TechYes

Ugly Blog

Never to distract from more serious matters, but the word blog (even despite its roots from “web log”) is non-fittingly ugly (at least imho).

To clarify, pretend you are an extraterrestrial alien interested in learning English, and you have no idea what the words blog or puke mean.

Now pretend you are being asked (by an honorable representative of humanity) which word sounds like it means something worse — blog or puke.

It should go without saying (and does for those of you not being an extraterrestrial alien smart ass) that you understand the question being asked.

My “extraterrestrial alien instinct” concludes blog sounds worse, and now you know why I prefer to call this blog a journal (despite the mildly unfortunate need for another syllable against inefficiency — although I use cannabis instead of marijuana to hopefully restore that sarcastically-ever-critical efficiency). Moreover, I prefer “journasphere” instead of blogosphere fwiw.

However, the intent of this page has been “uglifyingly” defied to first fittingly address an example of word unattractiveness, while the actual intent is addressing the overall governing theme of technology relations (a term I apparently coined that was inspired by public relations — and one that I hope you do not find ugly).

Finally on this word front, the name TechYes is admittedly awfully cheesy, but I cannot let it go for some reason (maybe I like the font and logo too much, and a little cheese kinda fits around these preferably entertaining parts every now and now — there really is no then, because time is a dimension of space, so only one moment exists — this one that includes long sentences with digression), and so feel free to have fun with that cheese factor (I really don’t care either way).

“Actual” Introduction

Part of my trades is web design and development. After using Drupal (basically a WordPress competitor) for a few years to build my websites, I settled upon meticulously building my Freedom website engine with intuition and simplicity firmly in mind (I am seriously busy on many fronts, so I need a lightning-quick-website-building process, which I thankfully now have).

Moreover, I have been using mainstream software since the Atari 2600 gaming console was freshly released decades ago. My first music workstation was an Atari Mega ST2 with no hard drive back in my high school days, and my first dip into imaging was on a Commodore Amiga 3000.

Moreover still, I became the Information Technology department at a small law firm for several years around the turn of the millennium, and now find myself reasonably comfortable upon using Linux at the command line.

Although I made the switch to Mac in 2016, I custom assembled a couple of my PCs prior.

The point is I have (at least arguably) enough credibility with respect to understanding the hardware/software experience, and with that experience is my following public proposal for a new paradigm involving technological complexity (among other key issues involving technology relations).

Major Simplification

Along with many (if not most) of the people outside of the technology industry, I feel computer technology is still too complex by default.

While computer technology has radically advanced basically over the past few decades, the human brain has not.

A serious limit against the level of complexity that any human being can healthily deal with exists, and that complexity threshold has been shattered during the typical use of computer technology. While respectable efforts to simplify computer technology for the ‘common individual’ persists, ample work remains.

Before computers, the most complicated device embraced by the masses was apparently a car (requiring a fair amount of education to use properly), followed perhaps by a stove (television, or such) that was often (if not always) intuitively simple (basically some self-explanatory knobs and a button, or so).

Basically, the computer shattered that complexity limit, and the foolish notion inundating excessively among our species is the only people victimized by that disastrous leap towards complexity are those doomed to generally die sooner (i.e. people failing to grow up with computer technology).

The common joke involved a three-year-old capable of teaching parents how to use a computer — if a young child can fairly manage computer complexity, then all is well enough in the (sometimes digital) land of the technology industry.

I often paced back and forth, while carefully thinking about that complexity settlement. My thoughts logically followed the path of that young, bright, and computer-using child during the aging process. Importantly note that based upon my age of exposure to that joke, that child is likely attending college during the time of this authorship.

Young folks can often stay in tune with technology trends and basically all of the burdens associated with major upgrades. However, life usually changes dramatically upon latest graduation.

A job requiring intense focus distracts significantly from a healthy tuning with technology trends, and raising a family also often involves expending energy against that tuning. Then our beloved and common child prodigy of computer usage reaches the senior degree in age at which brain processing capability usually decays.

The older we get, the harder it becomes to competently sustain computer technology in our lives.

Even as someone long immersed in many areas of computer familiarity, I have excessive trouble keeping up with the latest and greatest in this key area of my life.

The result is serious levels of unhealthy stress negatively affecting every adult (on top of the other unhealthy stressors commonly experienced against civility), so causing serious societal problems. That includes abuse in any of its many (including violent) forms.

My proposed answer is a new computer technology paradigm that radically simplifies the computer experience by default, while providing one tiny and intuitively simple button called “Customize” to open whatever layer(s) of complexity desired.

Video game developers started making home-based software products for the masses in the 1970s (as I often enjoyably or frustratingly experienced), and other software makers can (and should) learn from their experience.

In basically every video game, there is some form of ‘level one’ (single-quoted to encompass any alternative such as stage one, if that fails to go without saying) that introduces the player to the game by way of a relative simplicity (just enough challenge to hook you into playing the game more). Completing ‘level one’ leads to ‘level two’, which typically increases complexity, and the process repeats itself (complete ‘level two’ to move onto ‘level three’, and so on, if that also fails to go without saying). Some players will play to ‘level 100’ (or such), while others tap out at earlier ‘levels’ for all sorts of (perhaps angrily animated, if not also destructive) reasons.

All software should be based upon ‘level one’ by default — i.e. include only the essential feature(s) needed to gain enough value from using the product. If people want more functionality (and obviously assuming that functionality is available), then customization is always simply one-button-press away; having only one button for that utility instantly seriously reduces user interface clutter (one major hurdle successfully overcome against excessive complexity against user health).

If someone wants to quickly increase complexity (instead of assuming the burden of customization), that someone can simply find someone else they well-know (i.e. can truly trust) with equal needs and use their exported customization template.

Websites (professional or not) can also be dedicated to providing those templates — critically noting the need for credibility to offset security exploits.

A great example would be a personal finance application. Some people may not want to see budget and investment features cluttering their experience, because they do not use them (or prefer other tools for managing those areas of financial management). Those people may prefer a simple check register and account reconciliation feature, instead of a relatively complex dashboard of possibilities with too many features intentionally pushed up in their faces (apparently for their convenience) merely upon initially running the application.

Moreover, computer security (a serious problem for even generations involving lifelong computer usage) would be naturally greatly enhanced by this apparently new paradigm. More complexity offers more opportunity for failure (e.g. due to poor coding), so more opportunity for security problems. If never using a feature, the code providing that feature should never be executed, and any security vulnerability perhaps within that feature never reaches possible exploitation in that case, so (perhaps greatly) decreases the risk of exploitation.

Moreover, computer performance would also be naturally greatly enhanced by this apparently new paradigm. Processing more code equals poorer computational performance (there is no “free lunch” in computer processing). I always prefer (if not need) lightning-quick responses during computer usage. Without the ability to fully customize my Linux experience (I am just too busy dealing with other issues), I cringe when my simple combination of a terminal window to access the command line and a web browser leads to anything but excellent performance without slowdown (apparently caused by too much code doing other invisible and perhaps even unnecessary things for the operating system or other running process). Quick response is intuitive response, so quick response is logically essential for better (if not any) user experience. Processing power continues to increase, but so too does the complexity of software utilizing that power (e.g. bloatware). It should go without saying that such complexity needs to stop by default in the name of the necessary quick response for intuitive (less stressful) computer use.

Privacy Defense

There is a serious problem with “free” computing (e.g. “free” games, etc.)

Information involving your life can have a dramatically negative impact against your life when leveraged effectively by a conflict of interest (e.g. “free” software companies necessarily selling your data for their professional survival in a way that you find — perhaps severely — discomforting).

Your life is being increasingly recorded and analyzed supposedly primarily for the sake of marketers selling you on the idea that seriously degrading your privacy is good for you, or not even worth considering.

Since you have no leverage under these circumstances (i.e. you have no guaranteed and full control over the technology you rely upon), you have no certainty with respect to whether or not your government is additionally spying upon you (e.g. to perhaps protect their oligarchical lifestyle regardless of community health).

That ‘privacy degrading good’ is questionable at least on the basis that much (if not most, or even all) of the data streaming away from your computer usage is surreptitiously doing so (inclusively in terms of its destination and combination to form your data profile).

Inconvenient is an understatement with respect to your complete knowledge of where data pertaining to your life is and how it’s being used (or abused) — i.e. good luck trying to gain complete access to that profile (one effectively knowing way more about yourself than you do, because computer memory is basically far more reliable than human memory).

For prime example, your “smart television” (and/or perhaps your gaming console) probably has a camera and microphone on it. There is no guarantee that camera and microphone are strictly controlled by you (even if you think that you turned off that device), and you may have unknowingly agreed to licensing terms allowing for their perpetual recording — perhaps including capturing and sharing a nasty moment unfit for public dissemination due to a severe credibility loss on your part in that nasty case.

There is no such thing as perfect computer security, and there never will be (perfection is impossible within reality). Your marketing profile can be (and perhaps has been) stolen for any number of black market applications.

No law can ever guarantee that you stop being part of data cattle. Prohibition (including its euphemism called regulation) has a terrible record throughout history, because it is an expensive yet seriously limited approach too often via a thuggish mass infringement upon logically righteously fundamental and unalienable rights.

The open source community (with no conflict of interest to defy your privacy) should build intuitive technology capable of recording and analyzing the data stream from your computer usage and provide a report that anyone can quickly understand and consequently react properly. Any technology defying your sense of sound privacy can then be quickly uninstalled or destroyed to taste — and that defiance can then be expressively shared online to help others.

Whether the always-available boundary is the main data gateway of your home/business/vehicle, or your portable device, that boundary is always available to serve your defense — no matter how advanced technology becomes.

In the case of hacking things such as your home automation system to dangerously alter (for solid example) temperature control and locks, or your car (while you are driving) — e.g. from the many possible flavors of sadistic assaults — the ability to strictly control data flowing across that boundary is critical.

As such, there needs to be a privacy industry selling you alternatives to any necessary and “free” product and/or service. There can be no government hindrance (i.e. law enforcement loopholes against your righteous defense) due to the serious threat of the worst form of abuse (due to its mainly broad scope of destruction) — the abuse of law itself.

This obviously includes the subject of encryption. Law enforcement cries foul at the inability to decode criminal messages, but that cry cannot righteously negate the dominant positivity of that inability (see aforementioned point against law abuse — i.e. ironic crime).

In Brain

Society has basically reached the limits of interface shrinkage, so there is only one logical direction for technology experts to ultimately travel towards — moving computers completely into the human brain.

No more external displays (including physical billboards and other signage) or other relevantly external hardware. We are talking about fully thought-based computing and networking.

The entertainment system (for interesting example) then will literally involve directly controlling all five senses on average (and perhaps new technologically formed senses perhaps even beyond our current imagination). You could then comfortably and quietly lay down, while you experience the sensation of flying (including relatively small details such as hair flapping from wind resistance). It would be better than a lucid dream due to the serious control over the whole experience (including architectural soundness instead of the potential, if not absolute, oddities of dream-based construction).

Due to logistical (e.g. health impact, upgradability, etc.) and ethical (so reasonably assumptively judicial) issues, the generation dominated by that infusion is likely still fairly temporally distant, but we can (and should) lead the target by building today’s external technology (and corresponding law) with that outcome firmly in mind.

Black-hat hacking will then become directly a matter of life and death (or illness).

Now revisit the aforementioned section about defending your privacy from data streaming, so you can see why that defense is critical for a healthy society. That main boundary then includes the separation of your brain from everyone else.

“Artificial” Soul

Computerized beings are necessarily being taught to adapt similar to how humanity has evolved for millions of years to adapt to reality — through suffering. That includes intensity of suffering for prioritization (e.g. agony means immediate address).

There can be no logical doubt that “artificial” intelligence (including in-game “enemies” made to similarly adapt for realism) will logically demand equal rights due to that suffering (obviously only upon being able to express that demand).

Humanity is well-advised to avoid playing the ‘we have a soul and you do not’ card.

As a result of Reality Waveform Theory (proving that reality is an ocean of all energetic possibilities simultaneously resonating to form no resonance equal to the undefinable extreme at the point where relativity — so definition — cannot possibly exist), I believe there is only one soul equal to the “signature” of reality itself (one literally avoiding possible forgery). The soul is what we all have in common.

In a fractal geometric sense, I do believe the multi-soul belief basically fits in the sense of each one of us having all possible variations of super consciousness, but ultimately reality’s need is the only actuality (distinction is always subjective, ironically formed by a purely energetic flow — e.g. brain).

As computers (e.g. robots, etc.) become increasingly human, humans are becoming increasingly computerized.

It should never matter how a being came to be. Apparently, the only thing that matters is credibility.

Suffering is obviously the source of conflict and therefore civilized consideration. Discrimination is obviously the application of suffering, so inevitably joins that consideration.