I want to be able to enter my room and just say, "Computer." Like they did in STTNG and then have it play that cue sound and then issue it commands.

It shouldn't be hard to wire that up. Why isn't that a thing yet?

Me: Computer.

Computer: <Cue sound - Listening>

Me: Google Image Search for chocolate covered bacon

Computer: <Opens default browser, does requested search>

Me: Select third image. Prepare post to Google Plus. Caption: I'm not sure if this is yummy or gross. Post to Google Plus.

Computer: <Acknowledgment tone> 

Computer: <Accomplished tone>

Me: What is the population of Alabama?

Computer: <short Acknowledgement tone> Defaul browser goes to Wikipedia, performs search.

Computer: The population of Alabama is three million, four hundred thousand, seventy-five as of the 2010 census.

Etc Etc.

I remember back when I first heard about web browsers. I totally didn't get what the big deal was for a while. Telnet BBS's, gopher, ftp, newsnet, etc all seemed far superior. 

I had heard of, and played with, text documents that had text hyperlinks to other text documents, and HTML just looked like more of the same. Someone showed me a webpage he had made that just had a picture of his dog and some text. Whoopee.

I think it wasn't until 1994 or so that I began to see some promise for the web. I think it must have been around the time I found Yahoo. I was stunned and amazed at all the websites! 

What really opened up the web for me was the first time I saw Netscape Navigator running on someone's computer. I wish I could remember the websites we looked at, but I just remember thinking, this is huge!

So, thank you Sir Berners-Lee!

This post is inspired by Jeff Jarvis's blog post here: The Jobless Future

For a moment, let's be even more radical than +Jeff Jarvis :

He talks about a "jobless" economy and how today's jobs are going away due to new technology, automation, etc.

Let's think for a moment about true, 100% unemployment. Imagine a world, perhaps not so far away in the future, where all manufacturing and service jobs (retail, call centers, etc) are completely automated by machines and computers.

In a world like that, the only thing left for people to do are things that computers and machines can not do: arts, research - anything that requires imagination basically.

In "The Schroedinger's Cat Trilogy" books by Robert Anton Wilson, he imagines a society just like that. In his scenario, businesses were required to pay each worker laid off due to automation their full annual salary for life. This was considered a bargain because for each worker laid off, computers and machines can do much more work tirelessly for 24 hours a day, thus earning much more profits for the company involved.

I'm not sure if that's a good solution, but it's a thought and a starting place. I personally don't believe that any human should be forced into a life of dull drudgery.

We may find ourselves in a similar situation sooner rather than later, and society needs to think about how to handle it.

Extropianism was (is??) an offshoot of Transhumanism that leaned heavily to the libertarian side of things. Yeah, yeah, bunch of weirdos, but their founding principles have had a huge impact on my life. I think if you live by these principles, you're setting yourself up to weather the future quite well:

1. Perpetual Progress — Seeking more intelligence, wisdom, and effectiveness, an indefinite lifespan, and the removal of political, cultural, biological, and psychological limits to self-actualization and self-realization. Perpetually overcoming constraints on our progress and possibilities. Expanding into the universe and advancing without end.

2. Self-Transformation — Affirming continual moral, intellectual, and physical self-improvement, through critical and creative thinking, personal responsibility, and experimentation. Seeking biological and neurological augmentation along with emotional and psychological refinement.

3. Practical Optimism — Fueling action with positive expectations. Adopting a rational, action-based optimism, in place of both blind faith and stagnant pessimism.

4. Intelligent Technology — Applying science and technology creatively to transcend "natural" limits imposed by our biological heritage, culture, and environment. Seeing technology not as an end in itself but as an effective means towards the improvement of life.

5. Open Society — Supporting social orders that foster freedom of speech, freedom of action, and experimentation. Opposing authoritarian social control and favoring the rule of law and decentralization of power. Preferring bargaining over battling, and exchange over compulsion. Openness to improvement rather than a static utopia.

6. Self-Direction — Seeking independent thinking, individual freedom, personal responsibility, self-direction, self-esteem, and respect for others.

7. Rational Thinking — Favoring reason over blind faith and questioning over dogma. Remaining open to challenges to our beliefs and practices in pursuit of perpetual improvement. Welcoming criticism of our existing beliefs while being open to new ideas.

Just got home after seeing this weekend's big movie.  It's an excellent summer popcorn movie with some pretty good performances.

I will say, though, that I am _sick_ of big, brutish, stupid invading alien species.  Remember _Independence Day_?  That was one of the first.  Just off my head, we've seen more or less the same guys in _Cloverfield_, _Super 8_, _Battle: LA_, and we see them on TV now on shows like _Falling Skies_.

The aliens in tonight's movies just came across as giant, hulking ape things with almost no intelligence at all.  They ran around naked and seemed completely uncivilized.

I realize that making aliens like this gives us a great reason to really hate them and it draws a clear line between the good guys (us) and the bad guys (not us), but it's getting old.

Maybe it's all just a reaction to all the Star Wars, Star Trek, Babylon 5, etc prosthetic-forehead-of-the-week aliens, but I've kinda had enough.

That said, I'd love to have a movie where we have grotesque brutal looking aliens with 6 limbs that end up being unequivocal good guys that make us look bad.  Or a serious movie with harmless looking aliens that are evil beyond imagination.

Anyways, C & A was great fun.  It was fantastic seeing James Bond and Indy-Han in the same movie kicking ass together!  I hope they never consider a sequel. 

Since it launched, I've been subscribed to The Daily ($1/week) app on my iPad. At first I enjoyed it, but soon found it lacking. Very little depth, very simplistic. Just not very smart. I'm unsubscribing today.

Most of the free news apps on the iPad (USA Today, CNN, Fox News, etc) suffer from similar problems. Sure, I can read ridiculous amounts of free news in Safari, but I hunger for well written long-form journalism that's presented in a focused, organized app, and I'm willing to pay if I find it worth the price.

So, I've decided to subscribed to both The New York Times ($20/month, $0.99 for 1 week trial) and The Wall Street Journal ($2/week for first year then $4/week after that). Why these two? Well, NYT is still considered the pinnacle of journalism, and I've been a fan of the WSJ since college. 

They both compliment and contrast each other quite nicely. I'm of the opinion that one should read opinion pieces from more than one viewpoint, and reading both papers provides this in spades. There's also not a ton of overlap.

I've been reading both this week, and I have to say that I'm very impressed. Certainly the experience blows The Daily way out of the water. This morning I've been reading an article in NYT about artificial life that's really intriguing. I find myself perusing the WSJ throughout the day as well.

Both apps do have ads, but never any obnoxious, auto-video playing ads like you see on free news sites. Neither app is perfect - some times content seems to be missing, and it's a bit of a pain that both apps have completely different navigation systems. I prefer the WSJ's more iOSish approach.

In today's short attention span theatre of mediocre non-news news sources, it's nice to find that there's still decent long-form journalism that's intelligent and well written, at least for now.

As far as I can see, for most people, the only advantage in owning a desktop PC currently is being able to play cutting edge PC games. Nearly everything else you might want to do on a computer, you can today on a tablet and for the few of us who need to write code, a laptop like a MacBook Air will suffice.

And, if you play PC games and if you wish to be able to play the new games as they come out, you find yourself in the position of having to buy/build a new PC every year or so just to keep up.

The whole point of console gaming is that you buy one system for $500 or less and it should, in theory, last you for several years of game playing.

The Uncomfortable Spot that we're in has to do with the ancient video gaming console hardware that we're stuck with at the moment. Today's console gaming hardware is five or six years old in an industry where even two-year old hardware is considered dinosaur ancient.

The Xbox and the PS3 have kept up appearances fairly well over the years, and 2011's games certainly look a lot nicer than games that ran on the same hardware years ago, but I think we've hit the ceiling on what these old workhorses can do.

The Uncomfortable Spot is that we've reached the end of the desktop PC era, really, and yet we don't have proper, modern gaming hardware. The next generation of consoles aren't scheduled to begin appearing until the end of 2014 at the earliest. I don't really want to wait another few years to play MMOs again.

I think this is a huge opportunity for Apple as they release new versions of their mobile hardware on a near-yearly basis. The graphics and processing power in today's iPads aren't quite up to par with an XBox 360, but I can hazard a guess that with the iPad 3, Apple will begin making Microsoft and Sony very uncomfortable.

I think this vacuum of gaming hardware is going to make for an interesting next couple of years.

I think Google+ represents the commoditization of the web. 

A few more tweaks from Google, and I'll end up staying in their property more than half of my desktop surfing time.

I've hardly used Twitter at all since I logged into G+. I replaced the Twitter app with the G+ app in my iPhone app dock.

I've not even given logging onto Facebook a thought since, though to be fair, I've been a Facebook hater for years.

Email - Gmail for years now.

Calendar - Ditto

Photos - I've become a Picasa fan since G+. I have no plans to ever renew my Flickr account.

Video Chat - Skype who?

Browser - Chrome, since my second day of G+.

If Chrome adds the G+/GMail/etc black toolbar to the top of every page by default, they'll be even more dominant.

All that said, I'd say that at least half of my digital life is lived on my iPad, and even if there was a killer G+ app on the iPad, I doubt it would eat up a significant portion of my iPad life.

I think Apple my soon regret their tight integration with Twitter. I doubt I'll ever use that functionality. As soon as G+ adds video chat, photo sharing, etc to Huddles, iMessage will feel pretty damned weak. Huddles already lets me conduct mass, cross platform chats with my friends.

Apple: Time for some more innovation.