h. Play

When I was young reading this classic manga, I always thought that the world described in was absurd and yet charming with this blend of high tech, simple country life with a few mega pole.

I am now considering that it might be our future. To a curiously accurate extent.

Here’s a  (full) description of Earth in the Dragon Ball world:

Politically, Earth has a planet-wide constitutional monarchy. It is divided into 43 "sectors"

Absurd!! I was thinking during the early 90s. Kings are things from the past! Well now here’s the facts:

“The total household wealth in the world has been estimated at $125 trillion in year 2000. 90% of this wealth is held by people in North America, Europe, and high-income Asian countries, and 1% of adults are estimated to hold 40% of world wealth, a number which falls to 32% when adjusted for purchasing power parity.”

Of course it’s worse in 2010 (in the US the top 20% holds 85% of the wealth, note the opinion difference).That just looks like a monarchy, including the fact that this 20% of people can do whatever they want politically. Oh wait they can and they abuse it!

But what makes me think that this planet-wide monarchy could happen is that the 99% other adults are often dreaming about being part of this over-wealthy 1%. Just in the software realm the Apple AppStore works this way, even controlled by a dictatorship people are happy even if the facts are bad, really bad (half of all developers will earn less than $682 per year, read that twice). People believe and you can’t do nothing against that. Hope, even a not-so-smart one is powerful.

Hope ensures the system to go on and on forever to deliver just that, a constitutional monarchy across the world populated by millions of little communities everywhere (decentralization from a corrupted and pyramidal state) with 4 or 5 mega pole simply called East West South North Central City where people would try to make it. It doesn’t seem crazy for me: L.A./NYC, Paris/Marseille, Barcelona/Madrid… It’s already the case. Also we definitely need the same rights, assignments, economic rules everywhere. If we solve all the conflicts of today, it would do that: making everybody ok on how we live on Earth, under the same “mega” state.

Other point, younger I thought the future would be you know, all the future at once, crazy cities and flying cars. But probably it would happen as in Dragon Ball and as in real world today: technology adds itself but doesn’t destroy the older one. We spend insane amount of time in front of computers yet books are still here and worth some big businesses, still.

Let’s go deeper. 

“Though less common, intelligent anthropomorphic (and sometimes non-anthropomorphic) animals such as Oolong and Puar are integrated into the population and are well-adjusted and are also accepted as people. (This is similar to fairy tale animals in European fiction)”

I don’t know if intelligent anthropomorphic animals are going to happen but we’re sure crazy about these dogs cats and whatever animal you like. We even use terrorist-class systems to track down people treating kitties badly and the internet is having some sort of obsession with cats dogs and other cute non human living things. And maybe evolution is going to help them getting more like us: some dogs know how to ride Moscow metro to hang around the city.

So to conclude, a world based on a monarchy populated with robots (btw look at this video, I want one too and also, ROBOT NANNIES via Sean), old and weird people, indestructible old machines, little businesses, community-driven jobs, cheap and simple high quality of life with smart animals, ruled by a powerful, arbitrary but distant political system seems plausible.

I don’t know if Akira Toriyama thought about the accuracy of its world… Anyway, looking forward for these capsules…

One of the first on the road.

General Sherman, largest tree in the world.

Lords of the forest since the Ice Age.

 
It wouldn’t bend over.

After a few hours of driving from the level of the sea to around 2000 meters up in the mountains, there they are. Thousands years old fat ass sequoias. It’s amazing because it’s so sudden: from L.A. you cross the big plain before Bakersfield with nothing but flat fields. Then it’s little bushes on hills on the way to the forest. And then in 20 minutes there are trees everywhere and “holy shit” giant trees.

Magic. You feel you’re going to see a giant monster ala Shadow of the Colossus or Totoro walking slowly in the mist…

I have always looked at religions from the side like, “Hi. Why you’re here?”.

My dad was doing catechism and it never worked with me, I was laughing at the silliness of it. I wasn’t a rebel but for that thing, totally. No offense but it seemed too dumb. First I was reading a ton of stuff about rockets and space (future Ariane 5 was in the work) and science and nothing seemed limited for humans so why would I ask “God”? And if God is the answer to everything, stop asking questions and bugging me about it then.

Second my mother didn’t participate in any religious activity nor she was talking about it. She was the only person not to go to church when it was happening (rarely) and for my Mini Me, that was something. She was pretty much never wrong so if she wasn’t going, that was probably the right thing to do, wasn’t it?

 
Some people truly believe that. Think about that.

I went to a private catholic school later, but religion was only a cross on a wall and that was pretty much it. The 90s were starting and religion in France seemed to be a thing of the past. Meaning, nobody in the streets would wear anything religious or nobody would care, US based TV shows with references to God –yeah, quite often- always were a source of lol, medias were always ready to kick religion in the balls at the first occasion etc. All we had was the pope message for the New Year which would always triggered “isn’t he dead already?” jokes about him, this old dude from the past, having no influence, except maybe the Latin world. The pope always has been a Mummy Star there.

Seriously, I thought at some point that religion and mostly the Christian thing, was about to slowly die around 2000 and that sounded about right for the New Millennium filled with obvious jetpacks and holo-computers.

Turned out to be the exact opposite way.

I think that even worse than the wars triggered by 9/11 is the resurgence of religions and especially the ones based on the same stories. Soon after the tragedy every single president in Europe was having a trip to the Vatican and when Jean Paul II died it was almost like we forgot about all the stupid shit he and his posse supported. JP II dies and medias with live TV events ask, seriously, if the white smoke announcing to the world the election of a new pope is white enough??? That really was the 2005 WTF moment. Yesterday I watched a video of a young French woman saying about an aggression in the metro “Thank God protected me”. That someone younger than me born in France is turning herself to religion and pray  (for Islam “infidels” to be punished I suppose) kind of hurts.

It simply shows a high level of desperation. We fail to build a post-religion social structure evolving with us while providing security. That’s the challenge. Technology is accelerating so much, changing paradigms, transforming our lives, even businesses have a hard time keeping up with it. States are so far away it’s not even funny, not capable of providing this balanced social structure we want, making us angry. In this constant changing world I can see how an unchanged and stable system like religion is appealing, even more in the US where the state is so not providing enough. But to me it just seems insane to go this way…

I don’t know religion much, but I know they aren’t that right

Religions tend to be so totally outdated for our times, especially for women, how do they rise in popularity in a Facebook and Internet world, I don’t know. It makes me think about someone like Ron Paul, a Republican who can be wise voting against the Iraq War, opposing the War on Drugs , not supporting death penalty, being gay friendly or be tech friendly and at the same time being so WASP that he doesn’t believe in evolution (so yes, he’s pro-life). The dude is a libertarian until it hits his religious nerve. Religion is just fucking people up, that’s all I see.

These days, here in the US people laugh at an over religious woman but you have to be in a very religious country to found something like Scientology and make it work so good. In France people think that Islam is bad for women when everybody knows how bad Catholicism has been for women since forever. Like any religion I’d say.

The point is religions today should not be part of culture or being seen as part of it, period. It was, History is here to prove it thanks. But it’s not now, at all, it just makes things worse from France to Germany to NYC. Immigration and melting pot are unstoppable so let’s make it fluid by not fighting over really old virtual stuff that don’t matter in the world of today.

People prefer to rumble between groups instead of just being themselves, individuals who can enjoy any culture of the world and have their own preferences without attacking or degrading others because they don’t share them? Fine.

I’ll be somewhere, playing with robots.

Somehow this company is under the radar when it comes to complain about software but jeez, they should be on top.

I remember the times when I didn’t get what was the difference between Shockwave and Flash. I didn’t give a damn because it was all so great to see and try this brand new technology. All my graphic designer friends were just too happy and it was like we’re going to do animated movies for the intertubes and become billionaires.

I’ve never had problems with Adobe until I use their products of course. Photoshop is such a standard that there’s no question about it (although they’re slow at updating some obvious stuff). For their graphic tools,  their first business, nothing to say more than competitors.

But for the rest… Their fucking formats. The PDF. So awesome in the concept. So awful to use, even professionally the software is full of bugs and UI inconsistencies.  And Adobe Reader is more annoying that Norton. Maybe not, but really close.

Nooooooooooo

Flash. As long as it was used for games (and especially downloadable) it was great but since it became the standard for media players on the web, it’s not ok. The difference between having Flash installed or not when you’re browsing is astonishing, it’s more fluid, it doesn’t hang, the computer stays cool etc. But of course at some point, you have to fucking install the plugin…  I made it for a month without it and I now use a Flash blocker. HTML 5 should fix the problem but it’s still a long road from being able to deal without Flash, the slow and cpu intensive media player. Damn I hate it.

I’m creating e-learning content with their tool Captivate and besides the annoyance of having updates all the time for the Helper (???) Adobe AIR or for Flash security, the software is a pile of shit. They rewrote a new version that has been late and went out in June this year. It’s worse. Like, opening a template from Adobe and having the app crashing immediately. Every time. The menu Insert offers you to insert New Slide and Blank Slide which is the fucking same thing. I can’t target old computers with Flash 7. The AS2/AS3 mess. The Help is awful with a shitty in-app browser, I can’t open the help pdf with Foxit Reader (gotta love Acrobat The Retard) and so on.

It’s a tool meant for productivity and all I get is terrible frustration by loosing time trying to do simple things that barely work.

They sell Captivate 5 at a whooping 800$. For a world-class company that size, with that price and a poor quality like that, it feels like they’re spitting in my face. It’s the first time I’m so pissed off after purchasing a download. I think I’ll never buy any Adobe product ever again.

Adobe just doesn’t give a shit or they’re in panic mode, reaching for every creation tools market possible and extend their shitty formats use I don’t know but it’s now really ridiculous.

Yes, there’s no big competition against them and that’s the main problem.

Releasing some music always feels like being naked while presenting some architecture project to a group of people.

The workflow in my mind looks like this:

“Good…Mmh ok so there’s a conflict of sound at this moment, what should I do, lower this synthesizer volume or cut through frequencies with the EQ or lower the cycle of that operator? Let’s try and then apply the master compressor to see if it works… Almost… Now if I just get enough of reverb feedback at this moment, that should add to the consistency in the background… Right, so that grooves but because the HPF adds a lot of overhead on this track, I’m going to lower it at the same time… Nice curve, be smooth, less than -4 dB.. OK! Now rewind and PLAY”

Repeat. And that is just the mixing stage, but the point is that I really feel building something, creating it with plans, expectations, failures, progress and some sort of deadline… Daniel Cook did an amazing blog post about visualizing the creative process and it fascinates me how well it defines design, could it be music or a game or even your own way of skateboarding. The creative process is the same. It’s probably the same for a lot of people. Even you.

Anyhoo, here’s the last track:

Patchwork by Harold

I wish it was used in some demoscene stuff… Enough, let’s play some bass.

Or the complicated relationship between software and hardware and how the software is always the most important thing.

The best example of the complexity would be the HTC case. HTC makes phones. They’re so fast at iterating their models that they jumped into the software wagon after witnessing the iPhone’s kick in the mobile butt. HTC started its work on user interface in 2008 with TouchFLO 3D which became HTC Sense, both for Windows Mobile and Android. Really neat integration with social media and stuff that wasn’t available anywhere else in these ancient times, last summer.

iOS/HTC Sense/WP7. I’m totally bored with icons now, so WP7 is really appealing to me UI/UX wise.

These user interfaces (software) really had a huge role on selling phones (hardware). Today, manufacturers all try or do that: customizing the phone’s OS they’re selling. Which is the reason they all embrace Android and are not big fans of Windows Phone 7 which doesn’t allow customization like Windows Mobile 6.5 did. And yeah, they embrace Android now because the next version, Android 3, will not allow that skinning and rebranding shit.

The biggest bad point of this customization craze is that carriers and manufacturers abuse it and basically lock phones on features. Thankfully it’s mostly a US thing. In Europe, laws are behind consumers on that matter and phones can not be locked to carriers, it’s anti-competitive practice. Carriers already fuck us up quite well, thanks.

The second bad point is that having a customized phone software makes you unable to update easily and you all know how much it’s important these days. HTC finally released the update of HTC Sense for Android 2.1, except that Android is now at 2.2 and Google just released a new Gmail app that only works on 2.2… See? What was supposed to be a seemingless experience, is not. And HTC is trying the same with Windows Phone 7: adding a layer of user interface because it used to sell phones.

Manufacturers and carriers, face it: users don’t need your interfaces and widgets anymore because the main OSes of the market are today well mature and are looking good, thanks. Moreover, developers NEED a homogeneous market so that they can focus on the quality of their products and by making special OSes or blocking features, you’re not helping that.

True, the closer the relationship is between the hardware and the software, the better it is for everyone. The problem is that if it works, people will always forget about the hardware: I don’t have a HTC Hero, I have an Android phone. That really sucks for hardware people. How can they differentiate themselves? Yep, software customization and bigger marketing (SamsungGalaxyyy) that’s about all.

Hardware people want to shine like Apple. The problem is Apple works because it’s small, the Apple way cannot work with dozens of hardware makers and multiple OS providers.

Can’t wait to see the output of HP’s Palm critically acclaimed webOS.

Seriously, the tablet market is going to be such a mess especially for developers. That’s not good news, more time spent to try to make an app work everywhere… Like usual right, but I thought we were learning from our mistakes somehow.

This is where a hardware-wise open platform with a widespread OS like the couple x86/Windows, serving everybody quite well from the developer to the user, is pretty remarkable. Because looking at the mobile market and the overall trend in technology from a business standpoint, this kind of balance sounds like a dream.

I absolutely cannot imagine what it’s like to not choose your parents like 99.99999% of you. I cannot feel what it’s like to be linked to someone by the mighty Randomness of this Universe, to look like him.This feeling doesn’t exist for me.

I’m born through one of the most tragic freedom in this world, which is abandon your child forever. I am the result of a highly improbable fate that would have been impossible to achieve without people believing and people trusting each other, even if they are fundamentally different and wouldn’t share anything if I wasn’t here. I was in the middle of an amazing flow of respect and will to do good between opposites. Nothing too religious, just people making moral contracts that yeah, they’re going to make this work (guys, thanks again).

This made me very sensitive to randomness in life. I don’t like it. It reminds me of the start of my life. But this is how all of you started. You started by being randomly attached to two people by blood while I started by being attached with my consent to five people by moral contracts and paperwork.That’s quite different.

I can’t stop thinking that the way people are born allows societies to allow inconsistent behaviors and say it’s ok. Because I always feel more annoyed by these than anyone so far. 

My whole life started badly but quickly went really consistent, like maybe too much. But it made me what I am now and I could have been a much worse person at so many stages… 

The most inconsistent thing for me is how you people behave. And I have a hard time to know how to handle it, what to say knowing that my perspective comes from being born in a total chaos followed by an extreme consistency, comes through social barriers inexistent to me but ruling your world… It’s like I understand you very well while I don’t understand you at all at the same time, alternatively.

That makes me socially awkward, silent. Dreamy. Alone.

Exactly. Picture by Cris Dobbins