Cyber Security: A Love Story, a Redux

It was a Saturday afternoon.  Or maybe it was last Sunday.  I'll have to check the binary counters and flip flop circuits, to be sure.

I think it started out as a bar hop.   Someone had the foresight to rent a bus.  But there were no buses left.   So the driver asked if we would mind riding on a mobile carousel.  Why not, we thought?  After the first couple of wineries we visited, nothing seemed to matter anyway.

By the time the sun set, it was all a blur: the flashing lights, the wine spilled on the backs of the horses, and the endless spinning.  We eventually switched the carnival sound track on the carousel to Django Reinhardt and Amy Winehouse.   That seemed to help.   However, by midnight, I noticed that most of the travelers had left the ride.  It was just down to four of us:  Ellen DeGeneres, her Phant, me, and this tall Free Entity AI with brown hair and brown eyes.

Ellen seemed intent on getting the Free Entity AI to join her and the Phrant in some kind of tryst.   But the Free Entity was not interested.  Instead, she seemed more interested in entering data on her digital notebook.  The Phrant was nonplussed and waited for new instructions from Ellen.   I attempted to strike up a handshake protocol connection with the Phrant.   But my cerebral monitor indicated the Phrant had no public certificate and she was password and copyright protected.  And of course, I didn't have access to Ellen's virtual private network to mount a Man in Middle assault.

Moreover, it seemed my query to the Phrant aroused the attention of Ellen, who broke off her conversation with the Free Entity and scowled at me.   Ellen instant messaged me that the Phant was her property and that any further query's on my part would be trespassing, an invasion of privacy,  a public and private nuisance and that she would contact her lawyers to obtain a temporary restraining order.    So even in my inebriated state I got the message.  Ellen and her Phant then went to the far side of the carousel leaving the Free Entity and me alone on a pair of white trojan horses.

I decided to do a little investigation into the Free Entity.  Her public profile indicated that she was employed by the Federal Government in some sort of regulatory agency,  but she had an esoteric research interest in art.  I decided to forgo the traditional cyber-connection with her and instead vocalized directly by asking what she was writing.  She said it had to do with her thesis on neuroaesthetics.  She was studying symmetry in art and how it was related to unconscious processes in the brain.  She believed that anytime there was symmetry in art (or nature) it suggested that the subject matter was either prey, predator, or mate.  Which made a great deal of sense to me.   If I were walking through a forest in India, I could imagine that seeing the symmetry of the design on the head of a cobra would attract my attention.  The symmetry of the hourglass design on the black widow also signals the danger of a predator.   Similarly, if I were a female Peacock, I would imagine the design on the male Peacock would arose my interest.   As such, the AI believed that if the artist wanted to construct art that resonated with the viewer, she better include some symmetry of shapes and/or colors, etc.

I thought that was really cool.  Because look, I was wearing one of my shirts that had a 3D Mandala design on the front.  Given that I was wearing one of  my mandala tshirts, I thought the AI would take an interest in my subject matter.  So I sent her my private certificate key.   But she just got off her horse and sat on one of the the couches on the carousel and began to smoke one of her token rings. She asked if I wanted to join her.   We ended up smoking together on the couch until the sun came up.

I hoped that this was only the beginning.

Another story read during my world premier last weekend almost witnessed by the ai had she looked up from the sidewalk through the window to see me approaching the stage.

I Want to Hold the Hand Inside You: A Pseudo-Exploration into the Anxiety of Flying

I was getting into a plane under somewhat uncomfortable circumstances, but I don't really remember what they were at the time.  But that was only the start of my problems.  It was a lear jet.   A private jet.   Maybe I was the pilot, but I think my friend B was actually flying.  I can see a rear review mirror of the plane taxiing for takeoff now.

Now we are back inside the plane.  Either B or I set the plane on autopilot.  We trusted some sort of AI for our flight navigation.  Our destination was high in the mountains.

Then the scene pans out as we takeoff and I can now see a computer monitor displaying our progress across the flight map.  I think I was still on the plane at this time, but B and I had left the room that served as a cockpit and we went into the back room to party or lord knows what.  After all, we must not have needed to be in the cockpit room anymore because the AI was flying the plane now and we didn't need to worry about it.  Or so we thought.  Anyway, all I can remember seeing now is the aforementioned flight path map.  I saw the outline of our plane start from its location in Eastern Washington and I saw its intended location.   Somewhere close near by in the mountains of Idaho or Montana.

But almost immediately after liftoff I saw the plane start to deviate from its intended flight plan and head south.  Down across the southern United States and across the Caribbean.   I was immediately concerned.  Didn't they see what was happening?   We had to be at our destination at a specific time and we could not be late.   Couldn't they see what was happening?   Why didn't they/I come out of that other room and see the map about what was happening?  Why couldn't they/I see the Goddamn map! What were they/I thinking?

But the plane kept going inexorably downward now it was in South America and speeding up.  I could see the broad outline of the map of Antarctica looming ahead.   They/we were going to run out of gas.  We were flying over Antarctica now.  We were going to freeze.  We were over the South Pole and now going North on the Other Side of the globe.  Oh my God this is horrible.  But they/I couldn't see it!  Wake up....Wake up....

Rostov:  There is something wrong with him.  He always has to go out and do something.  I've been trying to get him to see a therapist.

Favorite Mother:  We've noticed that about him too.  He is always looking for something to do.

R:  His emotional problems are becoming physical problems.  He is very unhappy.  I can't make him happy.  What is he looking for?  I trust him, but in the back of my mind now I feel like he is still looking for someone else.

Womb Envy: An Exploration into Self Loathing and My Crush on Angela Merkel

Chapter 1:  The Main case

Man always up to something.

Always a story going on with man.

Woman different.

Unless woman in divorce.   Then woman in bad mood.  Then woman tell lots of stories.

Man constantly in divorce.

Whether man married or not.

Man never happy.

Not so woman.

Man listen to Army commercials:

"Be all that you can be"

Man enlist.  Man go off and do things.  Fix things.  Blow up things.

Not so woman.

Woman happy where she is; she complete.

Unless there is some man.

Telling her that she can or can't do something.

Then woman enlist.

Then woman go off and do things. Fix things, blow up things.   But not as many civilian casualties with woman.

And when things get blown up, woman accept refugees.  Even if she didn't cause them to be a refugee.  After all they don't have a home.

Its only fair.

Man don't care if its fair.

Unless man trying to impress woman.  Then man give appearance of being fair.

Man succumb to temptation.

Man care about ego over responsibility.

Man never really happy.

Man never where he is.

Man always missing something.

And its not a rib.

Someday Man become obsolete

Chapter 2:   Angela Merkel and the Dog

Angela Merkel is deathly afraid of dogs.  After she finished her Ph.D in quantum chemistry she was attacked by a dog.

Vladimir Putin is the type of man who likes to show that nothing is lost on him. He is a trained lawyer after all.  He must have learned that in law school.  So one of his first presents to Angela Merkel when she visited Moscow was a stuffed dog.

When Merkel later met with Putin in Putin's Sochi residence to discuss energy policy, Putin summoned his black lab Koni to the room.  As the dog approached Merkel, she stiffened and was visibly frightened. The male reporter from Der Spiegel covering the event was so incensed with Putin and his dog, that he later said he was ready to punch Putin over the event.

Merkel evaluated Putin's use of "dog" intimidation with a refined sense of scientific empathy: (quote) "I understand why he has to do this--to prove he's a man.   He's afraid of his own weakness.  Russia has nothing, no successful politics or economy.   All they have is this.".

Chapter 3:   Synchonicity--Carl Jung had it Nailed.   Note that while I was walking up on the stage to read my first ever story in a public setting I looked out the window and I see no one other but the louver walking from Obeds.   Truly life is strange.   And if you don't think that proved synchronicity, there is no hope for you.  As Bill Murray would say, "Get out of town you scientific empiricist!"

Lightness and Darkness

We are creatures of lightness and darkness.

"Have you been seeing someone?"  "You have been torturing yourself since you came back."

When God cast Satan out of heaven, he made a mistake that has had metaphorical repercussions for thousands of years.  You cannot lobotomize what you are.  Or what you have created.  Its part of you for eternity.

When you feel a strong emotion welling inside of you, be it anger, fear, sadness, remorse, our first inclination is to act like the creator in the Genesis story and either distance our self from the emotion, or deny that it exists in the first place.  Or even worse, harden our self against it.  As if by force of will we can negate the existence of the emotion.  When God cast Satan from heaven, he made the lesser angel an equal.  He bestowed upon Satan a form of omnipotence that was previously reserved for himself.

"Yes"

Had God showered Satan with compassion, empathy, understanding, he would diminished Satan's power for all eternity.  After all, Satan was and always will be a creation of God.  Or better yet, had God allowed Satan's pride and arrogance to exist, incorporating itself back into God's creation, much mischief could have been spared.  Imagine the change in tone if such a formative story of human civilization had a different ending.  

How then shall we recognize what is not darkness?  To this I can only say:  You will think you know many things.  During the day.  But at night, when it all falls apart, as it must, the path beyond the darkness transcends concepts and your thoughts.  You are alone.  You will always hear these voices.  Especially if you take the chemicals supposed to induce lucid dreaming.

You will always hear the voices.  And the darkness will always return.   Look now, even during the day, can you feel your conventions begin to fade.

Forgetfulness can sometimes bring a freedom of sort.  But it is short lived.  Times change.  You move on.  You do what must be done.  And it returns.   Can you bear it?

At times, you will feel the lack of sleep forcing you into a miserable state in which everything seems flat and of equal importance.  Where nothing matters and reality seems threadbare.   At these times, I sayeth unto you, this too is not darkness.  Look carefully!

Spooky Action at Distance involving Quantumly Entangled Dreams

A women leans against a plain white house.

The house is indistinguishable from the other houses on the block:  spread out like the nightmare in Vincent Price's neighborhood.   But she is showing this particular house a great deal of affection.   Nestled against the downspouts.  Cheek against the painted metal.

She now whispers something to the house.  Coupled with a strange caress.  The neighborhood is deserted.  Its Twilight.  Where did everyone go?  She wished them all away.  She is now adjusting to the consequences.

She breaks her embrace with the house with the faintest of smiles.  She looks forward to a life without distractions, without responsibilities.  Without noise.  Her body tingles with excitement in the eerie silence. Her eyes shimmer in the dim light like the waves of the Black Sea.

She does not see or hear the wisp of the rocket's vapor high overhead descending inexorably, inevitably to the ground.

Then, of course, our scene changes abruptly.  Now we are in that space ship hurtling down though the clouds high overhead.  The red lights and klaxons of the cockpit are blaring loudly.  Beyond frantic, the pilot is trying to manipulate the buttons, dials, and levers to avoid the crash. Chaos, panic, anxiety, and just when you think its over, there is more chaos, anxiety and panic--a lot more.   But you know its not going to work. And I know its not going to work.  And he knows its not going to work. It never does.  And all the breathing exercises in the world are not going to slow down his heart this time.

The ground is rushing up from below.  Sweat pores down the pilot's face as he clenches his teeth and prepares for impact.

Later, on the planet's surface, the pilot lays sprawled out over a smooth ledge near the top of a crater. This crater is even bigger than the last one he created.   A lot bigger.  Debris from the rocket ship smolders next to him.   He crawls on the ground but his progress stops as he comes to the lip of the crater.   He pulls himself over the ledge and tries to peer into the abyss he created.   As his strength fails him at length, he mutters to himself.  "Shadow," said he, "where can it be, this land of El Dorado?"

The scene pans out, and we see the pilot laying still, hand drooping over the edge of the crater, hot sun reflecting off the pilot's stationary helmet. Alone and dying on a deserted planet.  Well almost deserted. Just like last time.

But wait, there's more, we return to the woman leaning against the house.  In our absence, she fell asleep and now is waking up to the mid-morning sunlight and a strange whooshing noise from overhead.  She is not happy that her silence has been broken.  Her eyes follow the rocket's trajectory down and her body involuntarily tightens as she waits for the sound of the impact.

The pilot wakes up in bed next to the woman.  He glances at the alarm clock.   3:42 am.  He puts his arm around her and tries to go back to sleep.  But you know, and I know, and he knows, that sleep will not come.

The woman, already awake, wishes she was somewhere else.  And alone with her house.

Information vs. Knowledge

Professor, thanks for the great presentation last night.  I kept thinking about what you said regarding your disagreement with the movies’ editorial suggestion at the end that what North Korea needs is “information.”  You said that you disagreed and thought what they needed was “knowledge” in the context of what happened in the recent elections in the U.S. with all the “information” we have, hyperreality, etc. 

I suppose it comes down to how you define information and knowledge.   What occurred to me is a study I remember hearing about where they dropped off a computer without any instruction manual in a village in India and came back to find the children on their own had figured out how to use it.   When I returned home, I remembered it was a from a TED talk referenced here and as usual I had some of my facts wrong  lol: 

https://www.wired.com/2015/10/in-this-classroom-knowledge-is-overrated/

I guess what I’m getting at is that I’m more optimistic about the human as a noble savage that left on their own, devoid of social conditioning to be creative if they are given “information”—be in it the form of a computer or access to ideas from the outside world.  I agree with the movie director’s premise that what is lacking in North Korea is “information” because they are shut off from the outside world without any external sources on information.  It would be interesting to see if we dropped off by parachute a bunch of computers with satellite internet connections to the N. Korean countryside and came back ten years later to find out what happened.   North Korea would probably turn into South Korea.  Or if not, then it would be a testament to the strength of the ideas that support their society in the face of competing ideas.   Or there may be a lot of dead people.   I guess that I am one of those people who champions the flow of information because ultimately, despite the hiccups along the way—and trump is one big hiccup, the flow of information perpetuates growth evolution etc.   The biggest problem I see with information flow in this country now is the platform its spreading on---and facebook and twitter and bright people like you need to guide us on that way to a better platformJ

I also believe that probably what we consider knowledge is a bunch of propaganda at some level anyway.  Did you hear about the podcast debate between that Canadian Professor Jordan Peterson and Sam Harris the neuroscientist on the issue of facts, knowledge etc?  They could not even agree if there were facts etc. 

In a way, though this idea is half formed at best, I see North Korea as the embodiment of a society based on knowledge without any information gone horribly wrong.   North Korean’s have knowledge, plenty of it, but its like they have stayed in Plato’s cave without getting any fresh air.  They are able to stay in their idealized cave because Chinese capitalism (and from the movie it sounds like S. Korea and Japan also have a hand it in) props up their artificial world of Marxist ideas turned into a nightmare.  I doubt their ideas and knowledge could survive in the real world but for the artificial support system that props them up.  And that means something, doesn’t it:  what good are ideas if they can’t actually take root and survive in the real world?

And I guess that’s why I’m not really fired up about Plato, Hegel, Marx, Gramsci et al like I used to be when I was in grad school and working as a community organizer.   I started being influenced more by stuff like Max Weber and notions that the British (and hence American) models of government are best because of the checks and balances in place and  because they are not as overtly ideologically based.   They just keep the information flowing and hopefully all turns out well in the end.   What do you think?  Should I return to reading the young Marx and start organizing? Lol.   Maybe I will create an artificial distinction between information philosophers (Aristotle, weber etc)  and knowledge philosophers (plato, Hegel Marx) and side with the former…lol

If the Shoe Fits...

The Louver:  Here you are, take a look at the crater that is your life.

Sri:  In my sleep deprived state, I don't want to look.  You are not being very supportive, so I will run home to mommy.

The Farmers Daughter:  You can't be alone with yourself.

The Louver:  I don't think you have ever lived alone, going from one person to another.

The Entity:  Are you ever alone?

Sri:  Yes.  And I didn't like it.  I'm a pack animal.  I sleep better when others are around.

The Louver:  Provided they are not snoring.

The Farmers Daughter:  Don't mind my jumpy leg.

The Entity:  We fit together perfectly.

Sri:  I can sleep,  Just give me a cave.   With an entrance I can lock.  And earplugs.

The Entity:  It like there is nothing real with you.  You are always changing.

The Lithuanian:  You are an Ent ever moving, but with a tendency toward wholeness.

The Original Mother:  You need other people, you can't live alone.

Mondo:  You are the most Zen and the most not Zen person I have ever met.

The Farmers Daughter:  You are a married man.

Sri:  Breathe it all in.  You are nothing and its all you.

Rostov:  You are a good man.  You have always treated me well.  But we have nothing in common.

The Entity:  You are always manipulating people.

The Farmers Daughter:  I never believed that you would do that.

The Human Kate Bush:  The man with a child in his eyes.  But you are so determined.

The Human's Friend:  It opened something up in you that hadn't been opened before.

Sri:  My back hurts.  I need to sleep or I will get sick.

The Louver:  You've got to decide what you really want.  Write you own obituary.

The Duck:  If you are Yogi, I'm Boo Boo.

The Reg:  Duck and I do not approve what you are doing.

Kroeter:  Wake up Don!  Bring back the Night Oak Sign!

Duck and Reg:  The Uge!

Kroeter:  One day I'll find an island, a piece, a time of grace......

The State of the American News Media:

The american media is smarting in the face of its own obsolescence.  Yes, it just doesn't matter anymore what the reporters are saying, because everyone, I mean everyone, is a reporter in the age of social media.

The media of course opposed Donald Trump.  They are and were natural enemies.  What was surprising perhaps is that Donald Trump won despite the media.  The mainstream media that is.  Perhaps in the next election, if there is a figure as divisive as Donald Trump, the New York Times will not be writing OP Ed's opposing Trump.  The people reading Op Eds in the New York Times aren't going to be voting for Trump anyway.  Or the Wall Street Journal, for that matter.

The media's audience in the age of smart phones comprises a short and getting shorter attention span theater.  What is persuasive is the meme.  The meme is a simple short genetic or viral code that can get through the blood brain barrier of the intended host and multiply, multiply, multiply.  It gets to the heart of all the built in prejudices and metastasizes.  The memes that were never employed against Trump would suggests, weak, effeminate, cry baby, spoiled rich daddy's boy, shyster, soft hands, beady eyes, limp dick, blow hard.  Of course, it would have been more effective if the opposing candidate wasn't a manipulating and phony bitch.

Here is the Deal

Humans are nothing more than networks.  Batteries and electrical charges.  Conduits and neural webs.  Human networks are always restructuring themselves in order to acquire and dissipate increasingly more energy. Replication versus entropy.  Methylation versus chaos.

Humans exterminated other human-like species because of our unique ability to cooperate in large numbers.  Unless the Chinese get there way and are able to enforce top-down homogeneity, we are not insects.   Insects also cooperate in large numbers, but are inflexible and unable to change.  For this reason, the basic structure of the ant hill has not significantly evolved.   Remember that Xi Jinping!

Chimpanzees, like humans, also cooperate, but only in small numbers.  Chimps and other apes band together only when they have intimate connections.   Humans, on the other hand,  have the unique ability to cooperate with total strangers so long as we are united by a common purpose.  That purpose can be a myth, fictional story--or even a completely fraudulent premise so long as it is widely believed.  Joseph Goebbels and Steve Bannon know all about this:  a good story is far more unifying than a logical set of demonstrative facts.

Elon Musk has done more than his share of making connections and dissipating his electrical potential.  Lately, he has even apparently reached new heights of cooperation--setting him further apart from his simian ancestors.   To wit:   word on the street is that Musk is the new adviser for the Baron Vladimir Harkonnen.  With Musk's expertise, new and more efficient versions of the anti-gravity suspenders to support the Baron's corpuscular mass are certainly in the offing.

What does the future hold for Musk and the Baron?  Will they and the rest of humanity be devoured by the giant sand worm leviathans? Will Space-X, in cooperation with the new administration set up mining colonies in the asteroid belt?  Will David Bowie's question ever be answered about whether there is life on Mars?  Will the throbbing lower back pain and inability to walk prohibit me from going to work tomorrow?  Stay tuned.....................................................................................

Ps.  As Dave can verify, I didn't make it to work today