A Shot, A Regular and A Set of Brake Pads

I hand-crafted Motorola Mafia purposely, as an injection meme to test the vectoring possibilities of the Blogosphere. It generated three thousand page hits in three days and pierced the firewalls of perhaps three dozen electronics companies. Even I was surprised and I planned it.

But I didn't plan a "personal" cagegory, it just "became necessary".

Sort of how this story of three people is necessary tonight.

------

Christmas at the Vogue. A slender, shirtless boy approaches me with a tray, pops a shot down and grins.

"Merry Christmas"

Great. How do I tell him that we will NOT be going home together without being rude? I smile and drink. But as he leaves, I present my dilemma to the woman beside me and she laughs.

"That's just Chris, don't worry about it. He's always like that."

But now I have thoughts of hippies and free love and the 1960s.

Weeks later, I run into Chris again. He's nice, but he doesn't know what to make of me. I pass him a twenty and thank him for Christmas. He immediately rejects it and I shake my head.

"No, no. Use it for ten other people."

He gives me a movie star smile, nods and walks away.

---------

The Blue Room in New York City is not completely blue. If you search carefully before beer, there are remnants of its previous life; I suppose it was "The Brown Room". Our two principals are "Count Yorga", a vampiric idiot-savant computer geek (very three-sigma) and "Shaq", a large, B-grade comedian turned realtor.

I came across Shaq and Yorga in my first week. Each night we went various places, but we always started out from the Blue Room.

Shaq and Yorga drank.
A lot.
And I matched them.

Towards the end of my stay, Yorga was laid off and wanted to celebrate. Later, we'd had too much and Shag (who is quietly scary in size) turns suddenly and grabs my shoulder.

"Great", I think. "Here it comes, I pissed him off somehow."

Surprise passes over his face, then confusion.
Then a smile.

"You're a regular.", he chuckles.
"A regular what?", I ask.
"A regular, here, at the Blue Room. You're strange enough that you fit in."

Yorga suddenly comes to life, emphatically nodding his pale, bald head.

"Yeah, yeah, you're right, he's a regular."

Apparently this is high praise from a native New Yorker.
And the most memorable thing I heard during my visit.

--------

In New Jersey, I worked with a polite Indian man one year off the boat with a cell phone fetish. One day I heard him talking quietly about his new Nissan Sentra. He sighed as he hung up.

"What's wrong?"
"My car. It will cost $700 to fix the brakes."

"What? What's wrong with them?"
"The pads are worn out and the rotor is worn."

I pushed him over to an on-line Checkers store, where he discovered that brake pads cost $50 instead of $300 and now he's confused.

"They're lying to you", I said.
"But I don't understand. Why?"

"Because they can. Look, buy the pads, buy a book, and spend an hour loosening some bolts. Check with your friends here. It's easy, I've done it a dozen times."

But he spends the week with a sceptical scowl.

The following Monday he walks in quickly, straight to me.
He's ready to hug me, his arms flail around, a bit too close for comfort.

"You were right! It was so easy! My friend helped me, the cost was $50 and less than one hour of time!"

And from then on he was my most helpful and determined fan.
He saved me twice from embarassing errors.

And only because I did what any decent American would do.
It cost me nothing to do it.

----

And now I will go out and have fun because my father survived a cancer operation this week.

SARS versus Avian Flu Meme

Comparison of dejanews keyword counts for "SARS virus" and "Avian flu" -

Several points of interest in this simple graph. The "world awareness" of both panics is similar (so far). And notice how the "SARS" spike generates a minor blip (a discussion) about "avian flu", and vice versa.

The "SARS" dead-cat bounce peak triggers a much greater discussion about "avian flu".

I have a theory. In the pre-electricity world, information travelled at about the same rate and same vectors as disease. In today's world, information travels far faster than human vectors, even with airplanes. It's possible that the Internet played a hand in preventing a SARS epidemic in 2003.

Refer back to the Meme Capacitance Equivalent entry. It was probably mumbo-jumbo to 99% of the readers back then, but "SARS" versus "Avian Flu" demonstrates its relevance. Previous meme exposure probably leaves a persistent societal fingerprint (a permanent change in reaction) which is measurable during successive exposures to the same (or a similar) meme.

Comparison of latency fingerprints for "SARS" and "avian flu" (time scale for "SARS" is shifted, for ease of comparison) -

I had expected to see distinct differences if the previous "SARS" exposure created a persistent change in how society reacts to a pandemic meme. Look at how sharp the response is to "avian flu" versus "SARS". Most people don't know the true mortality rate of SARS. I monitored the case numbers daily and the mortality was fearful, something in the 15-20% range, roughly equivalent to the Black Plague.

Circumstantial evidence, though.
Not a real proof, but it is a good example of why a "meme capacitance" equivalent might be useful.

----

Note: The words "beautiful" and "attractive" are often used interchangeably, but I'm fairly careful to use them appropriately.

Tic TAC

Well. I must admit, the past four months in Seattle is the most peace I've had in past nine years, in spite of the (milder than anticipated) Kookiness of The Minions.

Tara and Bridget showed concern about me last night. Ha. They obviously haven't read their secret LJ advisories! And this assistant manager apparently believes that I'm potential husband material.

I don't think so.
Surely not now, but maybe I never was.

"The differentiated economy"...I should flesh it out a little more.

And off to SeaTAC.
And maybe Discovery Park again.

What The Hell

are you doing on my site at 4:30AM in the freaking morning?!

Even *I* am not my site at 4:30AM... unless I saw a particularly interesting woman tonight and most of LiveJournal.com was after my ass!!!!

Shoo!
Go to sleep!

"Maple Valley?!"
Don't make me hunt you down!
GO TO SLEEP!

Vogue Rogue

Hmmm. It seems I was wrong about the six shrieking wiccans" after my skull.

Make that six shrieking wiccans and most of LiveJournal.com -

The Vogue will be risky tonight, but that's why I have health and life insurance.
As Sergeant Akbar used to say (before he was wasted in one of the Continental raids), "Kismet".

Choke Collar Of Conformity

Is the Information Age a different animal than previous industrial ages?

The primary difference between the Information Age and previous industrial revolutions is quantitative, although each age has a defining characteristic. The Industrial Revolution of the late 1800s produced around a 10:1 productivity increase in argiculture and manufacturing from 1865 to 1880. Productivity gains during the Information Age are higher by orders of magnitude, although the bulk of that increase is limited to internal use in the IT industry.

It seems likely that the Cultural Diffusion is real and a direct result of the Information Age. In prior times, this diversification would have been a balkanizing force on mainstream culture, producing a general breakdown in communications, civility and productivity. Are there new factors at work which support the benefits of higher diversity while avoiding this balkanizing effect?

Essentially, we would need a strong Choke Collar of Conformity along core areas to support higher diversity -

(No, those are not Cat 'O Nine Tails, although perhaps I had some subliminal thoughts going on!)

Mainstream culture requires a certain level of commitment to core values from the majority. Is is possible to isolate the core values necessary for stability from those values which define diversity. I know that I can design an IT system which does, but is it likely to occur by pure hapstance in today's world?

I suppose the real questions is... how can we make quantifiable measurements to prove or disprove it?

---

FYI - if you google from outside the US, Google still forwards the originating IP address. If I remember correctly, Hurricane Dominique passed through Thailand several years ago. But I don't have time or inclination to track it all that finely, although I did enjoy the poke at Carson. Or Pat. Whoever it was at Ping.

Microsoft Virus Meme

You have two choices at work.
You can cover your ass.
Or you can build things.

I build things.

In 2000, Nate was pushed out of his position by The Three Stooges. (another story, another time)
I asked him what he was going to do about it.

"Keep building things. That's the best revenge", he said.
I have to admit, he was right.

Microsoft Virus Meme

Notice how the "virus" portion of "Microsoft" bandwidth continues growing over time, up until 2004 or so.

-----

And thursday night is Popoff Night, at least for five more weeks!

Wrath of the Wiccan Witches

Well, the good news is my site made a new high in repeat visits.
But the cost of that achievement was... Six Shrieking Wiccans seeking my scalp.

I annoyed not only the Wiccans, but apparently their enemies as well.

I hope they don't know voodoo.

I have been tempted
by fruit hanging ripe on the tree

I need some beef ribs tonight.

Art Meme Project (continued)

Prologue: A bizzare barrage of mixed messages preceded our hero's escape to dinner and a drink.....

Okay, I survived dinner.

But not even I may survive the Wrath of the Wiccan Witches ( an entry for next week! ).

Onward!

Our goal is to create an Information System design that supports artistic endeavors. It is, essentially, an idea factory plugged into current culture.

The Ideosphere is the full range of memes in motion. The previous artistic deductions determined two deliverables: An art theme (an interface in software terms) and a range of interpretations (implementations in software).

We want a theme that's not too mainstream, but not too obscure.
And we want a theme that supports a wide range of interpretation and human experience.

Using a tool like Meme Miner, we can cross-cut the Ideosphere for memes that are "just right", dialing in the desired popularity or obscurity on the initial cut. We can then re-cut each chosen meme for associated keywords. The diversity of these keywords is a rough proxy for "range of interpretations".

For example, the "LOVE" meme is highly mainstream. "RICHARD GERE WITH GERBILS" is funny, but fairly obscure. But these two memes establish upper and lower limits. Assume that a "primal fear" meme falls between them, within our desired range.

Re-cutting the "primal fear" meme yields a range of keywords, assume that they are "dog", "house" and "Richard Gere" among others. We choose these three sub-themes as the target invocations - feelings and memories of attack dogs, home-cooked meals and... ahem... gerbils, I guess.

The tool would be fairly easy to build, perhaps a few weeks for one or two programmers.

Swinging

Do The Maca-Lena

Note: Must... play... music clip for... full artistic effect.

When I dance
They call me Goddess Lena!

And the bedbugs
They think I'm so buena!

They all want me!
They can't have me!!!

So they all come
And share the house with me!

Moved with me!
Chomped on me!

And if I could...
I'd bug-bomb the whole city!

HEYYYYYY, Goddess Lena!

The Cultural Diffusion, Again

The Cultural Diffusion graphs are not an exhaustive proof. They're hardly a proof at all, they are circumstantial evidence. However, I did devise a scheme for an exhaustive proof that language is diversifying, which makes a stronger case for the overall theory.

The Methodology

• Take random document samples from Usenet which make up a time-series.


• Make measurements on the total word count of the average article.


• Make measurements of the total unique word count.

What should appear is that the total unique word count grows steadily over time, indicating an expanding domain of memes in the general population. The total document length should remain constant, but it's a variable that impacts the theory.

It will probably take me a little while to build a Usenet document randomizer. I imagine that Google will have it finished before me. But I will publish the results.

The Cultural Diffusion

The "cultural diffusion" (and the "attention deficit") have rattled around my mind for several years. I don't know why I never thought of using the Meme Miner to verify it.

But I finally did.

Total information grows faster than human population (for now) and it's easily duplicated, so the finite space of each human skull gets a greater diversity of information than ever in history. If information is a prime driver of culture, then "cultural diffusion" should occur; mainstream culture should shrink as fringe cultures spawn and grow.

A strategic view of the theory -

The result would be escalating costs expressed as information problems - miscommunication, cultural conflicts, etc. Eventually, the net cost of diversity should exceed its societal benefits and produce a big drop in the price of information as demand falls off.

An operational view of the process, as more memes enter our finite mental bandwidth -

The Methodology

I used "love" as a baseline (it was the strongest foundation meme I found, in total count and sustained growth) and as a proxy for total meme bandwidth. Hard numbers of total Usenet postings would be much better, but I think the proxy works. As I did in the movie memes, I charted the exponential growth of several "foundation" memes in comparison to the "love" meme, to measure if they are gaining or losing bandwidth.

In the cultural diffusion theory, most memes should continuously lose bandwith as new memes appear before old memes fade out.

Foundation memes are so deeply embedded in culture that they're barely affected by cultural fads or marketing manipulation. They retain quite predictable counts across long time periods. The labels marked "divergence" indicate that the meme starts fading, losing its percentage share of bandwidth. And here are the results -

This bandwidth "divergence" occurs over a good range of time periods - 1995, 1996, 2003, etc. But there are clusters of major change. One, in particular, stands out: The Dot Com Crash.

Most of the foundation memegraphs look like these graphs. And I have yet to see a case where divergence begins and then reverses. Are there alternate explanations? I would certainly think so, but I'll stick to my theory for now.

There could be numerous social and economic implications.

Tres Generacions

Tricky, tricky, tricky Generation X and sometimes Y and U.
Dressed down in sly-dye shirts and innocent faces.
Ahhhh..
yeah.

If you think that the timing is a coincidence, then you ain't paying attention, dad.

I understand why the old Motorola guys are creeped out by Infomation Y.
It is swimming with sharks.
A strange invisible network tracking you.

Heck, who needs the NSA?

I believe in two things, I have seen them in action; Synchronicity and Hurricane Dominique.

As I did my twelve mile walk yesterday, I realized that I have trudging through the Aftermath of Hurricane Dominique. I can see the residual traces in the clubs and in the journals. I didn't come to Seattle to parse through the rubble, but since I was already here....

I have also seen synchronicity, but Information Y muddies the waters these days.

And... back to the code.

Knick Knacks

The Cultural Diffusion is real, I'm fairly sure now.

I extracted some strong circumstantial evidence this week.
It's just that it looks slightly different than I had expected.

The movie memes led me down the right path, though.

There will be a partial graph tomorrow, I have security stuff to tweak today. I wish I could be absolutely sure that I'm not interpreting it wrong, or that it's some weirdness in Google's indexing scheme.

The Art of Ambiguity

Prologue: The Mixed Message pattern (MMP) is a political pattern. It is how politicians win elections. They embedded contextually-sensitive keywords and phrases in speeches which are designed for specific constituencies, but are near meaningless to other constituencies; George Bush and the Christian Right, for example.

In Seattle, art and politics are often intertwined. The Popoffs are not Art, but they're loud, the beer is cold and my mind is skipping from Art to software to the MMP and back around again.

Software is an Art, I've often heard.

But what is Art?
In particular, what is Art in relation to the MMP?

Wait a minute.
Art is context-driven, right?
Perhaps at its highest-level, Art is a variation of the Mixed Message Pattern.

So I worked out a possible Art meme with some logic and software design principles.

A work of art should appeal to a select audience, and elicit differing interpretation. In software tems, the art should speak to a single mental interface, an interface which is broad-based, but with a wide range of implementations. For example,

"LOVE"

Consider "LOVE" as the interface, the theme of our art project. It is broad-based with a myriad of interpretations. Love my mom, love my dog, love my job, or love my brand-new shoes.

So now we could build a software model of what "Art" looks like, as an abstract template or pattern.

Well, not quite yet.

We have the idea of interface and implementation, but what about "subject matter"?

We don't want it too fringy, cause there's a limited audience and we might get arrested by the cops.
We don't want it too popular, because the market is already saturated and after all, we're making ART, not coffee cups!

Yes.
That's it, then.
We need a visual diagram, but after I eat dinner, listen to more loud music and down a beer or two.