The long-range thinking and individualistic type. They are especially good at looking at almost anything and figuring out a way of improving it – often with a highly creative and imaginative touch. They are intellectually curious and daring, but might be physically hesitant to try new things.

The Scientists enjoy theoretical work that allows them to use their strong minds and bold creativity. Since they tend to be so abstract and theoretical in their communication they often have a problem communicating their visions to other people and need to learn patience and use concrete examples. Since they are extremely good at concentrating they often have no trouble working alone.

Brought to you by the Typealyzer.

Text

Text is obsolete as technology, and, currently it was transformed by internet from being primarily a medium for spanning imagination into a medium of (just) supporting and spreading information.

Also we lack tools to make textual information to work, to become knowledge, reality. There are no such things like working semantic web, really usable mind mapping software, self-aware and continuously, automagically expanding blog post, visualisable knowledge base.

We take text and memes, trying to memorize them, trying to store them and make them searchable, rememberable. But we are often left only with the memorisation — and that in a very unefective way. We mostly keep just a clue about something, the exact knowledge is eroded very quickly, in days or maximum a couple of weeks.

Too much energy for almost nothing. Too much procrastination.

Text shows you only the horizon, all the possibilities the world has, not your real opportunities as a finite individual. Text is the first new sense one must develop to live this new reality.

Text is to see code is to do.

Code

Code is reality. Immaterial transformed into material; memes, skills and style brought to life.

No one is able to change the world with a book anymore but anybody can change our life by a simple web application. Today is faster to do than to explain what to do and how to do.

Tell me and I’ll forget. Show me and I may not remember. Involve me and I’ll understand.

People need tools instead of information. People believe in products not in theories. The highest value today in digital is usability not entertainment.

Code is life. Multiplexed.

Iterates faster than biological and spiritual life. It is always hooked back to a core through feedback and self reflection. Yes it has a very visible and complex soul. It is a living channel between the horizon and many real lives. It is the future now.

Code is the fittest lifeform which exists today.

The fastest changing yet the outermost reaching thus the most profitable. Encapsulates culture, technology and human life. It is the new canon laying down the rules.

Disclaimer

Currently I’m working alone on all fronts of a startup: sensing the need, putting in context with global and local trends, designing the solution, focus on timing, choosing the tools, writing the code, creating user experiences, getting feedback, preparing to market and sell it.

I have exactly 20 years spent in IT, from assembling hardware to founding companies. It was never easier for a single guy to build a complete product/service than today.

My previous startup supports me financially. I had two years to make myself able to see the large horizon. I’ve created around 10-20 websites loved both by owners and customers. The last couple of years I’ve spent learning again to code. Prior that I fully lived in the corporate world to see what needs to be changed and how.

With this post I just want to express my excitement about the possibilities we have today. It was never such beautiful to start something up. Something that can change many people’s life and definitively yours.

I had luck with my only success story in startups, smuff.ro which supported me financially to have time catching up the flow, to bleed on the edge of technology, to understand as I can our world today and the trends behind driving it.

Newsledge is what happening today — a new lifestyle — being with the news and gaining advantage from it.

Napstering

2009 — in the same way as in earlier years before — was about the war between the digital and real.

No doubt digital is a new lifeform, a complete new universe anybody — you, your friends, your city, your country and your business, your entire world — must take into consideration.

We don’t know yet the laws governing this long awaited alien civilisation. The only thing we know it is here and takes over our lives. Without digital there is no future.

History thought us the basic driving force behind evolution and we might hope the digital revolution still fits this old pattern — the theory of metasystem transitions.

And we also know currently the new world order is driven by asymmetry where small is taking over the huge, and in the same time huge is getting bigger by taking over smaller.

Connecting metasystem transitions with asymmetry we can see the control of culture today is about digital taking over the real, and real trying to control digital.

Until recent times culture was controlled by classic channels like state/citizenship, religion, tv, books and newspapers. Today we have to add a new layer, the digital to the control pack.

Up today the single pattern digital revealed to us was its huge force and potential to napster classical control mechanisms instead of being an easy channel to control culture.

Identity

As Facebook grow in record time one of the biggest nations on Earth many control organisations are wondering how to deal with. Who owns these netizens, what laws are governing them, how somebody can monetize the simply existence of this new ecosystem.

And again there is just one immediate answer, a classic one, an old universal law to help: who names you controls you.

Who controls your identity is controlling you.

Good for us, unfortunate to control structures: in digital identity is a vague phenomena.

Your digital id is just a simple e-mail address and nothing more. One can have as many online identities wants, tracing them to a real person is easy and possible only because we don’t have yet the culture of managing our online identities.

The next year will be about creating this culture and all the necessary tools and infrastructures to support it.

Canonizing, the war is on netizens taking over their identity and internet companies to trace their digital path for better understanding and manipulation.

Too Big To Know

So far society and control is mapped to current trends, the third force — spirit — needs to be examined too.

The world moves from information to knowledge. From ubiquitous information to connected information.

Knowledge is nothing more than information which works — it is one’s ability to do. We will move from procrastination caused by the logorrhea of information to enjoy knowledge.

Since the world is too big to know we will need tools to extend our brain, a new sense dealing with knowledge built on  digital. Every metasystem transition equipped life with a new dimension and a new sense to interact with.

This new channel might be our digital selves living on the net and syncing back to us — or any form of synthetic life. It’s up to scientists and artists to find the best way how to integrate human with digital.

We, hackers have just one aim: to provide the best tools for the new transition.

Newsledge — Information That Works

We have to connect napstering, digital identity control and the knowledge economy into form and function capable to evolve, to have a life.

This year old media and especially the news industry was napstered heavily. The first front of O’Reilly’s war is on news. Consuming, producing and monetizing information will be changed completely. Value added news services will rise others just selling ads will die.

One thing is sure: we will have access to more and more quality information regardless of source.

And we will be able, by using new tools and services to distill knowledge from these information in a way which gives us flow instead of frustration.

For identity — helped by the open source initiative we can be very sure we will have a comfortable and safe way to start knowing and nobody will abuse our work done for obscure personal interests.

The question of how to become the real owners of all information we are producing, how to make it fully understandable to us and others, and how to evolve together can be and will be answered soon.

Knowledge cannot be taken from you.

Your identity is too important to be owned by any one company.
Your friends are too important to be owned by any one company.

– Aza Raskin, Mozilla.

The Case

If you are a digital consumer probably you are not so worried if your online habits goes for analysis to service providers like Google, Twitter, Facebook — to anyone who offers you a good tool in exchange of your identity information.

Even if there are shocking examples on how one’s online identity is transparent to the large public, to any user of the internet.

Even if you don’t realize consuming today — sharing — is producing identity information about yourself, it is building your very valuable digital footprint.

You think you are protected by anonymity which is an illusion. Google who knows you online doesn’t really knows who you are in real life but Facebook does both. Your internet service provider even knows more. And all these information can be collected in one place when necessary, or when an authority considers to do it.

Okay, you consider there is nothing to hide. Yet.

If you watch current trends you see the next web is about knowledge, more about what you know and what you think. Not just about plain information and simple sharing. It is about finishing uploading yourself to the net and creating your online alter ego. Putting together all pieces of information currently hosted by several independent services into one digitally living entity.

It is about becoming fully transparent on the net.

The one who names you controls you. In turn, what you are capable to name it becomes yours, will belong to you.

The question is you want to be controlled or you want to be in control? The only difference between is a little bit attention, self-control, directed interaction with the digital.

And yes, a yet missing proper tool to help you.

A Proposal

The best things in life are driven by secrets. Without secrets there is no discovery, motivation, possibility. Life experience is about to realise what makes you and what makes others, the world around you. Evolution is about to find, open and enjoy as many channels as possible inside you.

Once you’ve become fully transparent to others you’ll got the feeling of being watched, used. Your experiment won’t be fully hearted, completely clear, simply enjoyable without hidden concerns. You won’t be safe.

The Personal Identity Server

Who do you fully trust? In what you really trust? Who can keep best a secret?

Only you do.

So keep the secret of your online identity strictly personal. Manage your digital ego independently. Take fully what the digital universe offers but play with it, don’t take it straight.

1. Distribute yourself across many hosts, make your identity redundant. Do not offer a single point of failure, or a single point of control.
2. Make sure even if the chunks of information giving your identity are put together they cannot give the big picture.
3. Serve others only with chunks of identities not with a single universal identity.
4. Don’t stick forever to your online identities. They are not making you, you are making them. Change them, forget them, create new ones for new occasions.

It is about a peer-to-peer network of hosting identity chunks in an encrypted format. There is no centralized server or service provider. You host many but unknown identity chunks and others are hosting some of your identities. Untraceable and not decryptable.

Login to different services with different identities. Use as many browsers as possible each for a special purpose. Separate your online activities to different locations. In the office work only with your professional identities, when having fun at home use others. Do not mix them.

Be aware of the connection points where digital meets the real. Your mobile operator or internet service provider knows who pays the bills, and also knows your online activity history.

It’s not about being paranoiac it is about paying attention and dealing with the consequences. Comfort is dangerous eliminates the game, it makes you become the game of others. Renounce to some services, do not make your online activities and presence ubiquitous.

Try to learn separating things for your own benefit.

[UPDATE] Bruce Schneier thoughts about privacy in 2006.

[UPDATE] A Slashdot take on privacy.

To Google, you are the product. They are selling advertising. More specifically, they are selling your attention to marketers. Giving you privacy is contradictory to the entire purpose of their existence. They give you nice, fast, free stuff to keep you hooked in to their services and to keep collecting more data so that they can sell more advertising.

There is no privacy using Google services. There never will be. They will keep encroaching into your private info as far as you let them.

Spread the confusion by always killing your cookies and use different browsers.

http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1476918&cid=30425542

1) Use different browser profiles for different web applications.

If you start firefox with these options: -no-remote -ProfileManager it will allow you to run multiple copies simultaneously, each with a separate profile (different set of cookies, different set of plugins, different skins, different bookmarks, different histories, etc).

I create a specific profile for each major web app – I have one for IMDB, one for google searches, one for google mail, one for google voice, etc. And one for generic browsing.

Each profile has a couple of add-ons:
Adblock Plus [mozilla.org] – general catch-all to block things like doubleclick and the million other trackers
CookieSafe Lite [mozilla.org] – for fine-grained control of what sites can set cookies
NoScript [mozilla.org] – for fine-grained control of what sites can use javascript and flash
Redirect Cleaner [mozilla.org] – for removing those “bounce links” that a lot of sites use to track you when you follow a URL off their site, with the cleaner you go directly to the destination URL
RefControl [mozilla.org] – for clearing out or rewriting the referrer URL – prevents sites from knowing where you came from when you clicked a URL to their site, sometimes helpful in accessing poorly ‘restricted’ content
Targetted Advertising Cookie Opt-Out [mozilla.org] – sets special cookies that sites may choose to obey to say “don’t profile me” since these TACOs are not unique-per-user, I figure it can’t hurt although it probably doesn’t do anything
User Agent Switcher [mozilla.org] – Lets your browser identify itself as a different browser – this is very important
Ghostery [mozilla.org] – Informational Only – tells you what tracking sites may be tracking you on any given page (does not block them, and you get false alarms on sites where NoScript blocks javascript, but it is still good for situational awareness)
Better Privacy [mozilla.org] – Blocks new stealth “super cookies” in Flash and DOM Storage Objects. VERY IMPORTANT

Using the above plugins, I do the following in each profile:
1) Set NoScript to only allow javascript from the one website the profile is intended for – and block flash as much as possible regardless due to cross-profile flash cookies
2) Set CookieSafe that same way and then only for per-session cookies
3) Block and/or auto-delete Flash and DOM Storage cookies with Better Privacy – note flash cookies tend to be shared across all profiles because they go in a folder under “Documents & Settings” on MS Windows and ~/.macromedia/ on Linux. I am still looking at ways to force each profile to use a different directory for flash cookies – until then, block flash as much as possible and auto-delete cookies frequently
4) Set the User Agent to be different in each profile – this gives the appearance of multiple users behind a firewall which is key
5) Load a different theme or skin for each profile to make it easy to visually distinguish between windows so you don’t accidentally start browsing the web from your gmail window or vice-versa

All that is a little bit of a pain to set up, an hour or two total. But once in place, I think it is a reasonable compromise for reducing the risk of having your personally identifiable information gleaned in services like Google Mail from being automatically cross-referenced with your browsing habits. I am considering taking it a step further with FoxyProxy [mozilla.org] configurations to use TOR [wikipedia.org] for searches and other low-bandwidth actions that might further reduce centralized tracking of web usage without running everything through TOR.

Sensing > Filtering > Reasoning > Creating > Enjoying.

Use all existing tools to open as much channels as possible. Keep the process simple, natural, make it fun. Re-invest in your tools and channels.

Focus on adding structure to the unstructured, to order the unordered. Be capable to name things and make them yours. Make sure your ideas are followed. Structure > Name > Fame.

Read

This is the easiest part of the learning process and in the same time the most important. You are what you eat, you are what your friends are; the environment, the genius loci is tougher than us.

Make sure your sources are clean, the community which helps you gathering information is the best you can afford. In the same way important is to refine periodically your sources of information: renounce on obsolete channels and find new ones.

Gathering Information

It can be either digital or offline — already digitalized or to be digitalized.

Consuming digital information can be directed — reading news, blogs, magazines etc. regularly — or indirected, when you stumble upon something interesting while surfing (randomly) the net.

Direct information goes usually into your feed reader, or into other aggregators like a tumble log, life streamer or twitter. This is collecting, pulling information, subscribing to channels.

Indirect information must be pushed, remembered, marked, saved somehow. Fortunately there are many tools to clip important data, usually the channel providing the information offers this capability — like Youtube, Vimeo, Last.fm, Disquss etc. letting you to favorite data — or there are specialized tools like Delicious for bookmarking links and Evernote to copy-paste rich information you consider interesting.

We can affirm digital information can always be collected into known repositories.

Offline information comes from books, discussions with your friends, your moments of relaxation and revelation. In the same way we can affirm all offline information can be digitalized easily into specialized repositories. Thoughts are going into blogs, ideas into Twitter, pictures taken into Flickr, quotes into Tumblr, videos on Youtube and so on.

Channeling Information

Gathering and uploading information made the web 2 revolution. The next web is about marking/making information in such way to become the most useful possible. Information won’t be just plain data, it will offer and incorporate some useful aspects about itself, it will behave like an entity which is capable to act on its own — think in tags, metadata, API, microformats, semantics and mashups.

Currently there are such a few tools to markup information on the fly. And these markups are mostly personal, your opinion about that piece of data might sound unfamiliar to others, or they might tag the same information differently. Understanding information is still very subjective.

Delicious was fairly uncapable to set up universal tags in the same way Netvibes failed to create universal channels. Now Twitter, Gawker Media blogs and probably others started to make channels somehow usable.

Gathering information is easy, mapping, adding to your and others mindmap is difficult.

Ownership Of Information

Since people are just producing and consuming almost blindly information — not understanding its true nature — no wonder the question of who owns all these data is a shady business.

The copyright revolution seems to be over the open source nature of data triumphed. Information can be closed but its evolution will be jeopardised immediately.

The business of owning information must be opened up too. Web leaders like Google, Facebook and leading web technologies like cloud computing are on the wrong side of the identity issue. Your data is not safe and it is not yours — it is given out to service providers to use them as they want.

Identity cannot be outsourced. If your identity belongs to others also you as a person will belong to them. This issue tends to be very important as real tools for creating knowledge will rise — all you know about yourself and how you perceive the world must stay personal, its various aspects must controlled by you.

You decide what to reveal to whom to reveal under which identity you prefer.

Write

The missing solution on the information technology market is about mapping and owning the information in such way to represent objective knowledge to its users.

We saw information can be gathered and shared easily on every channel and these channels / service providers being usually the real owners and profitors of the hosted information. We’ve also seen information tends to become richer by encapsulating its various aspects. Also we have got acquainted with the open source nature of the information regarding its own evolution.

Now we have to find a solution on how to become the real owners of all information we are producing, how to make it fully understandable to us and others, and how to provide the best environment for its evolution.

In other words we must have to have the ability to import information from all service providers they are hosting it. We must have to create proper tools to map to our mind and keep this map personal, to share only well defined parts of this newly created knowledge back to different channels. And create an Open Source Business Model to make the information fit and suitable for the real world.

Enjoy

Until now the information economy was about to let people freely read and write. Enjoyment was not in the same way free for all participants. Some offering the infrastructures for reading and writing gathered more benefits than the generators of the content itself who often got procrastinated.

No one can expect infrastructure owners and service providers will focus voluntarily on such needs of their users. They are now in war fighting for more digital identity control.

During that war we must create a new system where reading, writing and enjoying are equally important and supported.

First comes the hard work to conquer your fear to meet the unknown, to stop ignoring things that matter, to be able to sense the noise, to start feeding yourself with source you consider valuable.

After the fear comes the acceptance once you’ve created usable interfaces to the unknown. You’ve already identified your heroes, leaders, points to follow on the subject. Noise is filtered into signal and you’ll start learning by combination and logistics.

You’ll gain self confidence by becoming able to share. You are now part of a culture you are proud of, an accepted member of a tribe — your reasoning has finally an echo. Your format strengthens, your growth started.

Once you are able to use what you are — you become master to, intelligent to your environment. You are part of the revolution your tribe is aiming for,  you are a creator in harmony with your goals and your achievements.

This is called love, evolution, progress as everyone desires, the all wanted flow, the beauty and the force of knowledge.

Tetrad

Freely after Marshall McLuhan.

If I were a company leader investing in software infrastructure first I would hire a hacker to consult me, and customize an open source software for my personal needs. If a single hacker wouldn’t be enough I would sponsor an already running open source project to get my solution.

The relation between angel investors, venture capital — the current startup culture — and hackers is the same like the model sketched above.

Software And Internet Is Built By Hackers

So why don’t we follow the rule of asymmetry governing our times, and focus on those who are adding the biggest value to the final result?

Lets put the packagers — investors, angels, capitalists — to the other side and examine what is their value added to our work, and see if we can replace their generous but sooner-or-later very expensive help.

Yes, I’m thinking here Linux, Apache, sendmail, MySQL, PHP, Ruby, Processing and so on. They were not founded, bootstrapped or startupped yet they survived — or even more, services and solutions built on them brought billions to startups, angels and capitalists.

The Combinator And The Cowboy Model

Currently there are two highly visible, proven and viable models a hacker can follow if thinking in startups: Paul Graham’s Y Combinator and the 37 Signals.

37 Signals … of who’s? Of David Heinemeier Hansson’s or Jason Fried’s?

The fact the combinator model is associated with an icon, and the cowboy model has no singular hero attached makes the basic difference between the two approach.

Y Combinator combines hackers with investors at the best price on the market. Paul is an angel guarding his hackers — and the best insurance for the investors. Without Paul there is no business, no connection between the producers — hackers — and distributors, packagers — capitalists.

37Signals is a younger concept, a roll-your-own solution. They are not connecting anybody but giving the best tools of the market for free to hackers, and, with their 3.000.000 customers are setting up the trend on the net for paid services — on how startups must generate revenue, and what consumers to pay for.

They are a completely standalone entity: they don’t depend on technology, on human resources (their tool Ruby on Rails is open source), on capital and on packaging/marketing. Since they have a cutting edge technology and business model they had already assured a large supporter base without the help of  third parties.

In contrast, the combinator model still follows the obsolete client-server architecture. If you are a hacker your application has to be accepted by Paul. Paul is your channel connecting to investors and making your product famous. You are depending on monetization and on your mentor.

The Open Business Model

Imagine as a hacker you have a good solution for a problem industry leaders are buzzing about. You already have a good partner, a co-founder with to start up. And you know two guys are far not enough to do the job. How would you proceed?

I would open up my company, my startup. The only shareholders would be hackers who invest time into the source code. The repository would be secured on Github, shares would be calculated based on code contributions, costs and revenues would be visible to all shareholders.

Since the problem to solve is hot, the business model is very new and exciting, and the contributors are all masters of modern media I think the buzz would hit high.

Such an Open Startup would have all the attention it needs to live and to prosper.

Give me a stable point and I’ll dislodge the world.

Socrates.

And we have that point.

The Trapped Self

Bela Hamvas was extraordinary. As a librarian he had access to old ancient knowledge. He understood all and translated to us the world from starting from  involution through Hermes Trismegistus to current times.

We are living in simulacrum.  We need to be deceived and the world around deceives us. Our inner self feels that and it is continuously looking for answers. Ancient science was aware of simulacra and the nature of the soul, they found a way, that distant point outside of the known world where one can clearly look around and understand everything.

Ancient leaders were born twice; on becoming leaders of society a ceremony took them to that distant point, where the self completely leaves this experience called life, and then they were reborn taking back the clairvoyance necessary to be a leader.

A leader who controls society without obscure personal interests.

Simulation Worlds

Steve Yegge started it’s last essaying odyssey with the story of a Siamese fighting fish trapped into and died in it’s own tank. Trapped into an universe which borders were all known and not extendable by imagination, simulated worlds.

Next, he takes us to another simulation, Super Mario Kart’s computer world and wonders where is that point when Mario will stand up from his kart, and will look straight to you, the one holding the controls, pullings the strings of its — simulated — world and life.

I am thinked.

Arthur Rimbaud

Yes, you are — your existence is — thinked by someone else. You are nothing than soemone else’s idea. The one who names you, who is calling on your name is controlling you totally. If you are not aware of this you are like Super Mario.

And the list of quotations flows, flows away:

“Our environment seems less like matter and more like an extension of the mind that controls it”

“Simulation, the ultimate imitation of life, becomes a wall that stands between us and the true experience of life.”

“Symbolic arenas are acts of self- and world-repair: they allow us to face and overcome simulated dangers and problems, which are a more exciting version of what we face in everyday life. In these characteristics, they are similar to daydreams, in which we convert our defeats into victories and our losses into gains to bolster the sense of safety and self-esteem.”

“Consumer culture now mass produces simulations that are used as substitutes for desired goods we can’t have or can’t have without paying some price.”

“We have created a society in which much of the culture and politics, as well as the economy, is geared toward mass producing, and consuming, simulations.”

“We now routinely experience simulation confusion, in which we mistake realism for reality and think some of these fakes and simulations really are what they imitate”

“Our conscious and unconscious thoughts about controlling real and virtual worlds are only a part of what is inside us that is relevant to these changes. Our minds also include an acute awareness of the various possibilities for good and bad as they relate to ourselves, society and nature. They include an awareness that we are fallen selves, trapped in our own psychodynamics and narcissism; that we live in fallen societies, permeated by the misuse of power and by deception, which is a product of our fallen nature as it is caught up in the world of scarcity and necessity we find in nature. And our minds include the awareness that we live amid a fallen world of nature that limits us at every turn, and that we have turned into a product of our own fallen selves. Of course, we are also aware of the good we have achieved — our fallen selves and societies have still managed to build civilization; we live lives with considerable fulfillment; we bring up new generations; and have turned nature into a source of material riches, for many.”

Source: transparencynow.com. Snippets available at the Flow.

Transparency

Until we, all of us will find our true nature, the reason why we are living in this world — we will be trapped by our self, ego and narcissism, and, living blindly in a simulacra.

We must first die and reborn as the ancient leaders; we must find that stable point to dislodge the simulated worlds around.

The most immediate method is to assure transparency around us, in our societies and governing power structures. The Control of our Culture and Civilisation must be transparent.

Until then we must practice involution: evolving ourselves inside, to that stable point of dislodgement — instead of building the outside, the simulacra around us.

A good, and immediately available starting point is to discover the nearest simulacra we can touch: our dreams. Welcome to Lucid Dreaming! Do yourself a favor and take a reality check.