graphical/universal interfaces, filters, filter bubbles, artificial intelligence, global mind

I want to say a few things about building new interfaces - universal interfaces, maybe you could call them. Let's see, how do we get from here to there? Well, I've been writing about, blogging about, this stuff for a few years. For a few years I've been talking about graphical internet - making it more fluid - making your internet interface a 3d graphical experience, like what we're used to with a lot of video games. So, that would be a project. I still feel strongly that it would be a very worthwhile project.

I don't think it's much beyond the difficulty and complexity of a lot of things that have already been created.  Minecraft and Roblox are examples of platforms that allow for creating 3d worlds and interacting with others in them. The next key innovations will have to do with connecting the different instances of the interface - different people's interfaces - together, so we'll be able to see each other, and making as much of the behavior of the interface as possible customizable by the user. 

What I'm describing here is much like visions of cyberspace that many science fiction authors and futurists have elaborated. I think we're very possibly to the point that we can really create it. And the reality, if and when it arrives, is sure to be amazing and profound in new, emergent, surprising ways, beyond what's been predicted in the fiction and the prognostications.

If you start by including, in the new interfaces, information from our current interfaces, data streams to & from from social networks, email, search, and other apps and so on, this can provide a starting point for populating the new medium. All of these largely text-based media can be included within a graphical superstructure. The old media become the first content of the new medium, and then we can go from there. So we'll immediately have all the same capabilities that we have now, plus the new capabilities inherent in a programmable graphical environment.

It really seems like something that could be built. I haven't dug into the programming and development of it myself yet. I would like to, and I might begin doing so soon, and I think many others have the ability to contribute very valuably too. I've never been much of a coder. I've been kind of a coder, years ago mostly. I feel like I know enough to say that, given our current resources - processing power, bandwidth, programming tools, browser 3-d graphics - something like what I'm discussing here could be put together in a few weeks, probably, with a team of a few people. Might take a few weeks. Getting more people involved might help too. There are ways for dozens or more people to be involved in a project at once, for sure.

However the development is organized, I want to suggest that it's important for it to happen. I think the pieces of this technological puzzle all basically exist, seemingly just waiting to be put together, and once we put them together, we will have created a profoundly new medium, a massive, and massively multiplayer, massively shared, new space, a new experience, so new that it might strike you as farfetched or hard to imagine. So let's try to flesh out the vision a bit more.

Roughly speaking, (anything we say in English words and sentences will be "rough" relative to actual code that implements these ideas; we're in an early stage of this project, the stage of trying to definitively plant this seed and get people more interested in this general topic) this interface will comprise a 3d space that we can navigate through, moving in all directions, zooming in and out, and adding, moving, and removing anything we wish anywhere we wish. Some entities in this space may be linked to specific resources, feeds, etc,. elsewhere in the world, and will be able to update and transform themselves in response to new information from the resources to which they're linked. Some entities will be programmed to act upon, interact with, other entities.

Virtual and augmented reality would be natural places to want to do this. But we have 3d graphics on our other screens too, on our desktops, laptops, and smartphones.

This can become the environment that we become used to entering into when we get online, instead of the current system, which is structured largely as separate pages. There will probably be tabs and windows and menus, etc., within the graphical environment -- we'll still use tools like these for switching between relatively separate, discrete components -- but a major part of the whole point of the new interface is integrating all our information into a single environment, allowing more visually apprehensible data to be included in a single landscape, allowing more fluid, continuous navigation through a visually rich data space. Among the multitudes of entities in this data space will be many varieties of tools that allow us to combine & organize all our data in new ways. With the availability of these new capabilities, it seems likely that we'll soon have much less use for making sudden, complete switches between entirely separate views, opting instead to organize our components, our views, our sub-windows, in many new, more flexible ways. When we do make relatively sudden, complete switches between views, we'll probably tend to find it advantageous to handle these switches within the graphical environment too, rather than using the tabs and windows of our browsers and operating systems. So it will be as if everything is happening within a single, all-encompassing page, rather than the myriad separate pages among which we're accustomed to shuffling.

When I wrote about this years ago, I speculated a lot about particular filtering algorithms that could be used for determining what appears in your interface (i.e. the "social graph transformation algorithms" in this blog's name). And that's still an interesting question. I'm not sure that it has the central, outsized importance that I seemed to ascribe to it in those years. It might still. It might still be that there are really interesting, hot, killer algorithms that could be used for that, still to be developed. But there are a lot of existing algorithms too, designed to handle similar tasks. So it's partially that this problem has been worked on and there are a lot of algorithms out there now. And partially, I think I've come to appreciate more fully the importance of the task of setting up an environment that's fully programmable by the users, who will have available a whole ecosystem of methods by which to fine-tune the population of their data spaces. And so I'm not sure that the development of any specific filtering algorithms will be, as I used to speculate, a significant constraint or milestone in developing these interfaces.

Let's discuss the filtering some more. Once we have the 3d environment that has things imported from the media that we're used to, then we'll also have our methods of filtering what comes in. That function will be there - within the graphical environment we'll have settings for those filters. It's an interesting exercise to imagine ways of graphically representing the codes, the controls, that would be involved in determining the behavior of these filters for a person's universal interface. So people will be able to, within the graphical world, again, (I keep saying "graphical"; I think it's kind of boring, now that I just keep saying it, but it's going to be fun when it exists) -- within there, you're going to be controlling your filter that will control what appears for you. And that filter will be information and it will appear there in the graphical world just like everything else. So you'll be able to mix and match and share and show off your filters. And you'll have filters of filters. There'll be so many different filters, for so many different purposes, that we'll be filtering in order to narrow down which one or ones we want to select at a given time and place. So this scenario offers strategies for dramatically improving the quality of our filters, giving us dramatically richer, more accurate, more actionable, information about (depictions of) our world.

People have been talking a lot about the filter bubble phenomenon. And this graphical interface strategy is a definite way of addressing that. It addresses, and it's good for, a lot of other things besides that too. I don't know if I've really mentioned too much about the filter bubble phenomenon, by that name or otherwise. I don't know if I've written too much about it. I've written about a lot of other great benefits we'd see and enjoy from these new graphical/universal interfaces, and overcoming our filter bubbles is definitely another one of those benefits. By enabling our screens to be populated in richer, more fluid ways, ways that will be simultaneously more fine-tuned by us and more automated, we'll be bringing a bigger, more comprehensive picture of what's going on to everyone, in contrast to our current situation, where there's a balkanization, a lack of overlap, in the content that different people see. So graphicalization, at the same time that it brings us content more exquisitely tailored for every unique moment, will also bring us big, unifying pictures that will be shared by everyone.

It might seem that there are two competing considerations here: the desire to give users more control of their filters, and the desire to bring more automated intelligence to bear on the creation of the filters. But these two priorities will reinforce each other: when we create more intelligent filters, we're giving people better options to choose from. We want to allow everyone to participate in creating and sharing ever more sophisticated filters.

I hope what I'm saying is clear. I think it's along the lines of what a lot of people are talking about, curious about, interested in. I noticed a conversation online a few weeks ago. Someone asked, what can social media companies do to improve the filtering process, what steps, what recommendations, would you give to them? And somebody replied, give the users control over their filters. Make those aspects of the programming more transparent to, and tweakable by, the users. That's what somebody's idea was in response to that question, that request for ideas. And then a third person replied to that reply, and expressed concern that if we give people the ability to modify their own filters, that that will make even more of a filter bubble problem. You can see how you might be concerned about that. But no, I think it can only help, if it's very transparent, if it's moving in the direction of the kinds of things I've been talking about - if people can see what filters other people are using - and then you can share them, and see through those other filters. If I choose a filter that filters out a lot, and I'm only seeing a very narrow spectrum of what's going on, then yes, that's of course a concern, but I don't think people are going to do that when extremely sophisticated alternatives are readily available. Those narrow spectrums are what's going on now, with the algorithms, the filters, that are applied to our social media. They're pretty static, we don't have control over them, and we're getting too narrow a spectrum. We can widen the spectrum by opening up the process of programming the filters. Imagine seeing what filters other people are using. Sharing, mixing, matching, and going toward graphical. There's going to be too much going on, we're going to have too much of a desire to get too much information. I think this is the constraint we're experiencing now. Too much going on, too much that we really want, and can really benefit from seeing on our screens. And so there's a big incentive to create more sophisticated ways of generating, and presenting to our eyes, relevant and timely and vivid pictures of what's going on.

When we say that our media have helped encase us in filter bubbles, I don't think this implies that anyone has necessarily engineered this phenomenon intentionally. With very centrally organized media, only a limited number of people have the access to be able to contribute to these projects. It seems fair to say that bureaucratic/financial priorities have sometimes tended to stifle innovation to a notable extent. It also seems fair to say that we each have sometimes inadvertently cooperated in constructing these bubbles around ourselves, via the well-known dynamics of intellectual inertia that we speak of as confirmation bias, reality tunnels, etc. Our interfaces have largely followed a "pull" model whereby we explicitly choose to look at, or receive updates from, certain sources. We have a natural and even necessary tendency to stick to the comfortable and familiar to a significant extent. We have a limited amount of attention to allocate, so we often choose to expose ourselves to things that help us flesh out and reinforce the intelligible aspects of reality that seem to help anchor us in something solid and dependable. We must simplify in order to function at all, but we've often tended to oversimplify, for instance treating broad classes of people as caricatures and ignoring their input and their concerns. We're aware of the benefits of having a diverse variety of inputs, but our frequent, understandable preference for the familiar, combined with the limitations of our media environment, have contributed to this balkanization.

As the person mentioned above suggested, there may be ways for social media, within their current general structure, to give users significantly better filtering options. The focus of my efforts with this document is to help catalyze interest in the development of the next generation of media, which goes beyond the linear, textual general structure of our current interfaces. The new interfaces will be structured from the ground up as environments suited to providing maximally comprehensive and inclusive data spaces for us to interact with.

This talk of seeing other people's interfaces through one's own, and seeing how other people are configuring their filters, will likely strike some as a potential source of privacy and security risks. Any new technology that enables new types of sharing, new ways to interact, new forms of intersubjectivity, could generate such concerns. These interfaces will surely facilitate exposure of our lives and our minds to each other in many unprecedented ways, but we'll also have unprecedented control over the exact terms on which this occurs. So I think we can look forward to the new forms of connection that this will engender. Much new information will become available to each of us. And in fact we can expect to see many benefits specifically in the areas of privacy and security. Graphical interfaces can be expected to give us many new tools for protecting ourselves and for cooperating to detect and defeat security threats. Many of the significant privacy and security concerns of today seem to involve surreptitious gathering and dissemination of information and disinformation. Pushing forward into a new generation of media that allows all netizens to coordinate with each other more flexibly, comprehensively, transparently, resiliently, may be a significant part of the puzzle of overcoming these ongoing adversarial information dynamics. It's in the context of, under the influence of, these unfortunate current dynamics, that we have tendencies to feel suspicious of any new forms of connection. We'll want to exercise care and good judgement in many ways and participate in many types of growth and development - cultural and spiritual in addition to technological. If we can see more of what's going on at a time - make more and more information available to the eye, more quickly, more efficiently, more digestibly - it seems safe to say that this will ultimately be good for everybody. And that's the kind of thing that creating a 3d graphical environment, as the basis of our interface, the basis of our user experience, will really facilitate.

It may still be difficult to imagine how this shared graphical environment would work, and how it could lead to such far-reaching consequences as we've suggested. A crucial part of it is that there will be a kind of bootstrapping process. The far-reaching consequences will result from the cooperative participation of all of us, as users of the new interfaces. The job of creating the interface is the job of facilitating the bootstrapping - programming a programmable, massively shared, environment.

This graphical interface scenario may be very relevant to our anticipated artificial intelligence scenarios. Creating more intelligent ways of connecting these existing biological intelligences (ourselves), to each other and to software and information, could well help us congeal into a more effective, coherent global mind, which would begin to have many of the capabilities that we expect artificial intelligence will have.

It seems reasonable and interesting to imagine that many existing artificial intelligence projects, deep learning projects, mathematical models of intelligence, etc., could be readily applied to the task of developing, maintaining, and evolving the filters in our graphical interfaces - in other words the task of deciding how to populate our screens out of the vastness of what's available.

In 1939 Leó Szilárd and Albert Einstein wrote a letter to Franklin Roosevelt, regarding the serious possibility "that the element uranium may be turned into a new and important source of energy in the immediate future." In both that situation and our situation now, in relation to these hypothetically forthcoming interfaces, work was/is required to make the possibility into a reality, but some of the immense implications could/can be foreseen.

This could be a very ripe time, with much growth & development coming to fruition. Often we seem to accumulate information, experience, data, over relatively long periods, and then in relatively short bursts, our knowledge bears fruit in the form of solutions, artifacts, inventions, paradigm shifts.

Our minds themselves can be considered a major frontier for exploration, discovery, and invention. Our inner experiences encompass vast spaces of associations, synchronicity, creativity, etc. New media that give us better ways of expressing our inner experiences will clearly have enormous benefits.

I wonder if the time is so ripe for these new interfaces (and for other new developments of equal or greater profundity) that the relative or marginal utility of many of our current media and interfaces is significantly declining for many of us. In other words, either starting now or starting some time pretty soon, for at least some of us, our time may be better spent developing the new interfaces (and doing various other things) rather than continuing to engage much through some of our currently most-used media.

As we (hopefully) work toward graphical interfaces (and I'd be happy to talk with anyone who might like to collaborate on it), let's remember that of course there are other important tasks to be attended to also. Let's keep attending to the personal, spiritual, and social tasks and changes that improve life for everyone. Let's help those who are have been, and/or are being, hurt in the current way of things. And let's be open to major new ideas, significantly new ways of doing things. All of these seem to be significant aspects of a worthwhile enterprise, what has long been referred to as the Great Work.

My previous post on graphical internet interfaces (May 2016): From Agar.io to GGODD (global graphical online direct democracy)

The violence is continuing in North Dakota, against journalists and against those sincerely trying to address a serious planetary situation. Decent, civilized societies don't resort to force like this.

Let's think carefully about our policies and attitudes toward laying hands on people and using irritants, rubber bullets, etc. Just because we have these less lethal methods available doesn't mean we should use them any time there's a dispute. They can be useful and appropriate tools for apprehending a violent person without unnecessarily harming them or anyone else who's nearby. But when the problem is that someone won't move out of the way of your construction project, it would have to be a pretty urgent project to justify using force. Surely this person has other things they'd like to be doing besides blocking your construction project. Talk to them, share your reasons for wanting to build it, and let them share their reasons for wanting to prevent it. It might help to invite others into the conversation too.

Violence precludes the attainment of clarity and of mutually agreeable solutions and outcomes. Instead of moving in with weapons, let's move in with open minds and with a sincere, curious willingness to exchange ideas.

Psychedelics and rebooting the psyche

"Rebooting the psyche" is a metaphor that's been used to describe apotheotic psychedelic experiences.

Consider first the familiar phenomenon known as sleep. Sleep seems to have some structural similarities to the rebooting of a computer. There are apparently important memory maintenance processes that occur during sleep, and we do it on a regular basis. An analogy could be drawn between our sleep cycles and the practice of rebooting a computer regularly to optimize performance. Going to sleep and waking up are profound transformations of consciousness, but we're pretty used to them.

Psychedelics can produce a transformation that's very profound, while the experiencer remains very much awake. This experience, this rebooting, while intense and challenging, ultimately strikes one as amazingly healthy, informative, and socially beneficial. Think of the instances where rebooting a computer produces nearly immediate dramatic increases in performance or capability, such as when we reboot as the final step in installing software. If you look at us as a population of creatures walking around with incredibly powerful supercomputers between our ears, but with hardly anyone ever rebooting, it makes sense that despite our wondrous abilities and accomplishments, we continue to be stymied by significant amounts of stress and social problems -- many seemingly surmountable but unsurmounted constraints.

This metaphor applies to "peak experiences" that can be brought on with large enough doses of psychedelics. Smaller doses -- "microdosing" -- can also bring many other well documented benefits.

From Agar.io to GGODD (global graphical online direct democracy)

Given our current levels of processing power and connectivity, there seem to be very juicy possibilities for new Internet interfaces that morph our online experiences into something palpably deeper, palpably accelerated, etc. 

Our computer screens have the ability to display (roughly speaking) anything, in any color. As yet, much of the meaning that we convey to each other through our screens retains the form, inherited from printing presses, of lines of black characters on a white background. It was totally natural/reasonable/understandable that this dichromatic way of using computer screens became so popular. It enabled us to apply the processing power of computers, and then the connective power of the Internet, to well-established textual methods of communication, scholarship, research, etc. Text can now be manipulated and searched with vastly greater efficiency.

We now spend a good portion of our lives, and manage a good portion of our affairs, online. Ventures with a serious potential to make our online experience significantly more vibrant, more meaningful, with more relevant feedback, will probably be of great interest.

Dichromatic text, as important as it has been historically (for example, as the basis of computer programming), is, of course, just one of many current and potential future media that can convey meaning. The ways in which it became so prevalent are, again, totally natural/reasonable/understandable, but now, we appear to be potentially on the brink of creating spectacularly new communication methods that will supersede our old friend, text.

We can imagine a graphical environment comprehensive and responsive enough that we're able to find or create an image to clearly represent any notion that we'd like to communicate in less time than it would have taken to type out a textual expression of the notion. We could use a fancy label like Graphical Supersession Point (GSP) for the hypothetical future point in time when this is accomplished. 

We could facilitate progress toward this sort of thing by looking less to the pages of printing presses and more to video games for inspiration in the basic design of our Internet portals/interfaces. This seems like a natural next step, a way of taking fuller advantage of the dynamic graphical capabilities of our Internet-connected screens.

Let's then imagine what we could add to our game-like interfaces to bring them closer to the GSP. 

There are multiplayer online games much more graphically sophisticated than Agar.io, but Agar.io's relative simplicity makes it easy to use as a metaphor or a starting point in imagining future interfaces. The existence of these games shows that many of the technical foundations are already in place for general-purpose internet interfaces in which we interact/communicate via our movements through a graphical space: where we go, what we consume, what we eject. In Agar.io, we try to consume each other, and we eject bits of our own bodies for various strategic purposes in the struggle to eat and not be eaten. This interactive, graphical experience, of being a nearly featureless blob, flying/floating/swimming through a barren space populated by other such blobs, prefigures a time when we'll be able to swim through, and cooperatively interact with, the entirety of our accumulated, digitized information stores.

Navigation & automatic space population

In Agar.io, we use our pointer to move around in the two dimensions of the rectangular playing area. As we eat and our character grows larger, our view automatically zooms out. When we lose mass, it zooms in. A key feature of our future interfaces will surely be the ability to change scale, to zoom in and out, at will, in addition to moving around in the virtual space. And, as we zoom out and more space appears around what we were looking at, or as we zoom in and more space appears within or between what we were looking at, our interface will decide, based on our explicit wishes and on other contextual clues/cues, what to display in those spaces. It will also be able to make such decisions when we're moving right, left, etc., and even when we're not doing anything. This automatic presentation of relevant/related information will make our Internet experiences visually richer, more beautiful, fluid, continuous. Instead of switching between discrete pages, with these future interfaces we can potentially fly/float/swim to any information anywhere.

Splitting the screen

Another key to visualizing these forthcoming interfaces seems to be that we'll surely make use of multiple simultaneous windows, or sub-interfaces, into cyberspace. If there's a 'rabbit hole' that we want to explore (an object into which we want to zoom or dive) within a given window, we may also want to keep the current contents of that window readily available while we're going down the rabbit hole (we might expect that we'll want to come back to the current location soon, and/or we might want to have it visible as we're traversing the rabbit hole, and/or we might want to transfer something between the current location and our destination down the rabbit hole, etc.) So we would spawn a new sub-interface from the existing one, or copy part of the existing one and paste it into a different one.

We can imagine simply having a few different windows or sub-interfaces on our screen with fairly stationary boundaries between them, maybe a large 'main' one in the middle with smaller ones around the edge or in the corners.

Maybe other sub-interfaces can take the form of circular Agar.io-like 'cells,' which lets the different-sized balls cluster and slide around each other fluidly. Maybe we'll sometimes use grids of rectangular windows. Maybe we'll sometimes prefer grid-like arrangements with more flexible, organic-feeling boundaries, resembling membranes between cells or the strands of a spider web, with regions of the web widening and shrinking with silky smoothness as we move the boundaries. Maybe sometimes the windows can overlap, each with a distinctive tab sticking out, like the tabs in our web browsers.

Other methods of organizing the sub-interfaces can be imagined too, and we can imagine using multiple methods simultaneously, in a nested/hierarchical way. The method may often be automatically determined by the context. Ultimately there may be no clear distinction between 'sub-interfaces' and the objects that appear within them, except where it's convenient to maintain such a distinction.

So, in other words, we can expect to be able to easily create indefinitely many virtual viewpoints, which themselves can become objects capable of being explored, played with, recombined, etc.

Commands

Any specialized task, for which a specialized interface has been developed, could be performed within these general-purpose interfaces, once we navigate to the specialized interface. But we can imagine two basic operations that it might be convenient to build into the general-purpose interface, simply for selecting things and moving them from one place to another. Call them Take & Put, Get & Give, Copy & Paste, etc. We could use the first operation on any item to consume it, activate it, select it, mark it, remember it, save it, create a save point or sub-interface, etc. The second operation then ejects, transmits, posts, conveys, to a specific location, the last item that was selected (or perhaps sometimes the collection of all such items since the last Eject command, etc.). We might click or tap on the screen to invoke the first operation, and click again to invoke the second, or drag and release to perform both operations in one motion, or we might use other keys/buttons.

Hieroglyphics

So if ideas like those above do help us create interfaces that let us cooperatively navigate and manipulate online objects with a new level of ease, then how could this eventually lead to the complete supersession of text as a means of communication?

As we begin using these interfaces, we'll be able to handle plain old text within them, in addition to more colorful, complex, representational images. Then we'll build graphical ontologies - organized libraries of images with precisely defined meanings - in other words, new hieroglyphic vocabularies. At first, we'll probably want to create a lot of such images corresponding to words and to mathematical/coding entities. Then new entities could emerge in these graphical systems with meanings that don't necessarily correspond to any previous spoken or textual symbols.

We'll want these hieroglyphics to look similar to whatever they represent, to evoke the meaning with their appearance. This may be easier to imagine for more concrete notions like tables and dogs than for more abstract notions like 'this' and 'that.' But for instance, we might find a circle with an arrow pointing toward the center to be a useful way of representing 'this,' 'self,' 'in,' etc., and likewise, a circle with an arrow pointing away from the center for 'that,' 'other,' 'out,' etc.

GSP, here we come!?

graphical ontologies

formulating intelligence & unity

Formulating intelligence

To me, the challenge of automating intelligence remains one of the most fascinating, seductive challenges of our world. Conceptual & technological advancements in this direction seem to be quickening, and more & more people seem to be getting seriously interested in it. In recent months and years, the focus of many discussions of AI seems to have shifted from whether it's a realistic possibility to how to minimize the risks it entails.

Formulating unity

Revolutionary Change was Chalmers Johnson's 1966 study of political revolutions throughout history.

Chalmers portrayed the formation of a "revolutionary ideology" as one of the key ingredients in successful revolutions. It seemed to be an important step in uniting the efforts of diverse sets of people and enabling them to cooperate in carrying out a revolution.

For many years, millions have dreamed of and anticipated a new kind of revolution. We imagine an international transformation more novel, of deeper and wider proportions, than any political event in recorded history - a radical shift in favor of freedom, progress, and fun - a new paradigm that constitutes an effective solution to age-old problems like conflict and poverty.

This revolution is being built in billions of ways simultaneously. Every spiritually affirmative experience, every experience from which we learn and grow, increases our ability to coexist harmoniously. There could also be a role for a forthcoming "revolutionary ideology." Narratives could emerge that provide overwhelmingly convincing arguments in favor of abandoning, en masse, certain prevailing control mechanisms, in favor of more efficient and effective practices.

In the meantime

Whether we're talking about AI or Revolution, we may not have overwhelming evidence for or against the proposition that it's possible in the near term, or possible at all. We can't point to any nearby planets with superintelligent machines or utopian societies. But that's been the lonely way of innovation and struggle on this planet all along. We do have what seem to me fairly convincing points in favor of the likelihood that it's quite possible that either milestone could be reached at virtually any time. Given this, and the monumental implications of succeeding in either case, it seems worthwhile to devote effort, attention, thought, contemplation, etc. to these challenges.

People who feel like they're getting close to solutions to these problems may well seem to be neglecting other communications as they devote concentrated attention to these big questions. And to broach such abstract, ambitious subjects has sometimes entailed a risk of appearing delusional or grandiose. But as the pictures come into clearer focus, perhaps a wider consensus will emerge and we'll get better at integrating these lines of inquiry into other aspects of life.

advertising psychedelics (again)

The Internet and modern computers were built largely by people who were inspired by psychedelics. Steve Jobs, for example. I guess I sometimes assume this is common knowledge, but I've recently been reminded that there's still a lot of misinformation floating around, so some more advertising may be in order.
 

Here's a video on Karry Mullis, who credited LSD for helping him make a discovery in genetic research that led to a Nobel Prize. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riDeuzVrlEQ

 
He wrote a book about it, Dancing Naked in the Mind Field: http://www.amazon.com/Dancing-Naked-Mind-Field-Mullis/dp/0679774009

Of course, musicians and artists are well known for getting inspiration from psychedelics. And scientists get inspiration from music and art. So even if some scientists don't take them (and often they do take them), they're still using the information, the gnosis, that psychedelics have helped provide.

10 Scientific and Technological Visionaries Who Experimented With Drugs: http://io9.com/5876304/10-scientific-and-technological-visionaries-who-experimented-with-drugs

All this, despite the official suppression and demonization of these compounds. But governments have had obvious tendencies toward shutting down overly novel phenomena that might challenge the governments' authority, and people understand this, and aren't entirely inclined to allow government dictates to define the limits of exploration and creativity.

Here's an interview where Francis Crick, co-discoverer of DNA, speaks about LSD: http://www.intuition.org/txt/crick2.htm

The issue of psychedelics is important for many reasons, including for the light it throws on the way we delude ourselves and keep repeating the same scripts, the same opinions, and avoid those aspects of reality that would challenge those habits. The benefits, about which information is abundantly available, are so extreme, that our continued inability to integrate the psychedelic method into our institutions speaks to the limitations, the brittleness, and the problems, of many of those institutions.

A neuroscientist talks about DMT:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqtvuzcL84M&app=desktop
 

And for good measure, here's one more, from good ol' Terence:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuEXBBaFAbw

Converge with us!

An occupation at a central urban location could serve at least three purposes:

1) Providing safety, community, and other basic aspects of a decent existence, for those who currently lack them.

2) Creating a hub for socializing, coordinating projects, etc. - for any activity that can benefit from the availability of a 24-hour, centrally located meeting place.

3) Spurring progress toward more optimal organizational methods in society at large. Organizational methods centered around violence and domination still hold sway around the world, to different degrees in different places. We can participate in the important and fascinating project of cultural evolution by creating spaces where voluntary, cooperative organizational methods are practiced, refined, and demonstrated.

sharpie revolution

A couple days ago, or so, I found a sharpie on the ground at a train stop. I tested it, it worked, I put it in my pocket.

Then I walked a couple blocks, and noticed, in the window of a zine shop, several copies of stolen sharpie revolution A DIY RESOURCE FOR ZINES AND ZINE CULTURE

psychedelics as a bellwether issue in advancing the narrative and achieving peace

I've been having some feelings of being kind of sorry for some of the last video that I posted, if I seemed to get kind of flippant about the violence that goes on. You know, I had a kind of thought there about getting paranoid and not getting paranoid.

As of today, April 15th, there is violence ongoing. We're doing a lot of things about it, we're doing a lot of good.

Not to make anybody uncomfortable, but when there are thoughts that people have about it, that seem like they might help the situation, we feel moved sometimes to share those thoughts in hopes of helping manifest the change we want to see, etc.

So what can we do? There's a lot of good, interesting conversations going on. And I've been doing a lot of thinking about how to frame all the issues and make a silver-bullet kind of manifesto, or, you know, transmission, that would help unify efforts, etc. And I'm still pretty optimistic about those sorts of efforts. I think that's possible, anyway. I still think that's possible.

But in the meantime, of all the questions and issues, if we were to talk about - since we've already gone on for a few minutes here - if you were to sort of pick an issue, off the top of one's head, or from the notes one's been making, thinking about these things, what one issue might prove productive in catalyzing cascades of desired advancements in the narrative?

Are you thinking what I'm thinking? I've been thinking about psychedelics, in that context of, what issue might we want to focus on, if for no other reason - there probably are other reasons - but if for no other reason than the relative simplicity of the conversation, in view of how concrete a thing it is that we're talking about - relative to things like talking about wages, and legislation, high abstractions like those - the question of: we have substances that produce profound experiences in people who ingest them. Do you ingest them, and how do you approach other people ingesting them?

I've had some conversations recently that have also sort of spurred this line of thought. We may have gotten into a habit of thinking about psychedelics as something so far out -- out there -- I mean, this is sort of the reputation they seem to have on some level, like how Obama just the other day predicted that changes in federal policy on marijuana are a long way off. Yeah. We know the reputation, and what the legislation is currently. But there's such a vast literature available regarding psilocybin, LSD, DMT, etc. And although it's still in large part an outlaw culture, there is a huge, rich, complex, friendly, humorous culture that has been connected with psychedelics. And then, in contrast to that, the types of things that are brought up when people are reacting against psychedelics or against tolerance of psychedelics - well, one person, a few weeks ago, mentioned, in relation to psilocybin mushrooms, that you don't want to "mess up your mind". But then we continued to have a conversation; we talked about dreams, about the value of dreams, sort of an analogy there. And then sometimes the first thing that seems to come to mind for people is people jumping out of windows. So, there seems to be a huge amount of potential here for finalizing the process of spreading the information around - waking up and smelling the mushrooms.

Making all labors "labors of love"

Advocating for a FREE (pay-it-forward) society might seem like unrealistic utopianism, but I'd like to make (part of) a case for it. I'll just touch on some points here, but a more complete case, with fleshed-out explanations and examples, seems ripe for the undertaking.

What's preventing the entire economy from working on a "labor of love" / "pay it forward" basis? Not much, I'd argue, besides the momentum of our assumptions. I think many, many people already feel very attracted to this idea, but when it's been brought up, the reaction against it has often simply been that it's too radically different from the status quo -- it's too different from how people are used to thinking. So it seems that there are many people who are for it, but who assume that too many others won't be for it. If we just take the idea a little more seriously and talk about it more, that tide can start to turn.

The core of the resistance to this turning of the tide seems to involve a suspicion that much of the labor that our civilization depends on is, well, so laborious that no one will do it unless there's direct compensation. In response to that concern, we can observe:

1) People do laborious things without compensation all the time already. Hobbies, volunteering, caregiving, etc.

2) The laboriousness is increased by the profit motive, which incentivizes maximum consumption.

3) We often create employment - create labor - that serves little "objective" purpose besides giving people jobs (and therefore, money).

4) Our system incentivizes the hoarding of work - we actually hoard knowledge and skills and opportunities, as these give us increased access to scarce work.

There are some specific paths that could lead to a post-coercive, post-bureaucratic world. Occupation movements create zones of freedom, allowing the mechanisms of a free society to be practiced, refined, and demonstrated while leaving the political/economic system intact elsewhere. Another possible path is a rapid shift in the attitudes/opinions of large masses of people, such that our systems may be transformed rapidly by general consensus.

Let's keep challenging the assumption that it's impossible, or impossible within our lifetimes. The more we think about it, write about it, talk about it, demonstrate about it, etc., the closer we may come to making it a reality.

phasing out political/financial systems

[video version]

Why support movements and initiatives (occupations, for instance) that could lead to the End of Money?

So often it has been assumed that a massive failure or shutdown of the political/financial system would lead to a collapse of civilization - mass starvation, violence, etc.

We can understand why people make that assumption.

But consider whether the opposite might be the case.

What would replace money and laws? Trust, relationships, communication, cooperation. Plenty of organizational methods exist that don't utilize political or financial capital. The political/financial systems have often crowded out, or driven out, alternative systems from various niches. Now we may be able to make a conscious, collective choice to retire the systems that evolved in an environment of harshness and mistrust, in favor of the abundantly available alternatives.

Let's remember that receiving or having money, by definition, confers no utility, creates no value, until you exchange the money for something from someone else who has agreed to use this medium. All of the utility of money derives from this agreement among us. We can collectively re-examine this agreement and possibly change or discard it. If we decide to discard it, this could save us a lot of time and energy, considering how pervasive and complex our interactions with money have become.

We've developed complex rules / expectations about when, under what circumstances, money is exchanged. Those rules and expectations are woven into our systems of distributing goods and performing services, but are they an integral part of those systems? I don't think so. In situation after situation, I think we could describe how each particular value-creating activity could proceed more effectively without money. There will be a certain amount of retooling, rethinking, reprogramming involved in this transition, surely. There will be radical reorganizations of many kinds.

I imagine there might be much more to be said about this. I'm interested in your take.

occupation movements

I'd like to dialog on, for instance, occupations of urban parks, vacant buildings. These have seemed to me, you might say, appropriate expressions of popular will, sensible logistical moves, under the circumstances, organized largely in a fashion of solidarity, freedom ("autonomy"), (direct) democracy. Although the occupations of 2011 were naturally reacted against in many ways, failed in many ways... connected by both opponents and some proponents to a distracting "99%" identity... real existential progress, significantly novel phenomena, did seem to emerge from those convergences.

I don't think we have to completely succumb to, accept, reify, our political/financial systems. Memetic engineering, guerrilla ontology, conversation, communication - these could easily (and nearly did) tip the scales in favor of uninstalling the "money"/"Master" programs from the noospheric computer, or obsolescing them, what have you - making room for, accommodating, other, more subtle, modes of organization - unleashing, I predict, a tidal wave of innovation, a renaissance even relative to the recent pace of change, a prigogenic leap.

I can grant the possibility that such leaps could come about even with the persistence of our current political/financial systems. But those systems seem to constitute one of the main constraints in our evolution. They're intimately connected to deeper psychological/social constraints - but noospheric evolution seems to me very possibly likely to include open discussions of the political/financial systems in particular - of whether we want to retain them or not - and to prompt alternative systems to be attempted.

I know that many, many people seem almost hopelessly ideologically invested, but realize also, their very fervor and pigheadedness belies the superficiality & vulnerability of their position. It's a house of cards, I'm trying to say. Those of us with the vision of an emerging, maybe inevitable, new phase of civilization, can help manifest it through dialog.

~

I think something as complex, and with such far reaching implications, as "the Occupy movement," rather than being treated as a historical phenomenon in which particular people were involved, might better be treated as an ongoing memeplex that we're all cocreating. So many different places have been occupied extralegally, by so many different people, in so many different ways - which of these are we including under "the Occupy movement"? Might it not be wise, compassionate, and forward-looking to voice general support for peaceful, extralegal occupations?

As someone fairly heavily involved in Occupy Portland, I agree that intellectually underdeveloped, politically skewed behavior was plentifully present in the movement (and in the reactions against it). I talked about some of the beautiful and less beautiful things I experienced at the occupation in this interview.

I think people sensed the imminent possibility that the movement would prove fantastically successful, and this contributed to the frequent ugliness in at least two ways:

 * People with longstanding grudges against the world, and ready-made, whiny narratives around those grudges, latched onto the dawning realization that this movement could prove successful in overturning the political/financial systems that they had so long felt oppressed by. Their voices, their ready-made narratives, were often portrayed as "voices of the movement" by media / commentators who felt nervous, ambiguous, or negative toward the occupations.

 * Power systems sensing their vulnerability may well have used various dirty tricks with the intent of defaming and degrading the occupations.

I think we learned some useful things about direct democracy. The general assembly model was given a real college try. In Portland, it gradually gave way to a "spokescouncil" model, then a much more informal "community assembly" model, then an even less formal monthly "meet & greet." In my opinion, the entire process of making formal "proposals" and trying to reach consensus on them was pretty convincingly demonstrated to be another form of bureaucracy that we can do without.

Some of the most constructive parts of these meetings seemed to be when people would announce "we're going to discuss / work on such & such, at such & such time & place - join us if you're interested."

http://www.8reader.com/lamb-gospel-according-biff-christs-childho?page=0%2C163

https://twitter.com/mpesce/status/576531405582176256

https://twitter.com/MungenCakes/status/576488608728657920

today ~ 11:00 to 12:00

Downtown I chat with Ninety Nine outside St. Michael's, and then with Bobby outside Sisters. Dawn is usually with Bobby, but she went to jail over the weekend. He's expecting her to meet up with him there any time. The two of them might be going to Cali soon to stay with Bobby's dad, who went to prison when Bobby was 4 and is still wearing a homing device on his ankle. They haven't seen each other since that incarceration decades ago, but they found each other on Facebook.

Back up north at the New Seasons, my total is $4.20. 'Alright!' I say. 420s have made a couple appearances like that in the last few weeks.
'Something's trying to tell you something?' he says.
'It may be that time.'

Owen is at the New Seasons parking lot entrance, making a big sign that says HUNGRY. His little dog stands on his shoulders. He tells me that two guys including Waffles went to jail for the stabbing of the 'yuppy' who died outside City Hall a few months ago.

canned cocktails

They lounged around a sunny picnic table, drinking canned cocktails.
One of them said:

"Well, I was feeling like sharing what seem like some moments of clarity I've been having recently -- just now -- about how everything really can be done, and done better, without money and things like elections and lawyering -- the mechanisms of centralized authority. EVERYTHING, including safety, including music, including... well, you name it. So about the only thing to do if you agree, I guess -- you can do what I'm doing right now, which is repeating something that's been said many times, many ways. Repeating an idea."

One said:

"People think, if the empire falls, we'll die."

One said:

"They're right! But we will anyway. And If it falls, we'll live longer and better.

Negativity and ego are such subtle mechanisms, that I so often focus on trying to be positive and constructive, that maybe I've often forgotten that sometimes we do have albatrosses around our necks, and that extricating ourselves from drags like that might sometimes be a positive and constructive act. Sometimes the best way to improve a computer's performance is to uninstall something."

A bit later they were back inside, one of them sitting on the couch, and the other on the chair in front of the computer. One got down on the floor and said:

"Man. Let's do a ritual. Let's make a cone of.... of whatever we want. Just a cone. The kind with a circular base, and a point at the top. Well, I guess that's what a cone is, right? Unless you've got the circle at the top or something, and the point at the bottom. But since we're sitting on the floor... and our bodies are kind of like cones, right? Wide on the bottom, coming to almost a point at the top? Okay. A cone around us. Yeah."

They said various other things that afternoon:

"So let's see what I can say to this person, or reptile?, I've been thinking about so often. Of course, now I'm saying it to everybody!! :) Wonderful person. Hah."
"What can this be but a con, a calculation, a trick, a joke, a ploy to elicit a word... well, it could be other things too, and it could function in ways besides being! What? Fixme, maybe. FIXME, that's what I used  to write in my notes to mean, following the convention used by Eric Raymond, who I think I kind of learned it from, 'revisit this in a subsequent draft'."
"Yes. Why not weasel our way out of weaselly words."
"You provoke whatever extent of eloquence ... in a relative sense ... might escape."
"I'll take everything back, sure."

"People, or at least a person, who I saw at a restarurant, a bar, with you, has been posting things online which a couple people have expressed concern about. He provoked a memory of a guy on an AI mailing list a couple years ago, who said he had a brain implant, but seemed to be doing some interesting coding with artificial life forms... "

"Everything is awesome. The legos have that much going."
The sky darkened.

"If you're a continuation of the spacetime, localized spirit, that I mean, then hey. And ... Well? Okay. If I express something here, let's say for now it's experimental, hypothetical, and tentative. For certain limited purposes. I know you somewhat, and these media -- English words, black letters in a white box on a flat screen -- seem to somehow sometimes be optimized for speaking one-on-one, one specific person to another specific person. So by addressing you, I'm trying to work the system. Sorry for the inconvenience! And damn. And rejoice, and ..."

"It's merely an exercise in pouring out truth, reconciliation, onto a forum where it will be effective. Now, let's deal seriously with the eventuality of it being effective."

"Alien to each other, too, I suppose? And maybe less so, more amenable, more compatible, with closer cousins! Unless, un miraculo viene, supongo,"

"Increible, las cosas que BLOCK? la comunicacion. Y ningun acentos aqui?"

"See, I'm sorry. I want to promote tidings of the best wishes and cheers, Christ, all the luminaries, everybody, Muhammad Ali, on and on and on. 100 percent."

"All right. Here's something I've been pondering. Do you ever find that something happened the previous night, or the previous minute, and you swear, or almost swear, that you couldn't have possibly acted so ... like the memories must be false, implanted. Hah, there! My excuse! No, I'm not saying they are implanted. I don't think they are. Necessarily :) Really. I'm saying... What AM I saying?! That... "

"Now, anyone can feel free to decipher this."

[draft] One Swell FOOP: A scheme for converting warehouses into free living space

There's a nonprofit organization called Friends of Occupy Portland (FOOP), which rents the "Occupy office" at St. Francis. So, what if FOOP were also to rent warehouses and/or other buildings where people could live and sleep?

At this moment, thousands of people in our city are without a room of their own, a condition that carries with it obvious difficulties: difficulty staying warm, dry, and rested; lack of privacy; lack of a place to store material objects.

There seem to be several, maybe dozens of, vacant warehouses in Portland at any given time, along with many other vacant habitable buildings. We might ask, what has kept them from being converted into living space?

In some ways, this solution has probably been mitigated against by

Most of the seven billion of us

Such a question could lead to a discussion of some basic assumptions of society:

addressing objections can come nth

0, tanstaafl, tina, nimby
1, difficulty, uncertainty
2, shelters are available
3, zoning

100%ism,

With FOOP we have an entity in whose name the property could be put, potentially allowing space to be made available for occupancy without giving legal control/ownership to anyone but an entity explicitly dedicated to assisting the Occupy movement.

We can spread this idea with the hope that it may reach someone with extra cash, or an extra warehouse, who's sympathetic to the cause and eager to help get some people into a friendly, free, warm, dry, safe space. There are lots of unhoused people who could get immediate, substantial relief from this, not to mention the wider ramifications - it would be great to make it happen before we get very deep into the winter.

[revised October 2014] psychedelics: the smarter choice

More and more people are learning about, and experiencing, the healing and visionary effects of psychedelics, including psilocybin and dimethyltryptamine (DMT). These are substances with many beneficial and interesting properties. They can often help create experiences that profoundly inform and enhance our lives.

These sentiments have been expressed eloquently and passionately by many people. Many books have been written (and many more are probably being written) about psychedelics. I've personally had some very fascinating, ecstatic, hugely valuable psychedelic experiences, and I reverently and gratefully look forward to the next one. If you've had a bad opinion about psychedelics, I ask that you reexamine your position. If you already share my position, consider this message a reminder that you're welcome to share your insights and experiences in any way that might help spread the joyful news! Love & blessings.

mid-2012 conversation about Occupy Portland

"INTERVIEWER" = Lois Melina

"PARTICIPANT" = Josh Maurice

INTERVIEWER:  Let’s see.  Get that close to you. Um,  so I have your name and I’m not going to put that on the recording, um, how  old were you on November 17th?

PARTICIPANT:  Thirty, November 17th, OK. INTERVIEWER:  Or you can just tell me your birthday. PARTICIPANT:  March 5th, 79.

INTERVIEWER:  Um,  so tell me what, um, tell me about your involvement with Occupy Portland.  What got you involved, what kinds of actions you’ve participated in and particularly I’m interested in the encampment.

PARTICIPANT:  Uh huh, uh huh.  Um,  I first heard about the ah, the plans for there to be an Occupy Portland at the Red and Black Café one night where I, I had been, um, trying to get to a talk that was being given there about anarchist organizing strategies.   Um,  so I got there after the talk and the Q and A were finished but somebody who I had talked to a few times before at that place, I remember at, at that time told me about Occupy Portland, you know, being planned for  October 6th  and modeled sort of after Occupy Wall Street.   And, ah, I went on to the gathering on October 6th  and, ah, a couple

friends, I participated in that.  Um,  that gathering by the waterfront and then going from there to Pioneer Square and then I sort of, ah, lost the crowd, lost track of them after that until the next day when I, ah, had found out where they set up the camp previous night.   I went down and walked through

briefly and then, so that was October 7th  and set up a tent there that night and, um, I was around quite a lot the first few days and then after that I was around at least every, every night, every time at night time, every day at night time almost, until about November 8th.  My dad was visiting from Ohio  and, ah, he a little five year old girl and I, she lives here in

Portland and I take care of her and I’ve  been doing that during the day time during most of those days of the camp, right?   While her mom was at her job I was at their apartment with Nix(?), she turned five November but we  were, three of us were staying in a Motel 6 for  a few nights starting about November 8th and maybe a couple days after that, after we had, couple days into his visit that the news of the Mayor ordering the dispersal came so let’s see, since then I’ve  been doing a lot of meetings at the office at St Francis and other places.

INTERVIEWER:  Were you there on eviction night?

PARTICIPANT:  Yeah, yeah, I, ah, packed up my  tent at 11, 11:30, stood around on the sidelines, ah, watching until maybe 12:30, 1, 1:30 or  so. I

took the last bus then, back to, ah, where I was crashing and then I went back on Sunday morning and, ah, saw the few people who were still in, ah, Chapman Square and, ah,

INTERVIEWER:  Were you involved in any of the other actions? The

November 17th bank, shut down the bank?

PARTICIPANT:  Um,  not too much, just sort of in the, in the, I remember on, on eviction day, on November 13th someone was kind of distraught about all that and was thinking, saying it out “We need to just go and like occupy these corporations” and I said “Well, we’re doing that November 17th, right?” and I had one of these flyers for  occupy the banks, ah, I took notes at the GA the night before that on November 16th, the night of November 16th I was hand, writing them out by hand and I was at the Red and Black again on November 17th while a lot of that was going on, going down downtown I was typing up those notes and posting them and then I went downtown and, ah, saw some of the last parts of the police, kind of, activity and, yeah, so I was there at nights.

INTERVIEWER:  You said you, um, take care of a little girl for  someone, is that a regular job?   Or was that?

PARTICIPANT:  Yeah, no  we’ve been together since she was born. INTERVIEWER:  Oh.

PARTICIPANT:  Pretty much every, yeah, we  were all living together until she was about four and-a-half and then started living separately, um, they had an apartment downtown in the Pearl District, right across the street from

Jamison Square during the Occupy, during the Occupation and, ah, I’d been going, going there in the morning, you know, pretty early every morning to get there before her mom left for  her job but it was less of a commute when I was camping downtown, you know, it was less, rather than camping out in the van where I was sleeping on southeast side so it had a kind of, that, ah, material benefits for  me just, just by its  location.

INTERVIEWER:  Yeah, so, um, how  do you describe yourself in terms of your work  or  career, even if you’re not employed that way?

PARTICIPANT:  Um.   Um,  um, did you, did you, did you look  over any of the, ah, blog posts I wrote about, about graphical internet

INTERVIEWER:  Huh uh.

PARTICIPANT:  Stuff.

INTERVIEWER:  No, I didn’t know  that you had a blog posted about those. PARTICIPANT:    Um,   yeah, yeah, for  a few years I’ve  been

writing, writing posts  ah, my  twitter account has links to it, twitter.com/joshmaurice

PARTICIPANT:  OK.

PARTICIPANT:  It’s  right at the top of that page, a little, you know, bio, has links to the two blogs.   Um  so but there’s a, I guess if you want to talk about the connection to Occupy, possibly with that.  I’ve  been writing about online direct democracy as a way  of transcending the political situation, I don’t know, a, ah, model for  a new ah system, etc.

INTERVIEWER:  How  long have you been doing that?

PARTICIPANT:  Maybe three years or  so I’ve  been talking about, been writing things about that but

INTERVIEWER:  OK.  Um,  and are you a student?

PARTICIPANT:  Mm,  not more in a university kind of thing, no, I ah, I did undergraduate and graduate, ah, degrees at Baylor University in Waco.

INTERVIEWER:  What’s your, um, graduate degree in?

PARTICIPANT:  In MBA information systems management, management. INTERVIEWER:  OK.  Um, so tell me about your experience in the camp, what,

what did you do, how,  what was your day like, what did you notice, what did it mean to you?

PARTICIPANT:  Wow, well   ah so much happened, you know, I had been, ah, anticipating, um, some kind of ah rapid transition to a new way  of living and so there was a lot of new experiences, new experiences there but I had, um, seems on, ah, par with the, with the way  in which I had been expecting the pace of change to accelerate.   Um, yeah, I wrote a bit about that too, not a whole lot about my, about sort of a, ah, I didn’t write, I had a lot of experiences that I never wrote anything about but I wrote a little bit about on my  blogs.   After the first day and the first few days of camp.

INTERVIEWER:  Did you say that you, you experienced that change as, as rapid and that was what you expected?

PARTICIPANT:  I, ah, I, for  the preceding months, years, I’d been expecting, I have been mostly thinking about it going down online in a way, you know, much more cyber, on a much more cyber level than it seems to have with Occupy but, um, yeah, the increasing connectivity, hyper-connectivity among people, um .

INTERVIEWER:  What was that like?

PARTICIPANT:   Oh you probably, it’s  probably been described as sort of a culture clash and, you know, I have a lot of people, just so many different people gathering together.

INTERVIEWER:  But what was your experience?

PARTICIPANT:  Oh, I had a lot of um, um, have you heard anything about Dave, ah, Campbell(?) who ah, somebody over (inaudible), somebody who was writing on the ground in chalk “Dave Campbell for  Mayor” and there’s a bust of his head in one of the, ah, maybe a pub or  a pub district by Yamhill. I remember him  in the tent next to mine and one day we  were, during the encampment but a couple blocks away, half a block away, we  were walking, talking and he was telling me about the guy who’d, ah, made that bust of his head in the middle of the, of camp, out there by the art tent. Um,  let’s see,

INTERVIEWER:  So  how  did, you mentioned the hyper-connectivity among people, how  did you, um, experience that?

PARTICIPANT:  For one thing, ah, you could hear, from my  tent I could hear five, six other dramas going on all around me, you know, or  whatever was going on in those tents around me was very, porous boundaries there so boundaries of distance and, ah, walls dissolved there for a while.

INTERVIEWER:  Hm.  And what was the impact of that beyond the, kind of the superficial of it, of being able to hear anything, what?

PARTICIPANT:  Uh huh.  I mean, you know, a lot of people probably grew a lot more connected to others and relationships were formed, people grew and, ah, learned a lot.

INTERVIEWER:  Was that true for  you?

PARTICIPANT:   I’ve  probably, for  sure met, actually, you know, met and learned the name of and so on of a lot more people probably since the end of the camp, well the camp was only  five weeks and then since then

it’s  been five more months so, but I was only  there at night time for  a lot of time except for the first few days I did get to be there a lot more, so, marathon thing happened and half the camp was vacated and then re- occupied after the marathon.   I put a blog, I put a post on a website around that, when that stuff was happening.  Um,  someone, someone, someone in an article was quoted as wondering if there was too much cooperation of the cops going on for accommodating the marathon, I made a comment about ah, um, it seemed like a lot of good work’s gone into accommodating this marathon which has been going on in Portland for  40 years and um, it’s  sort of good test and demonstration of the robustness of the movement to be able to accommodate that and cooperate and, uh, and, uh, I said it could, I said that people temporarily relocating to the South Park blocks or someplace might be good reconnaissance for  possible future expansions to

that block. I didn’t see a percentage in ah getting surly with the police.   I

also, I blogged a little about a conversation I had with a guy who was counter-demonstrating for  after, well, about three, four days in to the camp where the road was blocked off, Main Street, in between the two blocks and he was out there  going “Open the street, open the street” and, ah, a bunch of people out there barricading the street were yelling back at him and the guy, Remy and I talked to him  out there for  an hour, maybe, another lady came up who was doing research for, for, for  an academic paper, Capstone paper, she was talking with us too and another guy who was kind of skeptical but very interested in kind of deep discussion of the issue, the implications came up and I thought (inaudible)

INTERVIEWER:  So  what was that conversation like in terms of, was it a different kind of engagement for  you?

PARTICIPANT:   Yeah, well  it was a very new situation that you have a street that’s been occupied by people wanting to radically change the

socio-economic system and here’s somebody out there in that context kind of alone, you know, he’s one person against all these  others yet he’s representing for  the larger system that’s in place.   Uh, the lady who was doing some academic research who was there,  she, ah, asked him  “Is there anything that you would like to change about the system?” he said “No, not really, I think it’s  actually pretty good” he was going “Well maybe the death penalty” and

INTERVIEWER:  Did you feel that that was a good use of your time, having that conversation?

PARTICIPANT:   INTERVIEWER:  Say more about that.

PARTICIPANT:  Well there was this, um, you know, distance, misunderstanding, apparently, between this person and, and so, yeah, I think, when I walked up these people were yelling at each other then he mostly just had a fairly calm conversation then for  an hour after.   In talking for  a few minutes and then somebody at the barricade yelled something at him, I think, and then he went back into the street and yelled at them for  another little while but then came back, came right back and talked to us for  another 45 – 50 minutes.

INTERVIEWER:  What do you think the outcome of that conversation was for him  or  for  the rest of you?

PARTICIPANT:  Well I don’t know, it seemed interesting enough to bring up just now  and it seemed interesting enough to blog about it so maybe different people who read the blog got different things from it whereas, I intuited that may have it would have some significance for  different people without necessarily knowing the significance but

INTERVIEWER:  Did you learn anything new? PARTICIPANT:   Sure, all this stuff, in what?

INTERVIEWER:  From that conversation, did you come away with any kind of new?

PARTICIPANT:  I got to know  this guy Remy, kind of, a lot, he was there  and he was doing probably most of the talking for  that hour but he was very involved in the camp and I’ve, you know, I’ve  been around him  a lot subsequently, um, yeah, I learned, I learned about, I was listening, also to this guy and his narrative about,  you know, his politics. He lives with his uncle or  something, or  he’s living

INTERVIEWER:  Was there anything that particularly surprised you about your experience in the camp?  That you didn’t expect?

PARTICIPANT:  Well I didn’t know  very much about what to expect, you know, at all.  I was not, until the, ah, until October 7th  I was not expecting tents, really, right?   I remember talking to somebody about it in the Powell’s(?) Coffee Shop, the Powell, a few days before and, ah, he said he’d been trying to watch the videos of the meetings, I guess the GA’s, the videos on the Occupy Portland website but he hadn’t been able to get the videos to load and he was a little suspicious about whether somebody is blocking this videos from going through but I said I had gotten  some of it to play and, ah, I’d seen a guy saying “Nothing that will be, would be

considered a structure will be allowed but bring a lot of tarps and duct tape”. But just that, just the fact that a whole lot of people were going to converge

and possibly build some kind of, you know, rudimentary shelters with tarps and duct tape was interesting enough for  me to be into it, participate and then it turned out they’re able to get tents and well, were you at the Occupy Portland occupation at all?

INTERVIEWER:  I was at the October 6 march, kind of like you, I got to Pioneer Square and stayed there for  a little while and then I didn’t continue on to the camp.   Um,  and I was at the Jamie Diamond demonstration/protest when he came to town and I was at the march over the steel bridge on November

17th but, um, I went downtown afterwards but it didn’t seem like anything was happening at the banks and, you know, I guess what happened was people went back to the waterfront and reorganized and then, but, but I went home and I didn’t hear about what was happening until later that night so I was totally surprised by that.  And I didn’t, I dropped some things off at the camp, we  dropped some food off and things but I didn’t stay at the camp or spend much time there.

PARTICIPANT:  I got a few audio recordings of November 17th.

INTERVIEWER:  Hmm.  So  it sounds like you’ve been thinking about systems change for  a long time.

PARTICIPANT:  Hm.

INTERVIEWER:  And you’re still involved with the  Occupy movement so how are you feeling about this movement relative to your earlier thoughts about systems change?

PARTICIPANT:   Well, ah, I think it could, that, ah, internet, ah, a new kind of internet interface, a vastly differently kind of internet interface could emerge and kind of catalyze rapid changes in how  we  live before much else happens with the Occupy movement or  it could take a little bit of time for  that internet thing to happen and the Occupy phenomenon could become much more interesting, even before we  get, a, um, much more interesting kind of way  of relating to the internet but I can, not parallel, you know, minds of (inaudible)

INTERVIEWER:  What keeps you involved? PARTICIPANT:  In?

INTERVIEWER:  In Occupy?

PARTICIPANT:  Occupy?  Oh, well  I know  a lot of people, you know, by them and enjoy hanging out with them.  Ah, interesting, um meetings and discussions about how  to, how  to proceed.   You know  just recently this, um,

city hall mini-occupation, city hall occupancy vigil has been getting a lot of more, well, busy.

INTERVIEWER:  So  have you gone to the General Assemblies?   Did you go to the General Assemblies when you were at the camp?

PARTICIPANT:  Yeah, pretty much whenever I could, whenever I was there in the neighborhood.

INTERVIEWER:  Um,  so what did you think of those?

PARTICIPANT:  Um,  I  I found them interesting enough to keep going, I

still go.  I went yesterday, got there near the end of it but, um, let’s see.

There was one guy who I had seen at the Red and Black that night when I found about Occupy Portland, I ran into him  a few days into the Occupation and uh and asked him  about if he had been going to the GA’s and he said no, I’m not really into the politics of it although he did later, um, get into, get involved in the GA’s and, ah, facilitate the GA’s.

INTERVIEWER:  Well speaking of politics, what’s your sense of how  things happen in Occupy?   Can you describe for  me how  things, how  things happen, who, how  things get on the agenda?   How  they get determined?

PARTICIPANT:  Right now  there’s an agenda setting meeting on 6:30 on Mondays, sets agenda for  the 7 o’clock Monday GA and I guess the 7 o’clock Thursday spokes  council.

INTERVIEWER:  So  how  do you, how  does somebody get to be, do you, can anybody just go to that?

PARTICIPANT:  Oh yeah.   And, ah,

INTERVIEWER:  Are there people that you know  will be there? I mean who are committed to being there or?

PARTICIPANT:  Umm.

INTERVIEWER:  Facilitating, for  example?

PARTICIPANT:  Not really, anybody who I would say is there more than, well, I don’t know, some of the people might be there 95% of the time, ah, there’s, ah, there’s at least probably 6, 7, 8 regular facilitators. They often express, ah, desire for  more people to get on, on that team.

INTERVIEWER:  Are there, um, were there any individuals at the camp that, you know, after a time, you found yourself gravitating to or  listening to more or  wondering what they would think about a particular thing that was being discussed?

PARTICIPANT:  Um,  it could, I would imagine, that would describe, that would describe just about anybody I was familiar with or  ah, but, I’m not thinking of any one person, really, in particular, who would, ah, fit that description.

INTERVIEWER:  So  if I were to ask you, which I guess I am, um, to describe something that happened at the camp that captures the essence of what that experience was like for  you, does anything come to mind?

PARTICIPANT:  Hm.    I’m,  I’m,  I’m,  I don’t know, what’s, I’m more kind of, more kind of mundane everyday things are coming to mind,

the fact that people shared  food and ate together and, ah, lived together and socialized without, without, ah, without there  being necessarily a competition that, that, that, ah, structured a lot of the, of the, ah, experience.

INTERVIEWER:  What do you mean by without a lot of competition to structure the experience?

PARTICIPANT:  I mean there weren’t requirements for  what to do to get food or  to get a spot to, to, ah, to camp.   Um,   not really a currency or  a hierarchy, ah, at least as, ah, as much, to as much as an extent, seemed like a significant, significantly new progress in, ah, addressing those, in trying to.

INTERVIEWER:  Do you think you were aware of that at the time, or  is that, you were?

PARTICIPANT:  Sure, sure.   I told somebody, asked me, I don’t remember exactly when or where, during the camp somebody asked me what I thought about all of this or  something I said “Well, I’ve  kind of been drinking the Kool- Aid” Yeah, yeah, people were, a lot of people were very excited about it on that kind of level, revolution, lot of talk about revolution and evolution.

INTERVIEWER:  You think it was, would you put it in those categories of revolution, evolution?

PARTICIPANT:  Um,  I, um, I was not, I didn’t have a, a, ah, much of an expectation either way as to whether the camp would continue indefinitely or be evicted as it was, you know, so as far as I knew this was potentially something that would grow into a model that remained there until it spread outwards to more and more sectors of the world and yeah, ignite, I think,

helped, which it’s  still doing, it’s  just a phase of counter-current there

(inaudible)

INTERVIEWER:  You say which it’s  still doing?

PARTICIPANT:  Still, yeah, the processes are still evolving and people are still excited and participating, um, uh huh, uh huh.

INTERVIEWER:  At any time during that encampment, in particular, um, well  first let me ask, did you have any, um, personal aha’s?

PARTICIPANT:  Huh, I’m,  (yeah?) sure I did.   (inaudible)   I mean,  you know, I met a lot of interesting people, I met, I met, I met some kids in kids camp and brought the five year old, she was four then, into there and she, she would play with them so communal family, ah, huh, way of living, um.   Um,  my, I was, I was writing about it, algorithm is my  means for, the medium that I think about most as a way  of expressing what I’ve  been thinking about wanting to express so, and that was all

through the camp too, have you heard about A camp and the

the, the, yeah, there was a lot of noise at night and so, people’s demons came out and got, lot of people got to experience the

sound of them so INTERVIEWER:  Hm.

PARTICIPANT:  

INTERVIEWER:  Can you give me an example?

PARTICIPANT:  Well there was the most common chant that’s, that’s, that, you know, Occupy night time is infamous for  is “I will f*** you”. Have you heard of that one? It’s  just something you heard all night long from A camp, the, which I didn’t realize A stood for  alcohol, exactly, but yeah,

INTERVIEWER:  Oh.

PARTICIPANT:  Apparently, it got, it got, one newspaper article said it stood for  anarchy (inaudible) but that was basic, yeah, it’s  like a little gang, too, that sort, that, would sometimes compete for  supremacy with the Peace and Safety Team on resolving disputes that, like when the disputes involved Peace and Safety people but, yeah, yeah, when [a Peace and Safety Team person] was really mad at one point about something, camping right next to them.

and so yeah, a lot of really, convergence of, a lot of super-smart people, a lot of thugs and all kinds of people for  whatever varying reasons,

didn’t have a spot that they wanted to stay in, in the larger society or preferred this kind of a spot.

INTERVIEWER:  So  before Occupy how  would you spend  your time? PARTICIPANT:  Um,  for  a few months, or  maybe a month before Occupy, ah,

Nix’s  mom started, started this job at Sock Dreams so I was

every week or  whatever,  5 days a week I would, ah, get there,  be there pretty much all day, you know, for  before she started her commute to when she got home. Um,   yeah, but the Red and Black Café, which is now  right across the street from Occupy Portland, St Francis office, I would spend some time there and use their computers, they have freely available computers there.

INTERVIEWER:  Hm.   And what’s the, um, main thing that you work  on for

Occupy now?

PARTICIPANT:  Hm.   Well I attend meetings and I, I, I kind of go between the different people, places and help out wherever I can. Um,  done a couple of panel, Occupy Portland panels, panel discussions and, ah, I’ve  been downtown at the vigil quite a lot over the past, you know, few months.

INTERVIEWER:  Um,  did you ever find yourself thinking about when you were involved in the camp, in particular, thinking about, or  maybe just after, any particular individuals or  groups, maybe historical or  non-historical, people you know  personally, that just came to mind because of what you were involved in?

PARTICIPANT:  Um.   Yes.    Yes, yes, yes, influences?

INTERVIEWER:  Just, just came to mind and found yourself thinking about them?

PARTICIPANT:  Hm.   Let’s see.  Hm.    I think sometime right around November, December, um, I, ah, I read an article about situationists and so learned about that, situationists.

INTERVIEWER:  Situationists?  I don’t know  about that.

PARTICIPANT:  It’s  around,I think the early part of the 20th Century, artistic or school, genre, into, ah, practical, ah, practical joke, maybe, kind of stuff.  I don’t know. The idea of the spectacle seems associated with situationalism.

INTERVIEWER:  Uh huh.  And

PARTICIPANT:  Mark Pesce(?) INTERVIEWER:  Go ahead.

PARTICIPANT:  Mark Pesce  linked to an article about him, about this situationalist guy whose name I forget.   Mark Pesce is somebody I’ve  been following.

INTERVIEWER:  P-E-C-H-Y? PARTICIPANT:  P-E-S-C-E.

INTERVIEWER:  Oh.  As a blog or  a Twitter? PARTICIPANT:  Um,  his Twitter name is “mpesce”. INTERVIEWER:  Um,  do you think Occupy is spectacle?

PARTICIPANT:  Possibly, I haven’t looked at very much of that and what exactly they meant by spectacle but, ah, I look  forward to the next phase

and if there’s, there’s definite possible trajectories coming into focus, I think, with the, you know, possibly with the city hall vigil, if that continues to take off, just one current physical presence.

INTERVIEWER:  Did you find yourself having any, any, um, oh, either new ideas or affirmation of your ideas, um, about your relationship to your community or  your government, um, as part of this?

PARTICIPANT:  Yeah, I mean I’ve  been talking about direct democracy for, for, for  a while and then here’s this community springs up on two square blocks of the middle of the downtown of the city and it’s  based on direct democracy, ah, yeah, I’ve  been expecting a, a evolution past, past all the hierarchy assumptions about the necessity of competition

.

INTERVIEWER:  So  what do you mean by direct democracy?

PARTICIPANT:     Just like when you’re asking can anybody walk  up to the agenda setting meeting and put something on the agenda, yeah, there’s no, there’s no, ah, real obvious hierarchy built into the structure of the, of the, ah, process.   

INTERVIEWER:  That’s interesting because I have a feeling that if there were you would be the person who would notice that.

PARTICIPANT:  Hm.

INTERVIEWER:  Because you’ve been studying it for  so long.

PARTICIPANT:  Hm.    Um,  yeah, and it’s, and it’s, it’s  just the idea of, um, well, what were we  talking about? Um.

INTERVIEWER:  Direct democracy and whether there was any real, obvious hierarchy built into the structure.

PARTICIPANT:  Yeah, and enough people, I think are, understand about it and want a truly, egalitarian, and can, enough people are also capable of, of recognizing that, it is not even much risk of this

INTERVIEWER:  It’s  not drifting into that?

PARTICIPANT:  There’s not much risk of it drifting into something like that, yeah.

INTERVIEWER:  OK.  Does it look  the way you thought it would look, direct democracy?

PARTICIPANT:  How,  in some ways, I mean I don’t, I didn’t, (inaudible) really thought about the idea of people sleeping, sleeping in sleeping bags in a square all around city hall, that’s part of the, that’s a part but I didn’t anticipate a camp in the middle of downtown either.   Um,  but there was a kind of recognition too, I think, with, with, with all the connections and happy times and good, good times that were had with people in the Occupy camp

in that sense.   Ah, fulfilling a, ah, expectation and a hope. 

NTERVIEWER:   Um,  did you do any work  for  Obama in 2008?

PARTICIPANT:  Huh uh.

INTERVIEWER:  Um,  so what do you think prompted  you to start looking at direct democracy back when you did?  Was there  any kind of event or incident or  book you read or  anything that catalyzed that for  you?

PARTICIPANT:  Um,   I was, let’s see, probably in Robert AntonWilson in about year 2002 I first read a book of his called Prometheus Rising, um, hm, I was into sort of, ah, libertarianism in college, late part of high school and early part of college I was into, ah, objectivism, Ayn Rand. I went to a couple, couple summer, summer seminars of the objectivists center, libertarianism and then Robert Anton Wilson, I think, probably, ah, purposefully tried to tailor a lot of his stuff to appeal to libertarians and, ah, and so he introduced me to a lot of ideas, I think, in Prometheus Rising.

INTERVIEWER:  Were you active, um, in the 2008 election with the libertarian candidate?

PARTICIPANT:  Oh, oh, this was back in like, (inaudible), no, I was into libertarians maybe, you know, late 90’s, early 2000’s or  so, um, and then (inaudible) Terrence McKenna, I got a lot of doses of Noam Chomsky online, audios, etc., yeah, Terrence McKenna, um and, well, you know, Timothy Leary.

INTERVIEWER:  Uh huh.  Let’s see, how  we  doing?  So  is there anything that I

didn’t ask you that you wanted to talk about or  say?

PARTICIPANT:   We did a pretty good job, I think we  had some good nuggets in there.  

INTERVIEWER:  What were the best nuggets?

PARTICIPANT:  Let’s see, I um, I don’t know, I, ah, I would, I would, um, I still tend to be very reserved with, with, with, with expressing, you know, in the verbal medium, um, I’m still very focused on the algorithm as the medium for  the, for  what I may be able to have or  maybe able to contribute, um. There is the acronym that I, you’ll  see if you look  at the blog, or  the Twitter, GGODD, the  thing that I’m saying could be activated soon, could, could, could, could manifest soon.  Global, Graphical, Online Direct Democracy.

INTERVIEWER:  Hm.   Has this experience with Occupy made you believe that, make, has it made you believe that more than you did before?   More intensely?

PARTICIPANT:  Yeah.

INTERVIEWER:  That it would happen sooner, any of those?

PARTICIPANT:  Yeah, well  I was maybe 99% sure and then I became 99 ½ % sure.

INTERVIEWER:   OK.  Thanks  a lot. PARTICIPANT:  Thanks.

INTERVIEWER:  I’m going to turn this off.