The Audacity of Oxygen

When I consider my life I like to think I'm doing ok.

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Sure I've had a string of shitty bar jobs, completed diplomas and degrees that funkmaster wouldn't use to wipe his arse with, but aside from that I've travelled pretty well and encountered a wide range of cultures and lifestyles.

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Not once in this time, however, have i encountered somebody who is too busy to breathe. After spending a substantial amount of time pondering exactly what you would have to be doing to be, in fact, too busy to breathe i came up with nothing.

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A diver would have an oxygen tank, a swimmer would come up for air, a sex fiend would loosen the leash...

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But apparently there are people who are too busy to breathe. and finally they are being catered for. Nivea has released 'Nivea visage oxygen' catering for those who are 'too busy to breathe'.

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Surely between dropping the kids off to school, making that 9am brunch with other well off young hottie mummies, dropping by the market to pick up some organic overpriced produce you would find at least a bit of time to breathe, and more importantly, even if you didnt find time, wouldn't your body just do it for you anyway? If it didnt, wouldn't you die?

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Since when- and i concede i am the reminder king- did we have to actually think about making time to breathe.

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outrageous.

The Next Step in Evolution and AI

Life, so goes the theory, has evolved over time (lots of time) to adapt to its surroundings. Slightly different surroundings bring slightly different adaptations and voila, we have the staggering variety of life here on Earth in mere millennia. Humans, of course, share this trait. Black People turned into white people over thousands of years while in colder climes, Asians stayed in the sun too long and got squinty eyes and all the rest of it.

The problem now is that we as a species are not allowing nature to catch up. We are constantly inventing new things, changing our environments to suit ourselves. Essentially we are adapting the environment to suit ourselves. The problem with this is it may freeze evolution where it is. We are essentially telling natural selection to go stuff itself, we are perfect as we are and we’ll change everything else to suit us, thank you very much. So we give nature no chance to move on to the next evolutionary step. We can’t read minds, we can’t fly and we can’t be a mind with no body, ever, because we can’t evolve.

Also with medical technology we are keeping those negative evolutions (or devolutions) that would normally kill off the lucky recipients of such changes. So humans as a species are in the midst of a simultaneous devolution and evolution. This can only spell trouble. Taking an extreme and definitely politically incorrect view point, do we really need millions more idiots running around this world just because of the ‘sanctity of life’ and we have prevented them from taking the natural course and killing themselves off.

Of course there is arguments against this and its all value judgements, and its impossible to draw the line. Do we let an otherwise healthy, intelligent person die of cancer just because they ‘evolved’ that way? Or do we have an IQ cutoff for babies and kill them because they are a ‘devolution’? It all gets too complicated so we just go on as we are, and suffer/enjoy the consequences.

The biggest problem I see though is not the evolution/devolution dichotomy, but the possibility that we create something that we can’t control, and ruin everything for everybody. Evolution previously took care of this. If it didn’t work, you died, if it did, you survived. Now with the pace of humans altering their environment to suit themselves, there is no such automatic control.

If genetic modification of crops somehow reduces or eradicates the nutrional value of those crops, there is no way to go back, we’re all screwed. One interesting project I just came across the other day is ‘Blue Brain’. It is essentially a project modelling an entire rat brain from the ground up. They have successfully modelled a single neocortical column, the basic building block of all mammalian brains including humans. The cool thing about this is that when the set it to run, the column created its own networks between its neurons. It essentially grew as a real brain did. Of course it is miles off being true AI, but it is a long way there already.

And this is one of the scariest things about altering our environment, altering it to suit us, instead of altering to suit our environments. What if we create AI and can’t control it. It could be the end of the human race. I have a feeling that all intelligent life reaches this point at some point in its life. We can go one of two ways here, wipe ourselves out, or move onto the next evolutionary stage in our development. And I think its going to be dumb luck, not good management as to which it turns out to be. Bring on The Terminator.

An off-the-cuff blog regarding the first thing that caught my eye

There is a very special item that adorns the wall to the left of my little laptop hub (aka dinner table). Many of you will be familiar with it. Some of you might even be lucky enough to appear in it.

Yes, it’s the infamous photo board that Fincher et al put together for that very special occasion that was my 21^st birthday. Seems like an eternity ago now. Well, I guess 5 years is a long time…

This board is far more than just a collection of photos. I view it as a living, breathing tapestry of memories. Anyone who has sat and gazed at it for even a minute would know just what I mean. It never ceases to amaze me – each time I casually glance at the board I hone in on a photo that I hadn’t noticed for a while, and this triggers a memory which sets off a chain reaction of other associated recollections. Allow me to provide an example.

The photo that just caught my eye is one of me with bleached blonde hair tucking into a sausage in bread. I recall that this was from Ricardo del Sanjay’s 21^st. I then remember the mood of that night….the first time I met The Michael (then known simply as “Michael”)….drinking copious of amounts of what would have been no doubt Coopers, yes, before I became a sellout…I remember thinking it would be a great idea to sleep outside…and then rueing the shit out of this decision as I woke up at the crack of dawn to the blistering January sun after what couldn’t have been more than a couple of hours sleep…I could go on and on.

Now I’d estimate that there would be about 100 photos on the board, probably more. Each one of these is essentially a portal to a myriad of memories of my teens and early 20’s. If my house caught fire, I’d get burnt in order to save the board. Its priceless.

In so many ways gazing at this board is better than watching videos. The story is by no means linear, and each photo triggers so many brilliant little nuances of reminiscence from days where everything seemed so simple, and everyone was never much further than a text message invite away…

Times have changed. The crew has more or less disbanded, geographically anyway. But this board is homage to tighter knit days – and I love it to death.

With great respect and humble appreciation for my co-authors,

- The Moff