Labels: computers, personal bookmarks

.
Poor Firefox. I'm giving it a bit of an ego problem.



















When I go to shut down my computer (which doesn't have hibernate for some reason), if I have open tabs in Firefox and want to save them, I just Ctrl+Alt+Del to bring up the task manager, and end the Firefox.exe process, then shut down. When I reboot and open Firefox the next day, the tabs are still there, but Firefox thinks it messed up. I like features like this. More applications should have fail-safes built into them where they remember exactly what they were doing.


pax hominibus,
agape to all,
joel

Labels: computers, theological sources

An interesting exercise by some programmers to compare religious codes with computer programming languages.  I understand they mean it in jest, yet wonder a little, considering the potential sincerity of this ancient post.

lyrics: "Follow" by Brandi Carlile.

colors: none

mood: n.a.

chant/prayer/mantra: that the Internet's duct tape may hold us together.


pax hominibus,
agape to all,
joel

Labels: computers, slashdot, theological sources

Huh, who'da thunk it? Granted, the article above is linked to from /. and they don't like Microsoft so much, so it take it with a grain of salt.

This is what happens when a company has a monopoly on a market. Yes, there's Apple (mentioned in the article), and that's kind of great, but they're not really in the same market, and Apple have got their own issues of being welcoming to third-party developers.

And Microsoft's codebase is now crufty as all hell and bloated and slow and not necessarily secure, and if you don't re-install or re-ghost windows once in a while it really gets slow. Decisions made decades ago for Windows 3.1 still are hounding them, and while they have such an enormous codebase that a developer can probably find stuff within their library that will call for a pizza, take a credit card number, and sprinkle red peppers and parmesan on top when the pizza guy delivers, that same codebase is old and overworked, in ways that people who have passed on from the company probably didn't figure for. So it's a question of architecture.

With sufficient resources, time, and dedication, somebody else could come along and do a whitebox design of a new OS with all the functionality of Windows (and Mac, and Be, and Unix), plus some forward-visionary stuff and really intuitive (non-kludged) developer (and user) interfaces, and they wouldn't have to carry around decades-old baggage, ready to make changes on a dime (or maybe a silver dollar, these things still take time).

What does all this have to do with theology, you may ask? Well, replace the word "decades" above with "millenia," and that might provide some insight. A theology based on functionality, not having to call all the way back to Adam, Noah, Moses, Hagar, Jesus, etc. Of course, its good to have people to tell stories about, and to have some type of a rudder/constitution, but going to them as sources of wisdom is disempowering to the voice within.


lyrics: "you are sleeping, you do not want to believe. you are sleeping." rubber ring, the smiths

colors: blue, brown, black, green

mood: stressed, procrastinating in the worst way possible.

chant/prayer/mantra: stay on target.


pax hominibus,
agape to all,
joel

Labels: computers, technology, theological sources

here's one that i generated quite some time ago that i really like.


lyrics: what's going on? - marvin gaye

mood: exasperated. had a bad day waiting in line at best buy store #499, then picking up our "fixed" laptop, only to have to drive back and wait in line to give it to them, after they put it back together with a missing switch, so that we can't access the internet with it. in other words, they fixed the problem and created a new one. and we will have to go without our laptop for two more weeks. :(

when i asked the geeksquad guy behind the counter if we could get an extension on the warranty or credit of some type for this total mess up on their part, i could tell he was doing his best to NOT offer anything of value to replace our lost use of the laptop and my lost saturday. what he did offer was that they would ship the laptop back out for re-repairing using overnight delivery, so that the people who made the mistake would get the laptop on monday. needless to say, we will still not ever be buying anything from best buy again, and i will heartily recommend to any readers or friends that they do likewise.


pax hominibus,
agape to all,
joel

Labels: art, computers, fractal art, indifferent corporations

Islam and World Peace - Explanations of a Sufi - Appendix: Glossary | God, Wisdom, Peace, Prayer, Love, Unity, Sufi, Islam, Sufism, Inner Heart, Sufi Path

OK, I'm just testing out and setting up the latest version of Google Toolbar, which *finally* includes the ability to share bookmarks across computers in a way in which I can agree. Though I will add that the flat structure of the bookmarks (i.e.-only one level down of folders) leaves a little to be desired. Then again, perhaps that will make it difficult for me to get my bookmarks all messy like I usually seem to do.

lyrics: Sinead O'Connor, Troy.

colors: same as before. still with the burgundy and burnt sienna, etc.

mood: tired.

chant/prayer/mantra: asleep in heavenly peace? sometimes i wonder, by continuing to envision a heavenly state of existence here and now, does it keep me/us from being fully awake to the hellish war slogging on around us?


pax hominibus,
agape to all,
joel

Labels: computers, Islam, peace

The other day, I got a recall notice from the library where I work for this M.A. thesis I checked out regarding a connection between Alfred North Whitehead's notion of "concrescence" and Virginia Woolf's novels. It got recalled, which means now I'm reading it. In the first chapter, the author, Grete Stenersen, quotes Whitehead "All modern philosophy hinges round the difficulty of describing the world in terms of subject and predicate,..."

Heck, I didn't remember what a predicate was, so I looked it up on Google -- "define predicate".

At the Google link, I came to realize that the term "predicate" is also used in programming language, and that the use of written language is syntactical in nature. Yes, that may be obvious, but for somebody who used to growl at command prompts in junior high when all the computer knew to say was "syntax error," I had deep associations of syntax being something that computers use, not people.

But NO... Syntax is also for language, and the idea of predicate has crossed over from written language into computer language.

My laugh out loud was (and this involves coming all the way over into my world if you want to get it the way I did).... What if our written language has been too underdetermined, and the "code" that we've been writing, vis a vis sacred text (whichever you ascribe to, whether its the Bible, the Qur'an, the Book of Mormon, the Upanishads, or the script for the Flintstones)... What if that code we've (writers of sacred text) been writing is actually extremely buggy, and the syntax used there does "compile" for cultures, but just because something COMPILES doesn't mean that it runs as it was designed. In other words, we're inside the debugger, still hammering this program out.

Complicating matters is the fact that every single person who reads any given text has their own internalized instruction set. Just as running a program written for an Intel Pentium II chip, just as running that program on an Intel Pentium 3, or a motorola, or any of hundreds of different chips out there,... Just as running a decent program on a certain chip might produce desired results, running that same program on a different chip could either not work at all and crash/stall/freeze, or appear to work, but come up with something spectacularly unexpected.... Just as that is the case, trying to apply a sacred text (that truth be told, other than allowing for Author's conceit that God wrote it and made no mistakes, is likely fraught with errors that only a person with a mote in their eye could ignore them)... Trying to directly apply a sacred text across cultures is often a Bad Thing(tm).

But I've digressed. I didn't mean to deal with the cross-culture/cross-platform issues. The simple issue of getting a pattern of logic together that can be compiled and work on one specific processor is tough enough. [note upon reread: the words that follow are dense, inchoate, and confusing. sorry i'm not cleaning them up just now. i'm just going to get them down for myself to ponder for later] So... If the subject (the reader/agent) is the processor, the sacred text is the logic path, the code to be followed, what is the data? Is the data the object in the sentence? What happens when we start spooling in complex data? And every word must be carefully defined, so that the results of the program are predictable. And the code has to be tight, really TIGHT, so that it's not open to exploits, anywhere along the chain, whether in the chip design, when running the compiled code as intended, or in a way not intended.

side-note 1: the processor is the subject (each of us), the code is our system of assumptions and beliefs about how to act in the world, and the world is the data, or the object which we spool into our assumptions/code, and then act on based off of those assumptions

side-note 2 (not necessarily consistent with side-note1): in the real world, the data set, the compiled code, and the compiler are all one. the one's and zero's on the hard drive, the subatomic particles/waves in the universe (including all aspects, not just material), are all capable of being elements to be acted upon, of being that which acts upon, and of being elements which determine how other elements will act upon each other (within bounds -- for example, we still can't change the gravitational constant, etc.). Any element can at any given time act more like an object, or as a subject, or as a programming subject, and often will be a combination of the three.

But we're not starting out with tabula rasa in any way, shape, or form. Everybody's already got embedded instruction sets. How about creating a dual-boot? By creating a small metal-level compiler within the original system, and creating a simple instruction set to boot to, is it possible to boot up a boot-strapping system that can unpack and recompile itself into a flowering system of logic that holds together, and form a truly common base of religion?

I think using the English language -- or any other written language --might prove to be too fraught with exploitability. It will need to be in the universal language of mathematical logic, based on postulates and axioms (assumptions, beliefs, deep cognitive structures), leading to theorems (actions, habits, norms, laws, commandments, suggestions, resulting from the axioms) . (and if we're not working from the same axioms, we're not able to have a legitimate conversation about appropriate theorems/corollaries at all. sometimes i think the larger argument really is all about the axioms.)

E.g., Axiom 0: There exists a subject. (IOW, I am. I think therefore I am. I doubt therefore I am, etc.)
Axiom 1: There exists an object. (IOW, there is a world different than, or beyond, the subject. From a non-duality/unity viewpoint, this one would be thrown out. But as a multitheticalist, I'll be keeping both dualistic and monistic views around for comparison.)
Axiom 2: There exists a predicate. (which describes the subject, explicating its features, its spirit, and its character)
Axiom 3:...
.
.
.

Start with
Null : 0
Space : 1
Space^2 : 10
Space^3 : 11

Anyway, people don't like to think of themselves as being programmed (even though we are, from birth) and the above is so inchoate as to be embryonic meanderings. And the above, if readable at all (certainly fraught with syntax errors and doesn't compile at the present moment) is painfully dry, so there's a long way to go before its ready for prime time. In addition, there's the ever-present -- and IMHO opinion, ever-important -- proposition of free will, allowing our spirit to flower naturally rather than being too tightly bound by some spiritual fascism. Ah, the middle way....

lyrics: "Why shouldn't I?" by the Bob Manor band.

colors: black(1), white(2), blue(3), orange(4),....

mood: at the beginning of this post, chuckling. at the end of the post, baffled and overwhelmed. i think i should just go back to reading about whitehead's concrescence for a while and leave it at that.

chant/prayer/mantra: xboot.exe, blah blah blah.

And as a reminder, the thing that got me started on this blog post was the notion that our written/spoken common languages are so slackly put together compared to the deterministic programming done within computer languages.


pax hominibus,
agape to all,
joel

PS (added 1.13.08)- I just came across this post from the Logos Institute that speaks to this, regarding critiques of Orwell's thoughts on the necessity of precision of language.

Labels: Bible, computers, Math, Process Thought, religious community, sacred texts, theology

#1. Today I came across this article, in which The Gap is investigating allegations of child labor, with respect to some factories in India where some lines of their clothing are made.

What makes me sad about it is that if those clothes are coming over here to the USA.... MOST AMERICANS DON'T NEED MORE CLOTHES!!! Perhaps we might WANT some newer apparel, or we see something with a pretty picture on it, but there are enough clothes to go around in the United States (though somehow the poor and homeless are still left a bit in limbo). A Gap ad comes on with a smiling model/celebrity who's life has been so enriched because she/he is wearing clothes from the Gap, and ppl feel the need to buy. Ugh. If I have clothes that are in decent repair, I don't need new ones. If they need repairing, I'd much rather have them patched up a bit unless they're supposed to be my dressy Sunday duds.


#2. Today I called Linksys tech support regarding the incredible (poor) performance of my router, and talked to a man who spoke English very well, with an Indian accent. The connection wasn't so good so there were quite a few times I had to ask him to repeat himself. Having worked in tech support, I understand that often they get total chowderheads calling who have no clue how to even run a computer, so given the propensity of tech support folks to have to talk down at a simple level, combined with me asking him to repeat, it was an awkward phone call. He started out telling me to look in the lower-left corner for the __asfh__ button. I asked him to repeat, and then heard him say "The Start Button" I laughed out loud. Next he asked me to click the mouse on it and let go. Then he asked if I could find "Run..." on the menu. I tried to tell him I knew what I was doing, but to little avail. We went to a cmd prompt, followed by running ipconfig and ping 192.168.1.1 several times, with a 100% failure rate.

The other part where I laughed out loud was when I realized this absurdity: I was talking on a cell phone via satellites in the sky to a man in India who was (up during the middle of his night working and) telling me that I needed to keep holding onto a paper clip. The potential solution to this tech support riddle was for me to hold an unbent paper clip against a little recessed button on the router for 45 seconds, then to keep applying pressure to the paper clip while unplugging the power from the router, waiting another 30 seconds, then still applying pressure to the paper clip, replug the power and hold the paper clip for 30 more seconds. (Its a good thing I have two working hands, I thought.)

Anyway, during our 45 seconds and 30 seconds downtimes, he asked me briefly and casually if I'd ever been to India. I said "Not yet, have you?" He didn't reply, so I said I've always wanted to. That was the end of the small-talk and then we went back to ping 192.168.1.1. I don't think he found my response humorous, but then again, I wonder how many people in the U.S. and elsewhere know that a large quantity of tech support jobs are going to India. I don't even see it as "outsourcing" any more. Multinational companies hire wherever they can maximize profit and get good workers. And eventually, that will level the standard of living around the globe.

Sure its likely that there will be more rich people in the U.S. than in developing countries, but it's not unlikely that there won't be more and more poor people being exploited in the U.S. if this pattern continues. When/if the sweatshops start showing up in Detroit and Fresno, then what? Will people then know where the cheap big-box store prices come from?

Anyway, I am grateful to the two gentlemen in India for their help, and hopeful that justice will prevail in the economy.

lyrics: Something by Coleman Barks on staying up praying all night.

colors: red. all these computer issues lately have got my patience down, and my fire up. :|

mood: fiery.

chant/prayer/mantra: shed some light


pax hominibus,
joel

Labels: Capitalism, computers, globalism, USA

Hi Friends-

In our household, I am the IT guy, in charge of helping our computers work as a workgroup, and to each see the Internet through the router and cable modem. I am not a computer expert, so I do a lot of tinkering to hold things together. I am supposed to be working on homework, and writing applications for chaplaincy residency at hospitals, but computer woes have been sidetracking me mightily.

Yesterday evening, our Internet connection completely bit it (the workgroup still could all see each other through the router (when the wireless aspect was actually working--it's always been spotty even though our apartment is only about 20x20)) and I called our ISP and after an hour or two we got it to a point where now everything could see each other and the Internet.

Now today, when I booted up my audio computer, it failed to recognize the external USB/Firewire hard drive. After unplugging and replugging and rebooting FOUR times, I finally got it working by just hooking up the drive through USB only which is significantly slower, but worked. Then when iTunes fired up, it played, but I got no sound. Checked the Control Panel, and the only option is "Bluetooth Audio"... What's frustrating about that is that I have a perfectly good Firewire soundcard that wasn't being recognized. I tried in vain for two hours to get it to work, reinstalling drivers, checking in the Hardware Device Manager, unplugging and replugging, and nothing works. Windows says everything's working fine of course.

I used to work for a company that made audio software, and they made it for Windows only. That's why I've been sticking with Microsoft, but now Windows Vista's kernel plays poorly with the software that had worked nicely on Win2k, Win98, and WinXP. I *might* buy a Windows XP computer and keep it completely clean. But then again, I might be done with Microsoft. Their OS is turning into such a morass of difficulty for me that I can't see sticking with them much longer.

So, do I switch to Linux or Mac? Well, there is now FINALLY multitrack audio software (Ardour) for Linux, so maybe that if there are drivers for my audio device. Doing a google search for "linux firepod drivers" brought me to this forum, and this advice, which is bafflingly complex for a person like me. I'm computer literate, even computer savvy, but not that much of a geek to compile and build my own Linux distro, compile audio drivers, and then tweak them as this person does (though I am certainly envious of his skills). I really wish that the Linux community could find a way to make one or more installable highly stable versions of the OS that are inviting for people who know how to use computers AND have a straightforward way for people to install drivers and software using compiled executables, not requiring them to compile from source, seeking out special libraries and adding compile-time switches.

Switching to Mac might not be a bad idea, but then I need to find, pay for, and learn some alternate software. I'm not against that, as long as it's less frustrating and limited than the version of Garageband I used last year on my boss' Mac mini. Ugh.

What I really would love to see would be living communities develop with specialists in them. Imagine if you lived in an apartment building (or similar multi-unit domicile) with 40 people, one (or more) of whom was a computer specialist, one (or more...) who loved to cook, one who could repair guitars and electronic equipment, one who would take care of the garbage, one to keep the bathroom clean, one to be the treasurer, one who works the garden, one who does the political advocating, one to take care of the pets, several to work at jobs for pay, etc. As it is, with a family of two (as we are), it gets to the point where we're doing all of the jobs above, plus much more. Keeping the living rooms and bedrooms in separated quarters might be nice, but having a common dining area and kitchen would help make the community more efficient. Perhaps the dining area could double as a meeting space and movie theater. I think if human families were to try that on for size, it could make our way of life much better overall, as we'd be able to share 2 or 3 hammers between 10-15 families, cook large-scale meals and keep fresh foods and leftovers from going bad with a dedicated cook on staff. I still think having restaurants and individual family (and individual person) meals would be a good idea as well, of course. To think otherwise, IMO, would be a little myopic and confining.

Every time I bring this up to someone, they always talk about why it wouldn't work. I loathe that attitude. Its the attitude of "haters" as in, "why you gotta be all up and hatin' in my business?" What I want to hear from people is how it could work. What WOULD it take for humanity to develop more communal and cooperative lifestyles? What impediments are there, other than the same old examples shown to us in popular media, and dictated by the Defense of Marriage Act? I'm sure that if the government, and the people who elect their government, wanted to, they could provide incentives for people to live cooperatively. And for corporations to be more cooperative as well. (Oh I have a big long thing to write about corporate cooperativity, but that's for another day.)

OK, I got the computer exasperation whining off my chest for now, and have since digressed into a community-sharing tirade, so I guess I'll sign off. Thanks for reading. Love yr neighbor.

--
pax hominibus,
agape to everyone,
joel


http://revjd.blogspot.com/

"Strephon kissed me in the spring, Robin in the fall,
But Colin only looked at me And never kissed at all.
Strephon's kiss was lost in jest, Robin's lost in play,
But the kiss in Colin's eyes Haunts me night and day."
-Sara Teasdale

Once in a while, the time will come
To surrender everything you have to give
Once in a while, the time will come
To surrender everything you have to give
-Flaming Lips, "Superhumans"

Labels: computers, LGBT, paradigm shift, religious community, technology

I got a new Pentium M laptop for school a few months back. The integrated wireless card that came with it seriously sucks. As I'm typing this, I wonder if the connection will remain strong enough to send the bits through the wireless router when I send it. The wireless access point is about 12 feet away, just below me in the basement. I needed to update drivers earlier, and presently don't feel comfortable trying to access my Ximeta NDAS single hard disk server from the wireless laptop connection. Even when two feet from the wireless access point, the laptop behaves like somebody fed it lock-up pills when I try to connect to the NDAS server. I got the NDAS single hard disk server for the express purpose of being able to store and access my files on a lighter weight server than a full 300 watt box running all the time. Fortunately, the NDAS works great with the wired computers, so I can transfer files to the laptop by first transferring them to a desktop and then sharing the folder that the files are in. But for the most part, that defeats the purpose -- I could've just gotten an extra hard drive for my desktop and turned it on when I needed to share it.

Simple. The new technology is sometimes painful. How often do we accept that our cell phone connection drops out and our conversation gets cut off? Or our PDA falls to the ground and we lose three weeks of data since the last hotsync? Sync it up more frequently, that's the ticket. Getting to and from work requires a heck of a lot of effort. Either I drive and have to fight among traffic and obey stoplights and the rules of the road, or I bike or walk and have to fend off drivers without my own 1000 pound exoskeleton. A somewhat reliable one at that. Our car had a lot of issues the first 80000 miles, but the last 30000 have been pretty trouble free. Still, it's no secret that a car drains you head to feet.

This laptop has another issue. When I type, about once every few sentences, keys will registter twice -- that last instance wasn't intentional. I'm a great typist, and never have that problem with other keyboards. Unfortunately, this means that if I want to make sure that I don't have typos, I actually have to read the words as I type, even if I type them perfectly. Kind of a hassle.

I used to think that it would be so exciting when we finally have bionic ears, so that when our hearing is totally shot, or if one is deaf, there can just be a microphone membbrane within the auricle that sends an electrical signal to an electrical-neural junction where it's parsed direct by the brain. Unfortunately, I bet it will have a few bugs at first. Bleeding edge always does. For those who havve been deaf all their lives it will be a true miracle and I will sing hallelujah alongg with them. BUT even though my ears are overly sensitive to sounds and I could probably hear better, I wouldn't want to trade them for the new technology until it "just works" and is maintenance free enough that I'd have to get them checked on as frequently as I go to the audiologist, which isn't very often.

The point I guess I was getting at is that technology hasn't really arrived until it "just works". I think we're all excited about progress, or at least we should be in most cases, but there's a reason that cable TV, broadcast TV, TIVO, and FM radio are going to be around for a long time, while intternet streaming and downloads will be popular for some who swim upstream, but not entirely ubiquitous. When people can go to the local Target/Shopko/Walmart, pay $300 for a device that they plug into the wall, switch it to Channel Slashdot or Channel Wikipedia, or Channel HotOlderAsianLadies, it will catch on. Better yet instead of a channel changer, there'd be easy, configurable AND acquiescent portals that help guide you to the information/bits you really want or need, rather than funnelling you to the highest paying advertiser, then we'll be at a real level of maturity in the information age.

Right now, computers and the internet are a powerful medium, but I see them also as a hostile environment. Yes, yes, I can build a computer up from parts. With a bit of time I could configure a Linux distribution if I could spare the time, but I'd rather do otherwise. Put Linux inside of a $300 configurable internet appliance that "just works" on a communication system that is outside of the spamosphere, where it's not about buy and sell, but about free information trade. That will have people lining up ffrom Beijing to Helsinki to Los Angeles. Of course, in addition to having a browser, it'd be nice to havve it ship native with an email program, a newsreader, an instant messaging program, multimedia software for editing pictures, audio, video, flash, html, C++, formatted documents, etc. While we're dreaming here, why not roll them all into the OS, so they load when the OS loads, and feel truly integrated, rather than as separate disjoint programs? I suppose you'd need more memory in this system, but maybe these programs could be much more dynamic about allocating memory, so when they initially load, only the outer shell of the program's functionality is actually up. When accessed, it loads up the parts that it needs and deallocates as the code path gets far enough away from functions. Yeah, that's the ticket. And of course, to the stupid user, it all "just works," and they don't need to know anything more about it than they need to put toast in the toastter, or to turn on the hot water. And they don't need to type, since the OS has a microphone and logic that helps it to identify your speech as well as one human can tell what another is saying. Sure, it would all be rudimentary at first, only understanding the words you say to it, but eventually as it learns your movements and gestures and has a couple decent CCDs for parallax viewing, it'd be able to decipher body language and the tone of your voice.

Not long after that, we'll have ourselves a real rational AI. And of course, not just any rational AI, but one that will be able to ascertain what needs to be done better than we do, and maybe one that can control its base desires, or is entirely naive to the idea that impure motives could ever exist. Then, programmed correctly, that AI can run the world (as a steward with the best interests of the Earth and all inhabitants firmly in mind/logic), and we can just go about living our lives, following our recreational, vocational, and avocational desires, while the show runs itself.

Sure, it's idealistic to think all that, but somebody needs to set some goals. That's where I see us in a hundred years if we make it through the mess today, and can choke off all the bad seeds before they grow.

And yes, I know there are a lot of other checkpoints that we need to hit before we get to that state. Point A will always be where we are at. Point B is where we are trying to get to. It requires frequent progress updates of the direction and the magnitude of the current vector we're on. Are we heading toward point B? Has anyone really set up a point B that we can come to a consensus on?

Some people think that point B is not for us to define, or for us to experience the Rapture(tm) -- I think the "Left Behind" publishers should be allowed to claim that as (tm) if not actually (r).
Some people think that point B is for them to assume control over others -- the Taliban, the major corporations, the leading world governments, the financial elite, to name a few.
Some think that point B is to live out in the stars, but it will be a while until we're ready for tthat -- once we get the nuclear fusion thing figured out (my guess is it'll be "just works" in 70 years. Sad that I likely won't live to see it).

But on a serious note, none of us will live to see it if we are not able to collectively focus focus focus focus focus focus focus on the problems that beset us on all sides today. From every direction the sirens are loud, and I'm just pointing them out.

From a triage perspective, the short list of seeds that must be planted and sprout quickly (next five years):
1. Peace. Fucking dammit. Peace. Now.
a. This comes through security
b. Peace comes through justice.
c. Peace comes through forgiveness of others' past injustices.
d. Peace comes through repentance and atonement on the part of all who commit injustices (include self here please - a very rare ffew indeed are beyond reproach)
2. Secure and dismantle every weapon of mass destruction, then every weapon that can blow off somebody's limbs or put holes in their skin (knives excluded).
a. Make it understood to all that we are one collective community, spread across continents and island.
b. Remove the idea of bombing, shooting, and murdering from the list of tolerable behaviors. Not ever should these things be done. If we find that humans need to slowly wean off it, take it into virtual reality. Quake 3 or Halo or Doom should help. Just stop killing real people.
3. Put major funding toward securing biological dangers, including viruses, disease, genetic mutation, etc.
4. Keep our eyes on the sky in a serious way to watch for asteroids, and develop means to prevent them colliding with Earth.
5. We need to collectively ascertain reasons WHY its important that our civilization continue and thrive.
a. Our existence here and now is a miracle, in and of itself.
b. When we're here on Earth, we can think of a lot of ways to have fun.
6. Start living within our true means, at sustainable levels of resource use.
a. This one, I fear, will be tough for everyone. When I was young, we were told to conserve energy. Until we find ways to tap more powerful, safe energy sources and use raw materials judiciously, we need to conserve resources. Take pride in being efficient with resources, not in earning money from them.
b. Curb population growth (drastically). Encourage others to have fewer children, so we'll use less resources. We need to get down to ~4 billion by 2050, and eventually hit stasis somewhere around 1.5 - 2 billion.
7. Talk to your neighbors. Get to know them. Help them. Rely on them. Be kind to them. "who is my neighbor, blah blah blah?" Anyone within proximity to your person, or whom you communicate with via telephone, email, instant messaging, or facemail. Yes, people may suck sometimes, but see the good in the others. See it in yourselves.

The next revolution will not be political. By necessity, it will be spiritual.

Love.

Labels: artificial intelligence, computers, heaven on earth, our mission, pax hominibus/bright shiny future, religious community, salvation, technology, war and peace