I have this book that I’ve been meaning to read for quite a while now. It’s been sitting on my shelf for a number of years, untouched. It’s called “The Singularity is Near” by Ray Kurzweil. Yep, the same Kurzweil that started the highly accurate sampling with the Kurzweil keyboards, who wrote software that can scan and read written text for the blind, and a list of credits and accomplishments that span pages.
Kurzweil is an amazing man to put it mildly. With parents as artists, he recognized the potential of our creative abilities, and keeps the idea that it can be taken farther, by technology, by our accelerating evolutionary growth. He sees a future where things that we now would consider “magic” (for lack of a better term), is simply a science yet to be discovered.
I for one, believe him. He calls our current time the “knee” of the explosive advancement in technology, spanning biology, AI and nano-machines which can do everything from heal chronic disease to enhance human performance and our thinking processes beyond that of which the brain would normally be capable of. (The knee term means we are at the curve of what appears to be slow progress to things really taking off).
So, amongst our new forum, with old members and new appearing the same, the ability to create ever new and interesting music with the amazing technology we have available to us, and our every increasing need to be the same in our desire, but unique in our creation… I thought Ray Kurzweil deserved a shout out for his contribution, his inspiration that combines sound and technology, and determined effort to make the world a better place in general.
It is sometimes good to remember that if we have limits to this thing we call the “self”, they are beyond our ability to even imagine.
Thanks for the details, and all respect and best wishes to you as you maintain this trend.
On this forum, you can now post pictures, so please do so, in order that we can all now update our mental images to fit who you actually are. Or better still, wait a bit and provide a picture that is, for you, an acceptable compromise. I accept that your shape-changing is still a work-in-progress … you’ve not yet achieved your target for maintenance.
Of course, posting now, with front, side and back views eg topic: [Slimming] Update xx/xx/xx, means we can do our usual thing of chiming in with our encouragements, crits and hints.
Now this is sensitive stuff, so I’ll be as level and as solid as I can. Yes … I’m writing this with a hint of Coffee-Splat-Over-Monitor. But the underlying terror is a real as it was when I first saw your picture, and as when I noticed that the dogs in my own neighbourhood were beginning to wonder whether go for leg-hump or manboob suck.
That’s why I’m continuing this in John On Keyz’ ‘Ray Curzweil’ thread.
That’s the catch-up done.
Now, let’s look at the Captain Beefheart RIP thread. Ruddy Duck introduced it with
Far be it from me to be the first to turn this new forum into a RIP littered cemetery but I’m saddened by the death of Don Van Vliet.
And you, John just started this typhoon of a thread about the attitudes of Ray Kurzweil:
John, part of what you’re pointing out, to my perspective of seeing, includes how Ray Kurzweil lives in and promotes a world in which ‘music-related’ is part of ‘musician’ related - person-related. The person developing the creativity … or to be less tautological … the Person Developing. The developing person.
The above triggers off in me the following contribution to this topic:
User Help User DOES, in my opinion, become the watchword when our technology takes even the developers beyond ‘certainty of support’. This is not a dig at Stenberg … ‘no bugs’ is not possible at the moment. We’re in strange world where a washing machine - fkit - a WASHING machine can CRASH … with a program glitch. In the olden days, all we had to worry about was the belt slipping on a cam. Digital Picture frames … last year, a confirmed scare, that some of them has been hardwired with Trojans which would infect a host computer when picture files were being transferred.
We used to buy Pliers and Hammers and we did not expect ‘bugs’ … and there were none. A splintered haft was a function of misuse or bad wood. Gap your tappets and adjust to tds with the aid of a strobe.
Bottom line, this period of uncertainty, we face with the vestiges of our Newtonian expectations. It is a vision of Utopia or Heaven. However, we face it while walking a road of Purgatory, bereft of the Comfort Zones of the mid-1900s in which Doctors and scientists wore white coats, of tweed jackets while smoking pipes. Greater possibilities - greater unknowns - greater ignorance. Our Victorian and 20th century floodlights are understood to be but candles in a dark expanse of ever-increasing possibility.
And that’s why I cherish Doug’s posting of his topic, his demonstrated trust in us, and of our ability to be the right group with whom to share it. We are not dogs seeking manboobs to suck. We are hunters of the next musical moment, and of the next solutions we need to realise this, and more. I also cherish this Forum’s potential to diminish the probability of premature RIP Threads.
Warning: Metaphysical discourse ahead.
Exactly. I have always maintained a strong and internal belief that while vibration IS all, music is the KEY to all. All things vibrate at different rates and vibrates is inherent in all substance, whether the finest aethers of space to the density of physical matter. But music is the sentience that takes a combination of vibration (the substance), and music (the presence) to create form. There are also hints of the importance of music within our language. For instance the phrase of past generations “Conduct yourself in a civil manner”. “The Muse”, that grey area between the roiling pot of vibrational stew and the potential for the insertion of a created result. “Music”… (Muse-I-C)~see~ I see the muse and want to create a result. “Universe”. One verse, etc… Some pretty heavy references for us simple humans to really wrap our minds around, yet, there it is.
So it all boils down to the fact that with music, we create stuff. Things already in the different planes of existence that science is just beginning to understand. The doorway that defines the difference between idolization (worshiping something) and being (understanding that this something is already inherent in the self).
So yes, The developing person, developing into… more… I know that this kind of spreads the Kurzweil connection, but in some weird way it is also part of it. So no harm done
…and that Purgatory won’t get easier. Ever increasing demands will be applied to the self, physical, mental and spiritual… as well as ever increasing speed needed to meet those demands. Plus, not only do we not have those comfort zones, we also do not have the true unity in our world which would make the passage a hell of a lot easier. So like you, if I see someone bare their soul, it gives me a little spark of hope to build upon… knowing that that unity is still there, just obscured from my eyes.
It is one of the main reasons I expanded my music to tell a story, to search the unknown in a language different from the Babel that comes out of my mouth. Musicians have this undercurrent of energy which I am attracted to, something I can not find present in any other place whether physical or virtual.
