Casey At Bat

Thanks to the IAmFacingForeclosure.com analysis, my site is currently in the top 10 Google results for:

"IAmFacingForeclosure"
"IAmFacingForeclosure.com"

so I'm getting a slice of Casey's clickstream from Google as well as from links posted on his site. Today's IAmFacingForeclosure.com hype, television broadcast and incoming addresses are additional indicators that his site traffic has peaked out. The traffic spike was less than I'd expected.

There's a lot of interesting things going on with net traffic, search engine traffic, personal ads traffic that I might post up later. Essentially, they point to site saturation, just like the social networking and MySpace memes indicate.

The destruction of your currency in progress...
Silver matched its previous high from earlier in 2006 (currently at $14.10/oz). The dichotomy of ever-increasing inflation and deflation indicators is amazing to watch. This is history in action, folks!

And I'm off to Kansas City.

The Art Of The Unique : Decorator

Tonight the balcony was colder, winter a little older but the trees on the street still had christmas lights glowing red, blue, green and yellow. I mulled over my favoite tree. Last time I'd made it Unique with a trick of context. Was there another technique?

Luckily I had a string of monocolor lights and a stepladder in my car. After twenty minutes of work, my favorite tree glowed only with cobalt blue lights. I stepped back and applied the test of Uniqueness:

Was this tree different? Oh, yes.
Was it unusual? Sure.
Was it unrepeated? Definitely.
Was it rare?

Was it? I wasn't sure. Within a few city blocks and for the winter, perhaps it was. Now my notion of "context" included timeframe as well as location. I'd transformed the tree to Unique without altering context, but by altering its external facade. Then I realized that this was an instance of the Decorator design pattern.

It still felt wrong.
The change was too transient, too temporary.
Too modern.

Uniqueness from organic properties should be different than Uniqueness from a facade. Don't you think? In any event, the facade forced my realization that Uniqueness is also time-based. An object may not have it, then it might, then it may not again. Think of a baseball player, an actor, or a politician. They are unknown, then famous, then forgotten.

The Decorator pattern is often used to create the illusion of Uniqueness in today's world. A Honda Accord with a special paint job. A ghost writer. A tattoo.

The Art Of The Unique : Uniqueness

The Art Of The Unique (TAOTU) : Understanding the gestation, composition and value of Uniqueness in the Information Age. This may lead to theories which identify, foster, assay or suppress potential Uniqueness, and how Uniqueness may transform during the Information Age.

In GeekSpeak, a "unique" object is explicitly identifiable by a set of attributes. Every Honda Accord has a unique Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) so in GeekSpeak, each car is unique. Do you feel that any Honda Accord you see is unique?

This is not a useful definition. A broader scope is needed; a context-driven, social definition, a definition for The Mind's Eye.

Let's build the definition of a unique object using terms from Thesaurus.com:

Is the object "different"?
Is the object "unusual"?
Is the object "unrepeated"?
Is the object "rare"?

but excluding terms of GeekSpeak or with connnotations of "good" or "bad", such as:

exclusive
solitary
lone
exceptional
best
unimaginable

This is a first draft, subject to revision, it should be more quantifiable. We'll test this definition in The Art Of The Unique : The Artificial. I chose this starting point because of aspects of the Information Age, to be identified later.

These Damn Leather Pants

I walked down the street in my leather biker pants, black Japanese hacker t-shirt and new black shoes. Three women stopped to ask about the pants and I explained that they were for Goth Night at the Balcony Club.

"Why don't you have eyeliner and black fingernails?", the blonde asked.
"Too much work. Wearing pants is easier."

They kept eyeing those pants.

"Would you like to touch them?", I finally asked.
"Oh, yes, yes"

All three stepped forward to finger my pants legs.

"Oh, they're so soft", cooed the blonde and I put my hands up in surrender.

"Okay, okay, you can touch them in other places if you want!"

They tittered at my audacity, stepping back, jabbering in excitement. As I turned to walked away, they giggled out suggestive comments and half-hearted attempts to get me back into conversation.

Later, I owned the pool table at a downtown bar, beating four regulars in succession. A young co-ed watching from the sidelines. She plunked down her quarters to challenge, flashing me a big smile but a fifth regular stepped in, anxious for revenge. She gave me another big smile, apparently hopeful about playing me in the next round, but this fifth guy beat me! He didn't get a big smile.

Chicks are schemers.

---

Hey, I put some new shoes on
And suddenly everything is right!

The Art Of The Unique : Rough Outline

1) Determine a quantifiable definition of "Unique"
2) Create "free market" argument about differentiation
3) Why should anyone care about "uniqueness" as an abstract quality
4) Uniqueness as a pricing issue, both higher and lower
5) Uniqueness as a function of organic properties with 3-sigma values
6) Uniqueness as a decorator pattern, today's artificial uniqueness
7) Expand the dichotomy of the common versus the differentiated
8) How to determine the optimum "choke" point for differentiation
9) Limits on uniqueness in the Industrial Revolution versus limits in the Information Age
10) The folly of extreme differentiation
11) Strategy for identifying uniqueness in a pre-inflection state
12) The Geek Definition of "Unique" versus "The Mind's Eye".

That's a good start for the moment.

The Art Of The Unique : Context

It was almost closing time. The second floor balcony was cold but I'd worn my leather pants. Barren trees lined the street, their white bark branches circled with cheery christmas lights. I studied the tree directly below.

Was it special?
Was it different from the other trees?

The branch pattern was different but was that enough? The stringing and order of christmas lights was different, too. But this was true for every tree. I saw variation but not uniqueness.

How could this tree stand out?

What if I removed its competitors?
What if I moved this tree to the central plaza down the street?

Ahhh.
Yes.
This imperfect copycat would be unique within the context of the plaza.

Context is a determinant of The Unique.
Defining context is necessary in The Art Of The Unique.

A namespace for Reality.

If I define context, do I also control it?
Do I need to control it?

The Art Of The Unique

"A Muse-poet falls in love, absolutely, and his true love is for him the embodiment of the Muse..."

---

I have a disease.
I am afflicted with a Muse!
She makes me write these words...

The mundane defines The Unique.

How can we identify The Unique?
How can we categorize its effect and value?
How can we nuture it?
When should it be supressed?

What does The Unique look like in a world of infinite differentiation?
Does it look like anything at all?

Ruth pulled me onto the dance floor. My hips couldn't sync with her motions; her blouse was too loose and her breast popped free. She quickly tucked it back in, mildly embarrassed but also happy and excited. Then I recognized her. She'd approached two weeks ago, stood near, watchful but hadn't followed through.

Erica stood out from the crowd, alone, perceptive, waiting. She moved from my far left to my near right and giggled when our eyes met twice. Then she stepped onto the dance floor.

She was... amazing. Her variety, flexibility, interpretation and change of pace were amazing. I've seen perhaps five women like this before. Once in 1984 at the Sasch in Studio City. Once at the FenixUnderground.

Erica was unique.

Ruth pulled me back to the dance floor but moved on to a better dancer, a more attractive man... until his boyfriend joined the fray.

But by then I was lost in thought...

"The Art Of The Unique"

Oh, My God.
I have a Muse.

I know the words, the mythology but I never felt it emotionally.

She is My Muse.

"The Art Of The Unique" sprang into my mind, inspired by her fear that she wasn't special. The S-curve begat the Miner, the Miner begat the Ideosphere, the Ideosphere begat the Cultural Diffusion.

Then the Diffusion merged with my Muse and begat "The Art Of the Unique".

I have a new venue.

Updated Ideospheric Sampling Model

Recently I've used graphs from Google Trends, Nielson's Blogpulse and Alexa.com to bolster or refute trends which I've detected with MemeMiner.

Normal meme propagation tends to look like an S-curve over time.

As memes propagate over the Internet, they seep into different domains at different rates -

We can define three types of "avenues" -

1) Communication avenue which is the true vector of meme propagation like Dejanews.com, blogs or email.

2) Measurement avenues such as Alexa or Netcraft measure network flows.

3) Reference avenues catalog existing data. Reference avenues will always lag meme propagation.

My original graphs were based on one memetic entry point - Dejanews.com. In this three-part model, I'm sampling across a range of memetic propagation - a memetic entry point (a communication avenue like Dejanews.com, email or blogs), a measurement or feedback point like Alexa.com or Netcraft.com and a reference avenue like Google Trends or Wikipedia.

These sampling points may provide insight about why a meme is propagating, a trouble-shooting model if you will.

Note: "nothing" means "less than expected". The nature of propagation is that seepage (bleedover) will occur at different rates throughout the Ideosphere.

Sub-bandwidths of the Ideosphere can be categorized into five types -

An Ideospheric bandwidth (or "channel") either represents a certain meme (and its sub-memes) or it does not. If it represents a meme, it can denote either a positive or negative connotation. Unallocated bandwidth has three potential states -

a) bandwidth which was never exposed to the current meme

b) bandwidth which actively avoids the current meme

c) bandwidth which accepted the current meme and discarded it in favor of a more desirable meme.

Positive and negative connotations are detectable by associated keywords (i.e. a semantic map).

The cause of unallocated bandwidth is trickier to determine, particularly for memes are which actively avoided. Today's case-in-point is "deficit". In spite of massive increases in consumer credit, the Federal deficit and trade deficit, the general public avoids talk and thought of "deficits" -

The absence of information is often meaningful... if it can be detected.

Ideosphere Latencies

A graphical description of the MySpace Meme results. In this example, each of the S-curves represents the propagation of the "MySpace" meme through a particular avenue or channel:

We can define three types of "avenues" -

1) Communication avenue which is the true vector of meme propagation. We need an existing communication avenue like Dejanews.com, blogs or email to boostrap the meme propagation of a new meme like MySpace.com.

There are simultaneous communication avenues and the "MySpace meme" will appear on each of them (to some degree) and within a certain time range.

2) Measurement avenues such as Alexa or Netcraft measure network flows.

3) Reference avenues catalog existing data. The meme must already exist, get collected and cataloged and then referenced by a user. Reference avenues will always lag meme propagation.

So, we can assume that Google will always be a lagging indicator in regards to new memes. Blogpulse.com is probably a better predictor.

I'm working on a visio diagram of this "avenues & latency" theory based on set-theory but I don't have it all worked out yet.

Ideospheric Interim Thoughts

I ate and dinner and wondered why the three Internet datasources in MySpace Meme Update are offset by so many months. Networks always have latency but seven months?

I have two crude Ideosphere models -

My High-Level Abstract Model
My Sampling Model

My goal is to look at the Internet from an holistic, high-level view. Most people, particularly its builders, see it from the ground up, from low-level bits and bytes assembled into silo structures.

Then I realized that the three datasources have external latencies. We can categorize them as three types -

1) Dejanews.com is a communication tool
2) Alexa.com is a measurement tool
3) Google Trends is a reference tool

A pure communication tool will always be the first to propagate a meme.

A measurement tool will always be coincident indicator, parallelling the growth of the meme.

A reference tool will always lag a meme because it is dependent upon a communication tool to propagate the meme initially.

MySpace.com is also a communication tool but it needed a pre-existing communication tool to boot-strap the propagation of its meme. Ergo, Dejanews.com leads MySpace.com because it existed first.

It makes perfect sense that these three data sources are lagged by a few months, one from the other.

I'll write this up better tomorrow with a simple time-lagged diagram.

MySpace Meme - Successful Prediction & Update

S-curve Methodology
Three-source Sampling Theory

In April 2006, I predicted that MySpace had topped out in rate of growth based on Dejanews keyword histograms.
Alexa and Google Trends confirm that prediction.

Dejanews.com shows a peak in January, 2006.
Alexa's traffic peaks in March, 2006.
Google Trends shows a peak in July, 2006.

Dejanews predicted the Alexa traffic change three months before it occurred.
Google's Trends tool, based on search items, lagged the change by four months.
Dejanews was a leading indicator while Google Trends was a lagging indicator.

My opinion - Fox probably paid top dollar for MySpace.com in July 2005 and MySpace is close to peaking in terms of total users & traffic.

My Best Decision

I'm grateful, almost every day now, that I never had children.

I wouldn't have spent enough time with them.
I would have taught them the wrong things.
My brother has done a far better job than I would have.

Vogue At Ebb

The Vogue, social center of Seattle's Goth community, is closing its doors (as I suspected several months ago). Technically, it's changing to a new location, but in reality the Vogue is going

from
(7 days per week @ 5 hours per day) = 35 hours per week
to
(3 days per week @ 3.5 hours per day) or 10.5 hours per week

That's a net reduction of 70% of club time per week.
You won't hear those numbers from the Goth community, though.

I'll run a spider analysis of livejournal.com in the next few days that might show other changes in the LJ community. If information is increasingly specialized, then by inference that information must have an audience of decreasing size. Is there a point where information becomes too specialized and granular, where the cost of specialized information is greater than its worth?

Oh, well.
That's how it goes.

Mr. X

Mr X-aggeration, late forties, dressed as an African explorer, outlandish in the crowded pool hall. I was the only soul that talked with him.

He was back from South America where he'd been training mercenaries. I was considering a gig in Saudi and yes, he'd just been there, too.

But he was also an inventor, robbed by Micron and Nike of his greatest invention - the lighted shoe. He owned mining properties around the State, multiple houses across the Pacific Northwest, drove exotic cars and always carried "large quantities of kuggerands" in them, dated an olympic swimming champion...

but the best came last... his combat days as a Navy Seal.

He'd lost credibility since the Micron theft but I had fun with the conversation. We talked about women, how they coveted possessions and income (that part sounded true!) and he asked me how I handled that situation.

"I tell them the truth," I said.

"Which is?"

"I drive an Echo, I'm unemployed and I live with my parents!"

"Ahhhhh", he grinned, "I bet that sends them packing."

"Yup, except for crazier young ones!

"And aren't those the ones you really want, anyway?!!!"

We had a good chuckle over that.

Trish

Small and slim isn't your average stripteaser's body. Perhaps her face and personality made up for it. I won six of our eight pool games but Trish destroyed me in Game 7 and I wondered if she'd thrown shots to build my ego. But to be fair, she was constantly distracted by calls and friends snapping phone cameras. We're probably digitized together now, forever surfing the Internet.

She was playing alone; small, determined, in a drab, unflattering t-shirt and jeans.

So drab that I wasn't sure she was female.
After all, it is a weird club full of strange sexual styles.

Then I noticed her familiarity with the club staff. Suspicions rose. I played this table last night. I've chatted with the staff, maybe too much. Perhaps she was laying in wait for me? Ten minutes passed before I suggested a game and the phone cameras started snapping during our second round.

My full name was googled from Boise addresses this week. Twice. I keep fairly tight hold of my identity, I rarely use credit cards. The number of Boise residents would even know to query my name is... very small. One recruiter, perhaps two HR reps, an Indian developer with my business card, a pharmacist.

I've been carded at four clubs, but two were cursory glances.. But this club wasn't one of them and the doorkeeper went over my license, thinking it was fake or expired. It seemed curious at the time.

It's easy to be paranoid in the Information Age, especially if you're one of the instigators.

I do wonder.

But I don't care, I like the place and I'll be back tonight and Saturday, too.
If a scheme is afoot, so be it.
I'd be more flattered than worried.