Stone Riley's Blog: Stone Riley's Shoebox - Posts Tagged "occupy"
The Signaling Problem
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The Signaling Problem … (bomb resistance)
This is a professional technical position paper (I am sitting in a chair) offering you some reasoning and ideas, even some strategies and proposals, in a disjointed form struggling for dignity. My apologies for the quick informal novelistic writing. (I am a novelist and poet.) This is being written near Worcester Massachusetts in the seventeenth month of Donald Trump's reign as U.S. President. The particular subject of this paper's reasoning and ideas etc. is this: How can we use the worldwide web, like it is now, for reliable signaling in the particular resistance movement that our small committee here is trying to muster, and between us and the whole wide world? In particular, can the soaring onset of Occupy be replicated?
My nom de guerre is hiredwriter.
… Our Current Situation …
All the means we have for communicating on the worldwide web are thoroughly penetrated by our remorseless but disorganized and shortsighted opponents. According to a current tag line that all techs now say, there is no web security but only various levels of insecurity. However, in fact, by now there are no longer even levels of insecurity, for data anywhere on the web can now be bought if your banker will send the requested payment to the appropriate app's shopping cart window. Furthermore, the current maze of software apps makes the technology of the apps impossible to master. Your hard won programming expertise dissolves like morning mist the instant when the owners issue a large software update. Some of our information specialists choose that route anyway, building special versions of one app or another to better fit the needs of activists, even while they know they are building a raft of cards to float on turbulent water. In software engineering terms, the web landscape is grotesquely overgrown with structures of random noise. I.e. No one has ever cleaned the cat box.
So how can people in our movement do reliable signaling on the web? By plucking spider threads somehow?
… A Scheme For Thinking About This …
Okay, so I've worked a few decades doing software engineering, which is applied information theory. Besides that, I have been awarded a U.S. Army Cold War Good Conduct Medal, which included my service in that army's Signals Corps as a senior private in a platoon in the field in West Germany where I also finally did a month in U.S. Army jail for Vietnam War resistance actions. (Things look different from the top of a telephone pole.) And over the years while I've been watching the web fall into its current state of chaotic thrashing, I have also been trying to think about the whole thing in information terms.
Here's the strongest reasoning that I've stumbled on so far: You must study the long history of the worldwide web – study it way back far in time to the days of Marco Polo and the globe spanning Great Sailing Fleets of China, in the wide trade zone over there where pepper corns were money – a trading zone of very many countries arrayed half way round the world's largest ocean – and on eastward through North America by foot – yes, I suggest you study the worldwide web that far back at least if you are able to – back to those years when the pepper money zone was bustling and the hick poor cousin European shippers (in all their frail little fishing boats) – being very far from the world's great ocean – those puny European shippers were in sore danger of getting fleeced by the great Chinese pepper financiers – and in that distant worldwide signaling landscape (for in our view that is a signaling landscape) I suggest you start looking for your historical precedents there, or as far back as you can.
That is my suggested strategy for you in whatever signaling emergency you have: I call it the 'Learn From Historic Precedent' strategy. What you do is (1st) obtain and don an Information Specialist hat and Information Specialist eyeglasses. That's my strategy's step one. Then (2nd) do this: Scan all of world history looking for other situations that look like your situation, while you are wearing your Information Specialist eyeglasses and hat. Then (3rd) start discussing actions on that information. People in those times had similar needs to ours and we ought to examine their solutions.
And, obviously, also I can suggest a few particular historic precedents with hopes they might possibly help you in your discussions.
But how on Earth can I suggest historic precedents for you? Who are you? I don't know. So therefore, of course, I'm going to trust intuition. Below are listed a few mental images from the worldwide web's history that have looked extremely large to me in recent times, historic mental images that have nowadays, to me, seemed full of realistic power. I pass along to you my blessing for good fortune with this little bit of fortunetelling.
Random Precedent 1 … Transoceanic radio Morse distress calls in sinking of ship Titanic.
Random Precedent 2 … Day's publishing of Catholic Worker issue 1, financed by pennies.
Random Precedent 3 … Lincoln's War Department telegraph office in U.S. Civil War.
Random Precedent 4 … Murrow's 'London Calling' radio show amid the London Blitz.
Random Precedent 5 … Vietnam War combat news photos next day in U.S. newspapers.
Random Precedent 6 … Women's rally cry 'bread and roses' in U.S. Labor War.
And I mean you should keep this in mind: People in those times had needs similar to ours and we ought to examine their solutions.
If you're curious, sometime we might get together and discuss whatever logic there is in choosing those historic precedents, or we can discuss whatever logic there may be anywhere in this paper, but for now I'm glossing over that and lots of other details.
… Concepts For Our Solutions …
Our Signals Concept #1 … Let's write a little bit like robots. Put our most important and universal coding into partly-human language stuck in among our human readable material. For example: I have invented our new movement's catchword name BOMB RESISTANCE. Anyone can type this catchword equally well into any text channel of social media and the code will be readable on the other end. Furthermore, everyone can easily invent slight variations – like Bomb Resistance or (bomb resistance) or #bombresistance or Mybombresistance17 – to fit some detail of their immediate situation, and yet still remain legible in general to others. Because text is a wide low-level band of human natural communication.
Our Signals Concept #2 … Nail up a board with words carved on it. Post something new – I'm calling this new kind of thing a 'grand hailing stone' – posting a few of these inert robot things here and there around the worldwide web's signaling landscape, with each of these 'grand hailing stones' being only a block of human readable text saying who we are and how the visitor can enter our conversation. (I considered calling these new things 'rosetta stones' instead.) Each so-called hailing stone would be a brief text block, all of ours with the same content, all of ours with web address names that are meaningful riffs on our movement's catchword name. But we have, for example, one in English on Facebook, and/or one in Spanish on Google Cloud, and/or one in Arabic on Twitter, and/or etc. etc. Post them here and there around the worldwide web's signaling landscape. Then anyone anywhere can point to one for other people to look at. These things would be easily hacked or blocked but also easily repaired and replaced and replicated.
Our Signals Concept #3 … Go hang out with people, share smokes, and make friends. Do we know which social media app the Native American movement is currently using most? (Right now, I hear that they are using Facebook predominantly, and for good reason.) What channel are Veterans For Peace members largely using? How about Code Pink members? BLM? Palestine? If we want to cooperate with those movements, we ought to know where they chat. If we know that, then we can post selected bits of our stuff in their publicly available channels that appear to have heavy traffic. We can do that repeatedly as their courtesy may allow. We can just say hello – and concisely explain ourselves, and explain what we'd like to coop on – to everybody who is there and happens to see our bits of stuff. I'm calling this the 'Marco Polo' strategy, named for the famous merchant adventurer.
Our Signals Concept #4 … In our reality, the wide bottom band of every possible communication channel is our reality itself. That's a Law Of Nature here. For example, because of that, human robbed youth worldwide have just now recently declared a single movement. Have you noticed this yet? All the robbed youth of the world have just now recently realized themselves to be a single movement full of astonishing, intricate, and genius beauty. Have you realized this yet? I know you've heard it BECAUSE IT'S IN THEIR MUSIC that they tell us they are one. Okay? Plus, their communication is by being present and existent with your human nature in its open position. So reality is the wide bottom band of all communication channels.
But now, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, if I may speak Officially as your Captain during our little journey through this essay, I Must now ask you to find your Reality Selector Switch somewhere on your equipment. Yes, that is what I said and yes, I mean it. Yes, you have a Reality Selector Switch, if you are a human being, but of course, obviously, I don't know where you've put it on your equipment. You, reading this, you – thank you – You don't think you have a Reality Selector Switch do you? Please find it now anyway.
It might be any kind of multi-option rotary selection device, but you always operate them with your thumbs and fingers. Are you believing this at all? The incidents of your life have probably given it some familiar appearance. Well, actually, don't worry. Please don't worry. Some of you are really quite totally unfamiliar with reality selector technology at all, because many of you always are. So now you're in luck. Because I'm now Required to read this brief review for those of you who are only now waking up and looking around on this trip. Okay? I'm sorry for the inconvenience.
If you are a human being, rich or poor, young or old, inverted or obverted, real or someone's alternate personality, regardless of your immigration status or your lingering military conquest status, if you are a human being you have a Reality Selector Switch, sometimes even with a kind of little poly-choice dropdown menu on it. Have you gotten to a point yet where you realize this is a pretty well honed metaphor? Do you see some meaning in this yet? (I don't know what meaning you might see.) But if you are reading this position paper then you are probably an information specialist of some kind, so let's proceed as though you do.
So the point of this interruption in this essay is that you should now try to do the rather zen yoga act of finding your Reality Selector Switch before this essay lurches forward. Right now, if you're groping for it, please don't keep your hands and arms inside the car window. I said please do not. And now we have determined to pretend that you have found it! Very good! So, look at your Reality Selector Switch to see what is its current setting is. Pretend you've done that. Probably your switch's current setting is one of two things, either says 'science fiction' (because this interruption is a piece of science fiction writing) or probably it says maybe 'worldwide web' because that's where we were before this interruption. (Or maybe yours is stuck on 'U.S. Army'.)
Whatever. But now please do this: Use your real or imaginary fingers and/or thumbs to desperately search for the selector option choice that says 'UNIVERSAL WEB'. And let's pretend you've changed your reality setting to that. So now please slowly open your eyes and look around. Are you okay?
Our Signals Concept #5 … Our best writers should make straight-up truth propaganda for which the novelistic sci-fi paragraphs above are a demonstration sketch.
And finally Our Ultimate Signals Concept #6 … Let's assume quantum physics is real and so all the natural powers of Mind that human beings have always been reliably familiar with are true enough for practical use. Why not? Any objection to doing this, accepting that the natural powers of Mind are real enough for practical use? Any objection to us doing that? I don't see any reasonable objection. I must however give you expert notice that doing this hooks into the vast history of human magic and religion as well as science.
End of current signal.
The Signaling Problem … (bomb resistance)
This is a professional technical position paper (I am sitting in a chair) offering you some reasoning and ideas, even some strategies and proposals, in a disjointed form struggling for dignity. My apologies for the quick informal novelistic writing. (I am a novelist and poet.) This is being written near Worcester Massachusetts in the seventeenth month of Donald Trump's reign as U.S. President. The particular subject of this paper's reasoning and ideas etc. is this: How can we use the worldwide web, like it is now, for reliable signaling in the particular resistance movement that our small committee here is trying to muster, and between us and the whole wide world? In particular, can the soaring onset of Occupy be replicated?
My nom de guerre is hiredwriter.
… Our Current Situation …
All the means we have for communicating on the worldwide web are thoroughly penetrated by our remorseless but disorganized and shortsighted opponents. According to a current tag line that all techs now say, there is no web security but only various levels of insecurity. However, in fact, by now there are no longer even levels of insecurity, for data anywhere on the web can now be bought if your banker will send the requested payment to the appropriate app's shopping cart window. Furthermore, the current maze of software apps makes the technology of the apps impossible to master. Your hard won programming expertise dissolves like morning mist the instant when the owners issue a large software update. Some of our information specialists choose that route anyway, building special versions of one app or another to better fit the needs of activists, even while they know they are building a raft of cards to float on turbulent water. In software engineering terms, the web landscape is grotesquely overgrown with structures of random noise. I.e. No one has ever cleaned the cat box.
So how can people in our movement do reliable signaling on the web? By plucking spider threads somehow?
… A Scheme For Thinking About This …
Okay, so I've worked a few decades doing software engineering, which is applied information theory. Besides that, I have been awarded a U.S. Army Cold War Good Conduct Medal, which included my service in that army's Signals Corps as a senior private in a platoon in the field in West Germany where I also finally did a month in U.S. Army jail for Vietnam War resistance actions. (Things look different from the top of a telephone pole.) And over the years while I've been watching the web fall into its current state of chaotic thrashing, I have also been trying to think about the whole thing in information terms.
Here's the strongest reasoning that I've stumbled on so far: You must study the long history of the worldwide web – study it way back far in time to the days of Marco Polo and the globe spanning Great Sailing Fleets of China, in the wide trade zone over there where pepper corns were money – a trading zone of very many countries arrayed half way round the world's largest ocean – and on eastward through North America by foot – yes, I suggest you study the worldwide web that far back at least if you are able to – back to those years when the pepper money zone was bustling and the hick poor cousin European shippers (in all their frail little fishing boats) – being very far from the world's great ocean – those puny European shippers were in sore danger of getting fleeced by the great Chinese pepper financiers – and in that distant worldwide signaling landscape (for in our view that is a signaling landscape) I suggest you start looking for your historical precedents there, or as far back as you can.
That is my suggested strategy for you in whatever signaling emergency you have: I call it the 'Learn From Historic Precedent' strategy. What you do is (1st) obtain and don an Information Specialist hat and Information Specialist eyeglasses. That's my strategy's step one. Then (2nd) do this: Scan all of world history looking for other situations that look like your situation, while you are wearing your Information Specialist eyeglasses and hat. Then (3rd) start discussing actions on that information. People in those times had similar needs to ours and we ought to examine their solutions.
And, obviously, also I can suggest a few particular historic precedents with hopes they might possibly help you in your discussions.
But how on Earth can I suggest historic precedents for you? Who are you? I don't know. So therefore, of course, I'm going to trust intuition. Below are listed a few mental images from the worldwide web's history that have looked extremely large to me in recent times, historic mental images that have nowadays, to me, seemed full of realistic power. I pass along to you my blessing for good fortune with this little bit of fortunetelling.
Random Precedent 1 … Transoceanic radio Morse distress calls in sinking of ship Titanic.
Random Precedent 2 … Day's publishing of Catholic Worker issue 1, financed by pennies.
Random Precedent 3 … Lincoln's War Department telegraph office in U.S. Civil War.
Random Precedent 4 … Murrow's 'London Calling' radio show amid the London Blitz.
Random Precedent 5 … Vietnam War combat news photos next day in U.S. newspapers.
Random Precedent 6 … Women's rally cry 'bread and roses' in U.S. Labor War.
And I mean you should keep this in mind: People in those times had needs similar to ours and we ought to examine their solutions.
If you're curious, sometime we might get together and discuss whatever logic there is in choosing those historic precedents, or we can discuss whatever logic there may be anywhere in this paper, but for now I'm glossing over that and lots of other details.
… Concepts For Our Solutions …
Our Signals Concept #1 … Let's write a little bit like robots. Put our most important and universal coding into partly-human language stuck in among our human readable material. For example: I have invented our new movement's catchword name BOMB RESISTANCE. Anyone can type this catchword equally well into any text channel of social media and the code will be readable on the other end. Furthermore, everyone can easily invent slight variations – like Bomb Resistance or (bomb resistance) or #bombresistance or Mybombresistance17 – to fit some detail of their immediate situation, and yet still remain legible in general to others. Because text is a wide low-level band of human natural communication.
Our Signals Concept #2 … Nail up a board with words carved on it. Post something new – I'm calling this new kind of thing a 'grand hailing stone' – posting a few of these inert robot things here and there around the worldwide web's signaling landscape, with each of these 'grand hailing stones' being only a block of human readable text saying who we are and how the visitor can enter our conversation. (I considered calling these new things 'rosetta stones' instead.) Each so-called hailing stone would be a brief text block, all of ours with the same content, all of ours with web address names that are meaningful riffs on our movement's catchword name. But we have, for example, one in English on Facebook, and/or one in Spanish on Google Cloud, and/or one in Arabic on Twitter, and/or etc. etc. Post them here and there around the worldwide web's signaling landscape. Then anyone anywhere can point to one for other people to look at. These things would be easily hacked or blocked but also easily repaired and replaced and replicated.
Our Signals Concept #3 … Go hang out with people, share smokes, and make friends. Do we know which social media app the Native American movement is currently using most? (Right now, I hear that they are using Facebook predominantly, and for good reason.) What channel are Veterans For Peace members largely using? How about Code Pink members? BLM? Palestine? If we want to cooperate with those movements, we ought to know where they chat. If we know that, then we can post selected bits of our stuff in their publicly available channels that appear to have heavy traffic. We can do that repeatedly as their courtesy may allow. We can just say hello – and concisely explain ourselves, and explain what we'd like to coop on – to everybody who is there and happens to see our bits of stuff. I'm calling this the 'Marco Polo' strategy, named for the famous merchant adventurer.
Our Signals Concept #4 … In our reality, the wide bottom band of every possible communication channel is our reality itself. That's a Law Of Nature here. For example, because of that, human robbed youth worldwide have just now recently declared a single movement. Have you noticed this yet? All the robbed youth of the world have just now recently realized themselves to be a single movement full of astonishing, intricate, and genius beauty. Have you realized this yet? I know you've heard it BECAUSE IT'S IN THEIR MUSIC that they tell us they are one. Okay? Plus, their communication is by being present and existent with your human nature in its open position. So reality is the wide bottom band of all communication channels.
But now, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, if I may speak Officially as your Captain during our little journey through this essay, I Must now ask you to find your Reality Selector Switch somewhere on your equipment. Yes, that is what I said and yes, I mean it. Yes, you have a Reality Selector Switch, if you are a human being, but of course, obviously, I don't know where you've put it on your equipment. You, reading this, you – thank you – You don't think you have a Reality Selector Switch do you? Please find it now anyway.
It might be any kind of multi-option rotary selection device, but you always operate them with your thumbs and fingers. Are you believing this at all? The incidents of your life have probably given it some familiar appearance. Well, actually, don't worry. Please don't worry. Some of you are really quite totally unfamiliar with reality selector technology at all, because many of you always are. So now you're in luck. Because I'm now Required to read this brief review for those of you who are only now waking up and looking around on this trip. Okay? I'm sorry for the inconvenience.
If you are a human being, rich or poor, young or old, inverted or obverted, real or someone's alternate personality, regardless of your immigration status or your lingering military conquest status, if you are a human being you have a Reality Selector Switch, sometimes even with a kind of little poly-choice dropdown menu on it. Have you gotten to a point yet where you realize this is a pretty well honed metaphor? Do you see some meaning in this yet? (I don't know what meaning you might see.) But if you are reading this position paper then you are probably an information specialist of some kind, so let's proceed as though you do.
So the point of this interruption in this essay is that you should now try to do the rather zen yoga act of finding your Reality Selector Switch before this essay lurches forward. Right now, if you're groping for it, please don't keep your hands and arms inside the car window. I said please do not. And now we have determined to pretend that you have found it! Very good! So, look at your Reality Selector Switch to see what is its current setting is. Pretend you've done that. Probably your switch's current setting is one of two things, either says 'science fiction' (because this interruption is a piece of science fiction writing) or probably it says maybe 'worldwide web' because that's where we were before this interruption. (Or maybe yours is stuck on 'U.S. Army'.)
Whatever. But now please do this: Use your real or imaginary fingers and/or thumbs to desperately search for the selector option choice that says 'UNIVERSAL WEB'. And let's pretend you've changed your reality setting to that. So now please slowly open your eyes and look around. Are you okay?
Our Signals Concept #5 … Our best writers should make straight-up truth propaganda for which the novelistic sci-fi paragraphs above are a demonstration sketch.
And finally Our Ultimate Signals Concept #6 … Let's assume quantum physics is real and so all the natural powers of Mind that human beings have always been reliably familiar with are true enough for practical use. Why not? Any objection to doing this, accepting that the natural powers of Mind are real enough for practical use? Any objection to us doing that? I don't see any reasonable objection. I must however give you expert notice that doing this hooks into the vast history of human magic and religion as well as science.
End of current signal.
Stone Riley's Shoebox
A poet writing essays. Why the title? You know you keep a large size shoe box with all those creative ideas and suchlike stuff scribbled on the back of electric bill envelopes?
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