even if it is ostensibly “turned off.” About the only good way to be certain to stop this use is to pull the battery out of the thing.
And that’s a PITA, if you want to be able to actually use it without a delay and hassle of installing the battery then booting the thing up.
So the other day I sent a note to a good buddy of mine who has a lot more physics/technical knowledge than I do:
Second, a thought I had: since privacy is a concern, and your cell phone is a tracking device even when ‘off’ (but it’s a hassle to have to pull out the battery and then reboot the damned thing if you need it), why not go with a simple solution to isolate it? To wit: turn the phone off (or put it into ‘airplane mode’), drop it into a small Faraday cage. Just a simple bag or wallet with the right construction would do it. I know there are such things for use with passports/credit cards (I use a wallet for such when traveling overseas), so why not just extend the design a bit to accommodate a phone/tablet?
I got back a response which indicated that it should work, though you may need to tweak the construction specifics to be sure to block out the proper wavelengths most effectively.
And today, just for grins, I went to look for something like this. Guess what I found, which is just now available (actually, it won’t ship for a couple weeks):
Go Completely Off the GridThis cleverly designed, superslim pouch for your wallet and phone blocks transmissions, as well as cell-tower and GPS tracking, and protects personal information from RFID readers. Ripstop nylon. Imported.
Bingo. Like an invisibility cloak for your phone.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Artificial Intelligence, Civil Rights, Connections, Expert systems, Government, Marketing, movies, Paleo-Future, Philip K. Dick, Predictions, Privacy, Psychic abilities, Science Fiction, Society, tech | Tags: blogging, civil liberties, corruption, Facewatch, jim downey, literature, Philip K. Dick, police, privacy, Science Fiction, surveillance, technology, The Minority Report, video
I’ve mentioned Philip K. Dick, his genius and his influence on my writing, previously. And I’ve specifically written about his short story The Minority Report in the context of the UK’s plunge into becoming a surveillance society.
Well, even Philip K. Dick had his limitations. He was a man of his time, and couldn’t foresee just how powerful and widespread computing power and expert systems would become. Powerful enough that now it is routine for such systems to mimic one of the human brain’s best tricks: facial recognition. To wit:
The UK’s online crime reporting
& intelligence communityStop crime before it happens
Remember, if you’ve done nothing wrong, you’ve got nothing to fear. Unless, you know, you worry about abuses committed by others using such a powerful surveillance tool.
Nah, *that’d* never happen, would it?
Jim Downey
Filed under: Augmented Reality, Bipolar, Brave New World, Connections, Feedback, Predictions, Psychic abilities, Science, Science Fiction, Society, tech, Wired, Writing stuff | Tags: bipolar, blogging, jim downey, Kevin Dutton, literature, predictions, science, Science Fiction, Scrivener, St. Cybi's Well, technology, writing
As I’ve noted before, writing a long work of fiction is a strange thing, at least for me. I spend a lot of time intensely chewing over ideas, doing research, starting to conceptualize a narrative theory for the book, outlining various relationships between images and characters, sorting out what it is I really want to say more than the actual words to use.
Betwixt & between all of this, some honest to goodness writing gets done, then reorganized and shuffled, with plans and outlines changing. More research, more thinking, more feeling my way through the darkness with the only illumination occasional flashes of lightning.
This morning, after a lot of consideration, I downloaded Scrivener. Over the next week or so I’ll play around with it a bit, see whether it will be a useful tool.
And over lunch, some research & reading. It might be interesting, or even telling, what it was that I found. Here’s an excerpt:
The effects aren’t entirely dissimilar. An easy, airy confidence. A transcendental loosening of inhibition. The inchoate stirrings of a subjective moral swagger: the encroaching, and somehow strangely spiritual, realization that hell, who gives a s—, anyway?
There is, however, one notable exception. One glaring, unmistakable difference between this and the effects of alcohol. That’s the lack of attendant sluggishness. The enhancement of attentional acuity and sharpness. An insuperable feeling of heightened, polished awareness. Sure, my conscience certainly feels like it’s on ice, and my anxieties drowned with a half-dozen shots of transcranial magnetic Jack Daniel’s. But, at the same time, my whole way of being feels as if it’s been sumptuously spring-cleaned with light. My soul, or whatever you want to call it, immersed in a spiritual dishwasher.
So this, I think to myself, is how it feels to be a psychopath. To cruise through life knowing that no matter what you say or do, guilt, remorse, shame, pity, fear—all those familiar, everyday warning signals that might normally light up on your psychological dashboard—no longer trouble you.
Interesting, indeed.
And not unlike the high which comes with creating. Or entering a manic phase in my mild bipolar cycle.
Yes, interesting. Quite.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Civil Rights, Connections, Constitution, Failure, Government, Politics, Predictions, Preparedness, Society | Tags: Abraham Lincoln, election, jim downey, politics, predictions
This seems timely:
With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations.
I fear we have forgotten some hard-earned lessons.
Worse, I fear that an entire industry now exists which is premised on making us forget those lessons.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Amazon, Augmented Reality, Connections, Failure, Feedback, Government, Kindle, Marketing, movies, Music, Nuclear weapons, Predictions, Preparedness, Promotion, Publishing, Science, Science Fiction, Society, Survival, tech, Writing stuff, YouTube | Tags: Al Stewart, Amazon, art, atomic bomb, augmented reality, blogging, Communion of Dreams, direct publishing, jim downey, Kickstarter, Kindle, literature, matrix, movies, music, predictions, promotion, science, Science Fiction, St. Cybi's Well, technology, Trinity, video, writing, www youtube
Did you know that the first atomic bomb test was called Trinity?
* * * * * * * *
“Nothing ventured, nothing gained” they said
So you played for the winner takes all
And tossed the dice high up and craned your head
To see how the numbers would fall
Al Stewart, Midas Shadow
* * * * * * *
When we first see her …
… it’s clear that we’ve disappeared down the rabbit hole.
* * * * * * *
The old/young man smiled. “You have a glimpse of it.”
“Of?”
“The truth. Or what your mind can grasp of it.” The figure was standing beside the glowing burl. He reached down and seemed to scoop up a handful of the tholin, then lifting it, allowed it to flow from one hand to the other, a gloopy, glowing blue mass.
“You have a glimpse of it. Now, what will you do?”
Instinctively, Jon reached out and put his hand under the flowing tholin, felt its warmth pour into his palm, and settle there, waiting. “You said before that there wasn’t much time. What is going to happen?”
“I cannot see the future. But I can see more deeply into the present than others. Things are . . . changing.”
Chapter 15 of Communion of Dreams.
* * * * * * *
Did you know that the first atomic bomb test was called Trinity?
On Monday morning July 16, 1945, the world was changed forever when the first atomic bomb was tested in an isolated area of the New Mexico desert. Conducted in the final month of World War II by the top-secret Manhattan Engineer District, this test was code named Trinity. The Trinity test took place on the Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range, about 230 miles south of the Manhattan Project’s headquarters at Los Alamos, New Mexico. Today this 3,200 square mile range, partly located in the desolate Jornada del Muerto Valley, is named the White Sands Missile Range and is actively used for non-nuclear weapons testing.
And did you know that there was more than a little debate among the scientists working on the Manhattan Project about what would happen with the test? Yeah, seriously — they weren’t sure:
The observers set up betting pools on the results of the test.[28][29] Predictions ranged from zero (a complete dud) to 45 kilotons of TNT, to destruction of the state of New Mexico, to ignition of the atmosphere and incineration of the entire planet. This last result had been calculated to be almost impossible,[17][18] although for a while it caused some of the scientists some anxiety. Physicist I. I. Rabi won the pool with a prediction of 18 kilotons.[30]
It worked:
Three days remaining on the Kickstarter. Will it work?
I’m still craning my head to see how the numbers will fall.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Amazon, Augmented Reality, Connections, Humor, Kindle, Music, Promotion, Publishing, Religion, Science Fiction, Society, Writing stuff, YouTube | Tags: Amazon, augmented reality, blogging, Carl Jung, Communion of Dreams, direct publishing, humor, jim downey, Jungian psychology, Kickstarter, Kindle, literature, music, promotion, Roman, Science Fiction, St. Cybi's Well, Synchronicity, The Police, video, writing, www youtube
Today is October 8th.
October used to be the 8th month. That it is now the 10th month played havoc with my mind when I was a kid, since I knew damned good and well that “octo” meant “eight”. It wasn’t logical. It didn’t make sense. This may well have been my first conscious awareness that reality was kinda screwed-up. Seriously.
It is also, as it happens, day 8 in our little count-down. No, I didn’t plan it that way.
At least not consciously.
So, that brings us to this:
Have a good Monday.
Jim Downey
*Just in case. And yeah, Jung’s ideas run all through my fiction. Obviously.
Filed under: Amazon, Feedback, Kindle, Politics, Society, Writing stuff | Tags: Amazon, blogging, Communion of Dreams, feedback, jim downey, Kickstarter, Kindle, literature, reviews, St. Cybi's Well, writing
Doing my routine checking of stats this morning, I saw that there was a change to the count on reviews of Communion of Dreams on Amazon. It was down by one.
It didn’t take but a moment to see which one was missing — the top ranked review.
I sighed when I saw this. I know the person who wrote that review, who is a good guy and a top-notch writer. Recently we’d had a minor dust-up over political philosophy on Facebook. At least initially I thought it was minor. That he had ‘unfriended’ me over it gave me a bit of pause, but some people get wound up before an election. So I didn’t worry about it too much, figuring that perhaps we’d sort out things later and just agree to disagree on the matter in question. I guess not.
I must admit to finding this disappointing. Oh, it doesn’t make a rat’s ass worth of difference for the novel — there’s still plenty of solid reviews and opinions on the book for people to use. I just didn’t expect this person to take such a step. Whether or not he agrees with me on all political matters should be immaterial to what he thought of the book.
A shame, really.
Jim Downey
T-minus nine days and counting.
Filed under: Amazon, Feedback, Kindle, Marketing, Music, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction, Society, Writing stuff | Tags: Amazon, blogging, Communion of Dreams, direct publishing, jim downey, Kickstarter, Kindle, literature, music, promotion, Science Fiction, St. Cybi's Well, writing
On the first day of Kickstarter
my true fan sent to me:
A dollar for Saint Cybi.
Don’t worry, I’m not going to run through all 12 stanzas.
But we haven’t had much action this week on the Kickstarter, and the countdown has relentlessly continued with just 12 days remaining. Meaning that we’re 47% funded, but with 60% of the time over. That’s not a good trend.
I’d like this to be successful. It would allow me to concentrate on getting the book done and out sooner rather than later. So far 35 kind and generous souls have pledged, and I very much appreciate their support. But that’s a very small number.
If you’ve enjoyed my writing here or elsewhere, particularly if you’ve enjoyed Communion of Dreams, please take a moment and go check out the Kickstarter. There are some really great ‘rewards’ there — I’m not asking for a donation, just some advance sales of St. Cybi’s Well. A fair exchange, from $5 on up. And should St. Cybi’s Well prove to be popular, who knows, the limited edition hand-bound copies I’m offering may become valuable collector’s items.
And if you would share news of this Kickstarter effort with others, particularly those who have read Communion of Dreams, I would be very thankful.
Cheers!
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 