Science, Sci-fi, Huxley, Orwell and A Tid-Bit of Value – The Tid-Bit Coin
Sent: lundi 23 février 2015 03:05
To: Roger Stevenson
The Tid-Bit Coin Continued from Letter #64 with a lot of mental regurgitation:
Moving away from Kashmir’s Kadambari, and Kadambari’s Kashmir, and closer to the New World, and the books on my bedside table. My son as a part of his school syllabus has to read The Brave New World, and so he persuaded me to do the same (as I had fragments from an old memory) for us to review it together. OMG, and I must say that again! Aldous Huxley and subsequently Orson Welles 1984, have transformed me…you will not see the Purnima you knew, you will see a “Being”, a “Beast”.
There books should never have come within my shadow, it can only spell destruction, annihilation for the kind of fiercely independent persona I have. I am sorry Roger, there are just not enough punctuation marks for me to express myself!! I have transmorphed from posing as a left leaning socialist during my university days (my Cambridge mission college almost made that inevitable), to a radical RIGHT WING zealot! Right wing only in the sense of abhorring Big Government, and wanting them to get the hell out of my face, my life, my mind! I don’t want government, I don’t care for nations or the nation state. The only purpose I see in their existence is in further aggrandizing power and attempting to diminish all the other organs set up to contain this monster. A self propelled Hydra that swallows the Supreme court, diminishes the legislature and enslaves the President! The citizens are monitored, contained, reviewed, rewarded or punished all in the name of EFFICIENCY! How I hate efficiency, how i know that is my Achilles heel and I will submit all, my home, my personal space perhaps even my mind for greater efficiency. And it is this lure of efficiency under which we organize ourselves, submit ourselves and permit the State its excesses. Roger, please help me to close these books, how will i survive outside the State? The one thing I do know is that the internet is extending the conventional territorial space into another realm and man is regrouping himself in this realm. Perhaps in this realm we will be more free and not succumb to our vulnerabilities of “efficiency”. What do you foresee, do you see me? I somehow sense you have already traversed my road traveled my journey and found your answers. You always seem in a sense of bliss. You have that smile as you hear me rambling along, it could be all that French wine and chess or something else…
See below Huxley v Orwell – The Webcomic
https://biblioklept.org/2013/06/08/huxley-vs-orwell-the-webcomic-2/
Well, to top off all my bedside reading, I had visits from artist friends as I had mentioned earlier, all very anti establishment, searching for answers and traveling the world. We discussed the financial systems and how we are enslaved to it, and then we discussed alternate financial systems like Bitcoin, the decentralized online virtual currency. My response to Orwell and Huxley was the Tid-Bit Coin, a possible pathway outside the nations controlled dystopia outlined below.
Unfortunately, despite its incredible success, the governments impose strict restrictions and there are numerous governmental clampdowns. Here the value is “mined”, or generated by solving a mathematical calculation which changes as technology improves (so the ten minutes to mine still remains ten minutes despite the progress of technology). It was here I had a bit of a brainwave which I discussed with my finance guru buddy from Hong Kong (I suspect he thinks I’ve actually flown over the nest) but never lets up, and I would love to share the same with you.
Do see below an interesting quote that I lifted off Wikipedia by Melanie Fein, (Shadow Banking Charade) about Bitcoin:
Bitcoin appeals to tech-savvy libertarians, because it so far exists outside the institutional banking system and the control of governments.[217] Its appeal reaches from left wing critics, “who perceive the state and banking sector as representing the same elite interests, […] recognizing in it the potential for collective direct democratic governance of currency”[218] and socialists proposing their “own states, complete with currencies”,[219] to right wing critics suspicious of big government, at a time when activities within the regulated banking system were responsible for the severity of the financial crisis of 2007–08,
So Roger, in the world of today, with the acceleration in technology upping our ability to strive further and firing our passion, we as humanity have undertaken incredible humanity defining projects inconceivable a decade or two earlier, like The Human Genome Project which mapped the entire human genome, our essence, our DNA, our blueprint, all the 3 billion base pairs. This gargantuan project, projected to take ten years, undertaken by The National Institute of Health and overtaken by the shotgun methods of Craig Venture. Of course this data was released in the public domain though many had private interests from which they benefited.
Check out the Human Genome Project info: http://www.genome.gov/10001772
Now moving on to another gargantuan project The Human Brain Project which is being undertaken by the EU, and involves mapping the 63 billion neural networks and trillions of connections. This incredible human infrastructural project almost inconceivable in its size and complexity is currently being undertaken by man. Even though there have recently been issues with the multi billion funding required, the disgruntled scientists who claim that this neurological project is being turned into an IT project siphoning off the funding for pure brain research. Despite these issues the reality is that projects of this size requires immense manpower and billions of dollars both of which are not easily accessible unless a tangible commercial purpose is outlined and often that tangible commercial purpose which is in the minds of some of the parties pushing for these projects would not pass the muster of human ethics. The patenting of genes, so called synthetic cells, chromosomes, creating novel organisms, hybrids, mapping the brain so it can be simulated. And the commercial purpose may take us back to The Brave New World or 1984, and though crime.
Check out The Human Brain Project Info: https://www.humanbrainproject.eu
Then there is the the Near Earth Object (NEO) scanning facilities, and the US with its super powerful telescopes and satellites track these objects around the solar system. However, the complexity of this task is so great that we probably currently track only 1 percent of all the NEO in the solar system. The second issue is that there is a moratorium about disclosure, and the excuse is that it might contravene the nuclear pact, ie, it may be a nuclear missile testing and not a NEO. So we have Cherablinsk, the thunderous 2013 near earth asteroid impact that nobody was warned about, and nobody knew.
Check out the images of a looming NEO that alarmed a little girls eyes (oui moi) as she turned the pages of Tintin and The Shooting Star below:
https://tintin.fandom.com/wiki/The_Shooting_Star
My question is when it is an issue of the preservation of humanity, should we be really leaving ourselves at the mercy of nations. Don’t all these nations have their own axes to grind? What if an asteroid breaks up and a fraction hits an insignificant part of the globe from the western perspective, will the alarms really go off in time for the few indigenous people to take cover, or will the excuse be that we were unsure if we were contravening a nuclear pact? Should the EU really have the power to one day simulate the brain and perhaps control humanity (even though we know they project themselves as goody goodies, can they be trusted), do the nations not have their personal interest and retention of their power and influence in mind? Now Roger, imagine the French having the power to control the brains of the Americans and turn them into little robots at will…now there is at least one froggie that would have a smile on its face do you not agree?
My thought was that we use a version of this very virtual online currency, Bitcoin is already a victim, but generate another, that is created for the interest of humanity and not to further the interest of any one nation, especially when it concerns humanity defining infrastructural projects that equally concern the tribe in Borneo who may have no voice on the international stage and the fat banker in Zurich (Ooh I better be good to the Swiss if I want to continue visiting their glorious mountains). This virtual currency would not be defined by a nation, state, ideology, but would be for all of humanity. The most interesting part is the generation of the value of this virtual currency, would be generated by the virtual public that scans the skies for NEO, which they may do voluntarily now, but under this plan their work scanning the skies, generating formulas unraveling the trajectory of these objects would be a Tid-Bit of Value, and so they would be engaged and rewarded, all via an online game, all virtually(similar to solving the mathematical puzzle to generate a bitcoin). In the case of the human brain project, we need not just billions but manpower. We need those millions of teenage gamers who are spending their valuable time gaming online for nothing, we would tap this “gaming power or energy” and direct it towards scanning the skies or unraveling the connections between the neurons in the brain with each connection translating into an encryption further translating into value. In fact I would volunteer to create a game for the same which would be released for free online to tap the gamers who after every level, are rewarded tangibly by the creation of a virtual coin, or shall we say Tid-Bit Coin.
So Roger, what do you think of my plan for Our Brave New World, out of the clutches of The Nation State?
PS: (Let’s see if you can hold your breath through this regurgitation 😂 )
Room 101 (Continued)- The Tidbit Coin
As we are all aware, the Internet is silently expanding and enveloping us at a phenomenal rate. It has encroached into our every sphere and leaving barely a nook untouched. However, it still is at its nascent stage, it has far far to go. The creation and expansion of this infant universe is being undertaken by us, yes you and me as we pound away on our computers, cell phones, and digital gadgets texting, surfing, emailing, commenting and uploading all kinds of data. Slowly converting our efforts in human time into efforts in digital time/ virtual time and creating, expanding and generating intentionally or otherwise in this virtual space.
Now, I’m not immediately going to go into the complex discussion of the exact translation of human time into virtual time and whether the clocks correspond, if could or should they, but I would like to explore the value of this tidbit of human endeavor in virtual space. As we go about purposefully amending wiki, or responding to yahoo answers or enter and comment or give advice in any forum, we may be aware of voluntarily or intentionally imparting value to the forum. However, even in this simplistic scenario the value would be both the information imparted, the particular expertise and the participation in further expanding the network, the virtual universe. Often, the human time is volunteered, the time and space by which the universe has correspondingly expanded is conjectured. Similarly, for every tweet, quip, bleep, this virtual space is expanding but the complex interconnectivities of this virtual space, and it’s “weightage” or “values” would make defining the human value of this expansion very difficult to determine in my conception. But, let try (with) a “Tidbit”. Let’s aim to define the Tidbit along the lines of the currently popular Bitcoin. However, unlike the mining of the Bitcoin via resolving random complex mathematical equations, let’s conceive of a value for merely surfing the Internet, tweeting, emailing, posting, commenting and uploading data. The value of the Tidbit earned in the virtual world would have nothing to do with value in the human world whether it be in expertise, time, complexity of the value/data imparted, but would have its own equation based on how much it influences and expands this virtual world, the time space concepts being completely alien to those found in the human realm. We would have to figure out this formula but with a completely different mindset, or head screwed on where the values of the human world do not directly translate, and accordingly have to be weighed within its own context. We may have to set down some core ground rules or values by which this space is defined, and eventually the core laws of the mechanics of this space. Im not sure if anything at all has been done to date on the above as far as I’m aware.
As we identify the core values of this space, and set down its base governing laws, we can move on to the next phase of defining this virtual online currency, just for fun let’s call it a “tidbit” of value. The minute it’s defined, we can start churning it out. Every individual on the Net will accrue it at various rates, and we can easily develop an economy online for the utilization of the same. The primary movers possibly our initial underwriters if we wish, might be the hardware/software companies in whose interest the further expansion of the net, the addition of information and multiple users, using it for multiple purposes. Now the We the Netizens will have to figure if we want the big fish, or how much we want the big fish involved. We don’t want nations replaced by gigantic corporations then we are back in the same stew… Fish head curry! And we must not forget what we initially set out to do, to create a valuable alternate decentralized virtual currency which will stand in for all the mega billions spent by governments on large infrastructure projects that impact humanity, our human germ line, our humanness and our physical existence on this planet. Yes, the mega billions required for projects like the Human Genome project, where the data should not be privy to any nation corporation or group, the likes of the Human brain project, where the data generated/accumulated (which is what it’s appears to be downgraded to), is not in the hands of a few interested parties whether they be in the facades of nations, unions or Corporations. I cannot imagine wisdom to prevail when the fire of the gods lie only in the hands of one group. Of course the inevitable race will be for all groups to acquire the same unless the first group turn all the rest off to rest, and dons the hat of Big Brother, the Guardian of the Globe. Power corrupts absolutely, why give it yet another opportunity! Finally, onto our asteroid hunter project, or the NEO project by NASA and JPL. The gargantuan dimensions of this project has been discussed above, and the need for manpower and funding is urgently required to map as many of the NEO s that pose a threat as possible. However, as discussed above, we don’t want a nation organization or group to be the primary forces behind this for as discussed above, in the instance of smaller bodies, like Cherablinsk not the civilization ending ones, but the ones that could wipe out Manhattan, Shanghai or even the 15 million people in Delhi, India. For these size bodies neither do we have the current means to monitor nor the blanket freedom given to the scientists to disclose data. The world is shrouded in numerous agreements between nations to with hold information that could point to weapons testing or nuclear explosions, and since these asteroids tend to explode in the atmosphere despite having the data, the scientists hands may be tied till the NEO instead of exploding above the Indian Ocean explodes over New Delhi, by which time it would be much too late.
In my opinion, no one nation should be privy to this information, we should have satellites and monitoring stations that don’t act for nations and their buddies, but which act in the interest of humanity and disclose data as soon as it is accessible blasts, bombs, asteroids, comets and all. For this the agency/ organization monitoring would have to be independent of nations, and work to serve humanity for humanity’s sake And Pleeeeaaasse don’t start getting misty eyed and veering towards the UN thinking that somehow that is going to step in as the savior of humanity. Please understand the UN is severely conflicted, there is no option but to be biased based on its structure and formation. It serves a purpose, and like the other nations of the globe must be treated as one agglomerated nation with certain groups glomming more (“glom”how I love that word)and others being left in the periphery, and so similarly weighted.
Back to the independent organization required for monitoring NEO and alerting the citizens of the globe of impeding disasters, this organization of course would be funded and supported by the human virtual community both by their currency the Tidbit and the labor of the volunteers who will scan the skies, monitor and chart the trajectories either based on data shared or games designed for the purpose. These volunteers by their very reason of being online will earn a tidbit, Roger can you imagine the immense power that can be harnessed if we can tap even a fraction of all the people surfing the Net. Imagine being compensated just for going online! However, even if we only focus on gamers we have all the man hours we need for all our human infrastructure projects(those that impact human survival), the gamers may earn more based on the complexity of the task and the level of the game they are able to reach, thus uncovering more of the skies, being compensated and making the world a safer place for each and every one of us who is vested in this Human Story.
Love and hugs to you and the whole family.
Love,
Purnima
PURNIMA VISWANATHAN
Disclaimer 😛
All persons, places, events are fictitious; all imputed relationships purely aspirational. There were no men harmed during the penning of the Feminist Manifesto
Whodunnit: Blogger/Writer/CyberSmurf 