№ 344. Christmas Carol

What's a cure for old age and death? For chaos? For pandora's bane?

When world peace is a sight unseen in a galaxy far, far away, when death and sickness come bearing down on our doorposts, what's the proper response?

The year 2017 will come to a close soon. Like in so many years before it, people will again hope for a better year, for a better world.

World peace will always be a cliche. Climate change may soon be a tired slogan on a fake campaign platform. Gender fairness is so 1990s as one writer admitted.

Humankind is a never ending craft.

№ 343. Essential Algorithms

In our realities, there are many underlying, invisible truths. Gravity is one. It's a physical phenomenon. But there are other social rules which are just as intractable and vexing.

Here's one social algorithm:

№ 342. Waking Up to Binary Dreams 6

Was Bitcoin created by an AI?

No one knows for sure who invented it, but is it possible? Is this the beginning of the end. Or is this just a blip in a technological event horizon? The first series among the many waves to come?

I was watching a rerun of Animatrix. The dystopian prophecy still strongly argues for a plausible future given a set of many quite valid assumptions, more than ten years after its release.

During the Matrix runs at the turn of the 21st century there were no Social Networks or even smartphones yet. Year 2017, the Watchowski brothers have both chosen transgender identities and Facebook boasts of more than two billion users. Apparently we are still in fluidic space and time.

But I have an alternative future in mind that is far less radical than the ones envisioned by the Matrix. The future in my head will be more accommodating to a creeping hybrid of silicon and flesh. Science fiction will still have to yield to pragmatic concerns such as business, logistics and the law of supply and demand, among many other mundane realities.

№ 341. Waking Up to Binary Dreams 5

Cognitive computing. Creation of a hybrid of human and artificial intelligence to solve BIG, complex problems. Borg.

"The US must also determine a national strategy for how aggressively it will develop new systems, operational concepts and organizational constructs that exploit artificial intelligence advancements in warfare, according to the report.

Kitt the sidekick smart car was an early
pop culture example of benevolent AI. But I think,
in one episode, Kitt turned rogue.

An important part of that strategy relates to 'autonomy' which results 'from delegation of a decision to an authorized entity to take action within specific boundaries,' Work told CNN."

№ 340.Throwback Wednesday

I haven't seen this movie in ages. Still charming and funny. There's a poem by Auden too. What's not to like?

As I Walked Out One Evening

As I walked out one evening,
  Walking down Bristol Street,
The crowds upon the pavement
  Were fields of harvest wheat.

№ 339. 21st Century Empires, Globalization and Nation-States

It's ASEAN week in Manila.

"Looking at the different summits that are taking place in our region this week, one cannot but be inspired by the high-mindedness that seems to have summoned the world’s most powerful statesmen to this part of the world at this time. Yet, one cannot miss the irony, too. Here gathered are presidents and prime ministers purporting to offer collective solutions to humanity’s most intractable problems — solutions that, alas, are ultimately drawn from the shallow well of their respective national interests."

№ 338. Summer in November

Tower Records in Japan is alive and thriving. The branch in Osaka beside our hotel closes at 11 PM! Whooppie!

Among the many compact discs (CDs) finds is this:



So 80s and so retro, looking back.

№ 337. Love in November, in the Time of Diarrhea or After Ragnarok

"Para kay B is the first novel of scriptwriter par excellence Ricky Lee, published by the Writers’ Studio and launched in a grand bash last December. Subtitled “O kung paano dinevastate ng pag-ibig ang 4 out of 5 sa atin,” the novel deals with love and its wreckages. True to form, Lee conveys his insights in a manner that shatters the usual realistic narrative mode of Philippine literature in Filipino. For in the end, he lets the author of the novel within the novel question not just the nature of love, but the nature of narrative itself. Who, in the end, gives meaning to a story? It also mirrors the novel’s central point: who, in the end, benefits from love? And if love is so melodramatic and so sad, why do we even need it?"

I read Para kay B after Ondoy. It was one of the promised dry lands after that flood of end-of-the-world proportions. That--- meaning the flood, I swear, is not an exaggeration. It was Biblical. Or to borrow from another mythology: Ragnarok.

After Ondoy, the wreckage and the materials recovery, came the forced perspective of fragility and a whole lot of Beta --- that's uncertainty in finance.