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Fuck the System

Started by P3nT4gR4m, March 22, 2014, 12:47:59 PM

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P3nT4gR4m

If I was stuck in one of those hypothetical universes where I am compelled to answer the question "What's my thing?", with a single word, I can't think of one that would apply to me more appropriately than "Systems"

Whatever I look at, whatever I think about, what ever movies or a conversations my imagination plays in my head, a significant portion of my consciousness is picking apart the system or systems at work.

Nowhere is this focus of attention more pronounced than when I'm in my favourite environment, fucking around with one of my favourite stacks of parallel and emergent systems - namely the ocean.

Of all the systems in the universe, none communicate the science of systems to me, more eloquently than the ocean. The ocean is a lense, exposing pressure and weather and planetary gravitational systems to the naked eye. The ocean sings to me of, biology, whispers chaos in my ear, caresses me with particle and wave.

Everything I examine reveals a system or a stack or a chain or, as often as not, an onion structure of emergent layers of systems. Think high level interfaces, built on machine code, running on silicon. Dig a bit deeper, peel back another layer and there's systems of electrons and magnetism and other subatomic fuckery. Peel back another layer and it's something we explain using weird mathematical formulae that I won't pretend or attempt to understand. There's too many systems to learn when you only have one brain.

So I have to pick and choose. One system I chose to learn was computer systems. I learned the machine code and later on the high level languages that emerged from that. I explored the algorithms and structures that exploded, in the digital equivalent of the Cambrian Explosion. The information revolution. It's all systems. Systems built on foundation systems, manipulation by correlation. Manipulation by abstraction.

Abstraction is a really cool meta-system that us computer systems guys have created, to leverage the power of the complexity that our modern machines are capable of driving in a way that wraps up complex lower level interactions into discrete, higher-level, implementations of their collective form and function.

Anyone who's familiar with programming languages in any manner will almost certainly have used the equivalent of the keyword "ECHO" AKA "PRINT" or "PRINTF". They will know that typing this, with the correct syntax and parameters will make your choice of information appear on the screen in the form of text.

What might not be immediately apparent is that the whole concept of the keyword "echo" and the brackets and either the text in the inverted commas or the pointer to a memory area is itself a series of programmatic instructions called a function that presses the right buttons and flicks the right levers to send the right voltages along the right wires to light up specific pixels on the the screen.

The echo command is part of the abstraction "layer" between us and the electronics that allows us to execute a complex series of instructions to tiny little microscopic machines to do something abstract "HELLO WORLD!" Abstraction then wraps up anything from tens to hundreds to thousands of sentences of these instruction keywords into increasingly abstracted code "Layers", until we arrive at the interface. An internet browser or media player or calender or database app. Angry Birds. These are our digital organisms brought to life on a platform of silicon substrate.

I'm reliably informed that we now have the opportunity to apply our systems expertise to a platform that has been with us since before there was even an us but one which we were hitherto unable to harness. I'm talking about biology. Genetic engineering. The first layer of abstraction is well on the way to being solved. I'm here to tell you that this is only the beginning.

Once we have learned the first layer, we apply the next layer of abstraction. We leverage the next order of magnitude in terms of power and control. Then we repeat. And repeat and repeat. Until we're describing, in the queens english, the organic output or the effect that we wish to create or manipulate.

My high school biology is rusty as shit but I seem to remember that biologists have been working for centuries on producing structured programming hierarchy diagrams and models which we can use as a template to develop the final applications framework. They call this system "Classification" Kindom, Phylum, Class, Order... Our module heirarchy.

Think of it as the contents page of the biohacking reference manual.

I'm up to my arse in Brexit Numpties, but I want more.  Target-rich environments are the new sexy.
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"computation is a pattern in the spacetime arrangement of particles, and it's not the particles but the pattern that really matters! Matter doesn't matter." -- Max Tegmark

LMNO

You know, when you're not being a provocative asshole, you're really quite eloquent.

P3nT4gR4m


I'm up to my arse in Brexit Numpties, but I want more.  Target-rich environments are the new sexy.
Not actually a meat product.
Ass-Kicking & Foot-Stomping Ancient Master of SHIT FUCK FUCK FUCK
Awful and Bent Behemothic Results of Last Night's Painful Squat.
High Altitude Haggis-Filled Sex Bucket From Beyond Time and Space.
Internet Monkey Person of Filthy and Immoral Pygmy-Porn Wart Contagion
Octomom Auxillary Heat Exchanger Repairman
walking the fine line line between genius and batshit fucking crazy

"computation is a pattern in the spacetime arrangement of particles, and it's not the particles but the pattern that really matters! Matter doesn't matter." -- Max Tegmark

President Television

#3
Quote from: LMNO, PhD (life continues) on March 22, 2014, 03:24:44 PM
You know, when you're not being a provocative asshole, you're really quite eloquent.

Newsfeed?

EDIT: I've always been kind of amazed that computers can even work. I mean, the display alone, even for something as simple as a command line, must require a volume of data incomprehensible to the human mind. This isn't even getting into shit like real-time rendering in game engines.
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P3nT4gR4m

Some of the graphics in the first part of this video is fucking amazing

Really shows off the kind of hardware we're going to get to play with.

The last bit of this video is some weak as fuck facepalmy intelligent design bullshit. :kingmeh:

I'm up to my arse in Brexit Numpties, but I want more.  Target-rich environments are the new sexy.
Not actually a meat product.
Ass-Kicking & Foot-Stomping Ancient Master of SHIT FUCK FUCK FUCK
Awful and Bent Behemothic Results of Last Night's Painful Squat.
High Altitude Haggis-Filled Sex Bucket From Beyond Time and Space.
Internet Monkey Person of Filthy and Immoral Pygmy-Porn Wart Contagion
Octomom Auxillary Heat Exchanger Repairman
walking the fine line line between genius and batshit fucking crazy

"computation is a pattern in the spacetime arrangement of particles, and it's not the particles but the pattern that really matters! Matter doesn't matter." -- Max Tegmark

POFP

Talks of abstraction always brings me back to Alfred Korzybski and General Semantics, which makes me hate abstraction layers. But the way you describe these specific systems of abstraction layers, it makes me appreciate them again. You know, like, back before they were the reason I didn't see anything with certainty.

My father has been into electronics since he was a teenager, and so he brought me up on the inner-workings of circuits and computer systems. I appreciated them early-on, so they started to bore me as the people around me started talking, in-depth, about them for the first time in my mid-teen years. I connected the concept of abstraction layers to computer systems early-on as well, but I've always been excited in seeing the connection to things outside of "techmology," like biology, as you've suggested.

Definitely tonight's feast for thought. Thanks.
This Certified Pope™ reserves the Right to, on occasion, "be a complete dumbass", and otherwise ponder "idiotic" and/or "useless" ideas and other such "tomfoolery." [Aforementioned] are only responsible for the results of these actions and tendencies when they have had their addictive substance of choice for that day.

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P3nT4gR4m

I don't really see biology as something "outside of technology" It is technology. It's self replicating nano-machines. I think most people don't think of it as tech cos we never invented it. That'll probably change once we optimise it and start really programming new shit with it.

I'm up to my arse in Brexit Numpties, but I want more.  Target-rich environments are the new sexy.
Not actually a meat product.
Ass-Kicking & Foot-Stomping Ancient Master of SHIT FUCK FUCK FUCK
Awful and Bent Behemothic Results of Last Night's Painful Squat.
High Altitude Haggis-Filled Sex Bucket From Beyond Time and Space.
Internet Monkey Person of Filthy and Immoral Pygmy-Porn Wart Contagion
Octomom Auxillary Heat Exchanger Repairman
walking the fine line line between genius and batshit fucking crazy

"computation is a pattern in the spacetime arrangement of particles, and it's not the particles but the pattern that really matters! Matter doesn't matter." -- Max Tegmark

POFP

Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on March 31, 2014, 08:02:26 AM
I don't really see biology as something "outside of technology" It is technology. It's self replicating nano-machines. I think most people don't think of it as tech cos we never invented it. That'll probably change once we optimise it and start really programming new shit with it.

I think you're right.
This Certified Pope™ reserves the Right to, on occasion, "be a complete dumbass", and otherwise ponder "idiotic" and/or "useless" ideas and other such "tomfoolery." [Aforementioned] are only responsible for the results of these actions and tendencies when they have had their addictive substance of choice for that day.

Being a Product of their Environment's Collective Order and Disorder, [Aforementioned] also reserves the Right to have their ideas, technologies, and otherwise all Intellectual Property stolen, re-purposed, and re-attributed at Will ONLY by other Certified Popes. Corporations, LLC's, and otherwise Capitalist-based organizations are NOT capable of being Certified Popes.

Battering Rams not included.