Day: April 10, 2018

A day removed from my mid-kid’s birthday I find myself thinking about the concept of happiness. For most people around me happiness is simple, yet elusive. For some it is entirely modeled on what their siblings want. If one has a baby then that is what they want. If another gets a fancy car then that is what they want, as though mirroring their success manufactures a type of happiness. I myself live on the edge of a chasm that is the happy. I can peer down into it and know at the bottom is a great many things into which I may fall. As such I am happy in waves and often for different reasons.

What I seek presently is to find the joy in routine; to turn the necessities into a morning run along the edge of that chasm so that I may feel joy as wind against my skin as I run. I want to be happy in everything that I do. This doesn’t mean I expect to eschew sadness. One fuels the other in an endless cycle. I just want to sink in more and release the expectations of worry, wear, and sadness in order to embrace a deeper sense of joy from the simplest parts of my day. In essence, I want to enjoy it all, even the knowledge that I am not doing all I can, as it points to the notion that I can still do more.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. Behind the words: I recently started listening to the book ‘Continue Online’ which has opened in me a wealth of questions about how I feel about online interactions and the possibility of AI. In truth, I feel intrigued. I would very much enjoy interactions with AI and learning to understand their ‘way’ as well as understanding the possibilities of becoming a digital entity. I often wonder if this consciousness is in of itself a form of executable programming built from our human experiences. If so, can it be copied?
2. While this book is taking up precious brain cycles I remain interested in understanding a great many other things–namely the draft and Minecraft. Why those two? There is a sense of balanced creation at play there where I don’t entirely know what I am trying to make but have a vague sense of things, depending on what I discover to be possible within the confines of the world I’ve discovered. Likewise my team has a concept of what they want and the draft is the execution of that concept modified by variables outside of their control. In both instances we have a certain amount of control but also must wait and see if our monster becomes what we hope it will.
3. Yes, I was in fact reaching… Not mad about that.

I love gaming. I love games that give me the opportunity to build in an interactive world where the only limits placed upon me are my own abilities to acquire materials and, ultimately, to think of something to create. Still, a drawback of the platform is the very basic nature of the AI that I deal with. These AI respond to danger and to finance. I can scare them or trade with them. They don’t exist beyond that limitation. We will hit next gen when in-game characters have their own agenda. Add this to the ever improving graphics capability of consoles and other platforms and we are looking at immersive gaming that will eventually rival real life activity.

In some ways it already does, and that is what makes things dangerous. We are already peeled so far back from reality as to live in our own silo’d versions of truth that allowing for full rig immersion would serve only to reshape the social landscape further–leading us deeper into the silos and pushing for more tribalism and division.

Beyond the rise of thought tribes comes the very real fear that we will stop pursuing an advancement of the beauty and well being of the planet, becomes it becomes less critical than the game. Unfortunately we have largely lost our ability to think ten steps ahead. Two is about all we can muster anymore. If those two steps are what is my next digital fix and how can I improve my tech, then the issues of the environment never get served.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. I’ve established ‘bare minimum’ as blogging. I won’t ever do less than that in a day. This is obvious by action, but it is also important to articulate and reflect on.