URLs From the Edge

So, once again I'm building out a large set of financial projections, etc etc. to support a cool business idea and presentation in Power Point. The last time we did this exercise we parlayed ten PPT slides into $4MM, so at least I can say that these occasionally work. Execution of course, is a different matter. :-)

I'll post more details on the business idea soon; but we've got to get it moving and strong nibbles from some savvy angel investors need polite and timely replies. Back to work!

I've been having lengthy fireside chats with Master Ron again. He, Linda L and me are assembling the pieces of our new business and so many foundation level conversations are taking place over coffee.
Inevitably the topic came up - What are the commonalities found in each vertical community, and how to best serve their communications needs without having to custom roll all the tools for each one?

I have a working hypothesis; much of the common elements we use to self-identify within a group/culture are actually common to almost all cultures, in much the same way (and for the same reasons) that archetype personalities appear in every culture. Specifically for online communities I postulate that while specific nouns and 'merit badges' appear different on the surface, in actuality they each occupy an archetype niche whose effects are just below the surface. Not all Jungian niches are filled for every community, but I'll bet most of the missing ones are represented informally in some manner. The size of the community probably effects this; the larger the representative sample, the more likely we are to see the classic archetypes show up to the party. It's hard to escape biology, after all.

I've got some interesting experiments I'd like to build in order to validate this theory, and a lot of experts to poll. Fun fun!

This is the time of year when game developers migrate to San Francisco to participate in the largest annual conference and trade show of our industry. In preparation for that event, last minute flights and hotels are booked, calendars are created and shared, and emails are exchanges in flurries about meeting times and places. It's pretty frantic and a lot of ad-hoc is usually required. Last year I participated in over sixty (!) meetings during the six days I attended. Whew.
This year should be more austere however; the world financial crisis means everyone is being budget conscious.

One of my free-time (hah!) activities is AER - Amateur Experimental Rocketry. Recently I've been working with the other Kinetic Dream members to learn about, build, and test numerous projects related to high power rocketry, which is certainly *not* the model rockets of my childhood.

It is indeed refreshing, invigorating and even relaxing, to learn about a complex craft entirely from the ground up. Almost everything we do must be built step-by-step, starting from theory. While anyone can go buy a B, C or even E class model rocket engine from a local hobby store and then fly it in a model, you can't really do that for a motor in the M or Q class. You have to make it from scratch. Even the rocket fuselage has great challenges; the aerodynamic stresses when you push through Mach one are tremendous, and besides, you need an FAA airspace waiver, and a low-order explosives permit, and...

The deep theory is the cool stuff for me right now; - mathematics, physics, chemistry, electronics, aerodynamics, material sciences, etc. I'm pretty lousy at math; my brain is wired more for intuition and geometry, and complex relationships between symbols is hard for me (that's why I'm doing this with teammates who are good at that stuff).

I never imagined I'd have a leisure activity that requires use of Microsoft Project, but this one does; so many steps and tests and step-by-step building. Wheee.

I should really get some local boy/girl scouts involved, since this is really really cool to learn about; Megan is considering using her work on this project as a basis for her Masters thesis in Applied Physics, so a few merit badges wouldn't be out of the question, I think.

Check out my flickr stream for more pictures.

I saw an AER T-shirt recently that said;
"We're doing science.... really, really LOUD science"

Since I last posted, an awful lot has happened in my life. Wow.

Short Version:
1. Left my position at HIG/C3L3B.
2. Went to Burning Man (wheee! see picts on Flickr)
3. Starting a new company in a new industry

Right now I'm watching hurricane Ike making landfall in Texas. Next week I'm speaking at a conference in Austin, AGDC and I'm hoping the weather doesn't effect travel too much.

I'm also watching stories of the silly people who didn't evacuate their sea-level homes on Galveston Island when they were told, and now the Coast Guard must risk their lives to save them. Sigh.

In other news, the LHAC comes online this week. I have my fingers crossed that they see evidence for Higg's bosons emerging from the hot muon froth. It's the first step in creating an inertia-less stardrive. I'd settle for evidence of quantum space though, since that's the other path to FTL. Time to climb out of the well and go cruising the galaxy!

Today marks the anniversary of the 2nd day of the Battle of Gettysburg. This day saw Gen. Hancock filling a division-wide hole with the boys from the 1st Minnesota, pointing to the battleflags of the advancing confederate regiments he said "See those colors? Take them!". (Minnesota still has that battle flag, and refuses to give it back to Virginia. Heh.)

Here's the wonderful link that Ron sent to me - The Second Day

In my mind however, it was defense of Little Round Top by the 20th Maine (volunteers) which still resonates as the most impressive and emotional moment. It was perhaps one of the greatest, most impassioned defenses since Thermopylae. This was the moment - the critical beat of the butterfly's wings that changed the path of a hurricane. A desperate struggle against fearsome odds on a small hilltop, with moments of extreme courage and sacrifice that resonate through time and changed the course of American history.

So today marks the 14th straight day that I've worked at least some number of hours at the office. Sigh.
We've made some way cool stuff, taken a few missteps, learned a lot of lessons - typical path of a beta, I guess. Working in a mixed culture means you have to make some pretty basic mistakes all over again though, which adds to the stress.
We'll be consumer-facing on Monday night at midnight, although i doubt we'll see a lot of traffic until the PR and SEO/SEM campaign gets well underway.
On the completely-positive side; this is an amazing team. We've got a tech, art and QA team that totally rocks and I'd work with them again on any project. Even though I might not see eye to eye with everyone on the team, I pretty much respect them all.

Considering we only started on January 2nd, we've done an amazing amount of work in six months.

So we're at 8 days until the launch of our first consumer-facing website for our new company. Whew. The whole team is working 6 or 7 days each week, and sleeping in short chunks.
This has been a powerful learning-lessons adventure for me, if nothing else. Back to the grindstone!

In a philosophical mood today: It's interesting to observe (in a semi-detached manner) how my own brain sorts and processes the world. I've been a keen observer of my own mental processes for the last two years, and it's given me some tools and insight to step back a bit and watch when/how/why I react to events and people around me.

"All reality is collaborative" was something Dr. Howard Teich once told me, and I recall viewing that statement with skepticism in the moment. Now I'm not so sure; understanding the broader implications of "mirror neurons" has me re-assessing my initial reactions about how we build 'reality' collaboratively. "No man is an island" might be far more true than we expect.

Background thoughts:
Our brains are sooo limited (one is tempted to say 'flawed') in how they perceive the external world (and also in how it perceives its own internal emotional state). Are brains are slaves not only to biochemical nudging, but also to the basic architectural limitations of our senses and how the brain interprets sensory input. For example, look at how humans perceive scales (size/distance/time) beyond those readily apparent to our built-in senses - anything that doesn't fit into a basic biological survival/reproductive function is an abstraction. If it's further away than we can walk in a day, or smaller than about .5mm, or happens in less than 1/4 second of time, or more than ~60 seconds; anything at all which exists or happens outside these perception limits is *just a number* to our poor meat-computer. An abstraction... something we can think about but it's hard to 'grok' in the moment. Our hardware & software has not been optimized by selective forces (evolution) to deal with such concepts. Sure, I can *do* floating point math in my head, but I'm much better at being afraid of bees.

This is why democracy has a difficult time scaling; most people are easily distracted by the short-term, immediate urges. Thinking about second-order consequences, or understanding why we need a robust, complex ecology or economy is outside the scope of what they can perceive. To say nothing about understanding the distances/energies involved in getting to Mars.

Back to the main point:
So what I'm rambling towards goes something like this - Our perceptions of the world are flawed due to the limits on our biology, so we've invented/evolved various filtering & coping mechanisms when the complexity or scope of the universe exceeds our ability to readily comprehend. Superstition and religion are clear examples of this, as is the more recent Scientific Method. Both are simply tools for seeking understanding and safety in the face of things bigger than ourselves. However the discover of mirror neurons has me wondering if biological empathy is playing a part here too; as a primitive form of collaborative processing. Our own internal version of reality is shaped into a local reality by our interactions with others; collectively we form pockets of shared reality, communicating (from the bottom up) emotional and physical reactions to localities, followed by higher protocol communications (language) and then shared beliefs about what we were jointly experiencing. By talking about an event and sharing those memories and discussing possible explanations and expectations, we collaboratively arrive at a shared, consensual form of subjective reality. The collection of these world-views form a societies 'zeitgeist'. All common sense really, but the part I'm teasing at here is the fundamental involvement, at every level, of biology; our ability to sense, simulate/predict the experiences of others using only non-verbal networking.

I think biological empathy is a massive, yet largely unperceived, structural component of how we all perceive and transmit/share reality. We're overly focused on the semantics of language and missing a big chunk of the signal.

This article suggests that US firms have developed advanced surveillance technologies with taxpayer money, and which are now being resold to China for the purpose of strengthening China's repressive, dictatorial controls over their people. --> China's all-seeing eye

Sigh. If even 50% of this story is true, I am stunned and disgusted. I do not support our government condoning or allowing such active suppressions of democracy or personal freedoms without at least rigorous examination and oversight, as it is likely against our short and long term national interests.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Ubiquitous law enforcement is already a very slippery slope, never mind putting such tools into the hands of a repressive government bent on wholesale thought-control for the ‘betterment’ of their society.

With the rapid pace of technological development, it is easy for the affordances / utility of new technologies to become instruments of national power. The traditional slow pace of bureaucracy will not keep pace with logarithmic rates of change without conscious and active planning. To summarize my point: export controls must be rapidly and continually reassessed from an intelligent and informed point of view - we can no long afford to think about them as consisting of just missiles and supercomputers, but must rather implement a careful, expert level of scrutiny, with an eye towards secondary and emergent re-uses of seemingly innocuous technology.

I can't help but think that the Chinese government is laughing at us.