Using An ATM In a One-Government World: We Want New Conspiracy Theories and We Want Them Now

Have you ever read about the Illuminati? How about the Bilderbergs? Or the Council of 13 or The New World Order? If you’ve never heard of these organizations, that is sad, because they are currently ruling the world.

Well, they probably aren’t ruling the world. But many people believe they do. They think a few people raise their hands, make decrees, and the nations of the world follow the whims of a few maniacal rulers.

Does anybody remember when we were told communism was such an effective disease, it would infect the entire world. Soon, everyone would fly the communist flag if we didn’t fight it tooth and nail. After all, Fidel Castro killed Kennedy.

Or how many times has the end of the world been predicted? The signs are all here. Some messiah or deity was coming back to exact their vengeance against the sins of humanity? According to Isaac Asimov’s 1979 “Book of Facts,” humans have been predicting the end of the world since 2,800 B.C.E. The world is still here, yet some humans keep making predictions.

What do all these aforementioned conspiracy theories have in common, besides the fact that they are all dead wrong?

They are all conspiracy theories from times gone by. Ancient times, the cold war, Victorian England. Where are all our new conspiracy theories? Conspiracy theories that reflect our current era.

They would be easy to start. Let me begin.

• Did you know that three current members of congress are robots?
• What governments are currently controlled by artificial intelligence?
• I heard Steve Jobs didn’t die. He just traveled into the future to a time when cancer is eradicated.

Maybe I’m just tired of the old-world list of cracked ideas.

A quick caveat: If one-world government conspiracy theories are true, why do we have to exchange our money to fly to Europe, or Africa? If I were one of the Bilderbergs, and in charge of running the entire world, I would do away with multiple currencies first thing. Otherwise, it’s too hard to track the flow of funds. Francs and Dollars and Pesos and Marks and Euros. Too much math involved.

I dare you to go to an ATM in Saint Louis, Missouri, and demand it gives you Rupees. Just not gonna happen. Sure seems that many currencies equal many governments.

Anyway, the future is now. Many wonderful things are happening everyday. It’s just sad we can’t invent any more unproven arguments to better fit our rapidly changing times.

Get to it. Conspiracy theories of the future aren’t going to invent themselves.

Besides, Steve Jobs is returning any moment from the future with the answers to all of the world’s problems, including cancer.

Politics in a Post-Idea World

We live in a post-idea world. That is according to a 2011 article in the New York Times.

And many other thinkers and creators echo this idea.

It’s almost as if the 20th century was the century of big ideas. Of Freud and Einstein and Albert Schweitzer and Jane Goodall. And the 21st century will be 100 years of little ideas and remixes.

Freud, Einstein, Schweitzer - is the magic in the mustache?

Our hit songs and records are remixes. Our favorite big-budget movies are only remakes of movies from 30 or 40 years ago. Social media does not really help spread ideas, unless you consider gossip to be important.

So, no more big ideas?

I’m not convinced, but I do know this. The 21st century will definitely be 100 years of disposable ideas. Ideas will become obsolete faster and faster.

I was recently speaking to an expert who helps increase Search Engine Optimization for websites. He attends large conferences and hears the big ideas about how to game the internet and make it do what you want. He says as soon as these ideas are put into the world, everyone does them, and they no longer work. The internet search engines learn what is happening and they change.

Even some presidential candidates used phrases like “winning the future” during their 2012 campaigns. These terms were quickly deemed passe by many people. “Digital art” and “paperless” are now meaningless terms as well.

Where is our permanence?

What is a candidate to do when a campaign slogan becomes tired before the campaign is over? Invent more slogans? A slogan a day? Change with the times?

Or come up with one more suited to last? Or maybe just do away with slogans all together?

I don’t know. I’m not a political strategist. If I was, I would be winning elections and not sitting here blogging.

I do know this. Today, a word can become omnipresent within moments through social media platforms, the internet, and 24-hour news programs. And as soon as a word, phrase, or term becomes everywhere at every moment, we must turn on it, hate it, and destroy it.

And we will likely destroy the candidate along with their phrase.

So, the best advice to winning the future is this: Be real, be true, be authentic. These are timeless qualities.

Catchy, pithy phrases won’t be worth the paperless, digital cloud they are printed upon.

“History Is Expanding” For One Thousand, Alex: Jeopardy, Part II

1980's at its worst.

The decade of the 1980s was definitely very different from the 1990s, right? The ’80s are still known for bad hair and fashion and questionable musical tastes. The ’90s are known for all those things too, but both decades definitely had their own appearance.

We can look at photos of ourselves from 10 years ago and cringe. This is a phenomenon only modern people experience: accelerative thrust.

Were the '90s any better?

For millennia, the rate of change was very slow. You could live your entire life and not see any major inventions or cultural shifts. Fashion, beliefs in God, and technology were all very static. You could live for decades and travel for miles in medieval times and not encounter art or the written word. It was quite ordinary to not know how your governing bodies worked, let alone, recognize heads of state.

In the year 1650, Renee Descartes was enrolled in astronomy classes at Leiden University in the Dutch Republic. It would be absurd to think that Descartes ever told his astronomy teacher that he was being so 1640.

“Get with it, teacher dude.”

The differences would be imperceptible. Not blatantly obvious like the differences between the 1980s and 1990s.

Events are accelerating. Human knowledge is increasing. The world’s population is growing. The speed of communication is rising. This means there is more to know and less time to know it. I call this the Jeopardy Trap. The further we live and travel into the future, the more knowledge there is to acquire. Not just knowledge on the day to day, but exponential increases.

Participants on early Jeopardy episodes from the 1960s and 1970s had it easier than guests today.

Why?

There was less to know.

Just think of all the events and names and places just from the last 40 years. Watergate, the fall of Saigon, President Ronald Reagan, the assassination of John Lennon, and dare I say it, the rise of Madonna’s popularity.

That’s accelerative thrust.

Today, more breakthroughs and events and ideas occur in one day than in the entire eleventh century. This is only going to continue.

Think of some possible Jeopardy categories and how these change every decade

Current Events and Famous Authors

Famous Conquistadors and Hollywood Actors

Presidents and Rock Stars

Song Lyrics and Politics

Scientists and Movie Quotes

Pop Culture and Technology

And the knowledge of generations before us isn’t going away. Jeopardy contestants have to remember that too.

If you ever wanted to be a quiz show contestant, the best time to act is now. If you wait a week, or a month or year, there will only be more knowledge to consume.

Actually, the best time to appear on Jeopardy was 10 or 20 or 30 years ago, when there was less to know.

But in the 1960s and 1970s, the clues were only worth $10 to $50. Now, getting one question correct can net you more money than an entire show’s haul decades ago.

The upside and downside to the Jeopardy Trap? The further we travel into the future, the more there is to know. The more there is to know, the faster things happen. The faster things happen, the more getting the answers correct is worth.

Finally, in the future, knowledge equals wealth. It pays to keep up with accelerative thrust. Well, at least on Jeopardy.

“History Is Expanding” For One Thousand, Alex: Part I

Alan Turing

The Turing Test was first concocted in the early 1950s by computer theorist and visionary Alan Turing.

The test was designed to answer the question “Can computers think?” In one version, an inquisitor sits before a panel and asks questions into a console. Two sets of answers are projected back to him on a screen, one from a real live human being, the other from a computer.

The test is designed to fool the inquisitor as to which is the real human being. At a certain point, computers will become so intelligent that there will be no possible way to distinguish between man and machine.

What Turing didn’t explore was the other side of the coin. Instead of revealing what it means to be a computer, the test actually reveals what it means to be a human.

Enter Ken Jennings, a good-humored human with a mind for trivia. Beginning in 2004, Jennings appeared on the TV show “Jeopardy” over 70 times, winning several million dollars in the process and dazzling us for knowing everything from ancient history to pop music to minor Civil War battles.

In 2011, IBM and Jeopardy invited Jennings back to the game show to play some exhibition games against a new “super” computer named Watson. Watson can’t think, it wouldn’t be able to tell you what color tie you are wearing, it wouldn’t be able to point to a chair in a photograph.

But the machine was programed to make associations between words in trivia questions and attempt to extrapolate answers. If it reached a certain level of certainty, Watson would chime in and give its answer. And it performed well. Really well. It was fast. It was well informed. And most of all, it didn’t get nervous. It wasn’t aware it was playing a pick-up game for the future. The beginning of the next existential crisis faced by people: What happens when our machines best us at thinking, the last thing only humans could do?

This little Turing Test helped us answer a lot of questions about computers and our minds and what it means to think.

Not Ken Jennings

But the noble test forgets one thing. Computers are practicing being human, Ken Jennings already knows how to be human. It’s innate within him.

During the final moments of the final game of Jeopardy between man and machine, when Jennings had a little over 18-thousand dollars and was in a good position to lose, Ken’s answer was revealed. It was correct: Bram Stoker, the 19th century novelist. Watson also got the correct answer, but it had more money. It outbid Jennings in Final Jeopardy and won. Or did it?

Ken had scrawled a humble little message under his answer, sort of like thumbing your nose, creating humorous commentary, and paying respects all at the same time.

“I, for one, welcome our new computer overlords” was Ken’s message. He laughed. The game show audience laughed. The world laughed.

Watson did not laugh. It did not even blink one chip in it’s little circuit board brain. It could not if it wanted to. That’s what truly separates man from machine. Machines are cold and calculating, not emotional and approachable like Jennings.

Ken did humanity a service that day. He did something no one else wanted to do. Go up against one of the most powerful computers in the world, complete with an encyclopedia brain with nearly all the world’s trivial knowledge, accessible in a few nanoseconds, and lose in front of the entire world. Humanity’s sacrificial lamb.

I think this version of Turing test did not prove machines think. Machines can only access information at light speed. They are better than humans at fact retrieval and number crunching, but they will never think like humans.

If the battle between man and machines is coming,  I’m glad we have people like Ken Jennings on our side, even if people end up vanquished.

I, for one, welcome our new fleshy compatriots, who can lose with grace, dignity, and style, and still advance the meaning of being human.

Everything I Need to Know About Life, I Learned from R2-D2 : Why Artificial Intelligence Might Thrive in the World of Tomorrow

If the “Star Wars” movies are any indicator, artificial intelligence may be better suited for life in the future, or on other planets, than are humans.

The little garbage can-shaped droid R2-D2 was present in all six of the Star Wars canon movies. He was a member of the rebel alliance, fought Darth Vader, and rescued his friends from the clutches of evil. Even though R2 was full of gears and solid state circuits, he always demonstrated that, in fact, he was all heart.

R2 usually fought side by side with his robot buddy C-3PO, a shivering mound of nerves and fear. But R2 was nearly always the droid that displayed true heroism.

Here are some characteristics best demonstrated by R2-D2 that humans need to learn, or droids may outlast our little race of humans.

1.   Selflessness – In the movie “The Empire Strikes Back”, R2-D2 rescues his best buddy C-3PO on Cloud City. C-3PO was damaged after being blasted by storm troopers. Even though R2 is slow, and only gets around on three wheels, he rolled into enemy laser fire for his friend, never giving a second thought to his own well-being.

2.  Loyalty – Throughout all six Star Wars movies, R2 was fast to make friends with both humanoid and robotic characters. But he would face a whole room of banthas for the characters he considered friends like Luke and Leia Skywalker, Han Solo, and C-3PO.

3.   Bravery – Every now and then, R2 would get his paint chipped and a few circuits fried, but none of that pulled him from his main objectives. In “Return of the Jedi,” Luke is captured by Jabba the Hut and taken to a giant pit. Jabba intended to throw Luke into the sand hole where a hungry monster waited to devour Luke slowly over one thousand years. R2 smuggled in a light saber for Luke, pretty much saving the day and the rebellion, and furthermore, the entire galaxy.

4.   Non-Judgement – R2 encountered many different forms of life and cultures. Many were strange and exotic, but this did not matter to R2. He didn’t make fun of them, or point his diodes mockingly. R2 didn’t spend his time figuring out what races and cultures and beliefs he agreed with or supported. He accepted everyone equally, that is, until they demonstrated they could not be trusted.

5.   A Sense of Adventure – Sure, defeating Darth Vader wasn’t an easy job. And I bet the rebellion could have used a bot like R2 to sit around behind a desk, being highly efficient, sending out messages and tracking fighter parts’ deliveries. But a desk job wasn’t good enough for R2. He wanted an adventure, to be in the middle of things, to have his life on the line and come back home knowing he had made a difference.

If humans want to continue thriving in the future, perhaps we can all take a page from R2-D2, a little droid, shaped like a trash can, who wasn’t afraid to look danger in the eyes, all the while making friends and having cool adventures.

He only had three wheels, and at times he was a little slow, but the ideas he lived by and espoused are timeless. I hope we can all grow up to be just like R2-D2.

Eternal Life For Pennies A Day

In the future, we’ll all be famous for 15 minute eternities. We will live on, in digital form, as long as artificial intelligence, computers, and our robot overlords allow us. This is a new phenomenon. Thousands of years ago, it was much harder to live forever.

We believe the ancient Pharaohs of Egypt constructed the pyramids in Giza for their afterlives.

The pyramids are a mystery, and every question we answer only seems to bring up more questions. Where did a barely stone-age people, without astronomy and the value of pi learn to point their structures true north? How did a technologically primitive people learn to build a 400 foot structure? (It was the tallest structure in the world until nearly the Renaissance. Insert your favorite alien conspiracy theory here.) How many people were used to construct the pyramids? Were they slaves or hired hands? On and on, the questions seem to have no answers.

But Egyptologists tend to agree the pyramids were built as tombs, even though we can’t seem to find much evidence of burial inside the structures. That’s beside the point. And perhaps I’ve gone on a little too long to make my point.

Five-thousand years ago, it was really hard to be remembered forever. There were no birth or death certificates. Most people were illiterate anyway. And in the ancient world, why would someone 100 years after your death care you ever existed? You would likely be forgotten forever. Unless you took decades, millions of dollars of wealth, time, vision, technology, and thousands of tons of raw materials and built pyramids. This would keep people talking about you through the millennium at least.

But, in present day, you can live forever. You will never be forgotten. Your images and words and music and photos will live forever, in digital form, on the internet or other similar artificial platform. All the information you place online is converted into little ones and zeroes and possibly stored forever. So far, there is no evidence that it is ever deleted or forgotten.

100 years from now, someone will likely research your life and read all about the person you were. There will be videos and documents and addresses and your own personal writings. It’s like they knew you personally.

This type of eternal life is beyond the wildest imaginations of the ancient prophets and Pharaohs.

Living forever. And it only costs some social media company a few pennies a day to keep our online personas alive.

What will the world be like when personalities no longer die? Infinite talking heads ceaselessly chatting into oblivion. Suddenly, that trip to Mars seems like a great idea.

The Symptoms of Golden Age Syndrome

Sophistication and glamour mark the Golden Age of Hollywood

The Golden Age of Hollywood was a time period that lasted roughly from the 1920s until the early 1960s. Most movies were black and white. This is obviously an elegant look.

It was an era when men wore suits and ties, even on their days off. Film Noir was new and actors spoke in cool and hushed tones. And if a lady asked you to light her cigarette, you better produce a Zippo, my friend.

Many modern movies try their hardest to recreate this time period in look and feel. It’s as if people long for the days gone by.

There was a Golden Age of Radio and a Golden Age of Television as well. Even Golden Ages of Greece and Rome.

The Acropolis still remains as a testament of the Golden Age of Greece

What do all of these favorable and shining eras have in common? Yep, they’re all gone. In the past. No more. Kaput.

Futurists may not care too much about that. Don’t futurists all believe the Golden Age is yet to come?

Well, maybe.

There is even a medical term for this.

Golden Age Syndrome is when you believe the best times of the world are anytime but now. When you think the good times are all gone, or yet to come.

There are two theories on why we have memories. Some say memory is only a device used to remember our lives perfectly, every moment, every comment and place we’ve been.

Others believe the true purpose of memory is so we can better envision and imagine tomorrow.

Only one problem: This leaves many of us dreaming of other times, but it leaves us unaware of the current world. The here and now. Being present, like the Buddha taught.

Perhaps we just need a new Golden Age. I’ll take the burden upon myself to name it.

I’m declaring the present “The Golden Age of Idea Sharing.” Never before has it been so easy to give an idea to the world.

In the past, the fastest way to communicate a message was by ship or boat, a camel or horse, carrier pigeon, sometimes by foot, or a combination of all of these. There was a time when no one in the world possessed enough wealth and power to take a message from Greece to South America. Now, the power is virtually free and instantaneous.

My fellow human, since you and I live in a golden age, we should make the most of it. Every golden age needs its Socrates or Heddy Lamarr. I’m certain they are out there somewhere.